Terry Pratchett
The Last Continent
Discworld is a world and a mirror of worlds.
This is not a book about Australia. No, it's about somewhere entirley different which just happens to be, here and there, a bit... Australian.
Still... no worries, right?
Against the stars a turtle passes, carrying four elephants on its shell.
Both turtle and elephants are bigger than people might expect, but out between the stars the difference between huge and tiny is, comparatively speaking, very small.
But this turtle and these elephants are, by turtle and elephant standards, big. They carry the Discworld, with its vast lands, cloudscapes, and oceans.
People don't live on the Disc any more than, in less hand-crafted parts of the multiverse, they live on balls. Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the centre of their heads.
When gods get together they tell the story of one particular planet whose inhabitants watched, with mild interest, huge continent-wrecking slabs of ice slap into another world which was, in astronomical terms, right next door – and then did nothing about it because that sort of thing only happens in Outer Space. An intelligent species would at least have found someone to complain to. Anyway, no one seriously believes in that story, because a race quite that stupid would never even have discovered slood.
People believe in all sorts of other things, though. For example, there are some people who have a legend that the whole universe is carried in a leather bag by an old man.
They're right, too.
Other people say: hold on, if he's carrying the entire universe in a sack, right, that means he's carrying himself and the sack inside the sack, because the universe contains everything. Including him. And the sack, of course. Which contains him and the sack already. As it were.
To which the reply is: well?
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'.
It is a general test of the omnipotence of a god that they can see the fall of a tiny bird. But only one god makes notes, and a few adjustments, so that next time it can fall faster and further.
We may find out why.
We might find out why mankind is here, although that is more complicated and begs the question 'Where else should we be?' It would be terrible to think that some impatient deity might part the clouds and say, 'Damn, are you lot still here? I thought you discovered slood ten thousand years ago! I've got ten trillion tons of ice arriving on Monday!'
We may even find out why the duck-billed platypus.
Snow, thick and wet, tumbled on to the lawns and roofs of Unseen University, the Discworld's premier college of magic.
It was sticky snow, which made the place look like some sort of expensive yet tasteless ornament, and it caked around the boots of McAbre, the Head Bledlow, as he trudged through the cold, wild night.
Two other bledlows stepped out of the lee of a buttress and fell in behind him on a solemn march towards the main gates.
It was an old custom, centuries old, and in the summer a few tourists would hang around to watch it, but the Ceremony of the Keys went on every night in every season. Mere ice, wind and snow had never stopped it. Bledlows in times gone past had clambered over tentacled monstrosities to do the Ceremony; they'd waded through floodwater, flailed with their bowler hats at errant pigeons, harpies and dragons, and ignored mere faculty members who'd thrown open their bedroom windows and screamed imprecations on the lines of 'Stop that damn racket, will you? What's the point!' They'd never stopped, or even thought of stopping. You couldn't stop Tradition. You could only add to it.
The three men reached the shadows by the main gate, almost blotted out in the whirling snow. The bledlow on duty was waiting for them.
'Halt! Who Goes There?' he shouted.
McAbre saluted. The Archchancellor's Keys!'
'Pass, The Archchancellor's Keys!'
The Head Bledlow took a step forward, extended both arms in front of him with his palms bent back towards him, and patted his chest at the place where some bledlow long buried had once had two breast pockets. Pat, pat. Then he extended his arms by his sides and stiffly patted the sides of his jacket. Pat, pat.
'Damn! Could Have Sworn I Had Them A Moment Ago!' he bellowed, enunciating each word with a sort of bulldog carefulness.
The gatekeeper saluted. McAbre saluted.
'Have You Looked In All Your Pockets?'
McAbre saluted. The gatekeeper saluted. A small pyramid of snow was building up on his bowler hat.
'I Think I Must Have Left Them On The Dresser. It's Always The Same, Isn't It?'
'You Should Remember Where You Put Them Down.!'
'Hang On, Perhaps They're In My Other Jacket!'
The young bledlow who was this week's Keeper of the Other Jacket stepped forward. Each man saluted the other two. The youngest cleared his throat and managed to say:
'No, I Looked In... There This... Morning!'
McAbre gave him a slight nod to acknowledge a difficult job done well, and patted his pockets again.
'Hold On, Stone The Crows, They Were In This Pocket After All! What A Muggins I Am!'
'Don't Worry, I Do The Same Myself!'
'Is My Face Red! Forget My Own Head Next!'
Somewhere in the darkness a window creaked up.
'Er, excuse me, gentlemen—'
'Here's The Keys, Then!' said McAbre, raising his voice.
'Much Obliged!'
'I wonder if you could—' the querulous voice went on, apologizing for even thinking of complaining.
'All Safe And Secure!' shouted the gatekeeper, handing the keys back.
'—perhaps keep it down a little—'
'Gods Bless All Present!' screamed McAbre, veins standing out on his thick crimson neck.
'Careful Where You Put Them This Time. Ha! Ha! Ha!'
'Ho! Ho! Ho!' yelled McAbre, beside himself with fury. He saluted stiffly, went About Turn with an unnecessarily large amount of foot stamping and, the ancient exchange completed, marched back to the bledlows' lodge muttering under his breath.
The window of the University's little sanatorium shut again.
That man really makes me want to swear,' said the Bursar. He fumbled in his pocket and produced his little green box of dried frog pills, spilling a few as he fumbled with the lid. I've sent him no end of memos. He says it's traditional but, I don't know, he's so... boisterous about it...' He blew his nose. 'How's he doing?'
'Not good,' said the Dean.
