Interesting Times (Discworld 17)

'It's all going to go wrong,' said Rincewind flatly. 'What d'you mean, old fellow?'

'I just know it. It's all going to go wrong. Something dreadful's going to happen. I thought it was too good to last.'

'You see?' said the Dean. 'Hundreds of little legs. I told you. Would you listen?' Rincewind sat up. 'Don't start being nice to me,' he said. 'Don't start offering me grapes. No- one ever wants me for something nice.' A confused memory of his very recent past floated across his mind and he experienced a brief moment of regret that potatoes, while uppermost in his mind at that point, had not been similarly positioned in the mind of the young lady. No- one dressed like that, he was coming to realize, could be thinking of any kind of root vegetable. He sighed. 'All right, what happens now?'

'How do you feel?' Rincewind shook his head. 'It's no good,' he said. 'I hate it when people are nice to me. It means something bad is going to happen. Do you mind shouting?' Ridcully had had enough. 'Get out of that bed you horrible little man and follow me this minute or it will go very hard for you!'

'Ah, that's better. I feel right at home now. Now we're cooking with charcoal,' said Rincewind, glumly. He swung his legs off the bed and stood up carefully. Ridcully stopped halfway to the door, where the other wizards had lined up. 'Runes?'

ould 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.'

'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.[7] The figure sidled up to a skinny man in a huge overcoat who was frying something over a little oil-heater 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 buuunnnnnl' 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 loo|c 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!'

'Nonononononono!' 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!'

'Now, you lot, you saw that? Come on, gather round . . .' Half a dozen other youths slouched out of the alleyway and formed a ragged audience around Mr Boggis, the luckless student and the victim, who was staggering in a circle and making little 'oomph oomph' sounds but still, for some reason, apparently enjoying himself immensely.

'Now,' said Mr Boggis, with the air of an old skilled craftsman imparting his professional expertise to an ungrateful posterity, 'when inconveniencing a customer from your basic alley entrance, the correct procedure is - Oh, hello, Mr Ridcully, didn't see you there.' The Archchancellor gave him a friendly nod. 'Don't mind us, Mr Boggis. Thieves' Guild training, is it?' Boggis rolled his eyes. 'Dunno what they teaches 'em at school,' he said. 'It's jus' nothing but reading and writing all the time. When I was a lad school was where you learned somethin' useful. Right - you, Wilkins, stop that giggling, you have a go, excuse us just another moment, sir—'

'Ow!'

'Nononononono! My old granny could do better than that! Now look, you steps up trimly, places one hand on his shoulder here, for control . . . go on, you do it . . . and then smartly—'

'Ow!'

'All right, can anyone tell me what he was doing wrong?' The figure crawled away unnoticed, except by the wizards, while Mr Boggis was demonstrating the finer points of head percussion on Wilkins. It staggered to his feet and plunged on along the road, still moving like one hypnotized. 'He's crying,' said the Dean. 'Not surprising,' said the Archchancellor. 'But why's he grinnin' at the same time?'

'Curiouser and curiouser,' said the Senior Wrangler. Bruised and possibly poisoned, the figure headed back for the University, the wizards still trailing behind. 'You must mean “curious and more curious”, surely? And even then it doesn't make much sense—' It entered the gates but, this time, hurried jerkily through the main hall and into the Library. The Librarian was waiting, holding - with something of a smirk on his face, and an orang- utan can really smirk - the battered hat. 'Amazin',' said Ridcully. 'It's true! A wizard will always come back for his hat!' The figure grabbed the hat, evicted some spiders, threw away the sad affair made of leaves and put the hat on his head.

Rincewind blinked at the puzzled faculty. A light came on behind his eyes for the first time, as if up to now he'd merely been operating by reflex action. 'Er. What have I just eaten?'