Interesting Times (Discworld 17)

'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 space 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!'

'Oorrry orrraaah?'

'Oooorrrr?'

'With mustard!'

'Oooorrrr!' Twenty very small heads turned. A total of eighty specialized neurones 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 vou, 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—?'