The Last Hero

Terry Pratchett

Summary

He's been a legend in his own lifetime.

He can remember the glory days of high adventure.

He can remember when a hero didn't have to worry about fences and lawyers and civilisation.

He can remember when people didn't tell you off for killing dragons.

But he can't always remember, these days, where he put his teeth...

He's really not happy about that bit.

So now, with his ancient sword and his new walking stick and his old friends -- and they're very old friends -- Cohen the Barbarian is going on one final quest. It's been a good life. He's going to climb the highest mountain in the Discworld and meet his gods. He doesn't like the way they let men grow old and die.

It's time, in fact, to give something back.

The last hero in the world is going to return what the first hero stole. With a vengeance. That'll mean the end of the world, if no one stops him in time.

Someone is going to try. So who knows who the last hero really is?

Quotes

People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.

"Oh, well, life goes on," people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't.

Flight has been said to be one of the great dreams of Mankind. In fact it merely harks back to Man's ancestors, whose greatest dream was of falling off the branch.

Their method of finding a solution, as far as the Patrician could see, was by creative hubbub.

If the question was, "What is the best spell for turning a book of poetry into a frog?", then the one thing they [wizards] would not do was look in any book with a title like Major Amphibian Spells in a Literary Environment: A Comparison.

"The power drain is considerable; we may have to sacrifice another gerbil."

Not a muscle moved on the Patrician's face.

"Pardon me, I'm a little out of date on faculty staff," he said. "Are you the one who has to take the dried frog pills?"

"No, sir. That's the Bursar, sir," said Ponder. "He has to have them because he's insane."

"Ah," said Lord Vetinari, and now he did have an expression. It was that of a man resolutely refraining from saying what was on his mind.

Ridcully: "It's all to do with the Uncertainty Principle."
Vetinari: "And that is...?"
Ridcully: "I'm not sure."

He remembered the old days, when wizards had been gaunt and edgy and full of guile. They wouldn't have allowed an Uncertainty Principle to exist for any length of time; if you weren't certain, they'd say, what were you doing wrong?

"Cohen the Barbarian is not known for leaving things lying around, I fear," said the Patrician. "Bodies, perhaps."

Another response of the wizards, when faced with a new and unique situation, was to look through their libraries to see if it had ever happened before. This was, Lord Vetinari reflected, a good survival trait. It meant that in times of danger you spent the day sitting very quietly in a building with very thick walls.

Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant ... This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or -- a happy thought -- that pets are allowed.

...[Dunmanifestin] was a Good Address. It was where you hung your metaphysical equivalent of the shiny brass plate, like those small discreet buildings in the smarter areas of major cities which nevertheless appear to house one hundred and fifty lawyers and accountants, presumably on some sort of shelving.

Ask people to imagine an animal god and they will, basically, come up with the idea of someone in a really bad mask.

Men have been much better at inventing demons, which is why there are so many.

"...the thing about saving the world, gentlemen and ladies, is that it inevitably includes whatever you happen to be standing on."

"You could say: I am a hero, so when I kill you that makes you, de facto, the kind of person suitable to be killed by a hero. You could say that a hero, in short, is someone who indulges every whim that, within the rule of law, would have him behind bars or swiftly dancing what I believe is known as the hemp fandango."

-- One man's hero is another man's scoundrel

Betteridge: "Not rape, I believe. Not in the case of Cohen the Barbarian. Ravishing, possibly."
Vetinari: "There is a difference?"
Betteridge: "It's more a matter of approach, I understand. I don't believe there were ever any actual complaints."

Their eyes said that whatever it was, they had been there. Whatever it was, they had done it, sometimes more than once. But they would never, ever, buy the T-shirt. And they did know the meaning of the word "fear." It was something that happened to other people.

Truckle: "Well, when I was a lad, if you wanted to get a girl's int'rest, you had to cut off your worst enemy's wossname and present it to her."
Mad Hamish: "Whut?"
Truckle: "I SAID YOU HAD TO CUT OFF YOUR WORST ENEMY'S WOSSNAME AND PRESENT IT TO HER!"
Mad Hamish: "Aye, romance is a wonderful thing."
Boy Willie: "What'd you do if you didn't have a worst enemy?"
Truckle: "You try and cut off anyone's wossname, and you've soon got a worst enemy."

