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.
Thief of Time comes 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).
Wen: "I know that time was made for men, not the other way around. I have learned how to shape it and bend it. I know how to make a moment last forever, 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."
Clodpool: "Er... what does master want for breakfast?"
Wen: "Ah. One of the difficult ones."
* * *
Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth. ... It is unaccounted for because it is doing the accounting for the rest of it, and you cannot see the back of your own hand. [Footnote: Except in very small universes.]
* * *
[The coffee mug] bears a rather unconvincing picture of a teddy bear, and the legend "To The World's Greatest Granddad," and the slight change in the style of letter on the word "Granddad" makes it clear that this has come from one of those stalls that have hundreds of mugs like these, declaring that they're for the world's greatest Granddad/Dad/Mum/Granny/Uncle/Aunt/Blank. Only someone whose life contains very little else, one feels, would treasure a piece of gimcrackery like this.
* * *
Death was never quite sure why he allowed the Death of Rats to have an independent existence. ... But perhaps everyone needs a tiny part of themselves that can, metaphorically, be allowed to run naked in the rain [Footnote: Quite an overrated activity.]
* * *
...[Death] reached a full-length mirror. It was dark, like the bottom of a well. There was a pattern of skulls and bones around the frame, for the sake of appearances; Death could not look himself in the skull in a mirror with cherubs and roses around it.
* * *
In border country, the border gets crossed and sometimes things creep into the universe that have rather more on their minds than a better life for their children and a wonderful future in the fruit-picking and domestic-service industries.
* * *
Humanity practically was things that didn't have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history, and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.
* * *
An edge witch is one who makes her living on the edges, in that moment when boundary conditions apply -- between life and death, light and dark, good and evil and, most dangerous of all, today and tomorrow.
* * *
"'Scuse me," said the raven, "but how come Miss Ogg became Mrs. Ogg? Sounds a bit of a rural arrangement, if you catch my meaning."
WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY F1ND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.
* * *
When you needed an ally, and you were Death, on whom could you absolutely rely?
* * *
...sometimes it seemed that the life of Jeremy had been assembled by a not very competent craftsman who had allowed a number of small but important things to go ping into the comers of the room.
* * *
...sometimes Jeremy had to cough to attract the attention of his reflection when he was shaving.
* * *
Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be an Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available.
* * *
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
* * *
No dog ever ate the homework of one of Miss Susan's students, because there was something about Miss Susan that went home with them; the dog brought them a pen and watched imploringly while they finished it, instead.
* * *
...Miss Susan did not let the children do what they liked. She let them do what she liked. It had turned out to be a lot more interesting for everyone.
* * *
If Vincent's hand had gone up any faster it would have fried by air friction.
* * *
Pretty soon Vincent the Keen would have a galaxy of his very own. To give him his due, he was quite disinterested in which kind of star he got. Quantity, that was what he liked. Miss Susan had privately marked him down as Boy Most likely To Be Killed One Day By His Wife.
* * *
"Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do."
* * *
She tossed the ball into the wastepaper basket. She never missed. Sometimes the basket moved in order to ensure that this was the case.
* * *
There may, as the philosopher says, be no spoon, although this begs the question of why there is the idea of soup.
* * *
There are the Brothers of Cool, a reserved and secretive sect, which believes that only through ultimate coolness can the universe be comprehended, and that black works with everything, and that chrome will never truly go out of style.
* * *
"Oh," he said, and he smiled in a way that was not entirely nice. This smile contained a certain anticipatory element, a hint that trouble might be in store for someone who, in his opinion, richly deserved it.
* * *
"Do you really have semaphore addresses in Uberwald?"
"Oh, yeth. We are ready to grathp the future with both handth, thur."
"--And four thumbs--"
"Yeth, thur. We can grathp like anything."
* * *
"And... Nipsie the Impaler?"
"Er... would you believe he ran a kebab thhop, thur?"
"Did he?"
"Not conventionally tho, thur."
-- Igor's references
* * *
[Igor] looked around at the walls. They were bare, except for the shelves of clocks. This was surprising -- even Dribbling Doctor Vibes had had a calendar on the wall, which added a splash of colour. Admittedly it was from the Acid Bath and Restraint Co., in Ugli, and the colour it splashed was mostly red, but at least it showed some recognition of a world outside the four walls.
* * *
Obviously, he reasoned, if sticking screws up your nose was madness, then numbering them and keeping them in careful compartments was sanity, which was the opposite--
Ah. No. It wasn't, was it...
* * *
Time was something that largely happened to other people; [Lu-Tze] viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.
* * *
Lobsang: "Only I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved."
Lu-Tze: "Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair. He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him. They gave him a field posting really quickly after he came up with that one."
* * *
Lobsang: "There's the surprising way those little daisies spray you with venomous pollen..."
Lu-Tze: "Ah, yes. Many people find them extremely surprising."
* * *
Jeremy: "Are you any good at working with glass, Igor?"
Igor: "No, thur."
Jeremy: "You're not?"
Igor:"No, thur. I am bloody amathing at it, thur."
* * *
"It exithted," said Igor, "and then, after it did, it never had. Thith ith what my grandfather told me, and he built that clock with thethe very handth!"
Jeremy looked down. Igor's hands were gnarled, and, now he came to look at them, had a lot of scar tissue around the wrists.
"We really believe in heirloomth in our family," said Igor, catching his gaze.
"Sort of ... hand-me-downs, ahahaha," said Jeremy.
* * *
"It was a good challenge. A decent 'Ai!' and a very passable 'Hai-eee!,' I thought. Good martial gibberish all around, such as you don't often hear these days. And we would not want his trousers falling down at a time like this, would we?" He sniffed and added, "Especially at a time like this."
* * *
"Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!"
-- Rule One
* * *
He looked a bit like a monk, except for his hair, because his hair looked a bit like an entirely separate organism. To say that it was black and bound up in a ponytail is to miss the opportunity of using the term "elephantine." It was hair with personality.
* * *
Soto: "Look, I'm offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, do you understand?"
Newgate: "Why is it the opportunity of a lifetime, Mr. Soto?"
Soto: "No, you misunderstand me. You, that is Newgate Ludd, are being offered, that is by me, the opportunity of having a lifetime. Which is more than you will have shortly."
* * *
"You can't rewrite history!"
"Bet you a dollar?"
* * *
"What have l joined?"
"We're the most secret society that you can imagine."
"Really? Who are you, then?"
"The Monks of History."
"Huh? I've never heard of you!"
"See? That's how good we are."
* * *
Wen: "...I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not."
Clodpool: "Will I have to wash it?"
Wen: "That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way."
* * *
"It is fortuitous that you are my apprentice at this time, because if I can teach you, Clodpool, I can teach anyone."
