MR 13

[KingSize]

‘Oh, yes?’
‘You are a friend of his?’ said Otto.
‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Zere is a problem . . .’
‘He’s got twitchy because he has run out of coffee?’
‘Alas, if only it vas that simple.’ Otto looked awkward. ‘You have to
understand
that ven a vampire forgoes . . . the b-vord, there is a process that
ve call transference?
Ve force ourselves to desire something else? For me this vas not
painful. I crave the
perfection of light and shade. Pictures are my life! But your friend
chose . . . coffee.
And now he has none.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘I vunder if you do. It probably seemed so sensible to him. It is a
human craving,
and no one minds if you say, as it might be, “I am dying for a cup of
coffee”, or “I’d
kill for a cup of coffee”. But without coffee, he vill, I am
afraid . . . revert. You
understand, this is very difficult for me to talk about. . .’ Otto
trailed off.
‘By revert you mean . . . ?’
‘First vill come mild delusions, I think. A psychic susceptibility to
all kinds of
influences from who knows vhere, and vampires can hallucinate so
stronkly zat zey
can be contagious. I zink zat is happening already. He vill
become . . . erratic. This
may last for several days. And then his conditioning vill break and he
vill be, vunce
again, a true vampire. No more Mr Nice Coffee Drinker Guy.’
‘Can’t I do anything to help him?’
Otto reverentially laid his picture box in the back of the cart, and
turned to her.
‘You can find him some coffee, or . . . you can keep a vooden stake
and a big knife
ready. You vould be doink him a favour, believe me.’
‘I can’t do that!’
Otto shrugged. ‘Find someone who vill.’
‘He is amazing!’ said de Worde, as the cart rocked back down through
the trees. ‘I
know the clacks is against your religion, but he seems to understand
all about it.’
‘Like I said, sir, he assesses stuff,’ said Jackrum, beaming. ‘Mind
like a razor.’
‘He was talking about clacks algorithms that the companies are only
just now
investigating,’ said de Worde. ‘That department he was talking about—’
‘Ah, I can see nothing gets past you, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Very hush-
hush. Can’t
talk about it.’
‘To be frank, sergeant, I’d always assumed that Borogravia was,
well . . .
backward.’
Jackrum’s smile was waxy and bright. ‘If we seem to be a long way
back, sir, it’s
only so’s we can get a good run-up.’
‘You know, sergeant, it’s a great shame to see a mind like that
wasted,’ said de
Worde, as the cart lurched in a rut. ‘This is not an age of heroes and
famous last
stands and death-or-glory charges. Do your men a favour and try to
tell him that, will
you?’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Here is your road, sir.
Where will you
be heading now?’
‘To the Kneck valley, sergeant. This is a good story, sergeant. Thank
you. Allow
me to shake you by the hand.’
‘Glad to hear you think that, sir,’ said Jackrum, extending his hand.
Polly heard the
faint clink of coins in their passage from palm to palm. De Worde took
the reins.
‘But I must tell you, sergeant, that we’ll probably send off our stuff
by pigeon
within the hour,’ he said. ‘We will have to say you have prisoners.’
‘Don’t worry about that, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘By the time their mates
come out here
to rescue those gallopers, we’ll be halfway back to the mountains. Our
mountains.’
They parted. Jackrum watched them out of sight, and turned to Polly.
‘Him with his airs and graces,’ he said. ‘Did you see that? He
insulted me by
giving me a tip!’ He glanced at his palm. ‘Hmm, five Morpork dollars?
Well, at least
he’s a man who knows how to insult you handsomely,’ he added, and the
coins
disappeared into his jacket with remarkable speed.
‘I think he wants to help us, sarge,’ said Polly.
Jackrum ignored that. ‘I hate bloody Ankh-Morpork,’ he said. ‘Who’re
they to tell
us what to do? Who cares what they think?’
‘Do you think we can really join up with deserters, sarge?’
‘Nope. They deserted once, what’s to stop ‘em a second time? They spat
on the
Duchess when they deserted, they can’t kiss and make up now. You get
one kiss,
that’s all.’
