“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 that, so fair enough… cats?”

“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”

“Dwarfs? It says here ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold is an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened there?”

“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 colour blue?”

“Correct, sir.”

“What’s abominable about the colour blue? It’s just a colour! 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 of 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?”