The Light Fantastic (12 page)

The shopkeeper reappeared.

“Better?” he demanded.

“It’s an improvement,” said Twoflower, doubtfully. “I liked the herbs best.”

At this point Rincewind groaned. He was about to wake up.

There have been three general theories put forward to explain the phenomenon of the wandering shops or, as they are generically known,
tabernae vagantes
.

The first postulates that many thousands of years ago there evolved somewhere in the multiverse a race whose single talent was to buy cheap and sell dear. Soon they controlled a vast galactic empire or, as they put it, Emporium, and the more advanced members of the species found a way to equip their very shops with unique propulsion units that could break the dark walls of space itself and open up vast new markets. And long after the worlds of the Emporium perished in the heat death of their particular universe, after one last defiant fire sale, the wandering starshops still ply their trade, eating their way through the pages of spacetime like a worm through a three-volume novel.

The second is that they are the creation of a sympathetic Fate, charged with the role of supplying exactly the right thing at the right time.

The third is that they are simply a very clever way of getting around the various Sunday Closing acts.

All these theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.

Rincewind opened his eyes and lay for a moment looking up at the stuffed reptile. It was not the best thing to see when awakening from troubled dreams…

Magic! So that’s what it felt like! No wonder wizards didn’t have much truck with sex!

Rincewind knew what orgasms were, of course, he’d had a few in his time, sometimes even in company, but nothing in his experience even approximated to that tight, hot moment when every nerve in his body streamed with blue-white fire and raw magic had blazed forth from his fingers. It filled you and lifted you and you surfed down the rising, curling wave of elemental force. No wonder wizards fought for power…

And so on. The Spell in his head had been doing it, though, not Rincewind. He was really beginning to hate that Spell. He was sure that if it hadn’t frightened away all the other spells he’d tried to learn he could have been a decent wizard in his own right.

Somewhere in Rincewind’s battered soul the worm of rebellion flashed a fang.

Right, he thought. You’re going back into the Octavo, first chance I get.

He sat up.

“Where the hell is this?” he said, grabbing his head to stop it exploding.

“A shop,” said Twoflower mournfully.

“I hope it sells knives because I think I’d like to cut my head off,” said Rincewind. Something about the expression of the two opposite him sobered him up.

“That was a joke,” he said. “Mainly a joke, anyway. Why are we in this shop?”

“We can’t get out,” said Bethan.

“The door’s disappeared,” added Twoflower helpfully.

Rincewind stood up, a little shakily.

“Oh,” he said. “One of those shops?”

“All right,” said the shopkeeper testily. “It’s magical, yes, it moves around, yes, no, I’m not telling you why—”

“Can I have a drink of water, please?” said Rincewind.

The shopkeeper looked affronted.

“First no money, then they want a glass of water,” he snapped. “That’s just about—”

Bethan snorted and strode across to the little man, who tried to back away. He was too late.

She picked him up by his apron straps and glared at him eye to eye. Torn though her dress was, disarrayed though her hair was, she became for a moment the symbol of every woman who has caught a man with his thumb on the scales of life.

“Time is money,” she hissed. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to get him a glass of water. I think that’s a bargain, don’t you?”

“I say,” Twoflower whispered. “She’s a real terror when she’s roused, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Rincewind, without enthusiasm.

“All right, all right,” said the shopkeeper, visibly cowed.

“And then you can let us out,” Bethan added.

“That’s fine by me, I wasn’t open for business anyway, I just stopped for a few seconds to get my bearings and you barged in!”

He grumbled off through the bead curtains and returned with a cup of water.

“I washed it out special,” he said, avoiding Bethan’s gaze.

Rincewind looked at the liquid in the cup. It had probably been clean before it was poured in, now drinking it would be genocide for thousands of innocent germs.

He put it down carefully.

“Now I’m going to have a good wash!” stated Bethan, and stalked off through the curtain.

The shopkeeper waved a hand vaguely and looked appealingly at Rincewind and Twoflower.

“She’s not bad,” said Twoflower. “She’s going to marry a friend of ours.”

“Does he know?”

“Things not so good in the starshop business?” said Rincewind, as sympathetically as he could manage.

The little man shuddered. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “I mean, you learn not to expect much, you make a sale here and there, it’s a living, you know what I mean? But these people you’ve got these days, the ones with these star things painted on their faces, well, I hardly have time to open the store and they’re threatening to burn it down. Too magical, they say. So I say, of course magical, what else?”

“Are there a lot of them about, then?” said Rincewind.

“All over the Disc, friend. Don’t ask me why.”

“They believe a star is going to crash into the Disc,” said Rincewind.

“Is it?”

“Lots of people think so.”

“That’s a shame. I’ve done good business here. Too magical, they say! What’s wrong with magic, that’s what I’d like to know?”

