Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion ... So Far

by Terry Pratchett

  Leonard’s genius lies in seeing inherent in the common world the obvious things that men have never seen before. He is obsessively interested in everything. Yet within the vast amber of his genius is locked the tiny insect of what would be called, in a lesser man, stupidity. He watches the swirl of water over weirs, the intricate movements of musculature, the gliding of birds and the play of light through prisms and, then, fills up notebook after notebook with ingenious devices for killing whole cities by means of hot oil, explosions, etc. He has never in his life harmed a living creature, and would be greatly surprised and terribly shocked to think that anyone would take these doodles (with their carefully numbered components and cutaway diagrams) seriously. Inventions of his, lying unnoticed in obscure places or drawn as idle sketches in the margins of otherwise unremarkable books, lie around Ankh-Morpork like razor blades in a ham sandwich.

  It has to be added that one reason that Leonard’s inventions have not totally changed the face of the world is, probably, that he finds it hard to deal with the relative importance of things. He will expend as much time on designing a new hinge as he will on some vast scheme for extracting sunlight from oranges.

  He also has a strange attention span. He does not quickly lose interest in things. In fact, he remains greatly interested in all sorts of things, all the time, which leads him down all kinds of side alleys while the ostensible main invention gets neglected. For him there is, as it were, no difference between designing the Titanic and designing the deckchairs.

  For example, Leonard’s invention of the internal combustion engine has been delayed for some years while he works on the problem of how to make dice fluffy. But when a flying machine capable of reaching the highest mountain on the Disc was urgently needed, he designed it in a day, and that included two hours developing the Frying-Pan-that-Sticks-to-Everything.

  Leshp, Brass Gongs of. The legendary Brass Gongs can be heard far out in the CIRCLE SEA on stormy nights, as the currents stir the drowned towers of the city of Leshp, three hundred fathoms below. [M]

  Letitia. Letitia Keepsake. Daughter of the Duchess of Keepsake and fiancée to ROLAND. A colourless, fragile girl, with very blond hair and blue eyes. She wears a silly lacy dress and seriously impractical tiny white shoes. She has definite magical skills. Her family live at Keepsake Hall, at the far end of the Chalk. [ISWM]

  Level, Miss. A witch, who lives in ‘the Cottage in the Woods, Near the Dead Oak Tree in Lost Man’s Lane, High Overhang, If Out Leave Letters In Old Boot By Door’. Her garden is full of ornaments – sad, cheap ones – bunny rabbits with mad grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggest they are on bad medication.

  She is a research witch, who tries to find new spells by learning how old ones were really done. There are, were, two of her – she is/was one person in two bodies. She has/had a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. She could go shopping and stay home at the same time. She is like one person with four arms and four legs and four eyes. And two noses. Her right body was slightly clumsier than her left body, but she had better eyesight in her right pair of eyes. If there’s a gap of more than twenty miles or so between her two bodies, she gets rather clumsy.

  She has long grey hair, and she is quite tall, just slightly overweight and she wears lots of necklaces – and her glasses on a chain. She wears all black, with black jewellery and surprisingly high-heeled boots. Her trick broom is disguised as a bundle of firewood. Her pointy hat is only 9" high, to avoid having to duck in low-ceilinged rooms.

  Her mother died shortly after she was born, and her father was at sea and never came back. She ran away to join the circus as Topsy & Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act (also the Stupendous Bokunkus Sisters). At one time, she walked out with Marco & Falco, the Flying Pastrami Brothers (really called Sidney & Frank Cartwright). [HFOS]

  Lezek. MORT’S father. Bearded, shorter than his son, he made a haphazard living as a farmer. [M]

  Liartes. Brother of LIO!RT Dragonlord and LIESSA Dragonlady, and son of GREICHA the First, Lord of the WYRMBERG. [COM]

  Librarian. The Librarian of Unseen University is an orang-utan. This was not always the case. He was magically transformed by the events chronicled in The Light Fantastic – but since then no member of the University staff can remember who he was beforehand. In addition, a page was torn out of the relevant year book; no one knows why, or why the place was marked with a banana skin. There is a rumour that the Librarian was once Dr Horace Worblehat, B. Thau, D.M., but no one utters this out loud. Dr Worblehat is dimly remembered as being quiet, polite and generally the kind of person you cannot remember in the school photo. He was born in Moon Pond Lane, Ankh-Morpork, next to the saddle-makers.

  It is clear that whoever and whatever he once was the Librarian is now blissfully happy in himself, reckoning that the prehensile toes and extra-long arms are very helpful in his role. In a sense, say the wizards, it is as though he always was the Librarian and whatever inoffensive human shape he had for the first several decades of his life, he was merely marking time until he could become his own self.

