Eric

There was no way to describe how angry you can get running nearly twice the length of the space-time continuum, and the Luggage had been pretty annoyed to start with.

It looked at the hinges. It looked at the locks. It backed away a bit and appeared to read the new sign over the portal.

Possibly this made it angrier, although with the Luggage there wasn’t any reliable way of telling because it spent all its time beyond, in a manner of speaking, the hostility event horizon.

The doors of Hell were ancient. It wasn’t just time and heat that had baked their wood to something like black granite. They’d picked up fear and dull evil. They were more than mere things to fill a hole in the wall. They were bright enough to be dimly aware of what their future was likely to hold.

They watched the Luggage shuffle back across the sand, flex its legs and crouch down.

The lock clicked. The bolts dragged themselves back hurriedly. The great bars jerked from their sockets. The doors flung themselves back against the wall.

The Luggage untensed. It straightened. It stepped forward. It almost strutted. It passed between the straining hinges and, when it was nearly through, turned and gave the nearest door a damn good kick.

***

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.

“We can’t stay here for ever,” said Rincewind. “We need to do things. Like eat.”

“That’s one of the tremendous advantages of being a damned soul,” said Ponce da Quirm. “All the old bodily cares fade away. Of course, you get a completely new set of cares, but I have always found it advisable to look for the silver lining.”

“Wossname!” said the parrot, who was sitting on his shoulder.

“Fancy that,” said Rincewind. “I never knew animals could go to Hell. Although I can quite see why they made an exception in this case.”

“Up yours, wizard!”

“Why don’t they look for us here, that’s what I don’t understand?” said Eric.

“Shut up and keep walking,” said Rincewind. “They’re stupid, that’s why. They can’t imagine that we would be doing something like this.”

“Yes, they’re right there. I can’t imagine that we are doing something like this, either,” said Eric.

Rincewind treadled for a bit, watching a crowd of frantically searching demons hurry past.

“So you didn’t find the Fountain of Youth, then,” he said, feeling that he should make some conversation.

“Oh, but I did,” said da Quirm earnestly. “A clear spring, deep in the jungle. It was very impressive. I had a good long drink, too. Or draught, which I think is the more appropriate word.”

“And—?” said Rincewind.

“It definitely worked. Yes. For a while there I could definitely feel myself getting younger.”

“But—” Rincewind waved a vague hand to take in da Quirm, the treadmill, the towering circles of the Pit.

“Ah,” said the old man. “Of course, that’s the really annoying bit. I’d read so much about the Fountain, and you’d have thought someone in all those books would have mentioned the really vital thing about the water, wouldn’t you?”

“Which was—?”

“Boil it first. Says it all, doesn’t it? Terrible shame, really.”

The Luggage trotted down the great spiral road that linked the circles of the Pit. Even if conditions had been normal it probably would not have, attracted much attention. If anything, it was rather less astonishing than most of the denizens.

“This is really boring,” said Eric.

“That’s the point,” said Rincewind.

“We shouldn’t be lurking here, we should be trying to find a way out!”

“Well, yes, but there isn’t one.”

“There is, in fact,” said a voice behind Rincewind. It was the voice of someone who had seen it all and hadn’t liked any of it very much.

“Lavaeolus?” said Rincewind. His ancestor was right behind them.

“‘You’ll get home all right,’” said Lavaeolus bitterly. “Your very words. Huh. Ten years of one damn thing after another. You might have told a chap.”

“Er,” said Eric. “We didn’t want to upset the course of history.”

“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.”

“Excuse me,” said Rincewind.

“Yes?”

“You said there’s another way out?”

“Oh, yes. A back way.”

“Where is it?”

Lavaeolus stopped treadling for a moment and pointed across the misty hollow.

“See that arch over there?”

Rincewind peered into the distance.

“Just about,” he said. “Is that it?”

“Yes. A long steep climb. Don’t know where it comes out, though.”

“How did you find out about it?”

Lavaeolus shrugged. “I asked a demon,” he said. “There’s always an easier way of doing everything, you know.”

“It’d take forever to get there,” said Eric. “It’s right on the other side, we’d never make it.”