Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett [6]
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s