'Now pass me a piece of red pepper .
And the sun shone on the delta, that little infinity of reed beds and mud banks where the Djel was laying down the silt of the continent. Wading birds bobbed for food in the green maze of stems, and billions of zig-zag midges danced over the brackish water. Here at least time had always passed, as the delta breathed twice daily the cold, fresh water of the tide.
It was coming in now, the foam-crested cusp of it trickling between the reeds.
Here and there soaked and ancient bandages unwound, wriggled for a while like incredibly old snakes and then, with the mininum of fuss, dissolved.
THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR.
We 're sorry. It's not our fault.
HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE?
More than 1,300, I'm afraid.
VERY WELL, THEN. PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE.
You Bastard was regarding his empty hay rack.
It represented a sub-array in the general cluster 'hay', containing arbitrary values between zero and K.
It didn't have any hay in it. It might in fact have a negative value of hay in it, but to the hungry stomach the difference between no hay and minus-hay was not of particular interest.
It didn't matter how he worked it out, the answer was always the same. It was an equation of classical simplicity. It had a certain clean elegance which he was not, currently, in a position to admire.
You Bastard felt ill-used and hard done by. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, however, since that is the normal state of mind for a camel. He knelt patiently while Teppic packed the saddlebags.
'We'll avoid Ephebe,' Teppic said, ostensibly to the camel. 'We'll go up the end of the Circle Sea, perhaps to Quirm or over the Ramtops. There's all sorts of places. Maybe we'll even look for a few of those cities, eh? I expect you'd like that.'
It's a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole.
The door at the far end of the stable swung open. It was a priest. He looked rather flustered. The priests had been doing a lot of unaccustomed running around today.
'Er,' he began. 'Her majesty commands you not to leave the kingdom.'
He coughed.
He said, 'Is there a reply?'
Teppic considered. 'No,' he said, 'I don't think so.'
'So I shall tell her that you will be attending on her presently, shall I?' said the priest hopefully.
'No.'
'It's all very well for you to say,' said the priest sourly, and slunk off.
He was replaced a few minutes later by Koomi, very red in the face.
'Her majesty requests that you do not leave the kingdom,' he said.
Teppic climbed on to You Bastard's back, and tapped the camel lightly, with a prod.
'She really means it,' said Koomi.
'I'm sure she does.'
'She could have you thrown to the sacred crocodiles, you know.'