Challenge #01909-E085: Some Bargain
"Oook!" Life was so much better. With a tip of the hat to Sir Terry. -- Anon Guest
When you got right down to it, being transformed into one of the great apes wasn't that bad. Living expenses became super-cheap when all one needed was a hanging tyre and a blanket or three in a corner. The diet was bland, but affordable. Especially if one knew a guy who knew a guy who worked in gardening and could supply an ape with the right kind of prunings.
And, more to the point, nobody argued about late fees. Nobody with an ounce of sense or sensibility would argue with over five hundred pounds of deceptively flaccid muscle.
And yet, despite all that foreknowledge, someone was.
"Listen," said the beautiful stranger. "This book can't be part of your system, because it's never been in your system. We. Came. From... Somewhere else. And I was just checking to see if this kind of information was valuable. I can't be returning it... because it never came from here. We clear?"
"Ook," said the Librarian.
"What do you mean, all libraries are one? This didn't even come from this fucked-up reality."
The Librarian explained, through complicated gestures, the equation of L-Space. Knowledge equals power equals energy equals mass. Enough mass, and you can bend reality itself so that it connects with others.
To which the stranger with the scarf around his head smacked his forehead. "Gods, I keep forgetting that this is a P-class Impossible World..." And he raked his fingers through his golden hair.
Dislodging the scarf.
And displaying distinctly Elven ears.
"Eek!"
He swore. "No, no, nonononono... I'm not that kind of Elf. I come in peace. I swear." In fact, the ears were way more mobile than the ones the Librarian was familiar with, and they quickly vanished under the cover of the scarf again. "Humour me for like five minutes and I will make you the best banoffee pie you've ever tasted. Deal?"
"Ook?"
"No tricks. Swear on my sister's life."
That... read as surprisingly genuine. "Ook," he agreed.
They shook, and the Elf in the red robes winced a little at the grip. "...hachi machi... Okay. Here's the book. You just try and put it back where it came from. Not when it came from, but where it came from. Present day. I will wait right here until you come back."
The Librarian took the book and knuckled into the far reaches of L-space, treading pathways that he knew well until...
There was a void.
He backtracked, found another route. Came about it by another way. Void. He backtracked again. Climbing the shelves as only an orang-utan could. Void.
Void. Void. Void, and more void.
He finally came back and slammed the book on the desk. "Ook!"
"Ready to listen?" The red robes had shifted as he had been busy scribing something carefully down. There was a patch on the left breast. A large circle with twelve, differently-coloured circles spaced around its edge. The initials I.P.R.E. and a word, Taako underneath.
The Librarian folded his arms. "Ook."
"You can't put it back because the library it belongs to and the world it was on and the reality it was in has been... well... eaten."
"Eeek!"
"Me and my crew are trying to stop that happening here."
"Ook! Ook ook!"
"Thank you," said Taako from IPRE. "I'd like to help you... help us... save the world. And there's no way in hell that I can afford your late fees. So are we... good?"
"Ook," said the Librarian.
"Of course I'm cooking the pie. We had a deal. Fine. Show me to the kitchens."
The Librarian let Rincewind take him down there, and then examined the piece of paper that Taako had been writing so carefully on. It was a recipe. A very detailed, impossible-to-mess-up, careful recipe that spoke volumes of having to deal with many and varied time-keeping measures.
But an Elf was an Elf. And Rincewind was the best at detecting any kind of dangerous duplicity. Which, as it turned out, he didn't. The Librarian had thought that he would never meet even a temporarily honest Elf, but in an infinite universe, all things were possible.
Even an Elf named similarly to a food product, though he was far too polite to mention it to him.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / martinturzak]
If you like my stories, please Check out my blog and Follow me.
Send me a prompt [9remaining prompts!] PLEASE send prompts!
it's delicious, very suitable to eat with the family, nice post