Men at Arms (Discworld #15)(54)

'In a way. I've absolutely forbidden him to undertake it. Twice.'

Leonard nodded. 'Ah. I . . . think I understand. I hope it works.'

He sighed.

'I suppose I should have dismantled it, but . . . it was so clearly a made thing. I had this strange fancy I was merely assembling something that already existed. Sometimes I wonder where I got the whole idea. It seemed . . . I don't know . . . sacrilege, I suppose, to dismantle it. It'd be like dismantling a person. Biscuit?'

'Dismantling a person is sometimes necessary,' said Lord Vetinari.

'This, of course, is a point of view,' said Leonard da Quirm politely.

'You mentioned sacrilege,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Normally that involves gods of some sort, does it not?'

'Did I use the word? I can't imagine there is a god of gonnes.'

'It is quite hard, yes.'

The Patrician shifted uneasily, reached down behind him, and pulled out an object.

'What,' he said, 'is this?'

'Oh, I wondered where that had gone,' said Leonard. 'It's a model of my spinning-up-into-the-air machine.'[20]

Lord Vetinari prodded the little rotor.

'Would it work?'

'Oh, yes,' said Leonard. He sighed. 'If you can find one man with the strength of ten men who can turn the handle at about one thousand revolutions a minute.'

The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension.

'Now there is in this city,' he said, 'a man with a gonne. He has used it successfully once, and almost succeeded a second time. Could anyone have invented the gonne?'

'No,' said Leonard. 'I am a genius.' He said it quite simply. It was a statement of fact.

'Understood. But once a gonne has been invented, Leonard, how much of a genius need someone be to make the second one?'

'The rifling technique requires considerable finesse, and the cocking mechanism that slides the bullette assembly is finely balanced, and of course the end of the barrel must be very . . .' Leonard saw the Patrician's expression, and shrugged. 'He must be a clever man,' he said.

'This city is full of clever men,' said the Patrician. 'And dwarfs. Clever men and dwarfs who tinker with things.'

'I am so very sorry.'

'They never think.'

'Indeed.'

Lord Vetinari leaned back and stared at the skylight.

'They do things like open the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old temple in Dagon Street on the night of the Winter solstice when it also happens to be a full moon.'

'That's people for you, I'm afraid.'

'I never did find out what happened to Mr Hong.'

'Poor fellow.'

'And then there's the wizards. Tinker, tinker, tinker. Never think twice before grabbing a thread of the fabric of reality and giving it a pull.'

'Shocking.'

'The alchemists? Their idea of civic duty is mixing up things to see what happens.'

'I hear the bangs, even here.'

'And then, of course, along comes someone like you—'

'I really am terribly sorry.'

Lord Vetinari turned the model flying machine over and over in his fingers.

'You dream of flying,' he said.

'Oh, yes. Then men would be truly free. From the air, there are no boundaries. There could be no more war, because the sky is endless. How happy we would be, if we could but fly.'

Vetinari turned the machine over and over in his hands.

'Yes,' he said, 'I daresay we would.'

'I had tried clockwork, you know.'

'I'm sorry? I was thinking about something else.'

'I meant clockwork to power my flying machine. But it won't work.'

'Oh.'

'There's a limit to the power of a spring, no matter how tightly one winds it.'

'Oh, yes. Yes. And you hope that if you wind a spring one way, all its energies will unwind the other way. And sometimes you have to wind the spring as tight as it will go,' said Vetinari, 'and pray it doesn't break.'

His expression changed.

'Oh dear,' he said.

'Pardon?' said Leonard.

'He didn't thump the wall. I may have gone too far.'

Detritus sat and steamed. Now he felt hungry – not for food, but for things to think about. As the temperature sank, the efficiency of his brain increased even more. It needed something to do.

He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus.

Trolls evolved in high, rocky and above all in cold places. Their silicon brains were used to operating at low temperatures. But down on the muggy plains the heat build-up slowed them down and made them dull. It wasn't that only stupid trolls came down to the city. Trolls who decided to come down to the city were often quite smart – but they became stupid.

Detritus was considered moronic even by city troll standards. But that was simply because his brain was naturally optimized for a temperature seldom reached in Ankh-Morpork even during the coldest winter . . .