The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

by The Wit

  And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. 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.

  Intelligent life was, therefore, an anomaly. It made the filing untidy. The Auditors hated things like that.

  *

  Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.

  *

  Lobsang heard the dojo master say: ‘Dojo! What is Rule One?’

  ‘Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!’

  *

  If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked, punched, bit and spat. His artwork had even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staffroom, these began with an exorcism.

  Madam Frout had stooped to listening at the keyhole. She had heard Jason’s first tantrum of the day, and then silence. She couldn’t quite make out what Miss Susan said next.

  When she found an excuse to venture into the classroom half an hour later, Jason was helping two little girls to make a cardboard rabbit.

  Later his parents said they were amazed at the change, although apparently now he would only go to sleep with the light on.

  *

  ‘What precisely was it you wanted, madam?’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’ve left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they’ve finished.’

  ‘Algebra?’ said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. ‘But that’s far too difficult for seven-year-olds!’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t tell them that and so far they haven’t found out,’ said Susan.

  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.

  The Stationery Cupboard! That was one of the great battlegrounds of classroom history, that and the playhouse. But the ownership of the playhouse usually sorted itself out without Susan’s intervention, so that all she had to do was be ready with ointment, a nose-blow and mild sympathy for the losers, whereas the Stationery Cupboard was a war of attrition. It contained pots of powder paint and reams of paper and boxes of crayons and more idiosyncratic items like a spare pair of pants for Billy, who did his best. It also contained The Scissors, which under classroom rules were treated as some kind of Doomsday Machine, and, of course, the boxes of stars. The only people allowed in the cupboard were Susan and, usually, Vincent. Despite everything Susan had tried, short of actual deception, he was always the official ‘best at everything’ and won the coveted honour every day, which was to go into the Stationery Cupboard and fetch the pencils and hand them out. For the rest of the class, and especially Jason, the Stationery Cupboard was some mystic magic realm to be entered whenever possible.

  Honestly, thought Susan, once you learn the arts of defending the Stationery Cupboard, outwitting Jason and keeping the class pet alive until the end of term, you’ve mastered at least half of teaching.

  *

  According to the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen the Eternally Surprised sawed the first Procrastinator from the trunk of a wamwam tree, carved certain symbols on it, fitted it with a bronze spindle and summoned the apprentice, Clodpool.

  ‘Ah. Very nice, master,’ said Clodpool. ‘A prayer wheel, yes?’

  ‘No, this is nothing like as complex,’ said Wen. ‘It merely stores and moves time.’

  ‘That simple, eh?’

  ‘And now I shall test it,’ said Wen. He gave it a half-turn with his hand.

  ‘Ah. Very nice, master,’ said Clodpool. ‘A prayer wheel, yes?’

  ‘No, this is nothing like as complex,’ said Wen. ‘It merely stores and moves time.’

  ‘That simple, eh?’

  ‘And now I shall test it,’ said Wen. He moved it a little less this time.

  ‘That simple, eh?’

  ‘And now I shall test it,’ said Wen.

  *

  Lu-Tze bent down, picked up a fallen cork helmet, and solemnly handed it to Lobsang.

  ‘Health and safety at work,’ he said. ‘Very important.’

  ‘Will it protect me?’ said Lobsang, putting it on.

  ‘Not really. But when they find your head, it may be recognizable.’

  *

  ‘All roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.’

  ‘I thought all roads led away from Ankh-Morpork.’

  ‘Not the way we’re going.’

  *

  Now the cold crept in, slowly, like a sadist’s knife.

  Lu-Tze strode on ahead, seemingly oblivious of it.

  Lu-Tze, it was said, would walk for miles during weather when the clouds themselves would freeze and crash out of the sky. Cold did not affect him, they said.

  ‘Sweeper!’

  Lu-Tze stopped and turned. ‘Yes, lad?’

  ‘I don’t know how you can stand this cold!’

  ‘Ah, you don’t know the secret?’

  ‘Is it the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite that gives you such power?’

  Lu-Tze hitched up his robe and did a little dance in the snow, revealing skinny legs encased in thick, yellowing tubes.

  ‘Very good, very good,’ he said. ‘She still sends me these double-knit combinations, silk on the inside, then three layers of wool, reinforced gussets and a couple of handy trapdoors. Very reasonably priced at six dollars a pair because I’m an old customer. For it is written, “Wrap up warm or you’ll catch your death.”’

  *

  The Auditors hated questions. They hated them almost as much as they hated decisions, and they hated decisions almost as much as they hated the idea of the individual personality. But what they hated most was things moving around randomly.

  *

  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 is 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.

  *

  The Code of the Igors was very strict.

  Never Contradict: it was no part of an Igor’s job to say things like ‘No, thur, that’th an artery’ The marthter was always right.

  Never Complain: an Igor would never say ‘But that’th a thouthand mileth away!’

  Never Make Personal Remarks: no Igor would dream of saying anything like ‘I thould have thomething done about that laugh, if I wath you.’

  And never, ever Ask Questions. Admittedly, Igor knew, that meant never ask BIG questions. ‘Would thur like a cup of tea around now?’ was fine, but ‘What do you need a hundred virginth for?’ or ‘Where do you ecthpect me to find a brain at thith time of night?’ was not.

  *

  Death found Pestilence in a hospice in Llamedos. Pestilence liked hospitals. There was always something for him to do.r />
  Currently he was trying to remove the ‘Now Wash Your Hands’ sign over a cracked basin.

