Interesting Times

Page 26

'Initially, of course,' said Butterfly. 'The peasants can't even read and write.'
'I expect they don't even know how to farm properly,' said Rincewind, gloomily. 'Not after doing it for only three or four thousand years.'
'We certainly believe that there are many improvements that could be made, yes,' said Butterfly. 'If we act collectively.'
'I bet they'll be really glad when you show them,' said Rincewind. He stared glumly at the floor. He quite liked the job of a water buffalo string holder. It sounded nearly as good as the profession of castaway. He longed for the kind of life where you could really concentrate on the squishiness of the mud underfoot, and make up pictures in the clouds; the kind of life where you could let your mind catch up with you and speculate for hours at a time about when your water buffalo was next going to enrich the loam. But it was probably difficult enough as it was without people trying to improve it . . . He wanted to say: how can you be so nice and yet so dumb? The best thing you can do with the peasants is leave them alone. Let them get on with it. When people who can read and write start fighting on behalf of people who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open. But this is Hunghung. You can't think like that in Hunghung. This is where people have learned to do what they're told. The Horde worked that one out. The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different. You'll all be killed. I'm a coward. And even ,' know more about fights than you do. I've run away from some really good ones. 'Oh, let's just get out of here,' he said. He gingerly took the sword from a dead guard and held it the right way round on the second attempt. He weighed it for a second, then shook his head and threw it away. The cadre looked a lot happier. 'But I'm not leading you,' said Rincewind. 'I'm just showing you the way. And it's the way out, do you understand?' They stood wearing rather bruised looks, as people do who've been subject to several minutes' ranting. No-one spoke, until Twoflower whispered: 'He often goes on like this, you know. And then he does something very brave.' Rincewind snorted. There was another dead guard at the top of the stairs. Sudden death seemed to be catching.
And, leaning against the wall, was a bundle of swords. Tied to it was a scroll. The Great Wizard has shown us the way for only two minutes and already we have extra luck,' said Lotus Blossom. 'Don't touch the swords,' said Rincewind. 'But supposing we see more guards? Should we not resist them with every drop of our life's blood?' said Butterfly. Rincewind looked blank. 'No. Run away.'
'Ah, yes,' said Twoflower. 'And live to fight another day. That is an Ankh-Morpork saying.' Rincewind had always assumed that the purpose of running away was to be able to run away another day. 'However,' he said, 'people don't usually find themselves mysteriously let out of prison with a bunch of weapons handily close by and all the guards out of action. Ever thought of that?'
'And with a map!' said Butterfly. Her eyes shone. She flourished the scroll. 'It's a map of the way out?' said Rincewind. 'No! To the Emperor's chambers! Look, it has been marked! That's what Herb used to talk about sometimes! He must be in the palace! We should assassinate the Emperor!'
'More luck!' said Twoflower. 'But look, you know, I'm sure if we talked to him—'
'Haven't you been listening? We are not going to see the Emperor!' hissed Rincewind. 'Does it occur to you that guards don't stab themselves? Cells don't suddenly become unlocked? You don't find swords lying around so conveniently and you don't, you really don't find maps saying “This Way, Folks”! And anyway, you can't talk to someone who's a plate of prawn crackers short of a Set Meal A for Two!'
'No,' said Butterfly. 'We must make the most of this opportunity.' There will be lots of guards!'
'Well, Great Wizard, you'll have a lot of wishing to do.'
'You think I can snap my fingers like this, and all the guards would drop dead? Hah! I wish they would!'
'These two out here have,' Lotus Blossom reported, from the entrance to the dungeons. She was already in awe of Rincewind. Now she looked positively terrified. 'Coincidence!'
'Let's be serious,' said Butterfly. 'We have a sympathizer in the palace. Perhaps it is someone risking their lives every moment! We know some of the eunuchs are on our side.' They've got nothing left to lose, I suppose.'
'You have a better idea, Great Wizard?'
