Last Continent (22 page)

‘That was bloody great riding, mate!'

‘Could someone separate my ankles, please? I fear they may have fused together.'

A couple of the riders dismounted and, after some effort, pulled him free.

The leader looked down at him. ‘Name your price for that little battler, mate!' said Remorse.

‘Er . . . three . . . er . . . squids?' said Rincewind, muzzily.

‘What? For a wiry little devil like that? He's got to be worth a coupla hundred at least!'

‘Three squids is all I've got . . .'

‘I reckon a few of them rocks hit him on the head,' said one of the stockmen who were holding Rincewind up.

‘I mean I'll
buy
him off'f
you
, mister,' said Remorse, patiently. ‘Tell you what – two hundred squids, a bag of tucker and we'll set you right on the road to . . . Where was it he wanted to go, Clancy?'

‘Bugarup,' murmured Rincewind.

‘Oh, you don't wanna go to Bugarup,' said Remorse. ‘Nothing in Bugarup but a bunch of wowsers and pooftahs.'

‘'s okay, I
like
parrots,' mumbled Rincewind, who was just hoping that they would let him go so that he could hold on to the ground again. ‘Er . . . what's Ecksian for going mad with terrified fatigue and collapsing in a boneless heap?'

The men looked at one another.

‘Isn't that “snagged as a wombat's tonker”?'

‘No, no, no, that's when you chuck a twister, isn't it?' said Clancy.

‘What? Strewth, no. Chucking a twister's when . . . when you . . . yeah, it's when you . . . yeah, it's when your nose . . . Hang on, that's “bend a smartie” . . .'

‘Er—' said Rincewind, clutching his head.

‘What? “Bend a smartie” is when your ears get blocked underwater.' Clancy looked uncertain, and then seemed to reach a decision. ‘Yeah, that's right!'

‘Nah, that's “gonging like a possum's armpit”, mate.'

‘Excuse me—' said Rincewind.

‘That ain't right. “Gonging like a possum's armpit” is when you crack a crusty. When your ears are stuffed like a Mudjee's kettle after a week of Fridays, that's “stuck up like Morgan's mule”.'

‘No, you're referrin' to “happier than Morgan's mule in a choccy patch”—'

‘You mean “as
fast
as Morgan's mule after it ate Ma's crow pie”.'

‘How fast was that? Exactly?' said Rincewind.

They all stared at him.

‘Faster'n an eel in a snakepit, mate!' said Clancy. ‘Don't you understand plain language?'

‘Yeah,' said one of the men, ‘he might be a fancy rider but I reckon he's dumber than a—'

‘
Don't anyone say anything!
' shouted Rincewind. ‘I'm feeling a lot better, all right? Just . . . all right, all right?' He straightened his ragged robe and adjusted his hat. ‘Now, if you could just set me on the right road to Bugarup, I will not trespass further on your time. You may keep Snowy. He can bed down on a ceiling somewhere.'

‘Oh, no, mister,' said Remorse. He reached into a shirt pocket, pulled out a bundle of notes and licked his thumb to count off twenty. ‘I always pays me debts. You want to stay with us a while first? We could use another rider and it's tough going on the road by yourself. There's bush rangers about.'

Rincewind rubbed his head again. Now that his various bodily organs had wobbled their way back into their approximate positions he could get back to general low-key generalized dread.

‘They won't have to worry about me,' he mumbled. ‘I promise not to light fires or feed the animals. Well, I say
promise
– most of the time they're trying to feed off me.'

Remorse shrugged.

‘Just so long as there's no more of those damn dropping bears,' said Rincewind.

The men laughed.

‘Drop-bears? Who's been feedin' you a line about drop-bears?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘There's no such thing as drop-bears! Someone must've seen you coming, mate!'

‘Huh? They've got . . . they went,' Rincewind waved his arm, ‘boing . . . all over the place . . . great big teeth . . .'

‘I reckon he madder'n Morgan's mule, mate!' said Clancy.

The group went silent.

‘How mad is that, then?' said Rincewind.

