Truth Read online

  THE TRUTH

  Terry Pratchett

  CORGI BOOKS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Books by Terry Pratchett

  Author’s Note

  The Truth

  Footnotes

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781407035246

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  THE TRUTH

  A CORGI BOOK: 9780552154246

  Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Doubleday edition published 2000

  Corgi edition published 2001

  Corgi edition reissued 2008

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 2000 Discworld® is a trade mark registered by Terry Pratchett

  The right of Terry Pratchett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the Discworld series, started in 1983 with The Colour of Magic, and which has now reached 38 novels. Worldwide sales of his books are now 60 million, and they have been translated into 37 languages. Terry Pratchett was knighted for services to literature in 2009.

  The Discworld Series is a continuous history of a world not totally unlike our own except that it is a flat disc carried on the backs of four elephants astride a giant turtle floating through space, and that it is peopled by, among others, wizards, dwarves, policemen, thieves, beggars, vampires and witches. Within the history of Discworld there are many individual stories, which can be read in any order, but reading them in sequence can increase your enjoyment through the accumulation of all the fine detail that contributes to the teeming imaginative complexity of this brilliantly conceived world.

  1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC

  2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

  3. EQUAL RITES

  4. MORT

  5. SOURCERY

  6. WYRD SISTERS

  7. PYRAMIDS

  8. GUARDS! GUARDS!

  9. ERIC

  (illustrated by Josh Kirby)

  10. MOVING PICTURES

  11. REAPER MAN

  12. WITCHES ABROAD

  13. SMALL GODS

  14. LORDS AND LADIES

  15. MEN AT ARMS

  16. SOUL MUSIC

  17. INTERESTING TIMES

  18. MASKERADE

  19. FEET OF CLAY

  20. HOGFATHER

  21. JINGO

  22. THE LAST CONTINENT

  23. CARPE JUGULUM

  24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT

  25. THE TRUTH

  26. THIEF OF TIME

  27. THE LAST HERO

  (illustrated by Josh Kirby)

  28. THE AMAZING MAURICE &

  HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for younger readers)

  29. NIGHT WATCH

  30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for younger readers)

  31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT

  32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for younger readers)

  33. GOING POSTAL

  34. THUD!

  35. WINTERSMITH (for younger readers)

  36. MAKING MONEY

  37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS

  38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for younger readers)

  ----------Other books about Discworld----------

  THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD

  (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

  THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE

  (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

  THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III:

  DARWIN’S WATCH

  (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

  THE NEW DISCWORLD COMPANION

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK

  (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)

  THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO

  (with Paul Kidby)

  THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK

  (with Bernard Pearson)

  THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK

  (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson)

  WHERE’S MY COW?

  (illustrated by Melvyn Grant)

  THE ART OF DISCWORLD

  (with Paul Kidby)

  THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD

  (compiled by Stephen Briggs)

  THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD

  (with Jacqueline Simpson)

  ----------Discworld Maps----------

  THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK

  (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

  THE DISCWORLD MAPP

  (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

  A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE –

  A DISCWORLD MAPP

  (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)

  DEATH’S DOMAIN

  (with Paul Kidby)

  A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk

  ----------Non-Discworld books----------

  THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

  STRATA

  THE UNADULTERATED CAT

  (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)

  GOOD OMENS

  (with Neil Gaiman)

  --Non-Discworld novels for younger readers--

  THE CARPET PEOPLE

  TRUCKERS

  DIGGERS

  WINGS

  ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND*

  JOHNNY AND THE DEAD

  JOHNNY AND THE BOMB

  NATION

  *www.ifnotyouthenwho.com

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Sometimes a fantasy author has to point out the strangeness of reality. The way Ankh-Morpork dealt with its flood problems is curiously similar to that adopted by the city of Seattle, Washington, towards the end of the nineteenth century. Really. Go and see. Try the clam chowder while you’re there.

  THE TRUTH

  The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words ‘fire insurance’).

  The dwarfs can turn lead into gold …

  It buzzed through the fetid air of the Alchemists’ quarter, where they had been trying to do the same thing for centuries without success but were certain that they’d manage it by tomorrow, or next Tuesday at least, or the end of the month for definite.

  It caused speculation among the wizards at Unseen University, where they knew you could turn one element into another element, provided you didn’t mind it turning back again next day, and where was the good i
n that? Besides, most elements were happy where they were.

