Walking the Disc

onwardmotley asked:

As it is still the Glorious 25th (for another hour here) could you post the quote about how Ankh-Morpork is a process, and how Winder and Snapcase didn't see that, and how without the little wheels the whole system breaks down?

Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent their life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed……and gave back the dung from its pens and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions and ideas and interesting vices, songs and knowledge and something which, i looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That’s what civilization meant. It meant the city.[…]Was anyone important thinking about this? Suddenly the machine was wobbling, but Winder and his cronies didn’t think about the machine, they thought about money. Meat and drink came from servants. They happened.Vetinari, Vimes realized, thought about this sort of thing all the time. The Ankh-Morpork back home was twice as big and four times as vulnerable. He wouldn’t have let something like this happen. Little wheels must spin so that the machine can turn, he’d say. But now, in the dark, it all spun on Vimes. If the man breaks down, it all breaks down, he thought. The whole machine breaks down. And it goes on breaking down. And it breaks down the people.

The figure drew the sword back, but it was too late. Terror’s own more subtle knife had done its work. Winder’s face was crimson, his eyes were staring at nothing, and coming up from the throat, through the crumbs of cake, was a sound that merged a creak with a sigh. The dark figure lowered its sword, watched for a moment in the echoing silence, and then said: “Boo.” It reached out one gloved hand and gave the Patrician a push. Winder went over backwards, his plate dropping from his hand and shattering on the tiles. The Assassin held his bloodless sword at arm’s length and let it drop on the floor beside the corpse. Then he turned and walked slowly back across the marble floor. He shut the double doors behind him, and the echoes died away. Madam counted slowly to ten before she screamed. That seemed long enough.