Interesting Times

for research,” said Ridcully. “You don’t mind messing around with cogwheels and ants but when it comes to really trying to find out how things work and—”
    “Getting your hands dirty,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    “Yes, getting your hands dirty, you come over all shy.”
    “It’s not that, Archchancellor,” said Ponder. “But I believe it may be dangerous.”
    “I think I’m working it loose,” said Ridcully, poking in the depths of the tube. “Come on, you fellows, tip the thing up a bit…”
    Ponder took a few more steps back. “Er, I really don’t think—” he began.
    “Don’t think, eh? Call yourself a wizard and you don’t think? Blast! I’ve got my staff wedged now! That’s what comes of listening to you when I should have been paying attention, Mr. Stibbons.”
    Ponder heard a scuffling behind him. The Librarian, with an animal’s instinct for danger and a human’s instinct for trouble, had upturned a table and was peering over the top of it with a small cauldron on his head, the handle under one of his chins like a strap.
    “Archchancellor, I really do think—”
    “Oh, you think, do you? Did anyone tell you it’s your job to think? Ow! It’s got my fingers now, thanks to you!”
    It needed all Ponder’s courage to say, “I think…it might perhaps be some kind of firework, sir.”
    The wizards turned their attention to the fizzling string.
    “What…colored lights, stars, that sort of thing?” said Ridcully.
    “Possibly, sir.”
    “Must be planning a hell of a display. Apparently they’re very keen on firecrackers, over in the Empire.” Ridcully spoke in the tone of voice of a man over whom the thought is slowly stealing that he just might have done something very silly.
    “Would you like me to extinguish the string, sir?” said Ponder.
    “Yes, dear boy, why not? Good idea. Good thinking, that man.”
    Ponder stepped forward and pinched the string.
    “I do hope we haven’t ruined something,” he said.

    Rincewind opened his eyes.
    This was not cool sheets. It was white, and it was cold, but it lacked basic sheetness. It made up for this by having vast amounts of snowosity.
    And a groove. A long groove.
    Let’s see now…He could remember the sensation of movement. And he vaguely remembered something small but incredibly heavy -looking roaring past in the opposite direction. And then he was here, moving so fast that his feet left this…
    …groove. Yes, groove, he thought, in the easygoing way of the mildly concussed. With people lying around it groaning.
    But they looked like people who, once they’d stopped crawling around groaning, were going to draw the swords they had about their persons and pay detailed attention to serious bits.
    He stood up, a little shakily. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to run to. There was just this wide, snowy waste with a border of mountains.
    The soldiers were definitely looking a lot more conscious. Rincewind sighed. A few hours ago he’d been sitting on a warm beach with young women about to offer him potatoes, * and here he was on a windswept, chilly plain with some large men about to offer him violence.
    The soles of his shoes, he noticed, were steaming.
    And then someone said, “Hey! Are you…you’re not, are you…are you…whatsyername…Rincewind, isn’t it?”
    Rincewind turned.
    There was a very old man behind him. Despite the bitter wind he was wearing nothing except a leather loincloth and a grubby beard so long that the loincloth wasn’t really necessary, at least from the point of view of decency. His legs were blue from the cold and his nose was red from the wind, giving him overall quite a patriotic look if you were from the right country. He had a patch over one eye but rather more notable than that were his teeth. They glittered.
    “Don’t stand there gawping like a big gawper! Get these damn things off me!”
    There were heavy shackles around his ankles and wrists; a chain led to a group of more or less similarly clad men who were huddling in a crowd and watching Rincewind in terror.
    “Heh! They think you’re some kind of demon,” cackled the old man. “But I knows a wizard when I sees one! That bastard over there’s got the keys. Go and give him a good kicking.”
    Rincewind took a few hesitant steps towards a recumbent guard and snatched at his belt.
    “Right,” said the old man, “now chuck ’em over here. And then get out of the way.”
    “Why?”
    “’Cos you don’t