Twoflower had never fully understood the gulf in the exchange rate. The bag could quite easily set Cohen up with a small kingdom.
‘I’ll hand it over first chance I get,’ he said, and to his own surprise realised that he meant it.
‘Good. I’ve thought about something to give you, too.’
‘Oh, there’s no—’
Twoflower rummaged in the Luggage and produced a large sack. He began to fill it with clothes and money and the picture box until finally the Luggage was completely empty. The last thing he put in was his souvenir musical cigarette box with the shell-encrusted lid, carefully wrapped in soft paper.
‘It’s all yours,’ he said, shutting the Luggage’s lid. ‘I shan’t really need it any more, and it won’t fit on my wardrobe anyway.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘Well, I—of course, but—it’s yours. It follows you, not me.’
‘Luggage,’ said Twoflower, ‘this is Rincewind. You’re his, right?’
The Luggage slowly extended its legs, turned very deliberately and looked at Rincewind.
‘I don’t think it belongs to anyone but itself, really,’ said Twoflower.
‘Yes,’ said Rincewind uncertainly.
‘Well, that’s about it, then,’ said Twoflower. He held out his hand.
‘Goodbye, Rincewind. I’ll send you a postcard when I get home. Or something.’
‘Yes. Any time you’re passing, there’s bound to be someone here who knows where I am.’
‘Yes. Well. That’s it, then.’
‘That’s it, right enough.’
‘Right.’
‘Yep.’
Twoflower walked up the gangplank, which the impatient crew hauled up behind him.
The rowing drum started its beat and the ship was propelled slowly out onto the turbid waters of the Ankh, now back to their old level, where it caught the tide and turned towards the open sea.
Rincewind watched it until it was a dot. Then he looked down at the Luggage. It stared back at him.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Go away. I’m giving you to yourself, do you understand?’
He turned his back on it and stalked away. After a few seconds he was aware of the little footsteps behind him. He spun around.
‘I said I don’t want you!’ he snapped, and gave it a kick.
The Luggage sagged. Rincewind stalked away.
After he had gone a few yards he stopped and listened. There was no sound. When he turned the Luggage was where he had left it. It looked sort of huddled. Rincewind thought for a while.
‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
He turned his back and strode off to the University. After a few minutes the Luggage appeared to make up its mind, extended its legs again and padded after him. It didn’t see that it had a lot of choice.
They headed along the quay and into the city, two dots on a dwindling landscape which, as the perspective broadened, included a tiny ship starting out across a wide green sea that was but a part of a bright circling ocean on a cloud-swirled Disc on the back of four giant elephants that themselves stood on the shell of an enormous turtle.
Which soon became a glint among the stars, and disappeared.
The End
1
They won’t be described, since even the pretty ones looked like the offspring of an octopus and a bicycle. It is well known that things from undesirable universes are always seeking an entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the buses and closer to the shops.
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2
A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.
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3
An interesting metaphor. To nocturnal trolls, of course, the dawn of time lies in the future.
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4
Not precisely, of course. Trees didn’t burst into flame, people didn’t suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn’t flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be ‘not like molten gold’.
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5
No-one knows why, but all the most truly mysterious and magical items are bought from shops that appear and, after a trading life even briefer than a double-glazing company, vanish like smoke. There had been various attempts to explain this, all of which don’t fully account for the observed facts. These shops turn up anywhere in the universe, and their immediate non-existence in any particular city can normally be deduced from crowds of people wandering the streets clutching defunct magical items, ornate guarantee cards, and looking very suspiciously at brick walls.
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Annotations
1
The book’s title comes from the poem L'Allegro, written by John Milton in 1631:
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles
Such as hang on Hebe’s neck
And love to live in dimple sleek
Sport that wrinkled Care derides
And Laughter holding both his sides
Come and trip it as ye go
On the Light Fantastic toe.