  *

  And what is this ?

  ‘It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart.’

  And the reason for its presence?

  ‘It appears to tolerate the company of humans, asking nothing in return but food, water, shelter and comfort.’

  *

  ‘Look at the bird.’

  It was perched on a branch by a fork in the tree, next to what looked like a birdhouse.

  ‘Looks like some kind of old box to me,’ said Lobsang. He squinted to see better. ‘Is it an old … clock?’ he added.

  ‘Look at what the bird is nibbling,’ suggested Lu-Tze.

  ‘Well, it looks like … a crude gearwheel? But why—’

  ‘Well spotted. That, lad, is a clock cuckoo. A young one, by the look of it, trying to build a nest that’ll attract a mate. Not much chance of that … See? It’s got the numerals all wrong and it’s stuck the hands on crooked.’

  ‘A bird that builds clocks? I thought a cuckoo clock was a clock with a mechanical cuckoo that came out when—’

  ‘And where do you think people got such a strange idea from?’

  ‘But that’s some kind of miracle!’

  ‘Why?’ said Lu-Tze. ‘They barely go for more than half an hour, they keep lousy time and the poor dumb males go frantic trying to keep them wound.’

  *

  Of the very worst words that can be heard by anyone high in the air, the pair known as ‘Oh-oh’ possibly combine the maximum of bowel-knotting terror with the minimum wastage of breath.

  *

  ‘We’re having rabbit,’ Mrs War said. ‘I’m sure I can make it stretch to three.’

  War’s big red face wrinkled. ‘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.

  Despite himself, Death was fascinated. He had never come across the idea of keeping your memory inside someone else’s head.

  ‘Perhaps I would like a beer?’ War ventured.

  ‘You don’t like beer, dear.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘No, it brings on your trouble.’

  ‘Ah. Uh, how do I feel about brandy?’

  ‘You don’t like brandy, dear. You like your special oat drink with the vitamins.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said War mournfully. ‘I’d forgotten I liked that.’

  *

  ‘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?”‘ said Lobsang.

  ‘Really?’ said Susan briskly. ‘And which was he?’

  ‘What? Well … who knows?’

  ‘How did he write his poems?’ said Susan.

  ‘With a brush, of course.’

  ‘He didn’t flap around making information-rich patterns in the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?’

  ‘No one ever mentioned it.’

  ‘Then he was probably a man.’

  Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.

  Ankh-Morpork had not had a king for many centuries, but palaces tend to survive. A city might not need a king, but it can always use big rooms and some handy large walls, long after the monarchy is but a memory and the building is renamed the Glorious Memorial to the People’s Industry.

  *

  Wienrich and Boettcher were foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork’s Guild of Confectioners they did not understand the peculiarities of the city’s tastebuds.

  Ankh-Morpork people, said the 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 centres in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as ‘cheese’ and only escaped, through being the wrong colour, being defined as ‘tile grout’.

  *

  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.

  Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat!

  Well, no one could be expected to believe that counted.†

  The yeti of the Ramtops, where the Discworld’s magical field is so intense that it is part of the very landscape, are one of the few creatures to utilize control of personal time for genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition – you find out what is going to happen next by allowing it to happen. 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. This is not quite the paradox it appears because, after it has taken place, it hasn’t happened. All that actually remains is a memory in the yeti’s head, which merely turns out to be a remarkably accurate premonition. The little eddies in time caused by all this are just lost in the noise of all the kinks, dips and knots put in time by every other living creature.

  *

  Susan returned to the classroom and spent the rest of the day performing small miracles, which included removing the glue from Richenda’s hair, emptying the wee out of Billy’s shoes and treating the class to a short visit to the continent of Fourecks.

  † This is true. 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 contains no calories.

  HE’S been a legend in his own lifetime.

  He can remember the great days of high adventure.

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

  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 Ms 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?

  The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That’s the advantage of space. It’s big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.

  *

  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.

  There’s nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. The fact that there’s a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere.

  *

  ‘Ah, 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. It’s the universe that goes on. Just as the deceased was getting the hang of everything it’s all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one case, a cucumber. Why this has to be is one of the imponderables of life, in the face of which people either start to pray … or become really, really angry.

  *

  The wizards, once they understood the urgency of a problem, and then had lunch, and argued about the pudding, could actually work quite fast.

  Their method of finding a solution 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 would not do was look in any book with a title like Major Amphibian Spells in a Literary Environment: A Comparison. That would, somehow, be cheating. They would argue about it instead, standing around a blackboard, seizing the chalk from one another and rubbing out bits of what the current chalk-holder was writing before he’d finished the other end of the sentence. Somehow, though, it all seemed to work.

  *

  The gods play games with the fate of men. Not complex ones, obviously, because gods lack patience.

  Cheating is part of the rules. And gods play hard. To lose all believers is, for a god, the end. But a believer who survives the game gains honour and extra belief. Who wins with the most believers, lives.

  Believers can include other gods, of course. Gods believe in belief.

  *

  Lord Vetinari, despite his education, had a mind like an engineer. If you wished to open something, you found the appropriate spot and applied the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve your end. Possibly the spot was between a couple of ribs and the force was applied via a dagger, or between two warring countries and applied via an army, but the important thing was to find that one weak spot which would be the key to everything.