Turtle Recall Part 13

Which, rather neatly, leads on to the subject of Ephebian food and drink. In short, Ephebians make wine out of anything they can put in a bucket, and eat anything that can't climb out of one. They will drink wine which varnishes the inside of the throat and sometimes their food will try to hold on to the plate. (Plate-smas.h.i.+ng is a tradition at the end of an Ephebian meal, although it may be a better idea to smash them beforehand.) Ephebe has been called 'the cradle of democracy', and it is true that Ephebian democracy could do with its nappy changed. The Ephebians believe that every man should have the vote providing he isn't poor or a slave or foreign or disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous or a woman.

The voters (1,300 of them) go to the polls every five years to elect the Tyrant, who is more or less the supreme ruler for his period of office. In order to be considered for election a candidate for Tyrant must prove beyond doubt that he is pure in thought, word and deed, with no stain whatsoever on his character. Once elected it is a.s.sumed by everyone that he is a criminal madman.

Candidates for Tyrants.h.i.+p are elected by the placing of black or white b.a.l.l.s in various urns, thus giving rise to a well-known comment about politics.

A note on slavery: slaves make up more than half of Ephebe's population. Periodically someone suggests that they should be freed, but there is always a tremendous outcry. It comes from the slaves themselves, who have several times risen in revolt against the very idea. The reason lies in the particular status of slaves vs free men in Ephebian society. A free man is, clearly, free free to sleep in the rain, free to starve, free to suffer whatever vicissitudes the world might drop upon his manumitted head. No one is there to care for a free man. A free man is free to drop dead.

Whereas there are rules for slaves, established over a thousand years. Slaves get three meals a day, at least one with named meat in it. And one day off a week. And two weeks being-allowed-to-run-away every year (it is generally understood that a proper master will pay for his slave to come back from wherever it is he or she has run away to). A slave may not be beaten without a chance to appeal to the Tyrant, and the mistreatment of slaves is a grave crime. A slave is, after all, property. Respect for property is the cornerstone of democracy.

A slave does, of course, have to work, although not work like a slave.

After twenty years as a slave he can automatically become a free man, but most slaves take one look at what freedom entails and, despite the entreaties of a master who may well be living on olive pits in order to feed his household, sign up again for another twenty years.

Slavery would in fact be a huge drain on the economy of Ephebe were it not for the fact that it hasn't got one. The sun s.h.i.+nes, ripening the olives and the grapes, there are fish in the sea, there doesn't seem to be any really pressing reason to do anything much except sit and think, and so Ephebe ambles amiably from day to day.

Special notes for the visitor to Ephebe: do not be surprised to see naked old men, dripping wet, trotting through the streets. Most of the really serious philosophising in Ephebe is done in the bath, and the birth of a new idea will often lead the bather to spring away crying 'Eureka!' (literally, 'Give me a towel!') to start work on the theorem right away.

Barrels will be seen dotted around the streets. This is where the philosophers traditionally live, in order to show their disregard of matters in the mundane world. In order to show their love of comfort, however, the barrels are often very large, with enough room for a sauna.

Erasmus. Great-uncle of Mrs CAKE. Sometimes used to eat his meals under the table on account of werewolf blood. [ RM ]

Eric. (See THURSLEY, ERIC.) Errol. Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm, and technically a pedigree dragon. His sire was Treebite Brightscale, a prize-winner bred by the then Lady Sybil RAMKIN. But it was clear right from the egg that Errol was something unusual. He had a pear-shaped body and a head like an anteater, with nostrils like jet intakes, two tiny spiky ears and a pair of eyebrows almost the same size as his stubby wings, which should never have supported him in the air. He was named Errol by Corporal n.o.bBS, because of a supposed resemblance to his brother (Corporal n.o.bbs's, not the dragon's.) In fact Errol, dismissed as a whittle (or runt), turned out to be, according to the most modern thinking, a throwback to the original s.p.a.ce-faring dragons; his genes remembered what could be done with a streamlined body, small wings and a very hot flame, if only the flames could be persuaded to, er, come out of the other end. [GG]

Esk. Eskarina Smith. Daughter of Gordo SMITH. Eight years old and four feet tall, she has long brown hair and a gap in her front teeth, and the sort of features that promise to become, if not beautiful, then at least attractively interesting. She is the eighth child of an eighth son, and was handed, at birth, the wizard's staff belonging to Drum BILLET. She was the first female to be admitted to Unseen University. And the last, so far as records show. Current whereabouts unknown, for many years until she emerged, with white hair in a ponytail, wrinkles and wearing heavy stiff clothing and big boots in the events of I Shall Wear Midnight. She lives in the UU Unreal Estate and can walk through time and make it take orders from her. [ER, ISWM]

Evil-Minded Son of a b.i.t.c.h. Camel who appeared in the moving pictures. Probably the most intelligent mind in Holy Wood. [MP]

Evil-Smelling b.u.g.g.e.r. Renowned as the greatest camel mathematician of all time, and yet he spent his entire sad life carrying cargoes of dates and being hit with a stick by a man who couldn't count to twenty without looking at his sandals. [P]