‘But Lieutenant Blouse—’
‘The rupert should stick to sums. He thinks he’s a soldier. Never
walked on a
battlefield in his life. All that rubbish he gave your man was death-
or-glory stuff. And
I’ll tell you, Perks, I’ve seen Death more often than I care to
remember, but I’ve never
clapped eyes on Glory. I’m all for sending the fools to look for us
where we ain’t,
though.’
‘He’s not my man, sarge,’ said Polly.
‘Yeah, well, you’re at home with the writin’ and readin’,’ grumbled
Jackrum. ‘You
can’t trust the people who do that stuff. They mess around with the
world, and it turns
out everything you know is wrong.’
They reached the gully again. The squad had come back from their
various hiding
places, and most were clustered around one of the newspapers. For the
first time,
Polly saw the Picture.
It was actually quite good, especially of Shufti and Wazzer. She was
mostly hidden
by the bulk of Jackrum. But you could see the sullen cavalrymen behind
them, and
their expressions were a picture in themselves.
‘It’s a good one of Tonker,’ said Igorina, who didn’t lisp so much
when there were
no officers to hear.
‘Do you think having a picture like this is an Abomination in the Eyes
of Nuggan?’
said Shufti nervously.
‘Probably,’ said Polly absent-mindedly. ‘Most things are.’ She ran her
eye down
the text next to the picture. It was full of phrases like ‘plucky farm
boys’ and
‘humiliation of some of Zlobenia’s best troops’ and ‘sting in the
tail’. She could see
why it had caused trouble.
She rustled through the other pages. They were crammed with strange
stories about
places she’d never heard of, and pictures of people she didn’t
recognize. But one page
was a mass of grey text, under a line of much bigger printing which
read:
Why This Mad State Must Be Stopped
Bewildered, her eye picked up phrases from the sea of letters:
‘disgraceful
invasions of neighbouring states’, ‘deluded worshippers of a mad god’,
‘a strutting
bully’, ‘outrage after outrage’, ‘flying in the face of international
opinion’. . .
‘Don’t you lads read that rubbish, you don’t know where it’s been,’
said Sergeant
Jackrum jovially, arriving behind them. ‘It’ll all be lies. We are
leaving right—
Corporal Maladict!’
Maladict, emerging from the trees, gave a lazy salute. He was still
wearing his
blanket.
‘What are you doing out of uniform?’
‘I’m in uniform underneath, sarge. We don’t want to be seen, right?
Like this, we
become part of the jungle.’
‘It’s a forest, corporal! And without bloody uniforms, how the hell
will we know
our friends from our enemies?’
Maladict lit a cigarette before he replied. ‘The way I see it, sarge,’
he said, ‘the
enemy is everyone but us.’
‘Just one moment, sergeant,’ said Blouse, who had looked up from a
newspaper
and had been watching the apparition with considerable interest.
‘There are
precedents in antiquity, you know. General Song Sung Lo moved his army
disguised
as a field of sunflowers, and General Tacticus once commanded a
battalion to dress as
spruces.’
‘Sunflowers?’ said Jackrum, his voice oozing with disdain.
‘Both actions were successful, sergeant.’
‘No uniforms? No badges? No stripes, sir?’
‘Possibly you could be an extra large bloom?’ said Blouse, and his
face betrayed
no hint of amusement. ‘And you have surely carried out actions at
night, when all
markings are invisible ?’
‘Yessir, but night is night, sir, while sunflowers is . . . is
sunflowers, sir! I’ve worn
this uniform for more’n fift— all my life, sir, and sneaking around
without a uniform
is downright dishonourable! It’s for spies, sir!’ Jackrum’s face had
gone beyond red
into crimson, and Polly was amazed to see tears in the corners of his
eyes.
‘How can we be spies, sergeant, in our own country?’ said Blouse
calmly.
‘The el-tee’s got a point, sarge,’ said Maladict.
Jackrum turned like a bull at bay, and then to Polly’s amazement he
sagged. But
she wasn’t amazed for long. She knew the man. She didn’t know why, but
there was
something about Jackrum that she could read. It was in the eyes. He
could lie with
eyes as honest and tranquil as those of an angel. And if he appeared
to be backing
away, it was indeed only to get a run-up later on.
‘All right, all right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Upon my oath, I am not a
man to disobey
orders.’ And the eyes twinkled.
‘Well done, sergeant,’ said Blouse.
