Turtle Recall Part 20

Launch Controller. Official of KRULL who was responsible for the planning of the launch of the Potent Voyager from Krull. He was a practical magician, rather than a diplomat. [COM]

Lavaeolus. The finest military mind on the continent of KLATCH. When first seen, he was wearing tarnished armour and a grubby cloak. The helmet plume looked as though it had been used as a paintbrush. He was skinny, with all the military bearing of a deckchair.

His genius consisted of realising that, if there has to be a war, the aim should be to defeat the enemy as quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible a concept so breathtaking in its originality that few other military minds have been able to grasp it, and it shows what happens when you take the conduct of a war away from skilled soldiers.

He was a hero of the Tsortean Wars, which he ended by bribing a cleaner to show him a secret pa.s.sage into the citadel of TSORT. So not many people actually died during its capture, which means it couldn't have been that much of a victory, really.

It is possible that he is an ancestor of RINCEWIND. [P, E]

Lavatory, Sir Charles. Owner of C. H. Lavatory & Son, Mollymog Street, Ankh-Morpork, and president of the PLUMBERS' GUILD. Invented the first really efficient flushing toilet, which was therefore named after him. Of course, flushing a lavatory in Ankh-Morpork is not likely to make things any better.

A remarkable parallel with Thomas c.r.a.pper, the Victorian sanitary engineer who also lent his name to the more modern version of the privy (although the term 'c.r.a.pper' in that sense dates back at least to the sixteenth century. Perhaps Thomas got teased a lot at school and decided that if he was going to bear this name through life, then he'd d.a.m.n well see to it that it was one to be proud of). [SM]

Lavish, Cosmo. Step-son of Topsy Lavish and brother to Pucci Lavish (from whom he was forbidden, by court injunction from coming within twenty yards). He has made a detailed study of Lord Vetinari and is one of his biggest admirers.

Cosmo Lavish is cool, or at least makes a spirited effort to be so. He wears black, of course, as people do to show how rich they are, but the real giveaway is the beard. It is, technically, a goatee, but so exotic that it would have to be a very rare sort of goat, that maybe lived on high vertical cliff and had wool so fine that you'd have to shave five of them before you could knit a scarf. A thin line of black hair comes down each cheek, makes a detour to loop equally thinly under the nose and meets in a black triangle just below the lip, thus giving what Cosmo must have thought was a look of menacing elegance but in fact creates the effect of a pubic chin.

It is a high maintenance beard, even so. It isn't the beard of a man who has to get to work in a hurry. Some master barber has to deal with it hair by hair every day, and his job isn't made any easier by the fact that Cosmo has inflated somewhat since the day he adopted the style. There is a time in a thoughtless young man's life when his sixpack becomes a keg, and now the elegant facial topiary floats unhappily on a layer of fat. Cosmo is heavy bearded, too, so his jowls are usually blue. And yes, little tiny beads of sweat glint amongst the stubble.

And then you see the eyes, and they make up for everything. They have the faraway look of a man who can already see you dead . . . [MM]

Lavish, Pucci. Step-daughter of Topsy Lavish and sister to Cosmo Lavish who views her as a fiend in technically human shape. She is forbidden, by court injunction, from coming within fifteen yards of Cosmo. Pucci has a voice like a saw encountering a nail, with a slight additional touch of foghorn and is always referred to as 'a society beauty', which shows just how rich the Lavishes are. Cut in half, she might make two society beauties but not, at that point, very beautiful ones. While it is said that men she had spurned jumped off bridges in despair, the only person known to have said this is Pucci herself.

She is a 'large girl' and is blessed with beady, suspicious little eyes and a generous upper lip which combine with the long neck to put the honest observer in mind of a duck who's just been offended by a pa.s.sing trout.

