Thief of Time (Discworld, #26; Death, #5)

by Terry Pratchett

WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.

“And Crazed Baron Haha? It says under Reason for Leaving that he was crushed by a burning windmill.” “Cathe of mithtaken identity, thur.” “Really?” “Yeth, thur. I underthtand the mob mithtook him for Thcreaming Doctor Berthserk, thur.” “Oh. Ah, yes.” Jeremy glanced down. “Who you also worked for, I see.” “Yeth, thur.” “And who died of blood poisoning?” “Yeth, thur. Cauthed by a dirty pitchfork.” “And . . .Nipsie the Impaler?” “Er . . .would you believe he ran a kebab thhop, thur?” “Did he?” “Not conventionally tho, thur.”

“I’ve never been very venerable, except in cases of bad spelling.”

“Hold!” he commanded. “Do you not want to know the name of the man you are about to destroy?” The fighter held his stance, glaring at Lu-Tze. “I don’t need to know name of sweeper,” he said. Lu-Tze rolled the cigarette into a skinny cylinder and winked at the angry man, which only stoked the anger. “It is always wise to know the name of a sweeper, boy,” said the dojo master. “And my question was not addressed to you.”

“Things either exist or they don’t,” said Jeremy. “I am very clear about that. I have medicine.”

“Do you know what kinetic energy is?” “No.” “It’s what you have far too much of.”

“Algebra?” said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. “But that’s far too difficult for seven-year-olds!” “Yes, but I didn’t tell them that and so far they haven’t found out,” said Susan.

It was like Jason and the Battle for the Stationery Cupboard, Susan told herself. You soon learned that “No one is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard” was a prohibition that a seven-year-old simply would not understand. You had to think and rephrase it in more immediate terms, like “No one, Jason, no matter what, no, not even if they thought they heard someone shouting for help, no one—are you paying attention, Jason?—is to open the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or accidentally fall on the door handle so that it opens, or threatens to steal Richenda’s teddy bear unless she opens the door of the Stationery Cupboard, or be standing nearby when a mysterious wind comes out of nowhere and blows the door open all by itself, honestly, it really did, or in any way open, cause to open, ask anyone else to open, jump up and down on the loose floorboard to open, or in any other way seek to obtain entry to the Stationery Cupboard, Jason!”

The Auditors had tried to understand religion, because so much that made no sense whatsoever was done in its name. But it could also excuse practically any kind of eccentricity. Genocide, for example.

Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw. It did not make you popular, or cheerful, and—this seemed to her to be the most unfair bit—it didn’t even make you right. But it did make you definite, and she was definite that what was happening around her was not, in any accepted sense, real.

Ankh-Morpork people, said the guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact, they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders, and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that, according to the food standards of the great chocolate centers in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as “cheese” and only escaped, through being the wrong color, being defined as “tile grout.”

THEN WE DID WHAT WE COULD, he said, UNTIL WE COULD NOT.

“But I didn’t know that!” “In life, as in breakfast cereal, it is always best to read the instructions on the box,” said Lu-Tze. “This is the Iron Dojo, wonder boy!”