The Darkside Of The Sun
Page 1
Terry Pratchett
THE DARK SIDE
OF THE SUN
A DISCWORLD® NOVEL
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
About the Author
Also by the Author
The Dark Side of the Sun
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN: 9781407035567
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
A CORGI BOOK : 9780552133265
Originally published in Great Britain by Colin Smythe Ltd
PRINTING HISTORY
Colin Smythe edition published 1976
NEL edition published 1978
Corgi edition published 1998
27 29 30 28
Copyright © by Colin Smythe Ltd 1976
The right of Terry Pratchett to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
Condition of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
Set in 11/13pt Palatino by
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Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the Discworld series, started in 1983 with The Colour of Magic, and which has now reached 38 novels. Worldwide sales of his books are now 60 million, and they have been translated into 37 languages. Terry Pratchett was knighted for services to literature in 2009.
The Discworld Series is a continuous history of a world not totally unlike our own except that it is a flat disc carried on the backs of four elephants astride a giant turtle floating through space, and that it is peopled by, among others, wizards, dwarves, policemen, thieves, beggars, vampires and witches. Within the history of Discworld there are many individual stories, which can be read in any order, but reading them in sequence can increase your enjoyment through the accumulation of all the fine detail that contributes to the teeming imaginative complexity of this brilliantly conceived world.
1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC
2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
3. EQUAL RITES
4. MORT
5. SOURCERY
6. WYRD SISTERS
7. PYRAMIDS
8. GUARDS! GUARDS!
9. ERIC
(illustrated by Josh Kirby)
10. MOVING PICTURES
11. REAPER MAN
12. WITCHES ABROAD
13. SMALL GODS
14. LORDS AND LADIES
15. MEN AT ARMS
16. SOUL MUSIC
17. INTERESTING TIMES
18. MASKERADE
19. FEET OF CLAY
20. HOGFATHER
21. JINGO
22. THE LAST CONTINENT
23. CARPE JUGULUM
24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT
25. THE TRUTH
26. THIEF OF TIME
27. THE LAST HERO
(illustrated by Josh Kirby)
28. THE AMAZING MAURICE &
HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for younger readers)
29. NIGHT WATCH
30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for younger readers)
31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT
32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for younger readers)
33. GOING POSTAL
34. THUD!
35. WINTERSMITH (for younger readers)
36. MAKING MONEY
37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS
38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for younger readers)
----------Other books about Discworld----------
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD
(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE
(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III:
DARWIN’S WATCH
(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
THE NEW DISCWORLD COMPANION
(with Stephen Briggs)
NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK
(with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)
THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO
(with Paul Kidby)
THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK
(with Bernard Pearson)
THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK
(with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson)
WHERE’S MY COW?
(illustrated by Melvyn Grant)
THE ART OF DISCWORLD
(with Paul Kidby)
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD
(compiled by Stephen Briggs)
THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD
(with Jacqueline Simpson)
----------Discworld Maps----------
THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK
(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)
THE DISCWORLD MAPP
(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)
A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE –
A DISCWORLD MAPP
(with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)
DEATH’S DOMAIN
(with Paul Kidby)
A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk
----------Non-Discworld books----------
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
STRATA
THE UNADULTERATED CAT
(illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)
GOOD OMENS
(with Neil Gaiman)
--Non-Discworld novels for younger readers--
THE CARPET PEOPLE
TRUCKERS
DIGGERS
WINGS
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND*
JOHNNY AND THE DEAD
JOHNNY AND THE BOMB
NATION
*www.ifnotyouthenwho.com
THE DARK SIDE
OF THE SUN
1
‘Only predict.’
Charles Sub-Lunar, from The Lights In The Sky Are Photofloods
In the false dawn a warm wind blew out of the east, shaking the dry reed cases.
The marsh mist broke into ribbons and curled away. Small night creatures burrowed hastily into the slime. In the distance, hidden by the baroque mist curls, a night bird screeched in the floating reed beds.
In one of the big lakes near the open sea three delicate white windshells hoisted their papery sails and tacked slowly towards the incoming surf.
Dom waited just beyond the breakers, two metres below the dancing surface, a thin stream of bubbles rising from his gill pack. He heard the shells long before he saw them. They sounded like skates on distant ice.
