It was reckoned to be very healthy there. Very few germs were able to survive.
Hwel looked across a sort of misty sea in which buildings clustered like a sandcastle competition at high tide. Flares and lighted windows made pleasing patterns on the iridescent surface, but there was one glare of light, much closer to hand, which particularly occupied his attention.
On a patch of slightly higher ground by the river, bought by Vitoller for a ruinous sum, a new building was rising. It was growing even by night, like a mushroom – Hwel could see the cressets burning all along the scaffolding as the hired craftsmen and even some of the players themselves refused to let the mere shade of the sky interrupt their labours.
New buildings were rare in Morpork, but this was even a new type of building.
The Dysk.
Vitoller had been aghast at the idea at first, but young Tomjon had kept at him. And everyone knew that once the lad had got the feel of it he could persuade water to flow uphill.
‘But we’ve always moved around, laddie,’ said Vitoller, in the desperate voice of one who knows that, at the end of it all, he’s going to lose the argument. ‘I can’t go around settling down at my time of life.’
‘It’s not doing you any good,’ said Tomjon firmly. ‘All these cold nights and frosty mornings. You’re not getting any younger. We should stay put somewhere, and let people come to us. And they will, too. You know the crowds we’re getting now. Hwel’s plays are famous.’
‘It’s not my plays,’ Hwel had said. ‘It’s the players.’
‘I can’t see me sitting by a fire in a stuffy room and sleeping on feather beds and all that nonsense,’ said Vitoller, but he’d seen the look on his wife’s face and had given in.
And then there had been the theatre itself. Making water run uphill was a parlour trick compared to getting the cash out of Vitoller but, it was a fact, they had been doing well these days. Ever since Tomjon had been big enough to wear a ruff and say two words without his voice cracking.
Hwel and Vitoller had watched the first few beams of the wooden framework go up.
‘It’s against nature,’ Vitoller had complained, leaning on his stick. ‘Capturing the spirit of the theatre, putting it in a cage. It’ll kill it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hwel diffidently. Tomjon had laid his plans well, he’d devoted an entire evening to Hwel before even broaching the subject to his father, and now the dwarfs mind was on fire with the possibilities of backdrops and scenery changes and wings and flies and magnificent engines that could lower gods from the heavens and trapdoors that could raise demons from hell. Hwel was no more capable of objecting to the new theatre than a monkey was of resenting a banana plantation.
‘Damn thing hasn’t even got a name,’ Vitoller had said. ‘I should call it the Golde Mine, because that’s what it’s costing me. Where’s the money going to come from, that’s what I’d like to know.’
In fact they’d tried a lot of names, none of which suited Tomjon.
‘It’s got to be a name that means everything,’ he said. ‘Because there’s everything inside it. The whole world on the stage, do you see?’
And Hwel had said, knowing as he said it that what he was saying was exactly right, ‘The Disc.’
And now the Dysk was nearly done, and still he hadn’t written the new play.
He shut the window and wandered back to his desk, picked up the quill, and pulled another sheet of paper towards him. A thought struck him. The whole world was a stage, to the gods . . .
Presently he began to write.
All the Disc it is but an Theater, he wrote, Aite alle men and wymmen are but Players. He made the mistake of pausing, and another inspiration sleeted down, sending his train of thought off along an entirely new track.
He looked at what he had written and added: Except Those who selle popcorn.
After a while he crossed this out, and tried: Like unto thee Staje of a Theater ys the World, whereon alle Persons strut as Players.
This seemed a bit better.
He thought for a bit, and continued conscientiously: Sometimes they walke on. Sometimes they walke off.
He seemed to be losing it. Time, time, what he needed was an infinity . . .
There was a muffled cry and a thump from the next room. Hwel dropped the quill and pushed open the door cautiously.
The boy was sitting up in bed, white-faced. He relaxed when Hwel came in.
‘Hwel?’
‘What’s up, lad? Nightmares?’
‘Gods, it was terrible! I saw them again! I really thought for a minute that—’
Hwel, who was absent-mindedly picking up the clothes that Tomjon had strewn around the room, paused in his work. He was keen on dreams. That was when the ideas came.
‘That what?’ he said.
‘It was like . . . I mean, I was sort of inside something, like a bowl, and there were these three terrible faces peering in at me.’
‘Aye?’
‘Yes, and then they all said, “All hail . . .” and then they started arguing about my name, and then they said, “Anyway, who shall be king hereafter?” And then one of them said, “Here after what?” and one of the other two said, “Just hereafter, girl, it’s what you’re supposed to say in these circumstances, you might try and make an effort”, and then they all peered closer, and one of the others said, “He looks a bit peaky, I reckon it’s all that foreign food”, and then the youngest one said, “Nanny, I’ve told you already, there’s no such place as Thespia”, and then they bickered a bit, and one of the old ones said, “He can’t hear us, can he? He’s tossing and turning a bit”, and the other one said, “You know I’ve never been able to get sound on this thing, Esme”, and then they bickered some more, and it went cloudy, and then . . . I woke up . . .’ he finished lamely. ‘It was horrible, because every time they came close to the bowl it sort of magnified everything, so all you could see was eyes and nostrils.’
Hwel hoisted himself on to the edge of the narrow bed.
‘Funny old things, dreams,’ he said.
‘Not much funny about that one.’
‘No, but I mean, last night, I had this dream about a little bandy-legged man walking down a road,’ said Hwel. ‘He had a little black hat on, and he walked as though his boots were full of water.’
Tomjon nodded politely.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘And—?’
‘Well, that was it. And nothing. He had this little cane which he twirled and, you know, it was incredibly . . .’
The dwarfs voice trailed off. Tomjon’s face had that familiar expression of polite and slightly condescending puzzlement that Hwel had come to know and dread.
‘Anyway, it was very amusing,’ he said, half to himself. But he knew he’d never convince the rest of the company. If it didn’t have a custard pie in it somewhere, they said, it wasn’t funny.
Tomjon swung his legs out of bed and reached for his britches.
‘I’m not going back to sleep,’ he said. ‘What’s the time?’
‘It’s after midnight,’ said Hwel. ‘And you know what your father said about going to bed late.’
‘I’m not,’ said Tomjon, pulling on his boots. Tm getting up early. Getting up early is very healthy. And now I’m going out for a very healthy drink. You can come too,’ he added, ‘to keep an eye on me.’
Hwel gave him a doubting look.
‘You also know what your father says about going out drinking,’ he said.
‘Yes. He said he used to do it all the time when he was a lad. He said he’d think nothing of quaffing ale all night and coming home at 5 a.m., smashing windows. He said he was a bit of a roister-doister, not like these white-livered people today who can’t hold their drink.’ Tomjon adjusted his doublet in front of the mirror, and added, ‘You know, Hwel, I reckon responsible behaviour is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.’
Hwel sighed. Tomjon’s memory for ill-judged remarks was legendary.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just the one, though. Somewhere decent.’
‘I promise.’ Tomjon adjusted his hat. It had a feather in it.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘exactly how does one quaff?’
‘I think it means you spill most of it,’ said Hwel.
If the water of the river Ankh was rather thicker and more full of personality than ordinary river water, so the air in the Mended Drum was more crowded than normal air. It was like dry fog.