Jackrum pulled himself together. ‘I don’t want to be a sunflower,
though,’ he said.
‘Happily there are only fir trees in this area, sergeant.’
‘Point well made, sir.’ Jackrum turned to the awed squad. ‘All right,
Last Detail,’
he bellowed. ‘You heard the man! Spruce up!’
It was an hour later. As far as Polly could tell, they’d started out
for the mountains
but had travelled in a wide semi-circle so that they ended up facing
back the way they
had come, but a few miles away. Was Blouse leading, or had he left it
to Jackrum?
Neither man was complaining.
The lieutenant called a halt in a thicket of birch, thus doubling the
size of the
thicket. You could say that the camouflage effects were effective,
because bright red
and white shows up against greens and greys. Beyond that, though,
language tended
to run out.
Jade had scraped off her paint, and was green and grey anyway. Igorina
looked like
a walking brush. Wazzer quivered like an aspen all the time, so her
leaves rustled
permanently. The others had made more or less reasonable attempts, and
Polly was
pretty proud of her own efforts. Jackrum was about as tree-like as a
big red rubber
ball; Polly suspected that he’d surreptitiously shined up his
brasswork, too. Every tree
held a mug of tea in limb or hand. After all, they’d stopped for five
minutes.
‘Men,’ said Blouse, as if he’d only just reached that conclusion. ‘You
may have
gathered that we are heading back towards the mountains to raise a
deserters’ army
there. This story is, in fact, a ruse for the benefit of Mr de Worde!’
He paused, as if
expecting some reaction. They stared at him. He went on: ‘We are, in
fact, continuing
our journey to the Kneck valley. This is the last thing the enemy will
be expecting.’
Polly glanced at the sergeant. He was grinning.
‘It is an established fact that a small, light force can get into
places that a battalion
cannot penetrate,’ Blouse went on. ‘Men, we will be that force! Is
that not right,
Sergeant Jackrum?’
‘Yessir!’
‘We will come down like a hammer on those forces smaller than us,’
said Blouse
happily.
‘Yessir!’
‘And from those that outnumber us, we will merge silently into the
forest—’
‘Yessir!’
‘We will slip past their sentries—’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Jackrum.
‘—and take Kneck Keep from under their noses!’
Jackrum’s tea sprayed across the clearing.
‘I dare say our enemy feels impregnable just because he commands a
heavily
armed fort on a rocky crag with walls a hundred feet high and twenty
feet thick,’
Blouse continued, as if half the trees weren’t now dripping tea. ‘But
he is in for a
surprise!’
‘You all right, sarge?’ whispered Polly. Jackrum was making strange
little noises
in his throat.
‘Does anyone have any questions?’ said Blouse.
Igorina raised a branch. ‘How will we get in, sir?’ she said.
‘Ah. Good question,’ said Blouse. ‘And all will become apparent in due
time.’
‘Aerial cavalry,’ said Maladict.
‘Pardon, corporal?’
‘Flying machines, sir!’ said Maladict. ‘They won’t know where to
expect us. We
touch down in a handy LZ, take them out, and then dust off.’
Blouse’s clear brow wrinkled a little. ‘Flying machines?’ he said.
‘I saw a picture of one by someone called Leonard of Quirm. A sort
of . . . flying
windmill. It’s just like a big screw up in the sky—’
‘I don’t think we need one of those, although the advice is welcomed,’
said Blouse.
‘Not when we’ve got a big screw-up down here, sir!’ Jackrum managed.
‘Sir, this
is just a bunch of recruits, sir! All that stuff about honour and
freedom and that, that
was just for the writer man, right? Good idea, sir! Yeah, let’s get to
the Kneck valley,
and let’s sneak in and join the rest of the lads. That’s where we
ought to be, sir. You
can’t be serious about taking the keep, sir! I wouldn’t try that with
a thousand men.’
‘I might try it with half a dozen, sergeant.’
Jackrum’s eyes bulged. ‘Really, sir? What’ll Private Goom do? Tremble
at them?
Young Igor will stitch ‘em up, will he? Private Halter will give ‘em a
nasty look?
They’re promising lads, sir, but they’re not men.’
‘General Tacticus said the fate of a battle may depend upon the
actions of one man
in the right place, sergeant,’ said Blouse calmly.