Vetinari: "Have you been to the Hub?"
Rincewind: "Er... yes?"
Vetinari: "Can you describe the terrain?"
Rincewind: "Er..."
Vetinari: "What did the scenery look like?"
Rincewind: "Er... blurred, sir. I was being chased by some people."
Vetinari: "Indeed? And why was this?"
Rincewind: "Oh, I never stop to find out why people are chasing me, sir. I never look behind, either."

"Are you a friend of his?"

"Well, we've met a couple of times and he didn't kill me," said Rincewind. "That probably counts as a 'yes'."

The dungeons of the palace held a number of felons imprisoned "at his lordship's pleasure," and since Lord Vetinari was seldom very pleased they were generally in for the long haul.

...Lord Vetinari felt that the world was not yet ready for a man who designed unthinkable weapons of war as a happy hobby.

Vetinari: "This doesn't involve some kind of flying machine, does it?"
Leonard: "Um... why do you ask?"
Vetinari: "Because the destination is a very high place, Leonard, and your flying machines have an inevitable downward component."

"Not craftsmen, my lord," he said. "I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible."

He knew Leonard's reputation. This was a man who could invent seven new things before breakfast, including two new ways with toast.

This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn't just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up.

Some people are confident because they are fools. Leonard had the look of someone who was confident because, so far, he'd never found a reason not to be.

"I think I can say without fear of contradiction that our wizards can supply wind in practically unlimited amounts."

Many of the things built by the architect and freelance designer Bergholt Stuttley ("Bloody Stupid") Johnson were recorded in Ankh-Morpork, often on the line where it says "Cause of Death."

"Is this a matter for the Watch?" said the lawyer Mr. Slant. "Mr. Cohen is simply returning property to its original owner."

"That is an insight which had not hitherto occurred to me," said Lord Vetinari smoothly. "However, the City Watch would not be the men I think they are if they couldn't think of a reason to arrest anyone."

"It's very simple. I'm volunteering. I just don't wish to. But, after all, when did that ever have anything to do with anything?"

Too many people, when listing all the perils to be found in the search for lost treasure or ancient wisdom, had forgotten to put at the top of the list "the man who arrived just before you."

She had a blanket around her to keep out the cold. She was knitting. Stuck in the snow beside her was the largest sword the robbers had ever seen.

Intelligent robbers would have started to count up the incongruities here.

These, however, were the other kind, the kind for whom evolution was invented.

Cohen: "You got art, and we got rubies. We give you rubies, you give us art. End of problem, right?"
Minstrel: "Problem?"
Cohen: "Well, mainly the problem you'll have if you tell me you can't write me a saga."

Minstrel: "I'm not the world's greatest minstrel, you know."
Cohen: "You will be after you write this saga."

Things had happened quickly. It wasn't that the prospect of the end of the world was concentrating minds unduly, because that is a general and universal danger that people find hard to imagine. But the Patrician was being rather sharp with people, and that is a specific and highly personal danger and people had no problem relating to it at all.

"I don't think I've become old," said Boy Willie. "Not your actual old. Just more aware of where the next lavatory is."

In deference to their profession, the Horde mostly wore tiny leather loincloths and bits and pieces of fur and chainmail. In deference to their advancing years, and entirely without comment among themselves, these has been underpinned now with long woolly combinations and various strange elasticated things.

Truckle: "HE ASKED WHY WE WANT TO RETURN FIRE TO THE GODS, HAMISH!"
Hamish: "Eh? Someone's got to do it!"
Boy Willie: "Because it's a big world and we ain't seen it all."
Caleb: "Because the buggers are immortal."
Truckle: "Because of the way my back aches on chilly nights."
Cohen: "Because... because... they've let us grow old."

The wizards were good at wind, weather being a matter not of sourcery but of lepidoptery. As Archchancellor Ridcully said, you just had to know where the damn butterflies were.

Cohen: "So how come you left the Evil Dark Lord business, Harry?"
Evil Harry: "Well, you know how it is these days. People these days, when they're attacking your Dark Evil Tower, the first thing they do is block up your escape tunnel."
Cohen: "Bastards! You've got to let the Dark Lord escape. Everyone knows that."
Caleb: "That's right. Got to leave yourself some work for tomorrow."
Evil Harry: "And it wasn't as if I didn't play fair. I mean, I always left a secret back entrance to my Mountain of Dread, I employed really stupid people as cell guards--"

Caleb: "Didn't I fight you when you were the Doomed Spider God?"
Evil Harry: "Probably. Everyone else did."

