The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,20

sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification.

*

Every town in the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the criminals were afraid to walk the streets.

*

You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it. But then, he was a special kind of person.

You had to get up very early in the morning to get the better of the Patrician; in fact, it was wiser not to go to bed at all.

But he was popular, in a way. Under his hand, for the first time in a thousand years, Ankh-Morpork operated. It might not be fair or just or particularly democratic, but it worked. It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city† …

Ankh-Morpork!

Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people.

From a high point of vantage, Ankh-Morpork looked as though someone had tried to achieve in stone and wood an effect normally associated with the pavements outside all-night takeaways.

*

The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain.

*

‘A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,’ Carrot drew himself up proudly, ‘because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?’

The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like ‘What’s so bad about genocide?’

*

Jimkin Bearhugger’s Old Selected Dragon’s Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn’t have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well.

*

It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot-dogs to the rest.

*

Vimes looked into the grinning, cadaverous face of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart.

*

Anti-dragon cream. Personal guarantee: if you’re incinerated you get your money back, no quibble.’

‘What you’re saying,’ said Vimes slowly, ‘if I understand the wording correctly, is that if I am baked alive by the dragon you’ll return the money?’

‘Upon personal application,’ said Cut-Me-Own-Throat.

*

Vimes’d had a look at Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s dragon detectors, which consisted solely of a piece of wood on a metal stick. When the stick was burned through, you’d found your dragon. Like a lot of Cut-Me-Own-Throat’s devices, it was completely efficient in its own special way while at the same time being totally useless.

*

Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged slackness and was in any case probably against Nature’s way.

It was a plate stacked high with bacon, fried potatoes and eggs. Vimes could hear his arteries panic just bh4 looking at it.

Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows.

A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail.

The rioters watched it, hypnotized.

‘Now I know what you’re thinking,’ Vimes went on, softly. ‘You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself…’

He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade:

‘What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?’

*

Vimes gave his men his usual look of resigned dismay.

‘My squad,’ he mumbled.

‘Fine body of men,’ said Lady Ramkin. ‘The good old rank and file, eh?’

‘The rank, anyway’ said Vimes.

*

It is difficult for an orang-utan to stand to attention. Its body can master the general idea, but its skin can’t. The Librarian was