Eric (Discworld #9)

Eric (Discworld #9) Page 5

Perhaps I have died and I really am a demon, he thought.

It was an interesting point.

He opened his eyes again.

“Wow!” said Eric, his eyes gleaming. “Can I have all of it?”

The boy was standing in the same position he had been in the room. So was the luggage. So, to Rincewind's annoyance, was the parrot. It was perching in mid-air, looking speculatively at the cosmic panorama below.

The Disc might almost have been designed to be seen from space; it hadn't, Rincewind was damn sure, been designed to be lived on. But he had to admit that it was impressive.

The sun was about to rise on the far rim and made a line of fire that glittered around half the circumference. A long slow dawn was just beginning its sweep across the dark, massive landscape.

Below, harshly lit in the arid vacuum of space, Great A'Tuin the world turtle toiled under the weight of Creation. On his - or her, the matter had never really been resolved -carapace the four giant elephants strained to support the Disc itself.

There might have been more efficient ways to build a world. You might start with a ball of molten iron and then coat it with successive layers of rock, like an old-fashioned gobstopper. And you'd have a very efficient planet, but it wouldn't look so nice. Besides, things would drop off the bottom.

“Pretty good,” said the parrot. “Polly want a continent.” “It's so big,” breathed Eric. “Yes,” said Rincewind flatly. He felt that something more was expected of him. “Don't break it,” he added. He had a nagging doubt about all this. If he was for the sake of argument a demon, and

so many things had happened to him recently he was prepared to concede that he might have died and not noticed it in the confusion*, then he still didn't quite see how the world was his to give away. (*Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, “Where's my clean socks?”, no-one answers.) He was pretty sure that it had owners who felt the same way.

Also, he was sure that a demon had to get something in writing. “I think that you have to sign for it,” he said. “In blood.” “Whose?” said Eric. “Yours, I think,” said Rincewind. “Or bird blood will do, at a pinch.” He glared

meaningfully at the parrot, which growled at him. “Aren't I allowed to try it out first?” “What?” “Well suppose it doesn't work? I'm not signing for it until I've seen it work.” Rincewind stared at the boy. Then he looked down at the broad panorama of the

kingdoms of the world. I wonder if I was like him at his age? he thought. I wonder how I

survived? “It's the world,” he said patiently. “Of course it will bloody well work. I mean, look at it. Hurricanes, continental drift, rainfall cycle - it's all there. All ticking over like a bloody watch. It'll last you a lifetime, a world like that. Used carefully.”

Eric gave the world a critical examination. He wore the expression of someone who knows that all the best gifts in life seem to require the psychic equivalent of two U2 batteries and the shops won't be open until after the holidays.

“There's got to be tribute,” he said flatly. “You what?” “The kings of the world,” said Eric. “They've got to pay me tribute.” “You've really been studying this, haven't you,” said Rincewind sarcastically. "Just

tribute? You don't fancy the moon while we're up here? This week's special offer, one free satellite with every world dominated?“ ”Are there any useful minerals?“ ”What?“ Eric gave a sigh of long-suffering patience. ”Minerals,“ he said. ”Ores. You know.“ Rincewind coloured. ”I don't think a lad your age should be thinking of -"

“I mean metal and things. It's no use to me if it's just a load of rock.” Rincewind looked down. The Discworld's tiny moonlet was just rising over the far edge, and shed a pale radiance across the jigsaw pattern of land and sea.

“Oh, I don't know. It looks quite nice,” he volunteered. “Look, it's dark now. Perhaps everyone can pay you tribute in the morning?” “I want some tribute now.”

“I thought you might.” Rincewind gave his fingers a careful examination. It wasn't as if he'd ever been particularly good at snapping them.

He gave it another try.

When he opened his eyes again he was standing up to his ankles in mud.

Pre-eminent amongst Rincewind's talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn't matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I'll still be.

But he was also skilled in languages and in practical geography. He could shout `help!` in fourteen languages and scream for mercy in a further twelve. He had passed through many of the countries on the Disc, some of them at high speed, and during the long, lovely, boring hours when he'd worked in the Library he'd whiled away the time by reading up on all the exotic and faraway places he'd never visited. He remembered that at the time he'd sighed with relief that he'd never have to visit them.

And, now, here he was.

Jungle surrounded him. It wasn't nice, interesting, open jungle, such as leopard-skin-clad heroes might swing through, but serious, real jungle, jungle that towered up like solid slabs of greenness, thorned and barbed, jungle in which every representative of the vegetable kingdom had really rolled up its bark and got down to the strenuous business of outgrowing all competitors. The soil was hardly soil at all, but dead plants on the way to composthood; water dripped from leaf to leaf, insects whined in the humid, spore-laden air, and there was the terrible breathless silence made by the motors of photosynthesis running flat out. Any yodeling hero who tried to swing through that lot might just as well take his chances with a bean-slicer.