He grinned to himself. There would only be one chance. Some of those pretty trailing tendrils were lethal. There might never be another chance, ever. He tensed.
And knifed upwards.
The shell bucked violently as he grabbed the blunt prow, and he swung his legs hard over to avoid hitting the dangling green fronds. The world dissolved into a salt-tasting, cold white bubble of foam. Small silver fish slipped desperately past him, and then he was lying across the upper hull.
The shell had gone berserk, flailing with the bony mast in great slow sweeps. Dom watched it, getting his breath back, and then half-leapt, half-scrambled to the big white bulge near the base of the mast.
A shadow passed over him, and he rolled to one side as the mast nicked a furrow in the hull. As it passed he followed it, grabbed at the nerve knot, and pulled himself forward.
His fingers sought for the right spot. He found it.
The shell stopped its frenzied rush through the wavetops, hitting the water again with a slap that jarred Dom’s teeth. The sail wavered uncertainly.
Dom continued stroking until the creature was soothed and then stood up.
It didn’t count unless you stood up. The best dagon fishers could ride a shell with their toes. How he had envied them – and how carefully he had watched from the family barge on feast days, when the fishermen came in two or three hundred abreast on their half-tame shells with See-Why setting, a bright purple star, into the sea. Some of the younger men danced on their shells, spinning and leaping and juggling torches and all the time keeping the shell under perfect control.
Kneeling in front of the nerve knot he guided the big semi-vegetable back through the twisting waterways of the marsh, through acres of sea lilies and past floating reed islands. On several of them blue flamingoes hissed at him and stalked imperiously away.
Occasionally he glanced up and northwards, searching for tell-tale specks in the air. Korodore would find him eventually, but Dom was pretty certain that he wouldn’t pick him up straight away. He’d probably keep him under benevolent observation for a few hours because, after all, Korodore had been young once. Even Korodore. Whereas Grandmother gave the impression that she had been born aged eighty.
Besides, Korodore would bear in mind that tomorrow Dom would be Chairman and legally his boss. Dom doubted if that would influence him one jot. Old Korodore relished duty if it came sternly …
He smiled proudly as the shell cut smoothly through the quiet water. At least the fishermen would not be able to call him a blackhand, even if he wasn’t quite a fully fledged greenhand. That last initiation of the dagon fishermen could only be got out in the deeps, on a moonlit night, when the dagons rose out of the deep with their razor-sharp shells agape.
The shell bumped against the reed bed and Dom leapt lightly ashore, leaving it drifting in the little lagoon.
Joker’s Tower, which had been dominating the western sky, looked up before him. He hurried forward.
See-Why had risen and bathed the slim pyramid in pink light. The mist had left the reed beds round the base but the apex, five miles above the sea, was lost in perpetual cloud. Dom pushed his way through the dry reeds until he was within half a metre of the smooth, milkwhite wall.
He reached out gingerly.
Hrsh-Hgn had once, realizing vaguely that interminable lectures on planetary economics might not be palatable fare for a boy, smiled and switched off the faxboard. He had fetched his copy of Sub-Lunar’s Galactic Chronicles and told Dom about the Jokers.
‘Name the races classed as Human under the Humanity Act,’ he began.
‘Phnobes, men, drosks and the First Sirian Bank,’ Dom rattled off. ‘Also Class Five robots by Sub-Clause One may apply for Human status.’
‘Yess. And the other racess?’
Dom ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Creapii are Super-Human, Class Four robots are subhuman, sundogs are unclassified.’
‘Yess?’
‘The other races I’m not sure about,’ admitted Dom. ‘The Jovians and the rest. You never taught me anything about them.’
‘It iss not necessary. They are so alien, you undersstand. We share no common ground. Things humanity considers universal among self-aware races – a sense of identity, for example – are merely products of a temperate bipedal evolution. But all the fifty-two races so far discovered arose in the last five million standard years.’
‘You told me about that yesterday,’ said Dom, ‘Sub-Lunar’s Theory of Galactic Sapience.’
Then the phnobe had told him about the Jokers. The Creapii had found the first Joker tower and, all else having failed to open it, had dropped a live nigrocavernal matrix on it. The tower was later found to be intact. Three neighbouring stellar systems had been wrecked, however.
