Interesting Times d-17 Read online

  "How much do you think he weighs?"

  Rincewind's eyebrows raised. The woman looked down shyly.

  "You may be wondering why we are all blonde and white-skinned when everyone else in the islands around here is dark," she said. "It just seems to be one of those genetic things."

  "About 120, 125 pounds. Put another pound or two of junk on the heap. Er. Can you detect… you know… IT?"

  "This is all going to go wrong, Mr Stibbons, I just know it."

  "He's only six hundred miles away and we know where we are, and he's on the right half of the Disc. Anyway, I've worked this out on Hex so nothing can possibly go wrong."

  "Yes, but can anyone see… that… you know… with the… feet?"

  Rincewind's eyebrows waggled. A sort of choking noise came from his throat.

  "Can't see… it. Will you lot stop huffing on my crystal ball?"

  "And, of course, if you were to come with us we could promise you… earthly and sensual pleasures such as those of which you may have dreamed…"

  "All right. On the count of three—"

  The coconut dropped away. Rincewind swallowed. There was a hungry, dreamy look in his eyes.

  "Can I have them mashed?" he said.

  "NOW!"

  First there was the sensation of pressure. The world opened up in front of Rincewind and sucked him into it.

  Then it stretched out thin and went twang.

  Cloud rushed past him, blurred by speed. When he dared open his eyes again it was to see, far ahead of him, a tiny black dot.

  It got bigger.

  It resolved itself into a tight cloud of objects. There were a couple of heavy saucepans, a large brass candlestick, a few bricks, a chair and a large brass blancmange mould in the shape of a castle.

  They hit him one after the other, the blancmange mould making a humorous clang as it bounced off his head, and then whirled away behind him.

  The next thing ahead of him was an octagon. A chalked one.

  He hit it.

  Ridcully stared down.

  "A shade less than 125 pounds, I fancy," he said. "All the same… well done, gentlemen."

  The dishevelled scarecrow in the centre of the circle staggered to its feet and beat out one or two small fires in its clothing. Then it looked around blearily and said, "Hehehe?"

  "He could be a little disorientated," the Archchancellor went on. "More than six hundred miles in two seconds, after all. Don't give him a nasty shock."

  "Like sleepwalkers, you mean?" said the Senior Wrangler.

  "What do you mean, sleepwalkers?"

  "If you wake sleepwalkers, their legs drop off. So my grandmother used to aver."

  "And are we sure it's Rincewind?" said the Dean.

  "Of course it's Rincewind," said the Senior Wrangler. "We spent hours looking for him."

  "It could be some dangerous occult creature," said the Dean stubbornly.

  "With that hat?"

  It was a pointy hat. In a way. A kind of cargo-cult pointy hat, made out of split bamboo and coconut leaves, in the hope of attracting passing wizardliness. Picked out on it, in seashells held in place with grass, was the word WIZZARD.

  Its wearer gazed right through the wizards and, as if driven by some sudden recollection of purpose, lurched abruptly out of the octagon and headed towards the door of the hall.

  The wizards followed cautiously.

  "I'm not sure I believe her. How many times did she see it happen?"

  "I don't know. She never said."

  "The Bursar sleepwalks most nights, you know."

  "Does he? Tempting…"

  Rincewind, if that was the creature's name, headed out into Sator Square.

  It was crowded. The air shimmered over the braziers of chestnut sellers and hot potato merchants and echoed with the traditional street cries of Old Ankh-Morpork.[7]

  The figure sidled up to a skinny man in a huge overcoat who was frying something over a little oil-heater in a wide tray around his neck.

  The possibly-Rincewind grabbed the edge of the tray.

  "Got… any… potatoes?" it growled.

  "Potatoes? No, squire. Got some sausages inna bun."

  The possibly-Rincewind froze. And then it burst into tears.

  "Sausage inna buuunnnnn!" it bawled. "Dear old sausage inna inna inna buuunnn! Gimme saussaaage inna buunnnnn!"

  It grabbed three off the tray and tried to eat them all at once.

  "Good grief!" said Ridcully.