“How do you do that?” said Eric.

“It's probably a knack,” said Rincewind.

Eric subjected the wonders of Nature to a cursory and disdainful glance.

“This doesn't look like a kingdom,” he complained. “You said we could go to a kingdom. Do you call this a kingdom?”

“This is probably the rain forests of Klatch,” said Rincewind. “They're stuffed full of lost kingdoms.”

“You mean mysterious ancient races of Amazonian princesses who subject all male prisoners to strange and exhausting progenitative rites?” said Eric, his glasses beginning to fog.

“Haha,” said Rincewind stonily. “What an imagination the child has.”

“Wossname, wossname, wossname!” shrieked the parrot.

“I've read about them,” said Eric, peering into the greenery. “Of course, I own those kingdoms as well.” He stared at some private inner vision. “Gosh,” he said, hungrily.

“I should concentrate on the tribute if I was you,” said Rincewind, setting off down what was possibly a path.

The brightly-coloured blooms on a tree nearby turned to watch him go.

In the jungles of central Klatch there are, indeed, lost kingdoms of mysterious Amazonian princesses who capture male explorers for specifically masculine duties. These are indeed rigorous and exhausting and the luckless victims do not last long*. (*This is because wiring plugs, putting up shelves, sorting out the funny noise in attics and mowing lawns can eventually reduce even the strongest constitution.)

There are also hidden plateaux where the reptilian monsters of a bygone epoch romp and play, as well as elephants' graveyards, lost diamond mines, and strange ruins decorated with hieroglyphs the very sight of which can freeze the most valiant heart.

On any reasonable map there's barely room for the trees.

The few explorers who have passed on a number of handy hints to those who follow after, such as: 1) avoid if possible any hanging-down creepers with beady eyes and a forked tongue at one end; 2) don't pick up any orange-and-black-stripped creepers that are apparently lying across the path, twitching, because there is often a tiger on the other end; and 3) don't go.

If I'm a demon, Rincewind thought hazily, why is everything stinging me and trying to trip me up? I mean, surely I can only be harmed by a wooden dagger through my heart? Or do I mean garlic?

Eventually the jungle opened out into a very wide, cleared area that stretched all the way to a distant blue range of volcanoes. The land fell away below them to a patchwork of lakes and swampy fields, here and there punctured by great stepped pyramids, each one crowned with a thin plume of smoke curling into the dawn air. The jungle track opened out into a narrow, but paved, road.

“Where's this demon?” said Eric.

“It looks like one of the Tezuman kingdoms,” said Rincewind. “They're ruled over by the Great Muzuma, I think.” “She's an Amazonian princess, is she?” "Strangely enough, no. You'd be astonished how many kingdoms aren't ruled by

Amazonian princesses, Eric.“ ”It looks pretty primitive, anyway. A bit Stone Age.“ ”The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology," quoted

Rincewind. “Ah,” said Eric, “Good.” “No,” said Rincewind patiently. “It means time measurement.” “Oh.” “You'd approve of them. They're superb mathematicians, apparently.” “Huh,” said Eric, blinking solemnly. "Shouldn't think they've got a lot to count in a

backward civilisation like this.“ Rincewind eyed the chariots that were heading rapidly towards them. ”I think they usually count victims," he said.

The Tezuman Empire in the jungle valleys of central Klatch is known for its organic market gardens, its exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and its mass human sacrifices in honour of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa, god of mass human sacrifices. As they said, you always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered head-dress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use.

The Tezumen are renowned on the continent for being the most suicidally gloomy, irritable and pessimistic people you could ever hope to meet, for reasons that may soon be made clear. It was true about the time measurement as well. The Tezumen had realised long ago that everything was getting worse and, having a terrible literalmindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was.

Contrary to general belief, the Tezumen did invent the wheel. They just had radically different ideas about what you used it for.

It was the first chariot that Rincewind had ever seen that was pulled by llamas. That wasn't what was odd about it. What was odd about it was that it was being carried by people, two holding each side of the axle and running after the animals, their sandalled feet flapping on the flagstones.

“Do you think it's got the tribute in it?” said Eric.

All the leading chariot seemed to contain, apart from the driver, was a squat, basically cube-shaped man wearing a puma-skin outfit and a feather head-dress.

The runners panted to a halt, and Rincewind saw that each man wore what would probably be described as a primitive sword, made by affixing shards of obsidian into a wooden club. They looked to him no less deadly than sophisticated, extremely civilised swords. In fact they looked worse.