Interesting Times (Discworld, #17; Rincewind, #5)

by Terry Pratchett

There is a curse. They say: May You Live in Interesting Times.

Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out until too late that he’s been using two queens all along.

According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.

“This is not an albatross?” The Patrician smiled. “Ah, I can see you’re getting the hang of it.”

“Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A,” said the Bursar. The table fell silent. “Anyone understand that?” said Ridcully.

“With that hat?” It was a pointy hat. In a way. A kind of cargo-cult pointy hat, made out of split bamboo and coconut leaves, in the hope of attracting passing wizardliness. Picked out on it, in seashells held in place with grass, was the word WIZZARD.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said the Senior Wrangler.

Rincewind blinked. “This is Ankh-Morpork, isn’t it?” “Yes.” “I thought so.” Rincewind blinked, slowly. “Well,” he said, just as he fell forward, “I’m back.”

“Couldn’t you just send me back to my island? I liked it there. It was dull!”

said Rincewind, with the expression of one who knows that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

In short, Ponder was just a little bit worried.

He’d never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom.

The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he’d found it he’d be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people—thoughtless, feckless people—would call an adventure.

Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it was something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep, and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.

“Gently Push Over The Forces Of Repression!” they chorused.

Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-Morpork. It meant “to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming, and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was.”

“They say it’s very boring there. Their biggest curse is ‘May you live in interesting times,’ apparently.”

And then, in the same way that it can take considerable effort to push at a sticking door and no effort at all to fall full length into the room beyond, the spell caught. Ponder hoped, afterwards, that what he saw was an optical illusion. Certainly no one normally was suddenly stretched to about twelve feet tall and then snapped back into shape so fast that their boots ended up under their chin.

He grinned. Gems glittered in the morning light. Every tooth in the man’s head was a diamond. And Rincewind knew of only one man who had the nerve to wear troll teeth. “Here? Cohen the Barbarian?”

Lord Hong was watching the tea ceremony. It took three hours, but you couldn’t hurry a good cuppa.

“Nope. Orthopedic problem, see. Like . . . you know how a lot of people’ve got one leg shorter than the other? Funny thing, with me it’s—” “Don’t tell me,” said Rincewind. “Sometimes I get these amazing flashes . . . Both legs are shorter than the other, right?”

“They’re the cream!” Rincewind sighed. “Cohen, they’re the cheese.

Of course, we won’t have to kill all the guards . . .” “Oh, no?” “It’d take too long.” “Yes, and of course you’ll want to leave something to do tomorrow.”

“Nothing to worry about. The landscape is not hostile.” Rincewind didn’t believe him. He’d had the ground hit him very hard many times.

siege. Everyone’s waiting for the Emperor to die. These are what they call here”—he smiled—“interesting times.” “I hate interesting times.”

“What did you teach?” “Geography. And I was very interested in Auriental* studies. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.” “After being a teacher all your life?” “It did mean a change of perspective, yes.” “But . . . well . . . surely . . . the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death . . .” Mr. Saveloy brightened up. “Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?”

Rincewind liked the countryside in theory, providing it wasn’t rising up to meet him and was for preference happening on the far side of a city wall, but this was hardly countryside.

Rincewind felt very sorry, later, for what he said next.

The “later” suddenly caught up with him, and he did indeed feel quite ashamed.

No one bowed to anyone in Ankh-Morpork. And anyone who tried what he’d just tried in Ankh-Morpork would, by now, be scrabbling in the gutter for his teeth and whimpering about the pain in his groin and his horse would already have been repainted twice and sold to a man who’d be swearing he’d owned it for years.

The statement was followed by a pictogram of a dog passing water, which was for some obscure reason the Agatean equivalent of an exclamation mark. There were five of these.

But on the subject of appearing to own a stolen horse he had Rincewind bang to rights and, also, a foot on his neck. A foot on the neck is nine points of the law.

“Luck is my middle name,” said Rincewind, indistinctly. “Mind you, my first name is Bad.”

Rincewind rose like a boomerang curry from a sensitive stomach.

Rincewind had faced many horrors in his time, but none held quite the same place in the lexicon of dread as those few seconds after someone said, “Turn over your papers now.”

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.

The ones near the coast build rafts and head out across lonely seas to lands that are a fable. The ones inland resort to man-carrying kites and chairs propelled by fireworks. Many of them die in the attempt, of course. Most of the others are soon caught, and made to live in interesting times.

“But I would draw your attention to the famous saying of the Great Wizard Rincewind.” “Indeed, I am all ear,” said Lotus Blossom politely. “Rincewind, he say . . . Goodbyeeeeeeeee—”

“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,

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.

The world had too many heroes and didn’t need another one. Whereas the world had only one Rincewind and he owed it to the world to keep this one alive for as long as possible.

“Et a man once,” mumbled Mad Hamish. “In a siege, it were.” “You ate someone?” said Mr. Saveloy, beckoning to the waiter. “Just a leg.” “That’s terrible!” “Not with mustard.”

There was a sound like a marshmallow gently landing on a plate, and everything in front of him went white. Then the white turned red, streaked with black, and the terrible noise clapped its hands across his ears. A crescent-shaped piece of something glowing scythed the top off his hat and embedded itself in the nearest house, which caught fire. There was a strong smell of burning eyebrows. When the debris settled Rincewind saw quite a large hole in the wall. Around its edge the brickwork, now a red-hot ceramic, started to cool with a noise like glinka-glinka.

They had tried to set fire to guardhouses. That was good. That was proper revolutionary activity, except for the bit where they tried to make an appointment first.

On either side of the wall there was a long, thoughtful silence. “Rincewind?” “Twoflower?”

“But there are causes worth dying for,” said Butterfly. “No, there aren’t! Because you’ve only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!” “Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?” Rincewind took a deep breath. “Continuously!”

“But it will be terrible slaughter!” he said. “I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Saveloy. He fished in his pockets for a bag of peppermints.

It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus.

Have you ever killed anyone?” “Not outright. But I’ve always thought you can do considerable damage with a well-placed Final Demand.” Mr. Saveloy beamed. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Civilization.”

“Never a good idea to give a monkey the key to a banana plantation,” said Mr. Saveloy.