Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett [7]
“Was,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
“Not a cheese,” said Ridcully, unwilling to let go of a fact.
“No.”
“Sounds a sort of name you’d associate with cheese. I mean, a pound of Mature Rincewind, it rolls off the tongue…”
“Godsdammit, Rincewind is not a cheese!” shouted the Dean, his temper briefly cracking. “Rincewind is not a yogurt or any kind of sour milk derivative! Rincewind is a bloody nuisance! A complete and utter disgrace to wizardry! A fool! A failure! Anyway, he hasn’t been seen here since that…unpleasantness with the Sourcerer, years ago.”
“Really?” said Ridcully, with a certain kind of nasty politeness. “A lot of wizards behaved very badly then, I understand.”
“Yes indeed,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, scowling at the Dean, who bridled.
“I don’t know anything about that, Runes. I wasn’t Dean at the time.”
“No, but you were very senior.”
“Perhaps, but it just so happens that at the time I was visiting my aunt, for your information.”
“They nearly blew up the whole city!”
“She lives in Quirm.”
“And Quirm was heavily involved, as I recall.”
“—near Quirm. Near Quirm. Not all that near, actually. Quite a way along the coast—”
“Hah!”
“Anyway, you seem to be very well informed, eh, Runes?” said the Dean.
“I—What?—I—was studying hard at the time. Hardly knew what was going on—”
“Half the University was blown down!” The Dean remembered himself and added, “That is, so I heard. Later. After getting back from my aunt’s.”
“Yes, but I’ve got a very thick door—”
“And I happen to know the Senior Wrangler was here, because—”
“—with that heavy green baize stuff you can hardly hear any—”
“Nap my for time it’s think I.”
“Will you all shut up right now this minute!”
Ridcully glared at his faculty with the clear, innocent glare of someone who was blessed at birth with no imagination whatsoever, and who had genuinely been hundreds of miles away during the University’s recent embarrassing history.
“Right,” he said, when they had quietened down. “This Rincewind. Bit of an idiot, yes? You talk, Dean. Everyone else will shut up.”
The Dean looked uncertain.
“Well, er…I mean, it makes no sense, Archchancellor. He couldn’t even do proper magic. What good would he be to anyone? Besides…where Rincewind went”—he lowered his voice—“trouble followed behind.”
Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together.
“Sounds all right to me,” he said. “Best place for trouble, behind. You certainly don’t want it in front.”
“You don’t understand, Archchancellor,” said the Dean. “It followed behind on hundreds of little legs.”
The Archchancellor’s smile stayed where it was while the rest of his face went solid behind it.
“You been on the Bursar’s pills, Dean?”
“I assure you, Mustrum—”
“Then don’t talk rubbish.”
“Very well, Archchancellor. But you do realize, don’t you, that it might take years to find him?”
“Er,” said Ponder, “if we can work out his thaumic signature, I think Hex could probably do it in a day…”
The Dean glared.
“That’s not magic!” he snapped. “That’s just…engineering!”
Rincewind trudged through the shallows and used a sharp rock to hack the top off a coconut that had been cooling in a convenient shady rock pool. He put it to his lips.
A shadow fell across him.
It said, “Er, hello?”
It was possible, if you kept on talking at the Archchancellor for long enough, that some facts might squeeze through.
“So what you’re tellin’ me,” said Ridcully, eventually, “is that this Rincewind fella has been chased by just about every army in the world, has been bounced around life like a pea on a drum, and probably is the one wizard who knows anything about the Agatean Empire on account of once being friends with,” he glanced at his notes, “‘a strange little man in glasses’ who came from there and gave him this funny thing with the legs you all keep alluding to. And he can speak the lingo. Am I right so far?”
“Exactly, Archchancellor. Call me an idiot if you like,” said the Dean, “but why would anyone want him?”
Ridcully looked down at his notes