And we return to Darkest Howondaland chapter 16
Last postscripts
I started this tale 81,000 words ago with the words "A bit of a drabble…."
Some drabble.
I thought it was finished but I can't resist a few very last final words.
Unseen University
Ponder Stibbons sat in a quiet place in the library catching up with the latest copy of the Scientifick Pseudopolitian. After the exertions of the past few weeks, he was relieved to be getting back to normal again. Or to what passed for normality in Unseen University. He settled down with a relaxed smile spreading across his face as he began reading What Can Gauge-Gravity Thaumic Duality Teach Us About Supercondensed Pseudomatter Physics? (by Doctors Culducanard and Vafunculo, Brindisi University)(1)
He released a happy sigh. This was what academia should be about. However, he had got no further than…
We propose to discuss the impact of thaumically derived gauge-gravity duality on our understanding of two classes of systems: conformal quantum matter and compressible quantum matter, both magical and mundane….(2)
…when a heavy thump on the back of his head pushed him forwards and sent his glasses askew.
"OW! That hurt!" he complained, turning to face his attacker. "What was that in aid of, anyway?" he demanded.
Professor Rincewind looked down at him, fuming with uncharacteristic rage. Even more uncharacteristically, he'd just hit somebody, unprovoked, in anger.
Rincewind indignantly brandished a copy of the Times and pointed to a paragraph with a shaking finger.
"What the bloody hell is this?" he demanded, as Ponder straightened his specs.
"You wouldn't have dared do that if Johanna was here…" Ponder muttered, aware of how ineffectual it sounded. Rincewind nodded.
"Yes. Exactly. You've changed since you met her. look, I've known some pretty lethal women in my time."
Rincewind counted them off on his fingers.
"Conina. Bethan. Pretty Butterfly. Neilette. But just because she likes getting into fights and being adventurous doesn't mean you should join in, does it?"
From across the library, the Librarian looked up at the source of the noise, pointed a finger, and ook'd a warning.
Rincewind lowered his voice. But read out loud, or at least in a whisper…
…among many episodes of individual gallantry, Professor Stibbons of Unseen University demonstrated that the modern Wizard is at least the equal of Wizards of old. In a manner worthy of Mustrum Ridcully himself, the plucky young mage showed himself undaunted by the odds ranged against him and was seen to discharge fireball after fireball at the advancing hordes of Matabele tribal warriors, backing this up with powerful discharges of magic from his staff….
Ponder winced. His role in the battle had been to buy himself time by adopting the classic pose of both-hands-poised-to-deliver-destructive- spells, which had meant those attacking tribesmen nearest to him had slowed to a halt in fear and if others had not run into and over them from behind, they would have retreated. This had bought time for the real fighters to left and right of him to fire another close-order volley, with destructive results, into a disordered mob trying to run in two directions at once. Ponder had only fired one fireball: this was in sheer panic at one tribesman, who'd realised the wizard was bluffing on a bad hand, who'd leapt in and tried to stab him. In the event it had gone hopelessly wide and set fire to the wicker shield of an attacker twenty feet away, who had unwisely stopped to try to beat out the flames, thus setting fire to other men's shields in the close-packed assault and making himself a target for a crossbow bolt. In the meantime, Heidi van Kruger had dealt with the immediate threat to Ponder. He shuddered: if he closed his eyes he could still see the flash of metal and the spray of blood… Heidi had then leant over and said "Stay elive! Or else, Johanna is going to come after me!" and she had bodyguarded him for the rest of the battle. As for using his staff…. Well, in sheer blind panic and probably with his eyes closed, he'd swung it wildly and walloped another attacker, who had dropped with a grunt of pain and surprise. But that had pretty much been his battle.
"I know." Ponder said, sheepishly. "The Arch-Chancellor was delighted. He insisted on reading it to me too."
"You're a bloody idiot." Rincewind said, frankly. "What have I tried to teach you about Egregious Geography? Did any of it even sink in?"
"Look, I know what you're trying to say…"
Rincewind shook his head.
"Never stay on an active battlefield! This as egregious as Geography ever gets! " he said, insistently. "Run away! What else are legs for?"
"Errr… nowhere to run to?" Ponder countered.
"Doesn't matter! Away is the crucial thing!" Rincewind insisted.
Ponder considered this. A stranger in a jungle pursued by people who knew it intimately. And always assuming he could have evaded Johanna, up to a thousand Matabele warriors as well… no, there hadn't been an away. There never had been.
"You could be right." he said, not wanting a fight with somebody who most of the time was a friend.
Rincewind nodded, satisfied.
"I tell you these things for your own good." he said, mollified. "Anyway, it's getting on for lunchtime. Fancy a pint?"