* * *
"Ah," said Clodpool, with an expression that he thought made him look wise, although in reality it made him look like someone remembering a painful bowel movement.
* * *
Usually, the sweeper got on with people in inverse proportion to their local importance, and the reverse was true. The senior monks ... well, there could be no such thing as bad thoughts among people so enlightened, but it is true that the sight of Lu-Tze ambling insolently through the temple did tarnish a few karmas.
* * *
When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back.
* * *
Madam Frout wasn't very good at discipline, which was possibly why she'd invented the Method, which didn't require any.
* * *
She generally relied on talking to people in a jolly tone of voice until they gave in out of sheer embarrassment on her behalf.
* * *
"Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball," said Miss Susan. "My children have learned to expect a plot."
* * *
"That is rather rude of you, Susan."
"No, Madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith."
* * *
If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty.
* * *
He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staff, they began with an exorcism.
* * *
Madam Frout: "Are you introducing young children to the occult?"
Susan: "Oh yes."
Madam Frout: "What? Why?"
Susan: "So that it doesn't come as a shock."
* * *
The papers were in quite a good safe that would have occupied a competent thief for at least twenty minutes. The fact that the door swung open at her touch suggested that special rules applied here.
* * *
Lu-Tze listened to the senior monks, while leaning on his broom. Listening was an art he had developed over the years, having learned that if you listened hard and long enough peopIe would tell you more than they thought they knew.
* * *
"Okay, here are the rules," said Lu-Tze, walking straight past. "Word one is, you don't call me 'master' and I don't name you after some damn insect."
* * *
"And you will teach me everything?"
"I don't know about 'everything.' I mean, I don't know I much forensic mineralogy."
* * *
At his club, a gentleman could find the kind of food he'd got used to at school, like Spotted Dick, Jam Roly-Poly, and that perennial favorite, Stooge and Custard. Vitamins are eaten by wives.
* * *
Of course, he did have many of the qualities of a gentleman; he had a place in the country -- a far, dark country -- was unfailingly punctual, was courteous to all those he met -- and sooner or later he met everyone -- was well if soberly dressed, at home in any company, and, proverbially, a good horseman.
The fact that he was the Grim Reaper was the only bit that didn't quite fit.
* * *
She could see things that were really there [Footnote: Which is much harder than seeing things that aren't there. Everyone does that.]
* * *
Rules that applied to everyone else, like gravity, applied to [Susan] only when she let them. And, however hard you tried, this sort of thing did tend to get in the way of relationships. It was hard to deal with people when a tiny part of you saw them as a temporary collection of atoms that would not be around in another few decades.
* * *
I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE END OF THE WORLD IS EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY, WOULDN'T YOU?
* * *
Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying "End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH," the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
* * *
Susan did not waste breath saying things like "That's impossible" at a time like this. Only people who believed that they lived in the real world said things like that.
* * *
IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.
* * *
The Auditors might hate the untidiness caused by the emergence of life, but The Rules did not allow them to do anything about it. The ascent of mankind must have been a boon to them. At last there was a species that could be persuaded to shoot itself in the foot.
* * *
Susan did an unusual thing and listened. That's not an easy task for a teacher.
* * *
Susan felt a small, shameful and yet curiously satisfying sensation in seeing Death discomfited. He looked like someone who was being forced to reveal a skeleton in the closet.
* * *
Death: [TIME] FELL IN LOVE WITH A HUMAN...
Susan: "How very romantick."
* * *
"He acth quite normally," said Igor, a man with four thumbs and stitches all around his neck.
* * *
"Cultural, is it?" Dr. Hopkins looked relieved. He was a man who tried to see the best in everybody, but the city had got rather complicated since he was a boy, with dwarfs, and trolls, and golems, and even zombies. He wasn't sure he liked everything that was happening, but a lot of it was "cultural," apparently, and you couldn't object to that, so he didn't. "Cultural" sort of solved problems by explaining that they weren't really there.
* * *
In [Igor's] experience, many of the world's greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards. Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine.
* * *
"Thorry, thur, but Igorth do not 'tetht the printhiple.' Thtrap it to the bench and put a good thick bolt of lightning, that'th our motto. Thanh how you tetht thomething."
* * *
"I've heard that some people really seem to come alive in thunderstorms," said Jeremy, carefully adjusting the angle of a crystal.
"Ah, that wath when I worked for Baron Finklethtein," said Igor.
* * *
Madam Frout: "Algebra? But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!"
Susan: "Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out."
* * *
...there are some things even a voice of eldritch command can't achieve and one of them is to get extra money out of a head teacher...
* * *
The class had built a full-size white horse out of cardboard boxes, during which time they'd learned a lot about horses and Susan learned about Jason's remarkably accurate powers of observation. She'd had to take the cardboard tube away from him and explain that this was a polite horse.
* * *
Damndamndamndamn! It was nougat inside! Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat!
-- The universal lament of the chocoholic
* * *
A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking along contains no calories.
* * *
It sometimes worried her that nearly everyone she knew well was three feet high.
* * *
"The Way has an answer for everything, does it?"
"Yes."
"Then..." Lobsang nodded at the little volcano, which was gently smoking, "...how does that work? It is on a saucer!"
Lu-Tze stared straight ahead, his lips moving.
"Page seventy-six, I think," he said.
Lobsang tumed to the page.
"'Because,'" he read.
* * *
"...as you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down, eventually, to 'Because.'"
* * *
Lu-Tze: "...one day it seemed to me that everyone else had decided that wisdom can only be found a long way off. So I went to Ankh-Morpork. They were all coming here, so it seemed only fair."
Lobsang: "Seeking enlightenment?"
Lu-Tze: "No. The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while I was waiting, it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more fun."
* * *
"And I fetched up, calm of mind but empty of pocket, in Quirm Street ... and espied a sign in a window saying 'Rooms to Rent.' Thus I met Mrs. Cosmopilite, who opened the door when I knocked and then when I hesitated, not being sure of the language, she said, 'I haven't got all day, you know.' Almost to a word, one of the sayings of Wen! Instantly I knew that I had found what I was seeking!"
-- Lu-Tze discovers the Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite
* * *
Lobsang: "And... er ... these stories about you..."
Lu-Tze: "Oh, all true. Most of them. A bit of exaggeration, but mostly true."
Lobsang: "The one about the citadel in Muntab and the Pash and the fish bone?"
Lu-Tze: "Oh, yes."
Lobsang: "But how did you get in where half a dozen trained and armed men couldn't even--"
Lu-Tze: "I'm a little man and I carry a broom. Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom?"
* * *
"History needs shepherds, not butchers."