Someone should have told her that black is not her colour, that the expensive fur could have looked better on its original owners, that if you are going to wear high heels then this week's fashion tip is don't wear sungla.s.ses at the same time because when you walk out of the bright sunlight into the relative gloom of, say, a bank, you will lose all sense of direction and impale the foot of one of your own bodyguards. Someone should have told her, in fact, that true style comes from within. You can't buy it. Pucci can flounce better than a fat turkey on a trampoline. [MM]

Lavish, Topsy, Mrs. (Nee Turvy) Widow of Sir Joshua Lavish and step-mother to Pucci and Cosmo. She was a very small, very elderly, grey-haired woman with thin little hands. Moist VON LIPWIG cla.s.ses her as a 'Mark I Feisty Old Lady', turkey neck, embarra.s.sing sense of humour, a gleeful pleasure in mild cruelty, direct way of speaking that flirts with rudeness and, more importantly, also flirts with flirting. Game for anything that doesn't carry the risk of falling over and with a look in her eye that says 'I can do what I like, because I am old.' She used to own or control 51 per cent of the shares in the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork and she was the original owner of Mr FUSSPOT. [MM]

Lawn, Dr Mossy. Doctor Lawn lived in Twinkle Street, Ankh-Morpork but has moved to premises in Goose Gate, which he intends to open as a hospital. Wears the traditional long black robe and silly floppy hat, but has some radical new ideas about washing hands and keeping patients alive even beyond the time needed to get paid. Lawn's customers are at the bottom end of Ankh-Morpork society, in several senses. He is the unofficial doctor to the SEAMSTRESSES' GUILD and, now, to Her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess of Ankh-Morpork. It's amazing how rich you can become if you're in the right place with the right skills at the right time. [NW]

Law of Unequal Returns. A growing cause of friction in Ankh-Morpork. Let us say the rate for a job is five dollars a day. To a dwarf, the five dollars is worth rather more because, although dwarfs have much the same appet.i.tes as humans, they have much reduced accommodation expenses. This has always been noticed but has not led to much trouble; it is the recent influx of gnomes and goblins that has really brought the problem to light.

In trades like watchmaking and rat-catching, for example, very small people are not only at an advantage but in practical terms their wages are worth a lot more.

A dollar buys a man a big loaf. To him it is a meal. The same loaf at the same price is, to a gnome, bread for a week and can also be hollowed out to make temporary accommodation for his family. In occupations where small size and tiny fingers are a positive advantage (engraving, fine lacemaking and so on) gnomes can both undercut human compet.i.tion and yet live very stylishly.

There is clearly going to be trouble.

Laws of Ankh-Morpork. There aren't any.

Well . . .

Not entirely true. There aren't any now, except in the almost iconographic memory of Captain CARROT of the City WATCH. There are Guild laws, administered by the various Guilds and often the cause of friction between them (see VETINARI, LORD), but laws in the modern sense have gone out of fashion in the last several hundred years. The city is not, however, lawless. It more or less runs on the 'Patrician's Rules'. Lord Vetinari takes the unvoiced view that most citizens are guilty of something, or just generally guilty in a low-grade way. If there is a crime, then there ought to be seen to be a punishment; if the punishment can involve the actual perpetrator of the crime then this is a happy state of affairs, but it is not essential. Anything that threatens the city in any way be it a man, a philosophy or a device is 'against the law'.

Beyond that, Lord Vetinari believes in a common or natural law; if a man can sell short-weight bread and get away with it, then get away with it he does. If, however, his defrauded customers decide to nail him to his own ceiling, then that is fine, too.

The known and somewhat fossilised laws of Ankh-Morpork are: Being b.l.o.o.d.y Stupid Act, 1581 Decency Ordinances, 1389 Dignity of Man (Civil Rights) Act, 1341 Domestic & Domesticated Animals (Care & Protection) Act, 1673 Gambling (Regulations) Acts General Felonies Act, 1678 Industrial Processes Act, 1508 Licensed Premises (Hygiene) Acts, 1433, 1456, 1463, 1465 and 1470-1690 Privacy Act, 1467 Projectile Weapons (Civil Safety) Act, 1634 Public Ale Houses (Opening) Act, 1678 Public Forgatherings (Gambling) Act, 1567 Public Order Act, 1457 They are listed merely for completeness.

THE SYSTEM OF JUSTICE.

1. Criminal Justice.

As explained, there is none.

Although the current system in Ankh-Morpork consists almost entirely of 'Guild Justice' enforced by the city's Guilds, it is still the case that criminals taken by the Watch may opt to stand for trial before the PATRICIAN.

