Interesting Times

'What is it they actually do with the flowers?' said Lord Vetinari.

'What?'

The Patrician shrugged. 'Never mind. It was not at all important. But - since you are here, Archchancellor, having dropped by on your way to something infinitely more important, I am sure, most kind - I wonder if you could tell me: who is the Great Wizard?'

Ridcully considered this.

'The Dean, possibly,' he said. 'He must be all of twenty stone.'

'Somehow I feel that is not perhaps the right answer,' said Lord Vetinari. 'I suspect from context that "great" means superior.'

'Not the Dean, then,' said Ridcully.

Lord Vetinari tried to recollect the faculty of Unseen University. The mental picture that emerged was of a small range of foothills in pointy hats.

'The context does not, I feel, suggest the Dean,' he said.

'Er... what context would this be?' said Ridcully.

The Patrician picked up his walking stick.

'Come this way,' he said. 'I suppose you had better see for yourself. It is very vexing.'

Ridcully looked around with interest as he followed Lord Vetinari. He did not often have a chance to see the gardens, which had been written up in the 'How Not To Do It' section of gardening manuals everywhere.

They had been laid out, and a truer phrase was never used, by the renowned or at least notorious landscape gardener and all round inventor 'Bloody Stupid' Johnson, whose absent-mindedness and blindness to elementary mathematics made every step a walk with danger. His genius... well, as far as Ridcully understood it, his genius was exactly the opposite of whatever kind of genius it was that built earthworks that tapped the secret yet beneficent forces of the leylines.

No-one was quite certain what forces Bloody Stupid's designs tapped, but the chiming sundial frequently exploded, the crazy paving had committed suicide and the cast iron garden furniture was known so have melted on three occasions.

The Patrician led the way through a gate and into something like a dovecot. A creaking wooden stairway led around the inside. A few of Ankh-Morpork's indestructible feral pigeons muttered and sniggered in the shadows.

'What's this?' said Ridcully, as the stairs groaned under him.

The Patrician took a key out of his pocket. 'I have always understood that Mr Johnson originally planned this to be a beehive,' he said. 'However, in the absence of bees ten feet long we have found... other uses.'

He unlocked a door to a wide, square room with a big unglazed window in each wall. Each rectangle was surrounded by a wooden arrangement to which was affixed a bell on a spring. It was apparent that anything large enough, entering by one of the windows, would cause the bell to ring.

In the centre of the room, standing on a table, was the largest bird Ridcully had ever seen. It turned and fixed him with a beady yellow eye.

The Patrician reached into a pocket and took out a jar of anchovies. 'This one caught us rather unexpectedly,' he said. 'It must be almost ten years since a message last arrived. We used to keep a few fresh mackerel on ice.'

'Isn't that a Pointless Albatross?' said Ridcully.

'Indeed,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And a highly trained one. It will return this evening. Six thousand miles on one jar of anchovies and a bottle of fish paste my clerk Drumknott found in the kitchens. Amazing.'

'I'm sorry?' said Ridcully. 'Return to where?'

Lord Vetinari turned to face him.

'Not, let me make it clear, to the Counterweight Continent,' he said. 'This is not one of those birds the Agatean Empire uses for its message services. It is a well-known fact that we have no contact with that mysterious land. And this bird is not the first to arrive here for many years, and it did not bring a strange and puzzling message. Do I make myself clear?'

'No.'

'Good.'

'This is not an albatross?'

The Patrician smiled. 'Ah, I can see you're getting the hang of it.'

Mustrum Ridcully, though possessed of a large and efficient brain, was not at home with duplicity. He looked at the long vicious beak.

'Looks like a bloody albatross to me,' he said. 'And you just said it was. I said, isn't that a—'

The Patrician waved a hand irritably. 'Leaving aside our ornithological studies,' he said, 'the point is that this bird had, in its message pouch, the following piece of paper—'

'You mean did not have the following piece of paper?' said Ridcully, struggling for a grip.

'Ah, yes. Of course, that is what I mean. And this isn't it. Observe.'

He handed a single small sheet to the Arch-chacellor.

'Looks like paintin',' said Ridcully.

'Those are Agatean pictograms,' said the Patrician.

'You mean they're not Agatean pictograms?'

'Yes, yes, certainly,' sighed the Patrician, 'I can see you are well alongside the essential business of diplomacy. Now... your views, please.'

'Looks like slosh, slosh, slosh, slosh, Wizzard,' said Ridcully.

'And from that you deduce... ?'

'He took Art because he wasn't any good at spelling I mean, who wrote it? Painted it, I mean?'