Interesting Times (7 page)

“Of course,” said Ponder, “the subject would not, er, actually experience this—”

“Oh.”

“—as far as we know—”

“What?”

“—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—”

“Eh?”

“—to briefly witness the explosive discorporation.”

“Hey?”

“Now, we’re all familiar with the use of the spell as a fulcrum, er, so that one does not actually move
one
object but simply exchanges the position of two objects of similar mass. It is my aim tonight, er, to demonstrate that by imparting exactly the right amount of spin and the maximum velocity to the object—”

“Me?”

“—from the very first moment, it is virtually certain—”

“Virtually?”

“—to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles—”

“
Up to?
”

“—give or take ten percent—”

“
Give or take?
”

“So if you’d—excuse me, Dean, I’d be obliged if you’d stop dripping wax—if you’d all take up the positions I’ve marked on the floor…”

Rincewind looked longingly towards the door. It was no distance at all for the experienced coward. He could just trot out of here and they could…they could…

What could they do? They could just take his hat away and stop him ever coming back to the University. Now he came to think about it, they probably wouldn’t be bothered about the nailing bit if he was too much bother to find.

And that was the problem. He wouldn’t be dead, but then neither would he be a wizard. And, he thought, as the wizards shuffled into position and screwed down the knobs on the ends of their staffs, not being able to think of himself as a wizard
was
being dead.

The spell began.

Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief? Just about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or aptitudes that he didn’t have.

He was no good at anything else. Wizardry was the only refuge. Well, actually he was no good at wizardry either, but at least he was
definitively
no good at it. He’d always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn’t do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn’t a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid. It was a vaguely noble thought that had kept him warm during those occasional 3
A.M.
awakenings when he had evaluated his life and found it weighed a little less than a puff of warm hydrogen. And he probably
had
saved the world a few times, but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do something else. So you almost certainly didn’t actually get any karmic points for that. It probably only counted if you started out by thinking in a loud way “By criminy, it’s jolly well time to save the world, and no two ways about it!” instead of “Oh, shit, this time I’m
really
going to die.”

The spell continued.

It didn’t seem to be going very well.

“Come on, you chaps,” said Ridcully. “Put some backbone into it!”

“Are you sure…it’s…just something small?” said the Dean, who’d broken into a sweat.

“Looks like a…wheelbarrow…” muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

The knob on the end of Ridcully’s staff began to smoke.

“Will you look at the magic I’m using!” he said. “What’s goin’ on, Mr. Stibbons?”

“Er. Of course, size isn’t the same as mass…”

And then, in the same way that it can take considerable effort to push at a sticking door and no effort at all to fall full length into the room beyond, the spell caught.

Ponder hoped, afterwards, that what he saw was an optical illusion. Certainly no one normally was suddenly stretched to about twelve feet tall and then snapped back into shape so fast that their boots ended up under their chin.

There was a brief cry of “Oooooohhhhshhhhhh—” which ended abruptly, and this was probably just as well.

The first thing that struck Rincewind when he appeared on the Counterweight Continent was a cold sensation.

The next things, in order of the direction of travel, were: a surprised man with a sword, another man with a sword, a third man who’d dropped
his
sword and was trying to run away, two other men who were less alert and didn’t even see him, a small tree, about fifty yards of stunted undergrowth, a snowdrift, a bigger snowdrift, a few rocks, and one more and quite final snowdrift.

Ridcully looked at Ponder Stibbons.

“Well, he’s gone,” he said. “But aren’t we supposed to get something back?”

“I’m not sure the transit time is instantaneous,” said Ponder.

“You’ve got to allow for zooming-through-the-occult-dimensions time?”

“Something like that. According to Hex, we might have to wait several—”

Something appeared in the octagon with a “pop,” exactly where Rincewind had been, and rolled a few inches.

It did, at least, have four small wheels such as might carry a cart. But these weren’t workmanlike wheels; these were mere discs such as may be put on something heavy for those rare occasions it needs to be moved.