The accused may, if they have money, employ a member of the Guild of Lawyers (motto: LVCRE SERMAT [Money Talks]) to speak on their behalf. If they wish to be found not guilty they will often need large reserves of money. The long-held principle is very clear the more money you have, the more likely you are to be innocent. This is considered right and proper by the Guild, because rich people are an a.s.set to society and there are far too many poor people around in any case, and they're probably all criminals.

If the accused has no money, then their only hope is if the Patrician decides in their favour. He quite often does so, because he finds it instructive to all concerned.

As indicated elsewhere, there is no formal system of criminal law in the city. Nor is there any recognised scale of punishment. Imprisonment is viewed as a school for criminals and a drain on the state, and so therefore most punishments are a fine or a flogging. There are a number of specialised punishments, of which the scorpion pit is the best known, but for offences of a s.e.xual nature, particularly against minors, the usual recourse is the traditional tree, jar of honey and herd of cows.

Occasionally but rarely other ancient punishments are resurrected for deserving cases. A cla.s.sic one is tying the offender to one of the pillars of the Bra.s.s Bridge at low tide and untying him twenty-four hours later, at which point he is free to go.

The death penalty is usually reserved for treachery to the city, continuing to commit murder after being told not to, irredeemable stupidity while not being a troll, and persistent street theatre.

2. Civil Justice.

A state whose citizens are as perennially indignant and argumentative as are Ankh-Morpork's is bound to have a thriving Civil bench, and this is where the Guild of Lawyers make their real money. Cases are usually heard before a Court of Magisters (for poor people) or before a senior member of the Guild who has been appointed by the Patrician to serve as a judge.

(Since this is a fixed salary post, this means that the appointee suffers an effective drop in income, barring bribes, of course. Thus appointment to the role of judge is usually used by the Patrician as a form of mild rebuke to lawyers who have failed him in one way or another.) 3. The Historical System.

In the very early days of Ankh-Morpork justice was dispensed by the ARCHCHANCELLOR'S Court (see UNSEEN UNIVERSITY). There then followed a system set up under the city's monarchy, and many of today's traditions and t.i.tles date from that period. A three-tier system of justice prevailed: i. Small cases, involving the common citizens, would be heard by the Court of Magisters (or Justices of the King's Peace), made up of men of the city's ruling cla.s.ses. These JKPs would carry a nosegay into court, to ward off the offensive smell of the lower orders. As Ankh-Morpork got bigger, sometimes three or four people were needed to carry the flowers.

ii. Larger cases, involving the wealthier members of society, would be pleaded on their behalf by trained legal experts from the Guild of Lawyers. These experts, known as pleaders (who wore robes with a purse sewn into the upper-left back, so that their fee could be dropped in without them having to be seen handling filthy lucre), carried the t.i.tle of Serjeant (a corruption of their old t.i.tle of servientes Regis ad legem). They were the only people ent.i.tled to plead cases before one of the King's Judges. The King's Judges were reputed to be the finest judges that money could buy and they were often employed by other kings and queens in the STO PLAINS.

iii. Ultimate recourse was to the King, who would hear their pleadings in the Rats Chamber (so called because of the fresco of dancing rats painted on its ceiling). A vestige of this system still prevails in that the Patrician is the last court of appeal.

Reference is still made to the 'Inns of Court'. These were the ale-houses surrounding the Court House from which accused people would try to entice drunken lawyers with offers of hard cash.

The Ankh-Morpork Armoury COURTS AND PRISONS.

The old and derelict Ankh-Morpork Court House was taken over by the THIEVES' GUILD as their headquarters in the time of Lord Vetinari. Large and probably profitable court cases are now heard in a courtroom within the Guild of Lawyers.

There used to be a large prison (now private houses) around Sybil Lane near Hen and Chickens Field. The field got its name from the frequent processions to the gallows there, when the priest of choice would walk ahead of the gaggle of warders and accused, like 'a hen and her chicks'. This is how proper old cities name their places; they wouldn't dream of calling something First Avenue just because they'd got a lot of avenues and it was the first.

