Interesting Times (Discworld #17)

Interesting Times (Discworld #17) Page 23

'I will call for the guards and have you all flogged!' shouted Six Beneficent Winds, his temper moderated slightly by the extreme age of the visitors. 'What did he say?'

'He said he'd call for the guards.'

'Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!'

'No, we don't want that yet. Act normally.'

'You mean cut his throat?'

'I meant a more normal kind of normally.'

'It's what I call normal.' One of the old men faced the speechless official and gave him a big grin. 'Excuse us, your supreme . . . oh dear, what's the word? . . . . pushcart sail? . . . immense rock? . . . ah, yes . . . venerableness, but we seem to be a little lost.' A couple of the old men shuffled around behind Six Beneficent Winds and started to read, or at least try to read, what he'd been working on. A sheet of paper was snatched from his hand. 'What's this say, Teach?'

'Let me see . . . "The first wind of autumn shakes the lotus flower. Seven Lucky Logs to pay one pig and three [looks like a four-armed man waving a flag] of rice on pain of having his

[rather a stylized thing here, can't quite make it out] struck with many blows. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang.“ ' There was a subtle change among the old men. Now they were all grinning, but not in a way that gave him any comfort. One of them, with teeth like diamonds, leaned towards him and said, in bad Agatean: 'You are a tax collector, Mr Knob on Your Hat?' Six Beneficent Winds wondered if he'd be able to summon the guard. There was something terrible about these old men. They weren't venerable at all. They were horribly menacing and, although he couldn't see any obvious weapons, he knew for a cold frozen fact that he wouldn't be able to get out more than the first syllable before he'd be killed. Besides, his throat had gone dry and his pants had gone wet. 'Nothing wrong with being a tax collector . . .' he croaked. 'We never said that,' said Diamond Teeth. 'We always like to meet tax collectors.'

'Some of our most favouritest people, tax collectors,' said another old man. 'Saves a lot of trouble,' said Diamond Teeth. 'Yeah,' said a third old man. 'Like, it means you don't have to go from house to house killin' everyone for their valuables, you just wait and kill the—'

'Gentlemen, can I have a word?' The speaker was the slightly goat-faced one that didn't seem quite so unpleasant as the others. The terrible men clustered around him and Six Beneficent Winds heard the strange syllables of a coarse foreign tongue: 'What? But he's a tax collector! That's what they're for!'

'Whut?'

'A firm tax base is the foundation of sound governance, gentlemen. Please trust me.'

'I understood all of that up to ”A firm tax".'

'Nevertheless, no useful purpose will be served by killing this hard-working tax gatherer.'

'He'd be dead. I call that useful.' There was some more of the same. Six Beneficent Winds jumped when the group broke up and the goat-faced man gave him a smile. 'My humble friends are overawed by your . . . variety of plum . . . small knife for cutting seaweed . . . presence, noble sir,' he said, his every word slandered by Truckle's vigorous gesticulations behind his back.

'How about if we just cut a bit off?'

'Whut?'

'How did you get in here?' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'There are many strong guards.'

'I knew we missed something,' said Diamond Teeth. 'We would like you to show us around the For-bidden City,' said Goat Face. 'My name is . . . Mr Stuffed Tube, I think you would call it. Yes. Stuffed Tube, I'm pretty sure—' Six Beneficent Winds glanced hopefully towards the door. '—and we are here to learn more about your won-derful . . . mountain . . . variety of bamboo . . . sound of running water at evening . . . drat . . . civilization.' Behind him, Truckle was energetically demonstrating to the rest of the Horde what he and Bruce the Hoon's Skeletal Riders once did to a tax gatherer. The sweeping arm movements in particular occupied Six Beneficent Winds' attention. He couldn't understand the words but, somehow, you didn't need to. 'Why are you talking to him like that?'

'Ghenghiz, I'm lost. There are no maps of the Forbidden City. We need a guide.' Goat Face turned back to the taxman. 'Perhaps you would like to come with us?' he said. Out, thought Six Beneficent Winds. Yes! There may be guards out there! 'Just a minute,' said Diamond Teeth, as he nodded. 'Pick up your paintbrush and write down what I say.' A minute later, they'd gone. All that remained in the taxman's office was an amended piece of paper, which read as follows: 'Roses are red, violets are blue. Seven Lucky Logs to be given one pig and all the rice he can carry, because he is now One Lucky Peasant. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang. Help. Help. If anyone reads this I am being held prisoner by an evil eunuch. Help.' Rincewind and Twoflower lay in their separate cells and talked about the good old days. At least, Two-flower talked about the good old days. Rincewind worked at a crack in the stone with a piece of straw, it being all he had to hand. It would take several thousand years to make any kind of impression, but that was no reason to give up. 'Do we get fed in here?' he said, interrupting the flow of reminiscence. 'Oh, sometimes. But it's not like the marvellous food in Ankh-Morpork.'

'Really,' murmured Rincewind, scratching away. A tiny piece of mortar seemed ready to move. 'I'll always remember the taste of Mr Dibbler's sausages.'

'People do.'

'A once-in-a-lifetime experience.'

'Frequently.' The straw broke. 'Damn and blast!' Rincewind sat back. 'What's so important about the Red Army?' he said. 'I mean, they're just a bunch of kids. Just a nuisance!'

