Diggers
Authors: Terry Pratchett
PRATCHETT
DIGGERS
Excerpt from The Bromeliad Trilogy: Wings
I
N THE BEGINNING
. . .
. . . Arnold Bros (est. 1905) created the Store.
At least, that was the belief of thousands of nomes who for many generations
*
had lived under the floorboards of Arnold Bros (est. 1905), an old and respected department store.
The Store had become their world. A world with a roof and walls.
Wind and Rain were ancient legends. So were Day and Night. Now there were sprinkler systems and air conditioners, and their small crowded lives ticked to the clock of Opening Time and Closing Time. The seasons of their year were January Sales, Spring Into Spring Fashions, Summer Bargains, and Christmas Fayre. Led by the Abbot and priesthood of the Stationeri, they worshippedâin a polite, easy-going sort of way, so as not to upset himâArnold Bros (est. 1905), who they believed had created everything, i.e. the Store and all the contents therein.
Some families of nomes had grown rich and powerful and took the namesâmore or lessâof the Store departments they lived under . . . the Del Icatessen, the Ironmongri, the Haberdasheri.
And into the Store, on the back of a truck, came the last nomes to live Outside. They knew what wind and rain were, all right. That's why they'd tried to leave them behind.
Among them was Masklin, rat-hunter, and Granny Morkie and Grimma, although they were women and didn't really count. And, of course, there was the Thing.
No one quite understood the Thing. Masklin's people had handed it down for centuries; it was very important, that was all they knew. When it came near the electricity in the Store it was able to talk. It said it was a thinking machine from a ship which, thousands of years before, had brought the nomes from a far Store, or possibly star. It also said it could hear electricity talk, and one of the things the electricity was saying was that the Store would be demolished in three weeks.
It was Masklin who suggested that the nomes leave the Store on a truck. He found, oddly enough, that actually working out how you could drive a giant truck was the easiest part. The hardest part was getting people to believe that they could do it.
He wasn't the leader. He'd have liked to be a leader. A leader could stick his chin out and do brave things. What Masklin had to do was argue and persuade and, sometimes, lie very slightly. He found it was often easier to get people to do things if you let them think it was their idea.
Ideas! That was the tricky bit, all right. And there were lots of ideas that they needed. They needed to learn to work together. They needed to learn to read. They needed to think that female nomes were, well, nearly as intelligent as males (although everyone knew that really this was ridiculous and that if females were encouraged to think too much their brains overheated).
Anyway, it all worked. The truck did leave the Store just before it mysteriously burned down and, hardly damaging anything very much, was driven out into the country.
The nomes found an abandoned quarry tucked into a hillside, and moved into the ruined buildings. And then, they knew, everything was going to be All Right. There was going to be, they'd heard, a Bright New Dawn.
Of course, most nomes had never seen a dawn, bright or otherwise, and if they had they would have known that the trouble with bright new dawns is that they're usually followed by cloudy days. With scattered showers.
Six months passed. . . .
This is the story of the Winter.
This is the Great Battle.
This is the story of the awakening of Big John, the Dragon in the Hill, with eyes like great eyes and a voice like a great voice and teeth like great teeth.
But the story didn't end there.
It didn't start there, either.
The sky blew a gale. The sky blew a fury. The wind became a wall sweeping across the country, a giant stamping on the land. Small trees bent, big trees broke. The last leaves of autumn whirred through the air like lost bullets.
The trash heap by the gravel pits was deserted. The seagulls that patrolled it had found shelter somewhere, but it was still full of movement.
The wind tore into the heap as though it had something particular against old detergent boxes and leftover shoes. Cans rolled into the ruts and clanked miserably, while lighter bits of rubbish flew up and joined the riot in the sky.
Still the wind burrowed. Papers rustled for a while, then got caught and blasted away.
Finally, one piece that had been flapping for hours tore free and flew up into the booming air. It looked like a large white bird with oblong wings.
Watch it tumble. . . .
It gets caught on a fence, but very briefly. Half of it tears off and now, that much lighter, it pinwheels across the furrows of the field beyond. . . .
It is just gathering speed when a hedge looms up and snaps it out of the air like a fly.
I. And in that time were Strange Happenings: the Air moved harshly, the Warmth of the Sky grew Less, on some mornings the tops of puddles grew Hard and Cold.
II. And the nomes said unto one another, What is this Thing?
From
The Book of Nome,
Quarries Chap. 1, v. IâII
“W
INTER
,”
SAID
M
ASKLIN
firmly. “It's called winter.”
Abbot Gurder frowned at him.
“You never said it would be like
this
,” he said. “It's so
cold
.”
“Call this cold?” said Granny Morkie. “Cold? This ain't cold. You think this is cold? You wait till it gets really cold!” She was enjoying this, Masklin noticed; Granny Morkie always enjoyed doomâit was what kept her going. “It'll be really cold then, when it gets cold. You get
real
frosts and, and water comes down out of the sky in frozen bits!” She leaned back triumphantly. “What d'you think to that, then? Eh?”
“You don't have to use baby talk to us.” Gurder sighed. “We
can
read, you know. We know what snow is.”
“Yes,” said Dorcas. “There used to be cards with pictures on, back in the Store. Every time Christmas Fayre came around. We know about snow. It's glittery.”
“You get robins,” agreed Gurder.
“There's, er, actually there's a bit more to it than that,” Masklin began.
Dorcas waved him into silence. “I don't think we need to worry,” he said. “We're well dug in, the food stores are looking satisfactory, and we know where to go to get more if we need it. Unless anyone's got anything else to raise, why don't we close the meeting?”
Everything was going well. Or, at least, not very badly.
Oh, there was still plenty of squabbling and rows between the various families, but that was nomish nature for you. That's why they'd set up the Council, which seemed to be working.
Nomes liked arguing. At least the Council of Drivers meant they could argue without hitting one anotherâor hardly ever.
Funny thing, though. Back in the Store, the great departmental families had run things. But now all the families were mixed up and, anyway, there were no departments in a quarry. But by instinct, almost, nomes liked hierarchies. The world had always been neatly divided between those who told people what to do and those who did it. So, in a strange way, a new set of leaders was emerging.
The Drivers.
It depended on where you had been during the Long Drive. If you were one of the ones who had been in the truck cab, then you were a Driver. All the rest were just Passengers. No one talked about it much. It wasn't official or anything. It was just that the bulk of nomekind felt that anyone who could get the Truck all the way here was the sort of person who knew what they were doing.
