Eric

Curiosity overcame Rincewind’s usual cowardice.

“What’s going on?” he said. “What’s happening to him?”

The demon stopped kicking his heels on the edge of the pit. It didn’t occur to it to question Rincewind’s presence. It assumed that he wouldn’t be here unless he had a right to be. The alternative was unbelievable.

“I don’t know what he done,” it said, “but when I first come here his punishment was to be chained to that rock and every day an eagle would come down and peck his liver out. Bit of an old favourite, that one.”^{20}

“It doesn’t look as though it’s attacking him now,” said Rincewind.

“Nah. That’s all changed. Now it flies down every day and tells him about its hernia operation. Now it’s effective, I’ll grant you,” said the demon sadly, “but it’s not what I’d call torture.”

Rincewind turned away, but not before catching a glimpse of the look of terminal agony on the victim’s face. It was terrible.

There was worse, however. In the next pit several chained and groaning people were being shown a series of paintings. A demon in front of them was reading from a script.

“—this is when we were in the Fifth Circle, only you can’t see where we stayed, it was just off to the left there, and this is that funny couple we met, you’d never believe it, they lived on the Icy Plains of Doom just next door to—”

Eric looked at Rincewind.

“It’s showing them pictures of itself on holiday?” he said.

They both shrugged and walked away, shaking their heads.

Then there was a small hill. At the bottom of the hill there was a round rock. Beside the rock sat a manacled man, his despairing head buried in his hands. A squat green demon stood beside him, almost buckling under the weight of an enormous book.

“I’ve heard of this one,” said Eric. “Man who went and defied the gods or something. Got to keep pushing that rock up the hill even though it rolls back all the time—”^{21}

The demon looked up.

“But first,” it trilled, “he must listen to the Unhealthy and Unsafety Regulations governing the Lifting and Moving of Large Objects.”

Volume 93 of the Commentaries, in fact. The Regulations themselves comprised a further 1,440 volumes. Part 1, that is.

Rincewind had always liked boredom, treasuring it if only because of its rarity value. It had always seemed to him that the only times in his life when he wasn’t being chased, imprisoned or hit were when he was being dropped from things, and while falling a long way always had a certain sameness about it, it did not really count as “boring”. The only time he could look back on with a certain amount of fondness was his brief spell as assistant Librarian at Unseen University, when there wasn’t much to do except read books, make sure the Librarian’s banana supply wasn’t interrupted and, rarely, help him with a particularly recalcitrant grimoire.

Now he realised 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.

Whereas this was just boredom on top of more boredom, winding in on itself until it became a great crushing sledgehammer which paralysed all thought and experience and pounded eternity into something like flannel.

“This is dreadful,” he said.

The chained man raised a haggard face. “You’re telling me?” he said. “I used to like pushing the ball up the hill. You could stop for a chat, you could see what was going on, you could try various holds and everything. I was a bit of a tourist attraction, people used to point me out. I wouldn’t say it was fun, but it gave you a purpose in the afterlife.”

“And I used to help him,” said the demon, its voice raw with sullen indignation. “Give you a bit of a hand, sometimes, didn’t I? Pass on a bit of gossip and that. Sort of encourage him when it rolled back and that. I’d say things like ‘whoops, there goes the bleeder again,’ and he’d say ‘Bugger it’. We had some times, dint we? Great times.” It blew its nose.

Rincewind coughed.

“‘Sgetting too much,” said the demon. “We used to be happy in the old days. It wasn’t as if it used to hurt anyone much and, well, we was all in it together.”

“That’s it,” said the chained man. “You knew if you kept your nose clean you’d stand a chance of getting out one day. You know, once a week now I have to stop this for craft lessons?”

“That must be nice,” said Rincewind uncertainly.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Basketwork?” he said.

“I been here eighteen millennia, demon and imp,” grumbled the demon. “I learned my trade, I did. Eighteen thousand bloody years behind the pitchfork, and now this. Reading a—”

A sonic boom echoed the length of Hell.

“Oi oi,” said the demon. “He’s back. He sounds angry, too. We’d better get our heads down.” And indeed, all over the circles of Hades, demons and damned were groaning in unison and getting back to their private hells.

The chained man broke into a sweat.