Expletius. Ephebian philosopher who proved that the Disc is 10,000 miles wide. A lucky guess. More than twenty other philosophers proved that the Disc varied in size from infinite to 'too small to see' and, since they turned out to be wrong, Expletius got the Top Brain award. [SG]

Ezeriel. One-time Queen of KLATCH. Every young student of history knows that Ezeriel had a lot of lovers and died when she sat on a snake and used to bathe in a.s.ses' milk (they seldom know any more than this). She is a distant ancestor of KELI, which suggests that royalty around the CIRCLE SEA, as in Europe, followed the mix'n'match approach to royal weddings. [M]

Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm Fairies. As so often is the case on Discworld, any attempt at a precise description of the nature and role of fairies is bound to raise a crop of exceptions. They are not a species. The Tooth Fairies are human, although with ex officio special powers to enable them to remain unseen as they go about their essential business, but many other fairies appear to be dwarfs, gnomes, animals or even invisible.

Basically, they are a job description. A fairy is there to perform some specific, minor task take away unwanted teeth, brings boils and warts, see that you never have enough paperclips, steal the last wafer-thin After Dinner mint and so on. The mere act of belief will, in a sufficiently charged environment, summon one into existence. In fact the strangest of them all is the GLINGLEGLINGLEGLINGLE FAIRY, whose sole job it is to make, via some hand bells, the cheap and tinselly 'glingleglingleglingle' noise that precedes the appearance of a fairy or any act of fairy magic.

It is said that every time a bell rings a fairy gets a pair of wings, which means that there have been a lot more fairies since the invention of alarm clocks.

False, Praise & Salvation. False is a derivation of the original Klatchian name, Thala.s.sa. He is a breeder of complicated chickens. [SN]

Famine. An anthropomorphic personification. One of the Four Hors.e.m.e.n of the APOCRALYPSE. Arrogant, and always hungry. Technically, Famine, like PESTILENCE, was a Horseman created by humanity; Death has always been around, and ants and apes wage war. There have always been droughts and locusts, but for a really good famine, for fertile land to be turned into a dustbowl by stupidity and avarice, you need humans.

Fantailler, Marquis of. The Marquis got into so many fights in his youth (mostly as a result of being called the Marquis of Fantailler) that he decided to write a set of rules for what he called the 'n.o.ble art of fisticuffs', which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren't allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with n.o.ble chest outthrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn't read the Marquis' book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were, 'stuff the b.l.o.o.d.y Marquis of Fantailler . . .'

Far-re-ptah. Past Queen of DJELIBEYBI. Grandmother of TEPPICYMON XXVII. A strict and fearsome old woman who was, however, known as 'Grandma Pooney' to TEPPIC. [P]

Fasta Benj. A fisherman from a small nation of marsh-dwelling nomads near OMNIA, who were unknown to the world at large and entirely bypa.s.sed by history until by sheer chance his little boat was swept up by the multi-national fleet sent to destroy that country. His only recorded contribution to the very short Omnian war was a hopeful attempt to sell raw fish to all parties. Nevertheless, as a representative of a sovereign nation he went home with his own share of the spoils, which included the secret of fire and the use of metals. [SG]

Fate. Another anthropomorphic personification. A friendly-looking man in late middle age, with greying hair brushed neatly around features that a maiden would confidently proffer a gla.s.s of small beer to, should they appear at her back door. It is a face a kindly youth would gladly help over a stile. Except for the eyes, of course . . . while at a mere glance they are simply dark, a closer look reveals that they are holes opening on to a blackness so remote, so deep that the watcher feels himself inexorably drawn into the twin pools of infinite night and their terrible, wheeling stars. [COM]

Febrius. Ephebian philosopher. He proved that light travels at about the same speed as sound, in his famous 'Give us a shout when you see it, OK?' experiment involving two hills, a lantern with a movable cover over it and an a.s.sistant with a very loud voice. [SG]

Felmet, Lady. Wife of Leonal, Duke FELMET. A powerful and impressive woman who could not abide slackness or weakness and regarded the whole universe as something to bully. She had a big red face with thick eyebrows and a stubbly chin, and wore red velvet dresses that matched her complexion. Possibly eaten to death by rabbits and other fluffy creatures in the forests of LANCRE. [WS]

Felmet, Leonal, Duke. Murdered his cousin, King VERENCE I of LANCRE. An insect of a man with a thin face and heavily beringed hands, he had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

He was married for twenty years to the ma.s.sive Lady FELMET, whom he wed largely because he was fascinated by power, of which she was practically the embodiment. Fell to his death into the river Lancre. [WS]

Fiddler's Riddle. An unpleasant inn in Ohulan Cutash. No self-respecting goat can endure the smell in the Fiddler's Riddle. It was here that Eskarina Smith turned a barrel of plum brandy into milk. [ ER ]

Fido, Big. Chief Barker of the DOG GUILD. A small and rather dainty white poodle with the overgrown remains of a poodle cut and wearing a diamante collar. Big Fido was, to hijack a convenient phrase, barking mad apparently driven to this state one day by the realisation that everything around him (his bowl, his collar, his kennel, his blanket) had his name on it. He ate his blanket, savaged his owner and ran off. The madness seemed to tap some deep pit of primordial rage in his soul which enabled him to fight and kill dogs much larger and theoretically much stronger than him, and thus he became the acknowledged leader of the feral dogs of Ankh-Morpork. To them he expounded, at length and with much excited farting and foaming when he talked, his Dream: that all dogs were wolves at heart, and needed only to band together to overthrow humanity (the 'Master' race) and reclaim their ancient heritage. [MAA]

Fingers, Brother. Member of the ELUCIDATED BRETHREN OF THE EBON NIGHT. He used to work as an odd-job man at Unseen University, but was better known to the City WATCH as Bengy 'Lightfoot' Boggis, of the famous thieving family. [GG]

Firefighters' Guild. Not in existence long enough to develop a motto or a coat of arms. Outlawed by the PATRICIAN after many complaints. If you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and firefighters would go to prospective clients' houses in groups, making loud comments like 'Very inflammable looking place, this,' and 'Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly dropped match, know what I mean?' Since the disbanding of the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Firefighters the incidence of fires has gone down considerably. [GG]

First, Legitimate. Resident gravedigger at the Cemetery of Small G.o.ds in Ankh-Morpork. Known as 'Leggie', he is a black-clad, skinny figure. He owes his rather unusual first name to a mother's natural pride. [NW]

Fiz. Cartoonist at the Ankh-Morpork Times. [MR]

Flannelfoot, Zlorf. Past President of the a.s.sa.s.sINS' GUILD, and of rather earthier origins than many of its later members. Broad, honest face, a welter of scar tissue, the result of many a close encounter. Said by some that he chose a profession in which dark hoods, cloaks and nocturnal prowlings predominated because, it was said, there was a day-fearing trollish streak in his parentage. People who repeated this in earshot of Zlorf tended to carry their ears home in their hats. [COM]

Flead, Professor, the Late. A member of the Department of Post Mortem Communications at Unseen University. He has been dead for 300 years, but willed his soul to the University. He appears as a robed, pointy-hatted, bearded, elderly wizard, with a silvery monochrome effect and some slight transparency. [MM]

Fliemoe. A student at the a.s.sa.s.sINS' GUILD, and a bit of a bully. [P]

Flitworth, Renata. Skinny, short-sighted, aged seventy-five, with a face the colour and texture of a walnut. Miss Flitworth never had the chance even to become a widow because of the death of her intended in an avalanche just before their wedding, but she overcame a tendency to mope about this and got on with life in a determined, no-nonsense sort of way. She owned a farm in the plains below the RAMTOPS, not far from SHEEPRIDGE.

Her main claim to fame was as the employer of Bill DOOR (DEATH), who was sufficiently impressed by her to allow her soul to remain in the world just long enough to attend the long-looked-forward-to harvest dance. [RM]

Flora of the Disc. The Discworld has a rich and unusual variety of plants. These include: Achorion Purple [P]

Aphacia wood [SG]

Bindweed, Purple [TOT]

Bloodwater Lily [ER]

Choke apples [COM]

Climbing Elderberry [NOCB]

Climbing Henry & Twirling Betty [ISWM]

Creeping Foxglove [NOCB]

Creeping Shrillflower [NOCB]

Devil's Bit Scabious [WA]

Dropley's Etiolated Bladderwrack [J]

Dum-dum [RM]

Earwort [ER]

False Gentian [HFOS]

Fellwort, Woolly [WS]

Field Sowthistle [TOT]

Floribunda Mrs Shover (a rose) [RM]

Forget-me-Lots (pretty red and white flower) [ISWM]

Gherkins, Water [ER]

Goat's Beard, Yellow [TOT]

Ice Plant [TOT]

Jack-Jump-Into-Bed [ISWM]

Kzak fruit [M]

Love-in-a-Pickle [ISWM]

Love-Lies-Panting [NOCB]

Maiden's Puzzle [NOCB]

Maiden's Wish [ER]

Mandrake, Five-Leaved False [WS]

Maniac [RM]

Mouse Cress [NOCB]

Mustick [P]

Nervousa gloriosa [RM]

Nettle-Leaved Forthright [NOCB]

Nose Dropwort [HFOS]

Old Maids A-Plenty [NOCB]

Old Man's Frogbit [WS]

Old Man's Trousers [ER]

Peahane, Greater [ER]

PINES, COUNTING.

Purple Bindweed (Love-in-a-Spin) [SM]

Pyramid Strangler Vine [TLC]

Ragged-Leaved Trefoil [NOCB]

Sago-Sago Tree [H]

Sandwort, Red [TOT]

SAPIENT PEARWOOD.

Sapu tree (carnivorous tree of Sumtri) [TLC]

Scarlet Bellweed [NOCB]

Seven-leafed Clover [ISWM]

Sledgehammer Plant (Bhangbhangduc) [TLC]

Snake's Head [WA]

Spikkle [RM]

Syphacia bush [P]

Three Times Charlie [ISWM]

Toad Spurge [NOCB]

Uloruaha bush [COM]

WAHOONIE.

Wamwam Tree [TOT]

Wasp Agaric [P]

Water Dropwort [NOCB]