‘And having a lot more soldiers than the other bugger, sir,’ Jackrum
insisted. ‘Sir,
we should get to the rest of the army. Maybe it’s trapped, maybe it
isn’t. All that stuff
about them not wanting to slaughter us, sir, that makes no sense. The
idea is to win,
sir. If the rest of ‘em have stopped attacking, it’s because they’re
frightened of us. We
should be down there. That’s the place for young recruits, sir, where
they can learn.
The enemy is looking for ‘em, sir!’
‘If General Froc is among those captured, the keep will be where he is
held,’ said
Blouse. ‘I believe he was the first officer you served under as
sergeant, am I right?’
Jackrum hesitated. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said eventually. ‘And he
was the dumbest
lieutenant I’ve ever met, bar one.’
‘I am positive there is a secret entrance into the keep, sergeant.’
Polly’s memory nudged her. If Paul was alive, he was in the keep. She
caught
Shufti’s eye. The girl nodded. She’d been thinking along the same
lines. She didn’t
talk much about her . . . fiance, and Polly wondered how official the
arrangement was.
‘Permission to speak, sarge?’ she said.
‘Okay, Perks.’
‘I’d like to try to find a way into the keep, sarge.’
‘Perks, are you volunteering to attack the biggest, strongest castle
within five
hundred miles? Single-handed?’
‘I’ll go, too,’ said Shufti.
‘Oh, two of you?’ said Jackrum. ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Wazzer. ‘The Duchess has told me that I should.’
Jackrum looked down at Wazzer’s thin little face and watery eyes, and
sighed. He
turned back to Blouse. ‘Let’s get a move on, sir, shall we? We can
talk about this
later. At least we’re headed to Kneck, first stop on the road to hell.
Perks and Igor,
you take point. Maladict?’
‘Yo!’
‘Er . . . you scout on ahead.’
‘I hear you!’
‘Good.’
As the vampire walked past Polly the world, just for a moment,
changed; the forest
became greener, the sky greyer, and she heard a noise overhead, like
‘whopwhopwhop’. And then it was gone.
Vampire hallucinations are contagious, she thought. What’s going on in
his head?
She hurried forward with Igorina, and they set off again through the
forest.
Birds sang. The effect was peaceful, if you didn’t know about
birdsong, but Polly
could recognize the alarm calls close by and the territorial threats
far off and,
everywhere, the preoccupation with sex. That took the edge off the
pleasure.*
* It’s hard to be an ornithologist and walk through a wood when all
around you
the world is shouting: ‘Bugger off, this is my bush! Aargh, the nest
thief! Have
sex with me, I can make my chest big and red!’
‘Polly?’ said Igorina.
‘Hmm?’
‘Could you kill someone if you had to?’
Polly came right back to the here and now. ‘What sort of question is
that to ask
anyone?’
‘I think it’s the sort you’d ask a tholdier,’ said Igorina.
‘I don’t know. If they were attacking me, I suppose. Hurt them hard
enough to
keep them lying down, anyway. And you?’
‘We have a great respect for life, Polly,’ said Igorina solemnly.
‘It’s easy to kill
thomeone, and almost impossible to bring them back again.’
‘Almost?’
‘Well, if you don’t have a really good lightning rod. And even if you
have, they’re
never quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them.’
‘Igorina, why are you here?’
‘The clan isn’t very . . . keen on girls getting too involved in the
Great Work,’ said
Igorina, looking downcast. ‘“Stick to your needlework”, my mother
keeps saying.
Well, that’s all very fine, but I know I’m good at the actual
incisions as well.
Especially the fiddly bits. And I think a woman on the slab would feel
a lot better
about things if she knew there was a female hand on the we-belong-dead
switch. Tho
I thought some battlefield experience would convince my father.
Soldiers aren’t
choosy about who saves their lives.’
‘I suppose men are the same the world over,’ said Polly.
‘On the inside, certainly.’
‘And . . . er . . . you really can put your hair back?’ Polly had seen
it in its jar when
they’d been breaking camp; it had spun gently in its bottle of green
liquid, like some
fine, rare seaweed.