“What will you do?” said Twoflower.

“Oh, go to some other universe, there’s plenty around,” said the shopkeeper airily. “Thanks for telling me about the star, though. Can I drop you off somewhere?”

The Spell gave Rincewind’s mind a kick.

“Er, no,” he said, “I think perhaps we’d better stay. To see it through, you know.”

“You’re not worried about this star thing, then?”

“The star is life, not death,” said Rincewind.

“How’s that?”

“How’s what?”

“You did it again!” said Twoflower, pointing an accusing finger. “You say things and then don’t know you’ve said them!”

“I just said we’d better stay,” said Rincewind.

“You said the star was life, not death,” said Twoflower. “Your voice went all crackly and far away. Didn’t it?” He turned to the shopkeeper for confirmation.

“That’s true,” said the little man. “I thought his eyes crossed a bit, too.”

“It’s the Spell, then,” said Rincewind. “It’s trying to take me over. It knows what’s going to happen, and I think it wants to go to Ankh-Morpork. I want to go too,” he added defiantly. “Can you get us there?”

“Is that the big city on the Ankh? Sprawling place, smells of cesspits?”

“It has an ancient and honorable history,” said Rincewind, his voice stiff with injured civic pride.

“That’s not how you described it to
me,
” said Twoflower. “You told me it was the only city that actually started out decadent.”

Rincewind looked embarrassed. “Yes, but, well, it’s my home, don’t you see?”

“No,” said the shopkeeper, “not really. I always say home is where you hang your hat.”

“Um, no,” said Twoflower, always anxious to enlighten. “Where you hang your hat is a hatstand. A home is—”

“I’ll just go and see about setting you on your way,” said the shopkeeper hurriedly, as Bethan came in. He scooted past her.

Twoflower followed him.

On the other side of the curtain was a room with a small bed, a rather grubby stove, and a three-legged table. Then the shopkeeper did something to the table, there was a noise like a cork coming reluctantly out of a bottle, and the room contained a wall-to-wall universe.

“Don’t be frightened,” said the shopkeeper, as stars streamed past.

“I’m not frightened,” said Twoflower, his eyes sparkling.

“Oh,” said the shopkeeper, slightly annoyed. “Anyway, it’s just imagery generated by the shop, it’s not real.”

“And you can go anywhere?”

“Oh no,” said the shopkeeper, deeply shocked. “There’s all kinds of fail-safes built in, after all, there’d be no point in going somewhere with insufficient per capita disposable income. And there’s got to be a suitable wall, of course. Ah, here we are, this is your universe. Very bijou, I always think. A sort of universette…”

Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything.

A shadow starts to blot out the distant glitter, and it is blacker than space itself.

From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big
in
. Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size.

But this shape blotting out the sky like the footfall o God isn’t a planet.

It is a turtle, ten thousand miles long from its crater-pocked head to its armored tail.

And Great A’Tuin is
huge
.

Great flippers rise and fall ponderously, warping space into strange shapes. The Discworld slides across the sky like a royal barge. But even Great A’Tuin is struggling now as it leaves the free depths of space and must fight the tormenting pressures of the solar shallows. Magic is weaker here, on the littoral of light. Many more days of this and the Discworld will be stripped away by the pressures of reality.

Great A’Tuin knows this, but Great A’Tuin can recall doing all this before, many thousands of years ago.

The astrochelonian’s eyes, glowing red in the light of the dwarf star, are not focused on it but at a little patch of space nearby…

“Yes, but where are we?” said Twoflower. The shopkeeper, hunched over his table, just shrugged.

“I don’t think we’re
anywhere
,” he said. “We’re in a cotangent incongruity, I believe. I could be wrong. The shop generally knows what it’s doing.”

“You mean you don’t?”

“I pick a bit up, here and there.” The shopkeeper blew his nose. “Sometimes I land on a world where they understand these things.” He turned a pair of small, sad eyes on Twoflower. “You’ve got a kind face, sir. I don’t mind telling you.”

“Telling me what?”

“It’s no life, you know, minding the Shop. Never settling down, always on the move, never closing.”

“Why don’t you stop, then?”

“Ah, that’s it, you see, sir—I can’t. I’m under a curse, I am. A terrible thing.” He blew his nose again.

“Cursed to run a shop?”

“Forever, sir, forever. And never closing! For hundreds of years! There was this sorcerer, you see. I did a terrible thing.”

“In a shop?” said Twoflower.

“Oh, yes. I can’t remember what it was he wanted, but when he asked for it I—I gave one of those sucking-in noises, you know, like whistling only backward?” He demonstrated.

Twoflower looked somber, but he was at heart a kind man and always ready to forgive.

“I see,” he said slowly. “Even so—”

“That’s not all!”

