Snuff

BEGIN
     READING
    T he goblin
     experience of the world is the cult or perhaps religion of Unggue. In short, it is a
     remarkably complex resurrection-based religion founded on the sanctity of bodily
     secretions. Its central tenet runs as follows: everything that is expelled from a
     goblin’s body was clearly once part of them and should, therefore, be treated with
     reverence and stored properly so that it can be entombed with its owner in the
     fullness of time. In the meantime the material is stored in unggue pots, remarkable
     creations of which I shall speak later.
    A moment’s distasteful thought will tell us
     that this could not be achieved by any creature, unless in possession of great
     wealth, considerable storage space and compliant neighbors.
    Therefore, in reality, most goblins observe
     the Unggue Had—what one might term the common and lax form of Unggue—which
     encompasses earwax, finger- and toenail clippings, and snot. Water, generally
     speaking, is reckoned as not unggue, but something which goes through the body
     without ever being part of it: they reason that there is no apparent difference
     in the water before and after, as it were (which sadly shines a light on the
     freshness of the water they encounter in their underground lairs). Similarly
     feces are considered to be food that has merely undergone a change of state.
     Surprisingly, teeth are of no interest to the goblins, who look on them as a
     type of fungus, and they appear to attach no importance to hair, of which, it
     has to be said, they seldom have very much.
    At this point, Lord Vetinari, Patrician of
     Ankh-Morpork, stopped reading and stared at nothing. After a few seconds,
     nothing was eclipsed by the form of Drumknott, his secretary (who, it must be
     said, had spent a career turning himself into something as much like nothing as
     anything).
    Drumknott said, “You look pensive, my lord,” to
     which observation he appended a most delicate question mark, which gradually
     evaporated.
    â€œAwash with tears, Drumknott, awash with
     tears.”
    Drumknott stopped dusting the impeccably shiny black
     lacquered desk. “Pastor Oats is a very persuasive writer, isn’t he, sir…?”
    â€œIndeed he is, Drumknott, but the basic problem
     remains and it is this: humanity may come to terms with the dwarf, the troll and
     even the orc, terrifying though all these may have proved to be at times, and
     you know why this is, Drumknott?”
    The secretary carefully folded the duster he had
     been using and looked at the ceiling. “I would venture to suggest, my lord, that
     in their violence we recognize ourselves?”
    â€œOh, well done, Drumknott, I shall make a cynic of
     you yet! Predators respect other predators, do they not? They may perhaps even
     respect the prey: the lion may lie down with the lamb, even if only the lion is
     likely to get up again, but the lion will not lie down with the rat. Vermin,
     Drumknott, an entire race reduced to vermin!”
    Lord Vetinari shook his head sadly, and the
     ever-attentive Drumknott noticed that his lordship’s fingers had now gone back,
     for the third time that day, to the page headed “Unggue Pots” and he seemed,
     quite unusually, to be talking to himself as he did so…
    â€œThese are traditionally crafted by the goblin
     itself, out of anything from precious minerals to leather, wood or bone. Among
     the former are some of the finest eggshell-thin containers ever found in the
     world. The plundering of goblin settlements by treasure hunters in search of
     these, and the retaliation by the goblins themselves, has colored human-goblin
     relationships even to the present day.”
    Lord Vetinari cleared his throat and continued, “I
     quote Pastor Oats again, Drumknott: ‘I must say that
     goblins live on the edge, often because they have been driven there. When
     nothing else can survive, they do. Their universal greeting is, apparently,
     “Hang” which means “Survive.” I know dreadful crimes have been laid at their
     door, but the world itself has never been kind to them. Let it be said here that
     those who live their lives where life hangs by less than a thread understand the
     dreadful algebra of necessity, which has no mercy and when necessity presses in
     extremis, well, that is when the women need to make the unggue pot called “soul
     of tears,” the most beautiful of