Interesting Times

It was flat, and had a bend in the middle. Someone had spent a long time making rather nice designs on it in little coloured dots. Somehow, Rincewind wasn't at all surprised to see a butterfly among them.

The hunters watched him expectantly.

'Er, yes,' he said. 'Very good. Very good workmanship, yes. Interesting pointillistic effect. Shame you couldn't find a straighter bit of wood.'

One of the men laid down his spear, and squatted down and picked up a long wooden tube, covered with the same designs. He blew into it. The effect was not unpleasant. It sounded like bees would sound if they'd invented full orchestration.

'Um,' said Rincewind. 'Yes.'

It was a test, obviously. They'd given him this bent piece of wood. He had to do something with it. It was clearly very important. He'd—

Oh, no. He'd say something or do something, wouldn't he, and then they'd say, yes, you are the Great Bloke or something, and they'd drag him off and it'd be the start of another Adventure, i.e., a period of horror and unpleasantness. Life was full of tricks like that.

Well, this time Rincewind wasn't going to fall for it.

'I want to go home,' he said. 'I want to go back home to the Library where it was nice and quiet. And I don't know where I am. And I don't care what you do to me, right? I'm not going to have any kind of adventure or start saving the world again and you can't trick me into it with mysterious bits of wood.'

He gripped the stick and flung it away from him with all the force he could still muster.

They stared at him as he folded his arms.

'I'm not playing,' he said. 'I'm stopping right here.'

They were still staring. And now they were grinning, too, at something behind him.

He felt himself getting quite annoyed.

'Do you understand? Are you listening?' he said. 'That's the last time the universe is going to trick Rincewi—'

The End

People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events - the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there - that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

Usually about six inches across.

People wonder how this works, since a terrestrial elephant would be unlikely to bear a revolving load for any length of time without some serious friction burns. But you may as well ask why the axle of a planet doesn't squeak, or where love goes, or what sound yellow makes.

Which is like Fuzzy Logic, only less so.

All virtual lectures took place in room 3B, a room not locatable on any floor plan of the University and also, it was considered, infinite in size.

A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable I gods.

Such as 'Ouch!', 'Aargh!', 'Give me back my money, you scoundrel!' and 'You call these chestnuts? I call them little balls of charcoal, that's what I call them!'

And often the phrase 'a bastard you don't want to cross, and I didn't say that'.

The UU college porters. Renowned among the entire faculty for the hardness of their skulls, their obtuseness in the face of reasonable explanation, and their deeply held conviction that the whole place would collapse without them.

Except during extreme flood conditions it is extremely difficult to make much progress on the Ankh, and the University rowing teams compete by running over the surface of the river. This is generally quite safe provided they don't stand in one place for very long and, of course, it eats the soles off their boots.

This at least was true. Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream* in another forty-four.

* This is important. Inexperienced travellers might think that 'Aargh!' is universal, but in Betrobi it means 'highly enjoyable' and' in Howondaland it means, variously, 'I would like to eat your foot', 'Your wife is a big hippo' and 'Hello, Thinks Mr Purple Cat.' One particular tribe has a fearsome reputation for cruelty merely because prisoners appear, to them, to be shouting 'Quick! Extra boiling oil!'

Named after the wizard Sangrit Heisenberg and not after the more famous Heisenberg who is renowned for inventing what is possibly the finest lager in the world.

There was still a certain amount of confusion on this point.

KIDS! Only very silly wizards with bad sinus trouble do this Sensible people go off to a roped-off enclosure where they can watch a heavily protected man, in the middle distance, light (with the aid of a very long pole) something that goes 'fsst'. And then they can shout 'Hooray'.

The Ankh-Morpork name for the Counterweight Continent and its nearby islands. It means 'place where the gold comes from'.

In fact, he'd be about the seventy-third to admit it.

Such as Dish of Glistening Brown Stuff, Dish of Glistening Crunchy Orange Stuff, and Dish of Soft White Lumps.