The Librarian was very, very ill.
Snow plastered itself against the closed window.
There was a heap of blankets in front of the roaring fire. Occasionally it shuddered a bit. The wizards watched it with concern.
The Lecturer in Recent Runes was feverishly turning over the pages of a book.
'I mean, how do we know if it's old age or not?' he said. 'What's old age for an orang-utan? And he's a wizard. And he spends all his time in the Library. All that magic radiation the whole time. Somehow the flu is attacking his morphic field, but it could be caused by anything.'
The Librarian sneezed.
And changed shape.
The wizards looked sadly at what appeared very much like a comfortable armchair which someone had, for some reason, upholstered in red fur.
'What can we do for him?' said Ponder Stibbons, the Faculty's youngest member.
'He might feel happier with some cushions,' said Ridcully.
'Slightly bad taste, Archchancellor, I feel.'
'What? Everyone likes some comfy cushions when they're feeling a little under the weather, don't they?' said the man to whom sickness was a mystery.
'He was a table this morning. Mahogany, I believe. He seems to be able to retain his colour, at least.'
The Lecturer in Recent Runes closed the book with a sigh. 'He's certainly lost control of his morphic function,' he said. 'It's not surprising, I suppose. Once it's been changed, it'll change again much more easily, I'm afraid. A well known fact.'
He looked at the Archchancellor's frozen grin and sighed. Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him.
'It's quite hard to change the shape of a living thing but once it's been done it's a lot easier to do it next time,' he translated.
'Say again?'
'He was a human before he was an ape, Archchancellor. Remember?'
'Oh. Yes,' said Ridcully. Tunny, really, the way you get used to things. Apes and humans are related, accordin' to young Ponder here.'
The other wizards looked blank. Ponder screwed up his face.
'He's been showing me some of the invisible writings,' said Ridcully. Tascinatin' stuff.'
The other wizards scowled at Ponder Stibbons, as you would at a man who'd been caught smoking in a firework factory. So now they knew who to blame. As usual...
'Is that entirely wise, sir?' said the Dean.
'Well, I do happen to be the Archchancellor in these parts, Dean,' said Ridcully calmly.
'A blindly obvious fact, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. You could have cut cheese with his tone.
'Must take an interest. Morale, you know,' said Ridcully. 'My door is always open. I see myself as a member of the team.' Ponder winced again.
'I don't think I'm related to any apes,' said the Senior Wrangler thoughtfully. 'I mean, I'd know, wouldn't I? I'd get invited to their weddings and so on. My parents would have said something like, "Don't worry about Uncle Charlie, he's supposed to smell like that," wouldn't they? And there'd be portraits in—'
The chair sneezed. There was an unpleasant moment of morphic uncertainty, and then the Librarian was sprawling in his old shape again. The wizards watched him carefully to see what'd happen next.
It was hard to remember the time when the Librarian had been a human being. Certainly no one could remember what he'd looked like, or even what his name had been.
A magical explosion, always a possibility in somewhere like the Library where so many unstable books of magic are pressed dangerously together, had introduced him to unexpected apehood years before. Since then he'd never looked back, and often hadn't looked down either. His big hairy shape, swinging by one arm from a top shelf while he rearranged books with his feet, had become a popular one among the whole University body; his devotion to duty had been an example to everyone.
Archchancellor Ridcully, into whose head that last sentence had treacherously arranged itself, realized that he was unconsciously drafting an obituary.
'Anyone called in a doctor?' he said.
'We got Doughnut Jimmy here this afternoon,' said the Dean. 'He tried to take his temperature but I'm afraid the Librarian bit him.'
'He bit him? With a thermometer in his mouth?'
'Ah. Not exactly. There, in fact, you have rather discovered the reason for his biting.'
There was a moment of solemn silence. The Senior Wrangler picked up a limp black-leather paw and patted it vaguely.
'Does that book say if monkeys have pulses?' he said. 'Is his nose supposed to be cold, or what?'
There was a little sound, such as might be made by half a dozen people all sharply drawing in their breath at once. The other wizards began to edge away from their Senior Wrangler.
There was, for a few seconds, no other sound but the crackling of the fire and the howl of the wind outside.
The wizards shuffled back.
The Senior Wrangler, in the astonished tones of someone still possessing all known limbs, very slowly took off his pointy hat. This was something a wizard would normally do only in the most sombre of circumstances.
Well, that's it, then,' he said. 'Poor chap's on his way home. Back to the big desert in the sky.'
'Er. rainforest, possibly,' said Ponder Stibbons.
'Maybe Mrs Whitlow could make him some hot nourishing soup?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Archchancellor Ridcully thought about the housekeeper's hot nourishing soup. 'Kill or cure, I suppose,' he murmured. He patted the Librarian carefully. 'Buck up, old chap,' he said. 'Soon have you back on your feet and continuing to make a valued contribution.'
'Knuckles,' said the Dean helpfully.
'Say again?'
'Knuckles, rather than feet.'
'Castors,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Bad taste, that man,' said the Archchancellor.
They wandered out of the room. From the corridor came their retreating voices:
'Looked very pale around the antimacassar, I thought.'
'Surely there's some sort of a cure?'
'The old place won't be the same without him.'
'Definitely one of a kind.'
When they'd gone the Librarian reached up cautiously, pulled a piece of blanket over his head, cuddled his hot-water bottle and sneezed.
Now there were two hot-water bottles, one of them a lot bigger than the other and with a teddy bear cover in red fur.
