Interesting Times (Discworld #17)

Interesting Times (Discworld #17) Page 22

'Ahahaha,' said Rincewind. The Emperor waved a hand at the court again.

'Now I will retire,' he said. There was a general movement and much ostensible yawning. Clearly no one stayed up later than the Emperor. 'Emperor,' said Lord Hong wearily, 'what will you have us do with this Great Wizard of yours?' The old man gave Rincewind the look a present gets around the time the batteries have run out. 'Put him in the special . . . dungeon,' he said. 'For . . now.'

'Yes, Emperor,' said Lord Hong. He nodded at a couple of guards. Rincewind managed a quick look back as he was dragged from the room. The Emperor was lying back in his movable bed, quite oblivious to him. 'Is he mad or what?' he said. 'Silence!' Rincewind looked up at the guard who'd said that. 'A mouth like that could get a man into big trouble around here,' he muttered. Lord Hong always found himself depressed by the general state of humanity. It often seemed to him to be flawed. There was no concentration. Take the Red Army. If he had been a rebel the Emperor would have been assassinated months ago and the country would now be aflame, except for those bits too damp to burn. But these? Despite his best efforts, their idea of revolutionary activity was a surreptitious wall poster saying something like 'Unpleasantness To Oppressors When Convenient!' They had tried to set fire to guardhouses. That was good. That was proper revolutionary activity, except for the bit where they tried to make an appointment first. It had taken Lord Hong some considerable effort to see that the Red Army appeared to achieve any victories at all. Well, he'd given them the Great Wizard they so sincerely believed in. They had no excuse now. And by the look of him, the wretch was as craven and talentless as Lord Hong had hoped. Any army led by him would either flee or be slaughtered, leaving the way open for the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution would not be inefficient. Lord Hong would see to that. But things had to be done one step at a time. There were enemies everywhere. Suspicious enemies. The path of the ambitious man was a nightingale floor. One wrong step and it would sing out. It was a shame the Great Wizard would turn out to be so good at locks. Lord Tang's men were guarding the prison block tonight. Of course, if the Red Army were to escape, no blame at all could possibly attach to Lord Tang . . .

Lord Hong risked a little chuckle to himself as he strode back to his suite. Proof, that was the thing. There must never be proof. But that wouldn't matter very long. There was nothing like a fearsomely huge war to unite people, and the fact that the Great Wizard - that is, the leader of the terrible rebel army - was an evil foreign troublemaker was just the spark to light the firecracker. And then . . . Ankh-Morpork [urinating dog]. Hunghung was old. The culture was based on custom, the alimentary tract of the common water buffalo, and base treachery. Lord Hong was in favour of all three, but they did not add up to world domination, and Lord Hong was particularly in favour of that, provided it was achieved by Lord Hong. If I was the traditional type of Grand Vizier, he thought as he sat down before his tea table, I'd cackle with laughter at this point. He smiled to himself, instead. Time for the box again? No. Some things were all the better for the anticipation. Mad Hamish's wheelchair caused a few heads to turn, but no actual comment. Undue curiosity was not a survival trait in Hunghung. They just got on with their work, which appeared to be the endless carrying of stacks of paper along the corridors. Cohen looked down at what was in his hand. Over the decades he'd fought with many weapons - swords, of course, and bows and spears and clubs and . . . well, now he came to think of it, just about anything. Except this . . . 'I still don't like it,' said Truckle. 'Why're we carrying pieces of paper?'

'Because no-one looks at you in a place like this if you're carrying a piece of paper,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Why?'

'Whut?'

'It's - a kind of magic.'

'I'd feel happier if it was a weapon.'

'As a matter of fact, it can be the greatest weapon there is.'

'I know, I've just cut myself on my bit,' said Boy Willie, sucking his finger. 'Whut?'

'Look at it like this, gentlemen,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Here we are, actually inside the Forbidden City, and no-one is dead!'

'Yes. That's what we're . . . dunging . . . complaining about,' said Truckle. Mr Saveloy sighed. There was something in the way Truckle used words. It didn't matter what he actually said, what you heard was in some strange way the word he actually meant. He could turn the air blue just by saying 'socks'. The door slammed shut behind Rincewind, and there was the sound of a bolt shooting into place. The Empire's jails were pretty much like the ones at home. When you want to incarcerate such an ingenious creature as the common human being, you tend to rely on the good old- fashioned iron bar and large amounts of stone. It looked as though this well-tried pattern had been established here for a very long time. Well, he'd definitely scored a hit with the Emperor. For some reason this did not reassure him. The man gave Rincewind the distinct impression of being the kind of person who is at least as dangerous to his friends as to his enemies. He remembered Noodle Jackson, back in the days when he was a very young student. Everyone wanted to be friends with Noodle but somehow, if you were in his gang, you found yourself being trodden on or chased by the Watch or being hit in fights you didn't start, while Noodle was somewhere on the edge of things, laughing. Besides, the Emperor wasn't simply at Death's door but well inside the hallway, admiring the carpet and commenting on the hatstand. And you didn't have to be a political genius to know that when someone like that died, scores were being settled before he'd even got cold. Anyone he'd publicly called a friend would have a life expectancy more normally associated with things that hover over trout streams at sunset. Rincewind moved aside a skull and sat down. There was the possibility of rescue, he supposed, but the Red Army would be hard put to it to rescue a rubber duck from drowning. Anyway, that'd put him back in the clutches of Butterfly, who terrified him almost as much as the Emperor. He had to believe that the gods didn't intend for Rincewind, after all his adventures, to rot in a dungeon. No, he added bitterly, they probably had something much more inventive in mind. What light reached the dungeon came from a very small grille and had a second-hand look. The rest of the furnishing was a pile of what had possibly once been straw. There was— —a gentle tapping at the wall. Once, twice, three times.