They left the library together.
"Hear you might be getting married soon." Rincewind said, conversationally. "If the Lore gets changed. Given any thought to, you know, a Best Man?"
The Librarian, who had tagged on in the hope of beer and peanuts, picked up alertly and gave a hopeful "Oook?"
Ponder sighed. This was another bit of the social minefield he'd have to walk through in great big boots. He'd privately decided to ask Victor Tugelbend, who would be good in the role, make no social faux-pas of any kind, and would look good in the wedding iconographs. Ah well. Steeds getrou op die pan. One step at a time… then he realised he'd vocalised what he suspected would become his family motto, in Vondalaans. He shrugged. If he ever got to be important enough for a coat of arms, the Smith-Rhodes family motto would be a good one for the little curly scroll underneath. Maybe with two Osibisi propping up the shield. Let's see how the College of Heralds copes with that one…
Sergeant Fred Colon spread his generous bulk over a chair at All Jolson's. It was lunchtime. All knew to ensure his local policeman got a meal so square it was not only cubic, it could edge over into a totally new dimension as a hypercubic meal.
"Business booming, All?" Colon inquired, amiably. The big proprietor beamed happily.
"Never been better, Fred!" he said. "I tell you what, them new hands Precious brought back from Howondaland with her have been bloody wonders!"
He nodded over to where Esi-Awotwe, formerly a lowly soldier of Prince Samuel's royal impi, beamed a big happy grin back. He was tending the cooking range and stirring a huge vat, from which a warm peppery smell flavoured the air.
"Good lad. Hard worker. Precious said she was right impressed at the way he cooked a warthog, and asked me to give him a go. Don't speak much Morporkian yet, but it's early days. He's doing me a batch of hot pepper sauce. For the deli operation. All your Howondalandian food requirements under one roof."(3)
"Is that the sauce with the unfortunate name, All?"
All Jolson's face darkened for a second.
"That hot pepper sauce, yes. The one your colleague Corporal Nobbs insisted on buying half a dozen bottles of, because everyone he knew might fancy a laugh."
Colon nodded. "Arch-Chancellor Ridcully was well impressed, once he got past the name." Colon said, soothing him. "Bought a crate. Said it was just the thing he needed to give WowWow Sauce a new kick."
"Can't understand it, meself." All Jolson said. "Back home, the word just means "pepper"."(4)
"No accounting for folk, All." Colon said, with a straight face. "How's Precious? Ain't seen her much since she got back from foreign parts."
All Jolson beamed with pride and magnanimously overlooked "foreign parts".
"Fred, we're both made up with her now she's a Sergeant, like you!"
Fred Colon sighed, deeply. He always had mixed feelings when a fairly new Watchman got promoted to Sergeant. Part of him somehow felt it wasn't right, that they lacked his length of service. Sam Vimes had said that however many Sergeants there were in the Watch, Fred had a unique position – he was the Sergeant, the senior Sergeant, as befitted his unique position. The one other Sergeants used as a role-model. (5) This made him feel better about it. And besides, hadn't he nurtured young Precious and trained her, passed on his wealth of knowledge? She wouldn't be where she is today without me, he reflected. He felt proud of her.
"It's only right." Fred said. "The girl done well in Howondaland. 'Sides, if we're training all those dar… the new men… to go home and be Watchmen there for this new Prince, only right she gets the stripes. She here today? I notice as how it's her day off roster."
All Jolson beamed, benevolently.
"She's out back in her aviaries, Fred. Tending her birds. I'll tell her you're here. Ah. Here's me new waitress. Marisota?"
Fred bit back a yelp and a gasp. The new table waitress moved with surprising grace and delicacy. For a woman who was over seven feet tall. It wasn't that she was fat or out of proportion. Far from it. Whoever had worked out her proportions had got them right, but hadn't known when to stop proportioning her. She was dressed in modest Ankh-Morporkian clothing, a drab black dress with white apron, and seemed to be accepting the uncomfortable clothing. Fred had heard they wore much less at home. The lacy doily cap looked… well, a finishing touch.
"Sad story." All said, soberly. "Apparently all she ever wanted to be was a serving girl, a handmaiden to the Royal Family. But when she din't stop growing, they took her off and told her she was training as an Amazon warrior and a lethal implacable killing machine. Wrong shape to be a serving girl or a royal maid, see. When Precious found out, she asked me to at least give her a try. Good girl, hard worker. Her heart was never really in Amazon warrioring. Though she's useful to have around if we ever get difficult customers."
Fred noted Marisota had faint traces of old bruising to her face and when you looked closely, a reset broken nose, probably sorted out by those clever Igor buggers.
