by The Wit
‘That’s the thing about witchcraft,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer.’
Nanny said, ‘Funny to think of our Magrat being married and everything.’
‘What do you mean, everything?’
‘Well, you know - married,’ said Nanny. ‘I gave her a few tips. Always wear something in bed. Keeps a man interested.’
‘You always wore your hat.’
‘Right.’
*
‘What was that dance your Jason and his men did when they’d got drunk?’ said Granny.
‘It’s the Lancre Stick and Bucket Dance, Esme.’
‘It’s legal, is it?’
‘Technically they shouldn’t do it when there’s women present,’ said Nanny. ‘Otherwise it’s sexual morrisment.’
*
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.
BE a MAN in the City Watch! The City Watch needs MEN!’ But what it’s got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-Constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-Constable Angua (a woman … most of tbe time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).
And they need all the help they can get. Because they’ve only got twenty-four hours to clean tip the town and this is Ankh-Morpork we’re talking about…
‘Sergeant Colon,’ said Angua. ‘He was the fat one, yes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why has he got a pet monkey?’
‘Ah,’ said Carrot. ‘I think it is Corporal Nobbs to whom you refer …’
*
‘Who was that man with the granite face I saw in the Watch House?’ said Angua.
‘That was Detritus the troll,’ said Carrot.
‘No, that man,’ said Angua, learning as had so many others that Carrot tended to have a bit of trouble with metaphors. ‘Face like thu— face like someone very disgruntled.’
‘Oh, that was Captain Vimes. But he’s never been gruntled, I think’
*
Vimes’s meeting with the Patrician ended as all such meetings did, with the guest going away in possession of an unfocused yet nagging suspicion that he’d only just escaped with his life.
*
Sybil Ramkin lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side. Women who were merely well-off saved up and bought dresses made of silk edged with lace and pearls, but Lady Ramkin was so rich she could afford to stomp around the place in rubber boots and a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother. She was so rich she could afford to live on biscuits and cheese sandwiches. She was so rich she lived in three rooms in a thirty-four-roomed mansion; the rest of them were full of very expensive and very old furniture, covered in dust sheets.
*
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
*
The natural condition of the common swamp dragon is to be chronically ill, and the natural state of an unhealthy dragon is to be laminated across the walls, floor and ceiling of whatever room it is in. A swamp dragon is a badly run, dangerously unstable chemical factory one step from disaster. One quite small step.
It has been speculated that its habit of exploding violently when angry, excited, frightened or merely plain bored is a developed survival trait† to discourage predators. Eat dragons, it proclaims, and you’ll have a case of indigestion to which the term ‘blast radius’ will be appropriate.
*
To understand why dwarfs and trolls don’t like each other you have to go back a long way.
They get along like chalk and cheese. Very like chalk and cheese, really. One is organic, the other isn’t, and also smells a bit cheesy. Dwarfs make a living by smashing up rocks with valuable minerals in them and the silicon-based lifeform known as trolls are, basically, rocks with valuable minerals in them.
*
Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.
Carrot was not stupid. He was direct, and honest, and good-natured and honourable in all his dealings. In Ankh-Morpork this would normally have added up to ‘stupid’ in any case and would have given him the survival quotient of a jellyfish in a blast furnace, but there were a couple of other factors. One was a punch that even trolls had learned to respect. The other was that Carrot was genuinely, almost supernaturally, likeable. He got on well with people, even while arresting them. He had an exceptional memory for names.
Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn’t a good copper,
but he’d probably be spared the chore because lots of other people would happily admit it for him.
There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they’d seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, ‘Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-con-tinuum!’ or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!’
No clowns were funny.
That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you.
Three and a half minutes after waking up, Captain Samuel Vimes, Night Watch, staggered up the last few steps on to the roof of the city’s opera house, gasped for breath and threw up allegro ma non troppo.
*
He didn’t know much about gargoyles. Carrot had said something once about how marvellous it was, an urban troll species that had evolved a symbiotic relationship with gutters, and he had admired the way they funnelled run-off water into their ears and out through fine sieves in their mouths. You didn’t get many birds nesting on buildings colonized by gargoyles.
