Eric

almost have been designed to be seen from space; it hadn’t, Rincewind was damn sure, been designed to be lived on. But he had to admit that it was impressive.
    The sun was about to rise on the far rim and made a line of fire that glittered around half the circumference. A long slow dawn was just beginning its sweep across the dark, massive landscape.
    Below, harshly lit in the arid vacuum of space, Great A’Tuin the world turtle toiled under the weight of Creation. On his—or her, the matter had never really been resolved—carapace the four giant elephants strained to support the Disc itself.
    There might have been more efficient ways to build a world. You might start with a ball of molten iron and then coat it with successive layers of rock, like an old-fashioned gobstopper. And you’d have a very efficient planet, but it wouldn’t look so nice. Besides, things would drop off the bottom.
    “Pretty good,” said the parrot. “Polly want a continent.”
    “It’s so big ,” breathed Eric.
    “Yes,” said Rincewind flatly.
    He felt that something more was expected of him.
    “Don’t break it,” he added.
    He had a nagging doubt about all this. If he was for the sake of argument a demon, and so many things had happened to him recently he was prepared to concede that he might have died and not noticed it in the confusion, * then he still didn’t quite see how the world was his to give away. He was pretty sure that it had owners who felt the same way.
    Also, he was sure that a demon had to get something in writing.
    “I think you have to sign for it,” he said. “In blood.”
    “Whose?” said Eric.
    “Yours, I think,” said Rincewind. “Or bird blood will do, in a pinch.” He glared meaningfully at the parrot, which growled at him.
    “Aren’t I allowed to try it out first?”
    “What?”
    “Well, supposing it doesn’t work? I’m not signing for it until I’ve seen it work.”
    Rincewind stared at the boy. Then he looked down at the broad panorama of the kingdoms of the world. I wonder if I was like him at his age? he thought. I wonder how I survived?
    “It’s the world,” he said patiently. “Of course it will bloody well work. I mean, look at it. Hurricanes, continental drift, rainfall cycle—it’s all there. All ticking over like a bloody watch. It’ll last you a lifetime, a world like that. Used carefully.”
    Eric gave the world a critical examination. He wore the expression of someone who knows that all the best gifts in life seem to require the psychic equivalent of two U2 batteries and the shops won’t be open until after the holidays.
    “There’s got to be tribute,” he said flatly.
    “What?”
    “The kings of the world,” said Eric. “They’ve got to pay me tribute.”
    “You’ve really been studying this, haven’t you,” said Rincewind sarcastically. “Just tribute? You don’t fancy the moon while we’re up here? This week’s special offer, one free satellite with every world dominated?”
    “Are there any useful minerals?”
    “What?”
    Eric gave a sigh of long-suffering patience.
    “Minerals,” he said. “Ores. You know.”
    Rincewind colored. “I don’t think a lad your age should be thinking of—”
    “I mean metal and things. It’s no use to me if it’s just a load of rock.”
    Rincewind looked down. The Discworld’s tiny moonlet was just rising over the far edge, and shed a pale radiance across the jigsaw pattern of land and sea.
    “Oh, I don’t know. It looks quite nice,” he volunteered. “Look, it’s dark now. Perhaps everyone can pay you tribute in the morning?”
    “I want some tribute now .”
    “I thought you might.”
    Rincewind gave his fingers a careful examination. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been particularly good at snapping them.
    He gave it another try.
    When he opened his eyes again he was standing up to his ankles in mud.
    Preeminent among Rincewind’s talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be .
    But he was also skilled in languages and in practical geography. He could shout ‘help!’ in fourteen languages and scream for mercy in a further twelve. He had passed through many of the countries on the Disc, some of them at high speed, and