'Yes. Back into the cells.'
'What?'
'This smells wrong. Would you really kill the Emperor? I mean, really?' Butterfly hesitated. 'We've often talked about it. Two Fire Herb said that if we could assassinate the Emperor we would light the torch of freedom . . .'
'Yes. It'd be you, burning. Look, get back in the cells. It's the safest place. I'll lock you in and . . . scout.'
'That's a very brave suggestion,' said Twoflower. 'And typical of the man,' he added proudly. Butterfly gave Rincewind a look he'd come to dread. 'It is a good idea,' she said. 'And I will accompany you.'
'Oh, but it's bound to be . . . very dangerous,' said Rincewind quickly. 'No harm can possibly come to me when I'm with the Great Wizard,' said Butterfly. 'Very true. Very true,' said Twoflower. 'No harm ever came to me, I know that.'
'Besides,' his daughter went on, 'I have the map. And it would be dreadful if you lost your way and accidentally strayed out of the Forbidden City, wouldn't it?' Rincewind gave in. It struck him that Twoflower's late wife must have been a remarkably intelligent woman. 'Oh, all right,' he said. 'But you're not to get in the way. And you're to do what I tell you, OK?' Butterfly bowed. 'Lead on, O Great Wizard,' she said. 'I knew it!' said Truckle. 'Poison!'
'No, no. You don't eat it. You rub it on your body,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Watch. And you get what we in civilization call dean.' Most of the Horde stood waist-deep in the warm water, every man with his hands chastely wrapped around his body. Hamish had refused to relinquish his wheelchair, so only his head was above the surface. 'It's all prickly,' said Cohen. 'And my skin's peeling off and dissolving.'
'That's not skin,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Haven't any of you seen a bath before?'
'Oh, I seen one,' said Boy Willie. 'I killed the Mad Bishop of Pseudopolis in one. You get' - he furrowed his brow - 'bubbles and stuff. And fifteen naked maidens.'
'Whut?'
'Definitely. Fifteen. Remember it well.'
'That's more like it,' said Caleb. 'All we've got to rub is this soap stuff.'
'The Emperor is ritually bathed by twenty-two bath women,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'I could go and check with the harem eunuchs and wake them up, if you like. It's probably allowable under Entertaining.' The taxman was warming to his new job. He'd worked out that although the Horde, as individuals, had acquired mountains of cash in their careers as barbarian heroes they'd lost almost all of it engaging in the other activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary to the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable rebate. The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority anywhere[23] was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that counted. And the interest too, of course. 'No, no young women, I insist,' said Mr Saveloy. You're having a bath to get clean. Plenty of time for young women later.'
'Gotta date when all this is over,' said Caleb, a little shyly, thinking wistfully of one of the few women he'd ever had a conversation with. 'She's got her own farm, she said. I could be all right for a duck.'
'I bet Teach don't want you to say that,' said Boy Willie. 'I bet he'd say you gotta call it a waterfowl.'
'Huh, huh, hur!'
'Whut?'
Six Beneficent Winds sidled over to the teacher as the Horde experimented with the bath oil, initially by drinking it. 'I've worked out what it is you're going to steal,' he said. 'Oh, yes?' said Mr Saveloy politely. He was watching Caleb who, having had it brought home to him that he might have been adopting the wrong approach all his life, was trying to cut his nails with his sword. 'It's the legendary Diamond Coffin of Schz Yu!' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'No. Wrong again.'
'Oh.'
'Out of the baths, gentlemen,' said the teacher. 'I think . . . yes . . . you've mastered commerce, social intercourse—'
'—hur, hur, hur . . . sorry—'
'—and the principles of taxation,' Mr Saveloy went on. 'Have we done that? What are they, then?' said Cohen. 'You take away almost all the money that the merchants have got,' said Six Beneficent Winds, handing him a towel. 'Oh, is that it? I've been doing that for years.'
