Interesting Times (15 page)

“What do you have there, grandfather?”

A sword came up through the cloth and stabbed the guard in the thigh.

“Whut? Whut? Whutzeesay?”

“He said, ‘Aargh!,’ Hamish,” said Cohen, a knife appearing in his hand. With one movement his skinny arms had the captain in a lock, the knife at his throat.

“Whut?”

“He said, ‘Aargh!’”

“Whut? I ain’t even married!”

Cohen put a little more pressure on the captain’s neck.

“Now then, friend,” he said. “You can have it the easy way, see, or the hard way. It’s up to you.”

“Blood-sucking pig! You call this the easy way?”

“Well,
I
ain’t sweatin’.”

“May you live in interesting times! I would rather die than betray my Emperor!”

“Fair enough.”

It took the captain only a fraction of a second to realize that Cohen, being a man of his word, assumed that other people were too. He might, if he had time, have reflected that the purpose of civilization is to make violence the final resort, while to a barbarian it is the first, preferred, only and above all most enjoyable option. But by then it was too late. He slumped forward.

“I
always
lives in interestin’ times,” said Cohen, in the satisfied voice of someone who did a lot to keep them interesting.

He pointed his knife at the other guards. Mr. Saveloy’s mouth was wide open in horror.

“By rights I should be cleanin’ this,” said Cohen. “But I ain’t goin’ to bother if it’s only goin’ to get dirty again. Now,
person’ly
, I’d as soon kill you as look at you but Teach here says I’ve got to stop doin’ that and become respectable.”

One of the guards looked sideways at his fellows and then fell on his knees.

“What is your wish, o master?” he said.

“Ah, officer material,” said Cohen. “What’s your name, lad?”

“Nine Orange Trees, master.”

Cohen looked at Mr. Saveloy.

“What do I do now?”

“Take them prisoner,
please
.”

“How do I do that?”

“Well…I suppose you tie them up, that sort of thing.”

“Ah. And then cut their throats?”

“No! No. You see, once you’ve got them at your mercy, you’re not allowed to kill them.”

The Silver Horde, to a man, stared at the ex-teacher.

“I’m afraid that’s civilization for you,” he added.

“But you said the sods haven’t got any bloody weapons!” said Truckle.

“Yes,” said Mr. Saveloy, shuddering a little. “That’s why you’re not allowed to kill them.”

“Are you mad? Got mad papers, have you?”

Cohen scratched his stubbly chin. The remainder of the guard watched him in trepidation. They were used to cruel and unusual punishment, but they were unaccustomed to argument first.

“You haven’t had a tot of military experience, have you, Teach?” he said.

“Apart from Form Four? Not a lot. But I’m afraid this is the way it has to be done. I’m sorry. You did say you wanted me—”

“Well,
I
vote we just cuts their throats right now,” said Boy Willie. “I can’t be having with this prisoner business either. I mean, who’s gonna feed them?”

“I’m afraid you have to.”

“Who, me? Not likely! I vote we make them eat their own eyeballs. Hands up all in favor.”

There was a chorus of assent from the Horde and, among the raised hands, Cohen noticed one belonging to Nine Orange Trees.

“What you voting for, lad?” he said.

“Please, sir, I would like to go to the lavatory.”

“You listen to me, you lot,” said Cohen. “This slaughtering and butchering business isn’t how you do it these days, right? That’s what Mr. Saveloy says and he knows how to spell words like ‘marmalade’ which is more than you do. Now, we know why we’re here, and we’d better start as we mean to go on.”

“Yeah, but you just killed that guard,” said Truckle.

“I’m breaking myself in,” said Cohen. “You’ve got to creep up on civilization a bit at a time.”

“I still say we should cut their heads off. That’s what I did to the Mad Demon-Sucking Priests of Ee!”

The kneeling guard had cautiously raised his hand again.

“Please, master?”

“Yes, lad?”

“You could lock us up in that cell over there. Then we wouldn’t be any trouble to anyone.”

“Good thinking,” said Cohen. “Good lad. The boy keeps his head in a crisis. Lock ’em up.”

Thirty seconds later the Horde had limped off, into the city.

The guards sat in the cramped, hot cell.

Eventually one said, “What were they?”

“I think they might have been ancestors.”

“I thought you had to be dead to be an ancestor.”

“The one in the wheelchair
looked
dead. Right up to the point where he stabbed Four White Fox.”

“Should we shout for help?”

“They might hear us.”

“Yes, but if we don’t get let out we’ll be stuck in here. And the walls are very thick and the door is very strong.”

“Good.”

Rincewind stopped running in some alley somewhere. He hadn’t bothered to see if they’d followed him. It was true—here, with one mighty bound, you
could
be free. Provided you realized it was one of your options.

Freedom did, of course, include man’s age-old right to starve to death. It seemed a long time since his last proper meal.

The voice erupted further down the alley, as if on cue.

“Rice cakes! Rice cakes! Get chore nice rice cakes! Tea! Hundred-Year-Old Eggs! Eggs! Get them while they’re nice and vintage! Get chore—Yeah, what is it?”

An elderly man had approached the salesman.

“Dibhala-san! This egg you sold me—”

“What about it, venerable squire?”

“Would you care to smell it?”

The street vendor took a sniff.

“Ah, yes, lovely,” he said.

“Lovely?
Lovely?
This egg,” said the customer, “this egg is practically fresh!”

“Hundred years old if it’s a day, shogun,” said the vendor happily. “Look at the color of that shell, nice and black—”

“It rubs off!”

Rincewind listened. There was, he thought, probably something in the idea that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of
bodies
, but only a few people. That’s why you kept running into the same ones. There was probably some mold somewhere.

“You saying my produce is fresh? May I disembowel myself honorably! Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do—”

Yes, there seemed to be something familiar and magical about that trader. Someone had come to complain about a fresh egg, and yet within a couple of minutes he’d somehow been talked into forgetting this and purchasing two rice cakes and something strange wrapped in leaves.

The rice cakes looked nice. Well…nicer than the other things.

Rincewind sidled over. The trader was idly jigging from one foot to the other and whistling under his breath, but he stopped and gave Rincewind a big, honest, friendly grin.

“Nice ancient egg, shogun?”

The bowl in the middle of the tray was full of gold coins. Rincewind’s heart sank. The price of one of Mr. Dibhala’s foul eggs would have bought a street in Ankh-Morpork.

“I suppose you don’t give…credit?” he suggested.

Dibhala gave him a Look.

“I’ll pretend I never heard that, shogun,” he said.

“Tell me,” said Rincewind. “Do you know if you have any relatives overseas?”

This got him another look—a sideways one, full of sudden appraisal.

“What? There’s nothing but evil blood-sucking ghosts beyond the seas. Everyone knows that, shogun. I’m surprised you don’t.”

“Ghosts?” said Rincewind.

“Trying to get here, do us harm,” said Disembowel-Meself-Honorably. “Maybe even steal our merchandise. Give ’em a dose of the old firecracker, that’s what
I
say. They don’t like a good loud bang, ghosts.”

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 explains 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-Honorably. “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-Honorably 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 main street,” said Disembowel-Meself-Honorably. “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 tubes—”

“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 mon-ey. 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 mark-et stall,” said Dibhala, getting back into the slow-voice-for-the-hard-of-thinking, “and you say, ‘Good morn-ing, but-cher, how much for those dog noses?’ and he says, ‘Three
rhinu
, shogun,’ and
you
say, ‘I’ve only got a pony, okay?’ (look, there’s an etch-ing 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 smal-ler?’ 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 blood-suckers 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…