“Suit yourself.” The imp tapped the side of the box meaningfully. “We’ll see who sinks first.”
The luggage yawned, and moved forward a fraction of an inch.
“Oh all right,” said Rincewind irritably. “But you’ll have to give me time to think.”
The luggage backed off slowly. Rincewind edged his way back onto reasonably safe land and sat down with his back against a wall. Across the river the lights of Ankh city glowed.
“You’re a wizard,” said the picture imp. “You’ll think of some way to find him.”
“Not much of a wizard, I’m afraid.”
“You can just jump down on everyone and turn them into worms,” the imp added encouragingly, ignoring his last remark.
“No. Turning To Animals is an Eighth Level spell. I never even completed my training. I only know one spell.”
“Well, that’ll do.”
“I doubt it,” said Rincewind hopelessly
“What does it do, then?”
“Can’t tell you. Don’t really want to talk about it. But frankly,” he sighed , “no spells are much good. It takes three months to commit even a simple one to memory, and then once you’ve used it, pow it’s gone. that’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing, You know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t
remember what happens next.”
“I never thought of it like that,” said the imp.
“Hey, look -this is all wrong. When Twoflower said they’d got better kind of magic in the empire I thought- I thought…”
The imp looked at him expectantly. Rincewind cursed to himself.
“Well, if you must know, I thought he didn’t mean magic. Not as such.”
“What else is there, then?”
Rincewind began to feel really wretched. “I don’t know,” he said. “A better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense in it. Harnessing - harnessing the lightning, or something.”
The imp gave him a kind but pitying look.
“Lightning is the spears hurled by the thunder giants when they fight,” it said gently, “established meteorological fact. You can’t harness it.”
“I know,” said Rincewind miserably. That’s the flaw in the argument, of course.”
The imp nodded. and disappeared into the depths of the iconograph. A few moments later Rincewind smelled bacon frying. He waited until his stomach couldn’t stand the strain any more, and rapped on the box. The imp reappeared.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” it said even before Rincewind could open his mouth. “And even if you could get a harness on it, how could you get it to pull a cart?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Lightning. It just goes up and down. “You’d want it to go along, not up and down. Anyway, it’d probably burn through the harness.”
“I don’t care about the lightning! How can I think on an empty stomach?”
“Eat something, then. That’s logic.”
“How? Every time I move that damn box flexes its hinges at me!”
The luggage, on cue, gaped widely.