  It seared into the scarred, puffy and sometimes totally missing ears of the Thieves’ Guild, where people put an edge on their crowbars. Who cared where the gold came from?

  The dwarfs can turn lead into gold …

  It reached the cold but incredibly acute ears of the Patrician, and it did that fairly quickly, because you did not stay ruler of Ankh-Morpork for long if you were second with the news. He sighed and made a note of it, and added it to a lot of other notes.

  The dwarfs can turn lead into gold …

  It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs.

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘Damned if I know. I can’t.’

  ‘Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t say, if I could.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Ah-ha!’

  It came to the ears of the Night Watch of the city guard, as they did gate duty at ten o’clock on an icy night. Gate duty in Ankh-Morpork was not taxing. It consisted mainly of waving through anything that wanted to go through, although traffic was minimal in the dark and freezing fog.

  They hunched in the shelter of the gate arch, sharing one damp cigarette.

  ‘You can’t turn something into something else,’ said Corporal Nobbs. ‘The Alchemists have been trying it for years.’

  ‘They can gen’rally turn a house into a hole in the ground,’ said Sergeant Colon.

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ said Corporal Nobbs. ‘Can’t be done. It’s all to do with … elements. An alchemist told me. Everything’s made up of elements, right? Earth, Water, Air, Fire and … sunnink. Well-known fact. Everything’s got ’em all mixed up just right.’

  He stamped his feet in an effort to get some warmth into them.

  ‘If it was possible to turn lead into gold, everyone’d be doing it,’ he said.

  ‘Wizards could do it,’ said Sergeant Colon.

  ‘Oh, well, magic,’ said Nobby dismissively.

  A large cart rumbled out of the yellow clouds and entered the arch, splashing Colon as it wobbled through one of the puddles that were such a feature of Ankh-Morpork’s highways.

  ‘Bloody dwarfs,’ he said, as it continued on into the city. But he didn’t say it too loudly.

  ‘There were a lot of them pushing that cart,’ said Corporal Nobbs reflectively. It lurched slowly round a corner and was lost to view.

  ‘Prob’ly all that gold,’ said Colon.

  ‘Hah. Yeah. That’d be it, then.’

  And the rumour came to the ears of William de Worde, and in a sense it stopped there, because he dutifully wrote it down.

  It was his job. Lady Margolotta of Uberwald sent him five dollars a month to do it. The Dowager Duchess of Quirm also sent him five dollars. So did King Verence of Lancre, and a few other Ramtop notables. So did the Seriph of Al Khali, although in his case the payment was half a cartload of figs, twice a year.

  All in all, he considered, he was on to a good thing. All he had to do was write one letter very carefully, trace it backwards on to a piece of boxwood provided for him by Mr Cripslock the engraver in the Street of Cunning Artificers, and then pay Mr Cripslock twenty dollars to carefully remove the wood that wasn’t letters and make five impressions on sheets of paper.

  Of course, it had to be done thoughtfully, with spaces left after ‘To my Noble Client the’, and so on, which he had to fill in later, but even deducting expenses it still left him the best part of thirty dollars for little more than one day’s work a month.

  A young man without too many responsibilities could live modestly in Ankh-Morpork on thirty or forty dollars a month; he always sold the figs, because although it was possible to live on figs you soon wished you didn’t.

  And there were always additional sums to be picked up here and there. The world of letters was a closed boo— mysterious papery object to many of Ankh-Morpork’s citizens, but if they ever did need to commit things to paper quite a few of them walked up the creaky stairs past the sign ‘William de Worde: Things Written Down’.

  Dwarfs, for example. Dwarfs were always coming to seek work in the city, and the first thing they did was send a letter home saying how well they were doing. This was such a predictable occurrence, even if the dwarf in question was so far down on his luck that he’d been forced to eat his helmet, that William had Mr Cripslock produce several dozen stock letters which needed only a few spaces filled in to be perfectly acceptable.

  Fond dwarf parents all over the mountains treasured letters which looked something like this:

  Dear [Mume & Dad],

  Well, I arrived here all right and I am staying, at [109 Cockbill Street The Shades Ankh-Morpk]. Everythyng is fine. I have got a goode job working for [Mr C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Merchant Venturer] and will be makinge lots of money really soon now. I am rememberinge alle your gode advyce and am not drinkynge, in bars or mixsing with Trolls. Well thas about itte muƒt goe now, looking forwade to seing you and [Emelia] agane, your loving son,

  [Tomas Brokenbrow]

  … who was usually swaying while he dictated it. It was twenty pence easily made, and as an additional service William carefully tailored the spelling to the client and allowed them to choose their own punctuation.