Light travels slowly on the Disc and is slightly heavy, with a tendency to pile up against high mountain ranges. Research wizards have speculated that there is another, much speedier type of light which allows the slower light to be seen, but since this moves too fast to see they have been unable to find a use for it.
This does mean that, despite the Disc being flat, everywhere does not experience the same time at, (or want of a better term, the same time. When it was so late at night in Ankh-Morpork that it was early in the morning, elsewhere it was...
... but there were no hours here. There was dawn and dusk, morning and afternoon, and presumably there was midnight and midday, but mainly there was heat. And redness. Something as artificial and human as an hour wouldn't last five minutes here. It would be dried out and shrivelled up in seconds.
Above all, there was silence. It was not the chilly, bleak silence of endless space, but the burning organic silence you get when, across a thousand miles of shimmering red horizons, everything is too tired to make a sound.
But, as the ear of observation panned across the desert, it picked up something like a chant, a reedy little litany that beat against the all-embracing silence like a fly bumping against the windowpane of the universe.
The rather breathless chanter was lost to view because he was standing in a hole dug in the red earth; occasionally some earth was thrown up on the heap behind him. A stained and battered pointy hat bobbed about in time with the tuneless tune. The word 'Wizzard' had, perhaps, once been embroidered on it in sequins. They had fallen off, but the word was still there in brighter red where the hat's original colour showed through. Several dozen small flies orbited it.
The words went something like this:
'Grubs! That's what we're going to eat! That's why they call it grub! And what're we doing to get the grub? Why, we're grubbing for it! Hooray!' Another shovelful of earth arced on to the heap, and the voice said, rather more quietly: 1 wonder if you can eat flies?'
They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past.
Strangely enough, the madman in the hole was the only person currently on the continent who might throw any kind of light on a small drama being enacted a thousand miles away and several metres below, where the opal miner known only to his mates as Strewth was about to make the most valuable yet dangerous discovery of his career.
Strewth's pick knocked aside the rock and dust of millennia, and something gleamed in the candlelight.
It was green, like frosty green fire.
Carefully, his mind suddenly as frozen as the light under his fingers, he picked away at the loose rock. The opal picked up and reflected more and more light on to his face as the debris fell away. There seemed to be no end to the glow.
Finally, he let his breath out in one go.
'Strewth!'
If he'd found a little piece of green opal, say about the size of a bean, he'd have called his mates over and they'd have knocked off for a few beers. A piece the size of his fist would have had him pounding the floor. But with this... He was still standing there, brushing it gently with his fingers, when the other miners noticed the light and hurried over.
At least... they started out hurrying. As they came closer, they slowed to a kind of reverential walk.
No one said anything for a moment. The green light shone on their faces.
Then one of the men whispered: 'Good on yer, Strewth.'
There isn't enough money in all the world, mate.'
'Watch out, it might just be a glaze...'
'Still worth a mint. Go on, Strewth... get it out.'
They watched like cats as the pick pried loose more and more rock, and found an edge. And another edge.
Now Strewth's fingers began to shake.
'Careful, mate... there's a side of it...'
The men took a step back as the last of the obscuring earth was knocked away. The thing was oblong, although the bottom edge was a confusion of twisted opal and dirt.
Strewth reversed his pick and laid the wooden handle against the glowing crystal.
'Strewth, it's no good,' he said. 'I just gots to know...'
He tapped the rock.
It echoed.
'Can't be hollow, can it?' said one of the miners. 'Never heard of that.'
Strewth picked up a crowbar. 'Right! Let's—'
There was a faint plink. A large piece of opal broke away near the bottom. It turned out to be no thicker than a plate.
It revealed a couple of toes, which moved very slowly inside their iridescent shell.
'Oh, strewth,' said a miner, as they backed further away. 'It's alive.'
Ponder knew he should never have let Ridcully look at the invisible writings. Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day?
But no matter what precautions you took, sooner or later the boss was bound to come in and poke around and say things like, 'Is this where you work, then?' and 'I thought I sent a memo out about people bringing in potted plants,' and 'What d'you call that thing with the keyboard?'
And this had been particularly problematical for Ponder, because reading the invisible writings was a delicate and meticulous job, suited to the kind of temperament that follows Grand Prix Continental Drift and keeps bonsai mountains as a hobby or even drives a Volvo. It needed painstaking care. It needed a mind that could enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles in a dark room. It did not need Mustrum Ridcully.
The hypothesis behind invisible writings was laughably complicated. All books are tenuously connected through L-space and, therefore, the content of any book ever written or yet to be written may, in the right circumstances, be deduced from a sufficiently close study of books already in existence. Future books exist in potentia, as it were, in the same way that a sufficiently detailed study of a handful of primal ooze will eventually hint at the future existence of prawn crackers.
But the primitive techniques used hitherto, based on ancient spells like Weezencake's Unreliable Algorithm, had meant that it took years to put together even the ghost of a page of an unwritten book.
It was Ponder's particular genius that he had found a way around this by considering the phrase, 'How do you know it's not possible until you've tried?' And experiments with Hex, the University's thinking engine, had found that, indeed, many things are not impossible until they have been tried.
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.
When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but takes a little while for this to really be the case – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along. Using Hex to remake the attempt in minutely different ways at very high speed had resulted in a high success rate, and he was now assembling whole paragraphs in a matter of hours.
'It's like a conjurin' trick, then,' Ridcully had said. 'You're pullin' the tablecloth away before all the crockery has time to remember to fall over.'
And Ponder had winced and said, 'Yes, exactly like that, Archchancellor. Well done.'
