Discworld 27 - The Last Hero (9 page)

 
 
   
“I thought there would be more than that,” said Rincewind.
“Oh, those are just the ones we used to help us get clear of the Rim,”
said Leonard, as the Kite turned lazily in the air. “Most of the others
we'll use to go down.”
“Down?” said Rincewind.
“Oh, yes. We need to go down, as quickly as we can. No time to waste.”
“Down? This is not the time to talk about down! You kept on talking about
around. Around is fine! Not down!”
“Ah, but you see, in order to go around we need to go down. Fast.”
Leonard looked reproachful. “I did put it in my notes-”
“Down is not a direction with which I am happy!”
“Hello? Hello?” came a voice, out of the air.
“Captain Carrot,” said Leonard, as Rincewind sulked in his seat, “oblige
me by opening the cabinet there, will you?”
This revealed a fragment of smashed omniscope and the face of Ponder
Stibbons.
“It works!” His shout sounded muffled and somehow small, like the
squeaking of an ant. “You're alive?”
“We have separated the first dragons and everything is going well, sir,”
said Carrot.
“No, it's not!” Rincewind shouted. “They want to go dow-!”
Without turning his head. Carrot reached around behind Leonard and pulled
Rincewind's hat down over his face.
“The second-stage dragons will be about ready to burn now,” said Leonard.
“We had better get on, Mr Stibbons.”
“Please take careful observations of all-” Ponder began, but Leonard had
politely closed the case.
“Now then.” he said, “if you gentlemen will undo the clips beside you and
turn the large red handles you should be able to start the process of
folding the wings back in. I believe that as we increase speed, the
impellers will make the process easier.” He looked at Rincewind's blank
face as the angry wizard freed himself from his hat. “We will use the
rushing air as we fall to help us reduce the size of the wings, which we
will not require for a while.”
“I understand that.” said Rincewind distantly. “I just hate it.”
“The only way home is down, Rincewind,” said Carrot, adjusting his seat
belt. “And put your helmet on!”
“So if everyone would once again hold tight?” said Leonard, and pushed
gently on a lever. “Don't look so worried, Rincewind. Think of it as a
sort of... well, a magic carpet ride ...”
The Kite shuddered.
And dived ...
And suddenly the Rimfall was under them, stretching to an infinite mist
horizon, its rocky outcrops now islands in a white wall.
The ship shook again, and the handle Rincewind had been leaning on
started to move under its own power.
There was no solid surface any more. Every piece of the ship was
vibrating.
He stared out of the porthole next to him. The wings, the precious wings,
the things that kept you up, were folding gracefully in on themselves ...
“Rincewind,” said Leonard, a blur in his seat, “please ppull the bblack
lleverr!”
The wizard did so, on the basis that it couldn't make things worse.
But it did. He heard a series of thumps behind him. Five score of
dragons, having recently digested a hydrocarbon-rich meal, saw their own
reflections in front of them as a rack of mirrors was, for a moment,
lowered in front of their cages.
They flared.

 
 
   
Something crashed and smashed, back in the fuselage. A giant foot pressed
the crew back into their seats. The Rimfall blurred. Through red-rimmed
eyes they stared at the speeding white sea and the distant stars and even
Carrot joined in the hymn of terror, which goes:
“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhggggggg ...”
Leonard was trying to shout something. With terrible effort Rincewind
turned his huge and heavy head and just made out the groan: “Ttthe
wwwhite lllever!”
It took him years to reach it. For some reason his arms had been made out
of lead. Bloodless fingers with muscles weak as string managed to get a
grip and tow the lever back.
Another foreboding thump rattled the ship. The pressure ceased. Three
heads thumped forward.
And then there was silence. And lightness. And peace.
Dreamily, Rincewind pulled down the periscope and saw the huge fish
section curving gently away from them. It came apart as it flew, and more
dragons spread their wings and whirled away behind the Kite. Magnificent.
A device for seeing behind you without slowing down? Just the thing no
coward should be without.
“I've got to get one of these,” he murmured.
“That seemed to go quite well, I thought,” said Leonard. “I'm sure the
little creatures will get hack, too. Flitting from rock to rock ... yes,
I'm sure they will...”
“Er ... there's a strong draught by my seat-” Carrot began.
Ah, yes ... it would be a good idea to keep the helmets handy,“ Leonard
said. ”I've done my best, varnishing and laminating and so forth ... but
the Kite is not, alas, completely airtight. Well, here we are; well on
our way,“ he added brightly. ”Breakfast, anyone?“
”My stomach feels very-“ Rincewind began, but stopped.
A spoon drifted past, tumbling gently.
”What has switched off the downness?“ he demanded.
Leonard opened his mouth to say: No, this was expected, because
everything is falling at the same speed, but he didn't, because he could
see this was not a happy thing to say.
”It's the sort of thing that happens,“ he said. ”It's ... er ... magic.“
”Oh. Really? Oh.“
A cup bumped gently off Carrot's ear. He batted it away and it
disappeared somewhere aft.
”What kind of magic?“ he said.
The wizards were clustered around the piece of omniscope, while Ponder
struggled to
A picture exploded into view. It was horrible. ”Hello? Hello? This is
Ankh-Morpork calling!“
The gibbering face was pushed aside and Leonard's dome rose slowly into
view.
”Ah, yes. Good morning,“ he said. ”We are having a few ... teething
troubles.“
From somewhere offscreen came the sound of someone being sick.
”What is going on“?” bellowed Ridcully.
“Well, you see, it's rather amusing ... I had this idea of putting food
in tubes, you see, so that it could be squeezed out and eaten neatly in
weightless conditions and, er, because we didn't tie everything down, er,
I'm afraid my box of paints came open and the tubes got, er, confused, so
what Mr Rincewind thought was broccoli and ham turned out to be Forest
Green ... er.”
“Let me speak to Captain Carrot, will you?”
“I'm afraid that is not entirely convenient at the moment,” said Leonard,
his face clouded with concern.

