Last Continent (28 page)

‘I thought there wasn't a prison cell that could hold him,' said Rincewind.

‘Oh, he could get
out
of 'em,' said the warder. ‘He just couldn't run very far.'

Rincewind eyed the metal ball. ‘Oh, gods . . .'

‘Vince says how much do you weigh, 'cos he has to add the chains to your weight to get the drop right,' said the warder.

‘Does that matter?' said Rincewind in a hollow voice. ‘I mean, I die anyway, don't I?'

‘Yeah, no worries there, but if he gets it wrong, see, you either end up with a neck six feet long or,
you'll laugh about this, your head flies off like a perishin' cork!'

‘Oh, good.'

‘With Larrikin Larry we had to search the roof all arvo!'

‘Marvellous. All arvo, eh?' said Rincewind. ‘Well, you won't have that problem with me. I shall be elsewhere when I'm being hanged.'

‘That's what we like to hear!' said the warder, punching him jovially in the elbow. ‘A battler to the end, eh?'

There was a rumbling from Mt Vince.

‘And Vince says he'll be very privileged if you'd care to spit in his eye when he puts the rope aroun' your neck,' the warder went on. ‘That'll be something to show his grandchildren—'

‘Will you all please go away!' Rincewind shouted.

‘Ah, you'll be wanting some time to plot your getaway,' said the warder knowingly. ‘No worries. We'll be leavin' you alone, then.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Until about five a.m.'

‘Good,' said Rincewind gloomily.

‘Got any requests for your last breakfast?'

‘Something that takes a really really long time to prepare?' said Rincewind.

‘That's the spirit!'

‘Go away!'

‘No worries.'

The men walked off, but the warder strolled back after a while as if he had something on his mind.

‘There
is
something that you ought to know
about the hanging, though,' he said. ‘Might brighten up your night.'

‘Yes?'

‘We've got a special humanitarian tradition if the trapdoor sticks three times.'

‘Yes?'

‘Sounds a bit odd, but it's happened once or twice, believe it or not.'

A tiny green shoot rose from the blackened branches of hope.

‘And what's the tradition?' said Rincewind.

‘It's on account of it being heartless to have a man standing there more than three times, knowing that at any second his—'

‘Yes, yes—'

‘—and then all his—'

‘Yes—'

‘—and the worst part to my mind is where your—'

‘Yes, I understand! And so . . . after the third time . . . ?'

‘He's allowed back into his cell while we get a carpenter in to repair the trapdoor,' said the warder. ‘We even give him his dinner, if it's gone on a long time.'

‘And?'

‘Well, when the carpenter's given it a good test, then we take him out again and hang him.' He saw Rincewind's expression. ‘No need to look like that. 's better than having to stand around in the cold all morning, isn't it? That wouldn't be nice.'

When he'd gone, Rincewind sat and stared at the wall.

‘Baa!'

‘Shut up.'

So it was down to this, then. One brief night left, and then, if these clowns had anything to do with it, happy people would be wandering the streets to see where his head had come down. There was no justice!

G'DAY, MATE
.

‘Oh, no.
Please
.'

I JUST THOUGHT I SHOULD ENTER INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. A VERY CONVIVIAL PEOPLE, AREN'T THEY
? said Death. He was sitting beside Rincewind.

‘You just can't wait, can you?' said Rincewind bitterly.

NO WORRIES
.

‘So this is really it, then. I was
supposed
to have saved this country, you know. And I'm going to really die.'

OH, YES. THIS IS CERTAIN, I'M AFRAID
.

‘It's the stupidity of it that gets me. I mean, think of all the times I've nearly died in the past. I could've been flamed by dragons, right? Or eaten by huge things with tentacles. Or even had every single particle of my body fly off in a different direction.'

YOU HAVE CERTAINLY HAD AN INTERESTING LIFE
.

‘Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?'

Y
ES
.

‘Ghastly thought, really.' Rincewind shuddered. ‘Oh,
gods
, I've just had another one. Suppose I
am
just about to die and
this
is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?'

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES
DO
PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING'. WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN
?

Rincewind looked down at the bucket on Death's lap.

‘No, thank you. I really don't think so. They can be pretty deadly. And I must say it's a bit much of you to come here and gloat and eat prawns at me.'

I BEG YOUR PARDON
?

‘Just because I'm being hanged in the morning, I mean.'

ARE YOU? THEN I SHALL LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING HOW YOU ESCAPED. I'M DUE TO MEET A MAN IN . . . IN
. . . Death's eyesockets glowed as he interrogated his memory.
AH, YES . . . INSIDE A CROCODILE. SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES AWAY, I BELIEVE
.

‘What? Then why are you here?'

OH, I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEE A FRIENDLY FACE. AND NOW I THINK I HAD BETTER BE GOING
. Death stood up.
VERY PLEASANT CITY IN MANY RESPECTS. TRY TO SEE THE OPERA HOUSE WHILE YOU'RE HERE
.

‘Hang on . . . I mean, hold on, you told me I was certainly going to die!'

EVERYONE IS. EVENTUALLY
.

The wall opened and closed around Death as if it wasn't there, which was, from his lengthy perspective, quite true.

‘But
how
? I can't walk through—' Rincewind began.

He sat down again. The sheep cowered in the corner.

Rincewind looked at the untouched meat pie floater and gave the pie a prod. It sank slowly beneath the vivid green soup.

The sounds of the city filtered in.

After a while the pie rose again like a forgotten continent, sending a very small wave slopping against the edge of the bowl.