For the few individuals it is necessary to lock up, the modern prison, originally a royal palace called Tintement but now known as The Tanty, is on the Rim Bank. Its current head warder is an enlightened man who practises an intensive counselling and caring approach, subsequent to which many prisoners apply briskly for the cow and honey cure.

Lawsy Family. Mrs Angeline is the widow of a Mr Lawsy, an eel juggler. Their offspring, Henry, who works as a clerk in the firm of Morecombe, Slant and Honeyplace, is actually the result of a liaison with Henry SLUGG. [M!!!!!]

Legba. A large, black c.o.c.kerel. Familiar of Mrs GOGOL. [WA]

Legibus. An Ephebian philosopher and author of Geometries. A little man with a beard you could camp out in. He is quite old, and resembles a frog which has been dried out for some time. Something about him generally makes people think of the word 'spry'. [SG]

LeJean, Lady Myria. Originally an AUDITOR of Reality, she adopted human form to undertake a task for the Auditors. She was later named 'Unity' by Susan STO HELIT. In human form, she has long black hair cascading over her shoulders and she is quite attractive, in a monochromatic sort of way. Strictly speaking, she was an Auditor sent to learn more about being human; what she learned, in summary, was that she never wanted to go back to being an Auditor. Oh . . . and that there was such a thing as chocolate.

Lemon, Satchelmouth. The recruiting and enforcement officer for the Musicians' Guild, Ankh-Morpork. [SM]

Leonard of Quirm. (Aka Leonard da Quirm.) A painter and inventor; the greatest Discworld technological genius of all time. He had a house in the Street of Cunning Artificers, Ankh-Morpork, but currently resides in an attic in the PATRICIAN'S PALACE.

This may be considered cruel, but in many ways it is quite impossible to imprison someone like Leonard. Give him enough wood, wire, paints, drawing materials, food, a potty and a window through which he can watch the birds and it's unlikely that he will even notice. It's a large attic, airy and bright and cheerful with sunlight from windows in the roof. It's a sort of cross between a workshop and a store room. Several bird skeletons hang from the ceiling; there are other bones on the work tables, along with coils of wire and metal springs and tubes of paint and more tools many probably unique than you normally see in any one place. There is also a narrow bed, wedged between a thing like a loom with wings and a large bronze statue.

In appearance, he is clearly one of those people who started to look old around the age of thirty. He is not exactly bald. He has a lot of hair, long and curly and reaching almost to his shoulders. And he has a beard large enough to conceal a small chicken. His head has just grown up through his hair.

One of his achievements is the well-known painting the Mona Ogg (her teeth are said to follow you round the room), currently in the PATRICIAN'S collection. It is believed that Nanny OGG had not as yet visited Ankh-Morpork when this work was first brought to our attention; this may be some other Ogg which, considering the fecundity of the Ogg tribe, is quite likely. However, there have also been hints that the young Leonard went on sketching holidays in the mountains during his youth, and there is no doubt that if he had ever been within ten miles of the young Gytha Ogg he would have heard about her.

Leonard's genius lies in seeing inherent in the common world the obvious things that men have never seen before. He is obsessively interested in everything. Yet within the vast amber of his genius is locked the tiny insect of what would be called, in a lesser man, stupidity. He watches the swirl of water over weirs, the intricate movements of musculature, the gliding of birds and the play of light through prisms and, then, fills up notebook after notebook with ingenious devices for killing whole cities by means of hot oil, explosions, etc. He has never in his life harmed a living creature, and would be greatly surprised and terribly shocked to think that anyone would take these doodles (with their carefully numbered components and cutaway diagrams) seriously. Inventions of his, lying unnoticed in obscure places or drawn as idle sketches in the margins of otherwise unremarkable books, lie around Ankh-Morpork like razor blades in a ham sandwich.

It has to be added that one reason that Leonard's inventions have not totally changed the face of the world is, probably, that he finds it hard to deal with the relative importance of things. He will expend as much time on designing a new hinge as he will on some vast scheme for extracting sunlight from oranges.