And that had led to all the trouble with How to Dynamically Manage People for Dynamic Results in a Caring Empowering Way in Quite a Short Time Dynamically. Ponder didn't know when this book would be written, or even in which world it might be published, but it was obviously going to be popular because random trawls in the depths of L-space often turned up fragments. Perhaps it wasn't even just one book.
And the fragments had been on Ponder's desk when Ridcully had been poking around.
Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.
His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled 'Me, who does the telling' and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled 'Everyone else'.
Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly.
And it would have continued to do so if he hadn't suddenly started to see the point in preparing career development packages and, worst of all, job descriptions.
As the Lecturer in Recent Runes put it: 'He called me in and asked me what I did, exactly. Have you ever heard of such a thing? What sort of question is that? This is a university!'
'He asked me whether I had any personal worries,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I don't see why I have to stand for that sort of thing.'
'And did you see that sign on his desk?' the Dean had said.
'You mean the one that says, "The Buck Starts Here"?'
'No, the other one. The one which says, "When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life."'
'And that means...?'
'I don't think it's supposed to mean anything. I think it's just supposed to be.'
'Be what?'
'Pro-active, I think. It's a word he's using a lot.'
'What does that mean?'
'Well... in favour of activity, I suppose.'
'Really? Dangerous. In my experience, inactivity sees you through.'
Altogether, it was not a happy university at the moment, and mealtimes were the worst. Ponder tended to be isolated at one end of the High Table as the unwilling architect of this sudden tendency on the part of the Archchancellor to try to Weld Them Into A Lean Mean Team. The wizards had no intention of being lean, but were getting as mean as anything.
On top of that, Ridcully's sudden interest in taking an interest meant that Ponder had to explain something about his own current project, and one aspect of Ridcully that had not changed was his horrible habit of, Ponder suspected, deliberately misunderstanding things.
Ponder had long been struck by the fact that the Librarian, an ape – at least generally an ape, although this evening he seemed to have settled on being a small table set with a red-furred tea service – was, well, so human shaped. In fact, so many things were pretty much the same shape. Nearly everything you met was really a sort of complicated tube with two eyes and four arms or legs or wings. Oh, or they were fish. Or insects. All right, spiders as well. And a few odd things like starfish and whelks. But still there was a remarkably unimaginative range of designs. Where were the six-armed, six-eyed monkeys pinwheeling through the jungle canopy?
Oh, yes, octopussies too, but that was the point, they were really only a kind of underwater spider...
Ponder had poked around among the University's more or less abandoned Museum of Quite Unusual Things, and noticed something rather odd. Whoever had designed the skeletons of creatures had even less imagination than whoever had done the outsides. At least the outside-designer had tried a few novelties in the spots, wool and stripes department, but the bone-builder had generally just put a skull on a ribcage, shoved a pelvis in further along, stuck on some arms and legs and had the rest of the day off. Some ribcages were longer, some legs were shorter, some hands became wings, but they all seemed to be based on one design, one size stretched or shrunk to fit all.
Not to his very great surprise, Ponder seemed to be the only one around who found this at all interesting. He'd point out to people that fish were amazingly fish-shaped, and they'd look at him as if he'd gone mad.
Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There's no point in wondering what it was. Don't go digging things up in case they won't let you bury them again.
The most coherent theory was one he recalled from his nurse when he was small. Monkeys, she'd averred, were bad little boys who hadn't come in when called, and seals were bad little boys who'd lazed around on the beach instead of attending to their lessons. She hadn't said that bird were bad little boys who'd gone too close to the cliff edge, and in any case jellyfish would be more likely, but Ponder couldn't help thinking that, harmlessly insane though the woman had been, she might have had just the glimmerings of a point...
He was spending most nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers.
Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all. somehow, make sense. The goal is the Theory of Everything, but Ponder would settle for the Theory of Something and, late at night, when Hex appeared to be sulking, he despaired of even a Theory of Anything.
And it might have surprised Ponder to learn that the senior wizards had come to approve of Hex, despite all the comments on the lines of 'In my day we used to do our own thinking.' Wizardry was traditionally competitive, and, while UU was currently going through an extended period of peace and quiet, with none of the informal murders that had once made it such a terminally exciting place, a senior wizard always distrusted a young man who was going places since traditionally his route might be via your jugular.
Therefore there's something comforting in knowing that some of the best brains in the University, who a generation ago would be coming up with some really exciting plans involving trick floorboards and exploding wallpaper, were spending all night in the High Energy Magic Building, trying to teach Hex to sing 'Lydia the Tattooed Lady', exulting at getting a machine to do after six hours' work something that any human off the street would do for tuppence, then sending out for banana-and-sushi pizza and falling asleep at the keyboard. Their seniors called it technomancy, and slept a little easier in their beds in the knowledge that Ponder and his students weren't sleeping in theirs.
Ponder must have nodded off, because he was awakened just before 2 a.m. by a scream and realized he was face down in half of his supper. He pulled a piece of banana-flavoured mackerel off his cheek, left Hex quietly clicking through its routine and followed the noises.
The commotion led him to the hall in front of the big doors leading to the Library. The Bursar was lying on the floor, being fanned with the Senior Wrangler's hat.
'As far as we can gather, Archchancellor,' said the Dean, 'the poor chap couldn't sleep and came down for a book—'
Ponder looked at the Library doors. A big strip of black and yellow tape had been stuck across them, along with a sign saying: Danger, Do Notte Enter in Any Circumstances. It was now hanging off, and the doors were ajar. This was no surprise. Any true wizard, faced with a sign like 'Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We're not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,' would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. This made signs rather a waste of time, but at least it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, 'We told him not to.'
