Interesting Times

The voice erupted further down the alley, as if on cue.

'Rice cakes! Rice cakes! Get chore nice rice cakes! Tea! Hundred-Year-Old Eggs! Eggs! Get them while they're nice and vintage! Get chore - Yeah, what is it?'

An elderly man had approached the salesman.

'Dibhala-san! This egg you sold me—'

'What about it, venerable squire?'

'Would you care to smell it?'

The street vendor took a sniff.

'Ah, yes, lovely,' he said.

'Lovely? Lovely? This egg,' said the customer, 'this egg is practically fresh!'

'Hundred years old if it's a day, shogun,' said the vendor happily. 'Look at the colour of that shell, nice and black—'

'It rubs off!'

Rincewind listened. There was, he thought, probably something in the idea that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of bodies, but only a few people. That's why you kept running into the same ones. There was probably some mould somewhere.

'You saying my produce is fresh! May I disembowel myself honourably! Look, I'll tell you what I'll do—'

Yes, there seemed to be something familiar and magical about that trader. Someone had come to complain about a fresh egg, and yet within a couple of minutes he'd somehow been talked into forgetting this and purchasing two rice cakes and something strange wrapped in leaves.

The rice cakes looked nice. Well... nicer than the other things.

Rincewind sidled over. The trader was idly jigging from one foot to the other and whistling under his breath, but he stopped and gave Rincewind a big, honest, friendly grin.

'Nice ancient egg, shogun?'

The bowl in the middle of the tray was full of gold coins. Rincewind's heart sank. The price of one of Mr Dibhala's foul eggs would have bought a street in Ankh-Morpork.

'I suppose you don't give... credit?' he suggested.

Dibhala gave him a Look.

'I'll pretend I never heard that, shogun,' he said.

'Tell me,' said Rincewind. 'Do you know if you have any relatives overseas?'

This got him another look - a sideways one, full of sudden appraisal.

'What? There's nothing but evil blood-sucking ghosts beyond the seas. Everyone knows that, shogun. I'm surprised you don't.'

'Ghosts?' said Rincewind.

'Trying to get here, do us harm,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'Maybe even steal our merchandise. Give 'em a dose of the old firecracker, that's what I say. They don't like a good loud bang, ghosts.'

He gave Rincewind another look, even longer and more calculating.

'Where you from, shogun?' he asked, and his voice suddenly had the little barbed edge of suspicion.

'Bes Pelargic,' said Rincewind quickly. 'That ex-plains my strange accent and mannerisms that might otherwise lead people to think I was some sort of foreigner,' he added.

'Oh, Bes Pelargic,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'Well, in that case, I expect you know my old friend Five Tongs who lives in the Street of Heavens, yes?'

Rincewind was ready for this old trick.

'No,' he said. 'Never heard of him, never heard of the street.'

Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala grinned happily. 'If I yell "foreign devil" loud enough you won't get three steps,' he said in conversational tones. 'The guards will drag you off to the Forbidden City where there's this special thing they do with—'

'I've heard about it,' said Rincewind.

'Five Tongs has been the district commissioner for three years and the Street of Heavens is the man street,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'I've always wanted to meet a blood-sucking foreign ghost. Have a rice cake.'

Rincewind's gaze darted this way and that. But strangely enough the situation didn't seem dangerous, or at least inevitably dangerous. It seemed that danger was negotiable.

'Supposing I was to admit I was from behind the Wall?' he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.

Dibhala nodded. One hand reached into his robe and, in a quick movement, revealed and then concealed the corner of something which Rincewind was not entirely surprised to see was entitled WHAT I DID...

'Some people say that beyond the Wall there's nothing but deserts and burning wastes and evil ghosts and terrible monsters,' said Dibhala, 'but I say what about the merchandizing opportunities? A man with the right contacts... Know what I mean, shogun? He could go a long way in the land of blood-sucking ghosts.'

Rincewind nodded. He didn't like to point out that if you turned up in Ankh-Morpork with a handful of gold then about three hundred people would turn up with a handful of steel.

'The way I see it, what with all this uncertainty about the Emperor and talk of rebels and that - Long Live His Excellency The Son Of Heaven, of course - there might just be a nitch for the open-minded trader, am I right?'

'Nitch?'

'Nitch. Like... we've got this stuff - he leaned closer - 'comes out of a caterpillar's [unidentified pictogram]. 'S called... silk. It's—'

'Yes, I know. We get it from Klatch,' said Rincewind.

'Or, well, there's this bush, see, you dry the leaves but then you put it in hot water and you drin—'

'Tea, yes,' said Rincewind. 'That comes from Howondaland.'