Interesting Times (Discworld #17)

Interesting Times (Discworld #17) Page 43

'Oh, it's perfectly simple,' said the Bursar brightly. 'We sent the . . . dog thing to Hunghung. Rincewind was sent to some other place. And this creature was sent here. Just like Pass the Parcel.'

'You see?' said Ridcully to Stibbons. 'You're using language the Bursar can understand. And he's been chasing the dried frog all morning.' The Librarian staggered into the hall under the weight of a large atlas. 'Oook.'

'At least you can show us where you think our man is,' said Ridcully. Ponder took a ruler and a pair of compasses out of his hat. 'Well, if we assume Rincewind was in the middle of the Counterweight Continent,' he said, 'then all we need do is draw—'

'Oook!'

'I assure you, I was only going to use pencil—'

'Eeek.'

'All we have to do is imagine, all right, a third point equidistant from the other two . . . er . . . that looks like somewhere in the Rim Ocean to me, or probably over the Edge.'

'Can't see that thing in the sea,' said Ridcully, glancing up at the recently laminated corpse. 'In that case, it must have been in the other direction—' The wizards crowded round.

There was something there. '

'S not even properly drawn in,' said the Dean. 'That's because no-one's sure it really exists,' said the Senior Wrangler. It floated in the middle of the sea, a tiny continent by Discworld standards. ' “XXXX”,' Ponder read. 'They only put that on the map because no-one knows what it's really called,' said Ridcully. 'And we've sent him there,' said Ponder. 'A place that we're not even certain exists?'

'Oh, we know it exists now,' said Ridcully. 'Must do. Must do. Must be a pretty rich land, too, if the rats grow that big.'

'I'll go and see if we can bring—' Ponder began. 'Oh, no,' said Ridcully firmly. 'No, thank you very much. Next time it might be an elephant whizzing over our heads, and those things make a splash. No. Give the poor chap a rest. We'll have to think of something else . . .' He rubbed his hands together. 'Time for dinner, I feel,' he said. 'Um,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Do you think we were wise to light that string when we sent the thing back?'

'Certainly,' said Ridcully, as they strolled away. 'No-one could say we didn't return it in exactly the same state as it arrived . . .' Hex dreamed gently in its room. The wizards were right. Hex couldn't think. There weren't words, yet, for what it could do. Even Hex didn't know what it could do. But it was going to find out. The quill pen scritched and blotted its way over a fresh sheet of paper and drew, for no good reason, a calendar for the year surmounted by a rather angular picture of a beagle, standing on its hind legs.

The ground was red, just like at Hunghung. But whereas that was a kind of clay so rich that leaving a chair on the lawn meant that you had four small trees by nightfall, this ground was sand that looked as if it had got red by being baked in a million-year summer. There were occasional clumps of yellowed grass and low stands of grey-green trees. But what there was everywhere was heat. This was especially noticeable in the pond under the ghost gums. It was steaming. A figure emerged from the clouds, absentmindedly picking the burnt bits off his beard. Rincewind waited until his own personal world had stopped spinning and concentrated on the four men who were watching him. They were black with lines and whorls painted on their faces and had, between them, about two square feet of clothing. There were three reasons why Rincewind was no racist. He'd ended up in too many places too suddenly to develop that kind of mind. Besides, if he'd thought about it much, most of the really dreadful things that had happened to him had been done by quite pale people with big wardrobes. Those were two of the reasons. The third was that these men, who were just rising from a half-crouching position, were all holding spears pointing at Rincewind and there is something about the sight of four spears aimed at your throat that causes no end of respect and the word 'sir' to arise spontaneously in the mind. One of the men shrugged, and lowered his spear. 'G'day, bloke,' he said. This meant only three spears, which was an improvement. 'Er. This isn't Unseen University, is it, sir?' said Rincewind. The other spears stopped pointing at him. The men grinned. They had very white teeth. 'Klatch? Howondaland? It looks like Howonda-land,' said Rincewind hopefully. 'Don't know them blokes, bloke,' said one of the men. The other three clustered around him. 'What'll we call him?'

'He's Kangaroo Bloke. No worries there. One minute a kangaroo, next minute a bloke. The old blokes say that sort of thing used to happen all the time, back in the Dream.'

'I reckoned he'd look better than that.'

'Yeah.'

'One way to tell.' The man who was apparently the leader of the group advanced on Rincewind with the kind of grin reserved for imbeciles and people holding guns, and held out a stick. It was flat, and had a bend in the middle. Someone had spent a long time making rather nice designs on it in little coloured dots. Somehow, Rincewind wasn't at all surprised to see a butterfly among them. The hunters watched him expectantly. 'Er, yes,' he said. 'Very good. Very good workmanship, yes. Interesting pointillistic effect. Shame you couldn't find a straighter bit of wood.' One of the men laid down his spear, and squatted down and picked up a long wooden tube, covered with the same designs. He blew into it. The effect was not unpleasant. It sounded like bees would sound if they'd invented full orchestration. 'Um,' said Rincewind. 'Yes.' It was a test, obviously. They'd given him this bent piece of wood. He had to do something with it. It was clearly very important. He'd— Oh, no. He'd say something or do something, wouldn't he, and then they'd say, yes, you are the Great Bloke or something, and they'd drag him off and it'd be the start of another Adventure, i.e., a period of horror and unpleasantness. Life was full of tricks like that. Well, this time Rincewind wasn't going to fall for it. 'I want to go home,' he said. 'I want to go back home to the Library where it was nice and quiet. And I don't know where I am. And I don't care what you do to me, right? I'm not going to have any kind of adventure or start saving the world again and you can't trick me into it with mysterious bits of wood.' He gripped the stick and flung it away from him with all the force he could still muster. They stared at him as he folded his arms. 'I'm not playing,' he said. 'I'm stopping right here.' They were still staring. And now they were grinning, too, at something behind him. He felt himself getting quite annoyed. 'Do you understand? Are you listening?' he said. 'That's the last time the universe is going to trick Rincewi—'

The End