The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld Read online

  The Mended Drum in Filigree Street, foremost of the city’s taverns. It was famed not for its beer, which looked like maiden’s water and tasted like battery acid, but for its clientele. It was said that if you sat long enough in the Drum, then sooner or later every major hero on the Disc would steal your horse.

  *

  Ysabell was heavily into frills. Even the dressing table seemed to be wearing a petticoat. The whole room wasn’t so much furnished as lingeried.

  *

  Mort is reading from a very old book in the Library of Death:

  ‘… turnered hys hand, butt was sorelie vexed that alle menne at laste comme to nort, viz. Deathe, and vowed hymme to seke Imortalitie yn his pride … It’s written in Old,’ he said. ‘Before they invented spelling.’

  *

  Death visits a job centre:

  ‘It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,’ Keeble said. ‘Have you thought of going into teaching?’

  Death’s face was a mask of terror. Well, it was always a mask of terror, but this time he meant it to be.

  They opened the ledger.

  They looked at it for a long time.

  Then Mort said, ‘What do all those symbols mean?’

  ‘Sodomy non sapiens,’ said Albert under his breath.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Means I’m buggered if I know.’

  Harga’s House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city’s leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn’t get it. They don’t go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, soss and bacon and a fried slice.

  *

  ‘Rincewind!’ bawled Albert. ‘Take this thing away and dispose of it.’

  The toad crawled into Rincewind’s hand and gave him an apologetic look.

  ‘That’s the last time that bloody landlord gives any lip to a wizard,’ said Albert with smug satisfaction. ‘It seems I turn my back for a few hundred years and suddenly people in this town are encouraged to think they can talk back to wizards, eh?’

  As the bursar of this university I must say that we’ve always encouraged a good neighbour policy with respect to the community’ mumbled a wizard, trying to avoid Albert’s gimlet stare.

  ‘You spineless maggots! I didn’t found this university so you could lend people the bloody lawnmower!’

  *

  The Rite of AshkEnte, quite simply, summons and binds Death. Students of the occult will be aware that it can be performed with a simple incantation, three small bits of wood and 4cc of mouse blood, but no wizard worth his pointy hat would dream of doing anything so unimpressive; they knew in their hearts that if a spell didn’t involve big yellow candles, lots of rare incense, circles drawn on the floor with eight different colours of chalk and a few cauldrons around the place then it simply wasn’t worth contemplating.

  *

  The wizards have escaped unscathed from an encounter with their long-dead founder, whose statue had hitherto graced the campus.

  ‘I propose here and now we replace the statue [said the bursar]. And to make sure no students deface it in any way I suggest we then erect it in the deepest cellar.

  ‘And then lock the door,’ he added. Several wizards began to cheer up.

  ‘And throw away the key?’ said Rincewind.

  ‘And weld the door,’ the bursar said. ‘And then brick up the doorway’ There was a round of applause.

  ‘And throw away the bricklayer!’ chortled Rincewind, who felt he was getting the hang of this.

  The bursar scowled at him. ‘No need to get carried away’ he said.

  *

  The princess sprang to her feet and launched herself at her uncle, but Cutwell grabbed her.

  ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘This isn’t the kind of man who ties you up in a cellar with just enough time for the mice to eat your ropes before the flood-waters rise. This is the kind of man who just kills you here and now.’

  *

  ‘It’s not that I mind being a duke,’ said Mort. ‘It’s being married to a duchess that comes as a shock.’

  I WASN’T CUT OUT TO BE A FATHER, AND CERTAINLY NOT A GRANDAD. I HAVEN’T GOT THE RIGHT KIND OF KNEES.

  The Disc’s greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents.

  *

  Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

  THERE was an eighth son of an eighth son. He was, naturally, a wizard. And there it should have ended. However (for reasons we’d better not go into), he had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son … a wizard squared … a source of magic… a Souircerer.

  Far below, the sea sucked on the shingle as noisily as an old man with one tooth who had been given a gob-stopper.

  *

  ‘Children are our hope for the future.’

  THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.

  ‘What does it contain, then?’

  ME.

  ‘Besides you I mean!’

  Death gave him a puzzled look. I’M SORRY?

  *

  ‘What is there in this world that makes living worth while?’

  Death thought about it.

  CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.

  *

  There was no analogy for the way in which Great A ‘Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.

  So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.

  *

  Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the River Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nested among the gutters and eaves of Unseen University, although it was noticeable that however great the pressure on the nesting sites they never, ever, made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles’ disappointment.

  *

  Books of magic have a sort of life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelicomnicon has to be kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters, and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead.

  *

  In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about.

  The Librarian ambled back down the aisles. He had a face that only a lorry tyre could love.

  There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; afte
r sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is the considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction.

  *

  On top of the wardrobe, wrapped in scraps of yellowing paper and old dust sheets, was a large brass-bound chest. It went by the name of the Luggage. Why it consented to be owned by Rincewind was something only the Luggage knew, and it wasn’t telling, but probably no other item in the entire chronicle of travel accessories had quite such a history of mystery and grievous bodily harm. It had been described as half suitcase, half homicidal maniac. It had many unusual qualities … but currently there was only one that set it apart from any other brass-bound chest. It was snoring, with a sound like someone very slowly sawing a log.

  *

  The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe.

  *

  But it wasn’t the sight of the cockroaches that was so upsetting. It was the fact that they were marching in step, a hundred abreast … There was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time.

  Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column … The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tap-dancing over a bag of crisps.