*
Vimes snorted. I grew up here, he thought, and when I walk down the street everyone says, ‘Who’s that glum bugger?’ Carrot’s been here a few months and everyone knows him. And he knows everyone. Everyone likes him. I’d be annoyed about that, if only he wasn’t so likeable.
*
‘I’d like a couple of eggs,’ said Vimes, ‘with the yolks real hard but the whites so runny that they drip like treacle. And I want bacon, that special bacon all covered with bony nodules and dangling bits of fat. And a slice of fried bread. The kind that makes your arteries go clang just by looking at it.’
‘Tough order,’ said Harga.
‘You managed it yesterday.’
*
Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things which only exist in potentia, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-Morpork is a product of the Patrician’s rules about baseless metaphors, the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality around Ankh, which is so thin that it’s as thin as a very thin thing. The net result is that trading in pork futures - in pork that doesn’t exist yet - led to the building of the warehouse to store it in until it does.
*
C. M. O. T. Dibbler had a number of bad points, but species prejudice was not one of them. He liked anyone who had money, regardless of the colour and shape of the hand that was proffering it. For Dibbler believed in a world where a sapient creature could walk tall, breathe free, pursue life, liberty and happiness, and step out towards the bright new dawn. If they could be persuaded to gobble something off Dibbler’s hot-food tray at the same time, this was all to the good.
*
Leonard of Quirm was not all that old. He was one of those people who started looking venerable around the age of thirty, and would probably still look about the same at the age of ninety. He wasn’t exactly bald, either. His head had just grown up through his hair, rising like a mighty rock dome through heavy forest.
*
‘This city is full of clever men,’ said the Patrician …’They never think. They do things like open the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old temple in Dagon Street on the night of the winter solstice when it also happens to be a full moon.’
*
‘Captain Vimes?’ said Carrot, waving a hand in front of his eyes. There was no response.
‘How much has he had?’
‘Two nips of whiskey, that’s all.’
‘That shouldn’t do this to him, even on an empty stomach,’ said Carrot.
Angua pointed at the neck of a bottle protruding from Vimes’s pocket.
‘I don’t think he’s been drinking on an empty stomach,’ she said. ‘I think he put some alcohol in it first.’
*
‘Oh, no,’ said Sergeant Colon. ‘He’s had a whole bottle!’
Angua picked out the bottle and looked at the label.
‘C. M. O. T Dibbler’s Genuine Authentic Soggy Mountain Dew,’ she read. ‘He’s going to die! It says, “One hundred and fifty per cent proof”!’
‘Nah, that’s just old Dibbler’s advertising,’ said Nobby. ‘It ain’t got no proof. Just circumstantial evidence.’
*
‘He only drinks when he gets depressed,’ said Carrot.
‘Why does he get depressed?’
‘Sometimes it’s because he hasn’t had a drink.’
*
‘I appear … to be losing a lot of blood,’ said Lord Vetinari.
‘Who would have thought you had it in you,’ said Vimes, with the frankness of those probably about to die.
‘Captain QuirkeT said Carrot. ‘But he’s … not a good choice.’
‘Mayonnaise Quirke, we used to call him,’ said Colon. ‘He’s a pillock.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Angua. ‘He’s rich, thick and oily, yes?’
‘And smells faintly of eggs,’ said Carrot.
It’s generally very quiet in the Unseen University library. There’s perhaps the shuffling of feet as wizards wander between the shelves, the occasional hacking cough to disturb the academic silence, and every once in a while a dying scream as an unwary student fails to treat an old magical book with the caution it deserves.
*
Carrot could lead armies, Angua thought. Some people have inspired whole countries to great deeds because of the power of their vision. And so could he. Not because he dreams about marching hordes, or world domination, or an empire of a thousand years. Just because he thinks that everyone’s really decent underneath and would get along just fine if only they made the effort, and he believes that so strongly it burns like a flame which is bigger than he is. He’s got a dream and we’re all part of it, so that it shapes the world around him. And the weird thing is that no one wants to disappoint him. It’d be like kicking the biggest puppy in the universe. It’s a kind of magic.