* * *
"They can be very dangerous, things that don't look dangerous," said Lu-Tze. "Not looking dangerous is what makes them dangerous. For it is written, 'You can't tell a book by its cover.'"
* * *
Lu-Tze: "You are holding a deadly weapon! You are facing an unarmed man in a pose of submission! Are you frightened?"
Lobsang: "Yes! Yes, I am!"
Lu-Tze: "Good. That's Rule Three."
* * *
Lobsang: "But novices aren't allowed in there under pain of death!"
Lu-Tze: "That's a coincidence. Because death is what awaits you if you stay out there, too."
* * *
"You're not the reincarnation of someone, are you? That happens a lot in these parts."
* * *
Shoblang: "Oh. You're Death, right?"
Death: YES. I AM SORRY I AM LATE.
Shoblang: "So am I."
* * *
EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, STAYS HAPPENED.
"What kind of philosophy is that?"
THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS.
* * *
Acolyte: "I really must respectfully protest, Your Reverence. We have practiced for just such an emergency as--"
Lu-Tze: "Yeah, I know all about practicing procedures for emergencies. And there's always something missing."
Acolyte: "Ridiculous! We take great pains to--"
Lu-Tze: "You always leave out the damn emergency."
* * *
"Now let's see the abbot, shall we? It'II be time for his feed now. Solids, thank goodness. At least he's done with the wet nurse. It was so embarrassing for him and the young lady, honestly, you didn't know where to put your face and neither did he. I mean, mentally he's nine hundred years old..."
-- Awkward moments with reincarnation
* * *
The acolyte was, indeed, the kind of mildly objectionable person who engendered an irresistible urge by any right-thinking person to pour goo into his hair and hit him with a rubber yak, and the abbot was old enough to listen to his inner child.
* * *
Abbot: "You've disobeyed my baababa orders before, though. In Omnia, I remember."
Lu-Tze: "Tactical decision made by the man on the spot, Your Reverence. It was more what you might call an interpretalion of your order."
Abbot: "You mean, going where you had distinctly been told not to go and doing what you were absolutely forbidden to do?"
* * *
The abbot gave Lu-Tze a long hard stare, the kind that babies are good at giving.
* * *
"But I thought he was the supreme ruler!"
"Exactly! And it's very hard to get things done when you're a supreme ruler. There's too many people in the way, mucking things up."
* * *
"I'll tell you, the day someone pulls the plug out of the bottom of the universe, the chain will lead all the way to Ankh-Morpork and some bugger saying 'I just wanted to see what would happen.'"
* * *
"I don't think we need any of this stuff, Qu," said Lu-Tze.
Qu sighed. "At least you could let us tum your broom into a secret weapon, Lu- Tze. I've shown you the plans--"
"It is a secret weapon," said Lu-Tze. "It's a broom."
-- Name's Tze. Lu-Tze.
* * *
"Qu means well," said Lu-Tze, walking fast. "But if you listen to him you end up clanking when you walk and exploding when you sit down."
* * *
Lobsang: "I've got a question. Can you give me a straight answer?"
Lu-Tze: "I'll try, of course."
Lobsang: "What the hell is going on?"
Lu-Tze: "Oh. One of the difficult questions."
* * *
One of Igor's former masters had made a tick-tock man, all levers and gearwheels and cranks and clockwork. Instead of a brain, it had a long tape punched with holes. Instead of a heart, it had a big spring. Provided everything in the kitchen was very carefully positioned, the thing could sweep the floor and make a passable cup of tea. If it wasn't carefully positioned, or if the ticking, clicking thing hit an unexpected bump, then it'd strip the plaster off the walls and make a furious cup of cat.
* * *
Loyalty to a master was very important, but it took second place to loyalty to Igordom. If the world was going to be full of lurching servants, then they were damn well going to called Igor.
* * *
He was a people person. He preferred things that bled.
* * *
...obviously there were some things a man was not meant to know, such as what it felt like to have every single particle of your body sucked into a little hole...
* * *
For enough money, you could buy anything in Ankh-Morpork, and that included people.
* * *
Money could buy a lot of disinterest.
* * *
Anyway, the flow of lightning was a [Igor] family passion. With sand and chemicals and a few secrets, you could make lightning sit up and beg.
* * *
"The servant is satisfactory?"
"Oh, he grumbles a bit. But he has got a good heart. And a spare, apparently."
* * *
For all the trademark limp, Igors could move fast when they had to. They often had to, when the mob hit the windmill.
* * *
Igors were loyal, but they were not stupid. A job was a job. When an employer had no further use for your services, for example because he'd just been staked through the heart by a crowd of angry villagers, it was time to move on before they decided that you ought to be on the next stake. An Igor soon learned a secret way out of any castle and where to stash an overnight bag. In the words of one of the founding Igors: "We belong dead? Excuthe me? Where doth it thay 'we'?"
* * *
The quarry headed down a narrow street, and Igor half hoped that some of the Thieves' Guild were around. He'd very much like to see what happened if one of them gave her the tap on the noggin that was their prelude to negotiations. One had tried it with Igor yesterday, and if the man had been surprised at the metallic clang he'd been astonished to have his arm grabbed and broken with anatomical exactitude.
* * *
Up in the mountains, where most of the employment was for woodchoppers and miners, having an Igor living locally was considered very fortunate. There was always the risk of an ax bouncing or a sawblade running wild, and then a man was glad to have an Igor around who could lend a hand -- or even an entire arm, if you were lucky.
* * *
"Someone in Uberwald built this clock out of glass. Powered by lightning, as I recall. It somehow got down to a level where it could tick with the universe."
"Why did he want to do that?"
"Listen, he lived in a big old castle on a crag in Uberwald. People like that don't need a reason apart from 'because I can.' They have a nightmare and try to make it happen."
* * *
Lu-Tze: "Wen wrote ... well, the Secret Scroll, it's called. They keep it in a locked room. Only the abbots and the most senior monks ever get to see it."
Lobsang: "So how did you--?"
Lu-Tze: "Well, you wouldn't expect men like that to do the sweeping up in there, would you?"
* * *
One said, Tell us ... what is it like?
"What is what like?"
One said, Being insane. Being human.
* * *
Building a human being was easy; the Auditors knew exactly how to move matter around. The trouble was that the result didn't do anything but lie there and, eventually, decompose. This was annoying, since clearly human beings, without any special training or education, seemed to be able to make working replicas quite easily.
* * *
Beautiful women often achieved great things, on the other hand, merely by smiling at powerful men.
* * *
They were learning fast, or at least collecting data, which they considered to be the same as learning.
* * *
Lu-Tze: "It means we're obliged to them. The next monk through here might have to give someone a minute or two."