Rincewind lay back on the thin blanket and stared at the ceiling. Someone had even been writing on that, too. In fact . . .

Slowly, as if being raised by invisible strings, Rincewind turned and looked at the door.

The hinges were massive. They weren't screwed into the doorframe so that some clever prisoner might unscrew them. They were huge iron hooks, hammered into the stone itself, so that two heavy rings welded on to the door could drop right down on them. What was the man talking about?

He walked over and examined the lock closely. It drove a huge metal rod into the frame on its side and looked quite unpickable.

Rincewind stared at the door for some time. Then he rubbed his hands together and, gritting his teeth, tried to lift the door on the hinge side. Yes, there was just enough play . . .

It was possible to lift the rings off the spikes.

Then, if you pulled slightly and took a knee-wobbling step
this
way, you could yank the lock's rod out of its hole and the entire door into the cell.

And then a man could walk through and carefully rehang the door again and quietly wander away.

And that, Rincewind thought as he carefully manoeuvred the door back on to the hinges, was exactly what a stupid person would do.

At moments like this cowardice was an exact science. There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered,
thoughtful
panic. Right now he was in a place of safety. It was, admittedly, the death cell, but the point was that it was perhaps the one place in this country where nothing bad was going to happen for a little while. The Ecksians didn't look like the kind of people who went in for torture, although it was always possible they might make him eat some more of their food. So, for the moment, he had
time
. Time to plan ahead, to consider his next move, to apply his intellect to the problem at hand.

He stared at the wall for a moment, and then stood up and gripped the bars.

Right. That seemed to be about long enough. Now to run like hell.

The green deck of the melon boat had been divided into a male and female section, for the sake of decency. This meant that most of the deck was occupied by Mrs Whitlow, who spent a lot of the time sunbathing behind a screen. Her privacy was assured by the wizards themselves, since at least three of them would probably kill any of the
others who ventured within ten feet of the palm leaves.

There was definitely what Ponder's aunt, who'd raised him, would have called An Atmosphere.

‘I still think I ought to climb the mast,' he protested.

‘Ah! A peeping tom, eh?' snarled the Senior Wrangler.

‘No, I just think it would be a good idea to see where the boat is going,' said Ponder. ‘There're some big black clouds ahead.'

‘Good, we could do with the rain,' snapped the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘In which case, I shall be honoured to make Mrs Whitlow a suitable shelter,' said the Dean.

Ponder walked back to the stern, where the Archchancellor was gloomily fishing.

‘Honestly, you'd think Mrs Whitlow was the only woman in the world,' he said.

‘Do you think she might be?' said Ridcully.

Ponder's mind raced, and hit some horrible speed bumps in his imagination. ‘Surely not, sir!' he said.

‘We don't
know
, Ponder. Still, look on the bright side. We may all be drowned.'

‘Er . . . sir? Have you
looked
at the horizon?'

The everlasting storm was seven thousand miles long but only a mile wide, a great turning, boiling mass of enraged air circling the last continent like a family of foxes circling a henhouse.

The clouds were mounded up all the way to the
edge of the atmosphere – and they were ancient clouds now, clouds that had rolled around their tortured circuit for years, building up personality and hatred and, above all, voltage.

It was not a storm, it was a battle. Mere gales, a few hundred miles long, fought amongst themselves within the cloud wall. Lightning forked from thunderhead to thunderhead, rain fell and flashed into steam half a mile from the ground.

The air glowed.

And below, emerging from the ocean of potentiality in a rainstorm so thunderous that it was no more than a descending sea, rose the last continent.

On the wall of the deserted cell in Bugarup Gaol, among the scratches and stick drawings and tallies of a man's last few days, a drawing of a sheep became a drawing of a kangaroo and then faded completely into the stone.

‘So?' said the Dean. ‘We're in for a bit of a blow?'

The grey line filled the immediate future like a dental appointment.

‘I think it might be a lot worse,' said Ponder.

‘Well, let's steer somewhere else, then.'

‘There's no rudder, sir. And we don't know where anywhere else
is
. And we're low on water anyway.'

‘Don't they say that a big bank of cloud means there's land ahead?' said the Dean.

‘Bloody big land, then. EcksEcksEcksEcks, do you think?'

‘I hope so, sir.' Above Ponder, the sail flapped and billowed. ‘Wind's freshening, sir. I think the storm's sucking the air towards it. And . . . there's something else, I think. I wish I hadn't left my thaumometer on the beach, sir, because I think there's a very high level of background magic in this area.'

‘What makes you say this, boy?' said the Dean. ‘Well, for one thing everyone seems to be getting a bit tense, and wizards tend to get stro— to get touchy in the presence of large amounts of magic,' said Ponder. ‘But my suspicions were first aroused when the Bursar developed planets.'

There were two of them, orbiting his head at a height of a few inches. As was so often the case with magical phenomena, they possessed virtual unreality and passed unscathed through him and one another. They were slightly transparent.

‘Oh dear, Mugroop's Syndrome,' said Ridcully. ‘Cerebral manifestation. Better than a canary down a coalmine, a sign like that.'

A little sub-routine in Ponder's head began a short countdown.

‘Remember old “Dicky” Bird?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘He—'

‘Three! No, I don't, as a matter of fact. Do tell!' Ponder heard himself bark, louder than he would have done even if he
had
meant to vocalize his thoughts.

‘Indeed I shall, Mister Stibbons,' said the Chair calmly. ‘He was very susceptible to high magical
fields, and if his mind wandered, as it might do when he was dozing off, sometimes around his head there'd be, hehehe, there'd be these little—'