“I’m not personally familiar with it,” said Ponder, “but I have read poetry that-”
“Load of cobblers, poetry,” said Ridcully. “I’ve listened to mountain streams and they just go trickle, trickle, gurgle.
And you get them things in them, you know, insect things with little . . . anyway. Doesn’t sound like laughter at all, is my point. Poets always get it wrong. ‘S’like ‘she had lips like cherries.’ Small, round, and got a stone in the middle? Hah!”
He shut his eyes. After a while Ponder said, “So what happened, sir?”
“What?”
“The girl you were telling me about.”
“What girl?”
“This girl.”
“Oh, that girl. Oh, she turned me down. Said there were things she wanted to do. Said there’d be time enough.”
There was another pause.
“What happened then?” Ponder prompted.
“Happened? What d’you think happened? I went off and studied. Term started. Wrote her a lot of letters but she never answered ’em. Probably never got ’em, they probably eat the mail up there. Next year I was studying all summer and never had time to go back. Never did go back. Exams and so on. Expect she’s dead now, or some fat old granny with a dozen kids. Would’ve wed her like a shot. Like a shot.” Ridcully scratched his head. “Hah . . . just wish I could remember her name . . .”
He stretched out with his feet on the Bursar.
“‘S’funny, that,” he said. “Can’t even remember her name. Hah! She could outrun a horse-”
“Kneel and deliver!”
The coach rattled to a halt.
Ridcully opened an eye.
“What’s that?” he said.
Ponder jerked awake from a reverie of lips like mountain streams and looked out of the window.
“I think,” he said, “it’s a very small highwayman.”
The coachman peered down at the figure in the road. It was hard to see much from this angle, because of the short body and the wide hat. It was like looking at a well-dressed mushroom with a feather in it.
“I do apologize for this,” said the very small highwayman. “I find myself a little short.”
The coachman sighed and put down the reins. Properly arranged holdups by the Bandits’ Guild were one thing, but he was blowed if he was going to be threatened by an outlaw that came up to his waist and didn’t even have a crossbow.
“You little bastard,” he said. “I’m going to knock your block off.”
He peered closer.
“What’s that on your back? A hump?”
“Ah, you’ve noticed the stepladder,” said the low highwayman. “Let me demonstrate-”
“What’s happening?” said Ridcully, back in the coach.
“Um, a dwarf has just climbed up a small stepladder and kicked the coachman in the middle of the road,” said Ponder.
“That’s something you don’t see every day,” said Ridcully. He looked happy. Up to now, the journey had been quite uneventful.
“Now he’s coming toward us.”
“Oh, good.” The highwayman stepped over the groaning body of the driver and marched toward the door of the coach, dragging his stepladder behind him.
He opened the door.
“Your money or, I’m sorry to say, your-”
A blast of octarine fire blew his hat off. The dwarfs expression did not change. ‘ “I wonder if I might be allowed to rephrase my demands?”
Ridcully looked the elegantly dressed stranger up and down or, rather, down and further down.
“You don’t look like a dwarf,” he said, “apart from the height, that is.”
“Don’t look like a dwarf apart from the height?”
“I mean, the helmet and iron boots department is among those you are lacking in,” said Ridcully.
The dwarf bowed and produced a slip of pasteboard from one grubby but lace-clad sleeve.
“My card,” he said.
It read:
Giamo Casanunda
WORLD’S SECOND GREATEST LOVER
We Never Sleep
FINEST SWORDSMAN – SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
OUTRAGEOUS LIAR – STEPLADDERS REPAIRED
Ponder peered over Ridcully’s shoulder.
“Are you really an outrageous liar?”
“No.”
“Why are you trying to rob coaches, then?”
“I am afraid I was waylaid by bandits.”
“But it says here,” said Ridcully, “that you are a finest swordsman.”
“I was outnumbered.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Three million.”
“Hop in,” said Ridcully
Casanunda threw his stepladder into the coach and then peered into the gloom.
“Is that an ape asleep in there?”
“Yes.”
The Librarian opened one eye.
“What about the smell?”
“He won’t mind.”
“Hadn’t you better apologize to the coachman?” said
Ponder.
“No, but I could kick him again harder if he likes.”