Evil Harry: "But [Pamdar the Witch Queen] was a devil woman!"
Cohen: "We all get older, Harry. She runs a shop now. Pam's Pantry. Makes marmalade."
Evil Harry: "What? She used to queen it on a throne on top of a pile of skulls!"
Cohen: "I didn't say it was very good marmalade."

"It sucks all the life right out of you, civilisation."

"It killed Old Vincent the Ripper," said Boy Willie. "He choked to death on a concubine."

There was no sound but the hiss of snow in the fire and a number of people thinking fast.

"I think you mean cucumber," said the bard.

Cohen: "We're the last, see. Us 'n' you. No one else cares. There's no more heroes, Evil Harry. No more villains, neither."
Evil Harry: "Oh, there's always villains!"
Cohen: "No, there's vicious evil underhand bastards, true enough. But they use laws now. They'd never call themselves Evil Harry."

"I like a man I can't trust. You know where you stand with an untrustworthy man. It's the ones you ain't never sure about who give you grief."

"Gak," said the zombie.

"No tongue, eh?" said Cohen. "Don't worry, lad, a blood-curling screech is all you need. And a few bits of wire, by the look of it."

"They must make you proud. I don't know when I've ever seen a more stupid bunch of henchmen."

Ponder: "I'm not the stuff of heroes, sir."
Vetinari: "And what causes this lack in you, may I ask?"
Ponder: "I think it's because I've got an active imagination."

"We can't all pray at once! You know the gods don't like ecumenicalism! And what form of words will we use, pray?"

"I would have felt that a short non-controversial--" Hughnon Ridcully paused. In front of him were priests prohibited by holy edict from eating broccoli, priests who required unmarried girls to cover their ears lest they inflame the passions of other men, and priests who worshipped a small shortbread-and-raisin biscuit. Nothing was non-controversial.

"I'm just saying that blowing up the gods could cause trouble," said Evil Harry. "It's a bit ... disrespectful."

"The Impassable Caves of Dread," said Evil Harry.

Willie looked impressed. "Heard of them, have you? Accordin' to some old legend they're guarded by a legion of fearsome monsters and some devilishly devious devices and no one has ever passed through. Oh, yeah ... perilous crevasses, too. Next, we'll have to swim through underwater caverns guarded by giant man-eating fish that no man has ever yet passed. And then there's some insane monks, and a door you can pass only by solving some ancient riddle ... the usual sort of stuff."

THE CAT DIES WHEN THE AIR RUNS OUT?

"I suppose it might, sir," said Albert, his manservant. "But I don't reckon that's the point. If I understand it right, you don't know if the cat's dead or alive until you look at it."

THINGS WILL HAVE COME TO A PRETTY PASS, ALBERT, IF I DID NOT KNOW WHETHER A THING WAS DEAD OR ALIVE WITHOUT HAVING TO GO AND LOOK.

-- Death vs. Schrodinger

"Oh, Mighty One," he began, always a safe beginning and the religious equivalent of "To Whom It May Concern."

"First man to be cut in half by a concealed blade is a rotten egg, okay?"

Rincewind stared at the badge. He'd never had one before. Well, that was technically a lie ... he'd had one that said "Hello, I Am 5 Today!", which was just about the worst possible present to get when you are six.

Carrot: "It will certainly be a challenge to go where no one has gone before."
Rincewind: "Wrong! We're going where no one has come back from before."

Carrot: "What did you see?"
Rincewind: "My whole life, passing in front of my eyes."
Carrot: "Perhaps we shall see something more interesting."

"Stupidity wasn't the word for it. Never seen so many people hit themselves over the head with their own swords."

"I reckon our bard wasn't expecting flames to shoot out of the floor unexpectedly," said Cohen.

Truckle shrugged theatrically. "Well, if you're not going to expect unexpected flames, what's the point of going anywhere?"

Minstrel: "Mad! Mad! Mad! You're all stark staring mad!"
Caleb: "We prefer the term berserk, lad."

"I'm not exactly a rocket wizard, am I?"

"I can read and write," said Evil Harry. "Sorry. Part of the job. Etiquette, too. You've got to be polite to people when you march them out on the plank over the shark tank... it makes it more evil."

