Interesting Times

'No.'

'Hit the man over the head with a melon and thumped him into the strawberries and kicked him in the nuts and set fire to his stall and stole all the money?'

'Whut?'

'Correct!' Mr Saveloy sighed. 'Ghenghiz, you were doing so well up to then.'

'He didn't ort to have called me what he did!'

'But 'venerable' means old and wise, Ghenghiz.'

'Oh. Does it?'

'Yes.'

'We-ell… I did leave him the money for the apple.'

'Yes, but, you see, I do believe you took all his other money.'

'But I paid for the apple,' said Cohen, rather testily.

Mr Saveloy sighed. 'Ghenghiz, I do rather get the impression that several thousand years of the patient development of fiscal propriety have somewhat passed you by.'

'Come again?'

'It is possible sometimes for money to legitimately belong to other people,' said Mr Saveloy patiently.

The Horde paused to wrap their minds around this, too. It was, of course, something they knew to be true in theory. Merchants always had money. But it seemed wrong to think of it as belonging to them; it belonged to whoever took it off them. Merchants didn't actually own it, they were just looking after it until it was needed.

'Now, there is an elderly lady over there selling ducks,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I think the next stage — Mr Willie, I am not over there, I am sure whatever you are looking at is very interesting, but please pay attention — is to practise our grasp of social intercourse.'

'Hur, hur, hur,' said Caleb the Ripper.

'I mean, Mr Ripper, that you should go and enquire how much it would be for a duck,' said Mr Saveloy.

'Hur, hur, hur — What?'

'And you are not to rip all her clothes off. That's not civilized.'

Caleb scratched his head. Flakes fell out.

'Well, what else am I supposed to do?'

'Er… engage her in conversation.'

'Eh? What's there to talk about with a woman?'

Mr Saveloy hesitated again. To some extent this was unknown territory to him as well. His experience with women at his last school had been limited to an occasional chat with the housekeeper, and on one occasion the matron had let him put his hand on her knee. He had been forty before he found out that oral sex didn't mean talking about it. Women had always been to him strange and distant and wonderful creatures rather than, as the Horde to a man believed, something to do. He was struggling a little.

'The weather?' he hazarded. His memory threw in vague recollections of the staple conversation of the maiden aunt who had brought him up. 'Her health? The trouble with young people today?'

'And then I rip her clothes off?'

'Possibly. Eventually. If she wants you to. I might draw your attention to the discussion we had the other day about taking regular baths' — or even a bath, he added to himself — 'and attention to fingernails and hair and changing your clothes more often.'

'This is leather,' said Caleb. 'You don't have to change it, it don't rot for years.'

Once again Mr Saveloy readjusted his sights. He'd thought that Civilization could be overlaid on the Horde like a veneer. He had been mistaken.

But the funny thing — he mused, as the Horde watched Caleb's painful attempts at conversation with a representative of half the world's humanity — was that although they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally mixed with in staff-rooms, or possibly because they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally mixed with in staffrooms, he actually liked them. Every one of them saw a book as either a lavatorial accessory or a set of portable firelighters and thought that hygiene was a greeting. Yet they were honest (from their specialized point of view) and decent (from their specialized point of view) and saw the world as hugely simple. They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money.

And although they didn't set out to give the money away to the poor, that was nevertheless what they did (if you accepted that the poor consisted of innkeepers, ladies of negotiable virtue, pickpockets, gamblers and general hangers-on), because although they would go to great lengths to steal money they then had as much control over it as a man trying to herd cats. It was there to be spent and lost. So they kept the money in circulation, always a praiseworthy thing in any society.

They never worried about what other people thought. Mr Saveloy, who'd spent his whole life worrying about what other people thought and had been passed over for promotion and generally treated as a piece of furniture as a result, found this strangely attractive. And they never agonized about anything, or wondered if they were doing the right thing. And they enjoyed themselves immensely. They had a kind of honour. He liked the Horde. They weren't his kind of people.

Caleb returned, looking unusually thoughtful.

'Congratulations, Mr Ripper!' said Mr Saveloy, a great believer in positive reinforcement. 'She still appears to be fully clothed.'

'Yeah, what'd she say?' said Boy Willie.

'She smiled at me,' said Caleb. He scratched his crusty beard uneasily. 'A bit, anyway,' he added.

'Good,' said Mr Saveloy.

'She, er… she said she'd… she wouldn't mind seein' me… later…'

'Well done!'

'Er… Teach? What's a shave?'

Saveloy explained.

Caleb listened carefully, grimacing occasionally. He turned round occasionally to look at the duck seller, who gave him a little wave.

'Cor,' he said. 'Er. I dunno…' He looked around again. 'Never seen a woman who wasn't running away before.'

'Oh, women are like deer,' said Cohen loftily. 'You can't just charge in, you gotta stalk 'em—'

'Hur, hur, h — Sorry,' said Caleb, catching Mr Saveloy's stern eye.

'I think perhaps we should end the lesson here,' said Mr Saveloy. 'We don't want to get you too civilized, do we…? I suggest we take a stroll around the Forbidden City, yes?'

They'd all seen it. It dominated the centre of Hunghung. Its walls were forty feet high.

'There's a lot of soldiers guarding the gates,' said Cohen.

'So they should. A great treasure lies within,' said Mr Saveloy. He didn't raise his eyes, though. He seemed to be staring intently at the ground, as though searching for something he'd lost.

'Why don't we just rush up and kill the guards?' Caleb demanded. He was still feeling a bit shaken.

'Whut?'

'Don't be daft,' said Cohen. 'It'd take all day. Anyway,' he added, feeling a little proud despite himself, 'Teach here is goin' to get us in on an invisible duck, ain't that so, Teach?'

Mr Saveloy stopped.

'Ah. Eureka,' he said.

'That's Ephebian, that is,' Cohen told the Horde. 'It means 'Give me a towel.''

'Oh yeah,' said Caleb, who had been surreptitiously trying to untangle the knots in his beard. 'And when were you ever in Ephebe?'

'Went bounty hunting there once.'

'Who for?'

'You, I think.'