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said.
    He looked down.
    “Aargh,” he said, and closed his eyes.
    It was a better world in the darkness behind his eyelids. If he tapped his foot he could persuade himself that he could feel the floor, he could know that he was really standing in the room, and that the urgent signals from all his other senses, which were telling him that he was suspended in the airsome thousand miles or so above the Disc, were just a bad dream he’d wake up from. He hastily canceled that thought. If he was asleep he’d prefer to stay that way. You could fly in dreams. If he woke up, it was a long way to fall.
    Perhaps I have died and I really am a demon, he thought.
    It was an interesting point.
    He opened his eyes again.
    “Wow!” said Eric, his eyes gleaming. “Can I have all of it?”
    The boy was standing in the same position as he had been in the room. So was the Luggage. So, to Rincewind’s annoyance, was the parrot. It was perching in midair, looking speculatively at the cosmic panorama below.
    The Disc might almost have been designed to be seen from space; it hadn’t, Rincewind was damn sure, been designed to be lived on. But he had to admit that it was impressive.
    The sun was about to rise on the far rim and made a line of fire that glittered around half the circumference. A long slow dawn was just beginning its sweep across the dark, massive landscape.
    Below, harshly lit in the arid vacuum of space,Great A’Tuin the world turtle toiled under the weight of Creation. On his—or her, the matter had never really been resolved—carapace the four giant elephants strained to support the Disc itself.
    There might have been more efficient ways to build a world. You might start with a ball of molten iron and then coat it with successive layers of rock, like an old-fashioned gobstopper. And you’d have a very efficient planet, but it wouldn’t look so nice. Besides, things would drop off the bottom.
    “Pretty good,” said the parrot. “Polly want a continent.”
    “It’s so big ,” breathed Eric.
    “Yes,” said Rincewind flatly.
    He felt that something more was expected of him.
    “Don’t break it,” he added.
    He had a nagging doubt about all this. If he was for the sake of argument a demon, and so many things had happened to him recently he was prepared to concede that he might have died and not noticed it in the confusion, * then he still didn’tquite see how the world was his to give away. He was pretty sure that it had owners who felt the same way.
    Also, he was sure that a demon had to get something in writing.
    “I think you have to sign for it,” he said. “In blood.”
    “Whose?” said Eric.
    “Yours, I think,” said Rincewind. “Or bird blood will do, in a pinch.” He glared meaningfully at the parrot, which growled at him.
    “Aren’t I allowed to try it out first?”
    “What?”
    “Well, supposing it doesn’t work? I’m not signing for it until I’ve seen it work.”
    Rincewind stared at the boy. Then he looked down at the broad panorama of the kingdoms of the world. I wonder if I was like him at his age? he thought. I wonder how I survived?
    “It’s the world,” he said patiently. “Of course it will bloody well work. I mean, look at it. Hurricanes, continental drift, rainfall cycle—it’s all there. All ticking over like a bloody watch. It’ll last you a lifetime, a world like that. Used carefully.”
    Eric gave the world a critical examination. Hewore the expression of someone who knows that all the best gifts in life seem to require the psychic equivalent of two U2 batteries and the shops won’t be open until after the holidays.
    “There’s got to be tribute,” he said flatly.
    “What?”
    “The kings of the world,” said Eric. “They’ve got to pay me tribute.”
    “You’ve really been studying this, haven’t you,” said Rincewind sarcastically. “Just tribute? You don’t fancy the moon while we’re up here? This week’s special offer, one free satellite with