The Luggage had no brain as such, even though an outsider might well get the impression that it could think. What it did do was react, in quite complex ways, to its environment. Usually this involved finding something to kick, as is the case with most sapient creatures.
Currently it was ambling along a dusty track. Occasionally its lid would snap at flies, but without much enthusiasm. Its opal coating glowed in the sunlight.
‘Oaaw! Isn’t that pretty!’ Fetch it here, you two!’
It paid no attention to the brightly coloured cart that stopped a little way along the track. It was possibly aware at some level that people had got out and were staring at it, but it didn’t resist when they appeared to reach a decision and lifted it on to the cart. It didn’t know where it had to go, and since it also didn’t know where this cart was going perhaps it would take it there.
It waited a decent while after it had been put down, and then took in its surroundings. It had been stacked up by a lot of other boxes and suitcases, which was comforting. After five minutes spent being underground for millions of years the Luggage felt that it was due some quality time.
And it didn’t even resist when someone opened its lid and filled it up with shoes. Quite large shoes, the Luggage noticed, and many of them with interesting heels and inventive ways with silk and sequins. They were clearly ladies’ shoes. That was good, the Luggage thought (or emoted, or reacted). Ladies tended to lead quieter lives.
The purple cart rumbled off. Painted crudely on the back were the words: Petunia, The Desert Princess.
Rincewind looked hard at the shears that the head shearer was waving. They looked sharp.
‘You know what we do to people who go back on a bet round here?’ said Daggy, the gang boss.
‘Er . . . but I was drunk.’
‘So were we. So what?’
Rincewind looked out across the sheep pens. He knew what sheep were, of course, and had come into contact with them on many occasions, although normally in the company of mixed vegetables. He’d even had a toy stuffed lamb as a child. But there is something hugely unlovable about sheep, a kind of mad, eye-rolling brainless-ness smelling of damp wool and panic. Many religions extol the virtues of the meek, but Rincewind had never trusted them. The meek could turn very nasty at times.
On the other hand . . . they were covered in wool, and the shears looked pretty keen. How hard could it be? His radar told him that trying and failing was probably a lot less of a crime than not trying at all.
‘Can I have a trial run?’ he said.
A sheep was dragged out of the pens and flung down in front of him.
Rincewind gave Daggy what he hoped was the smile of one craftsman to another, but smiling at Daggy was like throwing meringues against a cliff.
‘Er, can I have a chair and a towel and two mirrors and a comb?’ he said.
Daggy’s look of intense suspicion deepened. ‘What’s this? What d’you want all that for?’
‘Got to do it properly, haven’t I?’
Away out of sight at the back of the shearing shed, on the sun-bleached boards, the outline of a kangaroo began to form. And then, the white lines drifting across the wood like wisps of cloud across a clear sky, it began to change shape . . .
Rincewind hadn’t had a proper haircut in a long time, but he knew how it was done.
‘So . . . have you had your holidays this year, then?’ he said, clipping away.
‘Mnaaarrrhh!’
‘What about this weather, eh?’ Rincewind said, desperately.
‘Mnaaarrrhh!’
The sheep wasn’t even trying to struggle. It was an old one, with fewer teeth than feet, and even in the very limited depths of its extremely shallow mind it knew that this wasn’t how shearing was supposed to go. Shearing was supposed to be a brief struggle followed by glorious cool freedom back in the paddock. It wasn’t supposed to include searching questions about what it thought of this weather or enquiries as to whether it required something for the weekend, especially since the sheep had no concept of the connotations of the term ‘weekend’ or, if it came to that, of the word ‘something’ either. People weren’t supposed to splash lavender water in its ear.
The shearers watched in silence. There was quite a crowd of them, because they’d gone and fetched everyone else on the station. They knew in their souls that here was something to tell their grandchildren.
Rincewind stood back, looked critically at his handiwork, and then showed the sheep the back of its head in the mirror, at which point the creature cracked, managed to get its feet under it and made a run for the paddock.
‘Hey, wait till I take the curlers out!’ Rincewind shouted after it.
He became aware of the shearers watching him. Finally one of them said, in a stunned voice, That’s sheep-shearing where yew come from, is it?’
‘Er . . . what did you think?’ said Rincewind.
‘It’s a bit slow, innit?’
‘How fast was I supposed to go?’
‘Weell, Daggy here once did nearly fifty in an hour. That’s what you’ve got to beat, see? None of that fancy rubbish. Just short back, front, top and sides.’
‘Mind yew,’ said one of the shearers, wistfully, ‘that was a beautiful lookin’ sheep.’
There was an outbreak of bleating from the sheep corrals.
‘Ready to give it a real go, Rinso?’ said Daggy.
‘Ye gawds, what’s that?’ said one of his mates.
The fence shattered. A ram stood in the gap, shaking its head to dislodge bits of post from its horns. Steam rose from its nostrils.
Most of the things Rincewind had associated with sheep, apart from the gravy and mint sauce, had to do with . . . sheepishness. But this was a ram, and the word association was suddenly . . . rampage. It pawed the ground. It was a lot bigger than the average sheep. In fact, it seemed to fill Rincewind’s entire future.
‘That’s not one of mine!’ said the flock’s owner.
Daggy placed his shears in Rincewind’s other hand and patted him on the back.
‘This one’s yours, mate,’ he said, and backed away. ‘You’re here to show us how it’s done, eh, mate?’
Rincewind looked down at his feet. They weren’t moving. They remained firmly fixed to the ground.
The ram advanced, snorting and looking Rincewind in the bloodshot eye.
‘Okay,’ it whispered, when it was very close. ‘You just make with the shears and the sheep’ll do the rest. No worries.’
‘Is that you?’ said Rincewind, glancing at the distant ring of watchers.
‘Hah, good one. Ready? They’ll do what I do. They’re like sheep, okay?’
The shearers watched as wool fell like rain.
That’s somethin’ you don’t often see,’ said one of them. Them standin’ on their heads like that . . .’
The cartwheels is good,’ said another shearer, lighting his pipe. ‘I mean, for sheep.’
Rincewind just hung on to the shears. They had a life of their own. The sheep flung themselves against the clippers as if in a real hurry to get into something more comfortable. Fleeces curled around his ankles, then around his knees, rose above his waist . . . and then the shears were slicing the air, and sizzling as they cooled down.
Several dozen dazed sheep were watching him very suspiciously. So were the sheep-shearers.
‘Er . . . have we started the competition yet?’ he said.
‘You just sheared thirty sheep in two minutes!’ roared Daggy.
‘Is that good?’
‘Good? No one takes two minutes for thirty sheep.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t go any faster.’
The shearers went into a huddle. Rincewind looked around for the ram, but it didn’t seem to be there any more.
Finally, something seemed to have been settled. The shearers approached him in the cautious, oblique way of men trying to hang back and walk forward at the same time.
Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution.
‘G’day!’ he said nervously.
Rincewind gave him a friendly wave, and it was only halfway through when he remembered that he was still holding the shears. Daggy hadn’t forgotten about them.
‘Er . . . we ain’t got five hundred squids till we get paid—’
Rincewind wasn’t certain how to deal with this. ‘No worries,’ he said. This covered most things.
‘. . . so if yew’re gonna be around . . .’
‘I just want to get to Bugarup as soon as possible,’ said Rincewind.
Daggy kept smiling but turned around and went into another huddle with the rest of the shearers. Then he turned back.