Vena: "You boys want some stew?"
Truckle: "Yeah. let the bard try it first, though."
Vena: "Shame on you, Truckle."
Truckle: "Well, you did drug me and steal a load of jewels off me last time we met..."
Vena: "That was forty years ago, man! Anyway, you left me alone to fight that band of goblins."

"Is it just me." said the minstrel, "or are we missing something here?"

"Like what?" demanded Cohen.

"Well, these scrolls all tell you how to get to the mountain, a perilous trek that no one has ever survived?"

"Yes? So?"

"So ... um ... who wrote the scrolls?"

...Nuggan was one of the newer gods, all full of hellfire and self-importance and ambition. Offler was not bright, but he had some vague inkling that for long-term survival gods needed to offer their worshippers something more than a mere lack of thunderbolts.

"Funny, really," said Vena. "All my life I've gone adventuring with old maps found in old tombs and so on, and I never ever worried about where they came from. It's one of those things you never think about, like who leaves all the weapons and keys and medicine kits lying around in the unexplored dungeons."

Archchancellor Ridcully decided that the crew needed to be trained. Ponder Stibbons pointed out that they were going into the completely unexpected, and Ridcully ruled therefore that they should be given some unexpected training.

"Did you see the design he came up with yesterday?" said the Dean. "Had this idea that they might have to get outside the machine to repair it so -- so he designed a sort of device to let you fly around with a dragon on your back! Said it was for emergencies!"

"What kind of emergency would be worse than having a dragon strapped to your back?" said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

"Exactly!"

...Evil Lords were generally brighter than heroes. You needed some functioning brain cells to do the payroll even for half a dozen henchmen.

"...when [Emperor Carelinus] got as far as the coast of Muntab, it was said that he stood on the shore and wept. Some philosopher told him there were more worlds out there somewhere, and that he'd never be able to conquer them. Er... that reminded me a bit of you."

Cohen strolled along in silence for a moment.

"Yeah," he said at last. "Yeah. I can see how that could be. Only not as cissy, obviously."

"I was rather thinking of problems associated with the thin air and low gravity," said Leonard. "That's what the survivor of the Maria Pesto reported. But this afternoon I feel I can come up with a privy that, happily, utilises the thinner air of altitude to achieve the effect normally associated with gravity. Gentle suction is involved."

Ponder nodded. He had a quick mind when it came to mechanical detail, and he'd already formed a mental picture. Now a mental eraser would be helpful.

Leonard: "I did once design a simple means whereby entire fleets could be destroyed quite easily, my lord. Only as a technical exercise, of course."
Vetinari: "But with numbered parts and a list of instructions?"
Leonard: "Why, yes, my lord. Of course. Otherwise it would not be a proper exercise."

"But couldn't someone build something like that?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "You practically include glue and transfers!"

"Well. I daresay there are people like that," said Leonard diffidently. "But I am sure the government would put a stop to things before they went too far."

"I was just hoping that if I didn't say anything you'd stop trying to explain things to me."

[The Luggage] understood every word he said. It obeyed about one in every hundred, unfortunately.

Lord Vetinari was not a man who delighted in the technical. There were two cultures, as far as he was concerned. One was the real one, the other was occupied by people who liked machinery and ate pizza at unreasonable hours.

"Even barbarian heroes generally draw the line at blowing up the world." He sighed. "They're usually not civilised enough for that."

Vetinari: "What is that on your badge. Captain Carrot?"
Carrot: "Mission motto, sir. Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it."
Vetinari: "I imagine he did. And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr. Rincewind?"
Rincewind: "Er... Er... roughly speaking, it means, 'We who are about to die don't want to', sir."

"If you would all stand in front of the flag and smile, please ... that means the corners of your mouth go up, Rincewind ... thank you."

Leonard: "No, I never bother to have any confidence."
Ponder: "You don't?"
Leonard: "No, things just work. You don't have to wish."

Vetinari: "But it could be said that someone would have to be insane to take part in this venture. In which case, of course, you are fully qualified."
Rincewind: "Then ... supposing I'm not insane?"
Vetinari: "Oh, as ruler of Ankh-Morpork I have a duty to send only the keenest, coolest minds on a vital errand of this kind."

