“Father, look, there's still coloured tiles on the—”

“Mine!”

“Mine!”

Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there.

“Dad, we don't have to—” Les began.

“You shut up! It's your future I'm thinking about, my lad—”

“Yes, but who cares who saw it first, Dad? We're both hundreds of miles from home! I mean, who's going to know, Dad?”

The two squid fishermen glared at one another.

The dripping buildings rose above them. There were holes that might well have been doorways, and glassless apertures that could have been windows, but all was darkness within. Now and again, Les fancied he could hear something slithering.

Solid Jackson coughed. “The lad's right,” he muttered. “Daft to argue. Just the four of us.”

“Indeed,” said Arif.

They backed away, each man carefully watching the other. Then, so closely that it was a chorus, they both yelled: “Grab the boat!”

There was a confused couple of moments and then each pair, boat carried over their heads, ran and slithered along the muddy streets.

They had to stop and come back, with mutual cries of “A kidnapper as well, eh?”, to get the right sons.

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

The weathercocks of Ankh-Morpork creaked around in the wind.

Very few of them were in fact representations of Avis domestica.