  *

  There was a lot of beer about. Here and there red-faced wizards were happily singing ancient drinking songs which involved a lot of knee-slapping and cries of ‘Ho!’ The only possible excuse for this sort of thing is that wizards are celibate, and have to find their amusement where they can.

  *

  The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below; to say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that piranhas are naturally a little peckish.

  *

  One of Rincewind’s tutors had said of him that ‘to call his understanding of magical theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice’.

  *

  The reason that wizards didn’t rule the Disc was quite simple. Hand any two wizards a piece of rope and they would instinctively pull in opposite directions. Something about their genetics or their training left them with an attitude towards mutual cooperation that made an old bull elephant with terminal toothache look like a worker ant.

  *

  The last thing Rincewind saw before he was dragged away was the Librarian. Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orang-utan had the weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard’s shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head.

  *

  ‘I said come on,’ she repeated. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  Rincewind took a deep breath. ‘Murderers, muggers, thieves, assassins, pickpockets, cutpurses, reevers, snigsmen, rapists and robbers,’ he said.

  Down these mean streets a man must walk, he thought. And along some of them he will break into a run.

  It might be thought that the Mended Drum was a seedy disreputable tavern. In fact it was a reputable disreputable tavern. Its customers had a certain rough-hewn respectability -they might murder each other in an easygoing way, as between equals, but they didn’t do it vindictively. A child could go in for a glass of lemonade and be certain of getting nothing worse than a clip round the ear when his mother heard his expanded vocabulary. On quiet nights, and when he was certain the Librarian wasn’t going to come in, the landlord was even known to put bowls of peanuts on the bar.

  *

  ‘Is he a fair and just ruler?’

  ‘I would say that he is unfair and unjust, but scrupulously even-handed. He is unfair and unjust to everyone, without fear or favour.’

  *

  The current Patrician, head of the extremely rich and powerful Vetinari family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep awhite cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a piranha tank; and you’d hazard for good measure that he probably collected rare thin porcelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while distant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him to use the word ‘exquisite’ and have thin lips. He looked the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar.

  Practically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrier called Wuffles that smelled badly and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the entire world he truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens. The people of Ankh are of a practical persuasion, and felt that the Patrician’s edict forbidding all street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn’t administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.

  *

  ‘I can’t swim,’ [said Rincewind.]

  ‘What, not a stroke?’

  ‘About how deep is the sea here, would you say? Approximately?’ he said.

  About a dozen fathoms, I believe.’

  ‘Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are.’

  *

  Abrim laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It sounded as though he had had laughter explained to him, probably slowly and repeatedly, but had never heard anyone actually do it.

  *

  ‘They’ll throw you into a seraglio!’

  Conina shrugged. ‘Could be worse.’ ‘But it’s got all these spikes and when they shut the door—’ hazarded Rincewind. ‘That’s not a seraglio.

  That’s an Iron Maiden. Don’t you know what a seraglio is?’

  ‘Um …’

  She told him. He went crimson.

  *

  It was said that everything in Ankh-Morpork was for sale except for the beer and the women, both of which one merely hired.

  *

  Of course, Ankh-Morpork’s citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

  *

  The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist’s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.†

  *

  In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find …

  *

  ‘Death walks abroad,’ added Nijel helpfully.

  ‘Abroad I don’t mind,’ said Rincewind. ‘They’re all foreigners. It’s Death walking around here I’m not looking forward to.’

  *

  ‘If we get a chance,’ whispered Rincewind to Nijel, ‘we run, right?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘From,’ said Rincewind, ‘the important word is from.’

  *

  Nijel was one of those people who, if you say ‘don’t look now’, would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable. These are the same people who, when you point out, say, an unusual crocus just beside them, turn round aimlessly and put their foot down with a sad little squashy noise. If they were lost in a trackless desert you could find them by putting down, somewhere on the sand, something small and fragile like a valuable old mug that had been in your family for generations, and then hurrying back as soon as you heard the crash.

&n
bsp; *

  Rincewind tries to explain a wizard’s inbuilt desire to construct a tower:

  ‘Wizards always used to build a tower around themselves, like those … what do you call those things you find at the bottom of rivers?’

  ‘Frogs.’

  ‘Stones.’

  ‘Unsuccessful gangsters.’

  ‘Caddis flies is what I meant,’ said Rincewind.

  *

  Rincewind wasn’t very good at precognition; in fact he could barely see into the present.

  *

  There came a thunderous knock at the door.

  There is a mantra to be said on these occasions. It doesn’t matter if the door is a tent flap, a scrap of hide on a wind-blown yurt, three inches of solid oak with great iron nails in or a rectangle of chipboard with mahogany veneer, a small light over it made of horrible bits of coloured glass and a bellpush that plays a choice of twenty popular melodies that no music lover would want to listen to even after five years’ sensory deprivation.

  One wizard turned to another and duly said: ‘I wonder who that can be at this time of night?’

  *

  The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion, and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc’s greatest philosopher, who after some thought proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large.

  *

  The Four Horsemen of the Disc’s Apocralypse have had three of their horses stolen while they were in an inn.

  WEIGHT DOESN’T COME INTO IT. MY STEED HAS CARRIED ARMIES. MY STEED HAS CARRIED CITIES. YEA, HE HATH CARRIED ALL THINGS IN THEIR DUE TIME, said Death. BUT HE’S NOT GOING TO CARRY YOU THREE.

  ‘Why not?’

  IT’S A MATTER OF THE LOOK OF THE THING.

  ‘It’s going to look pretty good, then, isn’t it,’ said War testily, ‘the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.’