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Authors: Terry Pratchett

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BOOK: Interesting Times
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“Have you ever
seen
the, er, former Emperor?” said Mr. Saveloy. “Mr. Winds?”

“Of course not. Hardly anyone has seen—”

He stopped.

“There you are, then,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Very quick on the uptake, Mr. Winds. As befits the Lord High Chief Tax Gatherer.”

“But it won’t work because—” Six Beneficent Winds stopped again. Mr. Saveloy’s words reached his brain.

“Lord High Chief? Me? The black hat
with
the red ruby button?”

“Yes.”

“And a feather in it, if you like,” said Cohen munificently.

The taxman looked in rapt consideration.

“So…if there was, say, a mere District Administrator who was incredibly cruel to his staff, particularly to a hard-working deputy, and thoroughly deserving of a good sound thrashing—”

“As the Lord High Chief Tax Gatherer, of course, that would be entirely your affair.”

Six Beneficent Winds’ grin now threatened to remove the top of his head.

“On the subject of new taxation,” he said, “I’ve often had this thought that fresh air is all too readily available at far below the cost of production—”

“We will listen to your ideas with extreme interest,” said Mr. Saveloy. “In the meantime, please arrange breakfast.”

“And have summoned,” said Cohen, “all those buggers who think they know what the Emperor looks like.”

The pursuer was closing.

Rincewind skidded around a corner and there, blocking the passageway, were three guards. These were not dead. They were alive, and they had got swords.

Someone cannoned into the back of him, pushed him to the ground, and leapt past.

He shut his eyes.

There were a couple of thumps, a groan, and then a very strange metallic noise.

It was a helmet, spinning round and round on the floor.

He was pulled to his feet.

“Are you going to lie around all day?” said Butterfly. “Come on. They’re not far behind!”

Rincewind glanced at the recumbent guards, and then loped after the girl.

“How many of them are there?” he managed.

“Seven now. But two of them are limping and one’s having trouble breathing. Come
on
.”

“You
hit
them?”

“Do you always waste breath like this?”

“Never found anyone who could keep up with me before!”

They turned a corner and almost ran into another guard.

Butterfly didn’t even stop. She took a ladylike step, whirled around on one foot, and kicked the man so hard on his ear that he spun on his own axis and landed on his head.

She paused, panted, and tucked a hair back into place.

“We should split up,” she said.

“Oh, no!” said Rincewind. “I mean, I must protect you!”

“I’ll head back to the others. You lead the guards away somewhere—”

“Can you
all
do that?”

“Of course,” said Butterfly, testily. “I
told
you we fought the guards. Now, if we split up one of us is bound to escape. The murderers! We were supposed to take the blame for that!”

“Didn’t I try to tell you? I thought you
wanted
him dead!”

“Yes, but we’re rebels. They were palace guards!”

“Er—”

“No time. See you in Heaven.”

She darted away.

“Oh.”

Rincewind looked around. It had all gone quiet.

Guards appeared at the end of the corridor, but cautiously, as befitted people who’d just met Butterfly.

“There!”

“Is it her?”

“No, it’s him!”

“Get him!”

He accelerated again, rounded a corner, and found that he was in a cul-de-sac that would undoubtedly, given the sounds behind, become a dead end. But there was a pair of doors. He kicked them open, ran inside, and slowed…

The room inside was dark, but the sound and air suggested a large space and a certain flatulent component indicated some kind of stable.

There was some light, though, from a fire. Rincewind trotted towards it and saw that it was under a huge cauldron, man-sized, full of boiling rice.

And now that his eyes were accustomed to the gloom he realized that there were shapes lying on slabs along both walls of an enormous room.

They were snoring gently.

They were, in fact, people. They might even have been humans, or at least had humans in their ancestry before someone, hundreds of years ago, had said, “Let’s see how big and fat we can breed people. Let’s try for really big bastards.”

Each giant frame was dressed in what looked like a nappy to Rincewind’s eyes and was dozing happily alongside a bowl holding enough rice to explode twenty people, just in case it woke up in the night and felt like a light snack.

A couple of his pursuers appeared in the doorway, and stopped. Then they advanced, but very cautiously, carefully watching the gently moving mounds.

