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Mort
by
Terry Pratchett

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Mort

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Mort Copyright © 1987 by Terry Pratchett
Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Reannuals are plants that grow backwards in time. You sow the seed this year and they grow last year. Mort’s family specialised in distilling the wine from reannual grapes. These were very powerful and much sought after by fortune-tellers, since of course they enabled them to see the future. The only snag was that you got the hangover the morning before, and had to drink a lot to get over it. Reannual growers tended to be big, serious men, much given to introspection and close examination of the calendar. A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment.	Topics: Drink Time Travel
In short, Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.
The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles—kingons, or possibly queons—that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.
Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.	Topic: Cities
Albert grunted. “Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?” Mort thought for a moment. “No,” he said eventually, “what?” There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, “Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ’em right.”
He knew about kings. Once a year a band of strolling players, or at any rate ambling ones, came to Sheepridge and the plays they performed were invariably about kings. Kings were always killing one another, or being killed. The plots were quite complicated, involving mistaken identity, poisons, battles, long-lost sons, ghosts, witches and, usually, lots of daggers. Since it was clear that being a king was no picnic it was amazing that half the cast were apparently trying to become one.	Topic: Royalty
This was rich country, full of silt and rolling cabbage fields and neat little kingdoms whose boundaries wriggled like snakes as small, formal wars, marriage pacts, complex alliances and the occasional bit of sloppy cartography changed the political shape of the land.	Topic: Boundaries
THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.
She wasn’t exactly beautiful, being over-endowed in the freckle department and, frankly, rather on the skinny side. But the sight of her caused a shock that hot-wired Mort’s hindbrain and drove it all the way to the pit of his stomach, laughing nastily.	Topic: Love
“Beneficent constellations shine on the hour of our meeting!” it boomed. “Which ones?” said Mort. There was a sudden worried silence. “Pardon?” “Which constellations would these be?” said Mort. “Beneficent ones,” said the figure, uncertainly.
“In a figurative sense,” he said. “What does that mean?” “Well, it means no,” said Cutwell. “But you said—” “That was advertising,” said the wizard. “It’s a kind of magic I’ve been working on.”	Topic: Advertising
“I mean you sound as though you want to die.” “There’s some things I shall miss,” she said. “But it gets thin, you know. Life, I’m referring to. You can’t trust your own body any more, and it’s time to move on. I reckon it’s about time I tried something else.”	Topic: Dying
“And they was kings in those days, real kings, not like the sort you get now. They was monarchs [...] I mean, they was wise and fair, well, fairly wise. And they wouldn’t think twice about cutting your head off as soon as look at you,” he added approvingly.
History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It’s been around a long time.	Topic: History
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.	Topic: Democracy
Although the scythe isn’t pre-eminent among weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants’ revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. Once its owner gets it weaving and spinning no-one—including the wielder—is quite certain where the blade is now and where it will be next.	Topic: Weaponry
text checked (see note) Nov 2009

Mort

Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.

But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

Reannuals are plants that grow backwards in time. You sow the seed this year and they grow last year.

Mort’s family specialised in distilling the wine from reannual grapes. These were very powerful and much sought after by fortune-tellers, since of course they enabled them to see the future. The only snag was that you got the hangover the morning before, and had to drink a lot to get over it.

Reannual growers tended to be big, serious men, much given to introspection and close examination of the calendar. A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment.

Topics:

Drink

Time Travel

In short, Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.

The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles—kingons, or possibly queons—that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.

Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.

Topic:

Cities

Albert grunted. “Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?”

Mort thought for a moment.

“No,” he said eventually, “what?”

There was silence.

Then Albert straightened up and said, “Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ’em right.”

He knew about kings. Once a year a band of strolling players, or at any rate ambling ones, came to Sheepridge and the plays they performed were invariably about kings. Kings were always killing one another, or being killed. The plots were quite complicated, involving mistaken identity, poisons, battles, long-lost sons, ghosts, witches and, usually, lots of daggers. Since it was clear that being a king was no picnic it was amazing that half the cast were apparently trying to become one.

Topic:

Royalty

This was rich country, full of silt and rolling cabbage fields and neat little kingdoms whose boundaries wriggled like snakes as small, formal wars, marriage pacts, complex alliances and the occasional bit of sloppy cartography changed the political shape of the land.

Topic:

Boundaries

THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.

She wasn’t exactly beautiful, being over-endowed in the freckle department and, frankly, rather on the skinny side. But the sight of her caused a shock that hot-wired Mort’s hindbrain and drove it all the way to the pit of his stomach, laughing nastily.

Topic:

Love

“Beneficent constellations shine on the hour of our meeting!” it boomed.

“Which ones?” said Mort.

There was a sudden worried silence.

“Pardon?”

“Which constellations would these be?” said Mort.

“Beneficent ones,” said the figure, uncertainly.

“In a figurative sense,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means no,” said Cutwell.

“But you said—”

“That was advertising,” said the wizard. “It’s a kind of magic I’ve been working on.”

Topic:

Advertising

“I mean you sound as though you want to die.”

“There’s some things I shall miss,” she said. “But it gets thin, you know. Life, I’m referring to. You can’t trust your own body any more, and it’s time to move on. I reckon it’s about time I tried something else.”

Topic:

Dying

“And they was kings in those days, real kings, not like the sort you get now. They was monarchs [...] I mean, they was wise and fair, well, fairly wise. And they wouldn’t think twice about cutting your head off as soon as look at you,” he added approvingly.

History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It’s been around a long time.

Topic:

History

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

Topic:

Democracy

Although the scythe isn’t pre-eminent among weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants’ revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. Once its owner gets it weaving and spinning no-one—including the wielder—is quite certain where the blade is now and where it will be next.

Topic:

Weaponry

text checked (see note) Nov 2009

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fromMortbyTerry Pratchett

from
Mort
by
Terry Pratchett