The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,8
saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world.
I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
*
‘Sir?’
YES?
‘What’s a curry?’
The blue fires flared deep in the eyes of Death.
HAVE YOU EVER BITTEN A RED-HOT ICE CUBE?
‘No, sir,’ said Mort.
CURRY’S LIKE THAT.
*
Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.
*
‘What are we going to do now?’
BUY YOU SOME NEW CLOTHES.
‘These were new today’
REALLY? IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY.
*
They turned into a wider street leading into a more affluent part of the city (the torches were closer together and the middens further apart).
*
Although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC personification, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.
*
Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map.
YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF THE BAY OF MANTE, HAVE YOU? he said.
‘No, sir,’ said Mort.
FAMOUS SHIPWRECK THERE.
‘Was there?’
THERE WILL BE, said Death, IF I CAN FIND THE DAMN PLACE.
*
Albert grunted. ‘Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?’
Mort thought for a moment.
‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘what?’
There was silence.
Then Albert straightened up and said, ‘Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ‘em right.’
*
Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother’s almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Dethe thee Great Levyller Comes To Alle Menne. He’d stared at it hundreds of times when learning his letters. It wouldn’t have been half so impressive if it had been generally known that the flame-breathing horse the spectre rode was called Binky
*
WHY IS THERE A CHERRY ON A STICK IN THIS DRINK? … IT’S NOT AS IF IT DOES ANYTHING FOR THE FLAVOUR. WHY DOES ANYONE TAKE A PERFECTLY GOOD DRINK AND THEN PUT IN A CHERRY ON A POLE? … TAKE THESE THINGS, NOW, said Death, fingering a passing canape. I MEAN, MUSHROOMS YES, CHICKEN YES, CREAM YES, I’VE NOTHING AGAINST ANY OF THEM, BUT WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY MINCE THEM ALL UP AND PUT THEM IN LITTLE PASTRY CASES? …
THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.
*
‘He doesn’t look a bad king,’ said Mort. ‘Why would anyone want to kill him?’
SEE THE MAN NEXT TO HIM? WITH THE LITTLE MOUSTACHE AND THE GRIN LIKE A LIZARD? … HIS COUSIN, THE DUKE OF STO HELIT. NOT THE NICEST OF PEOPLE, said Death. A HANDY MAN WITH A BOTTLE OF POISON. FIFTH IN LINE TO THE THRONE LAST YEAR, NOW SECOND IN LINE. BLT OF A SOCIAL CLIMBER, YOU MIGHT SAY.
‘My granny says that dying is like going to sleep,’ Mort added, a shade hopefully.
I WOULDN’T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER.
This part of Ankh-Morpork was known as The Shades, an inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower. It couldn’t be called squalid because that would be stretching the word to breaking point. It was beyond squalor and out the other side, where by a sort of Einsteinian reversal it achieved a magnificent horribleness that it wore like an architectural award. It was noisy and sultry and smelled like a cowshed floor.
*
Even before it entered the city [the River Ankh] was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.
*
‘Why do you trouble Igneous Cutwell, Holder of the Eight Keys, Traveller in the Dungeon Dimensions, Supreme Mage of—’
‘Excuse me,’ said Mort, ‘are you really?’
‘Really what?’
‘Master of the thingy, Lord High Wossname of the Sacred Dungeons?’
‘In a figurative sense.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, it means no,’ said Cutwell.
*
‘Is it possible to walk through walls?’ said Mort desperately.
‘Using magic?’
‘Um,’ said Mort, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then pick very thin walls,’ said Cutwell.
‘What time’s sunset around here?’
‘We normally manage to fit it in between night and day.’
He felt as if he’d been shipwrecked on the Titanic but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitania.