“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” The Patrician raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion. “It seems to me,” he went on, taking advantage of the brief pause, “that what we have here is a strictly magical phenomenon. I would like to hear from our learned friend on this point. Hmm?”
Someone nudged the Archchancellor of Unseen University, who had nodded off.
“Eh? What?” said the wizard, startled into wakefulness.
“We were wondering,” said the Patrician loudly, “what you were intending to do about this dragon of yours?”
The Archchancellor was old, but a lifetime of survival in the world of competitive wizardry and the byzantine politics of Unseen University meant that he could whip up a defensive argument in a split second. You didn’t remain Archchancellor for long if you let that sort of ingenuous remark whizz past your ear.
“My dragon?” he said.
“It’s well known that the great dragons are extinct,” said the Patrician brusquely. “And, besides, their natural habitat was definitely rural. So it seems to me that this one must be mag—”
“With respect, Lord Vetinari,” said the Archchancellor, “it has often been claimed that dragons are extinct, but the current evidence, if I may make so bold, tends to cast a certain doubt on the theory. As to habitat, what we are seeing here is simply a change of behavior pattern, occasioned by the spread of urban areas into the countryside which has led many hitherto rural creatures to adopt, nay in many cases to positively embrace, a more municipal mode of existence, and many of them thrive on the new opportunities thereby opened to them. For example, foxes are always knocking over my dustbins.”
He beamed. He’d managed to get all the way through it without actually needing to engage his brain.
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, 1989.
August 27, 2025
QotD: A critical bureaucratic talent
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