There was silence from the darkness on the other side of the doorway.
Ridcully extended a finger and pushed one door slightly.
Behind it something made a fluttering noise and the doors were slammed shut. The wizards jumped back.
'Don't risk it, Archchancellor!' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I tried to go in earlier and the whole section of Critical Essays had gone critical!'
Blue light flickered under the doors.
Elsewhere, someone might have said, 'It's just books! Books aren't dangerous!' But even ordinary books are dangerous, and not only the ones like Make Gelignite the Professional Way. A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke. Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre.
And the Unseen University Library was a magical library, built on a very thin patch of space-time. There were books on distant shelves that hadn't been written yet, books that never would be written. At least, not here. It had a circumference of a few hundred yards, but there was no known limit to its radius.
And in a magical library the books leak, and learn from one another...
They've started attacking anyone who goes in,' moaned the Dean. 'No one can control them when the Librarian's not here!'
'But we're a university! We have to have a library!' said Ridcully. 'It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the Library?'
'Students,' said the Senior Wrangler morosely.
'Hah, I remember when I was a student,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Old "Bogeyboy" Swallett took us on an expedition to find the Lost Reading Room. Three weeks we were wandering around. Had to eat our own boots.'
'Did you find it?' said the Dean.
'No, but we found the remains of the previous year's expedition.'
'What did you do?'
'We ate their boots, too.'
From beyond the door came a flapping, as of leather covers.
There's some pretty vicious grimoires in there,' said the Senior Wrangler. They can take a man's arm right off.'
'Yes, but at least they don't know about doorhandles,' said the Dean.
They do if there's a book in there somewhere called Doorknobs for Beginners,' said the Senior Wrangler. They read each other.'
The Archchancellor glanced at Ponder. There likely to be a book like that in there, Stibbons?'
'According to L-space theory, it's practically certain, sir.'
As one man, the wizards backed away from the doors.
'We can't let this nonsense go on,' said Ridcully. 'We've got to cure the Librarian. It's a magical illness, so we ought to be able to cook up a magical cure, oughtn't we?'
That would be exceedingly dangerous, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'His whole system is a mess of conflicting magical influences. There's no knowing what adding more magic would do. He's already got a freewheeling temporal gland. Any more magic and... well, I don't know what'll happen.'
'We'll find out,' said Ridcully brusquely. 'We need to be able to go into the Library. We'd be doing this for the college, Dean. And Unseen University is bigger than one man—'
'—ape—'
'—thank you, ape, and we must always remember that "I" is the smallest letter in the alphabet.'
There was another thud from beyond the doors.
'Actually,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'I think you'll find that, depending on the font, "c" or even "u" are, in fact, even smaller. Well, shorter, anyw—'
'Of course,' Ridcully went on, ignoring this as part of the University's usual background logic, 'I suppose I could appoint another librarian... got to be a senior chap who knows his way around... hmm... now let me see, do any names spring to mind? Dean?'
'All right, all rightl' said the Dean. 'Have it your own way. As usual.'
'Er... we can't do it, sir,' Ponder ventured.
'Oh?' said Ridcully. 'Volunteering for a bit of bookshelf tidying yourself, are you?'
'I mean we really can't use magic to change him, sir. There's a huge problem in the way.'
There are no problems, Mister Stibbons, there are only opportunities.'
'Yes, sir. And the opportunity here is to find out the Librarian's name.'
There was a buzz of agreement from the other wizards.
The lad's right,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Can't magic a wizard without knowing his name. Basic rule.'
'Well, we call him the Librarian,' said Ridcully. 'Everyone calls him the Librarian. Won't that do?'
That's just a job description, sir.'
Ridcully looked at his wizards. 'One of us must know his name, surely? Good grief, I should hope we at least know our colleagues' names. Isn't that so...' He looked at the Dean, hesitated, and then said, 'Dean?'
'He's been an ape for quite a while... Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'Most of his original colleagues have... passed on. Gone to the great Big Dinner in the Sky. We were going through one of those periods of droit de mortis.'
'Yes, but he's got to be in the records somewhere.'
The wizards thought about the great cliffs of stacked paper that constituted the University's records.
The archivist has never found him,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Who's the archivist?'
'The Librarian, Archchancellor.'
Then at least he ought to be in the Year Book for the year he graduated.'
'It's a very funny thing,' said the Dean, 'but a freak accident appears to have happened to every single copy of the Year Book for that year.'
Ridcully noted his wooden expression. 'Would it be an accident like a particular page being torn out leaving only a lingering bananary aroma?'
'Lucky guess, Archchancellor.'
Ridcully scratched his chin. 'A pattern emerges,' he said.
'You see, he's always been dead set against anyone finding out his name,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'He's afraid we'll try to turn him back into a human.' He looked meaningfully at the Dean, who put on an offended expression. 'Some people have been going around saying that an ape as Librarian is unsuitable.'
'I merely expressed the view that it is against the traditions of the University—' the Dean began.
'Which consist largely of niggling, big dinners and shouting damnfool things about keys in the middle of the night,' said Ridcully. 'So I don't think we—'
The expressions on the faces of the other wizards made him turn around.
The Librarian had entered the hall. He walked very slowly, because of the amount of clothing he'd put on; the sheer volume of coats and sweaters meant that his arms, instead of being used as extra feet, were sticking out very nearly horizontally on either side of his body. But the most horrifying aspect of the shuffling apparition was the red woolly bat.
