Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
“In fact,” he went on, a little more assertively now he could see a way ahead, “I heard this wizard down the University say that the Klatchians invented nothing. That was their great contribution to maffs, he said. I said ‘What?’ an’ he said, they come up with zero.” “Dun’t sound that clever to me,” said Nobby. “Anyone could invent nothing. I ain’t invented anything.” “My point exactly,” said Colon. “I told him, it was people who invented numbers like four and, and—” “—seven—” “—right, who were the geniuses. Nothing didn’t need inventing. It was just there. They probably just found it.”
I must brake off now because some robbers have broke into Vortin’s Dimond Warehouse and have taken Corporal Angua hostage. I fear there may be terrible bloodshed so, I remain, Yr. Loving Son, Carrot Ironfoundersson (Captain) ps I will write again tomorrow Carrot folded the letter carefully and slipped it under his breastplate. “I think they have had long enough to consider our suggestion, constable. What’s next on the list?” Constable Shoe leafed through a file of grubby paper and pulled out another sheet. “Well, we’re down to offenses of stealing pennies off
I must brake off now because some robbers have broke into Vortin’s Dimond Warehouse and have taken Corporal Angua hostage. I fear there may be terrible bloodshed so, I remain, Yr. Loving Son, Carrot Ironfoundersson (Captain)
“As my old sergeant used to say, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined,”
No one could get to the top of the Barbican. The Barbican had been the fortified gateway in the days when Ankh-Morpork didn’t regard an attacking army as a marvelous commercial opportunity.
That was one of Leonard of Quirm’s traits: he picked up conversations out of the air, he assumed everyone was an interested friend, and he took it for granted that you were as intelligent as he was.
Not that the man was a prisoner, except by dull, humdrum standards. He appeared rather grateful to be confined in this light, airy attic with as much wood, paper, sticks of charcoal and paint as he desired and no rent or food bills to pay. In any case, you couldn’t really imprison someone like Leonard of Quirm. The most you could do was lock up his body. The gods alone knew where his mind went. And, although he had so much cleverness it leaked continually, he couldn’t tell you which way the political wind was blowing even if you fitted him with sails.
It was impossible to know what he would think of next, because he was constantly reprogrammed by the whole universe. The sight of a waterfall or a soaring bird would send him spinning down some new path of practical speculation that invariably ended in a heap of wire and springs and a cry of “I think I know what I did wrong.”
He never understood what Lord Vetinari was talking about, he had a world view about as complex as that of a concussed duckling and, above all, never really paid attention. This made him an excellent confidant. After all, when you seek advice from someone it’s certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself.
It wasn’t that he soon got bored with things. He didn’t seem to get bored with anything. But since he was interested in everything in the universe all the time the end result tended to be that an experimental device for disemboweling people at a distance then became a string-weaving machine and ended up as an instrument for ascertaining the specific gravity of cheese.
“I always thought it was the presence of the desert. It leads to an urgency of thought. It makes you aware of the briefness of life.”
“Are you both stopping here or what?” “Nah, I’ve just come along as his chaperon,” said Colon, giving her a friendly grin. “He has to fight women off when they find out about his sexual magnetism.” Mrs. Spent gave the shocked Nobby a sharp look and bustled out of the room. “What’d you go and say that for?” said Nobby. “It’s got rid of her, hasn’t it?” “You were having a go at me, don’t deny it! Just because I’m going through a bit of an emotional wossname, eh?” “It was just a joke, Nobby. Just a joke.” Nobby peered under the narrow bed. “Wow!” he said, all emotional wossnames forgotten.
And yet all the time there was this feeling that the greater part of him was always deep, deep inside, looking out. No one could be so simple, no one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent. It was like being an actor. Only a very good actor was any good at being a bad actor.
“I don’t have to tell you and you can’t beat it out of me!” said the man, sticking out his chest. “Oh, thank you for telling me,” said Vimes. “I do hate wasted effort.”