“Oi, oi, oi!” shouted Rincewind.

The men stopped and stared at him.

“Wakey wakey! Let’s see the rising sons!” He grabbed a mighty ladle and banged it on the rice cauldron.

“Up you get! Hands off-er-whatever you can find and on with socks!”

The sleepers stirred.

“Oooorrrrr?”

“Ooooaaaoooooor!”

The room shook as forty tree-trunk legs swung off the slabs. Flesh rearranged itself so that, in the gloom, Rincewind appeared to be being watched by twenty small pyramids.

“Haaaroooooohhhh?”

“Those men,” said Rincewind, pointing desperately at his pursuers, who were slowly backing away, “those men have a pork sandwich!”

“Oorrryorrraaah?”

“Oooorrrr?”

“With mustard!”

“Oooorrrr!”

Twenty very small heads turned. A total of eighty specialized neurons fired into life.

And the floor shook. The wrestlers started to move hopefully towards the men, in a slow but deliberate run designed to be halted only by collision with another wrestler or a continent.

“Oooorrr!”

Rincewind dashed for the far door and burst through it. A couple of men were sitting in a small room drinking tea and playing
shibo
, watched by a third.

“The wrestlers are wrestless!” he shouted. “I think you’ve got a stampede going on!”

A man threw down his
shibo
tiles. “Blast! And it’s been at least an hour since they were fed!”

The men grabbed various nets and prods and items of protective clothing, leaving Rincewind alone.

There was another door. He sashayed through it. He’d never essayed a sashay before, but he reckoned he was due a sashay for quick thinking.

There was another passage. He ran down it, on the basis that absence of pursuit is no reason to stop running.

Lord Hong was folding paper.

He was an expert at it because when he did it he gave it his full attention. Lord Hong had a mind like a knife, although possibly a knife with a curved blade.

The door slid aside. A guard, red in the face from running, threw himself on to the floor.

“O Lord Hong, who is exalted—”

“Yes, indeed,” said Lord Hong distantly, essaying a taxing crease. “What has gone wrong this time?”

“My lord?”

“I asked you what has gone wrong.”

“Uh…we killed the Emperor as directed—”

“By whom?”

“My lord! You commanded it!”

“Did I?” said Lord Hong, folding the paper lengthwise.

The guard shut his eyes. He had a vision, a very short vision, of the future. There was a spike in it. He carried on.

“But the…prisoners can’t be found anywhere, lord! We heard someone approach and then…well, we saw two people, lord. We’re chasing them. But the others have vanished.”

“No slogans? No revolutionary posters? No
culprits?

“No, lord.”

“I see. Remain here.”

Lord Hong’s hands continued with the folding as he looked at the room’s other occupant.

“You have something to say, Two Fire Herb?” he said pleasantly.

The revolutionary leader looked sheepish.

“The Red Army has been quite expensive,” said Lord Hong. “The printing costs alone…And you cannot say I have not helped you. We unlocked the doors and killed the guards and gave your wretched people swords and a map, did we not? And now I can hardly claim that they killed the Emperor, may he stay dead for ten thousand years, when there is no sign of them. People will ask too many questions. I can hardly kill
everyone
. And we appear to have some barbarians in the building, too.”

“Something must have gone wrong, my lord.” Herb was hypnotized by the moving hands as they caressed that paper.

“What a pity. I do not like it when things go wrong. Guard? Redeem your miserable self. Take him away. I will have to try a different plan.”

“My lord!”

“Yes, Two Fire Herb?”

“When you…when we agreed…when it was agreed that the Red Army should be turned over to you, you did promise me indemnity.”

Lord Hong smiled.

“Oh, yes. I recall. I said, did I not, that I would neither say nor write any order for your death? And I must keep my word, otherwise what am I?”

He folded the last crease and opened his hands, putting the little paper decoration on the lacquered table beside him.

Herb and the guard stared at it.

“Guard…take him away,” said Lord Hong.

It was a marvellously constructed paper figure of a man.

But there didn’t seem to have been enough paper for a head.

The immediate court turned out to be about eighty men, women, and eunuchs, in various states of sleeplessness.