  The figure half ran, half capered away, fragments of bun and pork-product debris cascading from its unkempt beard.

  "I've never seen anyone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun and look so happy," said the Senior Wrangler.

  "I've never seen someone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun and look so upright," said the Dean.

  "I've never seen anyone eat anything of Dibbler's and get away without paying," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  The figure spun happily around the square, tears streaming down its face. The gyrations took it past an alley mouth, whereupon a smaller figure stepped out behind it and with some difficulty hit it on the back of the head.

  The sausage-eater fell to his knees, saying, to the world in general, "Ow!"

  "Nonononononono!"

  A rather older man stepped out and removed the cosh from the young man's hesitant hands, while the victim knelt and moaned.

  "I think you ought to apologize to the poor gentleman," said the older man. "I don't know, what's he going to think? I mean, look at him, he made it so easy for you and what does he get? I mean, what did you think you were doing?"

  "Mumblemumble, Mr Boggis," said the boy, looking at his feet.

  "What was that again? Speak up!"

  "Overarm Belter, Mr Boggis."

  "That was an Overarm Belter? You call that an Overarm Belter? That was an Overarm Belter, was it? This — excuse me, sir, we'll just have you up on your feet for a moment, sorry about this — this is an Overarm Belter—"

  "Ow!" shouted the victim and then, to the surprise of all concerned, he added: "Hahahaha!"

  "What you did was — sorry to impose again, sir, this won't take a minute — what you did was this—"

  "Ow! Hahahaha!"

  "Now, you lot, you saw that? Come on, gather round…"

  Half a dozen other youths slouched out of the alleyway and formed a ragged audience around Mr Boggis, the luckless student and the victim, who was staggering in a circle and making little 'oomph oomph' sounds but still, for some reason, apparently enjoying himself immensely.

  "Now," said Mr Boggis, with the air of an old skilled craftsman imparting his professional expertise to an ungrateful posterity, "when inconveniencing a customer from your basic alley entrance, the correct procedure is — Oh, hello, Mr Ridcully, didn't see you there."

  The Archchancellor gave him a friendly nod.

  "Don't mind us, Mr Boggis. Thieves' Guild training, is it?"

  Boggis rolled his eyes.

  "Dunno what they teaches 'em at school," he said. "It's jus' nothing but reading and writing all the time. When I was a lad school was where you learned somethin' useful. Right — you, Wilkins, stop that giggling, you have a go, excuse us just another moment, sir—"

  "Ow!"

  "Nononononono! My old granny could do better than that! Now look, you steps up trimly, places one hand on his shoulder here, for control… go on, you do it… and then smartly—"

  "Ow!"

  "All right, can anyone tell me what he was doing wrong?"

  The figure crawled away unnoticed, except by the wizards, while Mr Boggis was demonstrating the finer points of head percussion on Wilkins.

  It staggered to his feet and plunged on along the road, still moving like one hypnotized.

  "He's crying," said the Dean.

  "Not surprising," said the Archchancellor. "But why's he grinnin' at the same time?"

  "Curiouser and curiouser," said the Senior Wrangler.

&
nbsp; Bruised and possibly poisoned, the figure headed back for the University, the wizards still trailing behind.

  "You must mean 'curious and more curious', surely? And even then it doesn't make much sense—"

  It entered the gates but, this time, hurried jerkily through the main hall and into the Library.

  The Librarian was waiting, holding — with something of a smirk on his face, and an orang-utan can really smirk — the battered hat.

  "Amazin'," said Ridcully. "It's true! A wizard will always come back for his hat!"

  The figure grabbed the hat, evicted some spiders, threw away the sad affair made of leaves and put the hat on his head.

  Rincewind blinked at the puzzled faculty. A light came on behind his eyes for the first time, as if up to now he'd merely been operating by reflex action.

  "Er. What have I just eaten?"

  "Er. Three of Mr Dibbler's finest sausages," said Ridcully. "Well, when I say finest, I mean 'most typical', don'tcheknow."

  "I see. And who just hit me?"

  "Thieves' Guild apprentices out trainin'."