Rincewind picked up the skull and returned the signal. One tap came back. He repeated it. Then there were two. He tapped twice. Well, this was familiar. Communication without meaning . . . it was just like being back at Unseen University. 'Fine,' he said, his voice echoing in the cell. 'Fine. Très prisoner. But what are we saying?' There was a gentle scraping noise and one of the blocks in the wall very gently slid out of the wall, dropping on to Rincewind's foot. 'Aargh!'

'What big hippo?' said a muffled voice. 'What?'

'Sorry?'

'What?'

'You wanted to know about the tapping code? It's how we communicate between cells, you see. One tap means—'

'Excuse me, but aren't we communicating now?'

'Yes, but not formally. Prisoners are not. . . allowed . . . to talk . . .' The voice slowed down, as if the speaker had suddenly remembered something important. 'Ah, yes,' said Rincewind. 'I was forgetting. This is . . . Hunghung. Everyone . . . obeys . . . the rules . . .' Rincewind's voice died away too. On either side of the wall there was a long, thoughtful silence. 'Rincewind?'

'Twoflower?'

'What are you doing here?' said Rincewind. 'Rotting in a dungeon!'

'Me too!'

'Good grief! How long has it been?' said the muffled voice of Twoflower. 'What? How long has what been?'

'But you . . . why are . . .'

'You wrote that damn book!'

'I just thought it would be interesting for people!'

'Interesting? Interesting?'

'I thought people would find it an interesting account of a foreign culture. I never meant it to cause trouble.' Rincewind leaned against his side of the wall. No, of course, Twoflower never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, 'What happens if I do this?'

'It must have been Fate that brought you here,' said Twoflower. 'Yes, it's the sort of thing he likes to do,' said Rincewind. 'You remember the good times we had?'

'Did we? I must have had my eyes shut.'

'The adventures!'

'Oh, them. You mean hanging from high places, that sort of thing . . . ?'

'Rincewind?'

'Yes? What?'

'I feel a lot happier about things now you're here.'

'That's amazing.' Rincewind enjoyed the comfort of the wall. It was rust rock. He felt he could rely on it. 'Everyone seems to have a copy of your book,' he said. 'It's a revolutionary document. And I do mean copy. It looks as though they make their own copy and pass it on.'

'Yes, it's called samizdat.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means each one must be the same as the one before. Oh, dear. I thought it would just be entertainment. I didn't think people would take it seriously. I do hope it's not causing too much bother.' Well, your revolutionaries are still at the slogan-and-poster stage, but I shouldn't think that'll count for much if they're caught.'

'Oh, dear.'

'How come you're still alive?'

'I don't know. I think they may have forgotten about me. That tends to happen, you know. It's the paperwork. Someone makes the wrong stroke with the brush or forgets to copy a line. I believe it happens a lot.'

'You mean that there's people in prison and no-one can remember why?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Then why don't they set them free?'

'I suppose it is felt that they must have done something. All in all, I'm afraid our government does leave something to be desired.'

'Like a new government.'

'Oh, dear. You could get locked up for saying things like that.' People slept, but the Forbidden City never slept. Torches flickered all night in the great Bureaux as the ceaseless business of Empire went on. This largely involved, as Mr Saveloy had said, moving paper. Six Beneficent Winds was Deputy District Administrator for the Langtang district, and good at a job which he rather enjoyed. He was not a wicked man. True, he had the same sense of humour as a chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him. But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later on.

And he never took away from people more money than they actually had. He was also, unusually for men employed in the Forbidden City after dark, not a eunuch. Guards were not eunuchs, of course, and people had got around this by classifying them officially as furniture. And it had been found that tax officials also needed every faculty at their disposal to combat the wiles of the average peasant, who had this regrettable tendency to avoid paying taxes. There were much nastier people in the building than Six Beneficent Winds and it was therefore just his inauspicious luck that his paper and bamboo door slid aside to reveal seven strange-looking old eunuchs, one of them in a wheeled contrivance. They didn't even bow, let alone fall on their knees. And he not only had an official red hat but it had a white button on it! His brush dropped from his hands when the men wandered into his office as if they owned it. One of them started poking holes in the wall and speaking gibberish. 'Hey, the walls are just made of paper! Hey, look, if you lick your finger it goes right through! See?'