They were astonished at what sat on the throne.

The Horde were quite astonished at the court.

“Who’re all them vinegar-faced old baggages at the front?” whispered Cohen, who was idly tossing a throwing knife into the air and catching it again. “I wouldn’t even set fire to them.”

“They’re the wives of former Emperors,” hissed Six Beneficent Winds.

“We don’t have to marry them, do we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why’re their feet so small?” said Cohen. “I like to see big feet on a woman.”

Six Beneficent Winds told him. Cohen’s expression hardened.

“I’m learning a lot about civilization, I am,” he said. “Long fingernails, crippled feet and servants running around without their family jewels. Huh.”

“What is going on here, pray?” said a middle-aged man. “Who are you? Who are these old eunuchs?”

“Who’re you?” said Cohen. He drew his sword. “I need to know so’s it can be put on your gravestone—”

“I wonder if I might effect some introductions at this point?” said Mr. Saveloy. He stepped forward.

“This,” he said, “is Ghenghiz Cohen—put it away, Ghenghiz—who is technically a barbarian, and this is his Horde. They have overrun your city. And you are—?”

“Barbarian invaders?” said the man haughtily, ignoring him. “Barbarian invaders come in their thousands! Big screaming men on little horses!”

“I
told
you,” said Truckle. “But would anyone listen?”

“—and there is fire, terror, rapine, looting, and blood in the streets!”

“We haven’t had breakfast yet,” said Cohen, tossing his knife into the air again.

“Hah! I would rather die than submit to such as you!”

Cohen shrugged. “Why didn’t you say earlier?”

“Oops,” said Six Beneficent Winds.

It was a very accurate throw.

“Who
was
he, anyway?” said Cohen, as the body folded up. “Anyone know who he was?”

“Ghenghiz,” said Mr. Saveloy, “I’ve kept meaning to tell you: when people say they’d rather die, they don’t really
mean
they’d rather die. Not always.”

“Why’d they say it, then?”

“It’s the done thing.”

“Is this civilization again?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Let’s settle this once and for all, shall we?” said Cohen. He stood up. “Hands up those who’d rather die than have me as Emperor.”

“Anyone?” said Mr. Saveloy.

Rincewind trotted along another passage. Was there no outside to this place? Several times he thought he’d found an exit, but it led only to a courtyard within the huge building, filled with tinkling fountains and willow trees.

And the place was waking up. There were—

—running steps behind him.

A voice shouted, “Hey—”

He dived for the nearest door.

The room beyond was full of steam. It roiled in great billowing clouds. He could dimly make out a figure toiling at the huge wheel and the words “torture chamber” crossed his mind until the smell of soap replaced them with the word “laundry.” Rather wan but incredibly clean figures looked up from their vats and watched him with barely a hint of interest.

They did not look like people in close touch with current events.

He half ran, half sauntered between the bubbling cauldrons.

“Keep it up. Good man. That’s it, scrub, scrub, scrub. Let me see those wringers wringing. Well done. Is there another door out of here? Good bubbles there, very good bubbles. Ah…”

One of the laundry workers, who appeared to be in charge, gave him a suspicious glare and seemed to be about to say something.

Rincewind dodged through a courtyard crisscrossed with washing lines and stopped, panting, with his back to a wall.

Although it was against his general principles, it was perhaps time to stop and think.

People were chasing him. That is to say, they were chasing a running figure in a faded red robe and a very charred pointy hat.

It took a great effort for Rincewind to come to terms with the idea, but it was just possible that if he was
wearing something else
he might not be chased.

On the line in front of him, shirts and trousers flapped in the breeze. Their construction was to tailoring in the same way that woodchopping is to carpentry. Someone had mastered the art of the tube, and left it at that. They looked just like the clothes nearly everyone wore in Hunghung.

The palace was almost a city in its own right, said the voice of reason. It must be full of people on all sorts of errands, it added.

It would mean…taking off our hat, it added.

Rincewind hesitated. It would be hard for a non-wizard to grasp the enormity of the suggestion. A wizard would sooner go without his robe and trousers than forgo his hat. Without his hat, people might think he was an
ordinary person
.

BOOK: Interesting Times
7.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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