Interesting Times

kind enough to pass me up my tea?'

'And I was amazed the Senior Wrangler could ever fit in the sideboard,' said Ridcully. 'It's amazin' how a man can fold himself up.'

'I was just — just inspecting the silverware,' said a voice from the depths of a drawer.

The Luggage opened its lid. Several wizards jumped back hurriedly.

Ridcully examined the shark teeth stuck here and there in the woodwork.

'Kills sharks, you say?' he said.

'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Sometimes it drags them ashore and jumps up and down on them.'

Ridcully was impressed. Sapient pearwood was very rare in the countries between the Ramtops and the Circle Sea. There were probably no living trees left. A few wizards were lucky enough to have inherited staffs made out of it.

Economy of emotion was one of Ridcully's strong points. He had been impressed. He had been fascinated. He'd even, when the thing had landed in the middle of the wizards and caused the Dean's remarkable feat of vertical acceleration, been slightly aghast. But he hadn't been frightened, because he didn't have the imagination.

'My goodness,' said a wizard.

The Archchancellor looked up.

'Yes, Bursar?'

'It's this book the Dean loaned me, Mustrum. It's about apes.'

'Really.'

'It's most fascinating,' said the Bursar, who was on the median part of his mental cycle and therefore vaguely on the right planet even if insulated from it by five miles of mental cotton wool. 'It's true what he said. It says here that an adult male orang-utan doesn't grow the large flamboyant cheek pads unless he's the dominant male.'

'And that's fascinating, is it?'

'Well, yes, because he hasn't got 'em. I wonder why? He certainly dominates the Library, I should think.'

'Ah, yes,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'but he knows he's a wizard, too. So it's not as though he dominates the whole University.'

One by one, as the thought sank in, they grinned at the Archchancellor.

'Don't you look at my cheeks like that!' said Ridcully. 'I don't dominate anybody!'

'I was only—'

'So you can all shut up or there will be big trouble!'

'You should read it,' said the Bursar, still happily living in the valley of the dried frogs. 'It's amazing what you can learn.'

'What? Like… how to show your bottom to people?' said the Dean, from on high.

'No, Dean. That's baboons,' said the Senior Wrangler.

'I beg your pardon, I think you'll find it's gibbons,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

'No, gibbons are the ones that hoot. It's baboons if you want to see bottoms.'

'Well, he's never shown me one,' said the Archchancellor.

'Hah, well, he wouldn't, would he?' said a voice from the chandelier. 'Not with you being dominant male and everything.'

'Two Chairs, you come down here this minute!'

'I seem to be entangled, Mustrum. A candle is giving me some difficulty.'

'Hah!'

Rincewind shook his head and wandered away. There had certainly been some changes around the place since he had been there and, if it came to it, he didn't know how long ago that had been…

He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people — thoughtless, feckless people — would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it was something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.

The root problem, Rincewind had come to believe, was that he suffered from pre- emptive karma. If it even looked as though something nice was going to happen to him in the near future, something bad would happen right now. And it went on happening to him right through the part where the good stuff should be happening, so that he never actually experienced it. It was as if he always got the indigestion before the meal and felt so dreadful that he never actually managed to eat anything.

Somewhere in the world, he reasoned, there was someone who was on the other end of the see-saw, a kind of mirror Rincewind whose life was a succession of wonderful events. He hoped to meet him one day, preferably while holding some sort of weapon.

Now people were babbling about sending him to the Counterweight Continent. He'd heard that life was dull there. And Rincewind really craved dullness.

He'd really liked that island. He'd enjoyed Coconut Surprise. You cracked it open and, hey, there was coconut inside. That was the kind of surprise he liked.

He pushed open a door.

The place inside had been his room. It was a mess. There was a large and battered wardrobe, and that was about the end of it as far as proper furniture was concerned unless you wanted to broaden the term to include a wicker chair with no bottom and three legs and a mattress so full of the life that inhabits mattresses that it occasionally moved sluggishly around the floor, bumping into things. The rest of the room was a litter of objects dragged in from the street — old crates, bits of planking, sacks…

Rincewind felt a lump in his throat. They'd left his room just as it was.

He opened the wardrobe and rummaged through the moth-haunted darkness within, until his questing hand located—

— an ear—

— which was attached to a dwarf.

'Ow!'

'What,' said Rincewind, 'are you doing in my wardrobe?'

'Wardrobe? Er… Er… Isn't this the Magic Kingdom of Scrumptiousness?' said the dwarf, trying not to look guilty.

'No, and these shoes you're holding aren't the Golde Jewels of the Queen of the Fairies,' said Rincewind, snatching them out of the thief's hands. 'And this isn't the Wand of Invisibility and these aren't Giant Grumblenose's Wonderful Socks but this is my boot—'

'Ow!'

'And stay out!'

The dwarf ran for the door and paused, but only briefly, to shout: 'I've got a Thieves' Guild card! And you shouldn't hit dwarfs! That's speciesism!'

'Good,' said Rincewind, retrieving items of clothing.

He found another robe and put it on. Here and there moths had worked their lacemaking skills and most of the red colour had faded to shades of orange and brown, but to his relief it was a proper wizard's robe. It's hard to be an impressive magic-user with bare knees.

Gentle footsteps pattered to a halt behind him. He turned.

'Open.'

The Luggage obediently cracked its lid. In theory it should have been full of shark; in fact it was half full of