*
‘Captain Vimes always told me, sir, that there’s big crimes and little crimes. Sometimes the little crimes look big and the big crimes you can hardly see, but the crucial thing is to decide which is which.’
*
Foul Ole Ron was a Beggars’ Guild member in good standing. He was a Mutterer, and a good one. He would walk behind people muttering in his own private language until they gave him money not to. People thought he was mad, but this was not, technically, the case. It was just that he was in touch with reality on the cosmic level, and had a bit of trouble focusing on things smaller, like other people, walls and soap (although on very small things, such as coins, his eyesight was Grade A).
‘You can really talk?’ said Carrot. Gaspode rolled his eyes. ‘ ’Course not,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’ said the Patrician.
‘Corporal Nobbs, sir!’ said Nobby, saluting.
‘Do we employ you?’
‘Yessir!’
‘Ah. You’re the dwarf, are you?’
‘Nosir. That was the late Cuddy, sir! I’m one of the human beings, sir!’
You’re not employed as the result of any … special hiring procedures?’
‘Nosir,’ said Nobby, proudly.
‘My word.’
*
The Patrician steepled his fingers and looked at Carrot over the top of them. It was a mannerism that had unnerved many.
† From the point of view of the species as a whole. Not from the point of view of the dragon now landing in small pieces around the landscape.
OTHER children got given xylophones. Susan just had to ask her grandfather to take his vest off.
Yes. There’s a Death in the family.
It’s hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe - especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy. And especially when you have to face the new and addictive music that has entered the Discworld.
It’s lawless. It changes people.
It’s called Music With Rocks In.
It’s got a beat and you can dance to it, but…
It’s alive.
And it won’t fade away.
It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country’s main export. It had rain mines.
People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune.
Unfortunately, other people sought it too.
Lord Vetinari had encouraged the growth of the Guilds. They were the big wheels on which the clockwork of a well-regulated city ran. A drop of oil here … a spoke inserted there, of course … and by and large it all worked.
*
It looked the kind of musical instrument emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors.
*
‘We haven’t even practised together properly,’ said Imp.
‘We’ll practise as we go along,’ said Glod. ‘Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.’
*
The raven had grown up in the forever-crumbling, ivy-clad Tower of Art, overlooking Unseen University in far Ankh-Morpork …
The wizard who thought he owned him called him Quoth.
*
There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shovelling manure in a stable.
*
Quirm wasn’t a night town. People who came to Quirm looking for a good time went somewhere else. Quirm was so respectable that even dogs asked permission before going to the lavatory.
*
‘Ride the horse.’
/>
‘Where to?’
‘That’s for me not to know and you to find out.’
*
CURRY GARDENS
Curry with Vegetable … … . . 8p
Curry with Meat … … … . . 10p
Curry with Named Meat … . . 15p
*
Albert was bent over the stove. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘You want fried bread with your sausages?’
Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying pan. It wasn’t a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one. Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid.
*
The Mended Drum had traditionally gone in for, well, traditional pub games, such as dominoes, darts and Stabbing People In The Back And Taking All Their Money.
*
‘Why’d you want to come here?’ she said.
‘This is a battlefield, isn’t it?’ said the raven patiently. ‘You’ve got to have ravens afterwards.’ Its freewheeling eyes swivelled in its head. ‘Carrion regardless, as you might say.’
*
Death decides to join the Klatchian Foreign Legion. He arrives at one of their forts and knocks:
IS THIS THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION?
The face of the little man on the other side of the door went blank.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ve got me there. Hang on a moment.’ The hatch shut. There was a whispered discussion on the other side of the door. The hatch opened.
‘Yes, it appears we are the . .. the … what was that again? Right, got it … the Klatchian Foreign Legion. Yes. What was it you were wanting?’
I WISH TO JOIN.
‘Join? Join what?’
THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION.
‘Where’s that?’
There was some more whispering.
‘Oh. Right. Sorry. Yes. That’s us.’
The doors swung open. The visitor strode in. A legionary with corporal’s stripes on his arm walked up to him.
You’ll have to report to …’ his eyes glazed a little, ‘… you know … big man, three stripes … on the tip of my tongue a moment ago …’