Lobsang: "A minute or two isn't much."
Lu-Tze: "For a dying woman to say goodbye to her children, it's a lifetime."
* * *
Lu-Tze: "What I'm trying to find out here, is whether you have any idea what happens when a lot of big armed men try to attack a small, elderly, unarmed monk...?"
Hunter: "To the best of my knowledge, he turns out to be a very unlucky monk."
Lu-Tze: "Oh, well, then we'll just have to try it the hard way."
-- Always remember Rule One
* * *
In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom in sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
* * *
An Igor stood for loyal, dependable, discreet service with a smile, or at least a sort of lopsided grin, or possibly just a curved scar in the right place.
* * *
And it has to be said that there was nothing intrinsically evil about Igors themselves. They just didn't pass judgement on other people. Admittedly, that was because if you worked for werewolves and vampires and people who looked on surgery as modern art rather than science, passing judgement would mean you'd never have time to get anything Done.
* * *
Things were wrong, and when an Igor thinks that, they are really wrong.
* * *
Jeremy: "Why are you giving me that funny look, Igor?"
Igor: "Goeth with the fathe, thur."
* * *
Lady LeJean also did not appear in Twurps' Peerage or the Almanack de Gothic or any of the other reference books Igor had checked as a matter of course, which meant that she had something to hide. Of course, he had worked for masters who occasionally had a great deal to hide, sometimes in deep holes at midnight.
* * *
Every society needs a cry like ["Remember Koom Valley!"], but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is "Remember-The-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-The-Atrocity-That-We're-About-To-Commit-Today! And So On! Hurrah!"
* * *
You had to hand it to human beings. They had one of the strangest powers in the universe. ... No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom.
* * *
And along with this had come the contrary power, to make things normal. The world changed mightily, and within a few days humans considered it was normal.
* * *
Something like the Glass Clock had been too big to hide. ... People had tried to coat it with sugar and magic swords, but its true nature still lurked like a rake in an overgrown lawn, ready to rise up at the incautious foot.
* * *
As she stared at her notes, her hair unwound itself from its tight bun and took up its ground-state position, which was that of someone who had just touched something highly electrical.
* * *
Time waited for no man, they said.
Perhaps she'd waited for one, once.
* * *
If the horse of Death was inclined to let you ride him, then you'd stay on, saddle or no. And there was no upper limit to the amount of peopIe he could carry. After all, plagues sometimes happened suddenly.
* * *
"Interesting," said Lu-Tze. "Mrs. Cosmopilite says, 'Seeing is believing' and, strangely enough, the Great Wen said, 'I have seen, and I believe!'"
* * *
Gripper: "Really, it's me who is the victim here. All I needed was a bit of understanding, someone to see my point of view for five minutes..."
Death: WHAT WAS YOUR POINT OF VIEW?
Gripper: "All dwarfs need a damn good kicking, in my opinion."
* * *
Susan: "They're breaking the rules!"
Death: BENDING THEM. THEY HAVE FOUND A LOOPHOLE. I DO NOT HAVE THAT KIND OF IMAGINATION.
Susan: "A loophole... Well, why can't you find one too?"
Death: I AM THE GRIM REAPER. I DO NOT THINK PEOPLE WISH ME TO GET... CREATIVE.
* * *
You soon learned that "No one is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard" was a prohibition that a seven-year-old simply would not understand. You had to think and rephrase it in more immediate terms, like "No one, Jason, no matter what, no, not even if they thought they heard someone shouting for help, no one -- are you paying attention, Jason? -- is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or accidentally fall on the door handle so that it opens, or threatens to steal Richenda's teddy bear unless she opens the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or be standing nearby when a mysterious wind comes out of nowhere and blows the door open all by itself, honestly, it really did, or in any way open, cause to open, ask anyone else to open, jump up and down on the loose floorboard to open, or in any other way seek to obtain entry to the Stationery Cupboard, Jason!"
* * *
Susan: "Are you really talking about the Apocalypse? Are you serious? No one believes in that sort of thing anymore!"
Death: I DO.
* * *
YOU WILL NOT TELL THE RIVERS NOT TO FLOW. YOU WILL NOT TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO.
* * *
Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due caution, yet in the comfortable knowledge that should everything go pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and this is the important part, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not now happen because it's not going to be such a damn fool next time.
* * *
There were more ornaments -- gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer -- around a tiny pond than any sensible gardener should have allowed. Susan spotted one brightly painted gnome fishi-- no, that wasn't a rod he was holding, was it? Surely a nice old lady wouldn't put something like that in her garden, would she? Would she?
* * *
[The door] was opened by a small, fat, rosy-cheeked woman whose little currant eyes said, yep, that's my gnome all right, and be thankful he's only widdling in the pond.
* * *
Of course, there had been plenty of diseases, long before humans had been around. But humans had definitely created Pestilence. They had a genius for crowding together, for poking around in jungles, for setting the midden so handily next to the well.
* * *
"Pregnant fathers often panic... he just wasn't thinking properly, 'cos husbands never do when the time comes. They panic 'cos it ain't their world anymore."
* * *
"What did [the birth mother] look like?" said Susan.
Mrs. Ogg gave her a Look.
"You've got to remember the view I got where I was sitting," she said. "The kind of description I might give you ain't a thing anyone'd put on a poster, if you get my meaning."
* * *
The human body appeared to have up to eight [orifices]. One didn't seem to work and the rest appeared to be multifunctional, although surprisingly there seemed to be only one thing that could be done by the ears.
* * *
Auditor: Why are you dwelling in this building?
Lady LeJean: "The body requires one to do things that cannot be done on the street. At least, on many streets."
* * *
Anything that could survive in Ankh-Morpork's alleys, with their abandoned swamp dragons, dog packs, and furriers' agents, was not about to open even one eye for a bunch of floating nightdresses.
* * *
She had seen humans in all states of life and death, but seeing a body being spun out of raw matter was curiously disquieting when you were currently inhabiting a similar one. It was one of those times when the stomach did the thinking, and thought it wanted to throw up.
* * *
"See the people down there?" she said. "You must dress in appropriate city fashions."
Reluctantly, the Auditors did so, and while they retained the grayness, they did give themselves clothes that would pass unnoticed in the street. Up to a point, anyway.
"Only those of female appearance should wear dresses," Lady LeJean pointed out.
* * *
Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue hues that any professional artist would dismiss as the work of some enthusiastic amateur who'd never looked at a real sunset. This was one of those sunrises. It was the kind of sunrise a man rises and looks at and says, "No real sunrise could paint the sky Surgical Appliance Pink."
Nevertheless, it was beautiful. [Footnote: But not tasteful.]
