Interesting Times

On subject islands like Bhangbhangduc and Tingling there are similar walls, all metaphorically the same wall, and that seems strange to those of an unthinking military disposition who do not realize what its function really is.
    It is more than just a wall, it is a marker. On one side is the Empire, which in the Agatean language is a word identical with “universe.” On the other side is—nothing. After all, the universe is everything there is.
    Oh, there may appear to be things, like sea, islands, other continents and so on. They may even appear solid, it may be possible to conquer them, walk on them…but they are not ultimately real. The Agatean word for foreigner is the same as the word for ghost, and only one brush stroke away from the word for victim.
    The walls are sheer in order to discourage those boring people who persist in believing that there might be anything interesting on the other side. Amazingly enough there are people who simply won’t take the hint, even after thousands of years. The ones near the coast build rafts and head out across lonely seas to lands that are a fable. The ones inland resort to man-carrying kites and chairs propelled by fireworks. Many of them die in the attempt, of course. Most of the others are soon caught, and made to live in interesting times.
    But some did make it to the great melting pot called Ankh-Morpork. They arrived with no money—sailors charged what the market would bear, which was everything—but they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn’t sleep.

    Rincewind sometimes thought that his life was punctuated by awakenings. They were not always rude ones. Sometimes they were merely impolite. A very few—one or two, perhaps—had been quite nice, especially on the island. The sun had come up in its humdrum fashion, the waves had washed the beach in quite a boring way, and on several occasions he’d managed to erupt from unconsciousness without his habitual small scream.
    This one wasn’t just rude. It was downright insolent. He was being bumped about and someone had tied his hands together. It was dark, a fact occasioned by the sack over his head.
    Rincewind did some calculation, and reached a conclusion.
    “This is the seventeenth worst day of my life so far,” he thought.
    Being knocked unconscious in pubs was quite commonplace. If it happened in Ankh-Morpork then you’d likely as not wake up lying on the Ankh with all your money gone or, if a ship was due out on a long and unpopular voyage, chained up in some scupper somewhere with no option for the next two years but to plough the ocean wave. * But generally the knocker wanted to keep you alive. The Thieves’ Guild were punctilious about that. As they said: “Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; “Hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week.”
    If he was in what felt like a cart then someone had some purpose in keeping him alive.
    He wished he hadn’t thought of that.
    Someone pulled the sack off. A terrifying visage stared down at him.
    “‘I would like to eat your foot!’” said Rincewind.
    “Don’t worry. I am a friend.”
    The mask was lifted away. There was a young woman behind it—round-faced, snub-nosed, and quite different from any other citizen Rincewind had met hitherto. That was, he realized, because she was looking straight at him. Her clothes, if not her face, had last been seen on the stage.
    “Don’t cry out,” she said.
    “Why? What are you going to do?”
    “We would have welcomed you properly but there was no time.” She sat down among the bundles in the back of the swaying cart and regarded him critically.
    “Four Big Sandal said you arrived on a dragon and slaughtered a regiment of soldiers,” she said.
    “I did?”
    “And then you worked magic on a venerable old man and he became a great fighter.”
    “He did?”
    “And you gave him whole meat, even though Four Big Sandal is only of the pung class.”
    “I did?”
    “And you have your hat.”
    “Yes, yes, got my hat.”
    “And yet,” said the girl, “you don’t look like a Great Wizard.”
    “Ah. Well, the fact is—”
    The girl looked as fragile as a flower. But she had just pulled out, from somewhere in the folds