It was jolly. It had a bobble on it. It had been knitted by Mrs Whitlow, who was technically an extremely good needlewoman, but if she had a fault it lay in failing to take into account the precise dimensions of the intended recipient. Several wizards had on occasion been presented with one of her creations, which often assumed they had three ankles or a neck two metres across. Most of the things were surreptitiously given away to charitable institutions. You can say this about Ankh-Morpork – no matter how misshapen a garment, there will always be someone somewhere it would fit.
Mrs Whitlow's mistake here was the assumption that the Librarian, for whom she had considerable respect, would like a red bobble hat with side flaps that tied under his chin. Given that this would technically require that they be tied under his groin, he'd opted to let them flap loose.
He turned a sad face towards the wizards as he stopped outside the Library door. He reached for the handle. He said, in a very weak voice, ' 'k,' and then sneezed.
The pile of clothing settled. When the wizards pulled it away, they found underneath a very large, thick book bound in hairy red leather.
'Says Ook on the cover,' said the Senior Wrangler after a while, in a rather strained voice.
'Does it say who it's by?' said the Dean.
'Bad taste, that man.'
'I meant that maybe it'd be his real name.'
'Can we look inside?' said the Chair oi Indefinite Studies. 'There may be an index.'
'Any volunteers to look inside the Librarian?' said Ridcully. 'Don't all shout.'
'The morphic instability responds to the environment,' said Ponder. 'Isn't that interesting? He's near the Library, so it turns him into a book. Sort of... protective camouflage, you could say. It's as if he evolves to fit in with—'
'Thank you, Mister Stibbons. And is there a point to this?'
'Well, I assume we can look inside,' said Ponder. 'A book is meant to be opened. There's even a black leather bookmark, see?'
'Oh, that's a bookmark, is it?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who had been watching it nervously.
Ponder touched the book. It was warm. And it opened easily enough.
Every page was covered with 'ook'.
'Good dialogue, but the plot is a little dull.'
'Dean! I'd be obliged if you'd take this seriously, please!' said Ridcully. He tapped his foot once or twice. 'Anyone got any more ideas?'
The wizards stared at one another and shrugged.
'I suppose...' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Yes, Runes... Arnold, isn't it?'
'No, Archchancellor...'
'Well, out with it anyway.'
'I suppose... I know this sounds ridiculous, but...'
'Go on, man. We're almost all agog.'
'I suppose there's always... Rincewind.'
Ridcully stared at him for a moment. 'Skinny fella? Scruffy beard? Bloody useless wizard? Got that box on legs thingy?'
'That's right, Archchancellor. Well done. Er... he was the Deputy Librarian for a while, as I expect you remember.'
'Not really, but do go on,' he said.
'In fact he was here when the Librarian... became the Librarian. And I remember once, when we were watching the Librarian stamping four books all at the same time, he said, "Amazing, really, when you think he was born in Ankh-Morpork." I'm sure if anyone knows the name of the Librarian it's Rincewind.'
'Well, go and fetch him, then! I suppose you do know where he is, do you?'
'Technically, yes, Archchancellor,' said Ponder quickly. 'But we're not sure quite where the place where he is is, if you follow me.'
Ridcully gave him another stare.
'You see, we think he's on EcksEcksEcksEcks, Archchancellor,' said Ponder.
'EcksEcks—'
'—EcksEcks, Archchancellor.'
'I thought no one knew where that place was,' said Ridcully.
'Archchancellor,' said Ponder. Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them into Ridcully's head.
'What's he doing there?'
'We don't really know, Archchancellor. If you remember, we believe he ended up there after that Agatean business...'
'What did he want to go there for?'
'I don't think he exactly wanted to,' said Ponder. 'Er... we sent him. It was a trivial error in bi-locational thaumaturgy that anyone could make.'
'But you made it, as I recall,' said Ridcully, whose memory could spring nasty surprises like that.
'I am a member of the team, sir,' said Ponder, pointedly.
'Well, if he doesn't want to be there, and we need him here, let's bring him b—'
The rest of the sentence was drowned out not by a noise but by a sort of bloom of quietness, which rolled over the wizards and was so oppressive and soft that they couldn't even hear their own heartbeats. Old Tom, the University's magical and tongueless bell, tolled out 2 a.m. by striking the silences.
'Er—' said Ponder. 'It's not as simple as that.'
Ridcully blinked. 'Why not?' he said. 'Bring him back by magic. We sent him there, we can bring him back.'
'Er... it'd take months to set it up properly, if you want him back right here,' said Ponder. 'If we get it wrong he'll end up arriving in a circle fifty feet wide.'
That's not a problem, is it? If we keep out of it he can land anywhere.'
'I don't think you quite understand, sir. The signal to noise ratio of any thaumic transfer over an uncertain distance, coupled with the Disc's own spin, will almost certainly result in a practical averaging of the arriving subject over an area of a couple of thousand square feet at least, sir.'
'Say again?'
Ponder took a deep breath. 'I mean he'll end up arriving as a circle. Fifty feet wide.'
'Ah. So he probably wouldn't be very good in the Library after that, then.'
'Only as a very large bookmark, sir.'
'All right, then, it's down to sheer geography. Who've we got who knows anything about geography?'
The miners emerged from the vertical shaft like ants leaving a burning nest. There were thumps and thuds from below, and at one point Strewth's hat shot up into the air, turned over a few times and dropped back.
There was silence for a while and then, bits cracking off it like errant pieces of shell on a newly hatched chick, the thing pulled itself out of the shaft and...
... looked around it.