“Oh.”

“I told him there was no demand for it!”

“After making the sucking noise?”

“Yes. I probably grinned, too.”

“Oh, dear. You didn’t call him squire, did you?”

“I—I may have done.”

“Um.”

“There’s more.”

“Surely not?”

“Yes, I said I could order it and he could come back next day.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Twoflower, who alone of all the people in the multiverse allowed shops to order things for him and didn’t object at all to paying quite large sums of money to reimburse the shopkeeper for the inconvenience of having a bit of stock in his store often for several hours.

“It was early closing day,” said the shopkeeper.

“Oh.”

“Yes, and I heard him rattling the doorhandle, I had this sign on the door, you know, it said something like ‘Closed even for the sale of Necromancer cigarettes,’ anyway, I heard him banging and I laughed.”

“You laughed?”

“Yes. Like this. Hnufhnufhnufblort.”

“Probably not a wise thing to do,” said Twoflower, shaking his head.

“I know, I know. My father always said, he said, Do not peddle in the affairs of wizards…Anyway, I heard him shouting something about never closing again, and a lot of words I couldn’t understand, and then the shop—the shop—the shop came
alive
.”

“And you’ve wandered like this ever since?”

“Yes. I suppose one day I might find the sorcerer and perhaps the thing he wanted will be in stock. Until then I must go from place to place—”

“That was a terrible thing to do,” said Twoflower.

The shopkeeper wiped his nose on his apron. “Thank you,” he said.

“Even so, he shouldn’t have cursed you quite so badly,” Twoflower added.

“Oh. Yes, well.” The shopkeeper straightened his apron and made a brave little attempt to pull himself together. “Anyway, this isn’t getting you to Ankh-Morpork, is it?”

“Funny thing is,” said Twoflower, “that I bought my Luggage in a shop like this, once. Another shop, I mean.”

“Oh yes, there’s several of us,” said the shopkeeper, turning back to the table, “that sorcerer was a very impatient man, I understand.”

“Endlessly roaming through the universe,” mused Twoflower.

“That’s right. Mind you, there is a saving on the rates.”

“Rates?”

“Yes, they’re—” the shopkeeper paused, and wrinkled his forehead. “I can’t quite remember, it was such a long time ago. Rates, rates—”

“Very large mice?”

“That’s probably it.”

“Hold on—it’s thinking about something,” said Cohen.

Lackjaw looked up wearily. It had been quite nice, sitting here in the shade. He had just worked out that in trying to escape from a city of crazed madmen he had appeared to have allowed one mad man to give him his full attention. He wondered whether he would live to regret this.

He earnestly hoped so.

“Oh yes, it’s definitely thinking,” he said bitterly. “Anyone can see that.”

“I think it’s found them.”

“Oh, good.”

“Hold onto it.”

“Are you mad?” said Lackjaw.

“I know this thing, trust me. Anyway, would you rather be left with all these star people? They might be interested in having a talk with you.”

Cohen sidled over to the Luggage, and then flung himself astride it. It took no notice.

“Hurry up,” he said. “I think it’s going to go.”

Lackjaw shrugged, and climbed on gingerly behind Cohen.

“Oh?” he said, “and how does it g—”

Ankh-Morpork!

Pearl of cities!

This is not a completely accurate description, of course—it was not round and shiny—but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.

There have been bigger cities. There have been richer cities. There have certainly been prettier cities. But no city in the multiverse could rival Ankh-Morpork for its smell.

The Ancient Ones, who know everything about all the universes and have smelled the smells of Calcutta and !Xrc—! and dauntocum Marsport, have agreed that even these fine examples of nasal poetry are mere limericks when set against the glory of the Ankh-Morpork smell.

You can talk about ramps. You can talk about garlic. You can talk about France. Go on. But if you haven’t smelled Ankh-Morpork on a hot day you haven’t smelled anything.

The citizens are proud of it. They carry chairs outside to enjoy it on a really good day. They puff out their cheeks and slap their chests and comment cheerfully on its little distinctive nuances. They have even put up a statue to it, to commemorate the time when the troops of a rival state tried to invade by stealth one dark night and managed to get to the top of the walls before, to their horror, their nose plugs gave out. Rich merchants who have spent many years abroad sent back home for specially stoppered and sealed bottles of the stuff, which brings tears to their eyes.

It has that kind of effect.

There is only really one way to describe the effect the smell of Ankh-Morpork has on the visiting nose, and that is by analogy.

Take a tartan. Sprinkle it with confetti. Light it with strobe lights.

Now take a chameleon.

Put the chameleon on the tartan.

Watch it closely.

See?

Which explains why, when the shop finally materialized in Ankh-Morpork, Rincewind sat bolt upright and said “We’re here,” Bethan went pale and Twoflower, who had no sense of smell, said, “Really? How can you tell?”