* * *
"A bird that builds clocks? I thought a cuckoo clock was a clock with a mechanical cuckoo, which came out when--"
"And where do you think people got such a strange idea from?"
* * *
Lu-Tze: "Got any food left?"
Lobsang: "No. We finished it last night. Er... I heard tell that really advanced monks can live on the, er, life force in the actual air itself..."
Lu-Tze: "Only on the planet Sausage, I expect."
* * *
"Are you going to caw or croak, I wonder," said Lu-Tze, apparently to himself.
"Croak," said the raven.
"So you're not the raven we saw on the other side of the mountain, then."
"Me? Gosh, no," said the raven. "It's croaking territory over here."
"Just checking."
* * *
Humans had created Famine, too. Oh, there had always been droughts and locusts, but for a really good famine, for fertile land to be turned into a dust bowl by stupidity and avarice, you needed humans.
* * *
Igor opened the door before the second knock. An Igor might be filling coffins with earth in the cellar, or up on the roof adjusting the lightning conductor, but a caller never had to knock twice.
* * *
"Lawyerth, thur," said Igor, giving the word some extra spin.
"And?"
"Well, we have had a lot of money," said Igor with the conviction of a man who informally secreted a small but sensible amount of gold in his own bag.
* * *
She gave Jeremy another smile. "They are my accountants," she added, some reading on her part having suggested that this might excuse most oddities.
* * *
Igor grimaced. Where his baggage was concerned, accountants were probably worse news than lawyers.
* * *
Lady LeJean turned on the others. This time she wished hey could read her thoughts. She didn't know enough pronounceable human swearwords.
* * *
Dr. Hopkins: "My word, I see you have finished your clock! What a magnificent piece of work! Well done indeed, Jeremy! And what is this pretty blue glow?"
Jeremy: "It's, it's the crystal ring."
Lady LeJean: "It spins light. And then it makes a hole in the universe."
Dr. Hopkins: "Really? What an original idea! Does a cuckoo come out?"
* * *
Among the very worst words that can be heard by anyone high in the air, the pair known as "oh-oh" possibly combines the maximum of bowel-knotting terror with the minimum wastage of breath.
* * *
A man's life could become very, very painful if his blood began to move through time faster than his bones. It would also be very short.
* * *
Lobsang: "I'm not ... trained ... for this!"
Lu-Tze: "No one gets trained for this! You do it and you find out that you're good at it!"
Lobsang: "What happens if you find out you're no good?"
Lu-Tze: "Dead men don't find things out."
* * *
"There's more to you than meets the third eye, lad!"
* * *
The Auditors had tried to understand religion, because so much that made no sense whatsoever was done in its name. But it could also excuse practically any kind of eccentricity. Genocide, for example.
* * *
The war was going badly for the weaker side. Their positioning was wrong, their tactics ragged, their strategy hopeless. The Red army advanced across the whole front, dismembering the scurrying remnant of the collapsing Black army.
There was room for only one ant hill on this lawn...
* * *
IT HAS BEEN RATHER PEACEFUL OF LATE, I AGREE, said Death.
"Peaceful?" said War. "Ha! I may as well change m'name to 'Police Action', or 'Negotiated Settlement'!"
* * *
"Do I like rabbit?"
"Yes. dear."
"I thought I liked beef."
"No, dear. Beef gives you wind."
"Oh." War sighed. "Any chance of onions?"
"You don't like onions, dear,"
"I don't?"
"Because of your stomach, dear."
"Oh."
War smiled awkwardly at Death. "It's rabbit," he said. "Erm.., dear, do I ride out for Apocalypses?"
* * *
Despite himself, Death was fascinated. He had never come across the idea of keeping your memory inside someone else's head.
* * *
"Just the two of us?" said War.
RIGHT IS ON OUR SIDE.
"Speaking as War," said War, "I'd hate to tell you what happens to very small armies that have Right on their side."
* * *
To be human was to change, Death realized. The Horsemen... were horsemen. Men had wished upon them a certain shape, a certain form. And, just like the gods, and the Tooth Fairy, and the Hogfather, their shape had changed them. They would never be human, but they had caught aspects of humanity as though they were some kind of disease.
* * *
Lobsang: "Look, could you wind me up, please? It's urgent."
Susan: "Certainly. Lobsang Ludd, you are thoughtless and impulsive and deserve to die a stupid and pointless death."
Lobsang: "What?"
Susan: "And you are also rather slow on the uptake."
-- Lobsang meets Susan
* * *
Some people fade into the background. Miss Susan faded into the foreground. She stood out. Everything she stood in front of became nothing more than background.
* * *
"I'm sorry? You were dashing to prevent the end of the world but you stopped to help some old man? You ... hero!"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that I was a--" And then Lobsang stopped. She hadn't said "you hero" in the tone of voice of "you star"; it had been the tone in which people say "you idiot."
* * *
Lobsang: "You mean you need cool calculating bastards to save the world, do you?"
Susan: "The cool calculation does help, I must admit."
* * *
"What did you say?"
"I said it's uncertain death."
"Is that worse than certain death?"
"Much."
* * *
Susan: "Whoever designed it was a genius."
Lobsang: "An evil genius?"
Susan: "It's hard to say. I can't see any signs."
Lobsang: "What kind of signs?"
Susan: "Well, 'Hahaha!!!!!' painted on the side would be a definite clue, don't you think?"
* * *
Lobsang: "An evil spirit! The peasants down in the valleys hang up charms against them! But I thought they were just a superstition!"
Susan: "No, they're a substition. I mean they're real, but hardly anyone really believes in them."
* * *
Ronnie Soak: "No to yak milk? I can get cow milk, or goat, sheep, camel, llama, horse, cat, dog, dolphin, whale, or alligator, if you prefer."
Lu-Tze: "What? Alligators don't give milk!"
Ronnie Soak: "I didn't say it was easy."
* * *
Lu-Tze: "You were... you were the one who left before they became famous?"
Ronnie Soak: "Yes."
Lu-Tze: "But... this is a dairy. and you're washing bottles!"
Ronnie Soak: "Well? I had to do something with my time."
Lu-Tze: "But... you were the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse!"
* * *
Mr. White: "We are learning much."
Miss Brown: "What we are leaming makes no sense."
Mr. White: "The more we learn, the more sense it will make. There is nothing we cannot understand."
Miss Brown: "I do not understand why it is that I now perceive a desire to bring my hand in sharp contact with your face."
* * *
He swung [the axe]. It was a clumsy blow, and the human neck is a lot tougher than people believe, but Miss Brown's neck exploded into colored motes and she collapsed.
Mr. White looked around at the nearest Auditors, who all stepped back.
"Is there anyone else who wishes to try the experiment?" he said.