  Rincewind blinked. "This is Ankh-Morpork, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought so." Rincewind blinked, slowly. "Well," he said, just as he fell forward, "I'm back."

  Lord Hong was flying a kite. It was something he did perfectly.

  Lord Hong did everything perfectly. His water-colours were perfect. His poetry was perfect. When he folded paper, every crease was perfect. Imaginative, original, and definitely perfect. Lord Hong had long ago ceased pursuing perfection because he already had it nailed up in a dungeon somewhere.

  Lord Hong was twenty-six, and thin, and handsome. He wore very small, very circular steel-rimmed spectacles. When asked to describe him, people often used the word 'smooth' or even 'lacquered'.[8] And he had risen to the leadership of one of the most influential families in the Empire by relentless application, total focusing of his mental powers, and six well-executed deaths. The last one had been that of his father, who'd died happy in the knowledge that his son was maintaining an old family tradition. The senior families venerated their ancestors, and saw no harm in prematurely adding to their number.

  And now his kite, the black kite with the two big eyes, plunged out of the sky. He'd calculated the angle, needless to say, perfectly. Its string, coated with glue and ground glass, sawed through those of his fellow contestants and sent their kites tumbling.

  There was genteel applause from the bystanders. People generally found it advisable to applaud Lord Hong.

  He handed the string to a servant, nodded curtly at the fellow flyers, and strode towards his tent.

  Once inside, he sat down and looked at his visitor. "Well?" he said.

  "We sent the message," said the visitor. "No-one saw us."

  "On the contrary," said Lord Hong. "Twenty people saw you. Do you know how hard it is for a guard to look straight ahead and see nothing when people are creeping around making a noise like an army and whispering to one another to be quiet? Frankly, your people do not seem to possess that revolutionary spark. What is the matter with your hand?"

  "The albatross bit it."

  Lord Hong smiled. It occurred to him that it might have mistaken his visitor for an anchovy, and with some justification. There was the same fishy look about the eyes.

  "I don't understand, o lord," said the visitor, whose name was Two Fire Herb.

  "Good."

  "But they believe in the Great Wizzard and you want him to come here?"

  "Oh, certainly. I have my… people in "— he tried the alien syllables — "Ankh-More-Pork. The one so foolishly called the Great Wizzard does exist. But, I might tell you, he is renowned for being incompetent, cowardly and spineless. Quite proverbially so. So I think the Red Army should have their leader, don't you? It will… raise their morale."

  He smiled again. "This is politics," he said.

  "Ah."

  "Now go."

  Lord Hong picked up a book as his visitor left. But it was hardly a real book; pieces of paper had simply been fastened together with string, and the text was handwritten.

  He'd read it many times before. It still amused him, mainly because the author had managed to be wrong about so many things.

  Now, every time he finished a page, he ripped it out and, while reading the next page, carefully folded the paper into the shape of a chrysanthemum.

  "Great Wizard," he said, aloud. "Oh, indeed. Very great."

  Rincewind awoke. There were clean sheets and no-one was saying "Go through his pockets," so he chalked that up as a promising beginning.

  He kept his eyes shut, just in case there was anyone around who, once he was seen to be awake, would make life complicated for him.

  Elderly male voices were arguing.

  "You're all missin' the point. He survives. You keep on tellin' me he's had all these adventures and he's still alive."

  "What do you mean? He's got scars all over him!"

  "My point exactly, Dean. Most of 'em on his back, too. He leaves trouble behind. Someone Up There smiles on him."

  Rincewind winced. He had always been aware that Someone Up There was doing something on him. He'd never considered it was smiling.

  "He's not even a proper wizard! He never got more than two per cent in his exams!"

  "I think he's awake," said someone.

  Rincewind gave in, and opened his eyes. A variety of bearded, overly pink faces looked down upon him.

  "How're you feeling, old chap?" said one, extending a hand. "Name's Ridcully. Archchancellor. How're you feeling?"

  "It's all going to go wrong," said Rincewind flatly.

  "What d'you mean, old fellow?"

