Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett [51]
“I don’t think so,” said Lu-Tze. “There’s nothing funny about trumpets, really.”
“I meant that you long to be out in the field again. But you have been helping to train world operatives for many years, haven’t you? These gentlemen?”
On one side of the room, a number of burly and muscular monks were sitting. They were kitted out for travel, with rolled sleeping mats on their backs, and they were dressed in loose black clothing. They nodded sheepishly at Lu-Tze, and their eyes above their half-masks looked embarrassed.
“I did my best,” said Lu-Tze. “Of course, others trained them. I just tried to undo the damage. I never taught them to be ninjas.” He nudged Lobsang. “That, apprentice, is Agatean for ‘the Passing Wind,’” he said in a stage whisper.
“I am proposing to send them out immediately WAH!” The abbot hit his high chair with his spoon. “That is my order, Lu-Tze. You are a legend…but you have been a legend for a long time. Why not trust in the future? Bikkit!”
“I see,” said Lu-Tze sadly. “Oh, well, it had to happen sometime. Thank you for your consideration, Your Reverence.”
“Brrmbrrm…Lu-Tze, I have known you a long time! You will not go within a hundred miles of Uberwald, will you?”
“Not at all, Your Reverence.”
“That is an order!”
“I understand, of course.”
“You’ve disobeyed my baababa orders before, though. In Omnia, I remember.”
“Tactical decision made by the man on the spot, Your Reverence. It was more what you might call an interpretation of your order,” said Lu-Tze.
“You mean, going where you had distinctly been told not to go and doing what you were absolutely forbidden to do?”
“Yes, Your Reverence. Sometimes you have to move the seesaw by pushing the other end. When I did what shouldn’t be done in a place where I shouldn’t have been, I achieved what needed to be done in the place where it should have happened.”
The abbot gave Lu-Tze a long hard stare, the kind that babies are good at giving.
“Lu-Tze, you are not nmnmnbooboo to go to Uberwald or anywhere near Uberwald, understand?” he said.
“I do, Your Reverence. You are right, of course. But, in my dotage, may I travel another path, of wisdom rather than violence? I wish to show this young man…the Way.”
There was laughter from the other monks.
“The Way of the Washerwoman?” said Rinpo.
“Mrs. Cosmopilite is a dressmaker,” said Lu-Tze calmly.
“Whose wisdom is in sayings like ‘It won’t get better if you pick it’?” said Rinpo, winking at the rest of the monks.
“Few things get better if you pick at them,” said Lu-Tze, and now his calmness was a lake of tranquillity. “It may be a mean little Way but, small and unworthy though it is…it is my Way.” He turned to the abbot. “That was how it used to be, Your Reverence. You recall? Master and pupil go out into the world, where the pupil may pick up practical instruction by precept and example, and then the pupil finds his own Way and at the end of his Way—”
“—he finds himself bdum,” said the abbot.
“First, he finds a teacher,” said Lu-Tze.
“He is lucky that you will bdumbdum be that teacher.”
“Reverend Sir,” said Lu-Tze, “it is in the nature of Ways that none can be sure who the teacher may be. All I can do is show him a path.”
“Which will be in the direction of bdum the city,” said the abbot.
“Yes,” said Lu-Tze. “And Ankh-Morpork is a long way from Uberwald. You won’t send me to Uberwald because I am an old man. So, in all respect, I beg you to humor an old man.”
“I have no choice, when you put it like that,” said the abbot.
“Reverend Sir—” began Rinpo, who felt that he did.
The spoon was banged on the tray again. “Lu-Tze is a man of high reputation!” the abbot shouted. “I trust him implicitly to do the correct action! I just wish I could blumblum trust him to do what I blumblum want! I have forbidden him to go to Uberwald! Now do you wish me to forbid him not to go to Uberwald! BIKKIT! I have spoken! And now, will all you gentlemen be so good as to leave. I have urgent business to attend to.”
Lu-Tze bowed and grabbed Lobsang’s arm. “Come on,