"Her first meeting with Precious." All said. "I gotta say this for my girl, she felt bad about having to fight her and beat her unconscious. Felt she had to make up, somehow."
Fred looked up, a long way up, into Marisota's happy smiling face and felt glad Precious was on his side.
"You want from menu?" Marisota said, as if she'd learnt the Morporkian from rote. "Sir ready order now?"
"Pickin' up the language a treat." All said, happily. "I tell you, Fred. Grand workers!"
He lowered his voice.
"And I'm watchin' young Esi over there." he said. "Him and Precious seem to be workin' out an understanding. Not that I'm opposed, necessarily. Good lad, steady worker, got prospects. But I'm still her father."
Fred grinned. He had a daughter or two. He knew how it worked out.
"You just got to wait and see, All." He said, kindly, father to father. "I got two sons in law and they're not bad lads."
Precious Jolson released the two new birds into the aviary cage set aside for them. It was nice Johanna had remembered, in the middle of her other concerns. One of the last cargo flights from the city had included several transit cages, a sack of bird-food, and an incubator for eggs. Johanna and Ponder had set off for the Rimwards, and her last words to Precious had been to use her downtime productively. She understood, and had spent a couple of days setting humane traps in likely places and scouting for nests. A pair of the birds that needed really specialist handling, together with incubating eggs, had been taken to the Zoo. But here, Precious capitalised on the heat released from her father's kitchens – a twenty-four hour operation – to warm those cages that needed warmth. Some of the Dwarf officers of the Watch had helped engineer the heat-exchange machinery required to optimise surplus heat from the kitchens, to keep the tropical aviary thriving even in winter. Even the Zoo had found something to learn here. As so often happens, backyard technology built on the spot to address a need had become state-of-the-art.
An even larger woman than Precious was helping in the aviary, still shuffling awkwardly on a healing leg rebuilt by Igors. Precious appreciated the incredibly gentle touch she had, together with the way she could reach some of the higher perches without needing to stretch or use a ladder. The former Amazon warrior called Adetouna complained that the new kneecap installed by the Igors felt a little odd, as if it had a mind of its own, somehow.(6) But she was grateful she could walk again. After convalescence, she was to go to the barracks and help retrain the soldiers, she knew. But for now, being amongst the beautiful birds would be enough for her.
Emmanuelle-Marie Lapoignard les Deux-Epées consoled her grieving husband. She had always maintained that just because you had the occasional little affair while he was away for ten months of the year, it did not mean you did not love your husband. But then, you are not Quirmian, alors. Right now, she was loving, attentive and solicitous to his needs in the aftermath of the regrettable, but expected, death of his mother. As could be expected from the new Comptesse de Lapoignard.
She smiled to herself. Truly, everyone who had been on the Howondalandian Adventure had received promotion. And she need not visit that accursed continent ever again, so long as she lived.
(1) Ponder did this sort of thing to relax after a hard morning with Ridcully and the Faculty.
(2) This is taken from a real physics paper, slightly reworded for the Discworld.
(3) All Jolson's Howondalandian Food Emporium! For all the tastes of the continent! Whether you want that Matabele pepper sauce, White Howondalandian biltong in various flavours, mealiepap, ostrich meat, bobotie, pap und vleis, boerewois, isidudu, boophone, gesmorde vis, chakalaka, amasi, mashonza, pampoenkoekies, snoek, umvovu, umphoqoku, or zebra, as well as a thousand other foods, we've got it! Why not try our takeaway menu? Bunny-chow, sosatie, trotters and beans, and a dozen other popular foods such as boerewois-inna-bun! NB – Strictly No Bushmeat! Librarian-certified. He comes and checks.
(4) We are of course referring to the popular West African condiment "shitto sauce" here. Yes, really. White Brits cannot believe the name. West Africans running ethnic delis either fail to see the joke ("It's our word for "pepper", right?"), or else buy in extra quantities to sell to the British who are moved, out of humour, to hand over money in exchange for a bottle bearing that name. As they point out, you get the laugh, we get the money. And you might even try cooking with it and come back for more. It is rather good, like smoky tabasco or jalapeno.
(5) If only to know how not to do it. Although the fact that Fred was still alive after nearly forty years on the street was, to the thoughtful Watchman, worth learning about.
(6) The Igors assured her this was only to be expected and that the new kneecap might somehow "remember" the body it used to belong to. This was literally true, as the body in question belonged to the Nzambi N'lucki, who was currently lurching across Matabeleland intent on meeting Prince Samuel again. Adetouna had odd dreams about marching through the jungle, focused only on painfully killing her former employer. As she had her own reasons to hate Prince Samuel, she did not wonder too much about this. She would soon have a very pleasant dream indeed. From her point of view.