by The Wit
‘Oh, fresh morning of the world indeed,’ said the Count solemnly.
‘Such romance … and we met such lovely people, too. Do you remember Mr and Mrs Harker?’
‘Very fondly. I recall they lasted nearly all week.’
*
Vampires are not naturally co-operative creatures. It’s not in their nature. Every other vampire is a rival for the next meal. In fact, the ideal situation for a vampire is a world in which every other vampire has been killed off and no one seriously believes in vampires any more.
SAM Vimes is a man on the run.
Yesterday he was a Me, a chief of police and the ambassador to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberwald.
Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don’t ask). It’s snowing. It’s freezing. And if he can’t make it through the forest to civilization there’s going to be a terrible war.
But there are monsters on his trail. They’re bright. They’re fast. They’re werewolves - and they’re catching tip.
Starring dwarfs, diplomacy, intrigue and big lamps of fat.
All Jolson was a man who’d show up on an atlas and change the orbit of small planets. Paving stones cracked under his feet. He combined in one body – and there was plenty of room left over – Ankh-Morpork’s best chef and its keenest eater, a circumstance made in mashed potato heaven. He’d picked up the nickname by general acclaim, since no one seeing him in the street for the first time could believe that it was all Jolson.
*
It is in the nature of the universe that the person who always keeps you waiting ten minutes will, on the day you are ten minutes tardy, have been ready ten minutes early and will make a point of not mentioning this.
*
Uberwald was so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly unexplored, too.
(At least by proper explorers. Just living there doesn’t count.)
‘I could’ve bin a wolf, you know,’ said Gaspode.
‘With diff’rent parents, of course.’
‘Someone said something blotto voice,’ said Captain Colon.
‘I’m sure they didn’t, captain,’ said Nobby.
‘And I won’t be eyeballed like that, neither!’
‘No one’s looking at you!’ wailed Nobby.
‘Aha, you think I don’t know that one?’ Colon shouted. ‘There’s plenty of ways to eyeball someone without lookin’ at ‘em, corporal. That man over there is earlobing me!’
*
Gaspode settled down in the pose he almost unconsciously categorized as Faithful Companion Keeping Watch, got bored, scratched himself absent-mindedly, curled up in the pose known as Faithful Companion Curled Up With His Nose Pressed On His Bottom, and fell asleep.
*
Lord Vetinari paused. He found it difficult to talk to Frederick Colon. He dealt on a daily basis with people who treated conversation as a complex game, and with Colon he had to keep on adjusting his mind in case he overshot.
*
Gaspode wasn’t sure of his own ancestry. There was some terrier, and a touch of spaniel, and probably someone’s leg, and an awful lot of mongrel.
*
‘I believe you were an alcoholic, Sir Samuel.’ ‘No,’ said Vimes. ‘I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to be an alcoholic’
‘Everyone’s heard of Commander Vimes. I mean no offence, of course, but we were a little surprised when the Patrician said that you would be coming. We were expecting one of the more … experienced … diplomats.’
‘Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anything,’ said Vimes. ‘And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I’m your man.’
*
‘Igors heal very fast,’ said Lady Sybil.
‘They’d have to.’
‘Mister Skimmer said they’re very gifted surgeons, Sam.’
‘Except cosmetically, perhaps.’
*
‘This stuff … this stuff is spying. I wondered how Vetinari always seems to know so much!’
‘Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?’
‘But there’s loads of details here … I didn’t know we did this sort of thing!’
‘You use spies all the time, dear,’ said Sybil.
‘I do not!’
‘Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way Jose and Cumbling Michael?’
‘That is not spying, that is not spying! That’s just “information received”. We couldn’t do the job if we didn’t know what’s happening on the street!’
‘Well, perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of … a bigger street, dear.’
*
Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.
*
The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler, and wrote a set of rules for what he termed ‘the noble art of fisticuffs’, which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren’t allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble chest out-thrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn’t read the Marquis’s book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were ‘Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler—’
*
Vimes is being pursued through an unfriendly landscape.
So, what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree and die, or run for it and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better.
YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE.
Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.
‘Are you following me or what?’
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS ‘DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION’?
Lady Sybil wasn’t a good cook.
She’d never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would be for fifty people using at least four types of fork.
WILLIAM just wants to get at the truth.
Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it’s only the third edition…
William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld’s first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist’s life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes.
The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words ‘fire insurance’).
*
Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler’s existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all runny. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages.
*
As for Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, all that need be known about them at this point is that they are the kind of people who call you ‘friend’. People like that aren’t friendly.
‘You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office—’
‘Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.’
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half ful
l. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!’
*
Hugglestones was a boarding school so bleak and spartan that only the upper classes would dream of sending their sons there.
It was a granite building on a rain-soaked moor, and its stated purpose was to make men from boys. The policy employed involved a certain amount of wastage, and consisted of very simple and violent games in the healthy outdoor sleet. The small, slow, fat or merely unpopular were mown down, as nature intended.
*
‘Ah,’ said Mr Pin. ‘Right. You are concerned citizens.’ He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant ‘hang someone’.
*
‘Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o’clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.’
‘I wasn’t aware they had appointments, sir.’
‘They will have,’ said Lord Vetinari.
*
‘I am looking for Mister William der Worde,’ rumbled a voice.
‘That’s me,’ said William.
‘Der Patrician will see you now,’ said the troll.
