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The captain glared at him. The sergeant put on the poker face that has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower-ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach.
He opened the door, which saved the entire Ephebian army a bit of effort. They were just about to knock.
Basically, everyone knew that one side or the other would win, a few unlucky generals would get their heads chopped off, large sums of money would be paid in tribute to the winners, everyone would go home for the harvest and that bloody woman would have to make up her mind whose side she was on, the hussy.
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
He threw another sandwich at the Luggage. “Where you from?” Rincewind decided to come clean. “The future,” he said. This didn’t have the expected effect. The man just nodded. “Oh,” he said, and then he said, “Did we win?” “Yes.”
He decided to try the truth again. It was a novel approach and worth experimenting with.
“And this is where we’re going,” said Rincewind, determined to explore the full horror of the plan as one probes the site of a rotting tooth.
Eric rolled his eyes. “Lavaeolus was responsible for the fall of Tsort, on account of being so cunning,” he said. “And then afterward it took him ten years to get home and he had all sorts of adventures with temptresses and sirens and sensual witches.”
“Mr. Beekle is a silly.” The child withdrew its thumb and, with the air of one concluding some exhaustive research, added: “Mr. Beekle is a poo.”
“I can’t help it,” said Elenor. “The siege seemed to go on for such a long time and King Mausoleum was very kind and I never liked it much in Ephebe anyway—”
“Ah, well,” said the sergeant. “If you’re going to go around reading—”
“Anyway, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the Classics,” Rincewind added. “They never check their facts. They’re just out to sell legends.”
Rincewind trudged back up the beach. “The trouble is,” he said, “is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so. But he’s going to have enough to worry about.”
“You know the funny thing about his name?” said Eric, as they strolled along the sand. “No. What do you mean?” “Lavaeolus means ‘Rinser of winds.’” Rincewind looked at him. “He’s my ancestor?” he said.
Gods and demons, being creatures outside of time, don’t move in it like bubbles in the stream. Everything happens at the same time for them. This should mean that they know everything that is going to happen because, in a sense, it already has. The reason they don’t is that reality is a big place with a lot of interesting things going on, and keeping track of all of them is like trying to use a very big video recorder with no freeze button or tape counter. It’s usually easier just to wait and see.
Everything around Rincewind was black. It wasn’t simply an absence of color. It was a darkness that flatly denied any possibility that color might ever have existed.
“When I open my mouth no sounds come out.” “Don’t be—” Rincewind hesitated. He wasn’t making any sound either. He knew what he was saying, it just wasn’t reaching the outside world. But he could hear Eric. Perhaps the words just gave up on his ears and went straight to his brain.
“So we’re surrounded by absolutely nothing,” said Rincewind. “Total nothing.” He hesitated. “There’s a word for it,” he said. “It’s what you get when there’s nothing left and everything’s been used up.” “Yes. I think it’s called the bill,” said Eric.
“Okay,” he said. “The bill. That’s where we are. Floating in absolute bill. Total, complete, rock-hard bill.”
“Ah. Hallo,” said Rincewind. “And where is here, exactly?” “Nowhere. S’whole point, innit?” “Nowhere at all?” “Not yet.” “All right,” said Eric. “When is it going to be somewhere?” “Hard to say,”
“All I can see is darkness,” said Eric. “No you can’t,” said the little man, triumphantly. “You’re just seeing what there is before the darkness has been installed, sort of thing.”
“Multiple exclamation marks,” he went on, shaking his head, “are a sure sign of a diseased mind.”
Hell wasn’t what Rincewind had been led to expect, although there were signs of what it might once have been—a few clinkers in a corner, a bad scorch mark on the ceiling. It was hot, though, with the kind of heat that you get by boiling air inside an oven for years—
You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and, well, this hotel.
A very tired-looking bird was perched beside him. Rincewind thought that Eric’s parrot had it bad, but this bird had definitely been through the mangle of Life. It looked as though it had been plucked first and then had its feathers stuck back on.
Now he realized what made boredom so attractive. It was the knowledge that worse things, dangerously exciting things, were going on just around the corner and that you were well out of them. For boredom to be enjoyable there had to be something to compare it with.
“It helps if one of you is a girl,” he said. “According to Ephebian mythology, there’s a girl who comes down here every winter.” “To keep warm?” “I think the story says she actually creates the winter, sort of.”
“And, and, and when you do leave, if you look back…I think pomegranates come into it somewhere, or, or, or you turn into a piece of wood.”
The mere thought of living humans in his domain made him twang with fury like a violin string. You couldn’t trust them. They were unreliable. The last human allowed down here alive had given the place a terribly bad Press. Above all, they made him feel inferior.
There was a great treadmill. It didn’t power anything, and had particularly creaky bearings. It was one of Astfgl’s more inspired ideas, and had no use whatsoever except to show several hundred people that if they had thought their lives had been pretty pointless, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
“You didn’t want to upset the course of history,” said Lavaeolus slowly. He stared down at the woodwork of the treadmill. “Oh. Good. That makes it all all right. I feel a lot better for knowing that. Speaking as the course of history, I’d like to say thank you very much.”
Expressions twitched as the lords made up their minds like a row of dominoes falling over. There were some things on which even they were united. No more policy statements, no more consultative documents, no more morale-boosting messages to all staff. This was Hell, but you had to draw the line somewhere.
The kings of Hell might have heard of words like “subtlety” and “discretion,” but they had also heard that if you had it you should flaunt it and reasoned that, if you didn’t have it, you should flaunt it even more, and what they didn’t have was good taste.
“Elevation?” said Astfgl. “Your promotion, sire!” A great cheer went up from the younger demons, who would cheer anything.
Rincewind pulled himself up on his elbows, and thought: look out, behind you…
