Read Online The Truth by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

“No, Arnold. You can use the money to buy as many old—”
    There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews, and the rest of the crew went very still. When Altogether Andrews was quiet for a while, you never knew who he was going to be.
    There was always the possibility that it would be Burke.
    “Can I ask a question?” said Altogether Andrews, in a rather hoarse treble.
    The crew relaxed. That sounded like Lady Hermione. She wasn’t a problem.
    “Yes…Your Ladyship?” said Gaspode.
    “This wouldn’t be… work , would it?”
    The mention of the word sent the rest of the crew into a fugue of stress and bewildered panic.
    “Haaaruk…gak!”
    “Bugrit!”
    “Quack!”
    “No, no, no,” said Gaspode hurriedly. “It’s hardly work, is it? Just handing out stuff and takin’ money? Doesn’t sound like work to me.”
    “I ain’t working!” shouted Coffin Henry. “I am socially inadequate in the whole area of doing anything!”
    “We do not work,” said Arnold Sideways. “We is gentlemen of les-u-are.”
    “Ahem,” said Lady Hermione.
    “Gentlemen and ladies of les-u-are,” said Arnold gallantly.
    “This is a very nasty winter. Extra money would certainly come in handy,” said the Duck Man.
    “What for?” said Arnold.
    “We could live like kings on a dollar a day, Arnold.”
    “What, you mean someone’d chop our heads off?”
    “No, I—”
    “Someone’d climb up inside the privy with a red-hot poker and—”
    “No! I meant—”
    “Someone’d drown us in a butt of wine?”
    “No, that’s dying like kings, Arnold.”
    “I shouldn’t reckon there is a butt of wine big enough that you couldn’t drink your way out of it,” muttered Gaspode. “So, what about it, masters? Oh, and mistress, o’course. Shall I—shall Ron tell that lad we’re up for it?”
    “Indeed.”
    “Okay.”
    “Gawwwark…pt!”
    “Bugrit!”
    They looked at Altogether Andrews. His lips moved, his face flickered. Then he held up five democratic fingers.
    “The ayes have it,” said Gaspode.

    Mr. Pin lit a cigar. Smoking was his one vice. At least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. The others were just job skills.
    Mr. Tulip’s vices were also limitless, but he owned up to cheap aftershave because a man has to drink something . The drugs didn’t count, if only because the only time he’d ever got real ones was when they’d robbed a horse doctor and he’d taken a couple of big pills that had made every vein on his body stand out like a purple hosepipe.
    The pair were not thugs. At least, they did not see themselves as thugs. Nor were they thieves. At least, they never thought of themselves as thieves. They did not think of themselves as assassins. Assassins were posh, and had rules. Pin and Tulip—the New Firm, as Mr. Pin liked to refer to them—did not have rules.
    They thought of themselves as facilitators . They were men who made things happen, men who were going places.
    It has to be added that when one says “they thought” it means “Mr. Pin thought.” Mr. Tulip used his head all the time, from a distance of about eight inches, but he was not, except in one or two unexpected areas, a man given much to using his brain. On the whole, he left Mr. Pin to do the polysyllabic cogitation.
    Mr. Pin, on the other hand, was not very good at sustained, mindless violence, and admired the fact that Mr. Tulip had an apparently bottomless supply. When they had first met, and had recognized in each other the qualities that would make their partnership greater than the sum of its parts, he’d seen that Mr. Tulip was not, as he appeared to the rest of the world, just another nut job. Some negative qualities can reach a pitch of perfection that changes their very nature, and Mr. Tulip had turned anger into an art.
    It was not anger at anything. It was just pure, platonic anger from somewhere in the reptilian depths of the soul, a fountain of never-ending red-hot grudge; Mr. Tulip lived his life on