The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett [125]
The other one looked blearily at the two arch-chancellors, and saluted. This caused a spark to leap from its fingers and burn its ear.
“Er, Rincewind,” it said.
“And what have you been up to while we’ve been doing all this hard work, pray?” said Ridcully.
Rincewind looked around, very slowly. Occasional little blue streaks crackled in his beard.
“Well, that all seemed to go pretty well, really. All things considered,” he said, and fell full length into a puddle.
It rained. After that, it rained. Then it rained some more. The clouds were stacked like impatient charter flights over the coast, low on fuel, jockeying for position, and raining. Above all, raining.
Floodwater roared down the rocks and scoured out the ancient muddy waterholes. A species of tiny shrimps whose world for thousands of years had been one small hole under a stone were picked up and carried wholesale into a lake that was spreading faster than a man could run. There had been fewer than a thousand of them. There were a lot more next day. Even if the shrimps had been able to count how many, they were far too busy to bother.
In the new estuaries, rich in sudden silt and unexpected food, a few fish began the experiment of a salt-free diet. The mangroves started their stop-motion conquests of the new mudbanks.
It went on raining.
Then it rained some more.
After that, it rained.
It was some days later.
The ship rose and fell gently by the dock. The water around it was red with suspended silt in which a few leaves and twigs floated.
“A week or two to NoThingfjord and we’re practically home,” said Ridcully.
“Practically on the same continent, anyway,” said the Dean.
“Quite an int’resting long vacation, really,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
“Probably the longest ever,” said Ponder. “Did Mrs. Whitlow like her stateroom?”
“I for one will quite enjoy bunking down in the hold,” said the Senior Wrangler loyally.
“The bilges, actually,” said Ponder. “The hold’s full. Of opals, beer, sheep, wool and bananas.”
“Where’s the Librarian?” said Ridcully.
“In the hold, sir.”
“Yes, I suppose it was silly of me to ask. Still, nice to see him his old self again.”
“I think it may have been the lightning, sir. He’s certainly very lively now.”
And Rincewind sat on the Luggage, down on the dock.
Somehow, he felt, something should be happening. The worst time in your life was when nothing much was going on, because that meant that something bad was about to hit you. For some strange reason.
He could be back in the University Library in a month or so, and then ho! for a life of stacking books. One dull day after another, with occasional periods of boredom. He could hardly wait. Every minute not being a minute wasted was, well, a minute wasted. Excitement? That could happen to other people.
He’d watched the merchants loading the ship. It was pretty low in the water, because there would be so many Ecksian things the rest of the world wanted. Of course, it’d come back light, because it was hard to think of any bloody thing it could bloody import that was better than any bloody thing in EcksEcksEcksEcks.
There were even a few more passengers willing to see the world, and most of them were young.
“Hey, aren’t you one of the foreign wizards?”
The speaker was a young man carrying a very large knapsack topped by a bedroll. He seemed to be the impromptu leader of a small group of similarly overloaded people, with wide, open faces and slightly worried expressions.
“You can tell, can’t you?” said Rincewind. “Er…you wanted something?”
“D’yew think we can buy a cart in this place NoThingfjord?”
“Yes, I should think so.”
“Only me and Clive and Shirl and Gerleen were thinkin’ of picking one up and driving to—” He looked around.
“Ankh-Morpork,” said Shirl.
“Right, and then selling it, and gettin’ a job for a while, having a look round, y’know…for a while. That’d be right?”
Rincewind glanced at the others trooping up the gangplank. Since the invention of the dung beetle, which had in fact happened not too far away, it was probable that no creature had ever