Sourcery - Terry Pratchett [85]
“Everyone okay?” he said.
“Is this Ankh?” she said. “Only when we wanted to go there, we rather hoped you’d put us somewhere with a door.”
“You’re on your way,” said the genie.
“In what?”
Something about the way in which the spirit hesitated caused Nijel’s mind to leap a tall conclusion from a standing start. He looked down at the lamp in his hands.
He gave it an experimental jerk. The floor shook.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s physically impossible.”
“We’re in the lamp?” said Conina.
The room trembled again as Nijel tried to look down the spout.
“Don’t worry about it,” said the genie. “In fact, don’t think about it if possible.”
He explained—although “explained” is probably too positive a word, and in this case really means failed to explain but at some length—that it was perfectly possible to travel across the world in a small lamp being carried by one of the party, the lamp itself moving because it was being carried by one of the people inside it, because of a) the fractal nature of reality, which meant that everything could be thought of as being inside everything else and b) creative public relations. The trick relied on the laws of physics failing to spot the flaw until the journey was complete.
“In the circumstances it is best not to think about it, yuh?” said the genie.
“Like not thinking about pink rhinoceroses,” said Nijel, and gave an embarrassed laugh as they stared at him.
“It was a sort of game we had,” he said. “You had to avoid thinking of pink rhinoceroses.” He coughed. “I didn’t say it was a particularly good game.”
He squinted down the spout again.
“No,” said Conina, “not very.”
“Uh,” said the genie, “Would anyone like coffee? Some sounds? A quick game of Significant Quest?*
“Drink?” said Creosote.
“White wine?”
“Foul muck.”
The genie looked shocked.
“Red is bad for—” it began.
“—but any port in a storm,” said Creosote hurriedly. “Or sauterne, even. But no umbrella in it.” It dawned on the Seriph that this wasn’t the way to talk to the genie. He pulled himself together a bit. “No umbrella, by the Five Moons of Nasreem. Or bits of fruit salad or olives or curly straws or ornamental monkeys, I command thee by the Seventeen Siderites of Sarudin.”
“I’m not an umbrella person,” said the genie sulkily.
“It’s pretty sparse in here,” said Conina, “Why don’t you furnish it.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Nijel, “is, if we’re all in the lamp I’m holding, then the me in the lamp is holding a smaller lamp and in that lamp—”
The genie waved his hands urgently.
“Don’t talk about it!” he commanded. “Please!”
Nijel’s honest brow wrinkled. “Yes, but,” he said, “is there a lot of me, or what?”
“It’s all cyclic, but stop drawing attention to it, yuh?…Oh, shit.”
There was the subtle, unpleasant sound of the universe suddenly catching on.
It was dark in the tower, a solid core of antique darkness that had been there since the dawn of time and resented the intrusion of the upstart daylight that nipped in around Rincewind.
He felt the air move as the door shut behind him and the dark poured back, filling up the space where the light had been so neatly that you couldn’t have seen the join even if the light had still been there.
The interior of the tower smelled of antiquity, with a slight suspicion of raven droppings.
It took a great deal of courage to stand there in that dark. Rincewind didn’t have that much, but stood there anyway.
Something started to snuffle around his feet, and Rincewind stood very still. The only reason he didn’t move was for fear of treading on something worse.
Then a hand like an old leather glove touched his, very gently, and a voice said: “Oook.”
Rincewind looked up.
The dark yielded, just once, to a vivid flash of light. And Rincewind saw.
The whole tower was lined with books. They were squeezed on every step of the rotting spiral staircase that wound up inside. They were piled up on the floor, although something about the way in which they were piled suggested that the word “huddled” would be more appropriate.