‘Oh, yes. Scalp transplants are easy. It stings a bit for a couple of
minutes, that’s
all—’
There was movement between the trees, and then the blur resolved
itself into
Maladict. He held a finger to his lips as he drew closer, and
whispered urgently:
‘Charlie’s tracking us!’
Polly and Igorina looked at one another. ‘Who’s Charlie?’
Maladict stared at them, and then rubbed his face distractedly.
‘I’m . . . sorry, er . .
. sorry, it’s . . . look, we’re being followed! I know it!’
The sun was setting. Polly peered over the rocky ledge, back the way
they had
come. She could make out the track, golden and red in the late
afternoon light.
Nothing was moving. The outcrop was near the top of another rounded
hill; the rear of
it became the floor of a little enclosed space, surrounded by bushes.
It made a good
lookout for people who wanted to see without being seen, and it had
done so in the
recent past, by the look of the old fires.
Maladict was sitting with his head in his hands, with Jackrum and
Blouse on either
side of him. They were trying to understand, and not making much
progress.
‘So you can’t hear anything?’ said Blouse.
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t see anything and can’t smell anything?’ said Jackrum.
‘No! I told you! But there is something after us. Watching us!’
‘But if you can’t—’ Blouse began.
‘Look, I’m a vampire,’ panted Maladict. ‘Just trust me, okay?’
‘I thould, tharge,’ said Igorina, from behind Jackrum. ‘We Igorth
often therve
vampireth. In timeth of strethth their perthonal thpace can extend ath
much ath ten
mileth from their body.’
There was the usual pause that follows an extended lisp. People need
time to think.
‘Streth-th?’ said Blouse.
‘You know how you can feel that someone’s looking at you?’ mumbled
Maladict.
‘Well, it’s like that, times a thousand. And it’s not a . . . a
feeling, it’s something I
know.’
‘Lots of people are looking for us, corporal,’ said Blouse, patting
him kindly on the
shoulder. ‘It doesn’t mean that they’ll find us.’
Polly, looking down on the gold-lit woodland, opened her mouth to
speak. It was
dry. Nothing came out.
Maladict shook the lieutenant’s hand away. ‘This . . . person isn’t
looking for us!
They know where we are!’
Polly forced saliva into her mouth, and tried again. ‘Movement!’
And then it wasn’t there any more. She’d have sworn there had been
something on
the path, something that merged with the light, revealing itself only
by the changing,
wavering pattern of shadows as it moved.
‘Er . . . perhaps not,’ she muttered.
‘Look, we’ve all lost sleep and we’re all a little “strung out”,’ said
Blouse. ‘Let’s
just keep things down, shall we?’
‘I need coffee!’ moaned Maladict, rocking back and forth.
Polly squinted at the distant pathway. The breeze was shaking the
trees, and redgold
leaves were drifting down. For a moment there was just a
suggestion . . . She got
to her feet. Stare at shadows and waving branches for long enough and
you could see
anything. It was like looking at pictures in the flames.
‘O-kay,’ said Shufti, who’d been working over the fire. ‘This might do
it. It smells
like coffee, anyway. Well^. . . quite like coffee. Well . . . quite
like coffee if coffee
was made from acorns, anyway.’
She’d roasted some acorns. At least the woods had plenty of them at
this time of
year, and everybody knew that roasted, ground acorns could be
substituted for coffee,
didn’t they? Polly had agreed that it was a worth a try, but as far as
she could recall no
one had ever, given the choice, said ‘No, I will not touch horrible
coffee any more!
It’s a Long Black ground-acorn substitute for me, with extra floating
gritty bits!’
She took the mug from Shufti and carried it over to the vampire. As
she bent down
. . . the world changed.
. . . whopwhopwhop . . .
The sky was a haze of dust, turning the sun into a blood-red disc. For
a moment
Polly saw them in the sky, giant fat screws spinning in the air,
hovering in the air but
drifting slowly towards her—
‘He’s having flashsides,’ whispered Igorina, at her elbow.
‘Flashsides?’
‘Like . . . someone else’s flashbackth. We don’t know anything about
them. They
could come from anywhere. A vampire at this stage is open to all sorts
of influences!
Give him the coffee, please!’
Maladict grabbed the mug and tried to down the contents so quickly
that they
spilled over his chin. They watched him swallow.
‘Tastes like mud,’ he said, putting down the mug.