 
 
   
“Why? Did he have the broccoli and ham too?”
“No, he had the Cadmium Yellow.” There was a yelp and a series of clangs
somewhere behind Leonard. “On the brighter side, however. I can report
that the Mk II privy appears to function perfectly”
The Kite, in its headlong plunge, curved back towards the Rimfall. Now
the water was a great tumbling cloud of mist.
Captain Carrot hovered in front of a window, taking pictures with the
iconograph. “This is amazing,” he said. “I'm sure we'll find the answers
to some questions that have puzzled mankind for millennia.”
“Good. Can you get this frying pan off my back?” said Rincewind.
“Urn,” said Leonard.
It was a sufficiently troubling syllable for the others to look at him.
“We seem to be, er, losing air rather faster than I thought,” said the
genius. “But I'm sure the hull isn't any leakier than I allowed for. And
we seem to be falling faster, according to Mr Stibbons. Uh ... it's a
little difficult to piece it all together, of course, because of the
uncertain effects of the Disc's magical field. Um ... we should be all
right if we wear our helmets all the time ...”
“There's plenty of air nearer to the world, isn't there?” said Rincewind.
“Can't we just fly into it and open a window?”
Leonard stared mournfully into the mists that filled half of their view.
“We are, er, moving very fast.” he said, slowly. “And air at this speed
... air is ... the tiling about air ... tell me, what do you understand
by the words ”shooting star“?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Rincewind demanded.
“Um ... that we die an immensely horrible death”
“Oh, that,” said Rincewind.
Leonard tapped a dial on one of the tanks of air. “I really don't think
my calculations were that wro-”
Light exploded into the cabin.
The Kite rose through tendrils of mist.
The crew stared.
“No one will ever believe us.” said Carrot, eventually. He raised his
iconograph towards the view and even the imp inside, which belonged to a
species that was seldom impressed with anything, said “”Gosh!“ in a tiny
voice as it painted furiously.
”I don't believe this,“ said Rincewind. ”and I'm seeing it.“
A tower, an immensity of rock, rose from the mist. And looming over the
mist, huge as worlds. the backs of four elephants. It was like flying
through a cathedral, thousands of miles high.
”It sounds like a joke,“ Rincewind babbled, ”elephants holding up the
world, hahaha ... and then you see it.. .“
”My paints, where are my paints .. . ?“ mumbled Leonard.
”Well, some of them are in the privy,“ said Rincewind.
Carrot turned, and looked puzzled. The iconograph floated away, trailing
small curses.
”And where's my apple?“ he said.
”What?“ said Rincewind, perplexed at the sudden subject of fruit.
”I'd just started eating an apple, and I just rested it in the air ...
and it's gone?
The ship creaked in the glaring sunlight.
And an apple core came tumbling gently through the air.
“I suppose there are just the three of us aboard?” said Rincewind
innocently.
“Don't be silly,” said Carrot. “We're sealed in!”
“So .. . your apple ate itself?”
They looked at the jumble of bundles held in the webbing behind them.

 
 
