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tribute: Pyramids

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@@ -1554,16 +1554,215 @@ The past used to be a lot better than it is now.
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%title Pyramids (2)
%passage 1
The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to practice before
doing it for real.
%title Pyramids (11)
# p. 218 (ROC edition)
%passage 1 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
What a chap needed at a time like this was a sign, some sort of book of
instructions. The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to
practice before doing it for real.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 128 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
%passage 2
Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a
human being to be really stupid.
Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a
human being to be really stupid.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 9-10 ('tlingas' is accurate)
%passage 3
It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in
their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them
when you were badly dressed.
Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last
penny, and was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was
pretty good.
At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he'd
been in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his
eyes.
He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them
on. Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades
darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken
from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed
throwing /tlingas/ were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A
thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the
chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped
down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin container with an
assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for
ease of selection in the dark.
He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his
right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an
afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask
of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger,
a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles.
Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire.
He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at
himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 30
%passage 4
He'd always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough
to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to
accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind,
but only so that he could avoid it whenever possible: he had contrived a
room that could actually be colder than the weather outside.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 92
%passage 5
A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he
thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it's true
that there are billions of universes stacked along side one another, the
thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.
But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how
magnificent the effort, they surely can't manage to be as godawfully stupid
as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with,
but over hundreds of thousands of years we've really improved on it.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 96 (Ptaclusp the pyramid builder, sons Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIb)
%passage 6
Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for
the amount of breath expended in saying "Good morning", and another one who
worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You
scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and
paid you back by getting educated.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 136
%passage 7
It's a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such
thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is
apparently part of the job spec.
High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the
implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they're
issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea
monsters and throwing little babies in the sea.
This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high
priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their
best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or
flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they're
getting it absolutely right.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 206-208 (text has 'that's now it happened'; 'now' changed to 'how' here)
%passage 8
Copolymer, the greatest storyteller in the history of the world, sat back
and beamed at the greatest minds in the world, assembled at the dining
table.
Teppic had added another iota to his store of new knowledge. 'Symposium'
meant a knife-and-fork tea.
"Well," said Copolymer, and launched into the story of the Tsortean Wars.
"You see, what happened was, /he'd/ taken /her/ back home, and her
father--this wasn't the old king, this was the one before, the one with the
wossname, he married some girl from over Elharib way, she had a squint,
what was her name now, began with a P. Or an L. One of them letters,
anyway. Her father owned an island out on the bay there, Papylos I think
it was. No, I tell a lie, it was Crinix. /Anyway/ the king, the other
king, he raised an army and they.... Elenor, that was her name. She had
a squint, you know. But quite attractive, they say. When I say married,
I trust I do not have to spell it out for you. I mean, it was a bit
unofficial. Er. Anyway, there was this wooden horse and after they'd got
in... Did I tell you about this horse? It was a horse. I'm pretty sure
it was a horse. Or maybe it was a chicken. Forget my own name next! It
was wossname's idea, the one with the limp. Yes. The limp in his leg, I
mean. Did I mention him? There'd been this fight. No, that was the other
one, I think. Yes. Anyway, this wooden pig, damn clever idea, they made
it out of thing. Tip of my tongue. Wood. But that was later, you know.
The fight! Nearly forgot the fight. Yes. Damn good fight. Everyone
banging on their shields and yelling. Wossname's armour shone like shining
armour. Fight and a half, that fight. Between thingy, not the one with
the limp, the other one, wossname, had red hair. /You/ know. Tall fellow,
talked with a lisp. Hold on, just remembered, he was from some other
island. Not him. The other one, with the limp. Didn't want to go, he
said he was mad. Of course, he /was/ bloody mad, definitely. I mean, a
wooden cow! Like wossname said, the king, no not that king, the other one,
he saw the goat, he said 'I fear the Ephibeans, especially when they're mad
enough to leave bloody great wooden livestock on the doorstep, talk about
nerve, they must think we was born yesterday, set fire to it,' and, of
course, wossname had nipped in round the back and put everyone to the
sword, talk about laugh. Did I say she had a squint? They said she was
pretty, but it takes all sorts. Yes. Anyway, that's how it happened.
/Now/, of course, wossname--I think he was called Melycanus, had a limp--he
wanted to go home, well, you would, they'd been there for /years/, he
wasn't getting any younger. That's why he dreamt up the thing about the
wooden wossname. Yes. I tell a lie, Lavaelous was the one with the knee.
Pretty good fight, that fight, take it from me."
He lapsed into self-satisfied silence.
"Pretty good fight," he mumbled and, smiling faintly, dropped off to sleep.
Teppic was aware that his own mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Along
the table several of the diners were wiping their eyes.
"Magic," said Xeno. "Sheer magic. Every word a tassle on the canopy of
Time."
"It's the way he remembers every tiny detail. Pin sharp," murmured Ibid.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 211
%passage 9
"I'd love to stay and listen to you listening to me all day," he said.
"But there's a man over there I'd like to see."
"That's amazing," said Endos, making a short note and turning his attention
to a conversation further along the table. A philosopher had averred that
although truth was beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was
breaking out. Endos listened carefully.(1)
(1) The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is
well known that most people don't listen. They use the time when someone
else is speaking to think of what they're going to say next. True Listeners
have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity
value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find,
or at least hard to find twice.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 278 (perhaps ought to end this one with the first paragraph...)
%passage 10
In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few
inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This
was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take
place /even though no-one is actually looking at it/.
And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.
It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart
ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one
another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them
struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way,
and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small
mountain of rubble.
Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite a long time.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 280 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
%passage 11
Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
@@ -7072,7 +7271,7 @@ IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT...
# Death Quotes are always one line, and '%e passage' can be omitted.
#
%section Death
%title Death Quotes (22)
%title Death Quotes (23)
%passage 1
WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.
%e passage
@@ -7153,6 +7352,9 @@ I SAID WAS. IT'S CALLED THE PAST TENSE. YOU'LL SOON GET USED TO IT.
# p. 13
%passage 22
DON'T LET IT UPSET YOU.
# Pyramids, p. 57 (ROC edition)
%passage 23
I CAN SEE THAT YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT.
%e title
%e section
#