Men at Arms (Discworld #15)(20)

He unfolded the strip.

It was a collar or, at least, what remained of a collar – it was burnt at both ends. The word 'Chubby' was just readable through the soot.

'The devils!' said Vimes. 'They did blow up a dragon!'

The most dangerous man in the world should be introduced.

He has never, in his entire life, harmed a living creature. He has dissected a few, but only after they were dead,[8] and had marvelled at how well they'd been put together considering it had been done by unskilled labour. For several years he hadn't moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most of his time inside his own head in any case. There's a certain type of person it's very hard to imprison.

He had, however, surmised that an hour's exercise every day was essential for a healthy appetite and proper bowel movements, and was currently sitting on a machine of his own invention.

It consisted of a saddle above a pair of treadles which turned, by means of a chain, a large wooden wheel currently held off the ground on a metal stand. Another, freewheeling, wooden wheel was positioned in front of the saddle and could be turned by means of a tiller arrangement. He'd fitted the extra wheel and tiller so that he could wheel the entire thing over to the wall when he'd finished taking his exercise and, besides, it gave the whole thing a pleasing symmetry.

He called it 'the-turning-the-wheel-with-pedals-and-another-wheel-machine'.

Lord Vetinari was also at work.

Normally, he was in the Oblong Office or seated in his plain wooden chair at the foot of the steps in the palace of Ankh-Morpork; there was an ornate throne at the top of the steps, covered with dust. It was the throne of Ankh-Morpork and was, indeed, made of gold. He'd never dreamed of sitting on it.

But it was a nice day, so he was working in the garden.

Visitors to Ankh-Morpork were often surprised to find that there were some interesting gardens attached to the Patrician's Palace.

The Patrician was not a gardens kind of person. But some of his predecessors had been, and Lord Vetinari never changed or destroyed anything if there was no logical reason to do so. He maintained the little zoo, and the racehorse stable, and even recognized that the gardens themselves were of extreme historic interest because this was so obviously the case.

They had been laid out by Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Many great landscape gardeners have gone down in history and been remembered in a very solid way by the magnificent parks and gardens that they designed with almost god-like power and foresight, thinking nothing oi making lakes and shifting hills and planting woodlands to enable future generations to appreciate the sublime beauty of wild Nature transformed by Man. There have been Capability Brown, Sagacity Smith, Intuition De Vere Slade-Gore . . .

In Ankh-Morpork, there was Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Bloody Stupid 'It Might Look A Bit Messy Now But Just You Come Back In Five Hundred Years' Time' Johnson. Bloody Stupid 'Look, The Plans Were The Right Way Round When I Drew Them' Johnson. Bloody Stupid Johnson, who had 2,000 tons of earth built into an artificial hillock in front of Quirm Manor because 'It'd drive me mad to have to look at a bunch of trees and mountains all day long, how about you?'

The Ankh-Morpork palace grounds were considered the high spot, if such it could be called, of his career. For example, they contained the ornamental trout lake, one hundred and fifty yards long and, because of one of those trifling errors of notation that were such a distinctive feature of Bloody Stupid's designs, one inch wide. It was the home of one trout, which was quite comfortable provided it didn't try to turn around, and had once featured an ornate fountain which, when first switched on, did nothing but groan ominously for five minutes and then fire a small stone cherub a thousand feet into the air.

It contained the hoho, which was like a haha only deeper. A haha is a concealed ditch and wall designed to allow landowners to look out across rolling vistas without getting cattle and inconvenient poor people wandering across the lawns. Under Bloody Stupid's errant pencil it was dug fifty feet deep and had claimed three gardeners already.

The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it.

But the Patrician rather liked the gardens, in a quiet kind of way. He had certain views about the mentality of most of mankind, and the gardens made him feel fully justified.

Piles of paper were stacked on the lawn around the chair. Clerks renewed them or took them away periodically. They were different clerks. All sorts and types of information flowed into the Palace, but there was only one place where it all came together, very much like strands of gossamer coming together in the centre of a web.

A great many rulers, good and bad and quite often dead, know what happened; a rare few actually manage, by dint of much effort, to know what's happening. Lord Vetinari considered both types to lack ambition.

'Yes, Dr Cruces,' he said, without looking up.

How the hell does he do it? Cruces wondered. I know I didn't make any noise . . .

'Ah, Havelock—' he began.

'You have something to tell me, doctor?'

'It's been . . . mislaid.'

'Yes. And no doubt you are anxiously seeking it. Very well. Good day.'

The Patrician hadn't moved his head the whole time. He hadn't even bothered to ask what It was. He bloody well knows, thought Cruces. How is it you can never tell him anything he doesn't know?

Lord Vetinari put down a piece of paper on one of the piles, and picked up another.