The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,27
prolapses of pipework, blank walls, fetid alleys.
And the window to the lavatories.
*
‘Fascinating,’ said the Patrician. He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him.
*
“Twas beauty killed the beast,’ said the Dean, who liked to say things like that.
‘No it wasn’t,’ said the Chair. ‘It was it splatting into the ground like that.’
All dwarfs have beards and wear many layers of clothing.
Their courtships are largely concerned with finding out, in delicate and circumspect ways, what sex the other dwarf is.
The flooded stairs lay in front of them.
‘Can you swim?’ said Victor.
‘Not very well,’ said Ginger.
‘Me neither,’ he said …
‘Still,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.’
†She was right about that, but only by coincidence.
DEATH is missing – presumed … er… gone. Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn.
Meanwhile, on a little farm, far, far away, a tall dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There’s a harvest to be gathered in …
Not a muscle moved on Death’s face, because he hadn’t got any.
The shortest-lived creatures on the Disc were mayflies, which barely make it through twenty-four hours. Two of the oldest zigzagged aimlessly over the waters of a trout stream, discussing history with some younger members of the evening hatching.
‘You don’t get the kind of sun now that you used to get,’ said one of them.
‘You’re right there. We had proper sun in the good old hours. It were all yellow. None of this red stuff.’
‘It were higher, too.’
‘It was. You’re right.’
‘And nymphs and larvae showed you a bit of respect.’
‘They did. They did,’ said the other mayfly vehemently.
‘I reckon, if mayflies these hours behaved a bit better, we’d still be having proper sun.’
The younger mayflies listened politely.
‘I remember,’ said one of the oldest mayflies, ‘when all this was fields, as far as you could see.’
The younger mayflies looked around.
‘It’s still fields,’ one of them ventured, after a polite interval.
‘I remember when it was better fields,’ said the old mayfly sharply.
‘Yeah,’ said his colleague. ‘And there was a cow.’
‘That’s right! You’re right! I remember that cow! Stood right over there for, oh, forty, fifty minutes. It was brown, as I recall.’
You don’t get cows like that these hours.’ …
‘What were we doing before we were talking about the sun?’
‘Zigzagging aimlessly over the water,’ said one of the young flies. This was a fair bet in any case.
‘No, before that.’
‘Er … you were telling us about the Great Trout.’
‘Ah. Yes. Right. The Trout. Well, you see, if you’ve been a good mayfly, zigzagging up and down properly—’
‘—taking heed of your elders and betters—’
‘—then eventually the Great Trout—’
Clop
Clop
‘Yes?’ said one of the younger mayflies.
There was no reply.
‘The Great Trout what?’ said another mayfly, nervously.
They looked down at a series of expanding concentric rings on the water.
‘The holy sign!’ said a mayfly. ‘I remember being told about that! A Great Circle in the water! Thus shall be the sign of the Great Trout!’
*
Whereas the oldest things on the Discworld were the famous Counting Pines.
The six Counting Pines in this clump were listening to the oldest, whose gnarled trunk declared it to be thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four years old. The conversation took seventeen years, but has been speeded up.
‘I remember when all this wasn’t fields.’
‘What was it, then?’ said the nearest pine.
‘Ice. If you can call it ice. We had proper glaciers in those days. Not like the ice you get now, here one season and gone the next. It hung around for ages.’
‘Wow. That was a sharp one.’
‘What was?’
‘That winter just then.’
‘Call that a winter? When I was a sapling we had winters—’
Then the tree vanished.
After a shocked pause for a couple of years, one of the clump said: ‘He just went! Just like that! One day he was here, next he was gone!’
Since the trees were unable even to sense any event that took place in less than a day, they never heard the sound of axes.
*
Death’s pale horse’s name was Binky He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed.
Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognized way of getting advancement in the orders.