Clancy leaned on his saddle and looked nervously at the other men. He licked his lips. ‘Well, it's . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, it's . . . it's . . .' His face twisted up. ‘It's . . .'

‘Ver' . . . ?' Rincewind hinted.

‘Ver' . . .' Clancy mumbled, clutching the syllable like a lifeline.

‘Hmm?'

‘Ver . . . ry . . .'

‘Keep going, keep going . . .'

‘Ver . . . ry . . . mad?' said Clancy.

‘Well done! See? So much easier,' said Rincewind. ‘Someone mentioned something about food?'

Remorse nodded to one of the men, who handed Rincewind a sack.

‘There's beer and veggies and stuff and, 'cos you're a good sport, we're giving you a tin of jam, too.'

‘Gooseberry?'

‘Yep.'

‘And I'm wondering about your hat,' said
Remorse. ‘Why's there all corks round it?'

‘Knocks the flies out,' said Rincewind.

‘That works, does it?'

‘Course not,' said Clancy. ‘If'n it does, someone'd have thought of it by now.'

‘Yes. Me,' said Rincewind. ‘No worries.'

‘Makes you look a bit of a drongo, mate,' said Clancy.

‘Oh, good,' said Rincewind. ‘Which way's Bugarup?'

‘Just turn left at the bottom of the canyon, mate.'

‘That's all?'

‘You can ask again when you meet the bush rangers.'

‘They've got some sort of cabin or station, have they?'

‘They've . . . Well, just remember they'll find you if you get lost.'

‘Really? Oh, well, I suppose that's part of their job. Good day to you.'

‘G'day.'

‘No worries.'

The men watched Rincewind until he was out of sight.

‘Didn't seem very bothered, did he?'

‘He's a bit gujeroo, if you ask me.'

‘Clancy?'

‘Yes, boss?'

‘You made that one up, didn't you . . . ?'

‘Well . . .'

‘You bloody did, Clancy.'

Clancy looked embarrassed, but then rallied.
‘All right, then,' he said hotly. ‘What about that one you used yesterday, “as busy as a one-armed carpenter in Smackaroo”?'

‘What about it?'

‘I looked it up in the atlas and there's no such place, boss.'

‘There damn well is!'

‘There isn't. Anyway, no one'd employ a one-armed carpenter, would they? So he wouldn't be busy, would he?'

‘Listen, Clancy—'

‘He'd go fishing or something, wouldn't he?'

‘Clancy, we're supposed to be carving a new language out of the wilderness here—'

‘Probably'd need someone to help him bait the line, but—'

‘Clancy, will you shut up and go and get the horses?'

It took twenty minutes to roll enough of the rocks away, and five minutes after that Clancy reported back.

‘Can't find the little bastard, boss. And we looked underneath all the others.'

‘It couldn't have got past us!'

‘Yes it could, boss. You saw it goin' up those cliffs. Probably miles away by now. You want I should go after that bloke?'

Remorse thought about it, and spat. ‘No, we got the colt back. That's worth the money.' He stared reflectively down the canyon.

‘You all right, boss?'

‘Clancy, after we get back to the station, go on into town and call in at the Pastoral Hotel
and bring back as many corks as they've got, willya?'

‘Think it'll work, boss? He was as weird as . . .' Clancy was pulled up by the look in his boss's eye. ‘He was pretty weird,' he said.

‘Weird, yeah. But smart, too. No flies on him.'

Behind them, in the jumble of rocks and bushes at the end of the canyon, a drawing of a small horse became a drawing of a kangaroo and then faded into the stone.

The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did.

Wizards, when faced with danger, would immediately stop and argue amongst themselves about exactly what kind of danger it was. By the time everyone in the party understood, either it had become the sort of danger where your options are so very, very clear that you instantly take one of them or die, or it had got bored and gone away. Even danger has its pride.

When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful demi-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worried about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase ‘in harm's way'.

It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars
in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the
other
kind of wizard.