Unfortunately, some of Lord Vetinari's committees, devised in order to prevent their members from interfering with anything important, had turned their attention to provisioning the craft. It appeared packed for every eventuality, including alligator-wrestling on a glacier.

[Experimental Privy] Mk 2 was as yet untried. It creaked ominously under their gaze, an open invitation to constipation and kidney stones.

Rincewind: "And what's this thing hanging in the ceiling in front of me?"
Leonard: "It's my new device for looking behind you. It's very simple to use. I call it the Device For Looking Behind You."

"[The craft] has to have a name." said Carrot. "It's very bad luck to attempt a voyage in a vessel with no name."

Rincewind looked at the levers in front of his seat. They had to do mainly with dragons. "We're in a big wooden box and behind us are about a hundred dragons who are getting ready to burp," he said. "I think we need a name. Er... do you actually know how to fly this thing, Leonard?"

"Not as such, but I intend to learn very soon."

"A really good name," said Rincewind fervently.

Rincewind: "Down? This is not the time to talk about down! You kept on talking about around. Around is fine! Not down!"
Leonard: "Ah, but you see, in order to go around we need to go down. Fast. I did put it in my notes--"
Rincewind: "Down is not a direction with which I am happy!"

A device for seeing behind you without slowing down? Just the thing no coward should be without.

From somewhere offscreen came the sound of someone being sick.

"What is going on?" bellowed Ridcully.

"Well, you see, it's rather amusing ... I had this idea of putting food in tubes, you see, so that it could be squeezed out and eaten neatly in weightless conditions and, er, because we didn't tie everything down, er, I'm afraid my box of paints came open and the tubes got, er, confused, so what Mr. Rincewind thought was broccoli and ham turned out to be Forest Green..."

"...tell me, what do you understand by the words 'shooting star'?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Rincewind demanded.

"Um... that we die an immensely horrible death."

"Oh, that," said Rincewind.

Minstrel: "It's classical mythology. Cohen. I thought everyone knew. He was chained to a rock for eternity and every day an eagle comes and pecks out his liver."
Cohen: "...Chained to a rock? For a first offence? He's still there?"
Minstrel: "Eternity isn't finished yet. Cohen."
Cohen: "He must've had a big liver!"
Minstrel: "It grows again every night, according to the legend."
Cohen: "I wish my kidneys did."

Vetinari: "Can they throw the Librarian out?"
Ponder: "No, sir. That would be murder, sir."
Vetinari: "Yes, but they may save the world. One ape dies, one world lives. You do not need to be a rocket wizard to work that out, surely?"
Ponder: "You can't ask them to make a decision like that, sir!"
Vetinari: "Really? I make decisions like that every day."

Minstrel: "Some people say you achieve immortality through your children."
Cohen: "Yeah? Name one of your great-granddads, then."

"Is there anything we can do to help?" said the Dean.

Ponder gave the other wizards a desperate look. How would Lord Vetinari have handled this?

"Why, yes," he said brightly. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to find a cabinet somewhere and come up with a list of all the various ways I could solve this? And I will just sit here and toy with a few ideas?"

--Ponder learns the art of misdirection

On the Kite, the situation was being "workshopped." This is the means by which people who don't know anything got together to pool their ignorance.

"Ook!"

"I'm sorry?"

"He said, 'And this boat is made of wood!'" said Rincewind.

"All that in one syllable?"

"He's a very concise thinker!"

"I wouldn't trust a wizard to give me directions to the other side of a very small room."

ACTUALLY I AM A ROCKET WIZARD.

--Message on Ponder Stibbons' shirt

"I'm trying to think of all the things that could go wrong," said Carrot.

"I've got to nine so far," said Rincewind. "And I haven't started on the fine detail."

They landed. It's a short sentence, but contains a lot of incident.

"A good wizard, Rincewind," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "Not particularly bright, but, frankly, I've never been quite happy with intelligence. An overrated talent, in my humble opinion."

...the problem with bandaging an orangutan's head is knowing when to stop.

"You know ... from up here ... you can't see the boundaries between nations," said Carrot, almost wistfully.

"Is that a problem?" said Leonard. "Possibly something could be done."

"Maybe huge, really huge buildings in lines, along the frontiers," said Rincewind. "Or... or very wide roads. You could paint them different colors to save confusion."