He also has a strange attention span. He does not quickly lose interest in things. In fact, he remains greatly interested in all sorts of things, all the time, which leads him down all kinds of side alleys while the ostensible main invention gets neglected. For him there is, as it were, no difference between designing the t.i.tanic and designing the deckchairs.

For example, Leonard's invention of the internal combustion engine has been delayed for some years while he works on the problem of how to make dice fluffy. But when a flying machine capable of reaching the highest mountain on the Disc was urgently needed, he designed it in a day, and that included two hours developing the Frying-Pan-that-Sticks-to-Everything.

Leshp, Bra.s.s Gongs of. The legendary Bra.s.s Gongs can be heard far out in the CIRCLE SEA on stormy nights, as the currents stir the drowned towers of the city of Leshp, three hundred fathoms below. [M]

Let.i.tia. Let.i.tia Keepsake. Daughter of the d.u.c.h.ess of Keepsake and fiancee to ROLAND. A colourless, fragile girl, with very blond hair and blue eyes. She wears a silly lacy dress and seriously impractical tiny white shoes. She has definite magical skills. Her family live at Keepsake Hall, at the far end of the Chalk. [ISWM]

Level, Miss. A witch, who lives in 'the Cottage in the Woods, Near the Dead Oak Tree in Lost Man's Lane, High Overhang, If Out Leave Letters In Old Boot By Door'. Her garden is full of ornaments sad, cheap ones bunny rabbits with mad grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggest they are on bad medication.

She is a research witch, who tries to find new spells by learning how old ones were really done. There are, were, two of her she is/was one person in two bodies. She has/had a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. She could go shopping and stay home at the same time. She is like one person with four arms and four legs and four eyes. And two noses. Her right body was slightly clumsier than her left body, but she had better eyesight in her right pair of eyes. If there's a gap of more than twenty miles or so between her two bodies, she gets rather clumsy.

She has long grey hair, and she is quite tall, just slightly overweight and she wears lots of necklaces and her gla.s.ses on a chain. She wears all black, with black jewellery and surprisingly high-heeled boots. Her trick broom is disguised as a bundle of firewood. Her pointy hat is only 9" high, to avoid having to duck in low-ceilinged rooms.

Her mother died shortly after she was born, and her father was at sea and never came back. She ran away to join the circus as Topsy & Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act (also the Stupendous Bokunkus Sisters). At one time, she walked out with Marco & Falco, the Flying Pastrami Brothers (really called Sidney & Frank Cartwright). [HFOS]

Lezek. MORT'S father. Bearded, shorter than his son, he made a haphazard living as a farmer. [M]

Liartes. Brother of LIO!RT Dragonlord and LIESSA Dragonlady, and son of GREICHA the First, Lord of the WYRMBERG. [COM]

Librarian. The Librarian of Unseen University is an orang-utan. This was not always the case. He was magically transformed by the events chronicled in The Light Fantastic but since then no member of the University staff can remember who he was beforehand. In addition, a page was torn out of the relevant year book; no one knows why, or why the place was marked with a banana skin. There is a rumour that the Librarian was once Dr Horace Worblehat, B. Thau, D.M., but no one utters this out loud. Dr Worblehat is dimly remembered as being quiet, polite and generally the kind of person you cannot remember in the school photo. He was born in Moon Pond Lane, Ankh-Morpork, next to the saddle-makers.

It is clear that whoever and whatever he once was the Librarian is now blissfully happy in himself, reckoning that the prehensile toes and extra-long arms are very helpful in his role. In a sense, say the wizards, it is as though he always was the Librarian and whatever inoffensive human shape he had for the first several decades of his life, he was merely marking time until he could become his own self.

In looks he has the red-haired-rubber-sack-filled-with-water look of a very well grown (300lb) male, although he has not developed the overlarge cheek pads that are a feature of a dominant male orang. This is because he is not, strictly, a dominant male he is an ex-officio member of the college council and a member of the faculty and he therefore quite rightly regards the ARCHCHANCELLOR as the dominant male, even though the Archchancellor does not often sit high up in trees with a large leaf on his head.