'No, you've been taking away all the money,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's where you go wrong. You kill too many of them, and the ones you don't kill you leave too poor.'
'Sounds frightfully good to me,' said Truckle, excavating the cretaceous contents of an ear. 'Poor merchants, rich us.'
'No, no, no!'
'No, no, no?'
'Yes! That's not civilized!'
'It's like with sheep,' Six Beneficent Winds explained. 'You don't tear their skin off all in one go, you just shear them every year.' The Horde looked blank. 'Hunter-gatherers,' said Mr Saveloy, with a touch of hopelessness. 'Wrong metaphor.'
'It's the marvellous Singing Sword of Wong, isn't it?' whispered Six Beneficent Winds. 'That's what you're going to steal!'
'No. In fact, “steal” is rather the wrong word. Well, anyway, gentlemen . . . you might not yet be civilized but at least you're nice and clean, and many people think this is identical. Time, I think, for . . . action.' The Horde straightened up. This was back in the area they understood. 'To the Throne Room!' said Ghenghiz Cohen. Six Beneficent Winds wasn't that fast on the uptake, but at last he put two and two together. 'It's the Emperor!' he said, and raised his hand to his mouth in horror tinged with evil delight. 'You're going to kidnap him!' Diamonds glittered when Cohen grinned. There were two dead guards in the corridor leading to the private Imperial apartments. 'Look, how come you were all taken alive?' whispered Rincewind. 'The guards I saw had big swords. How come you're not dead?'
'I suppose they planned to torture us,' said Butter-fly 'We did injure ten of them.' Oh? Pasted posters on them, did you? Sang revol-utionary songs until they gave in? Listen, someone wanted you alive.' The floors sang in the darkness. Every footstep produced a chorus of squeaks and groans, just like the floorboards at the University. But you didn't expect that sort of thing in a nice shiny palace like this. 'They're called nightingale floors,' said Butterfly. 'The carpenters put little metal collars around the nails so that no-one can creep up unawares.' Rincewind looked down at the corpses. Neither man had drawn his sword. He leaned his weight on his left foot. The floor squeaked. Then he leaned on his right foot. The floor groaned. 'This isn't right, then,' he whispered. 'You can't creep up on someone on a floor like this. So someone they knew killed those guards. Let's get out of here . . .'
'We go on,' said Butterfly firmly. 'It's a trap. Someone's using you to do their dirty work.' She shrugged. 'Turn left by the big jade statue.'
It was four in the morning, an hour before dawn There were guards in the official staterooms, but not very many. After all, this was well inside the Forbidden City, with its high walls and small gates. It wasn't as though anything was going to happen. It needed a special type of mind to stand guard over some empty rooms all night. One Big River had such a mind, orbiting gently within the otherwise blissful emptiness of his skull. They'd happily called him One Big River because he was the same size and moved at the same speed as the Hung. Everyone had expected him to become a tsimo wrestler, but he'd failed the intelligence test because he hadn't eaten the table. It was impossible for him to get bored. He just didn't have the imagination. But, since the visor of his huge helmet registered a permanent expression of metal rage, he'd in any case cultivated the art of going to sleep on his feet. He was dozing happily now, aware only of an occasional squeaking, like that of a very cautious mouse. The helmet's visor swung up. A voice said: 'Would you rather die than betray your Emperor?' A second voice said: 'This is not a trick question.' One Big River blinked, and then turned his gaze downwards. An apparition in a squeaky- wheeled wheelchair had a very large sword pointing at exactly that inconvenient place where his upper armour didn't quite meet his lower armour. A third voice said: 'I should add that the last twenty-nine people who answered wrong are . . . dried shredded fish . . . sorry, dead.' A fourth voice said: 'And we're not eunuchs.' One Big River rumbled with the effort of thought. 'I tink I rather live,' he said. A man with diamonds where his teeth should have been gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder. 'Good man,' he said. 'Join the Horde. We could use a man like you. Maybe as a siege weapon.'