“And that’s the Bursar,” said Ridcully, pointing to Exhibit B, who was sleeping the sleep of the near-terminally overdosed on dried frog pills. “Hey, Bursar? Bursssaaar? No, he’s out like a light. Just push him under the seat. Can you play Cripple Mr. Onion?”
“Not very well.”
“Capital!”
Half an hour later Ridcully owed the dwarf $8,000.
“But I put it on my visiting card,” Casanunda pointed out. “Outrageous liar. Right there.”
“Yes, but I thought you were lying!”
Ridcully sighed and, to Ponder’s amazement, produced a bag of coins from some inner recess. They were large coins and looked suspiciously realistic and golden.
Casanunda might have been a libidinous soldier of fortune by profession but he was a dwarf by genetics, and there are some things dwarfs know.
“Hmm,” he said. “You don’t have “outrageous liar” on your visiting card, by any chance?”
“No!” said Ridcully excitedly
“It’s just that I can recognize chocolate money when I see it.”
“You know,” said Ponder, as the coach jolted along a canyon, “this reminds me of that famous logical puzzle.”
“What logical puzzle?” said the Archchancellor. “Well,” said Ponder, gratified at the attention, “it appears that there was this man, right, who had to choose between going through two doors, apparently, and the guard on one door always told the truth and the guard on the other door always told a lie, and the thing was, behind one door was certain death, and behind the other door was freedom, and he didn’t know which guard was which, and he could only ask them one question and so: what did he ask?”
The coach bounced over a pothole. The Librarian turned over in his sleep.
“Sounds like Psychotic Lord Hargon of Quirm to me,” said Ridcully, after a while.
“That’s right,” said Casanunda. “He was a devil for jokes like that. How many students can you get in an Iron Maiden, that kind of thing.”
“So this was at his place, then, was it?” said Ridcully.
“What? I don’t know,” said Ponder.
“Why not? You seem to know all about it.”
“I don’t think it was anywhere. It’s a puzzle.”
“Hang on,” said Casanunda, “I think I’ve worked it out. One question, right?”
“Yes,” said Ponder, relieved.
“And he can ask either guard?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, right. Well, in that case he goes up to the smallest guard and says, Tell me which is the door to freedom if you don’t want to see the colour of your kidneys and incidentally I’m walking through it behind you, so if you’re trying for the Mr. Clever Award just remember who’s going through it first.'”
“No, no, no!”
“Sounds logical to me,” said Ridcully “Very good thinking.”
“But you haven’t got a weapon!”
“Yes I have. I wrested it from the guard while he was considering the question,” said Casanunda.
“Clever,” said Ridcully. “Now that, Mr. Stibbons, is logical thought. You could learn a lot from this man-”
“-dwarf-”
“-sorry, dwarf. He doesn’t go on about parasite universes all the time.”
“Parallel!” snapped Ponder, who had developed a very strong suspicion that Ridcully was getting it wrong on purpose.
“Which ones are the parasite ones, then?”
“There aren’t any! I mean, there aren’t any, Archchancellor.[15] Parallel universes, I said. Universes where things didn’t happen like-” He hesitated. “Well, you know that girl?”
“What girl?”
“The girl you wanted to marry?”
“How’d you know that?”
“You were talking about her just after lunch.”
“Was I? More fool me. Well, what about her?”
“Well. . . in a way, you did marry her,” said Ponder.
Ridcully shook his head. “Nope. Pretty certain I didn’t. You remember that sort of thing.”
“Ah, but not in this universe-”
The Librarian opened one eye.
“You suggestin’ I nipped into some other universe to get married?” said Ridcully.
“No! I mean, you got married in that universe and not in this universe,” said Ponder.
“Did I? What? A proper ceremony and everything?”
“Yes!”
“Hmm.” Ridcully stroked his beard. “You sure?”
“Certain, Archchancellor.”
“My word! I never knew that.”
Ponder felt he was getting somewhere.
“So-”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t I remember it?”
Ponder had been ready for this.
“Because the you in the other universe is different from the you here,” he said. “It was a different you that got married. He’s probably settled down somewhere. He’s probably a great-grandad by now.”
“He never writes, I know that,” said Ridcully “And the bastard never invited me to the wedding.”