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Feet of Clay quotes page 1
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‘Religion is all very well, but what do prophets know about profits, eh?’ People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. Willikins was there, and the old man who stoked the boiler[...] [ie the geyser, as mentioned in maa.] Good old Sybil – although she did tend to talk about curtains these days, but Sergeant Colon had said this happened to wives and was a biological thing and perfectly normal. Hmm. Going thin on top. Definitely a receding scalp there. Less hair to comb but, on the other hand, more face to wash… ‘I suspect, on reflection, that it was foolish of me to choose the roof,’ said the assassin. ‘Probably,’ said Vimes. He’d spent several hours a few weeks ago sawing though joists and carefully balancing the roof tiles. ‘I should have dropped off the wall and used the shrubbery.’ ‘Possibly,’ said Vimes. He’d set a bear-trap in the shrubbery. Letters home always gave [Carrot] some trouble. Letters from his parents were always interesting, being full of mining statistics and exciting news about new shafts and promising seams. All he had to write about were murders and such things as that. In the Dwarf Bread Museum, in Whirligig Alley, Mr Hopkinson the curator was somewhat excited. Apart from other considerations, he'd just been murdered. [This is the same museum that Carrot mentions in maa: '[...]and there's the dwarf museum off Rime Street-' 'Is there?' said Vimes [...] 'Yes, sir. Just up Whirligig Alley.' 'Fancy that. What's in it?' 'Many interesting examples of dwarf bread, sir.'] MR HOPKINSON, ARE YOU FULLY AWARE THAT YOU ARE DEAD? ‘Dead?’ trilled the curator. ‘Oh, no. I can’t possibly be dead. Not at the moment. It’s simply not convenient. I haven’t even catalogued the combat muffins.’ I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE. I FIND THE BEST APPROACH IS TO TAKE LIFE AS IT COMES. ‘That seems very irresponsible…’ IT’S ALWAYS WORKED FOR ME. ‘Er… I did tell you my name, didn’t I, sir?’ ‘Yes. Got it down here,’ said Vimes. ‘Cheery Littlebottom. Yes?’ ‘Er… yes. That’s right. Well, thank you, sir.’ Vimes listened to them go down the passage. Then he carefully shut the door and put his coat over his head so that no one would hear him laughing. ‘Cheery Littlebottom!’ ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a wolf!’ ‘In a city? What does it find to eat?’ ‘Oh, why did you have to ask that?’ ‘Pray enter.’ For some reason the words re-spelled themselves in Vimes’s hindbrain as ‘prey, enter’. 'Old Stoneface [...] murdered the last king of Ankh-Morpork, as every schoolboy knows.' [Really? In a conversation between Vimes and Carrot in maa, the identity of 'the man who said: no more kings' is said to be something you have to search for.] You either spent your time trying to make sure people didn’t find out or you let them find out and spent your time watching them keep their distance and whisper behind your back, although of course you’d have to turn round to watch that. ‘It beats me why Ankh-Morpork wants to celebrate the fact it had a civil war three hundred years ago,’ said Angua, coming back to the here-and-now. ‘Why not? We won,’ said Carrot. ‘Yes, but you lost, too.’ ‘Always look on the positive side, that’s what I say.’ ‘And the name’s Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets, sir.’ [Hmm. In Jingo, his name is given as ‘Visit-The-Ungodly…’. Perhaps there’s a little flexibility in the translation from Omnian.] It was like the back rooms of museums everywhere, full of junk [...] such as coins dated '52 BC'. [Given we're on the Discworld here, this always makes me wonder: before who?] It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning. It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort. ‘Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.’ Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said. The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. ‘That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.’ The Patrician opened his eyes. ‘You are a doctor, aren’t you?’ he said. Doughnut Jimmy gave him an uncertain look. He was not used to patients who could talk. ‘Well, yeah… I have a lot of patients,’ he said. ‘Indeed? I have very little,’ said the Patrician. Detritus came in, nodded at Cheery, and looked carefully around the room. Finally he picked up a battered chair. ‘Dis’ll have to do,’ he said. ‘If he want, I can break der back off’f it.’ ‘What?’ said Cheery. ‘Ole Doughnut said for to get a stool sample,’ said Detritus. ‘It’s gone very quiet downstairs, Fred,’ he said. ‘Plotting don’t make a lot of noise, sir, generally.’ ‘You… are going to be…’ Vimes began, unpeeling each word like a sullen grape of wrath. Nobby squirmecl again. [Squirmecl? The first of several odd typos in my copy of the book (UK Corgi paperback).] Vimes stopped himself from asking: ‘You know him, then?’ Because Carrot knew everyone. If Carrot were to be dropped into some dense tropical jungle it’d be ‘Hello, Mr Runs Swiftly Through The Trees! Good morning, Mr Talks To The Forest, what a splendid blowpipe! And what a novel place for a feather!’ 'Ah, h'druk g'har dWatch, Sh'rt'azs!' [footnote: 'Welcome, Corporal Smallbottom!...] [I'm never sure whether it's a mistake or some kind of dwarfish technicality of translation that means Littlebottom is referred to as 'Smallbottom' twice in this footnote.] ‘You?’ said the voice. The owner of the voice made it very clear that he was aware there were degrees of nobility from something above kingship stretching all the way down to commoner, and that as far as Corporal Nobbs was concerned an entirely new category – commonest, perhaps – would have to be coined. ‘What’s a No. 23?’ ‘ “Running Screaming at People While Drunk and Trying to Cut Their Knees off”,’ said Angua. [As it says in gg: ‘All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming ‘Arrrrrrgh!’ and axing their legs off at the knee.’] ‘I think you’ll like it here. Everyone’s got troubles in the Watch. Normal people don’t become policemen.’ Igneous, despite giving the appearance of not being able to count beyond ten without ripping off someone else’s arm… ‘That’s Violet. She’s a tooth fairy.’ [Whom we will meet again in Hogfather.] 'And next to her is Schleppel the bogeyman.' [Who came out of the closet in Reaper Man.] The door was opened by a stout man in a bloody apron. He was shocked to have his belt grabbed by one dwarf hand, while another dwarf hand was thrust in front of his face, holding a badge, and a dwarf voice in the region of his navel said, ‘We’re in the Watch, right? Oh, yes! And if you don’t let us in we’ll have your guts for starters!’ Angua threw up her hands. ‘I’m trying to be civilized,’ she said. ‘I could confiscate you right now. The charge would be Being Obstructive When It’s Been a Long Day and I’ve Had Enough.’ ‘…and Sergeant Detritus will be around constantly so that if anyone nods off he’ll kick arse, sir, and you’ll know when he does that ‘cos the poor bugger’ll come right through the wall.’ |
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Feet of Clay quotes page 1
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