  In looks he has the red-haired-rubber-sack-filled-with-water look of a very well grown (300lb) male, although he has not developed the overlarge cheek pads that are a feature of a dominant male orang. This is because he is not, strictly, a dominant male – he is an ex-officio member of the college council and a member of the faculty and he therefore quite rightly regards the ARCHCHANCELLOR as the dominant male, even though the Archchancellor does not often sit high up in trees with a large leaf on his head.

  Habits and habitat: he has a book-lined nest in a cubby-hole under the desk in the middle of the Library. He hides there under his tattered blanket when he is worried. He appears to want nothing more than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the PATRICIAN’S private menagerie. (This is a puzzle. There are no orangs in the menagerie. Nor are there any other kinds of ape.) He is generally naked but he does wear an old green robe when he’s had a bath or modesty really requires it.

  The Librarian is, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular get on his nerves. There is something sacrilegious about the way people keep taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He likes people who love and respect books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, is to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

  In short, he is a useful and well-respected member of the University staff, his only failing being a tendency to educative violence if referred to as a ‘monkey’. During the evenings he can often be found enjoying a quiet pint and, if the landlord is not wary, every single bowl of peanuts in the Mended DRUM, where his iron grip and ability to swing from the rafters adds an extra dimension of terror to bar-room brawls.

  Libraries, nature of. Even big collections of ordinary books distort space and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter.

  The relevant equation is: Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else.

  All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space by the bookwormholes created by the strong space-time distortions found in any large collection of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact – because it amounts to time travel.

  The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown, and 3) the nature of causality must not be interfered with. (See also BOOKS and INVISIBLE WRITINGS.)

  Library, the. Boo
ks play a major role in the Discworld. In Discworld reality as well as in general magical theory the Name is often nearly identical to the Thing itself; to know the Name is to control the Thing. Books on the Discworld often do far more than merely record its history and the concerns of its inhabitants; they often are the script on which the unfolding drama is based.

  Books can also be affected by their contents, and a book containing powerful magic spells can become, for all practical purposes, alive.

  The Library at Unseen University therefore has to deal with problems rather greater than readers writing ‘Rubbish!’ in the margins and using slices of bacon as a bookmark.

  From the outside, the Library of Unseen University is a low, brooding building, with high, narrow, barred windows and a glass dome high above its centre. There clearly is a centre, because it is quite possible for someone to walk from the door to the middle of the floor.

  However, all four of the standard dimensions are, in this place, plaited like soft clay by the presence of the very high thaumic field generated by the magic in the books coupled with the pressure on space-time from the books themselves. Because of the distortions caused by the vast amount of assembled knowledge, the Library has a diameter of about 100 yards but an infinite radius. The interior is a topographical nightmare; the sheer presence of so much stored magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M. C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways. The floor seems to become the wall in the distance, shelves play tricks on the eyes and seem to twist through more dimensions than the usual three. There are even some shelves up on the ceiling.

  The Library is the greatest assemblage of magical texts anywhere in the multiverse; over 90,000 volumes weigh down its shelves. (This may not sound like many, but it should be borne in mind that most of the books are fully two feet high and six inches thick and some are much larger. And these are merely the magical books. The Library also houses an uncounted number of less volatile texts, in the occult sense at any rate; indeed, if the L-space theories are correct, the Library contains every book everywhere, including the ones that never actually got written.)

  Magic is volatile. A spell may be pinned to the page like a butterfly, but it still tries to escape, to have form, to take control, to be said. In a sense, the books in Unseen University’s library are semi-alive. At UU, your homework could eat the dog.

  Great care has to be taken to ensure that this magic causes no harm. As the raw magic crackles from the spines of the magical books, it earths itself harmlessly in the copper rails nailed to every shelf for that very purpose.

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

  Faint traceries of blue fire crawl across the bookcases and there is a sound, a papery whispering, such as might come from a colony of roosting starlings. In the silence of the night, the books talk to one another.

  It is always warm in the Library, because the magic that produces the OCTARINE glow also gently cooks the air.

  In the lower levels are the maximum security shelves where the rogue books are kept – the books whose behaviour or mere contents demand a whole shelf, a whole room, to themselves. Cannibal books. Books which will read you rather than the other way about. Books which, if left on a shelf with their weaker brethren, would be found in a ‘Revised, Enlarged and Smug Edition’ in the morning.

  Down in these dark tunnels, behind heavily barred doors, are also kept the, er, erotic books, in vats of crushed ice. Also kept in the Library of Unseen University is the OCTAVO, originally in the possession of the CREATOR of the Discworld.

  And, as indicated before, there is L-space. Somewhere beyond the common shelves lies an entire library universe, peopled by creatures that have evolved in the immense biobibliographical field, such as kickstool crabs and the wild thesaurus. It should be possible eventually to find your way into any other library at any point in time, and it is known that the LIBRARIAN made use of this feature to rescue some of the more interesting works from the burning library of EPHEBE (in Small Gods).

  New readers are required to make the following declaration.

  DECLARATION TO BE READ ALOUD WHEN ASKED

  ‘I, Speak Your Name, hereby undertake not to remove without permission from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or use inappropriate force in fighting back any such volumes as may from time to time attack me; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame be it magical or otherwise, and not to smoke or expectorate or explode or levitate above 2' in the Library; to refrain, to the best of my abilities, from spontaneously combusting in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library and any which may, from time to time, be added by the Librarian, whose judgement on all matters relating to the operation of the Library is final and if necessary terminal. I further promise to read and inwardly digest any documents that are drawn to my attention attesting to the difference between those creatures commonly referred to as “monkeys” and the higher apes, accepting further that being allowed to do so is a concession on the part of the Librarian and that holding my head two inches from the page is an aid to reading and then repeatedly banging it on the table is a valuable aid to memory.’

  Various legends are linked to UU’s library. There is the persistent story of the Lost Reading Room, for example. Wise students in search of more distant volumes take care to leave chalk marks on the shelves, and tell friends to come looking for them if they’re not back for supper.

  Even wiser students don’t go in at all.

  Liessa Wyrmbidder. Liessa Dragonlady. Lady of the WYRMBERG. Sister to LIO!RT and LIARTES and daughter of GREICHA the First. She is a magnificent sight, with waist-length red hair, flecked with gold. She is almost naked, apart from a couple of mere scraps of the lightest chain mail, and riding boots of iridescent dragon-hide. In one boot is thrust a riding crop – unusual in that it is as long as a spear and topped with tiny steel barbs. She has a slim, black dagger in her belt. She is heavily into jewellery, with a diamond spangle in her navel, tiger-rubies adorning her toe-rings, and large, incredibly rare blue-milk diamonds adorning the rings on her fingers. They just don’t make heroines like her any more. For one thing, they force them to wear more clothes. [COM]

  Light Dams. Some of the tribes in the Great NEF region construct mirror walls in the desert mountains to collect the Disc sunlight, which they then use as a currency. This is possible because of the strange nature of light in the Discworld’s magical field. [M]

  Light, nature of. As far as can be determined, there are now four distinct types of light on the Disc. For the sake of discussion they could be called common light, meta-light, dark light and ‘the light fantastic’.

  Meta-light is almost an idea rather than a phenomenon. It is the light by which darkness can be seen, and therefore is always available, everywhere. If it didn’t exist, darkness could not be visible. It is widely used in the film industry for shots in caves and mines.

  Common light undergoes some important changes in the Discworld’s vast and ancient magical field. It slows down considerably (and variably, but generally to about the speed of sound) and, at the same time, becomes very slightly heavier than air and also – by assumption – soluble. (It pools in deep valleys but has gone by midnight, so it either sinks into the ground or is soluble in darkness.)

  The speed of common light was established by FEBRIUS, the Ephebian philosopher.

  The combined effect of these changes can be seen by watching a Discworld day from a convenient point in space. The disc is 10,000 miles across. The sunlight strikes point A and proceeds towards point B at about 600 mph, producing a rather pleasing effect similar to an incoming tide. When it strikes a mountain range (C) it piles up on the dawn side, so that dawn will be postponed in the ‘light shadow’ of the mountain until ei
ther the light flows over the top or around the sides.

  The light fantastic is perhaps best evidenced by the dull, sullen light which fills the room where the OCTAVO is kept. Not strictly light at all but the opposite of light. Darkness is not the opposite of light, it is simply its absence. The light fantastic is the light that lies on the far side of darkness.

  Ordinary light passing through a strong magical field is split into not seven but eight colours, and the eighth – OCTARINE – is generally associated with things magical. It can be described in terms of other colours about as readily as red can be described in terms of green, yellow and blue, but if some description is really insisted on then octarine is a rather disappointing greeny-purple-yellow colour.

  Likely, Trevor. Son of Dave ‘Big Dave’ Likely – a legendary Ankh-Morpork footballer. Trevor is congenially lazy – he can sleep anywhere – and does. He is keen on football, and is very skilled at kicking tin cans. He runs the candle vats at Unseen University. He is not a bad lad – not a gentleman, of course, and if he did not take life so easily he could make something of himself, if he had reason to put his mind to it. [UA]

  Lilith, Lady. Lady Lilith de Tempscire. (See WEATHERWAX, LILY.)

  Lily, Iron. Nickname for the woman who teaches games at the Quirm College for Daughters of Gentlefolk. The girls say that she shaves, and lifts weights with her teeth. She is well-known for her hearty bellows from the touchline during sports matches: ‘Get some ball, you bunch of soft nellies!’ and so on. [SM]

  Lilywhite, Medium Dave. Thoughtful, patient criminal in Ankh-Morpork, who was considered something of an intellectual because his tattoos were spelled correctly. He was, in his own way, honest, in that he dealt fairly with other criminals, and that counts for a lot in any underworld. If he had a fault it was a tendency to deal out terminal and definitive retribution to anyone who said anything about his brother.