There was a chorus of hasty refusals.
"Good," said Mr. White. "Already we are learning a great deal!"
* * *
"He chopped her head off!"
"Don't shout! And keep your head down!" Susan hissed.
"But he--"
"I think she knows!"
* * *
Lobsang: "Do you call that [killing] acting human?"
Susan: "You don't get out much, do you? My grandfather says that if an intelligent creature takes a human shape, it starts to think human. Form defines function."
Lobsang: "That was the action of an intelligent creature?"
Susan: "Not only doesn't get out much, also doesn't read history."
* * *
"Do you know about the curse of the werewolves?"
"Isn't being a werewolf curse enough?"
* * *
Lobsang: "The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he awoke and said, 'Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man?'"
Susan: "Really? ... How did he write his poems?"
Lobsang: "With a brush, of course."
Susan: "He didn't flap around making information-rich pattems in the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?"
* * *
"...they're finding out what being human really means."
"Which is?"
"That you're not as much in control as you think."
* * *
"Just a minute," said Lobsang. "Who are you? Time has stopped, the world is given over to ... fairy tales and monsters, and there's a schoolteacher walking around?"
"Best kind of person to have," said Susan.
* * *
Susan: "I've inherited certain talents."
Lobsang: "Like living outside time?"
Susan: "That's one of them."
Lobsang: "It's a weird talent for a schoolteacher!"
Susan: "Good for grading papers, though."
* * *
"Please! Wind me up again!"
"All right. You are a--"
"That wasn't very funny the first time!"
* * *
She smiled. "Look on the bright side," she added. "We're young, we've got all the time in the world..." She swung the wrench onto her shoulder. "Let's go clubbing."
* * *
Lu-Tze was eight hundred years old, and that was why he was having a rest. A hero would have leaped up and rushed out into the silent city and then--
And there you had it. Then a hero would have had to wonder what to do next. Eight hundred years had taught Lu-Tze that what happens, stays happened... Later, a solution would present itself. In the meantime, a cup of tea and conversation with his serendipitous rescuer might speed that time.
* * *
Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.
* * *
And Lu-Tze read: "And the Angel clothed all in white opened the Iron Book, and a fifth rider appeared in a chariot of burning ice, and there was a snapping of laws and a breaking of bonds and the multitudes cried 'Oh God, we're in trouble now!'"
"That was me," said Ronnie proudly.
* * *
"The public wasn't interested in me anymore," said Ronnie. "Or so I was told. Back in those days we were only playing to very small crowds. One plague of locusts, some tribe's waterhole drying up, a volcano exploding... we were glad of any gig going. There wasn't room for five." He sniffed. "So I was told."
* * *
Knowing how to use other people's vanity was a martial art all in itself, and Lu-Tze had been doing it for a long time.
* * *
"The sensation known as extreme pain, which I mentioned previously, is now really quite acute. What shall I do now?"
* * *
All kinds of sensations arose when they were given instructions by a man holding an edged weapon. It was surprising how smoothly the impulse to consult and discuss metamorphosed into a pressing desire to do what the weapon said.
* * *
Logsang: "I used to be a thief."
Susan: "I used to be able to walk through the walls."
* * *
They'd all lost so many powers. It was ridiculous to have to communicate by flapping bits of your skin, and as for the tongue... yuerkkk...
* * *
And she felt hungry. And that also made no sense. The stomach was a bag for digesting food. It wasn't supposed to issue commands. The Auditors could survive quite well by exchanging molecules with their surroundings and making use of any local source of energy. That was a fact.
Try telling that to the stomach.
* * *
"I know what I like," said Susan, still staring at the busy gray figures. "And right now I'd like quite a lot of weaponry."
* * *
Lobsang: "No, but the sign up there says 'Arms and Armor'!"
Susan: "So? Are you any good with weapons?"
Lobsang: "No! You see, I've been taught to fight without--"
Susan: "Maybe there's a sword I can use."
-- Why unarmed combat isn't all it's cracked up to be
* * *
"I was one of them," said Lady LeJean. "Now I rather think I'm one of me."
* * *
"Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human."
* * *
Miss Tangerine was one of the faster-learning Auditors and had already formulated a group of things, events, and situations that she categorized as "bloody stupid." Things that were "bloody stupid" could be dismissed.
* * *
"Do what I say, you organic organ!"
-- Auditor swearing
* * *
Lady LeJean: "We have never had egos before."
Susan: "Well, you seem to be managing."
Lady LeJean: "Only by becoming completely and utterly insane."
* * *
They revealed an exquisite mask of a face that had nevertheless been made up by a clown. Probably a blind clown. And one who was wearing boxing gloves. In a fog. The woman looked at the world through panda eyes and her lipstick touched her mouth only by accident.
* * *
"One of life's little certainties," said Susan, standing on the edge of the museum's parapet, "is that there is generally a last chocolate hidden in all those empty wrappers."
* * *
Susan: "May I offer a fashion tip?"
Lady LeJean: "It would be welcomed."
Susan: "Long cerise bloomers with that dress? Not a good idea."
Lady LeJean: "No? They are very colorful, and quite warm. What should I have chosen instead?"
Susan: "With that cut? Practically nothing."
* * *
"Does a bear poo in the woods?" [Footnote: Teaching small children for any length of time can do this to a vocabulary.]
* * *
Koan ninety-seven: "Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you." Hmm. No real help there. Besides, he'd occasionally been unsure that he'd written that one down properly, although it certainly had worked. He'd always left aquatic mammals well alone, and they had done the same to him.
* * *
"Pleased to meet you," he said. "Let me guess your name."
-- Lu-Tze channels The Rolling Stones
* * *
To call Wienrich and Boettcher "chocolate makers" was like calling Leonard of Quirm "a decent painter who also tinkered with things", or Death "not someone you'd want to meet every day".
* * *
...they didn't make, they created. There's an important difference. [Footnote: Up to ten dollars a pound, usually.]
* * *
If you had to ask the price of W&B's chocolates, you couldn't afford them. And if you'd tasted one and still couldn't afford them, you'd save and scrimp and rob and sell elderly members of your family for just one more of those mouthfuls that fell in love with your tongue and turned your soul to whipped cream.
* * *
There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the [chocolate maker's] window drooled too much.
* * *
Ankh-Morpork people, said the [Confectioners] guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact, they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders, and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that, according to the food standards of the great chocolate centers in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as "cheese" and only escaped, through being the wrong color, being defined as "tile grout."
* * *
Lady LeJean: "The mind can overrule the body! Otherwise, what is it for?"
Susan: "I've often wondered."
