Interesting Times (Discworld 17)

'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 Arch-chancellor 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-haidressers 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 mould in the shape of a castle. They hit him one after the other, the blancmange mould 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 dishevelled scarecrow in the centre 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 cargo-cult 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.'