The miners, crouched behind various bushes and sheds, were quite certain of this, even though the monster had no visible eyes.
It turned, its hundreds of little legs moving rather stiffly, as if they'd spent too much time buried in the ground.
Then, weaving slightly, it set off.
And far away in the shimmering red desert, the man in the pointy hat climbed carefully out of his hole. He held in both hands a bowl made of bark. It contained... lots of vitamins, valuable protein and essential fats. See? No mention of wriggling at all.
A fire was smouldering a little way away. He put the bowl down carefully and picked up a large stick, stood quietly for a moment and then suddenly began to hop around the fire, smacking the ground with the stick and shouting, 'Hah!' When the ground had been subdued to his apparent satisfaction he whacked at the bushes as if they had personally offended him, and bashed a couple of trees as well.
Finally he advanced on a couple of flat rocks, lifted up each one in turn, averted his eyes, shouted, 'Hah!' again and flailed blindly at the ground beneath.
The landscape having been acceptably pacified, he sat down to eat his supper before it escaped.
It tasted a little like chicken. When you are hungry enough, practically anything can.
And eyes watched him from the nearby water-hole. They were not the tiny eyes of the swarming beetles and tadpoles that made a careful examination of every handful he drank a vital gastronomic precaution. These were far older eyes, and currently without any physical component.
For weeks a man whose ability to find water was limited to checking if his feet were wet had survived in this oven-ready country by falling into waterholes. A man who thought of spiders as harmless little creatures had experienced only a couple of nasty shocks when, by now, this approach should have left him with arms the size of beer barrels that glowed in the dark. The man had even hit the seashore once and paddled in a little way to look at the pretty blue jellyfish, and it was all the watcher could do to see that he got a mere light sting which ceased to be agonizing after only a few days.
The waterhole bubbled and the ground trembled as if, despite the cloudless sky, there was a storm somewhere.
Now it was three o'clock in the morning. Ridcully was good at doing without other people's sleep.
Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.
And because it was so big it could afford to have an almost unlimited number of staff on the premises. Tenure was automatic or, more accurately, non-existent. You found an empty room, turned up for meals as usual, and generally no one noticed, although if you were unfortunate you might attract students. And if you looked hard enough in some of the outlying regions of the University, you could find an expert on anything.
You could even find an expert on finding an expert. The Professor of Recondite Architecture and Origami Map Folding had been woken up. been introduced to the Archchancellor, who had never set eyes on him before, and had produced a map of the University which would probably be accurate for the next few days and looked rather like a chrysanthemum in the act of exploding.
Finally, the wizards reached a door and Ridcully glared at the brass plate on it as if it had just been cheeky to him.
' "Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography",' he said. 'This looks like the one.'
'We must have walked miles,' said the Dean, leaning against the wall. 'I don't recognize any of this.'
Ridcully glanced around. The walls were stone but had at some time been painted in that very special institutional green that you get when an almost-finished cup of coffee is left standing for a couple of weeks. There was a board covered in balding and darker green felt on which had been optimistically thumbtacked the word 'Notices'. But from the looks of it there had never been any notices and never would be, ever. There was a smell of ancient dinners.
Ridcully shrugged, and knocked on the door.
'I don't remember him,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'I think I do,' said the Dean. 'Not a very promising boy. Had ears. Don't often see him around, though. Always has a suntan. Odd, that.'
'He's on the staff. If anyone knows anything about geography, he's our man.' Ridcully knocked again.
'Perhaps he's out,' said the Dean. That's where you mostly get geography, outside.'
Ridcully pointed to a little wooden device by the door. There was one outside every wizard's study. It consisted of a little sliding panel in a frame. Currently it was revealing the word ' ', although you could never be sure with some wizards.
The Dean tried to slide the panel. It refused to budge.
'He must come out sometimes,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Besides, sensible men should be in bed at three a.m.'
'Yes, indeed,' said the Dean meaningfully.
Ridcully thumped on the door. 'I demand that you open up!' he shouted. 1 am the Master of this College!'
The door moved under the blow, but not very much. It was blocked by what turned out to be, after some strenuous shoving by all the wizards, an enormous pile of paperwork. The Dean picked up a yellowing piece of paper.
This is the memo saying I've been appointed as Dean!' he said. 'That was years ago!'
'Surely he must come out somet—' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Oh dear...'
The same thought had occurred to the other wizards, too.
'Remember poor old Wally Sluwer?' murmured the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking around in some trepidation. 'Three years of tutorials post mortem.'
'Well, the students did say he was a bit quiet,' said Ridcully. He sniffed. 'Doesn't smell bad in here. Quite fresh, really. Pleasantly salty. Aha...'
There was bright light under a door at the other end of the crowded and dusty room, and the wizards could hear a gentle splashing.
'Bath night. Good man,' said Ridcully. 'Well, we don't have to disturb him.'
He peered at the titles of the books that lined the room.
'Bound to be a lot about EcksEcksEcksEcks somewhere here,' he added, pulling out a volume at random. 'Come along. One man, one book each.'
'Can we at least send out for some breakfast?' grumbled the Dean.
'Far too early for breakfast,' said Ridcully.
'Well, some supper, then?'
Too late for supper.'
The Chair of Indefinite Studies took in the rest of the room. A lizard scuttled across the wall and disappeared.
'Bit of a mess in here, isn't there?' he said, glaring at the place where the lizard had been. 'Everything's very dusty. What's in all those boxes?'
'Says "Rocks" on this side,' said the Dean. 'Makes sense. If you're going to study the outdoors, do it in the warm.'