‘Yes, but is it working?’
Maladict looked up and blinked his eyes. ‘Ye gods, that stuff is
gruesome.’
‘Are we in a forest or a jungle? Any flying screws?’ Igorina demanded.
‘How
many fingers am I holding up?’
‘You know, that’s something an Igor should never say,’ said Maladict,
grimacing.
‘But . . . the . . . feelings aren’t so strong. I can suck it down! I
can gut it out.’
Polly looked at Igorina, who shrugged and said, ‘That’s nice,’ and
motioned to
Polly to join her a little way off.
‘He, or possibly she, is right on the edge,’ she said.
‘Well, we all are,’ said Polly. ‘We’re hardly getting any sleep.’
‘You know what I mean. I’ve, er . . . taken the liberty of, er . . .
being prepared.’
Wordlessly, Igorina let her jacket fall open, just for a moment. Polly
saw a knife, a
wooden stake and a hammer, in neatly stitched little pockets.
‘It’s not going to come to that, is it?’
‘I hope not,’ said Igorina. ‘But if it does, I’m the only one who can
reliably find the
heart. People always think it’s more to the left than—’
‘It’s not going to come to that,’ said Polly firmly.
The sky was red. The war was a day away.
Polly crept along just below the ridge with the tea can. It was tea
that kept the army
on its feet. Remember what’s real. . . well, that took some doing.
Tonker and Lofty,
for example. It didn’t matter which of them was on guard, the other
one would be
there as well. And there they were, sitting side by side on a fallen
tree, staring down
the slope. They were holding hands. They always held hands, when they
thought they
were alone. But it seemed to Polly that they didn’t hold hands like
people who were,
well, friends. They held hands tightly, as someone who has slipped
over a cliff would
hold hands with a rescuer, fearing that to let go would be to fall
away.
‘Tea up!’ she quavered.
The girls turned, and she dipped a couple of mugs into the scalding
tea.
‘You know,’ she said quietly, ‘no one would hate you if you ran away
tonight.’
‘What do you mean, Ozz?’ said Lofty.
‘Well, what’s there in Kneck for you? You got away from the school.
You could
go anywhere. I bet the two of you could sneak—’
‘We’re staying,’ said Tonker severely. ‘We talked about it. Where else
would we
go? Anyway, supposing^ something is following us?’
‘Probably just an animal,’ said Polly, who didn’t believe it herself.
‘Animals don’t do that,’ said Tonker. ‘And I don’t think Maladict
would get so
excited. It’s probably more spies. Well, we’ll get them.’
‘Nobody is going to take us back,’ said Lofty.
‘Oh. Er . . . good,’ said Polly, backing away. ‘Well, must get on, no
one likes cold
tea, eh?’
She hurried round the hill. Whenever Lofty and Tonker were together,
she felt like
a trespasser.
Wazzer was on guard in a small dell, watching the land below with her
usual
expression of slightly worrying intensity. She turned as Polly
approached.
‘Oh, Polly,’ said Wazzer. ‘Good news!’
‘Oh, good,’ said Polly weakly. ‘I like good news.’
‘She says it will be all right for us not to wear our dimity scarves,’
said Wazzer.
‘What? Oh. Good,’ said Polly.
‘But only because we are serving a Higher Purpose,’ said Wazzer. And,
just as
Blouse could invert commas, Wazzer could drop capital letters into a
spoken
sentence.
‘That’s good, then,’ said Polly.
‘You know, Polly,’ said Wazzer, ‘I think the world would be a lot
better if it was
run by women. There wouldn’t be any wars. Of course, the Book would
consider such
an idea a Dire Abomination unto Nuggan. It may be in error. I shall
consult the
Duchess. Bless this cup that I may drink of it,’ she added.
‘Er, yes,’ said Polly, and wondered what she should dread more:
Maladict
suddenly turning into a ravening monster, or Wazzer reaching the end
of whatever
mental journey she was taking. She’d been a kitchen maid and now she
was
subjecting the Book to critical analysis and talking to a religious
icon. That sort of
thing led to friction. The presence of those seeking the truth is
infinitely to be
preferred to those who think they’ve found it.
Besides, she thought as she watched Wazzer drink, you only thought the
world
would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know
many women. Or