Thud!

while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she compounded the insult by actually being very likable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out after any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: “Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that’s not going to matter.”
    And she had a stomach made of iron, too. Angua found herself wondering how many hopeful men had died trying to drink her under the table. Alcohol didn’t seem to go to her brain at all. Maybe it couldn’t find it. But she was pleasant, easygoing company, if you avoided allusion, irony, sarcasm, repartee, satire, and words longer than “chicken.”
    Angua was tetchy because she was dying for a beer, but the young man behind the bar thought that “a pint of Winkles” was the name of a cocktail. Given the drinks on offer, perhaps this was not surprising.
    “What?” said Angua, reading the menu, “is a Screaming Orgasm?”
    “Ah,” said Sally, “Looks like we got to you just in time, girl!”
    “No,” sighed Angua as the others laughed; that was such a vampire response. “I mean what’s it made of?’’
    “Almonté, Wahlulu, Bearhuggers Whiskey Cream, and vodka,” said Tawneee, who knew the recipe for every cocktail ever made.
    “And how does it work?” said Cheery, craning to see over the top of the bar.
    Sally ordered four, and turned back to Tawneee.
    “So…you and Nobby Nobbs, eh?” she said. “How about that?” Three sets of ears flared.
    The other thing you got used to in the presence of Tawneee was silence. Everywhere she went, went quiet. Oh, and the stares. The silent stares. And sometimes, in the shadows, a sigh. There were goddesses who’d kill to look like Tawneee.
    “He’s nice,” said Tawneee. “He makes me laugh and he keeps his hands to himself.”
    Three faces locked in expressions of concentrated thought. In Angua’s case, one was: This is Nobby we’re talking about. There are so many questions that we are not going to ask.
    “Has he shown you the tricks he can do with his spots?” she said.
    “Yes. I thought I’d widdle myself! He’s so funny!”
    Angua stared into her drink. Cheery coughed. Sally studied the menu.
    “And he’s very dependable,” said Tawneee. And, as if dimly aware that this was still not sufficient, she added sadly: “If you must know, he’s the first boy who’s ever asked me out.”
    Sally and Angua breathed out together. Light dawned. Ah, that was the problem. And this one’s a baaaad case.
    “I mean, my hair’s all over the place, my legs are too long, and I know my bosom is far too—” Tawneee went on, but Sally had raised a quietening hand.
    “First point, Tawneee—”
    “My real name’s Betty,” said Tawneee, blowing a nose so exquisite that the greatest sculptor in the world would have wept to carve it. It went blort .
    “First point, then…Betty,” Sally managed, struggling to use the name, “is that no women under forty-five—”
    “Fifty,” Angua corrected.
    “Right, fifty…no woman under fifty uses the word ‘bosom’ to name anything connected to her. You just don’t do it.”
    “I didn’t know that,” Tawneee sniffed.
    “It’s a fact,” said Angua. And, oh dear, how to begin to explain the jerk syndrome? To someone like Tawneee, on whom the name Betty stuck like rocks to a ceiling? This wasn’t just a case of the jerk syndrome, this was it, the quintessential, classic, pure platonic example that should be stuffed and mounted and preserved as a teaching aid for students in the centuries to come. And she was happy with Nobby!
    “What I’ve got to tell you now is…” she began, and faded in the face of the task, “is…look, shall we have another drink? What’s the next cocktail on the menu?”
    Cheery peered at it.
    “Pink, Big and Wobbly,” she announced.
    “Classy! We’ll have four!”

F red Colon peered through the bars. He was, on the whole, a pretty good jailer; he always had a pot of tea on the go, he was, as a general rule, amiably disposed to most people, he was too slow to be easily fooled, and he kept the cell keys in a tin box in the bottom drawer on his desk, a long way out of reach of any stick, hand, dog, cunningly thrown belt, or trained Klatchian monkey spider. *
    He was a bit worried about this dwarf. You got all