Eric (Discworld 9)

Travelling by magic always had major drawbacks. There was the feeling that your stomach was lagging behind. And your mind filled up with terror because the destination was always a little uncertain. It wasn't that you could come out anywhere. “Anywhere” represented a very restricted range of choices compared to the kind of places magic could transport you to. The actual travelling was easy. It was achieving a destination which, for example, allowed you to survive in all four dimensions at once that took the real effort.

In fact the scope for error was so huge it seemed something of an anti-climax to emerge in a fairly ordinary, sandy-floored cavern.

It contained, on the far wall, a door.

There was a forbidding door. It looked as though its designer had studied all the cell doors he could find and had then gone away and produced a version for, as it were, full visual orchestra. It was more of a portal. Some ancient and probably fearful warning was etched over its crumbling arch, but it was destined to remain unread because over it someone else had pasted a bright red-and-white notice which read: “You Don't Have To Be `Damned` To Work Here, But It Helps!!!”

Rincewind squinted up at the notice.

“Of course I can read it,” he said. “I just don't happen to believe it.”

“Multiple exclamation marks,” he went on, shaking his head, “are a sure sign of a diseased mind.”

He looked behind him. The glowing outlines of Eric's magic circle faded and winked out.

“I'm not being picky, you understand,” he said. “It's just that I thought you said you could get us back to Ankh. This isn't Ankh. I can tell by the little details, like the flickering red shadows and the distant screaming. In Ankh the screaming is usually much closer,” he added.

“I think I did very well to get it to work at all,” said Eric, bridling. “You're not supposed to be able to run magic circles in reverse. In theory it means you stay in the circle and reality moves around you. I think I did very well. You see,” he added, his voice suddenly vibrating with enthusiasm, “if you rewrite the source codex and, this is the difficult bit, you route it through a high-level - ”

“Yes, yes, very clever, what will you people think of next,” said Rincewind. “The only thing is, we're, I think it's quite possible that we're in Hell.”

“Oh?”

Eric's lack of reaction made Rincewind curious.

“You know,” he added. “The place with all the demons in it?”

“Oh?”

“Not a good place to be, it's generally felt,” said Rincewind.

Rincewind thought about this. He wasn't, when you got right down to it, quite sure what it was that demons did to you. But he did know what humans did to you, and after a lifetime in Ankh-Morpork this place could turn out to be an improvement. Warmer, at any rate.

He looked at the door-knocker. It was black and horrible, but that didn't matter because it was also tied up so that it couldn't be used. Beside it, with all the signs of being installed recently by someone who didn't know what they were doing and didn't want to do it, was a button set into the splintered woodwork. Rincewind gave it an experimental prod.

The sound it produced might once have been a popular tune, possibly even one written by a skilled composer to whom had been vouchsafed, for a brief ecstatic moment, the music of the spheres. Now, however, it just went bing-BONG-ding-DONG.

And it would be a lazy use of language to say that the thing that answered the door was a nightmare. Nightmares are usually rather daft things and it's very hard to explain to a listener what was so dreadful about your socks coming alive or giant carrots jumping out of hedgerows. This thing was the kind of terrifying thing that could only be created by someone sitting down and thinking horrible thoughts very clearly. It had more tentacles than legs, but fewer arms than heads.

o;Lots?” said Eric. “I thought there was only one.”

“Oh, no. There's masses of them,” said the creator, beginning to fade away. “That's quantum mechanics for you, see. You don't do it once and have done. No, they keep on branching off. Multiple choice they call it, it's like painting the - painting the - painting something very big that you have to keep on painting, sort of thing. It's all very well saying you just have to change one little detail, but which one, that's the real bugger. Well, nice to have met you. If you need any extra work, you know, an extra moon or something - ”

“Hey!”

The creator reappeared, his eyebrows raised in polite surprise.

“What happens now?” said Rincewind.

“Now? Well, I imagine there'll be some gods along soon. They don't wait long to move in, you know. Like flies around a - flies around a - like flies. They tend to be a bit highspirited to start with, but they soon settle down. I suppose they take care of all the people, ekcetra.” The creator leaned forward. “I've never been good at doing people. Never seem to get the arms and legs right.” He vanished.

They waited.

“I think he's really gone this time,” said Eric, after a while. “What a nice man.”

“You certainly understand a lot more about why the world is like it is after talking to him,” said Rincewind.

“What're quantum mechanics?”