Interesting Times

it much, most of the really dreadful things that had happened to him had been done by quite pale people with big wardrobes. Those were two of the reasons.
    The third was that these men, who were just rising from a half-crouching position, were all holding spears pointing at Rincewind and there is something about the sight of four spears aimed at your throat that causes no end of respect and the word “sir” to arise spontaneously in the mind.
    One of the men shrugged, and lowered his spear.
    “G’day, bloke,” he said.
    This meant only three spears, which was an improvement.
    “Er. This isn’t Unseen University, is it, sir?” said Rincewind.
    The other spears stopped pointing at him. The men grinned. They had very white teeth.
    “Klatch? Howondaland? It looks like Howondaland,” said Rincewind hopefully.
    “Don’t know them blokes, bloke,” said one of the men.
    The other three clustered around him.
    “What’ll we call him?”
    “He’s Kangaroo Bloke. No worries there. One minute a kangaroo, next minute a bloke. The old blokes say that sort of thing used to happen all the time, back in the Dream.”
    “I reckoned he’d look better than that.”
    “Yeah.”
    “One way to tell.”
    The man who was apparently the leader of the group advanced on Rincewind with the kind of grin reserved for imbeciles and people holding guns, and held out a stick.
    It was flat, and had a bend in the middle. Someone had spent a long time making rather nice designs on it in little colored dots. Somehow, Rincewind wasn’t at all surprised to see a butterfly among them.
    The hunters watched him expectantly.
    “Er, yes,” he said. “Very good. Very good workmanship, yes. Interesting pointillistic effect. Shame you couldn’t find a straighter bit of wood.”
    One of the men laid down his spear, and squatted down and picked up a long wooden tube, covered with the same designs. He blew into it. The effect was not unpleasant. It sounded like bees would sound if they’d invented full orchestration.
    “Um,” said Rincewind. “Yes.”
    It was a test, obviously. They’d given him this bent piece of wood. He had to do something with it. It was clearly very important. He’d—
    Oh, no. He’d say something or do something, wouldn’t he, and then they’d say, yes, you are the Great Bloke or something, and they’d drag him off and it’d be the start of another Adventure, i.e., a period of horror and unpleasantness. Life was full of tricks like that.
    Well, this time Rincewind wasn’t going to fall for it.
    “I want to go home,” he said. “I want to go back home to the Library where it was nice and quiet. And I don’t know where I am. And I don’t care what you do to me, right? I’m not going to have any kind of adventure or start saving the world again and you can’t trick me into it with mysterious bits of wood.”
    He gripped the stick and flung it away from him with all the force he could still muster.
    They stared at him as he folded his arms.
    “I’m not playing,” he said. “I’m stopping right here.”
    They were still staring. And now they were grinning, too, at something behind him.
    He felt himself getting quite annoyed.
    “Do you understand? Are you listening?” he said. “That’s the last time the universe is going to trick Rincewi—”

About the Author
    Terry Pratchett’s novels have sold more than thirty million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. He lives in England.
    www.terrypratchettbooks.com
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Praise for TERRY PRATCHETT’s
DISCWORLD
    “Smart and funny.”
    Denver Post
    “Humorously entertaining (and subtly thought-provoking) fantasy…Pratchett’s Discworld books are filled with humor and with magic, but they’re rooted in, of all things, real life and cold, hard reason.”
    Contra Costa Times
    “Pratchett has created an alternate universe full of trolls, dwarfs, wizards, and other fantasy elements, and he uses that universe to reflect on our own culture with entertaining and gloriously funny results. It’s an accomplishment nothing short of magical.”
    Chicago Tribune
    “Terry Pratchett seems constitutionally unable to write a page without at least a twitch of the grin muscles….[But] the notions Pratchett plays with are nae so narrow or nae so silly as your ordinary British farce. Seriously.”
    San Diego Union-Tribune
    “If Terry Pratchett is not yet an