   
“I mean, call me Mr Suspicious,” said Rincewind, “but if the ship is
heavier than Leonard thought, and we're using up more air, and food is
vanishing-”
“You're not suggesting that there's some kind of monster floating around
below the Rim that can bore into wooden hulls, are you?” said Carrot,
drawing his sword.
“Ah, I hadn't thought of that one,” said Rincewind. “Well done.”
“Interesting,” said Leonard. “It would be, perhaps, a cross between a
bird and a bivalve. Somewhat squid-like, possibly, using jets of-”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes!”
Carrot pulled out a roll of blankets and tried to look back along the
cabin.
“I think I saw something move,” he said. “Just behind the air reservoirs
...”
He ducked under a bundle of skis and disappeared into the shadows.
They heard him groan.
“Oh, no ...”
“What? What?” said Rincewind. Carrot's voice was muffled.
“I've found a ... it looks like a ... skin ...”
Ah, fascinating.“ said Leonard, sketching on his notepad. ”Possibly, once
aboard a hospitable vessel, such a creature would metamorphose into-“
Carrot emerged, a banana skin kebabed on the end of his sword.
Rincewind rolled his eyes. ”I have a very definite feeling about this.“
he said.
”So have I.“ said Carrot.
It took them some time, but finally they pushed away a box of dishcloths
and there were no more hiding places.
A worried face looked out of the nest it had made.
”Ook?“it said.
Leonard sighed, laid aside his pad and opened up the omniscope's box. He
banged on it once or twice, and it flickered and showed the outline of a
head.
Leonard took a deep breath.
”Ankh-Morpork, we have an orangutan ...“
Cohen sheathed his sword.
”Wouldn't have expected much to be living up here.“ he said, surveying
the carnage.
”There's even less now,“ said Caleb.
The latest fight had been over in the twinkling of an eye and the
cleaving of a backbone. Any ... creatures that ambushed the Horde did so
at the end of their lives.
”The raw magic here must be huge.“ said Boy Willie. ”I suppose creatures
like this get used to living off it. Sooner or later something will learn
to live anywhere.“
”It's certainly doing Mad Hamish good,“ said Cohen. ”I'll swear he's not
as deaf as he was.“
”Whut?“
”I SAID YOU'RE NOT AS DEAF AS YOU WERE, HAMISH!“
”There's no need to shout, mon!“
”Can we cook 'em. do you think?“ said Boy Willie.
”They'll probably taste a bit like chicken,“ said Caleb. ”Everything
does, if you're hungry enough.“
”Leave it to me.“ said Mrs McGarry. ”You get a fire going, and I'll make
this taste more like chicken than ... chicken,"
Cohen wandered off to where the minstrel was sitting by himself, working
on the remains of his lute. The lad had brightened up considerably as the
climb progressed. Cohen thought. He had completely stopped whimpering.
Cohen sat down next to him.

 
 
   
“What're you doing, lad?” he said. “I see you found a skull.”
“It's going to be the sound box,” said the minstrel. He looked worried
for a moment. “That is all right, isn't it?”
“Sure. Good fate for a hero, having his bones made into a harp or
something. It should sing out wonderful.”
“This will be a kind of lyre.” said the minstrel. “It's going to be a bit
primitive, I'm afraid.”
“Even better. Good for the old songs,” said Cohen.
“I have been thinking about the ... the saga.” the minstrel admitted.
“Good lad, good lad. Plenty of spakes?”
“Um. yes. But I thought I'd start off with the legend of how Mazeda stole
fire for mankind in the first place.”
“Nice,” said Cohen.
“And then a few verses about what the gods did to him,” the minstrel went
on, tightening a string.
“Did to him? Did to him?” said Cohen. “They made him immortal!”
“Er ... yes. In a way, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, ”in a way“?”
“It's classical mythology. Cohen,” said the minstrel. “I thought everyone
knew. He was chained to a rock for eternity and every day an eagle comes
and pecks out his liver.”
“Is that true?”
“It's mentioned in many of the classic texts.
”I'm not much of a reader,“ said Cohen. ”Chained to a rock? For a first
offence? He's still there?“
”Eternity isn't finished yet. Cohen.“
”He must've had a big liver!“
”It grows again every night, according to the legend,“ said the minstrel.
”I wish my kidneys did.“ said Cohen. He stared at the distant clouds that
hid the snowy top of the mountain. ”He brought fire to everyone, and the
gods did that to him, eh? Well... we'll have to see about that.“
The omniscope showed a snowstorm.
”Bad weather down there, then,“ said Ridcully.
”No, it's thaumic interference,“ said Ponder. ”They're passing under the
elephants. We'll get a lot more of it, I'm afraid.“
”Did they really say “Ankh-Morpork, we have an orangutan”?“ said the
Dean.
”The Librarian must have got on board somehow,“ said Ponder. ”You know
what he's like for finding odd comers to sleep in. And that. I'm afraid,
explains about the weight and the air. Er ... I have to tell you that I'm
not sure that they have enough time or power to get back on to the Disc
now.“
”What do you mean, you're not sure?“ said Lord Vetinari.
”Er ... I mean I am sure but, er, no one likes bad news all at once,
sir.“
Lord Vetinari looked at the big spell that dominated the cabin. It
floated in the air: the whole world, sketched in glowing lines and.
dropping from one glittering edge, a small curving line. As he watched it
lengthened slightly.
”They can't just turn around and come back?“ he said.
”No, sir. It doesn't work like that.“
”Can they throw the Librarian out?“
The wizards looked shocked.
”No, sir,“ said Ponder. ”That would be murder, sir.“
”Yes, but they may save the world. One ape dies, one world lives. You do
not need to be a rocket wizard to work that out, surely?“
”You can't ask them to make a decision like that, sir!"