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2
The reference is to the saying “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” (also known by its acronym ‘TANSTAAFL’, made popular by science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his classic novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, although the phrase was originally coined by American economist John Kenneth Galbraith).
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3
"Slightly foxed” is a term used primarily by antiquarian booksellers to denote that there is staining (usually due to Ferric OXide, hence ‘FOXed’) on the pages of a book. This does not usually reduce the value of the book, but booksellers tend to be scrupulous about such matters.
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4
Many people have commented on the last name of the 304th Chancellor of Unseen University: Weatherwax, and asked if there is a connection with Granny Weatherwax.
In Lords and Ladies, Terry supplies the following piece of dialogue (on p. 224/161) between Granny and Archchancellor Ridcully as an answer:
"'There was even a Weatherwax as Archchancellor, years ago,’ said Ridcully. ‘So I understand. Distant cousin. Never knew him,’ said Granny.”
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5
This is one of those candlesticks with a flat, saucer-like base, a short candleholder in the middle and a loop to grip it by at one side. ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ is a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, and traditional illustrations always show Willie going upstairs carrying a candle.
Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Upstairs and downstairs, in his nightgown.
Rapping at the windows, Crying through the lock,
‘Are the children all in bed? For it’s now eight o’clock.’
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6
The title the ancient Egyptians used for what we now call the Book of the Dead was The Book of Going Forth By Day. Note that in the UK until a few years ago the pubs opened at 11 a.m.
If you try really hard (one of my correspondents did) you can see this as a very elaborate joke via the chain: Around Elevenish —> Late in the morning —> Late —> Dead —> Book of the Dead. But I doubt if even Terry is that twisted.
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7
Amongst English (and Australian) children there exists the folk-belief that the seed-heads of dandelions can be used to tell the time. The method goes as follows: pick the dandelion, blow the seeds away, and the number of puffs it takes to get rid of all the seeds is the time, e.g. three puffs = three o’clock. As a result, the dandelion stalks with their globes of seeds are regularly referred to as a “dandelion clocks” in c
olloquial English.
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8
The magic eating its way through the ceilings with the wizards chasing it floor after floor vaguely resonates with the ‘alien blood’ scene in the movie Alien, where the acidic blood of the Alien burns through successive floors of the ship, with people running down after it.
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9
The original quote here dates back to 1777, and is by Samuel Johnson (a well-known harmless drudge): “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
Quite a few people have mistaken this quote for a reference to Douglas Adams. Of course Adams was simply parodying Johnson’s quote as well when he wrote (in Chapter 4 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe):
"[…] when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words ‘When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life’, the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight.”
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10
When someone on the net wondered if this scene had been influenced by Monty Python (who also do a Death-at-a-party sketch), Terry replied:
"No. I'm fairly honest about this stuff. I didn’t even see the film until long after the book was done. Once again, I'd say it’s an easy parallel—what with the Masque of the Red Death and stuff like that, the joke is just lying there waiting for anyone to pick it up.”
The Masque of the Red Death is a well-known story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the nobility, in a decadent and senseless attempt to escape from the plague that’s ravishing the land, lock themselves up a castle and hold a big party. At which a costumed personification of Death, of course, eventually turns up and claims everyone anyway.
It is perhaps also worth pointing out that the quoted sentence looks very much like a classic Tom Swiftie (if you can accept Death as a shade). Tom Swifties (after the famous series of boys’ novels which popularised them) are sentences of the form “xxx, said he zzz-ly”, where the zzz refers back to the xxx. Examples:
"Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily.
"Let’s look for another Grail!” Tom requested.
"I used to be a pilot,” Tom explained.
"I'm into homosexual necrophilia,” said Tom in dead earnest.
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11
The miscommunication between natives and foreign explorers Terry describes here occurs in our world as well. Or rather: it is rumoured, with stubborn regularity, to have occurred all over the globe. Really hard evidence, one way or the other, turns out to be surprisingly hard to come by. As Cecil Adams puts it in More of the Straight Dope: “Having now had the “I don’t know” yarn turn up in three different parts of the globe, I can draw one of two conclusions: either explorers are incredible saps, or somebody’s been pulling our leg.”
