The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

first explanation that presents itself and then bunk off somewhere for a quiet smoke? A certain lack of imagination? An abilityto get out of their depth on a wet pavement?’
    *
    Vetinari peered at a small heap of bent and twisted metal.
    ‘What was it, Leonard?’ he said.
    ‘An experimental device for turning chemical energy into rotary motion,’ said Leonard. ‘The problem, you see, is getting the little pellets of black powder into the combustion chamber at exactly the right speed and one at a time. If two ignite together, well, what we have is the external combustion engine.’
    ‘And, er, what would be the purpose of it?’ said the Patrician.
    ‘I believe it could replace the horse,’ said Leonard proudly.
    They looked at the stricken thing.
    ‘One of the advantages of horses that people often point out,’ said Vetinari, after some thought, ‘is that they very seldom explode.’
    *
    Leonard’s incredible brain sizzled away alarmingly, an overloaded chip pan on the Stove of Life. It was impossible to know what he would think of next, because he was constantly reprogrammed by the whole universe. The sight of a waterfall or a soaring bird would send him spinning down some new path of practical speculation that invariably ended in a heap of wire and springs and a cry of ‘I think I know what I did wrong.’ He’d been a member of most of the craft guilds in the city but had been thrown out for getting impossibly high marks in the exams or, in some cases, correcting the questions. It was said that he’d accidentally blown up the Alchemists’ Guild using nothing more than a glass of water, a spoonful of acid, two lengths of wire and a ping-pong ball.
    *
    Nobby and Colon go on a call - in plain clothes:
    ‘Come on, open up! Watch business!’
    Corporal Nobbs pulled at Sergeant Colon’s sleeve and whispered in his ear.
    ‘Not Watch business!’ said Colon, pounding the door again. ‘Nothing to do with the Watch at all! We are just civilians, all right?’
    The door opened a crack.
    ‘Are you the Watch?’ said a voice.
    ‘No! I think I just made that clear—’
    ‘Piss off, copper!’
    The door slammed.
    ‘You sure this is the right place, sarge?’
    ‘Don’t call me sarge when we’re in plain clothes!’
    ‘Right you are, Fred.’
    ‘That’s—’ Colon hesitated in an agony of status. ‘Well, that’s Frederick to you, Nobby’
    ‘Right, Frederick. And that’s Cecil, thank you.’
    ‘Cecil?’
    ‘That is my name,’ said Nobby coldly.
    ‘Have it your way’ said Colon. ‘Just remember who’s the superiorcivilian around here, all right?’
    He hammered on the door again.
    ‘We hear you’ve got a room to let, missus!’ he yelled.
    ‘Brilliant, Frederick,’ said Nobby. ‘That was bloody brilliant!’
    ‘Well, I am the sergeant, right?’ Colon whispered.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Er … yeah … right … well, just you remember that, right?’
    *
    ‘Sam?’
    Vimes looked up from his reading.
    ‘Your soup will be cold,’ said Lady Sybil from the far end of the table. ‘You’ve been holding that spoonful in the air for the last five minutes by the clock.’
    ‘Sorry dear.’
    Belatedly, his nuptial radar detected a certain chilliness from the far side of the cruet.
    ‘Is, er, there something wrong, dear?’ he said.
    ‘Can you remember when we last had dinner together, Sam?’
    ‘Tuesday, wasn’t it?’
    ‘That was the Guild of Merchants’ annual dinner, Sam.’
    Vimes’s brow wrinkled. ‘But you were there too, weren’t you?’
    *
    Ankh-Morpork no longer had a fire brigade. The citizens had a rather disturbingly direct way of thinking at times, and it did not take long for people to see the rather obvious flaw in paying a group of people by the number of fires they put out. The penny really dropped shortly after Charcoal Tuesday.
    Since then they had relied on the good old principle of enlightened self-interest. People living close to a burning building did their best to douse the fire, because the thatch they saved might be their own.

    ‘Mr Vimes saved the day!’ said Sergeant Colon excitedly .
    ‘Just went straight in and saved everyone, in the finest tradition of the Watch!’
    ‘Fred?’ said Vimes, wearily.
    Yessir?’
    ‘Fred, the finest tradition of the Watch is having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the wind at 3 a.m. Let’s not get carried away, eh?’

    Colon rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up for inspection.
    ‘This