Тут будет очень много цитат из Going Postal, под кат.
Ground level, that was the goal: a floor you could rely on.
***
‘Now, now, Postmaster, don’t distress yourself unduly. In my experience, his lordship is a... complex man. It is not wise to anticipate his reactions.’
‘You mean you think I’m going to live?’
***
Always remember that the crowd which applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.
***
‘Around mid-morning, Mr Lipwig, you were chatting to people outside your regrettably distressed building when’ - here the Patrician glanced at his notes - ‘you suddenly looked up, shielded your eyes, dropped to your knees and screamed, “Yes, yes, thank you, I am not worthy, glory be, may your teeth be picked clean by birds, halleluiah, rattle your drawers” and similar phrases, to the general concern of people nearby, and you then stood up with your hands outstretched and shouted “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, buried in a field! Thank you, thank you, I shall fetch it immediately!” Whereupon you wrested a shovel from one of the men helping to clear the debris of the building and began to walk with some purpose out of the city.’
‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘It’s all a bit of a blank.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Vetinari happily. ‘You will probably be quite surprised to know that a number of people followed you, Mr Lipwig? Including Mr Pump and two members of the City Watch?’
‘Good heavens, did they?’
‘Quite. For several hours. You stopped to pray on a number of occasions. We must assume it was for the guidance which led your footsteps, at last, to a small wood among the cabbage fields.’
‘It did? I’m afraid it’s all rather a blur,’ said Moist.
читать дальше***
First urchin (having acquired some of the newly minted ‘Stampings’): ’ ‘ere, ‘ave you seen Lord Vetinari’s back side?’
Second urchin: ‘Nah, and I wouldn’t lick it for a penny, neiver!’
***
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: ‘Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.’
***
She froze, staring over his shoulder. He saw her right hand scrabble frantically among the cutlery and grab a knife.
‘That bastard has just walked into the place!’ she hissed. ‘Readier Gilt! I’ll just kill him and join you for the pudding... ’
‘You can’t do that!’ hissed Moist.
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘You’re using the wrong knife! That’s for the fish! You’ll get into trouble!’
***
His head was all over the wall...
Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you’re going to behave, I shan’t bring you again.
But, with its usual treachery, it went on working. He’d never, ever, laid a finger on anyone. He’d always run rather than fight. And murder, now, surely murder was an absolute? You couldn’t commit 0.021 of a murder, could you? But Pump seemed to think you could murder with a ruler. Okay, perhaps somewhere downstream people were... inconvenienced by a crime, but... what about bankers, landlords, even barmen? ‘Here’s your double brandy, sir, and I’ve 0.0003 killed you’? Everything everyone did affected everyone, sooner or later.
***
I commend my soul to any god who can find it.
***
‘Er, you couldn’t get him to knock up something a little more sombre, could you?’ said Moist, covering his eyes to stop himself being blinded by his own lapels. ‘For me to wear when I don’t want to illuminate distant objects?’
***
He was erratically good at maths, which is to say he could calculate odds and currency very, very fast. There had been a geometry section in his book at school, but he’d never seen the point. He tried, anyway.
***
He liked Teemer and Spools. He liked the kind of business where you could actually speak to the man whose name was over the door; it meant it probably wasn’t run by crooks. And he liked the big, solid, unflappable workmen, recognizing in them all the things he knew he lacked, like steadfastness, solidarity and honesty. You couldn’t lie to a lathe or fool a hammer. They were good people, and quite unlike him...
One way in which they were quite unlike him was that none of them, right now, probably had wads of stolen paper stuffed into their jacket.
***
Some tasks needed a good honest hammer. Others needed a twisty corkscrew.
***
‘I will sue the University! I will sue the University!’ screamed Greenyham. He picked up a chair and hurled it at the omniscope. Halfway to the glass it turned into a small flock of doves, which panicked and soared up to the roof.
‘Oh, please sue the University!’ Ridcully bellowed. ‘We’ve got a pond full of people who tried to sue the University—’
***
Always push your luck, because no one else would push it for you.
***
I wonder if it’s like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you’ll die falling.
***
Incidentally, it’s wisest not to argue with the nursing staff. I find the wisest course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted.
***
Dr Lawn had his name on a plate on his desk, because doctors are very busy and can’t remember everything.
***
After all, what could a master criminal buy? There was a shortage of seaside properties with real lava flows near a reliable source of piranhas, and the world sure as hell didn’t need another Dark Lord, not with Gilt doing so well. Gilt didn’t need a tower with ten thousand trolls camped outside. He just needed a ledger and a sharp mind. It worked better, was cheaper and he could go out and party at night.
***
Vetinari’s expression was getting on Moist’s nerves. You know, he thought. I know you know. You know I know you know. But I know you can’t be certain, not certain. ‘Well... there was an angel,’ he said.
***
‘Commander Vimes has given me some succinct reports of today’s events,’ he said, putting down the troll figure he was holding and turning over a few sheets of paper. ‘Beginning with the riot at the Grand Trunk offices this morning which, he says, you instigated... ?’
‘All I did was volunteer to deliver such clacks messages as had been held up by the unfortunate breakdown,’ said Moist. ‘I didn’t expect the idiots in their office to refuse to hand the messages back to their customers! People had paid in advance, after all. I was just helping everyone in a difficult time. And I certainly didn’t “instigate” anyone to hit a clerk with a chair!’
***
He could feel that old electric feeling, the one you got deep inside when you stood right there in front of a banker who was carefully examining an example of your very best work. The universe held its breath, and then the man would smile and say ‘Very good, Mr Assumed Name, I will have my clerk bring up the money right away.’ It was the thrill not of the chase but of the standing still, of remaining so calm, composed and genuine that, for just long enough, you could fool the world and spin it on your finger. They were the moments he lived for, when he was really alive and his thoughts flowed like quicksilver and the very air sparkled. Later, that feeling would present its bill. For now, he flew.
***
‘The hero has to come out with the cat. The cat doesn’t have to be alive—’
***
But fire was sneaky stuff, he knew. It sat there and smouldered until you opened the door to see how it was getting on, and then the fire caught its breath and your eyeballs got soldered to your skull.
***
I ain’t a clever man like them up on the towers. Hah, I’m stupid enough to keep my feet on the ground!
***
Across a continent, the line of light, beads on the pre-dawn darkness. And, then, the Hour of the Dead begins, at either end of the Grand Trunk, as the upline and downline shutters clear their messages and stop moving, one after the other.
The men of the towers had prided themselves on the speed with which they could switch their towers from black and white daylight transmission to the light and dark mode of the night. On a good day they could do it with barely a break in transmission, clinging to swaying ladders high above the ground while around them the shutters rattled and chattered. There were heroes who’d lit all sixteen lamps on a big tower in less than a minute, sliding down ladders, swinging on ropes, keeping their tower alive. ‘Alive’ was the word they used. No one wanted a dark tower, not even for a minute.
The Hour of the Dead was different. That was one hour for repairs, replacements, maybe even some paperwork. It was mostly replacements. It was fiddly to repair a shutter high up on the tower with the wind making it tremble and freezing the blood in your fingers, and always better to swing it out and down to the ground and slot another one in place. But when you were running out of time, it was tempting to brave the wind and try to free the bloody shutters by hand.
Sometimes the wind won. The Hour of the Dead was when men died.
***
The Post Office was the underdog, and an underdog can always find somewhere soft to bite.