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No one is more worried by the actual physical manifestation of a god than his priests; it’s like having the auditors in unexpectedly.
“They shall not presume to instruct me in how to run my kingdom.” Koomi salted this treasonable statement away for further study and patted him gently on the back.
He was turning over in his mind an interesting new concept in Thau-dimensional physics which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity and, for some reason, broccoli.
It was usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow.
“We lead an active afterlife in our family, don’t we?” observed the king dryly.
“Look, some of us are trying to float a philosophical concept here,” said Ibid sarcastically. “Don’t let us interrupt you, will you?” Someone threw a breadstick at him.
Pyramids. So they have to flare it off. Flarelight, they call it. They think it looks pretty! It’s their time they’re burning off!”
It wasn’t everything that Teppic had been worrying about, but it had been jockeying for top position.
“Oh, yes. You’re right. Damn right. I was being persecuted for my beliefs.” “That’s terrible,” said Teppic. Khuft spat. “Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.”
You Bastard kicked him. You Bastard had very concise ideas about people putting their hands in his mouth. Besides, he’d seen the bricks, and every camel knew what two bricks added up to. It was a good kick, toes well spread, powerful and deceptively slow. It picked Krona up and delivered him neatly into a steaming heap of Augean stable sweepings.
It was another nice day in the high desert. It was always a nice day, if by nice you meant an air temperature like an oven and sand you could roast chestnuts on.
This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along.
“OK,” said the Sphinx, in the uncertain tones of someone who has let the salesman in and is now regretfully contemplating a future in which they are undoubtedly going to buy life insurance.
The priests were going irrational. It wasn’t that the gods were disobeying them. The gods were ignoring them. The gods always had.
He turned back to the river, extended his hands in front of him, pressed them together and then opened them gently. There was a damp sucking noise, and the waters of the Djel parted in front of him. There was a sigh from the crowd, but their astonishment was nothing to the surprise of a dozen or so crocodiles, who were left trying to swim in ten feet of air.
the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity’s incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. They’re not talking here of such easy errors as “It’s perfectly safe,” or “The ones that growl a lot don’t bite,” but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine.
And connoisseurs of mankind’s tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges’ envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi’s fine performance in “Begone from this place, foul shades” will be a contender for all-time bloody stupid greeting.
Just because fate throws you together doesn’t mean fate’s got it right.
He’d wanted changes. It was just that he’d wanted things to stay the same, as well.
up.” His recent experiences had left him with no ill effects other than a profitable tendency to think at right angles to everyone else, and he sat wreathed in smiles while his mind constructed tariff rates, docking fees and a complex system of value added tax which would shortly give the merchant venturers of Ankh-Morpork a nasty shock.
THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR. We’re sorry. It’s not our fault. HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE? More than 1,300, I’m afraid. VERY WELL, THEN. PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE.
I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.” Screams, flames, people running for safety . . .
