Sourcery - Страница 50

3

The furrow left by the fleeing gargoyles caused the University’s head gardener to bite through his rake and led to the famous quotation: ‘How do you get a lawn like this? You mows it and you rolls it for five hundred years and then a bunch of bastards walks across it.’

4

In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about.

5

At least, by anyone who wanted to wake up the same shape, or even the same species, as they went to bed.

6

The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.

7

This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping.

8

The Ankh-Morpork Merchants’ Guild publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises describes the area of Old Morpork known as The Shades as ‘a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherree exitment and romans lurkes arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditinal street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private.’ In other words, you have been warned.

9

The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn’t quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring – a sort of green bean thing that buzzed – led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider.

* Sweet peas were used by Mendel in his early genetic experiments. Fruit flies are used in contemporary genetics. Among the ‘fundamentals’ that the wizards failed to grasp is of course the fact that (a) you can only cross individuals within each species, not across, and (b) you are not supposed to use magic.

With respect to (a) I was told that in 1991 (three years after Sourcery) an article was published in which a team of geneticists write about a certain transposon that seemed to be common to both maize and fruit flies, implying that it might be possible to have some form of horizontal transmission between vegetable and animal DNA, after all

10

The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.

11

Wizards’ tastes in the matter of puns are about the same as their taste in glittery objects.

12

Of course, Ankh-Morpork’s citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

13

No one ever had the courage to ask him what he did there.

14

Or up, or obliquely. The layout of the Library of Unseen University was a topographical nightmare, the sheer presence of so much stored magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M.C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways.

* Maurits C. Escher: Dutch graphic artist of the 20th century, well-known for his tangled, paradoxical pictures of optical illusions and plane-filling tilings. Read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach for much, much more information.

15

The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.

16

Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.

17

In a truly magical universe everything has its opposite. For example, there’s anti-light. That’s not the same as darkness, because darkness is merely the absence of light. Anti-light is what you get if you pass through darkness and out the other side. On the same basis, a state of knurdness isn’t like sobriety. By comparison, sobriety is like having a bath in cotton wool. Knurdness strips away all illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they’ve screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again.

18

For a description of the chimera we shall turn to Broomfog’s famous bestiary Anima Unnaturale: ‘It have thee legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise, the teeth of an fowel, and the winges of an snake. Of course, I have only my worde for it, the beast having the breathe of an furnace and the temperament of an rubber balloon in a hurricane.’

* More reputable witnesses than Broomfog describe the chimera or chimaera (from Greek mythology) as a fire-breathing monster having either the hindquarters of a serpent and the head of a lion on the body of a goat, or else the back of a goat, the wings of a dragon, the front half of a lion, and three heads (one each for goat, lion and dragon).

Woody Allen somewhere describes a mythical beast called the Great Roe, which has “the head of lion and the body of a lion, only not the same lion”.

19

Of course, wizards often killed one another by ordinary, non-magical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.

20

All right. But you’ve got the general idea.

21

It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid for all whose business is with the arcane and hermetic. It contained lists of things that didn’t exist and, in a very significant way, weren’t important. Some of its pages could only be read after midnight, or by strange and improbable illuminations. There were descriptions of underground constellations and wines as yet unfermented. For the really up-to-the-epoch occultist, who could afford the version bound in spider skin, there was even an insert showing the London Underground with the three stations they never dare show on the public maps.

* Refers to the ‘Filofax’ system: a small notebook (the more expensive versions are leather-bound) with loose-leaf information sheets, diary, calendar, notes, wine lists, London underground maps, etc. In the UK the Filofax at one time became the badge of the stereotypical 80s Yuppie, seen working in London’s “square mile”, walking around with a mobile phone clamped to his ear while referring to his Filofax to find a free appointment. Hence the Genie: “‘Let’s do lunch...’”

22

He always argued that he was.

23

Very popular among gods, demi-gods, daemons and other supernatural creatures, who feel at home with questions like ‘What is It all About?’ and ‘Where will It all End?’

24

Although this was the only way in which they resembled the idols built, in response to ancient and unacknowledged memories, by children in snowy weather; it was extremely unlikely that this Ice Giant would be a small mound of grubby ice with a carrot in it by the morning.

25

Which wisely decided not to fly again, was never claimed, and lived out the rest of its days as the carriage horse of an elderly lady. What War did about this is unrecorded; it is pretty certain that he got another one.

comments

1

A pun on the English boy’s name ‘Colin’, with a nod to the expression “to coin a phrase”.

2

This subject comes up every now and again on alt.fan.pratchett, so it is time for an annotation to settle this matter for once and for all: playing (chess) games with Death is a very old concept. It goes back much further than either Ingmar Bergman’s famous 1957 movie The Seventh Seal, or Chris de Burgh’s less famous 1975 song ‘Spanish Train’ (which describes a poker game between God and the Devil).

3

A reference to C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy story The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, in which the heroes are magically transported to the Land of Narnia through the back of an old wardrobe, which was made from a tree that grew from the seeds of a magical apple taken from that Land long before.

4

Probably a reference to a famous scene from the ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ segment in Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia. The “sourcerer” being in fact the Apprentice, Mickey, dreaming of commanding the wind to blow, the waves to wave, the stars to fall, and so on.

Some people were also reminded of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

5

Play on the word ‘pissed’, common British/Australian (but apparently not American) slang for ‘drunk’.

6

Paraphrases Humphrey Bogart’s famous line from Casablanca: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

7

The reference is to traditional British pub names like King’s Head, Queen’s Head or Nag’s Head, all occurring quite frequently, where the appropriate head (a nag being a horse) is displayed on a sign outside, often on a pole before the building.