And nor did you. I wonder why?'
'1 . . . do you know, I don't know?'
'I should never have made it. It was merely an application of principles. Ballistics, you know. Simple aerodynamics. Chemical power. Some rather good alloying, although I say it myself. And I'm rather proud of the rifling idea. I had to make a quite complicated tool for that, you know. Milk? Sugar?'
'No, thank you.'
'People are searching for it, I trust?'
'The Assassins are. But they won't find it. They don't think the right way.' The Patrician picked up a pile of sketches of the human skeleton. They were extremely good.
'Oh, dear.'
'So I am relying on the Watch.'
'This would be the Captain Vimes you have spoken of.'
Lord Vetinari always enjoyed his occasional conversations with Leonard. The man always referred to the city as if it was another world.
'Yes.'
'I hope you have impressed upon him the importance of the task.'
'In a way. I've absolutely forbidden him to undertake it. Twice.'
Leonard nodded. 'Ah. I . . . think I understand. I hope it works.'
He sighed.
'I suppose I should have dismantled it, but . . . it was so clearly a made thing. I had this strange fancy I was merely assembling something that already existed. Sometimes I wonder where I got the whole idea. It seemed . . . I don't know . . . sacrilege, I suppose, to dismantle it. It'd be like dismantling a person. Biscuit?'
'Dismantling a person is sometimes necessary,' said Lord Vetinari.
'This, of course, is a point of view,' said Leonard da Quirm politely.
'You mentioned sacrilege,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Normally that involves gods of some sort, does it not?'
'Did I use the word? I can't imagine there is a god of gonnes.'
'It is quite hard, yes.'
The Patrician shifted uneasily, reached down behind him, and pulled out an object.
'What,' he said, 'is this?'
'Oh, I wondered where that had gone,' said Leonard. 'It's a model of my spinning-up-into-the-air machine.'[20]
Lord Vetinari prodded the little rotor.
'Would it work?'
'Oh, yes,' said Leonard. He sighed. 'If you can find one man with the strength of ten men who can turn the handle at about one thousand revolutions a minute.'
The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension.
'Now there is in this city,' he said, 'a man with a gonne. He has used it successfully once, and almost succeeded a second time. Could anyone have invented the gonne?'
'No,' said Leonard. 'I am a genius.' He said it quite simply. It was a statement of fact.