Habits and habitat: he has a book-lined nest in a cubby-hole under the desk in the middle of the Library. He hides there under his tattered blanket when he is worried. He appears to want nothing more than soft fruit, a regular supply of index cards and the opportunity, every month or so, to hop over the wall of the PATRICIAN'S private menagerie. (This is a puzzle. There are no orangs in the menagerie. Nor are there any other kinds of ape.) He is generally naked but he does wear an old green robe when he's had a bath or modesty really requires it.

The Librarian is, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular get on his nerves. There is something sacrilegious about the way people keep taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He likes people who love and respect books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian's opinion, is to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

In short, he is a useful and well-respected member of the University staff, his only failing being a tendency to educative violence if referred to as a 'monkey'. During the evenings he can often be found enjoying a quiet pint and, if the landlord is not wary, every single bowl of peanuts in the Mended DRUM, where his iron grip and ability to swing from the rafters adds an extra dimension of terror to bar-room brawls.

Libraries, nature of. Even big collections of ordinary books distort s.p.a.ce and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter.

The relevant equation is: Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Ma.s.s; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Ma.s.s distorts s.p.a.ce into polyfractal L-s.p.a.ce, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else.

All libraries everywhere are connected in L-s.p.a.ce by the bookwormholes created by the strong s.p.a.ce-time distortions found in any large collection of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact because it amounts to time travel.

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and s.p.a.ce are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown, and 3) the nature of causality must not be interfered with. (See also BOOKS and INVISIBLE WRITINGS.) Library, the. Books play a major role in the Discworld. In Discworld reality as well as in general magical theory the Name is often nearly identical to the Thing itself; to know the Name is to control the Thing. Books on the Discworld often do far more than merely record its history and the concerns of its inhabitants; they often are the script on which the unfolding drama is based.

Books can also be affected by their contents, and a book containing powerful magic spells can become, for all practical purposes, alive.

The Library at Unseen University therefore has to deal with problems rather greater than readers writing 'Rubbish!' in the margins and using slices of bacon as a bookmark.

From the outside, the Library of Unseen University is a low, brooding building, with high, narrow, barred windows and a gla.s.s dome high above its centre. There clearly is a centre, because it is quite possible for someone to walk from the door to the middle of the floor.

However, all four of the standard dimensions are, in this place, plaited like soft clay by the presence of the very high thaumic field generated by the magic in the books coupled with the pressure on s.p.a.ce-time from the books themselves. Because of the distortions caused by the vast amount of a.s.sembled knowledge, the Library has a diameter of about 100 yards but an infinite radius. The interior is 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. The floor seems to become the wall in the distance, shelves play tricks on the eyes and seem to twist through more dimensions than the usual three. There are even some shelves up on the ceiling.

The Library is the greatest a.s.semblage of magical texts anywhere in the multiverse; over 90,000 volumes weigh down its shelves. (This may not sound like many, but it should be borne in mind that most of the books are fully two feet high and six inches thick and some are much larger. And these are merely the magical books. The Library also houses an uncounted number of less volatile texts, in the occult sense at any rate; indeed, if the L-s.p.a.ce theories are correct, the Library contains every book everywhere, including the ones that never actually got written.) Magic is volatile. A spell may be pinned to the page like a b.u.t.terfly, but it still tries to escape, to have form, to take control, to be said. In a sense, the books in Unseen University's library are semi-alive. At UU, your homework could eat the dog.

Great care has to be taken to ensure that this magic causes no harm. As the raw magic crackles from the spines of the magical books, it earths itself harmlessly in the copper rails nailed to every shelf for that very purpose.

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 around.

Faint traceries of blue fire crawl across the bookcases and there is a sound, a papery whispering, such as might come from a colony of roosting starlings. In the silence of the night, the books talk to one another.

It is always warm in the Library, because the magic that produces the OCTARINE glow also gently cooks the air.

In the lower levels are the maximum security shelves where the rogue books are kept the books whose behaviour or mere contents demand a whole shelf, a whole room, to themselves. Cannibal books. Books which will read you rather than the other way about. Books which, if left on a shelf with their weaker brethren, would be found in a 'Revised, Enlarged and Smug Edition' in the morning.

