The Truth (Discworld 25)

'I don't know,' he admitted. I suppose it's because I'm no good at anything else. Now I can't imagine doing anything else.'

'But I heard your family's got pots of money.'

'Mr Goodmountain, I'm useless. I was educated to be useless. What we've always been supposed to do is hang around until there's a war and do something really stupidly brave and then get killed. What we've mainly done is hang on to things. Ideas, mostly.'

'You don't get on with them, then.'

'Look, I don't need a heart-to-heart about this, can you understand? My father is not a nice man. Do I have to draw you a picture? He doesn't much like me and I don't like him. If it comes to that, he doesn't like anyone very much. Especially dwarfs and trolls.'

'No law says you have to like dwarfs and trolls,' said Goodmountain.

'Yes, but there ought to be a law against disliking them the way he does.'

'Ah. Now you've drawn me a picture.'

'Maybe you've heard the term "lesser races"?'

'And now you've coloured it in.'

'He won't even live in Ankh-Morpork any more. Says it's polluted.'

'That's observant of him.'

'No, I mean--'

'Oh, I know what you mean,' said Goodmountain. 'I've met humans like him.'

'You said this was all about money?' said William. 'Is that true?'

The dwarf nodded at the ingots of lead stacked up neatly by the press. 'We wanted to turn lead into gold,' he said. 'We'd got a lot of lead. But we need gold.'

William sighed. 'My father used to say that gold is all dwarfs think about.'

'Pretty much.' The dwarf took another pinch of snuff. 'But where people go wrong is... see, if all a human thinks about is gold, well, he's a miser. If a dwarf thinks about gold, he's just being a dwarf. It's diffrent. What do you call them black humans that live in Howondaland?'

'I know what my father calls them,' said William. 'But I call them "people who live in Howondaland".'

'Do you really? Well, I hear tell there's one tribe where, before he can get married, a man has to kill a leopard and give the skin to the woman? It's the same as that. A dwarf needs gold to get married.'

'What... like a dowry? But I thought dwarfs didn't differentiate between--'

'No, no, the two dwarfs getting married each buy the other dwarf off their parents.'

'Buy? said William. 'How can you buy people?'

'See? Cultural misunderstanding once again, lad. It costs a lot of money to raise a young dwarf to marriageable age. Food, clothes, chain mail... it all adds up over the years. It needs repaying. After all, the other dwarf is getting a valuable commodity. And it has to be paid for in gold. That's traditional. Or gems. They're fine, too. You must've heard our saying "worth his weight in gold"? Of course, if a dwarf's been working for his parents that gets taken into account on the other side of the ledger. Why, a dwarf who's left off marrying till late in life is probably owed quite a tidy sum in wages - you're still looking at me in that funny way

'It's just that we don't do it like that...' mumbled William.

Goodmountain gave him a sharp look. 'Don't you, now?' he said. 'Really? What do you use instead, then?'

'Er... gratitude, I suppose,' said William. He wanted this conversation to stop, right now. It was heading out over thin ice.

'And how's that calculated?'

'Well... it isn't, as such...'

'Doesn't that cause problems?'