The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett [36]
“Can’t see things that don’t move?” said the Archchancellor. “You mean we just have to wait for it to walk into a tree?”
“Mrs. Whitlow’s still sitting there!” said the Senior Wrangler.
She was in fact spreading some runny cheese on a biscuit in a ladylike fashion.
“I don’t think she’s seen it!”
Ridcully rolled up his sleeve. “I think a round of fireballs, gentlemen,” he said.
“Hold on,” said Ponder. “This may be an endangered species.”
“So is Mrs. Whitlow.”
“But do we have the right to wipe out what—”
“Absolutely,” said Ridcully. “If its creator had meant it to survive he would have given it a fireproof skin. That’s your evolution for you, Stibbons.”
“But perhaps we ought to study it…?”
The thing was beginning to get up speed now. It was amazing how fast it could move, considering how big it was.
“Er…” said Ponder nervously.
Ridcully raised his arm.
The creature stopped, jerked into the air, and then went flat, like a rubber ball that had been stepped on, and indeed when it sprang back into shape it was with a noise akin to the sound made when a bad conjurer is having trouble twisting the back legs on to the balloon animal. Insofar as it had an expression at all, it looked more astonished than hurt. Little flashes of lightning crackled around it. It went flat again, rolled up into a cylinder, twisted into a range of interesting but probably painful shapes, shrank to a ball the size of a grapefruit and then, with a final and rather sad little noise that might well have been spelled prarp, dropped back on to the sand.
“Now that was pretty good,” said Ridcully. “Which of you fellows did that?”
The wizards looked at one another.
“Not us,” said the Dean. “It was going to be fireballs all the way.”
Ridcully nudged Ponder. “Go on, then,” he said. “Study it.”
“Er…” Ponder looked at the bewildered creature on the sand. “Er…the subject appears to have turned into a large chicken.”
“Good, well done,” said Ridcully, as if to wrap things up. “Shame to waste this fireball, then.”
He hurled it.
It was a road.
At least, it was a long flat piece of desert with wheel ruts in it. Rincewind stared at it.
A road. Roads went somewhere. Sooner or later they went everywhere. And when you got there, you generally found walls, buildings, harbors…boats. And incidentally a shortage of talking kangaroos. That was practically one of the hallmarks of civilization.
It wasn’t that he was against anyone saving the world, or whatever subset of it apparently wanted saving. He just felt that it didn’t need saving by him.
Which way to go? He picked a direction at random and jogged along for a while, as the sun came up.
After a while there was a cloud of dust in the dawn, coming closer. Rincewind stood hopefully by the track.
What eventually appeared at the inverted apex of the cloud was cart, pulled by a string of horses. The horses were black. So was the cart. And it didn’t seem to be slowing down.
Rincewind waved his hat in the air, just as the horses came past.
After a while the dust settled. He got back on to his feet and walked unsteadily through the bushes until he found the cart where it had come to rest. The horses watched him warily.
It wasn’t a huge cart to be pulled by eight horses, but both they and the cart were covered with so much wood, leather and metal they probably didn’t have much energy to spare. Spikes and studs covered every surface.
The reins led not to the usual seat, but into holes in the front of the cart itself. This was roofed over with more wood and ironmongery—bits of old stove, hammered-out body armor, saucepan lids, and tin cans that had been stamped flat and nailed on.
Above the slot where the reins went in was something like a piece of bent stovepipe, poking through the cart’s roof. It had a watchful look.
“Er…hello?” said Rincewind. “Sorry if I scared your horses…”
In the absence of any reply he climbed up an armored wheel and looked at the top of the cart. There was a round lid that had been pushed open.
Rincewind didn’t even consider looking inside. That’d mean his head