* * *
Lady LeJean: "The will can overrule the emotions, the will can overrule the instincts--"
Susan: "Good, good, now just work your way up to the bit where it says chocolate, okay?"
Lady LeJean: "That's the hard one!"
* * *
"He thinks such big thoughts he needs a second lifetime just to finish them off!"
* * *
Kaos: "Rules? Rules? I'm Kaos!"
Lu-Tze: "Who was the first?"
Kaos: "Yes!"
Lu-Tze: "Creator and Destroyer?"
Kaos: "Damn right!"
Lu-Tze: "Apparently complicated, apparently patternless behaviour that nevertheless has a simple, deterministic explanation and is a key to new levels of understanding of the multidimensional universe?"
Kaos: "You'd better believe it-- What?"
* * *
Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He prided himself on an incredibly well-honed ability to talk his way in or out of anything, but that rather depended on a passably sane entity being involved at the other end of the dialogue.
* * *
"Eat... Oh, good grief... Eat... 'a delicious fondant sugar creme infused with delightfully rich and creamy raspberry filling wrapped in mysterious dark chocolate' ... you gray bastards!"
* * *
Susan: "Are you any good? Lobsang thinks you're a bit of a fraud."
Lu-Tze: "Only a bit? I'm surprised."
* * *
Unity: "And that was the last of the caramels, by the way."
Susan: "No, there's six in one of W&B's Gold Selections. Three have got white chocolate cream in dark chocolate and three have got whipped cream in milk chocolate. They're the ones in the silver wrapp-- Look, I just happen to know things, all right? Let's keep going, okay?"
* * *
Death: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT YOU ARE NOT OFFICIAL.
Angel: "What do you mean?"
Death: THE BOOK OF TOBRUN HAS NOT BEEN CONSIDERED OFFICIAL CHURCH DOGMA FOR A HUNDRED YEARS. THE PROPHET BRUTHA REVEALED THAT THE WHOLE CHAPTER WAS A METAPHOR FOR A POWER STRUGGLE WITHIN THE EARLY CHURCH. IT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE REVISED VERSION OF THE BOOK OF OM, AS DETERMINED BY THE CONVOCATION OF EE.
Angel: "Not at all?"
Death: I'M SORRY.
Angel: "I've been thrown out? Just like the damn rabbits and the big syrupy things?"
Death: YES.
Angel: "Even the bit where I blow the trumpet?"
Death: OH, YES.
* * *
Famine: "I've been thinking. Maybe there are things worth putting up a fight for."
Pestilence: "And they are--?"
Famine: "Salad-cream sandwiches. You just can't beat them. That tang of permitted emulsifiers? Marvellous."
* * *
Auditor: And now you must all go and bring terror and destruction and so on and so forth. Correct?
Death: EXACTLY. ONLY, WHILE IT IS TRUE WE HAVE TO RIDE OUT, IT DOESN'T SAY ANYWHERE AGAINST WHOM.
* * *
Wizards and philosophers had found Chaos, which is Kaos with his hair combed and a tie on, and had found in the epitome of disorder a new order undreamed of. There are different kinds of rules. From the simple comes the complex, and from the complex comes a different kind of simplicity. Chaos is order in a mask...
* * *
It was a work of art, the sword. It had imaginary velocity, negative energy and positive cold, cold so cold that it met heat coming the other way and took on something of its nature. Burning cold. There had never been anything as cold as this since before the universe began.
* * *
The Fifth Horseman rode out, and a faint smell of cheese followed him.
* * *
"Susan?"
Susan was peering up the street. "Mmm?"
"Do you have any chocolate left?"
Susan shook her head. "Mmm-mmm."
"I believe you were carrying the cherry cremes?"
"Mmm?"
Susan swallowed, and then gave a cough that expressed, in a remarkably concise way, embarrassment and annoyance.
"I just had one!" she snapped. "I need the sugar."
"I'm sure no one said you did have more than one," said Unity meekly.
"We haven't been counting at all," said Lu-Tze.
"If you have a handkerchief," said Unity, still diplomatically, "I could wipe away the chocolate around your mouth which must have inadvertently got there during the last engagement."
* * *
Because I have seen everything.
"Would you like to tell everyone?" said Susan, reverting to Classroom Sarcasm. "We'd all like to know how this ends!"
You misunderstand the meaning of "everything".
* * *
"Coffee beans coated in chocolate," breathed Susan. "They should be outlawed!"
The two women watched in horror as Lu-Tze put one in his mouth. He gave them a surprised look.
"Quite nice, but I prefer liquorice," he said.
"You mean you don't want another one?" said Susan.
"No, thank you."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I'd quite like liquorice, though, if you have any..."
"Have you had some special monk training?"
"Well, not in chocolate combat, no," said Lu-Tze. "But is it not written, 'If you have another one you won't have an appetite for your dinner'?"
"You really mean you will not eat a second chocolate coffee bean?"
"No, thank you."
Susan looked across at Unity, who was trembling. "You do have tastebuds, don't you?"
* * *
WE HAVE BECOME TOO HUMAN.
"Us? Human? Don't make me lau--"
LOOK AT THE SWORD IN YOUR HAND, said Death. DON'T YOU NOTICE ANYTHING?
"It's a sword. Sword-shaped. Well?"
LOOK AT THE HAND. FOUR FINGERS AND A THUMB. A HUMAN HAND. HUMANS GAVE YOU THAT SHAPE.
* * *
HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS FACED US AND THEY HAVE NOT SURRENDERED.
"Well, yes," said Pestilence. "But with us they could always hope for a remission."
"Or a sudden truce," said War.
"Or--" Famine began, and hesitated, and said finally, "A shower of fish?" He looked at their expressions. "That actually happened once."
* * *
Death: IN ORDER TO HAVE A CHANGE OF FORTUNE AT THE LAST MINUTE YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOUR FORTUNE TO THE LAST MINUTE. WE MUST DO WHAT WE CAN.
Pestilence: "And if that doesn't work?"
Death: THEN WE DID WHAT WE COULD, UNTIL WE COULD NOT.
* * *
"Some old man told me you live and learn," [Chaos] said. "Well. I have lived, and now I've learned that the edge of a sword is infinitely long. I've also learned how to make damn good yoghurt, although this is not a skill I intend to employ today."
* * *
"We shall see," Mr. White said. "Your associate seemed to prefer the axe!"
He pointed to the body of Lu-Tze.
To the empty patch of cobbles where Lu-Tze had been.
A hand tapped him on the shoulder.
"Why is it," said a voice by his ear, "that no one ever believes in Rule One?"
* * *
Susan: "Ah, so I'm not seeing with my eyes. And what else? What's happening to me? My hand... looks normal, but does that mean it is? Am I getting smaller or bigger? Does--?"
