The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.
    *
    Lord Astfgl’s patience, which in any case had the tensile strength of putty, snapped at this point.
    *
    Rincewind tried some. It was a bowl of cereal, nuts, and dried fruit. He didn’t have any quarrel with any of that. It was just that somewhere in the preparation something had apparently done to these innocent ingredients what it takes a million gravities to do to a neutron star. If you died of eating this sort of thing they wouldn’t have to bury you, they would just need to drop you somewhere where the ground was soft.
    *
    Pre-eminent amongst Rincewind’s talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be.
    But he was also skilled in languages and in practical geography. He could shout ‘help!’ in fourteen languages and scream for mercy in a further twelve.
    *
    The Tezuman Empire in the jungle valleys of central Klatch is known for its organic market gardens, its exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and its mass human sacrifices in honour of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa, god of mass human sacrifices. As they said, you always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered headdress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use.

    ‘Why do you keep saying wossname?’ said Rincewind.
    ‘Limited wossname. Doodah. Thingy. You know. It’s got words in it,’ said the parrot.
    ‘Dictionary?’ said Rincewind.

    ‘It’s their god Quezovercoatl. Half man, half chicken, half jaguar, half serpent, half scorpion and half mad.’
    *
    Rincewind and companions have been tied up and left.
    ‘In fact,’ said da Quirm, ‘I think—’ He rolled from side to side experimentally, tugging at the vines which were holding him down. ‘Yes, I think when they did these ropes up – yes,definitely, they—’
    ‘What? What?’ said Rincewind.
    ‘Yes, definitely’ said da Quirm. ‘I’m absolutely sure about it. They did them up very tightly and professionally. Not an inch of give in them anywhere.’
    *
    They were discussing strategy when Rincewind arrived. The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
    *
    ‘It’s probably some kind of magic, or something,’ Rincewind said. ‘There’s no air. That’s why there’s no sound. All the little bits of air sort of knock together, like marbles. That’s how you get sound, you know.’
    ‘Is it? Gosh.’
    ‘So we’re surrounded by absolutely nothing,’ said Rincewind. ‘Total nothing.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s a word for it,’ he said. ‘It’s what you get when there’s nothing left and everything’s been used up.’
    ‘Yes. I think it’s called the bill,’ said Eric.
    *
    Hell, it has been suggested, is other people.
    This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on.
    This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul.
    The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realize that since they didn’t have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn’t. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no one was suffering they didn’t enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness.
    *
    Astfgl had achieved in hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which a) is costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time.
    *
    The speaker was Duke Vassenego, one of the oldest demons. How old,