Down in these dark tunnels, behind heavily barred doors, are also kept the, er, erotic books, in vats of crushed ice. Also kept in the Library of Unseen University is the OCTAVO, originally in the possession of the CREATOR of the Discworld.

And, as indicated before, there is L-s.p.a.ce. Somewhere beyond the common shelves lies an entire library universe, peopled by creatures that have evolved in the immense biobibliographical field, such as kickstool crabs and the wild thesaurus. It should be possible eventually to find your way into any other library at any point in time, and it is known that the LIBRARIAN made use of this feature to rescue some of the more interesting works from the burning library of EPHEBE (in Small G.o.ds).

New readers are required to make the following declaration.

DECLARATION TO BE READ ALOUD WHEN ASKED.

'I, Speak Your Name, hereby undertake not to remove without permission from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, doc.u.ment, or other object belonging to it or use inappropriate force in fighting back any such volumes as may from time to time attack me; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame be it magical or otherwise, and not to smoke or expectorate or explode or levitate above 2' in the Library; to refrain, to the best of my abilities, from spontaneously combusting in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library and any which may, from time to time, be added by the Librarian, whose judgement on all matters relating to the operation of the Library is final and if necessary terminal. I further promise to read and inwardly digest any doc.u.ments that are drawn to my attention attesting to the difference between those creatures commonly referred to as "monkeys" and the higher apes, accepting further that being allowed to do so is a concession on the part of the Librarian and that holding my head two inches from the page is an aid to reading and then repeatedly banging it on the table is a valuable aid to memory.'

Various legends are linked to UU's library. There is the persistent story of the Lost Reading Room, for example. Wise students in search of more distant volumes take care to leave chalk marks on the shelves, and tell friends to come looking for them if they're not back for supper.

Even wiser students don't go in at all.

Liessa Wyrmbidder. Liessa Dragonlady. Lady of the WYRMBERG. Sister to LIO!RT and LIARTES and daughter of GREICHA the First. She is a magnificent sight, with waist-length red hair, flecked with gold. She is almost naked, apart from a couple of mere sc.r.a.ps of the lightest chain mail, and riding boots of iridescent dragon-hide. In one boot is thrust a riding crop unusual in that it is as long as a spear and topped with tiny steel barbs. She has a slim, black dagger in her belt. She is heavily into jewellery, with a diamond spangle in her navel, tiger-rubies adorning her toe-rings, and large, incredibly rare blue-milk diamonds adorning the rings on her fingers. They just don't make heroines like her any more. For one thing, they force them to wear more clothes. [COM]

Light Dams. Some of the tribes in the Great NEF region construct mirror walls in the desert mountains to collect the Disc sunlight, which they then use as a currency. This is possible because of the strange nature of light in the Discworld's magical field. [M]

Light, nature of. As far as can be determined, there are now four distinct types of light on the Disc. For the sake of discussion they could be called common light, meta-light, dark light and 'the light fantastic'.

Meta-light is almost an idea rather than a phenomenon. It is the light by which darkness can be seen, and therefore is always available, everywhere. If it didn't exist, darkness could not be visible. It is widely used in the film industry for shots in caves and mines.

Common light undergoes some important changes in the Discworld's vast and ancient magical field. It slows down considerably (and variably, but generally to about the speed of sound) and, at the same time, becomes very slightly heavier than air and also by a.s.sumption soluble. (It pools in deep valleys but has gone by midnight, so it either sinks into the ground or is soluble in darkness.) The speed of common light was established by FEBRIUS, the Ephebian philosopher.

The combined effect of these changes can be seen by watching a Discworld day from a convenient point in s.p.a.ce. The disc is 10,000 miles across. The sunlight strikes point A and proceeds towards point B at about 600 mph, producing a rather pleasing effect similar to an incoming tide. When it strikes a mountain range (C) it piles up on the dawn side, so that dawn will be postponed in the 'light shadow' of the mountain until either the light flows over the top or around the sides.

The light fantastic is perhaps best evidenced by the dull, sullen light which fills the room where the OCTAVO is kept. Not strictly light at all but the opposite of light. Darkness is not the opposite of light, it is simply its absence. The light fantastic is the light that lies on the far side of darkness.