Feet of Clay

than any of us and after a few months he’s talking to moss and having people flayed alive.”
    “Vetinari isn’t mad.”
    “Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.”
    “I am only a weak woman,” said Mrs. Palm, to the personal disbelief of several present, “but it does seem to me that there’s an opportunity here. Either there’s a long struggle to sort out a successor, or we sort it out now. Yes?”
    The guild leaders tried to look at one another while simultaneously avoiding everyone else’s glances. Who’d be Patrician now? Once there’d have been a huge multisided struggle, but now!…
    You got the power, but you got the problems, too. Things had changed. These days, you had to negotiate and juggle with all the conflicting interests. No one sane had tried to kill Vetinari for years , because the world with him in it was just preferable to one without him.
    Besides…Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He’d tamed it like a dog. He’d taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he’d aimed it at the throat of the world.
    He’d taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He’d made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake .
    Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, as Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn’t been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable.
    Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: “Do not fight, or we will kill you.” The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: “If you fight, we’ll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that’s my pike you’re pointing at me. I paid for that shield you’re holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.”
    And now the whole machine, which whirred away so quietly that people had forgotten it was a machine at all and thought that it was just the way the world worked, had given a lurch.
    The guild leaders examined their thoughts and decided that what they did not want was power. What they wanted was that tomorrow should be pretty much like today.
    “There’s the dwarfs,” said Mr. Boggis. “Even if one of us—not that I’m saying it would be one of us, of course—even if someone took over, what about the dwarfs? We get someone like Snapcase again, there’s going to be chopped kneecaps in the streets.”
    “You’re not suggesting we have some sort of… vote , are you? Some kind of popularity contest?”
    “Oh, no. It’s just…it’s just…all more complicated now. And power goes to people’s heads.”
    “And then other people’s heads fall off.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t keep on saying that, whoever you are,” said Mrs. Palm. “Anyone would think you ’d had your head cut off.”
    “Uh—”
    “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Slant. I do apologize.”
    “Speaking as the President of the Guild of Lawyers,” said Mr. Slant, the most respected zombie in Ankh-Morpork, “I must recommend stability in this matter. I wonder if I may offer some advice?”
    “How much will it cost us?” said Mr. Sock.
    “Stability,” said Mr. Slant, “equals monarchy.”
    “Oh, now, don’t tell us—”
    “Look at Klatch,” said Mr. Slant doggedly. “Generations of Seriphs. Result: political stability. Take Pseudopolis. Or Sto Lat. Or even the Agatean Empire—”
    “Come on ,” said Dr. Downey. “Everyone knows that kings—”
    “Oh, monarchs come and go, they depose one another, and so on and so forth,” said Mr. Slant. “But the institution goes on. Besides, I think you’ll find that it is possible to work out…an accommodation.”
    He realized that he had the floor. His fingers absentmindedly touched the seam where his head had been sewn back on. All those years ago Mr. Slant had refused to die until he had been paid for the disbursements in the matter