The Truth

currency of choice. Tomorrow…perhaps the weaponry will be just words. The most words, the quickest words, the last words. Look out of the window. Tell me what you see.”
    “Fog,” said the High Priest.
    Vetinari sighed. Sometimes the weather had no sense of narrative convenience.
    “If it was a fine day,” he said sharply, “you would see the big semaphore tower on the other side of the river. Words flying out and back from every corner of the continent. Not long ago it would take me the better part of a month to exchange letters with our ambassador in Genua. Now I can have a reply tomorrow. Certain things become easier, but this makes them harder in other ways. We have to change the way we think. We have to move with the times. Have you heard of c-commerce?”
    “Certainly. The merchant ships are always—”
    “I mean that you may now send a clacks all the way to Genua to order a…a pint of shrimps, if you like. Is that not a notable thing?”
    “They would be pretty high when they got here, my lord!”
    “Certainly. That was just an example. But now think of a prawn as merely an assemblage of information!” said Lord Vetinari, his eyes sparkling.
    “Are you suggesting that prawns could travel by semaphore?” said the High Priest. “I suppose that you might be able to flick them from—”
    “I was endeavoring to point up the fact that information is also bought and sold,” said Lord Vetinari. “And also that what was once considered impossible is now quite easily achieved. Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works.”
    He walked over to a table on which was spread out a map of the world. It was a workman’s map; this is to say, it was a map used by someone who needed to refer to it a lot. It was covered with notes and markers.
    “We’ve always looked beyond the walls for the invaders,” he said. “We always thought change came from outside, usually on the point of a sword. And then we look around and find that it comes from the inside of the head of someone you wouldn’t notice in the street. In certain circumstances it may be convenient to remove the head, but there seem to be such a lot of them these days.”
    He gestured towards the busy map.
    “A thousand years ago we thought the world was a bowl,” he said. “Five hundred years ago we knew it was a globe. Today we know it is flat and round and carried through space on the back of a turtle.” He turned and gave the High Priest another smile. “Don’t you wonder what shape it will turn out to be tomorrow?”
    But a family trait of all the Ridcullys was not to let go of a thread until you’ve unraveled the whole garment.
    “Besides, they have these little pincer things, you know, and would probably hang on like—”
    “What do?”
    “Prawns. They’d hang on to—”
    “You are taking me rather too literally, Your Reverence,” said Vetinari sharply.
    “Oh.”
    “I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat.”
    “It’ll end in trouble, my lord,” said Ridcully. He’d found it a good general comment in practically any debate. Besides, it was so often true.
    Lord Vetinari sighed. “In my experience, practically everything does,” he said. “That is the nature of things. All we can do is sing as we go.”
    He stood up. “However, I will pay a personal visit to the dwarfs in question.” He reached out to ring a bell on his desk, stopped, and with a smile at the priest moved his hand instead to a brass-and-leather tube that had hung from two brass hooks. The mouthpiece was in the shape of a dragon.
    He whistled into it, and then said:
    “Mr. Drumknott? My coach, please.”
    “Is it me,” said Ridcully, giving the newfangled speaking tube a nervous glance, “or is there a terrible smell in here?”
    Lord Vetinari gave him a quizzical look and glanced down.
    There was a basket just underneath his desk. In it was what appeared to be, at first glance and certainly at first smell, a dead dog. It lay with all four legs in the air. Only the occasional gentle expulsion of wind suggested that some living process was going on.
    “It’s his teeth,” he said coldly. The dog Wuffles turned over and regarded the priest with one baleful black eye.
    “He’s doing very well for a dog of his age,” said Hughnon, in a desperate attempt to climb a