‘I don’t have an appointment with Lord Vetinari!’
‘Ah, well,’ said the troll, ‘you’d be amazed at how many people has appointments wid der Patrician an’ dey don’t know it.’
*
Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were 1) meat, 2) from a known four-footed creature, 3) probably land-dwelling.
*
‘ … a naked man, hotly pursued by Members of the Watch, burst through the Window and ran around the Room, causing much Disarray of the Tarts before being Apprehended by the Trifles.’
An innocent young reporter writes.
*
William wondered why he always disliked people who said ‘no offence meant’. Maybe it was because they found it easier to say ‘no offence meant’ than actually refrain from giving offence.
*
William felt predisposed to like Vimes, if only because of the type of enemies he made, but as far as he could see everything about the man could be prefaced by the word ‘badly’, as in -spoken, -educated and -in need of a drink.
*
‘Ah, just the man I was looking for!’ said William.
‘Am I?’ wheezed Nobbs, smoke curling out of his ears.
‘Yes, I’ve been talking to Commander Vimes, and now I would like to see the room where the crime was committed.’ William had great hopes of that sentence. It seemed to contain the words ‘and he gave me permission to’ without actually doing so.
*
One of the strange things about eating at Mrs Arcanum’s was that you got more leftovers than you got original meals. That is, there were far more meals made up from what were traditionally considered the prudently usable remains of earlier meals – stews, bubble-and-squeak, curry – than there were meals at which those remains could have originated.
The curry was particularly strange, since Mrs Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts and therefore added the curious yellow curry powder with a very small spoon, lest everyone should suddenly tear their clothes off and do foreign things. The main ingredients appeared to be swede and gritty rainwater tasting sultanas and the remains of some cold mutton.
*
The best way to describe Mr Windling would be like this: you are at a meeting. You’d like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn’t very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is already putting their papers neatly together, a voice says ‘If I can raise a minor matter, Mr Chairman …’ and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr Windlings of the universe is the term ‘in my humble opinion’, which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, ‘these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed’.
*
Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness, apart from in a very sternly abridged dictionary. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.
*
‘You don’t think a dress like this would be a bit … forward, do you?’ said Sacharissa, holding the dress against herself.
Rocky looked worried.
You’re quite a lot forward already’ he opined.
Sacharissa’s knowledge of vintages extended just as far as knowing that Chateau Maison was a very popular wine.
Sacharissa pulled a brown leather wallet out of the jacket.
‘Any clue to who he is?’ said William.
‘Er … there’s something done on the leather in pokerwork,’ said Sacharissa.
‘What does it say?’
‘ “Not A Very Nice Person At All”,’ she read. ‘I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?’
‘Someone who wasn’t a very nice person,’ said William.
Death sighed and shook his head.
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?
The Death of Rats looked up.
SQUEAK, he said.
Death waved a hand dismissively WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.
*
‘Oh, I see,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘You mean you should be free to print what you like?’
‘Well … broadly, yes, sir.’
‘Because that’s in the public interest?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Stories about man-eating goldfish and people’s husbands disappearing in big silver dishes?’
‘No, sir. That’s what the public is interested in. We do the other stuff, sir.’
‘Amusingly shaped vegetables?’
‘Well, a bit of that, sir. Sacharissa calls them human interest stories.’
‘About vegetables and animals?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So … we have what the people are interested in, and human interest stories, which is what humans are interested in, and the public interest, which no one is interested in.’
‘Except the public, sir,’ said William, trying to keep up.
‘Which isn’t the same as people and humans?’
‘I think it’s more complicated than that, sir.’
‘Obviously Do you mean that the public is a different thing from the people you just see walking about the place? The public thinks big, sensible, measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things?’
‘I think so. I may have to work on that idea too, I admit.’
*
‘I’m sure we can pull together, sir.’
Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, I do hope not, I really do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.’ He smiled. ‘It’s the only way to make progress.’
*
You think that’s really true?’ William said.
Sacharissa shrugged. ‘Really true? Who knows? This is a newspaper, isn’t it? It just has to be true until tomorrow.’
TIME is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed.
And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where
it’s wasted (like Underwater – how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time.
But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu-Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone’s problems.
Complete with a full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous).
‘She has told me everything,’ said Wen. ‘I know that time was made for men, not the other way round. I have learned how to shape it and bend it. I know how to make a moment last for ever, because it already has. And I can teach these skills even to you, Clodpool. I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.’
The apprentice gave him a bleary look.
‘Er … what does master want for breakfast?’ he said.
Wen looked down from their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of the difficult ones.’
*
This is the desk of a professional. It is clear that their job is their life. There are … human touches, but these are the human touches that strict usage allows in a chilly world of duty and routine.
Mostly they’re on the only piece of real colour in this picture of blacks and greys. It’s a coffee mug. Someone somewhere wanted to make it & jolly mug. It bears a rather unconvincing picture of a teddy bear, and the legend ‘To The World’s Greatest Grandad’ and the slight change in the style of lettering on the word ‘Grandad’ makes it clear that this has come from one of those stalls that have hundreds of mugs like this, declaring that they’re for the world’s greatest Grandad/Dad/Mum/Granny/Uncle/ Aunt/Blank. Only someone whose life contains very little else, one feels, would treasure a piece of gimcrackery like this.
*
They were not lifeforms. They were … non-lifeforms. They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell.