Interesting Times

This was especially noticeable in the pond under the ghost gums. It was steaming.

A figure emerged from the clouds, absentmindedly picking the burnt bits off his beard.

Rincewind waited until his own personal world had stopped spinning and concentrated on the four men who were watching him.

They were black with lines and whorls painted on their faces and had, between them, about two square feet of clothing.

There were three reasons why Rincewind was no racist. He'd ended up in too many places too suddenly to develop that kind of mind. Besides, if he'd thought about it much, most of the really dreadful things that had happened to him had been done by quite pale people with big wardrobes. Those were two of the reasons.

The third was that these men, who were just rising from a half-crouching position, were all holding spears pointing at Rincewind and there is something about the sight of four spears aimed at your throat that causes no end of respect and the word 'sir' to arise spontaneously in the mind.

One of the men shrugged, and lowered his spear.

'G'day, bloke,' he said.

This meant only three spears, which was an improvement.

'Er. This isn't Unseen University, is it, sir?' said Rincewind.

The other spears stopped pointing at him. The men grinned. They had very white teeth.

'Klatch? Howondaland? It looks like Howondaland,' said Rincewind hopefully.

'Don't know them blokes, bloke,' said one of the men.

The other three clustered around him.

'What'll we call him?'

'He's Kangaroo Bloke. No worries there. One minute a kangaroo, next minute a bloke. The old blokes say that sort of thing used to happen all the time, back in the Dream.'

'I reckoned he'd look better than that.'

'Yeah.'

'One way to tell.'

The man who was apparently the leader of the group advanced on Rincewind with the kind of grin reserved for imbeciles and people holding guns, and held out a stick.

It was flat, and had a bend in the middle. Someone had spent a long time making rather nice designs on it in little coloured dots. Somehow, Rincewind wasn't at all surprised to see a butterfly among them.

The hunters watched him expectantly.

'Er, yes,' he said. 'Very good. Very good workmanship, yes. Interesting pointillistic effect. Shame you couldn't find a straighter bit of wood.'

One of the men laid down his spear, and squatted down and picked up a long wooden tube, covered with the same designs. He blew into it. The effect was not unpleasant. It sounded like bees would sound if they'd invented full orchestration.

'Um,' said Rincewind. 'Yes.'

It was a test, obviously. They'd given him this bent piece of wood. He had to do something with it. It was clearly very important. He'd—

Oh, no. He'd say something or do something, wouldn't he, and then they'd say, yes, you are the Great Bloke or something, and they'd drag him off and it'd be the start of another Adventure, i.e., a period of horror and unpleasantness. Life was full of tricks like that.

Well, this time Rincewind wasn't going to fall for it.

'I want to go home,' he said. 'I want to go back home to the Library where it was nice and quiet. And I don't know where I am. And I don't care what you do to me, right? I'm not going to have any kind of adventure or start saving the world again and you can't trick me into it with mysterious bits of wood.'

He gripped the stick and flung it away from him with all the force he could still muster.

They stared at him as he folded his arms.

'I'm not playing,' he said. 'I'm stopping right here.'

They were still staring. And now they were grinning, too, at something behind him.

He felt himself getting quite annoyed.

'Do you understand? Are you listening?' he said. 'That's the last time the universe is going to trick Rincewi —'

The End

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Примечания

1

People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events — the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there — that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

2

Usually about six inches across.

3

People wonder how this works, since a terrestrial elephant would be unlikely to bear a revolving load for any length of time without some serious friction burns. But you may as well ask why the axle of a planet doesn't squeak, or where love goes, or what sound yellow makes.

4

Which is like Fuzzy Logic, only less so.

5

All virtual lectures took place in room 3B, a room not locatable on any floor plan of the University and also, it was considered, infinite in size.