It had been a long afternoon. They had broken into realspace in a number of walls in a variety of cities because, according to the shopkeeper, the Disc’s magical field was playing up and upsetting everything.

All the cities were empty of most of their citizens and belonged to roaming gangs of crazed left-ear people.

“Where do they all come from?” said Twoflower, as they fled yet another mob.

“Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s what I’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Bethan, “or if it makes sense, I don’t like it.”

The star was bigger than the sun. There would be no night tonight. On the opposite horizon the Disc’s own sunlet was doing its best to set normally, but the general effect of all that red light was to make the city, never particularly beautiful, look like something painted by a fanatical artist after a bad time on the shoe polish.

But it was
home
. Rincewind peered up and down the empty street and felt almost happy.

At the back of his mind the Spell was kicking up a ruckus, but he ignored it. Maybe it was true that magic was getting weaker as the star got nearer, or perhaps he’d had the Spell in his head for so long he had built up some kind of psychic immunity, but he found he
could
resist it.

“We’re in the docks,” he declared. “Just smell that sea air!”

“Oh,” said Bethan, leaning against the wall, “yes.”

“That’s ozone, that is,” said Rincewind. “That’s air with character, is that.” He breathed deeply.

Twoflower turned to the shopkeeper.

“Well, I hope you find your sorcerer,” he said. “Sorry we didn’t buy anything, but all my money’s in my Luggage, you see.”

The shopkeeper pushed something into his hand.

“A little gift,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

He darted back into his shop, the bell jangled, the sign saying Call Again Tomorrow For Spoonfetcher’s Leeches, the Little Suckers banged forlornly against the door, and the shop faded into the brickwork as though it had never been. Twoflower reached out gingerly and touched the wall, not quite believing it.

“What’s in the bag?” said Rincewind.

It was a thick brown paper bag, with string handles.

“If it sprouts legs I don’t want to know about it,” said Bethan.

Twoflower peered inside, and pulled out the contents.

“Is that all?” said Rincewind. “A little house with shells on?”

“It’s very useful,” said Twoflower defensively. “You can keep cigarettes in it.”

“And they’re what you really need, are they?” said Rincewind.

“I’d plump for a bottle of really strong suntan oil,” said Bethan.

“Come on,” said Rincewind, and set off down the street. The others followed.

It occurred to Twoflower that some words of comfort were called for, a little tactful small talk to take Bethan out of herself, as he would put it, and generally cheer her up.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s just a chance that Cohen might still be alive.”

“Oh, I expect he’s alive all right,” she said, stamping along the cobbles as if she nursed a personal grievance against each one of them. “You don’t live to be eighty-seven in his job if you go around dying all the time. But he’s not here.”

“Nor is my Luggage,” said Twoflower. “Of course, that’s not the same thing.”

“Do you think the star is going to hit the Disc?”

“No,” said Twoflower confidently.

“Why not?”

“Because Rincewind doesn’t think so.”

She looked at him in amazement.

“You see,” the tourist went on, “you know that thing you do with seaweed?”

Bethan, brought up on the Vortex Plains, had only heard of the sea in stories, and had decided she didn’t like it. She looked blank.

“Eat it?”

“No, what you do is, you hang it up outside your door, and it tells you if it’s going to rain.”

Another thing Bethan had learned was that there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner.

“I see,” she said.

“Rincewind is like that, you see.”

“Like seaweed.”

“Yes. If there was anything at all to be frightened about, he’d be frightened. But he’s not. The star is just about the only thing I’ve ever seen him not frightened of. If he’s not worried, then take it from me, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“It’s not going to rain?” said Bethan.

“Well, no. Metaphorically speaking.”

“Oh.” Bethan decided not to ask what “metaphorically” meant, in case it was something to do with seaweed.

Rincewind turned around.

“Come on,” he said. “Not far now.”

“Where to?” said Twoflower.

“Unseen University, of course.”

“Is that wise?”

“Probably not, but I’m still going—” Rincewind paused, his face a mask of pain. He put his hand to his ears and groaned.

“Spell giving you trouble?”

“Yargh.”

“Try humming.”

Rincewind grimaced. “I’m going to get rid of this thing,” he said thickly. “It’s going back into the book where it belongs. I want my head back!”

“But then—” Twoflower began, and stopped. They could all hear it—a distant chanting and the stamping of many feet.

“Do you think it’s star people?” said Bethan.

It was. The lead marchers came around a corner a hundred yards away, behind a ragged white banner with an eight-pointed star on it.

“Not just star people,” said Twoflower. “All kinds of people!”

The crowd swept them up in its passage. One moment they were standing in the deserted street, the next they were perforce moving with a tide of humanity that bore them onward through the city.