"Should aerial travel become widespread," said Leonard, "it would be a useful idea to grow forests in the shape of the name of the country, or of other areas of note."

Rincewind: ""Anyway, we shall be leaving shortly. I am just collecting some [moon] rocks."
Vetinari: "I'm sure they will come in useful."
Ponder: "Actually, sir, they will be very valuable."
Vetinari: "Really?"
Ponder: "Oh, yes! They may well be completely different from rocks on the Disc!"
Vetinari: "And if they are exactly the same?"
Ponder: "Oh, that would be even more interesting, sir!"

"I don't know what I'll say to him. 'Don't blow the world up' sounds a pretty persuasive argument to me. I'd listen to it."

"And I don't like the idea of going anywhere near the gods. We're like toys to them, you know." And they don't realize how easily the arms and legs come off, he added to himself.

"Behold!" said Cohen, striking a pose.

The Silver Horde looked around.

"What?" said Evil Harry?

"Behold, the citadels of the gods!" said Cohen, striking the pose again.

"Yes, well, we can see it," said Caleb. "Is there something wrong with your back?"

"Hah, this takes me back," said Truckle. "Remember, Hamish? You and me signed on with Duke Leofric the Legitimate when he invaded Nothingfjord?"

"Aye, I mind it."

"Five damn days, that battle took," said Truckle, "'cos the Dutchess was doing a tapestry to commemorate it, right? We had to keep doing the fights over and over again, and there was the devil to pay when she was changing needles. There's no place for the media on the field of battle, I've always said."

"You were just going to rush in, weren't you? Heroes never have a plan. It's always left up to us Dark Lords to have the plans."

[The Chair of Indefinite Studies] was not an ambitious wizard, and generally just concentrated on keeping out of trouble and not doing anything very much. The nice thing about Indefinite Studies was that no one could describe exactly what they were. This gave him quite a lot of free time.

By the ominous creaking, and the smell, an orangutang was hanging on to the back of Rincewind's seat.

"You make a very good God of Love. What kind of love, I wouldn't like to say."

"And you. Truckle, are...?"

"The God of bloody Swearing," said Truckle the Uncivil firmly.

"Er, that could actually work," said the minstrel, as Evil Harry frowned. "After all. there are Muses of dance and song, and there's even a Muse of erotic poetry--"

"Oh, I can do that," said Truckle dismissively. "'There was a young lady from Quirm. Whose grip was--'"

"Willie, why have you got a tomato on your head and a carrot in your ear?"

Boy Willie grinned proudly. "You'll love this one," he said. "God of Bein' Sick."

What goes around, comes around. If not examined too closely, it passes for justice.

"You might have never made it into the, you know, big Dark Lord league, but you've got ... well, Harry, you've definitely got the Wrong Stuff."

Minstrel: "You're letting him go?"
Cohen: "Of course. You haven't been paying attention, lad. The Dark Lord always gets away. But you'd better put in the song that he betrayed us. That'll look good."
Evil Harry: "And ... er ... you wouldn't mind saying I fiendishly tried to cut your throats?"
Cohen: "All right. Put in that he fought like a black-hearted tiger."

"...I'm absolutely certain that when the gods find they're under attack by a man with a tomato on his head and another one disguised as the Muse of Swearing they're really, really going to want the whole world to know what happened next."

"Ah, the God of Fish," said a god to Cohen, falling in beside him. "And how are the fish, your mightiness?"

"Er ... what?" said Cohen. "Oh ... er ... wet. Still very wet. Very wet things."

"And things?" a goddess asked Hamish. "How are things?"

"Still lyin' aroond!"

"And are you omnipotent?"

"Aye, lass, but there's pills I'm takin' f'r it!"

...if you played dice with Fate the roll was always fixed.

Rincewind: "We-ll ... you know that religion that thinks that whirling around in circles is a form of prayer?"
Carrot: "Oh, yes. The Hurtling Whirlers of Klatch."
Rincewind: "Mine is like that, only we go more in... straight lines. Yes. That's it. Speed is a sacrament."
Carrot: "You believe it gives you some sort of eternal life?"
Rincewind: "Not eternal, as such. More... well, just more, really. More life. That is, more life than you would have if you did not go very fast in a straight line."

Carrot: "According to the mission notes, a number of humans have entered Dunmanifestin in the past and returned alive."
Rincewind: "Returned alive per se is not hugely comforting. With their arms and legs? Sanity? All minor extremities?"