The phnobes never discovered a Joker tower: they had always known of one. The tower of Phnobis, rising from the sea into the perpetual cloud cover, was the cause and basis of the planet-wide Frss-Gnhs religion – literally, Pillar of the Universe.
Earth-human colonists had found seven, one of them floating in the asteroid belt of the Old Sol system. That was when the Joker Institute was set up.
The young races of men, Creapii, phnobe and drosk found themselves watching one another in awe across a galaxy littered with the memories of a race that had died before human time began. And out of that awe arose the legends of Jokers World, the glittering goal that was to taunt adventurers and fools and treasure hunters across the light years …
Dom touched the tower. There was the faintest tingle, a sudden stab of pain. He leapt back, frantically rubbing life back into his frozen fingers. The coldness of the towers was always greatest at noon, when they drank in heat, yet grew icy.
Dom set off round the tower, feeling the cold reaching out towards him. Looking up he thought he saw the air within a foot of the smooth walls darken, as if light was just a gas and was being sucked in by the spire. It wasn’t logical, but the idea had a certain artistic appeal.
Towards noon a security flyer glittered briefly on the western horizon, heading south. Dom stepped sideways into a clump of reeds … And wondered what he was doing in the marsh. Freedom, that was it. The last day of real freedom. His last chance to see Widdershins without a security guard standing on either side of him and a score of more subtle protections all round. He had planned it, down to squashing Korodore’s ubiquitous robot insects that spied on him – always for his own protection – in his bedroom.
And now he’d have to go home and face Grandmother. He was beginning to feel just a little foolish. He wondered what he had expected from the tower: some feeling of cosmic awe, probably, a sense of the deeps of Time. Certainly not this sinister, insidious sensation of being watched. It was just like being at home.
He turned back.
There was a hiss of superheated air as something passed his face and struck the tower. Where it hit the frozen wall the heat blossomed into a flower of ice crystals.
Dom dived instinctively, rolled over and over and was up and running. A second blast passed him and a dry seed head in front of him exploded into a shower of sparks.
He stifled the urge to look round. Korodore had schooled him unmercifully in assassination drill. Knowing who was the assassin was small reward for being assassinated. Korodore said, ‘The
price of curiosity is a terminal experience.’
At the edge of the lagoon Dom gathered himself and dived. As he hit the water the third blast seared across his chest.
Great bells rang, far out to sea or maybe in his head. The cool greenness was soothing, and the bubbles …
Dom awoke. With an inculcated instinct he kept his eyes closed and tentatively explored his environment.
He was lying on the mixture of sand, ooze, dry reed stems and snail shells that passed for soil on most of Widdershins. He was in shade, and the thunder of surf was very near. And the soil rocked, gently, to the beat of the waves. The air smelled and tasted of salt, mingled with marsh ooze, reed pollen and … something else. It was dank and musty, and very familiar.
Something was sitting a few inches away. Dom opened one eye a fraction and saw a small creature watching him intently. Its dumpy body was covered in pink hair which sprouted from a scaly hide. A snout was a bad compromise between a beak and a prehensile nose. It had three pairs of legs, no two exactly alike. It was almost a Widdershins legend.
Behind Dom someone lit a fire. He tried to sit up and it felt as though a red-hot bar had been laid across his chest.
‘O juvindo may psutivi,’ said a gentle voice.
A face out of a nightmare appeared above him. The skin was grey and hung in folds under eyes four times the proper size in which small irises stared out like beads in milk. Great flat ears were turned towards Dom. The musty smell was overpowering. The face was set off by a pair of large sungoggles.
The phnobe was trying to speak Janglic. Dom summoned his resources and answered him in jaw-breaking phnobic.
‘A sscholar,’ said the phnobe, dryly. ‘My name is Fff-Shs. And you are Chairman Sabalos.’
‘Not till tomorrow,’ moaned Dom. He winced as the pain came again.
‘Ah. Yess. Do not on any account make ssudden movementss. I have treated the burn. It iss superficial.’
The phnobe stood up and walked out of Dom’s vision. The small creature still watched him intently.
Dom turned his head slowly. He was lying in a small clearing in the centre of one of the floating islands that thronged the marsh rhines. It was moving slowly and, remarkably, against the wind. From somewhere below the reed mat came the occasional deep pulse of an antique deuterium motor.