The Carpet People

Briggs)
    CARPE JUGULUM (adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs)
    LORDS AND LADIES (adapted for the stage by Irana Brown)
    INTERESTING TIMES (adapted by Stephen Briggs)
    THE FIFTH ELEPHANT (adapted by Stephen Briggs)
    THE TRUTH (adapted by Stephen Briggs)
    THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
    THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
    THE DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs)¥
    THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs)
    THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs)
    A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs and Paul Kidby)
    DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby)
    NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK
    THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby)¥
    THE LAST HERO (with Paul Kidby)¥
    GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman)
    STRATA
    THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
    THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)¥
    * also available in audio ¥ published by Victor Gollancz
    published by Samuel Frenchpublished by Methuen Drama
    published by Ebury Presspublished by Oxford University Press

Author’s Note
    This book had two authors, and they were both the same person.
    The Carpet People was published in 1971. It had a lot of things wrong with it, mostly to do with being written by someone who was seventeen at the time.
    And it sold a bit, and eventually it sold out. And that was it.
    And then about seven years ago the Discworld books began to sell, and people would buy them and say, ‘Here, what’s this book The Carpet People by The Same Author?’ and the publishers got so fed up with telling people that there was no demand for it that they decided it was time for a new edition.
    Which was read by Terry Pratchett, aged forty-three, who said: hang on. I wrote that in the days when I thought fantasy was all battles and kings.Now I’m inclined to think that the real concerns of fantasy ought to be about not having battles, and doing without kings. I’ll just rewrite it here and there . . .
    Well, you know how it is when you tweak a thread that’s hanging loose . . .
    So this is it. It’s not exactly the book I wrote then. It’s not exactly the book I’d write now. It’s a joint effort but, heh heh, I don’t have to give him half the royalties. He’d only waste them.
    You asked for it. Here it is. Thanks.
    Incidentally, the size of the city of Ware is approximately→.
    Terry Pratchett 15
September 1991

Prologue
    They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.
    It’s what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other people, and gives them a name like The Other People or, if it’s not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they’d think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it’d save a lot of trouble later on.
    Not that the Munrungs were in any way primitive. Pismire said they had a rich native cultural inheritance. He meant stories.
    Pismire knew all the old stories and many new ones and used to tell them while the whole tribe listened, enthralled, and the night-time fires crumbled to ashes.
    Sometimes it seemed that even the mighty hairsthat grew outside the village stockade listened, too. They seemed to crowd in closer.
    The oldest story was the shortest. He did not tell it often, but the tribe knew it by heart. It was a story told in many languages, all over the Carpet.
    ‘In the beginning,’ said Pismire, ‘there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet, which covered the flatness. It was young in those days. There was no dust among the hairs. They were slim and straight, not bent and crusty like they are today. And the Carpet was empty.
    ‘Then came the dust, which fell upon the Carpet, drifting among the hairs, taking root in the deep shadows. More came, tumbling slowly and with silence among the waiting hairs, until the dust was thick in the Carpet.
    ‘From the dust the Carpet wove us all. First came the little crawling creatures that make their dwellings in burrows and high in the hairs. Then came the soraths, and the weft borers, tromps, goats, gromepipers and the snargs.
    ‘Now the Carpet had life and noise. Yes, and death and silence. But there was a thread missing from the weave on the loom of life.
    ‘The Carpet was full of life, but it did not know it was alive. It could be, but it could not think. It did not even know what it was.
    ‘And so from the dust came us, the CarpetPeople. We gave the Carpet its name, and named the creatures, and