Sybil had cooked him a meal. She wasn’t a very good cook. This was fine by Vimes, because he wasn’t a very good eater.
“But there’s a lot of armed men down there.” “My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure,” said Carrot. “Really? Well, there’s eleven of them.”
All the lads have joined up?” “Yessir!” “You told them it wasn’t compulsory?” “Yessir! I said, ‘It ain’t compuls’ry, you just gotta,’ sir.” “Detritus, I wanted volunteers.” “’sright, sir. They volunteered all right, I saw to that.”
The food was . . . dog food. In Ankh-Morpork terms, it meant something that you wouldn’t even put in a sausage, and there are very few things that a man with a big enough mincer cannot put in a sausage.
Where will they attack?” “Gebra, sire. I’m sure of it.” “Our most heavily fortified city? Surely not. Only an idiot would do that.” “I have studied Lord Rust in some depth, sire.
He was in the immediate company of a man even the Assassins’ Guild was frightened of, another man who would stay up all night in order to invent an alarm clock to wake him up in the morning, and a man who had never knowingly changed his underwear.
But we should not let the prospect of being tortured to death dismay us, eh?” “Fortune favors the brave, sir,” said Carrot cheerfully. “Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis à vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?” “Oh, no one’s ever heard of Fortune favoring them, sir.”
we can trade them some of the water for wood and flour, right?” His father waved a hand cautiously. “Maybe,” he said. “No need to rush into that, though. We’re pretty close to finding a seaweed that’ll burn. I mean, what’re our long-term objectives here?” “Cooking meals and keeping warm?” said Les hopefully. “Well, initially,” said Jackson. “That’s obvious. But you know what they say, lad. ‘Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.’
“Come on up, Nobby,” he said. “And remember we’re doing this for the gods, Ankh-Morpork and—” It seemed to Colon that a foodstuff would indeed be somehow appropriate. “And my mum’s famous knuckle sandwich!”
“It’s the waiting that’s the worst part,” said his sergeant, next to him. “It might be the worst part,” said the commander. “Or, there again, the bit where they suddenly rise out of the desert and cut you in half might be the worst part.”
“It’s like hypnotism,” said Vimes hurriedly. “People follow him to see what’s going to happen next. They tell themselves that they’re just going along with it for a while and can stop any time they want to, but they never want to. It’s damn magic.”
“Watch out for people trying to sell you dirty postcards, Nobby,” said Colon. “My uncle was here once and he said some bloke tried to sell him a pack of dirty postcards for five dollars. Disgusted, he was.” “Yeah, ’cos you can get ’em in the Shades for two dollars,” said Nobby. “That’s what he said. And they were Ankh-Morpork ones. Trying to flog us our own dirty postcards? I call that disgusting, frankly.”
Always be a little bit foreign wherever you are, because everyone knows foreigners are a little bit stupid.
What damn good was something like this? All it really meant was that he was allowed to chase the little criminals, who did the little crimes. There was nothing he could do about the crimes that were so big you couldn’t even see them. You lived in them. So . . . safer to stick to the little crimes,
It was a kind of magic. He told people they were good chaps, and they knew they weren’t good chaps, but the way he told it made them believe it for a while. Here was someone who thought you were a noble and worthy person, and somehow it would be unthinkable to disappoint them. It was a mirror of a speech, reflecting back to you what you wanted to hear. And he meant it all.
“It shouldn’t have to be like this!” Vimes shouted, at the sky in general. “You know? Sometimes I dream that we could deal with the big crimes, that we could make a law for countries and not just for people, and people like him would have—
Meanwhile, the armies dug in. Someone had already erected a crude signpost, its arms pointing to various soldiers’ homes. Since these were all in part of Ankh-Morpork the arms all pointed exactly the same way.
“You’re offering to change history?” he said. “Is that it? Rewrite the—” “Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being reexamined and reevaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can’t possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands.
Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we’d be melting the bronze already. No. I was thinking of the first Vimes who tried to make a future and merely made history.