  "I just know it. It's all going to go wrong. Something dreadful's going to happen. I thought it was too good to last."

  "You see?" said the Dean. "Hundreds of little legs. I told you. Would you listen?"

  Rincewind sat up. "Don't start being nice to me," he said. "Don't start offering me grapes. No-one ever wants me for something nice." A confused memory of his very recent past floated across his mind and he experienced a brief moment of regret that potatoes, while uppermost in his mind at that point, had not been similarly positioned in the mind of the young lady. No-one dressed like that, he was coming to realize, could be thinking of any kind of root vegetable.

  He sighed. "All right, what happens now?"

  "How do you feel?"

  Rincewind shook his head. "It's no good," he said. "I hate it when people are nice to me. It means something bad is going to happen. Do you mind shouting?"

  Ridcully had had enough. "Get out of that bed you horrible little man and follow me this minute or it will go very hard for you!"

  "Ah, that's better. I feel right at home now. Now we're cooking with charcoal," said Rincewind, glumly. He swung his legs off the bed and stood up carefully.

  Ridcully stopped halfway to the door, where the other wizards had lined up.

  "Runes?"

  "Yes, Archchancellor?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, his voice oozing innocence.

  "What is that you've got behind your back?"

  "Sorry, Archchancellor?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "Looks like some kind of tool," said Ridcully.

  "Oh, this," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, as if he'd only just at that moment noticed the eight-pound lump hammer he'd been holding. "My word… it's a hammer, isn't it? My word. A hammer. I suppose I must just have… picked it up somewhere. You know. To keep the place tidy."

  "And I can't help noticing," said Ridcully, "that the Dean seems to be tryin' to conceal a battle-axe about his person."

  There was a musical twang from the rear of the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

  "And that sounded like a saw to me," said Ridcully. "Is there anyone here not concealin' some kind of implement? Right. Would anyone care to explain what the hell you think you're doin'?"

  "Hah, you don't know what it was like," muttered the Dean, no
t meeting the Archchancellor's eye. "A man daren't turn his back for five minutes in those days. You'd hear the patter of those damn feet and—"

  Ridcully ignored him. He put an arm around Rincewind's bony shoulders and led the way towards the Great Hall.

  "Well, now, Rincewind," he said. "They tell me you're no good at magic."

  "That's right."

  "Never passed any exams or anything?"

  "None, I'm afraid."

  "But everyone calls you Rincewind the wizard."

  Rincewind looked at his feet. "Well, I kind of worked here as sort of deputy Librarian—"

  "—an ape's number two—" said the Dean.

  "—and, you know, did odd jobs and things and kind of, you know, helped out—"

  "I say, did anyone notice that? An ape's number two? Rather clever, I thought."

  "But you have never, in fact, actually been entitled to call yourself a wizard?" said Ridcully.

  "Not technically, I suppose…"

  "I see. That is a problem."

  "I've got this hat with the word "Wizzard" on it," said Rincewind hopefully.

  "Not a great help, I'm afraid. Hmm. This presents us with a bit of a difficulty, I'm afraid. Let me see… How long can you hold your breath?"

  "I don't know. A couple of minutes. Is that important?"

  "It is in the context of being nailed upside down to one of the supports of the Brass Bridge for two high tides and then being beheaded which, I'm afraid, is the statutory punishment for impersonating a wizard. I looked it up. No-one was more sorry than me, I can tell you. But the Lore is the Lore."

  "Oh, no!"

  "Sorry. No alternative. Otherwise we'd be knee-deep in people in pointy hats they'd no right to. It's a terrible shame. Can't do a thing. Wish I could. Hands tied. The statutes say you can only be a wizard by passing through the University in the normal way or by performing some great service of benefit to magic, and I'm afraid that—"

  "Couldn't you just send me back to my island? I liked it there. It was dull!"

  Ridcully shook his head sadly.

  "No can do, I'm afraid. The offence has been committed over a period of many years. And since you haven't passed any exams or performed," Ridcully raised his voice slightly, "any service of great benefit to magic, I'm afraid I shall have to instruct the bledlows[9] to fetch some rope and—"