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12
Speaking of Tom Swifties…
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13
The cottage and the events alluded to a bit later (“‘Kids of today,’ commented Rincewind. ‘I blame the parents,’ said Twoflower.”) are straight out of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale by the brothers Grimm.
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14
Candyfloss is known as cotton candy in the US, or fairy floss in Australia. It’s the pink spun sugar you can eat at fairs and shows.
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15
A parody of the typical numerical pseudo-science tossed about regarding the Great Pyramid and the ‘cosmic truths’ (such as the distance from the Earth to the Sun) that the Egyptians supposedly incorporated into its measurements.
The remark about sharpening razor blades at the end of the paragraph is similarly a reference to the pseudo-scientific ‘fact’ that (small models of) pyramids are supposed to have, among many other powers, the ability to sharpen razor blades that are left underneath the pyramids overnight.
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16
From the first Conan The Barbarian movie (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger): “Conan! What is good in life?” “To crush your enemies, drive them before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” This quote, in turn, is lifted more or less verbatim from an actual conversation Genghiz Khan is supposed to have had with his lieutenants.
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17
Another fairy tale reference, this time to Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
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18
A mixture of “someone’s been eating my porridge” and “someone’s been sleeping in my bed”, both from the Goldilocks and the Three Bears fairy tale.
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19
An organisation with this name is also mentioned in the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
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20
The four fundamental forces that govern our universe are gravitation, electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.
The word ‘charm’ also resonates with the concept of quarks, the elementary quantum particles that the strong nuclear force in fact acts on.
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21
The bickering of the spells is cleared up somewhat by the creation passages on pp. 103/85-119/99 from Eric. It is quite clearly stated that first the Creator did an Egg and Cress (for Rincewind), then He Cleared His Throat, then He Read the Octavo (that’s the word then), which created the world and finally the primordial slime came into being because Rincewind couldn’t eat the Egg and Cress Sandwich and just dropped it on the beach. The Creator subcontracted for the firmament, so it isn’t quite clear when that came to be.
"In the beginning was the word” is of course also a biblical allusion to John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
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22
Caroc = Tarot and Ching Aling = I Ching: two ways of accessing the Distilled Wisdom of the Ancients, and all that. A minor inconsistency, by the way, is that on p. 24/24 there actually is a reference to Tarot cards.
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23
A reference to the Young Men’s Christian Association, YMCA. In our world the YMCA somehow became associated with the homosexual scene (I think quite a few people singing merrily along to the Village People’s disco hit ‘YMCA’ would have been very surprised to learn what the song was really about), hence the “studded collars and oiled muscles” bit.
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24
It’s always important never to look back if you’re rescuing somebody from Death’s domain. The best known example of this can be found in the tragic legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus went to fetch his departed loved one, talked Hades (the Greek version of Death) into it, but had to leave without looking back. Of course he looked—and she was gone forever. A contemporary retelling of the Orpheus legend can be found in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.
A few people have written and suggested a reference to Lot’s wife in Genesis 19:26 (who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back when they left Sodom and Gomorrah), but the fact that we’re talking about Death’s domain here indicates clearly to me that the Orpheus reference is the one Terry intended.
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25
A houri is actually a beautiful young girl found in the Moslem paradise. ‘Sherbet’ is a cooling Oriental fruit drink (also a frozen dessert) as well as a fizzy sweet powder children eat as a sweet, and which comes in a cardboard tube with a liquorice ‘straw’ at the top. To get to the sherbet you bite off the end of the liquorice and suck through it.
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26
A biriani is an Indian rice curry.
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27
This is the first mention of Creosote, whom we will later meet as a fully developed character in his own right, in Sourcery.
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The Light Fantastic d-2 Page 22