His footsteps took him, almost without his being aware, along the gently winding path up the mountain. Strange creatures peered at him from the undergrowth on either side. Some of them looked like—

Wizards think in terms of books, and, now, one crept out from the shelves of Ponder's memory. It had been given to him when he was small. In fact, he'd still got it somewhere, filed away in a cardboard box.
¹⁷

It had consisted of lots of small pages on a central spiral. Each one showed the head, body or tail of some bird, fish or animal. It was possible for the sufficiently bored to shuffle and turn them so that you got, say, a creature with the head of a horse, the body of a beetle and the tail of a fish. The cover promised ‘hours of fun' although, after the first three minutes, you couldn't help wondering what kind of person could make that kind of fun last for hours, and whether suffocating him as kindly as possible now would save the Serial Crimes Squad a lot of trouble in years to
come. Ponder, however, had hours of fun.

Some of the creat—
things
in the undergrowth looked like the pages of that book. There were birds with beaks as long as their bodies. There were spiders the size of hands. Here and there the air shimmered like water. It resisted very gently as Ponder tried to walk through it, and then let him pass, but the birds and insects didn't seem inclined to follow him.

There were beetles everywhere.

Eventually, by easy stages, the winding path reached the top of the mountain. There was a tiny valley there, just below the peak. At the far end was a large cave mouth, lit by a blue glow within.

A large beetle sang past Ponder's ear.

The cave mouth opened into a cavern, filled with misty blue fog. There was a suggestion of complex shadows. And there were sounds – whistles, little zipping noises, the occasional thud or clang that suggested work going on somewhere in the mist.

Ponder brushed aside a beetle that had landed on his cheek and stared at the shape right in front of him.

It was the front half of an elephant.

The other half of the elephant, balancing against all probability on the two legs at the rear end, stood a few yards away. In between was . . . the rest of the elephant.

Ponder Stibbons told himself that if you cut an elephant in half and scooped out the middle, what you would get would be . . . well, mess. There wasn't much mess here. Pink and purple tubes
had uncoiled neatly on to a workbench. A small stepladder led up into another complexity of tubes and bulky organs. There was a general feel of methodical work in progress. This wasn't the horror of an elephant in an explosive death. This was an elephant under construction.

Little clouds of white light spiralled in from all corners of the cavern, spun for a moment, and became the god of evolution, who was standing on the stepladder.

He blinked at Ponder. ‘Oh, it's you,' he said. ‘One of the pointy creatures. Can you tell me what happens when I do this?'

He reached inside the echoing depths of the front half. The elephant's ears flapped.

‘The ears flapped,' squeaked Ponder.

The god emerged, beaming. ‘It's amazing how difficult that is to achieve,' he said. ‘Anyway . . . what do you think of it?'

Ponder swallowed. ‘It's . . . very good,' he managed. He took a step back, bumped into something, and turned and looked into the gaping maw of a very large shark. It was in the middle of another . . . well, he had to think of it as a sort of biological scaffolding. It rolled an eye at him. Behind it, a much bigger whale was being assembled.

‘It is, isn't it?' said the god.

Ponder tried to concentrate on the elephant. ‘Although—' he said.

‘Yes?'

‘Are you sure about the wheels?'

The god looked concerned. ‘You think they're too small? Not quite suitable for the veldt?'

‘Er, probably not . . .'

‘It's very hard to design an organic wheel, you know,' said the god reproachfully. ‘They're little masterpieces.'

‘You don't think just, you know, moving the legs about would be simpler?'

‘Oh, we'd never get anywhere if I just copied earlier ideas,' said the god. ‘Diversify and fill all niches, that's the ticket.'

‘But is lying on your side in a mud hole with your wheels spinning a very
important
niche?' said Ponder.

The god looked at him, and then stared glumly at the half-completed elephant.

‘Perhaps if I made the tyres bigger?' he said, hopefully yet in a hopeless voice.

‘I don't think so,' said Ponder.

‘Oh, you're probably right.' The little god's hands twitched. ‘I don't know, I do
try
to diversify, but sometimes it's so difficult . . .'