Carrot: "Outstanding! It's just a walk in the park!"
Rincewind: "You mean people are going to mug us and steal all our money and kick us viciously in the ribs?"

"He did cheat Fate. If you do cheat Fate, I do not believe it says anywhere that Fate's subsequent opinion matters."

The Lady: "I... am the million-to-one-chance."
Cohen: "Yeah? And who are all the other chances?"
The Lady: "I am those, also."
Cohen: "Then you ain't no lady."

"I shall smite you with lightning!" squeaked Nuggan, raising his hands to protect himself.

"You can't! Not here! You can only do that stuff back in the world! All you can do here is bluff and illusion! And bullying! That's what prayers are ... it's frightened people trying to make friends with the bully!"

Sweevo: "I prohibit the practice of panupunitoplasty."
Offler:"What'th that?"
Sweevo: "Search me, but it's got them worried."

"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive ... A song can keep someone immortal."

"Anyway," Cohen went on, "it dunt matter if someone kills the gods. It does matter that, someone tried. Next time, someone'll try harder."

He appeared, in many ways, to be a hero, except that he was far too clean.

There was, there always was, at the start and the finish ... the Code. They lived by the Code. You followed the Code, and you became part of the Code for those who followed you. The Code was it. Without the Code, you weren't a hero. You were just a thug in a loincloth.

The Code was quite clear. One brave man against seven ... won. They knew it was true. In the past, they'd all relied on it. The higher the odds, the greater the victory. That was the Code.

Forget the Code, dismiss the Code, deny the Code ... and the Code would take you.

"Rincewind?" said Cohen. "What're you doing here, you old rat?"

"Trying to save the world," said Rincewind. He rolled his eyes. "Again."

"Can we stop it?"

"No," said Rincewind.

"Can we outrun it?"

"Only if you can think of a way to run ten miles really, really fast," said Rincewind.

As they hurried after it, Rincewind saw it bounce out and into ten miles of empty air. He thought he heard the last words, as the downward plunge began: "Aren't we supposed to shout somethingggg..."

Carrot: "On the other hand... giving up their lives to save everyone in the world... that's a good ending, too."
Rincewind: "But it was them who were going to blow it up!"
Carrot: "Still very brave of them, though."

"I feel," said Blind Io, "that if we had wanted people to fly, we would have given them wings... Why did you do it?" he said.

"You gave me wings when you showed me birds," said Leonard of Quirm. "I just made what I saw."

"Tell me," said Blind Io. "Is there a god of policemen?"

"No, sir," said Carrot. "Coppers would be far too suspicious of anyone calling themselves a god of policemen to believe in one."

"But you are a gods-fearing man?"

"What I've seen of them certainly frightens the life out of me, sir."

Gods have little use for irony.

Although gods, on the whole, do not feel at home around mechanical things, every pantheon everywhere in the universe finds it necessary to have some minor deity -- Vulcan, Wayland, Dennis, Hephaistos -- who knows how bits fit together and that sort of thing.

Most large organizations, to their regret and expense, have to have someone like that.

Minstrel: "We'd never even find the bodies."
Evil Harry: "Ah, and that'd be 'cos they didn't die, see? They'd have come up with some plan at the last minute, you can bet on it."
Minstrel: "Harry--"
Evil Harry: "You can call me Evil, lad."
Minstrel: "Evil, they spent the last minute falling down a mountain!"

He'd never been keen on heroes. But he realized that he needed them to be there, like forests and mountains ... he might never see them, but they filled some sort of hole in his mind.

Vena: "Are you dead or not?"
Cohen: "Well, the way I see it, we don't think we are, so why should we care what anyone else thinks? We never have."

"In the olden days," she said, "when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars."

THE HEAVENS CHANGE, said Death. WHAT TODAY LOOKS LIKE A MIGHTY HUNTER MAY LOOK LIKE A TEACUP IN A HUNDRED YEARS' TIME.

"That doesn't seem fair."

NO ONE EVER SAID IT HAD TO BE. BUT THERE ARE OTHER STARS.

Carrot: "We ought to get him home as soon as possible. What's the usual direction? 'Second star to the left and straight on 'til morning'?"
Rincewind: "I think that may very probably be the stupidest piece of astronavigation ever suggested."