Besides, the Emperor wasn’t simply at Death’s door but well inside the hallway, admiring the carpet and commenting on the hatstand. And you didn’t have to be a political genius to know that when someone like that died, scores were being settled before he’d even got cold. Anyone he’d publicly called a friend would have a life expectancy more normally associated with things that hover over trout streams at sunset.
Rincewind moved aside a skull and sat down. There was the possibility of rescue, he supposed, but the Red Army would be hard put to it to rescue a rubber duck from drowning. Anyway, that’d put him back in the clutches of Butterfly, who terrified him almost as much as the Emperor.
He had to believe that the gods didn’t intend for Rincewind, after all his adventures, to rot in a dungeon.
No, he added bitterly, they probably had something much more inventive in mind.
What light reached the dungeon came from a very small grille and had a second-hand look. The rest of the furnishing was a pile of what had possibly once been straw. There was—
—a gentle tapping at the wall.
Once, twice, three times.
Rincewind picked up the skull and returned the signal.
One tap came back.
He repeated it.
Then there were two.
He tapped twice.
Well, this was familiar. Communication without meaning . . . it was just like being back at Unseen University.
‘Fine,’ he said, his voice echoing in the cell. ‘Fine. Très prisoner. But what are we saying?’
There was a gentle scraping noise and one of the blocks in the wall very gently slid out of the wall, dropping on to Rincewind’s foot.
‘Aargh!’
‘What big hippo?’ said a muffled voice.
‘What?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What?’
‘You wanted to know about the tapping code? It’s how we communicate between cells, you see. One tap means—’
‘Excuse me, but aren’t we communicating now?’
‘Yes, but not formally. Prisoners are not. . . allowed . . . to talk . . .’ The voice slowed down, as if the speaker had suddenly remembered something important.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Rincewind. ‘I was forgetting. This is . . . Hunghung. Everyone . . . obeys . . . the rules . . .’
Rincewind’s voice died away too.
On either side of the wall there was a long, thoughtful silence.
‘Rincewind?’
‘Twoflower?’
‘What are you doing here?’ said Rincewind.
‘Rotting in a dungeon!’
‘Me too!’
‘Good grief! How long has it been?’ said the muffled voice of Twoflower.
‘What? How long has what been?’
‘But you . . . why are . . .’
‘You wrote that damn book!’
‘I just thought it would be interesting for people!’
‘Interesting? Interesting?’
‘I thought people would find it an interesting account of a foreign culture. I never meant it to cause trouble.’
Rincewind leaned against his side of the wall. No, of course, Twoflower never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, ‘What happens if I do this?’
‘It must have been Fate that brought you here,’ said Twoflower.
‘Yes, it’s the sort of thing he likes to do,’ said Rincewind.
‘You remember the good times we had?’
‘Did we? I must have had my eyes shut.’
‘The adventures!’
‘Oh, them. You mean hanging from high places, that sort of thing . . . ?’
‘Rincewind?’
‘Yes? What?’
‘I feel a lot happier about things now you’re here.’
‘That’s amazing.’
Rincewind enjoyed the comfort of the wall. It was rust rock. He felt he could rely on it.
‘Everyone seems to have a copy of your book,’ he said. ‘It’s a revolutionary document. And I do mean copy. It looks as though they make their own copy and pass it on.’
‘Yes, it’s called samizdat.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means each one must be the same as the one before. Oh, dear. I thought it would just be entertainment. I didn’t think people would take it seriously. I do hope it’s not causing too much bother.’
Well, your revolutionaries are still at the slogan-and-poster stage, but I shouldn’t think that’ll count for much if they’re caught.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘How come you’re still alive?’
‘I don’t know. I think they may have forgotten about me. That tends to happen, you know. It’s the paperwork. Someone makes the wrong stroke with the brush or forgets to copy a line. I believe it happens a lot.’
‘You mean that there’s people in prison and no-one can remember why?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Then why don’t they set them free?’
‘I suppose it is felt that they must have done something. All in all, I’m afraid our government does leave something to be desired.’
‘Like a new government.’
‘Oh, dear. You could get locked up for saying things like that.’
People slept, but the Forbidden City never slept. Torches flickered all night in the great Bureaux as the ceaseless business of Empire went on.
This largely involved, as Mr Saveloy had said, moving paper.
Six Beneficent Winds was Deputy District Administrator for the Langtang district, and good at a job which he rather enjoyed. He was not a wicked man.
True, he had the same sense of humour as a chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him.
But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later on.
And he never took away from people more money than they actually had.
He was also, unusually for men employed in the Forbidden City after dark, not a eunuch. Guards were not eunuchs, of course, and people had got around this by classifying them officially as furniture. And it had been found that tax officials also needed every faculty at their disposal to combat the wiles of the average peasant, who had this regrettable tendency to avoid paying taxes.
There were much nastier people in the building than Six Beneficent Winds and it was therefore just his inauspicious luck that his paper and bamboo door slid aside to reveal seven strange-looking old eunuchs, one of them in a wheeled contrivance.
They didn’t even bow, let alone fall on their knees. And he not only had an official red hat but it had a white button on it!
His brush dropped from his hands when the men wandered into his office as if they owned it. One of them started poking holes in the wall and speaking gibberish.
‘Hey, the walls are just made of paper! Hey, look, if you lick your finger it goes right through! See?’
‘I will call for the guards and have you all flogged!’ shouted Six Beneficent Winds, his temper moderated slightly by the extreme age of the visitors.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he’d call for the guards.’
‘Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!’
‘No, we don’t want that yet. Act normally.’
‘You mean cut his throat?’
‘I meant a more normal kind of normally.’
‘It’s what I call normal.’
One of the old men faced the speechless official and gave him a big grin.
‘Excuse us, your supreme . . . oh dear, what’s the word? . . . . pushcart sail? . . . immense rock? . . . ah, yes . . . venerableness, but we seem to be a little lost.’
A couple of the old men shuffled around behind Six Beneficent Winds and started to read, or at least try to read, what he’d been working on. A sheet of paper was snatched from his hand.
‘What’s this say, Teach?’
‘Let me see . . . “The first wind of autumn shakes the lotus flower. Seven Lucky Logs to pay one pig and three [looks like a four-armed man waving a flag] of rice on pain of having his [rather a stylized thing here, can’t quite make it out] struck with many blows. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang.” ‘
There was a subtle change among the old men. Now they were all grinning, but not in a way that gave him any comfort. One of them, with teeth like diamonds, leaned towards him and said, in bad Agatean:
‘You are a tax collector, Mr Knob on Your Hat?’
Six Beneficent Winds wondered if he’d be able to summon the guard. There was something terrible about these old men. They weren’t venerable at all. They were horribly menacing and, although he couldn’t see any obvious weapons, he knew for a cold frozen fact that he wouldn’t be able to get out more than the first syllable before he’d be killed. Besides, his throat had gone dry and his pants had gone wet.