Above the wheels things became rather more interesting.

There was a large round cylinder, like a barrel on its side. A considerable amount of effort had been put into its construction; large amounts of brass had gone into making it look like a very large, fat dog with its mouth open. A minor feature was a length of string, which was smoking and hissing because it was on fire.

It didn’t do anything dangerous. It just sat there, while the smoldering string slowly got shorter.

The wizards gathered round.

“Looks pretty heavy,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“A statue of a dog with a big mouth,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “That’s rather dull.”

“Bit of a lap-dog, too,” said Ridcully.

“Lot of work gone into it,” said the Dean. “Can’t imagine why anyone’d want to set fire to it.”

Ridcully poked his head into the wide tube.

“Some kind of big round ball in here,” he said, his voice echoing a little. “Someone pass me a staff or something. I’ll see if I can wiggle it out.”

Ponder was staring at the fizzing string.

“Er,” he said, “I…er…think we should all just step away from it, Archchancellor. Er. We should all just step back, yes, step back a little way. Er.”

“Hah, yes, really? So much for research,” said Ridcully. “You don’t mind messing around with cogwheels and ants but when it comes to really trying to find out how things work and—”

“Getting your hands dirty,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Yes, getting your hands dirty, you come over all shy.”

“It’s not that, Archchancellor,” said Ponder. “But I believe it may be dangerous.”

“I think I’m working it loose,” said Ridcully, poking in the depths of the tube. “Come on, you fellows, tip the thing up a bit…”

Ponder took a few more steps back. “Er, I really don’t think—” he began.

“Don’t think, eh? Call yourself a wizard and you don’t think? Blast! I’ve got my staff wedged now! That’s what comes of listening to you when I should have been paying attention, Mr. Stibbons.”

Ponder heard a scuffling behind him. The Librarian, with an animal’s instinct for danger and a human’s instinct for trouble, had upturned a table and was peering over the top of it with a small cauldron on his head, the handle under one of his chins like a strap.

“Archchancellor, I really
do
think—”

“Oh, you think, do you? Did anyone tell you it’s your job to think? Ow! It’s got my fingers now, thanks to you!”

It needed all Ponder’s courage to say, “I think…it might perhaps be some kind of firework, sir.”

The wizards turned their attention to the fizzling string.

“What…colored lights, stars, that sort of thing?” said Ridcully.

“Possibly, sir.”

“Must be planning a hell of a display. Apparently they’re very keen on firecrackers, over in the Empire.” Ridcully spoke in the tone of voice of a man over whom the thought is slowly stealing that he just might have done something very silly.

“Would you like me to extinguish the string, sir?” said Ponder.

“Yes, dear boy, why not? Good idea. Good thinking, that man.”

Ponder stepped forward and pinched the string.

“I do hope we haven’t ruined something,” he said.

Rincewind opened his eyes.

This was
not
cool sheets. It was white, and it was cold, but it lacked basic sheetness. It made up for this by having vast amounts of snowosity.

And a groove. A
long
groove.

Let’s see now…He could remember the sensation of movement. And he vaguely remembered something small but incredibly
heavy
-looking roaring past in the opposite direction. And then he was here, moving so fast that his feet left this…

…groove. Yes, groove, he thought, in the easygoing way of the mildly concussed. With people lying around it groaning.

But they looked like people who, once they’d stopped crawling around groaning, were going to draw the swords they had about their persons and pay detailed attention to serious bits.

He stood up, a little shakily. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to run to. There was just this wide, snowy waste with a border of mountains.

The soldiers were definitely looking a lot more conscious. Rincewind sighed. A few hours ago he’d been sitting on a warm beach with young women about to offer him potatoes,
^*
and here he was on a windswept, chilly plain with some large men about to offer him violence.

The soles of his shoes, he noticed, were steaming.

