Interesting Times

'I never said that! I—' Rincewind stopped. Memory treacherously dredged up a few phrases, such as Oh, the Archchancellor listens to everything I say and That place would just fall down without me around. But that was just the sort of thing you said after a few beers, surely no-one would be so gullible as to write...

A picture focused itself in Rincewind's memory It was of a happy, smiling little man with huge spectacles and a trusting, innocent approach to life which brought terror and destruction everywhere he wandered. Twoflower had been quite unable to believe that the world was a bad place and that was largely because, to him, it wasn't. It saved it all up for Rincewind.

Rincewind's life had been quite uneventful before he'd met Twoflower. Since then, as far as he could remember, it had contained events in huge amounts.

And the little man had gone back home, hadn't he? To Bes Pelargic - the Empire's only proper seaport.

Surely no-one would be so gullible as to write this sort of thing?

Surely no-one apart from one person would be so gullible.

Rincewind was not politically minded but there were some things he could work out not because they were to do with politics but because they had a lot to do with human nature. Nasty images moved into place like bad scenery.

The Empire had a wall around it. If you lived in the Empire then you learned how to make soup out of pig squeals and swallow spit because that's how it was done, and you were bullied by soldiers all the time because that was how the world worked. But if someone wrote a cheerful little book about...

... what I did on my holidays...

... in a place where the world worked quite differently...

... then however fossilized the society there would always be some people who asked themselves danger-ous questions like 'Where's the pork?'

Rincewind stared glumly at the wall. Peasants of the Empire, Rebel! You have nothing to lose but your heads and hands and feet and there's this thing they do with a wire waistcoat and a cheesegrater...

He turned the book over. There was no author's name. There was simply a little message: Increased Luck! Make Copies! Extended Duration And Happiness To The Endeavour!

Ankh-Morpork had had the occasional rebellion, too, over the years. But no-one went around organizing things. They just grabbed themselves a weapon and took to the streets. No-one bothered with a formal battlecry, relying instead on the well-tried 'There 'e goes! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now kick 'im inna fork!'

The point was... whatever caused that sort of thing wasn't usually the reason for it. When Mad Lord Snapcase had been hung up by his figgin it hadn't really been because he'd made poor old Spooner Boggis eat his own nose, it had been because years of inventive nastiness had piled on one another until the grievances reached—

There was a terrible scream from the far side of the room. Rincewind was half out of his seat before he noticed the little stage, and the actors.

A trio of musicians had squatted down on the floor. The inn's customers turned to watch.

It was, in a way, quite enjoyable. Rincewind didn't quite follow the plot, but it went something like: man gets girl, man loses girl to other man, man cuts couple in half, man falls on own sword, all come up front for a bow to what might be the Agatean equivalent of 'Happy Days Are Here Again'. It was a little hard to make out the fine detail because the actors shouted 'Hoorrrrrraa!' a lot and spent much of their time talking to the audience and their masks all looked the same to Rincewind. The musicians were in a world or their own or, by the sound of it, three different worlds.

'Fortune cookie?'

'Huh?'

Rincewind re-emerged from the thickets of thespi-anism to see the landlord beside him.

A dish of vaguely bivalvular biscuits was thrust under his nose.

'Fortune cookie?'

Rincewind reached out. Just as his fingers were about to close on one, the plate was jerked sideways an inch or two, bringing another under his hand.

Oh, well. He took it.

The thing was - his thoughts resumed, as the play screamed on - at least in Ankh-Morpork you could lay your hands on real weapons.

Poor devils. It took more than well-turned slogans and a lot of enthusiasm to run a good rebellion. You needed well-trained fighters and, above all, a good leader. He hoped they found one when he was well away.

He unrolled the fortune and read it idly, oblivious to the landlord walking around behind him.

Instead of the usual 'You have just enjoyed an inferior meal' it was quite a complicated pictogram.

Rincewind's fingers traced the brush strokes.

' "Many... many... apologies..." What kind—'

The musician with the cymbals clashed them together sharply.

The wooden cosh bounced off Rincewind's head.

The old men playing shibo nodded happily to themselves and turned back to their game.