The Truth (Discworld, #25; Industrial Revolution, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It’s also wrong. There’s a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise.

They were small, brightly colored, and happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn’t be too much education wasted.

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who’s been pinching my beer? And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman’s eye.

Hugglestones was a granite building on a rain-soaked moor, and its stated purpose was to make men from boys. The policy employed involved a certain amount of wastage, and consisted, in William’s recollection at least, of very simple and violent games in the healthy outdoor sleet. The small, slow, fat, or merely unpopular were mown down, as nature intended, but natural selection operates in many ways and William found that he had a certain capacity for survival. A good way to survive on the playing fields of Hugglestones was to run very fast and shout a lot while inexplicably always being a long way from the ball. This had earned him, oddly enough, a reputation for being keen, and keenness was highly prized at Hugglestones, if only because actual achievement was so rare.

But too much reading had taken its toll. William found that he now thought of prayer as a sophisticated way of pleading with thunderstorms.

He enjoyed reading and writing. He liked words. Words didn’t shout or make loud noises, which pretty much defined the rest of his family.

He had died for his beliefs; chief among them was the very Hugglestonian one that bravery could replace armor, and that Klatchians would turn and run if you shouted loud enough.

Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works.”

“A thousand years ago we thought the world was a bowl,” he said. “Five hundred years ago we knew it was a globe. Today we know it is flat and round and carried through space on the back of a turtle.”

There was this to be said about the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, an odor so intense that it took on a personality of its own and fully justified the capital letter: after the initial shock the organs of smell just gave up and shut down, as if no more able to comprehend the thing than an oyster can comprehend the ocean. After some minutes in its presence, wax would start to trickle out of people’s ears and their hair would begin to bleach. It had developed to such a degree that it now led a semi-independent life of its own, and often went to the theater by itself, or read small volumes of poetry. Ron was outclassed by his smell.

Insofar as he’d formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where “traditional values” meant “hang someone.”

“Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things . . . well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds. I can see you’ve got the hang of it already.”

William wondered why he always disliked people who said “no offense meant.” Maybe it was because they found it easier to say “no offense meant” than actually to refrain from giving offense.

“You know zat another term for an iconographer would be ‘photographer’? From the old word ‘photus’ in Latation, vhich means—” “‘To prance around like an idiot ordering everyone about as if you owned the place,’” said William. “Ah, you know it!”

“Are you staying with us? It could be dangerous,” said William, realizing that he was saying this to a vampire iconographer who undied every time he took a picture.

He held up a pale hand. “I haf to tell you zese things! Haf you heard the theory zat zere is no such thing as zer present? Because if it is divisible, zen it cannot be zer present, and if it is not divisible, zen it cannot have a beginning which connects to zer past and an end zat connects to zer future? Zer philosopher Heidehollen tells us zat the universe is just a cold soup of time, all time mixed up together, and vot we call zer passage of time is merely qvantum fluctuations in zer fabric of space-time.” “You have very long winter evenings in Uberwald, don’t you?”

“Oh, dear. Zis is so complicated,” said Otto. “Look, zer philosopher Kling says zer mind has a dark side and a light side, you see, and dark light . . . is seen by zer dark eyes of zer mind . . .” He paused again. “Yes?” said Sacharissa politely. “I vas vaiting for zer roll of thunder,” said the vampire. “But, alas, zis is not Ubervald.” “You’ve lost me there,” said Sacharissa. “Vell, you see, if I vas to say something portentous like ‘zer dark eyes of zer mind’ back home in Ubervald, zere would be a sudden crash of thunder,” said Otto. “And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say ‘Yonder is . . .zer castle,’ a volf would be bound to howl mournfully.” He sighed. “In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay.”

“The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what’s in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.”

Sacharissa saw a movement. Boddony had pulled his ax out from under the bench. It was a traditional dwarf ax. One side was a pickax, for the extraction of interesting minerals, and the other side was a war ax, because the people who own the land with the valuable minerals in it can be so unreasonable sometimes.

“Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?” he said. NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW. “Which bit?” THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOU BEING BORN AND YOU DYING.

“We’ve always been privileged, you see. Privilege just means ‘private law.’ That’s exactly what it means.

“Ve have people like you back home,” he said. “Zey are the ones that tell the mob vot to do. I come here to Ankh-Morpork, zey tell me things are different, but really it is alvays the same. Always zere are damn people like you! And now, vot shall I do with you?” He wrenched at his own jacket, and tossed the black ribbon aside. “I never liked zer damn cocoa anyvay,” he said. “Otto!” The vampire turned. “Yes, Villiam? Vot is it you vish?” “That’s going too far.” Lord de Worde had gone pale. William had never seen him so obviously frightened before. “Oh? You say? You think I bite him? Shall I bite you, Mister Lordship? Vell, maybe not, because Villiam here thinks I am a good person.” He pulled Lord de Worde close, so their faces were a few inches apart. “Now, maybe I have to ask myself, how good am I? Or maybe I just have to ask myself . . . amI better zan you?” He hesitated for a second or two, and then in a sudden movement jerked the man towards him. With great delicacy, he planted a kiss on Lord de Worde’s forehead. Then he put the trembling man back down on the floor and patted him on the head. “Actually, maybe zer cocoa is not too bad and zer young lady who plays zer harmonium, sometimes she vinks at me,” he said, stepping aside.

“Are you okay, Villiam?” said Otto. “I feel sick. But . . . yeah, I’m all right. Of all the boneheaded, stubborn, self-centered, arrogant—” “But you make up for it in other vays,” said Otto. “I meant my father.” “Oh.” “He’s just so certain he’s in the right all the time—” “Sorry, this is still your father ve’re talking about?”

Words resemble fish in that some specialized ones can survive only in a kind of reef, where their curious shapes and usages are protected from the hurly-burly of the open sea. “Rumpus” and “fracas” are found only in certain newspapers (in much the same way that “beverages” are only found in certain menus). They are never used in normal conversation.

The best way to describe Mr. Windling would be like this: You are at a meeting. You’d like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn’t very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is already putting their papers neatly together, a voice says “If I can raise a minor matter, Mr. Chairman . . .” and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr. Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr. Windlings of the universe is the term “in my humble opinion,” which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, “these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed.”