And then someone said, “Hey! Are you…you’re not, are you…are you…whatsyername…Rincewind, isn’t it?”

Rincewind turned.

There was a very old man behind him. Despite the bitter wind he was wearing nothing except a leather loincloth and a grubby beard so long that the loincloth wasn’t really necessary, at least from the point of view of decency. His legs were blue from the cold and his nose was red from the wind, giving him overall quite a patriotic look if you were from the right country. He had a patch over one eye but rather more notable than that were his teeth. They glittered.

“Don’t stand there gawping like a big gawper! Get these damn things off me!”

There were heavy shackles around his ankles and wrists; a chain led to a group of more or less similarly clad men who were huddling in a crowd and watching Rincewind in terror.

“Heh! They think you’re some kind of demon,” cackled the old man. “But I knows a wizard when I sees one! That bastard over there’s got the keys. Go and give him a good kicking.”

Rincewind took a few hesitant steps towards a recumbent guard and snatched at his belt.

“Right,” said the old man, “now chuck ’em over here. And then get out of the way.”

“Why?”

“’Cos you don’t want to get blood all over you.”

“But you haven’t got a weapon and there’s one of you and they’ve got big swords and there’s five of them!”

“I know,” said the old man, wrapping the chain around one of his fists in a businesslike manner. “It’s unfair, but I can’t wait around all day.”

He grinned.

Gems glittered in the morning light. Every tooth in the man’s head was a diamond. And Rincewind knew of only one man who had the nerve to wear troll teeth.

“Here? Cohen the Barbarian?”

“Ssh! Ingconitar! Now get out of the way, I said.” The teeth flashed at the guards, who were now vertical. “Come on, boys. There’s five of you, after all. An’ I’m an old man. Mumble, mumble, oo me leg, ekcetra…”

To their credit, the guards hesitated. It was probably not, to judge from their faces, because there’s something reprehensible about five large, heavily beweaponed men attacking a frail old man. It might have been because there’s something odd about a frail old man who keeps on grinning in the face of obvious oblivion.

“Oh, come
on
,” said Cohen. The men edged closer, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move.

Cohen took a few steps forward, waving his arms wearily. “Oh,
no
,” he said. “It makes me ashamed, honestly it does. This is
not
how you attack someone, all milling around like a lot of millers; when you attack someone the important thing to remember is the element of…
surprise
—”

Ten seconds later he turned to Rincewind.

“All right, Mister Wizard. You can open your eyes now.”

One guard was upside-down in a tree, one was a pair of feet sticking out of a snowdrift, two were slumped against rocks, and one was…generally around the place. Here and there. Certainly hanging out.

Cohen sucked his wrist thoughtfully.

“I reckon that last one came within an inch of getting me,” he said. “I must be getting old.”

“Why are you h—” Rincewind paused. One packet of curiosity overtook the first one. “How old
are
you, exactly?”

“Is this still the Century of the Fruitbat?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I dunno. Ninety? Could be ninety. Maybe ninety-five?” Cohen fished the keys out of the snow and ambled over to the group of men, who were cowering even more. He unlocked the first set of manacles and handed the shocked prisoner the keys.

“Bugger off, the lot of you,” he said, not unkindly. “And don’t get caught again.”

He strolled back to Rincewind.

“What brings you into this dump, then?”

“Well—”

“Interestin’,” said Cohen, and that was that. “But can’t stay chatting all day, got work to do. You coming, or what?”

“What?”

“Please yourself.” Cohen tied the chain around his waist as a makeshift belt and wedged a couple of swords in it.

“Incidentally,” he said, “what did you do with the Barking Dog?”

“What dog?”

“I expect it doesn’t matter.”

Rincewind scuttled after the retreating figure. It wasn’t that he felt safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around.
No one
was safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around. Something seemed to have gone wrong with the ageing process there. Cohen had always been a barbarian hero because barbaric heroing was all he knew how to do. And while he got old he seemed to get harder, like oak.