  On this particular evening, with the sleet gurgling in the downspouts outside his lodgings, William sat in the tiny office over the Guild of Conjurors and wrote carefully, half listening to the hopeless but painstaking catechism of the trainee conjurors at their evening class in the room below.

  ‘… pay attention. Are you ready? Right. Egg. Glass …’

  ‘Egg. Glass,’ the class droned listlessly.

  ‘… Glass. Egg …’

  ‘Glass. Egg …’

  ‘… Magic word …’

  ‘Magic word …’

  ‘Fazammm. Just like that. Ahahahahaha …’

  ‘Faz-ammm. Just like that. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha …’

  William pulled another sheet of paper towards him, sharpened a fresh quill, stared at the wall for a moment and then wrote as follows:

  And finally, on the lighter Side, it is being said that the Dwarfs can Turn Lead into Gold, though no one knows whence the rumour comes, and Dwarfs going about their lawful occaƒions in the City are hailed with cries such as, e.g., ‘Hollah, short stuff, let’s see you make some Gold then!’ although only Newcomers do this because all here know what happens if you call a Dwarf ‘short stuff’, viz., you are Dead.

  Yr. obdt. servant, William de Worde

  He always liked to finish his letters on a happy note.

  He fetched a sheet of boxwood, lit another candle and laid the letter face down on the wood. A quick rub with the back of a spoon transferred the ink, and thirty dollars and enough figs to make you really ill were as good as in the bank.

  He’d drop it in to Mr Cripslock tonight, pick up the copies after a leisurely lunch tomorrow, and with any luck should have them all away by the middle of the week.

  William put on his coat, wrapped the wood block carefully in some waxed paper and stepped out into the freezing night.

  The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It’s also wrong. There’s a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise.

  For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.

  The dwarfs dwarfhandled their overloaded, creaking cart along the street, peering ahead in fog. Ice formed on the cart and hung from their beards.

  All it needed was one frozen puddle.

  Good old Dame Fortune. You can depend on her.

  The fog closed in, making every light a dim glow and muffling all sounds. It was clear to Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs that no barbarian horde would be including the invasion of Ankh-Morpork in their travel plans for this evening. The watchmen didn’t blame them.

>   They closed the gates. This was not the ominous activity that it might appear, since the keys had been lost long ago and latecomers usually threw gravel at the windows of the houses built on top of the wall until they found a friend to lift the bar. It was assumed that foreign invaders wouldn’t know which windows to throw gravel at.

  Then the two watchmen trailed through the slush and muck to the Water Gate, by which the river Ankh had the good fortune to enter the city. The water was invisible in the dark, but the occasional ghostly shape of an ice floe drifted past below the parapet.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Nobby, as they laid hands on the windlass of the portcullis. ‘There’s someone down there.’

  ‘In the river?’ said Colon.

  He listened. There was the creak of an oar, far below.

  Sergeant Colon cupped his hands around his mouth and issued the traditional policeman’s cry of challenge.

  ‘Oi! You!’

  For a moment there was no sound but the wind and the gurgling of the water. Then a voice said: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you invading the city or what?’

  There was another pause. Then:

  ‘What?’

  ‘What what?’ said Colon, raising the stakes.

  ‘What were the other options?’

  ‘Don’t mess me about … Are you, down there in the boat, invading this city?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Colon, who on a night like this would happily take someone’s word for it. ‘Get a move on, then, ’cos we’re going to drop the gate.’

  After a while the splash of the oars resumed and disappeared downriver.

  ‘You reckon that was enough, just askin’ ’em?’ said Nobby.

  ‘Well, they ought to know,’ said Colon.

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘It was a tiny little rowin’ boat, Nobby. Of course, if you want to go all the way down to them nice icy steps on the jetty—’

  ‘No, Sarge.’

  ‘Then let’s get back to the Watch House, all right?’

  * * *

  William turned up his collar as he hurried towards Cripslock the engraver. The usually busy streets were deserted. Only those people with the most pressing business were out of doors. It was turning out to be a very nasty winter indeed, a gazpacho of freezing fog, snow and Ankh-Morpork’s ever-present, ever-rolling smog.