Interesting Times (3 page)

A few bubbles broke the surface of the sea, causing the raft to rock a little. After a while, a couple of pieces of shark skin floated up.

Rincewind sighed and put down his fishing rod. The rest of the shark would be dragged ashore later, he knew it. He couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t as if they were good eating. They tasted like old boots soaked in urine.

He picked up a makeshift oar and set out for the beach.

It wasn’t a bad little island. Storms seemed to pass it by. So did ships. But there were coconuts, and breadfruit, and some sort of wild fig. Even his experiments in alcohol had been quite successful, although he hadn’t been able to walk properly for two days. The lagoon provided prawns and shrimps and oysters and crabs and lobsters, and in the deep green water out beyond the reef big silver fish fought each other for the privilege of biting a piece of bent wire on the end of a bit of string. After six months on the island, in fact, there was only one thing Rincewind lacked. He’d never really thought about it before. Now he thought about it—or, more correctly,
them
—all the time.

It was odd. He’d hardly ever thought about them in Ankh-Morpork, because they were there if ever he wanted them. Now they weren’t, and he
craved
.

His raft bumped the white sand at about the same moment as a large canoe rounded the reef and entered the lagoon.

Ridcully was sitting at his desk now, surrounded by his senior wizards. They were trying to tell him things, despite the known danger of trying to tell Ridcully things, which was that he picked up the facts he liked and let the others take a running jump.

“So,” he said, “
not
a kind of cheese.”

“
No
, Archchancellor,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Rincewind is a kind of wizard.”

“Was,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Not a cheese,” said Ridcully, unwilling to let go of a fact.

“No.”

“Sounds a sort of name you’d associate with cheese. I mean, a pound of Mature Rincewind, it rolls off the tongue…”

“
Godsdammit
, Rincewind is not a cheese!” shouted the Dean, his temper briefly cracking. “Rincewind is not a yogurt or any kind of sour milk derivative! Rincewind is a bloody nuisance! A complete and utter disgrace to wizardry! A fool! A failure! Anyway, he hasn’t been seen here since that…unpleasantness with the Sourcerer, years ago.”

“Really?” said Ridcully, with a certain kind of nasty politeness. “A lot of wizards behaved very badly then, I understand.”

“Yes indeed,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, scowling at the Dean, who bridled.

“I don’t know anything about that, Runes. I wasn’t Dean at the time.”

“No, but you were very senior.”

“Perhaps, but it just so happens that at the time I was visiting my aunt, for your information.”

“They nearly blew up the whole city!”

“She lives in Quirm.”

“
And
Quirm was heavily involved, as I recall.”

“—
near
Quirm.
Near
Quirm. Not all that near, actually. Quite a way along the coast—”

“Hah!”

“Anyway,
you
seem to be very well informed, eh, Runes?” said the Dean.

“I—What?—I—was studying hard at the time. Hardly knew what was going on—”

“Half the University was blown down!” The Dean remembered himself and added, “That is, so I heard. Later. After getting back from my aunt’s.”

“Yes, but I’ve got a very thick door—”

“And I happen to
know
the Senior Wrangler was here, because—”

“—with that heavy green baize stuff you can hardly hear any—”

“Nap my for time it’s think I.”

“
Will you all shut up right now this minute!
”

Ridcully glared at his faculty with the clear, innocent glare of someone who was blessed at birth with no imagination whatsoever, and who had genuinely been hundreds of miles away during the University’s recent embarrassing history.

“Right,” he said, when they had quietened down. “This Rincewind. Bit of an idiot, yes? You talk, Dean. Everyone else will shut up.”

The Dean looked uncertain.

“Well, er…I mean, it makes no sense, Archchancellor. He couldn’t even do proper magic. What good would he be to anyone? Besides…where Rincewind went”—he lowered his voice—“
trouble followed behind
.”

Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together.

“Sounds all right to me,” he said. “Best place for trouble, behind. You certainly don’t want it in front.”

“You don’t understand, Archchancellor,” said the Dean. “It followed behind on hundreds of little legs.”

The Archchancellor’s smile stayed where it was while the rest of his face went solid behind it.

“You been on the Bursar’s pills, Dean?”

“I assure you, Mustrum—”

“Then don’t talk rubbish.”

“Very
well
, Archchancellor. But you do realize, don’t you, that it might take years to find him?”

“Er,” said Ponder, “if we can work out his thaumic signature, I think Hex could probably do it in a day…”

The Dean glared.

“That’s not magic!” he snapped. “That’s just…engineering!”

Rincewind trudged through the shallows and used a sharp rock to hack the top off a coconut that had been cooling in a convenient shady rock pool. He put it to his lips.

A shadow fell across him.

It said, “Er, hello?”

It was possible, if you kept on talking at the Archchancellor for long enough, that some facts might squeeze through.

“So what you’re
tellin
’ me,” said Ridcully, eventually, “is that this Rincewind fella has been chased by just about every army in the world, has been bounced around life like a pea on a drum, and probably is the one wizard who knows anything about the Agatean Empire on account of once being friends with,” he glanced at his notes, “‘a strange little man in glasses’ who came from there and gave him this funny thing with the legs you all keep alluding to. And he can speak the lingo. Am I right so far?”

“Exactly, Archchancellor. Call me an idiot if you like,” said the Dean, “but why would anyone want him?”

Ridcully looked down at his notes again. “
You’ve
decided to go, then?” he said.

“No, of course not—”

“What I don’t think you’ve spotted here, Dean,” he said, breaking into a determinedly cheery grin, “is what I might call the common denominator. Chap stays alive. Talented. Find him. And bring him here. Wherever he is. Poor chap could be facing something
dreadful
.”

The coconut stayed where it was, but Rincewind’s eyes swivelled madly from side to side.

Three figures stepped into his line of vision. They were obviously female. They were
abundantly
female. They were not wearing a great deal of clothing and seemed to be altogether too fresh-from-the-hairdressers for people who have just been paddling a large war canoe, but this is often the case with beautiful Amazonian warriors.

A thin trickle of coconut milk began to dribble off the end of Rincewind’s beard.

The leading woman brushed aside her long blonde hair and gave him a bright smile.

“I know this sounds a little unlikely,” she said, “but I and my sisters here represent a hitherto undiscovered tribe whose menfolk were recently destroyed in a deadly but short-lived and highly specific plague. Now we have been searching these islands for a man to enable us to carry on our line.”

“
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 mold in the shape of a castle.

They hit him one after the other, the blancmange mold 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 disheveled scarecrow in the center 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 cargocult 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.
^*

The figure sidled up to a skinny man in a huge overcoat who was frying something over a little oilheater 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!”

“No
no
no
no
no
no
no!”

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!”