Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett [76]
“Besides,” his daughter went on, “I have the map. And it would be dreadful if you lost your way and accidentally strayed out of the Forbidden City, wouldn’t it?”
Rincewind gave in. It struck him that Twoflower’s late wife must have been a remarkably intelligent woman.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “But you’re not to get in the way. And you’re to do what I tell you, okay?”
Butterfly bowed.
“Lead on, o Great Wizard,” she said.
“I knew it!” said Truckle. “Poison!”
“No, no. You don’t eat it. You rub it on your body,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Watch. And you get what we in civilization call clean.”
Most of the Horde stood waist-deep in the warm water, every man with his hands chastely wrapped around his body. Hamish had refused to relinquish his wheelchair, so only his head was above the surface.
“It’s all prickly,” said Cohen. “And my skin’s peeling off and dissolving.”
“That’s not skin,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Haven’t any of you seen a bath before?”
“Oh, I seen one,” said Boy Willie. “I killed the Mad Bishop of Pseudopolis in one. You get”—he furrowed his brow—“bubbles and stuff. And fifteen naked maidens.”
“Whut?”
“Definitely. Fifteen. Remember it well.”
“That’s more like it,” said Caleb.
“All we’ve got to rub is this soap stuff.”
“The Emperor is ritually bathed by twenty-two bath women,” said Six Beneficent Winds. “I could go and check with the harem eunuchs and wake them up, if you like. It’s probably allowable under Entertaining.”
The taxman was warming to his new job. He’d worked out that although the Horde, as individuals, had acquired mountains of cash in their careers as barbarian heroes they’d lost almost all of it engaging in the other activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary to the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable rebate.
The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority anywhere* was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that counted. And the interest, too, of course.
“No, no young women, I insist,” said Mr. Saveloy. “You’re having a bath to get clean. Plenty of time for young women later.”
“Gotta date when all this is over,” said Caleb, a little shyly, thinking wistfully of one of the few women he’d ever had a conversation with. “She’s got her own farm, she said. I could be all right for a duck.”
“I bet Teach don’t want you to say that,” said Boy Willie. “I bet he’d say you gotta call it a waterfowl.”
“Huh, huh, hur!”
“Whut?”
Six Beneficent Winds sidled over to the teacher as the Horde experimented with the bath oil, initially by drinking it.
“I’ve worked out what it is you’re going to steal,” he said.
“Oh, yes?” said Mr. Saveloy politely. He was watching Caleb who, having had it brought home to him that he might have been adopting the wrong approach all his life, was trying to cut his nails with his sword.
“It’s the legendary Diamond Coffin of Schz Yu!” said Six Beneficent Winds.
“No. Wrong again.”
“Oh.”
“Out of the baths, gentlemen,” said the teacher. “I think…yes…you’ve mastered commerce, social intercourse—”
“—hur, hur, hur…sorry—”
“—and the principles of taxation,” Mr. Saveloy went on.
“Have we done that? What are they, then?” said Cohen.
“You take away almost all the money that the merchants have got,” said Six Beneficent Winds, handing him a towel.
“Oh, is that it? I’ve been doing that for years.”
“No, you’ve been taking away all the money,” said Mr. Saveloy. “That’s where you go wrong. You kill too many of them, and the ones you don’t kill you leave too poor.”
“Sounds frightfully good to me,” said Truckle, excavating the cretaceous contents of an ear. “Poor merchants, rich us.”
“No, no, no!”
“No, no, no?”
“Yes! That’s not civilized!”
“It’s like with sheep,” Six Beneficent Winds explained. “You don’t tear their skin off all in one go, you just shear them every year.”
The Horde looked blank.
“Hunter-gatherers,” said Mr. Saveloy, with a touch of hopelessness. “Wrong metaphor.”
“It’s the marvelous Singing Sword of Wong, isn’t it?” whispered Six