'Yes, I'm afraid things got rather confused,' said Twoflower. 'Um. Have you ever heard of the theory that History goes in cycles?'

'I saw a drawing in one of Leonard of Quirm's notebooks—' Rincewind began, trying again with another straw. 'No, I mean . . . like a . . . wheel, spinning. If you stand in the same place it all comes round again?'

'Oh, that. Blast!'

'Well, a lot of people believe it here. They think History starts again every three thousand years.'

'Could be,' said Rincewind, who was looking for another straw and wasn't really listening. Then the words sank in. 'Three thousand years? That's a bit short, isn't it? The whole thing? Stars and oceans and intelligent life evolving from arts graduates, that sort of thing?'

'Oh, no. That's just . . . stuff. Proper history started with the founding of the Empire by One Sun Mirror. The first Emperor. And his servant, the Great Wizard. Just a legend, really. It's the sort of thing peasants believe. They look at something like the Great Wall and say, that's such a marvellous thing it must have been built by magic . . . And the Red Army . . . what it probably was was just a well-organized body of trained fighting men. The first real army, you see. All there was before was just undisciplined mobs. That's what it must have been. Not magical at all. The Great Wizard couldn't really have made . . . What the peasants believe is silly . . .'

'Why, what do they believe?'

'They say the Great Wizard made the earth come alive. When all the armies on the continent faced One Sun Mirror the Great Wizard . . . flew a kite.'

'Sounds sensible to me,' said Rincewind. 'When there's war around take the day off, that's my motto.'

'No, you don't understand. This was a special kite. It trapped the lightning in the sky and the Great Wizard stored it in bottles and then took the mud itself and . . . baked it with the lightning, and made it into an army.'

'Never heard of any spells for that.'

'And they have funny ideas about reincarnation, too . . .' Rincewind conceded that they probably would. It probably whiled away those long water- buffaloid hours: hey, after I die I hope I come back as . . . a man holding a water buffalo, but facing a different way. 'Er . . . no,' said Twoflower. They don't think you come back at all. Er . . . I'm not using the right words, am I? . . . Bit corroded on this language . . . I mean ^reincarnation. It's like reincarnation backwards. They think you're born before you die.'

'Oh, really?' said Rincewind, scratching at the stones. 'Amazing! Born before you die? Life before death? People will get really excited when they hear about that.'

'That's not exactly . . . er. It's all tied in with ancestors. You should always venerate ancestors because you might be them one day, and . . . Are you listening?' The little piece of mortar fell away. Not bad for ten minutes' work, thought Rincewind. Come the next Ice Age, we're out of here . . . It dawned on him that he was working on the wall that led to Twoflower's cell. Taking several thousand years to break into an adjoining cell could well be thought a waste of time. He started on a different wall. Scratch . . . scratch . . . There was a terrible scream. Scratchscratchscratch— 'Sounds like the Emperor has woken up,' said Twoflower's voice from the hole in the wall. 'That's kind of an early morning torture, is it?' said Rincewind. He started to hammer at the huge blocks with a piece of shattered stone. 'It's not really his fault. He just doesn't understand about people.'

'Is that so?'

'You know how common kids go through a stage of pulling the wings off flies?'

'I never did,' said Rincewind. 'You can't trust flies. They may look small but they can turn nasty.'

'Kids generally, I mean.'

'Yes? Well?'

'He is an Emperor. No-one ever dared tell him it was wrong. It's just a matter of, you know, scaling up. All the five families fight among themselves for the crown. He killed his nephew to become Emperor. No-one has ever told him that it's not right to keep killing people for fun. At least, no-one who has ever managed to get to the end of the first sentence. And the Hongs and the Fangs and the Tangs and the Sungs and the McSweeneys have been killing one another for thousands of years. It's all part of the royal succession.'

'McSweeneys?'

'Very old-established family.' Rincewind nodded gloomily. It was probably like breeding horses. If you have a system where treacher-ous murderers tend to win, you end up breeding really treacherous murderers. You end up with a situation where it's dangerous to lean over a cradle . . . There was another scream. Rincewind started kicking at the stones. A key turned in the lock. 'Oh,' said Twoflower. But the door didn't open. Finally Rincewind walked over and tried the big iron ring. The door swung outwards, but not too far because the recumbent body of a guard makes an unusual but efficient doorstop. There was a whole ring of keys hanging from the one in the door . . . An inexperienced prisoner would simply have run for it. But Rincewind was a post-graduate student in the art of staying alive, and knew that in circumstances like these much the best thing to do was let out every single prisoner, pat each one hurriedly on the back and say, 'Quick! They're coming for you!' and then go and sit somewhere nice and quiet until the pursuit has disappeared in the distance. He opened the door to Twoflower's cell first. The little man was skinnier and grubbier than he remembered, and had a wispy beard, but in one very significant way he had the feature that Rincewind remembered so well - the big, beaming, trusting smiled that suggested that anything bad currently happening to him was just some sort of laughable mistake and would be bound to be sorted out by reasonable people. 'Rincewind! It is you! I certainly never thought I'd see you again!' he said.

'Yes, I thought something on those lines,' said Rincewind. Twoflower looked past Rincewind at the fallen guard. 'Is he dead?' he said, speaking of a man with a sword half buried in his back. 'Extremely likely.'

'Did you do that?'

'I was inside the cell!'