Lobsang: Are you always like this?
Susan: "Like what? I can feel your hand and I can hear your voice -- at least, I think I can hear it, but maybe it's just in my head -- but I can't feel myself running--"
Lobsang: So... so analytical?
Susan: "Of course. What am I supposed to be thinking? 'Oh, my paws and whiskers'?"
* * *
Don't let go of my hand.
"It's all right, I won't let you go."
I meant, don't let go of my hand because otherwise every part of your body will be compressed into a space much, much smaller than an atom.
"Oh."
* * *
Mr. Orange got there first, but Miss Taupe trod on his fingers. After that, it became very busy and confusing and, to judge by the sounds from within the growing scrum, also very, very painful. ... There was a scream from somewhere in the mob.
"Democracy at work," said Lu-Tze happily.
* * *
Lobsang: "It makes you wonder if there is anything to astrology after all."
Susan: "Oh, there is. Delusion, wishful thinking and gullibility."
Lobsang: "Don't you ever let go?"
Susan: "I haven't yet."
Lobsang: "Why?"
Susan: "I suppose... because in this world, after everyone panics, there's always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoe."
* * *
"There's something I must do first," said Lobsang. "I must meet my mother."
"Have we got ti--?" Susan began, and then added, "We have, haven't we? All the time in the world."
"Oh, no. Far more time than that," said Wen. "Besides, there's always time to save the world."
* * *
"But Lobsang built the clock! Well, part of him did. So he's saving the world and destroying it, all at once?"
"Family trait," said Wen. "It is what Time does at every instant."
* * *
Wen: "Think of everything. It's an everyday word. But 'everything' means... everything. It's a much bigger word than 'universe'. And everything contains all possible things that can happen at all possible times in all possible worlds. Don't look for complete solutions in anyone of them. Sooner or later, everything causes everything else."
Susan: "Are you saying one little world is not important, then?"
Wen: "Everything is as important as everything else."
* * *
"Defend the small spaces, don't run with scissors, and remember that there is often an unexpected chocolate," said Wen. He smiled. "And never resist a perfect moment."
* * *
Susan had been brought up to be practical and that meant swimming lessons. The Quirm College for Young Ladies had been very advanced in that respect, and its teachers took the view that a girl who couldn't swim two lengths of the pool with her clothes on wasn't making an effort.
* * *
Hippos only look big and cuddly from a distance. Close up, they just look big.
* * *
Lu-Tze, when they found him, was looking calmly up at an enormous mammoth. Under its huge hairy brow its eyes were squinting with the effort both of seeing him and of getting all three of its brain cells lined up so that it could decide whether to trample on him or gouge him out of the frost-bound landscape. One brain cell was saying 'gouge', one was going for 'trample' but the third had wandered off and was thinking about as much sex as possible.
At the far end of its trunk, Lu-Tze was saying, "So, you've never heard of Rule One, then?"
* * *
Lobsang: "Imagine... that there is a jigsaw, all in pieces. But... I am very good at spotting edges and shapes. Very good. And all the pieces are moving. But because they were once linked, they have by their very nature a memory of that link. Their shape is the memory. Once a few are in the right position, the rest will be easier. Oh, and imagine that all the bits are scattered across the whole of eventuality, and mixing randomly with pieces from other histories. Can you grasp all that?"
Susan: "Yes. I think so."
Lobsang: "Good. Everything I have just said is nonsense. It bears no resemblance to the truth of the matter in any way at all. But it is a lie that you can... understand, I think."
* * *
Lu-Tze shook his head. "You, Susan, buckets of water from the wells! You, Miss Unity, you follow her with the grease pails!"
"And what are you going to do?" said Susan, grabbing two buckets.
"I'm going to worry like hell and that's not an easy job, believe me!"
* * *
Lu-Tze: "And now, may I suggest you ladies leave by the back way? People are going to come running down here in a minute and it's all going to get very excitable. Probably best if you aren't around."
Susan: "What will you do?"
Lu-Tze "Lie. It's amazing how often that works."
* * *
"The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, 'What about me?' and you can just hear the universe replying, 'Well, what about you?'"
* * *
Unfortunately, Unity did not seem to have mastered some of the subtleties of human conversation, such as when a tone of voice means "Stop this line of inquiry right now or may huge rats eat you by day and by night."
* * *
"There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime."
* * *
He was sitting by the side of the street, watching carefully, with his begging bowl in front of him. There were of course far more interesting and complex ways for a History Monk to avoid being noticed, but he'd adopted the begging bowl method ever since Lu-Tze had shown him that people never see anyone who wants them to give him money.
* * *
Everyone has a conditional clause in their life, some little unspoken addition to the rules like "except when I really need to" or "unless no one is looking" or, indeed, "unless the first one was nougat". Soto had for centuries embraced a belief in the sanctity of all life and the ultimate uselessness of violence, but his personal conditional clause was "but not the hair. No one touches the hair, okay?"
* * *
"I thought we said no tricks?" said Lu-Tze.
"Yes, Sweeper," said Lobsang, poised in mid-air. "And then I thought: never forget Rule One."
"Aha! Well done. You've learned something!"
* * *
"Nothing to worry about, lad," said Lu-Tze, calmly now."'You just forgot Rule Nineteen. Submit?"
"Rule Nineteen?" said Lobsang, almost pushing himself off the mat until terrible pain forced him down again. "What the hell is Rule Nineteen? Yes, yes, submit, submit!"
"'Remember Never to Forget Rule One'," said Lu-Tze.
* * *
It was, Lu-Tze reminisced later, an unusual ceremony. The abbot did not appear overawed, because babies generally aren't and will throw up over anyone.
* * *
"Ten thousand gallons of delicate fondant sugar cream infused with essence of violet and stirred into dark chocolate," said Chaos. "There are also strata of hazelnut praline in rich butter cream, and areas of soft caramel for that special touch of delight."
SO ... YOU'RE SAYING THAT THIS VAT COULD EXIST SOMEWHERE IN A TRULY INFINITE EVERYWHERE AND THEREFORE IT CAN EXIST HERE? said Death.
"Indeed," said Chaos.
* * *
"In any case, chocolate is hardly a rare commodity," said Chaos. "There are planets covered in the stuff."
REALLY?
"Indeed."
IT MIGHT BE BEST, said Death, IF NEWS LIKE THAT DID NOT GET ABOUT.
* * *
A good teacher used whatever materiaIs there were to hand, and taking the class to visit Mrs. Ogg was an education in herself.
* * *
Susan was very strict about eating in class and took the view that, if there were rules, then they applied to everyone, even her. Otherwise they were merely tyranny. But maybe rules were there to make you think before you broke them.
* * *
Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.