Interesting Times

He gave Rincewind another look, even longer and more calculating.

'Where you from, shogun?' he asked, and his voice suddenly had the little barbed edge of suspicion.

'Bes Pelargic,' said Rincewind quickly. 'That ex-plains my strange accent and mannerisms that might otherwise lead people to think I was some sort of foreigner,' he added.

'Oh, Bes Pelargic,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'Well, in that case, I expect you know my old friend Five Tongs who lives in the Street of Heavens, yes?'

Rincewind was ready for this old trick.

'No,' he said. 'Never heard of him, never heard of the street.'

Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala grinned happily. 'If I yell 'foreign devil' loud enough you won't get three steps,' he said in conversational tones. 'The guards will drag you off to the Forbidden City where there's this special thing they do with—'

'I've heard about it,' said Rincewind.

'Five Tongs has been the district commissioner for three years and the Street of Heavens is the man street,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'I've always wanted to meet a blood-sucking foreign ghost. Have a rice cake.'

Rincewind's gaze darted this way and that. But strangely enough the situation didn't seem dangerous, or at least inevitably dangerous. It seemed that danger was negotiable.

'Supposing I was to admit I was from behind the Wall?' he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.

Dibhala nodded. One hand reached into his robe and, in a quick movement, revealed and then concealed the corner of something which Rincewind was not entirely surprised to see was entitled WHAT I DID…

'Some people say that beyond the Wall there's nothing but deserts and burning wastes and evil ghosts and terrible monsters,' said Dibhala, 'but I say what about the merchandizing opportunities? A man with the right contacts… Know what I mean, shogun? He could go a long way in the land of blood-sucking ghosts.'

Rincewind nodded. He didn't like to point out that if you turned up in Ankh-Morpork with a handful of gold then about three hundred people would turn up with a handful of steel.

'The way I see it, what with all this uncertainty about the Emperor and talk of rebels and that — Long Live His Excellency The Son Of Heaven, of course — there might just be a nitch for the open-minded trader, am I right?'

'Nitch?'

'Nitch. Like… we've got this stuff' — he leaned closer — 'comes out of a caterpillar's [unidentified pictogram]. 'S called… silk. It's—'

'Yes, I know. We get it from Klatch,' said Rincewind.

'Or, well, there's this bush, see, you dry the leaves but then you put it in hot water and you drin—'

'Tea, yes,' said Rincewind. 'That comes from Howondaland.'

D. M. H. Dibhala looked taken aback.

'Well… we've got this powder, you put it in rubes—'

'Fireworks? Got fireworks.'

'How about this really fine china, it's so—'

'In Ankh-Morpork we've got dwarfs that can make china you can read a book through,' said Rincewind. 'Even if it's got tiny footnotes in it.'

Dibhala frowned.

'Sounds like you are very clever blood-sucking ghosts,' he said, backing away. 'Maybe it's true and you are dangerous.'

'Us? Don't worry about us,' said Rincewind. 'We hardly ever kill foreigners in Ankh-Morpork. It makes it so hard to sell them things afterwards.'

'What've we got that you want, though? Go on, have a rice cake. On the pagoda. Wanna try some pork balls? Onna chopstick?'

Rincewind selected a cake. He didn't like to ask about the other stuff.

'You've got gold,' he said.

'Oh, gold. It's too soft to do much with,' said Dibhala. 'It's all right for pipes and putting on roofs, though.'

'Oh… I daresay people in Ankh-Morpork could find a use for some,' said Rincewind. His gaze returned to the coins in Dibhala's tray.

A land where gold was as cheap as lead…

'What's that?' he said, pointing to a crumpled rectangle half covered with coins.

D. M. H. Dibhala looked down. 'It's this thing we have here,' he said, speaking slowly. 'Of course, it's probably all new to you. It's called money. It's a way of carrying around your—'

'I meant the bit of paper,' said Rincewind.

'So did I,' said Dibhala. 'That's a ten-rhinu note.'

'What does that mean?' said Rincewind.

'Means what it says,' said Dibhala. 'Means it's worth ten of these.' He held up a gold coin about the size of a rice cake.

'Why'd you want to buy a piece of paper?' said Rincewind.

'You don't buy it, it's for buying things with,' said Dibhala.

Rincewind looked blank.

'You go to a market stall,' said Dibhala, getting back into the slow-voice-for-the-hard-of-thinking, 'and you say, 'Good morning, butcher, how much for those dog noses?' and he says, 'Three rhinu, shogun,' and you say, 'I've only got a pony, OK?' (look, there's an etching of a pony on it, see, that's what you get on ten-rhinu notes) and he gives you the dog noses and seven coins in what we call 'change'. Now, if you had a monkey, that's fifty rhinu, he'd say 'Got anything smaller?' and—'

'But it's only a bit of paper!' Rincewind wailed.

'It may be a bit of paper to you but it's ten rice cakes to me,' said Dibhala. 'What do you foreign bloodsuckers use? Big stones with holes in them?'

Rincewind stared at the paper money.

There were dozens of papermills in Ankh-Morpork, and some of the craftsmen in the Engravers' Guild could engrave their name and address on a pinhead.

He suddenly felt immensely proud of his countrymen. They might be venal and greedy, but by heaven they were good at it and they never assumed that there wasn't any more to learn.

'I think you'll find,' he said, 'that there's a lot of buildings in Ankh-Morpork that need new roofs.'

'Really?' said Dibhala.

'Oh, yes. The rain's just pouring in.'

'And people can pay? Only I heard—'

Rincewind looked at the paper money again. He shook his head. Worth more than gold…

'They'll pay with notes at least as good as that,' he said. 'Probably even better. I'll put in a good word for you. And now,' he added hurriedly, 'which way is out?'

Dibhala scratched his head.

'Could be a bit tricky,' he said. 'There's armies outside. You look a bit foreign with that hat. Could be tricky —'

There was a commotion further along the alley or, rather, a general increase in the commotion. The crowd parted in that hurried way common to unarmed crowds in the presence of weaponry, and a group of guards hurried towards Disembowel-Meself-Honourably.

He stepped back and gave them the friendly grin of one happy to sell at a discount to anyone with a knife.

A limp figure was being dragged between two of the guards. As it went past it raised a slightly bloodstained head and said, 'Extended Duration to the—' before a gloved fist smacked across its mouth.

And then the guards were heading down the street. The crowd flowed back.

'Tch, tch,' said D. M. H. 'Seems to be — Hello? Where'd you go?'