'But what about all the fishing nets and coconuts?'
The Dean had to agree the point. The study was a mess, even by the extremely expansive standards of wizardry. Boxes of dusty rocks occupied the little space that wasn't covered with books and paper. They had been variously labelled, with inscriptions like 'Rocks from Lower Down', 'Other Rocks', 'Curious Rocks' and 'Probably Not Rocks'. Further boxes, to Ponder's rising interest, were marked 'Remarkable Bones', 'Bones' and 'Dull Bones'.
'One of those people who pokes his nose where it doesn't belong, I fancy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, and sniffed. He sniffed again, and looked down at the book he'd picked at random.
'This is a pressed squid collection,' he said.
'Oh, is it any good? I used to collect starfish when I was a boy,' said Ponder.
The Lecturer in Recent Runes shut the book and frowned at him over the top of it. 'I daresay you did, young man. And old fossils too, I expect.'
'I always thought that old fossils might have a lot to teach us,' said Ponder. 'Perhaps I was wrong,' he added darkly.
'Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It's against all reason. What's in it for them?'
'So how do you explain fossils, then?' said Ponder.
'Ah, you see, I don't,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. 'It saves so much trouble in the long run. How do skinless sausages hold together, Mister Stibbons?'
'What? Eh? How should I know something like that?'
'Really? You don't know that but you think you're entirely qualified to know how the whole universe was put together, do you? Anyway, you don't have to explain fossils. They're there. Why try to turn everything into a big mystery? If you go around asking questions the whole time you'll never get anything done.'
'Well, what are we put here for?' said Ponder.
There you go again,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Says here it's girt by sea,' said the Senior Wrangler.
He looked up at their stares.
This continent EcksEcksEcksEcks,' he added, pointing at a page. 'Says here "Little is known about it save that it is girt by sea." '
'I'm glad to see someone has their mind on the task in hand,' said Ridcully. 'You two get on with some studyin', please. Right, then, Senior Wrangler... girt by sea, is it?'
'Apparently.'
'Well... it would be, wouldn't it,' said Ridcully. 'Anything else?'
'I used to know a Gert,' said the Bursar. The terror of the Library had sent his somewhat erratic sanity on a downward slide into the calm pink douds again.
'Not... very much,' said the Senior Wrangler, flicking through the pages. 'Sir Roderick Purdeigh spent many years looking for the alleged continent and was very emphatic that it didn't exist.'
'Quite a jolly gel. Gertrude Plusher, I think her name was. Face like a brick.'
'Yes, but he once got lost in his own bedroom,' said the Dean, thumbing through another book. 'They found him in the wardrobe.'
'I wonder if it's the same Gert?' said the Bursar.
'Could be, Bursar,' said Ridcully. He nodded at the other wizards. 'No one's to let him have any sugar or fruit.'
For a while there was no sound but the splash of water behind the door, the turning of pages and the Bursar's randomized humming.
'According to this note in Wasport's Lives of the Very Dull People,' said the Senior Wrangler, squinting at the tiny script, 'he met an old fisherman who said in that country the bark fell off the trees in the winter and the leaves stayed on.'
'Yes, but they always make up that sort of thing,' said Ridcully. 'Otherwise it's too boring. It's no good coming home and just saying you were shipwrecked for two years and ate winkles, is it? You have to put in a lot of daft stuff about men who go around on one big foot and The Land of Giant Plum Puddings and nursery rubbish like that.'
'My word!' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had been engrossed in a volume at the other end of the table. 'It says here that the people on the island of Slakki wear no clothes at all and the women are of unsurpassed beauty.'
'That sounds quite dreadful,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies primly.
There are several woodcuts.'
'I'm sure none of us wish to know that,' said Ridcully. He looked around at the rest of the wizards and repeated, in a louder voice, 'I said I'm sure none of us wish to know that. Dean? Come right back here and pick up your chair!'
There's a mention of EcksEcksEcksEcks in Wrencher's Snakes of All Nations,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. It says the continent has very lew poisonous snakes... Oh, there's a footnote.' His finger went down the page. 'It says, "Most of ihem have been killed by the spiders." How very odd.'
'Oh,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It also says here that "The denizens of Purdee Island also existeth inne a State of Nature" ' – he struggled with the ancient handwriting – ' "yette is in Fine Healthe & of Good Bearing & Stature & is Trulee a... knobbly Savage..." '
'Let me have a look at that,' said Ridcully. The book was passed down the table. The Arch-chancellor scowled.
'It's written "knoble",' he said. 'Noble savage. Means you... act like a gentleman, don'tcherknow...'
'What... go fox-hunting, bow to ladies, don't pay your tailor... That sort of thing?'
'Shouldn't think that chap owes his tailor very much,' said Ridcully, looking at the accompanying illustration. 'All right, chaps, let's see what else we can find...'
'He's having rather a long bath, isn't he?' said the Dean, after a while. 'I mean, I like to be as well scrubbed as the next man, but we're talking serious prunes here.'
'Sounds like he's sloshing about,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Sounds like the seaside,' said the Bursar happily.
'Try to keep up, will you, Bursar?' said Ridcully wearily.
'Actually...' said the Senior Wrangler, 'there is a certain seagully component, now that you mention it...'
Ridcully stood up, strode over to the bathroom door and held up his fist to knock.
'I am the Archchancellor,' he grumbled, lowering it. 'I can open any doors I damn well please.' And he turned the handle.
'There,' he said, as the door swung back. 'See. gentlemen? A perfectly ordinary bathroom. Stone bath, brass taps, bath cap, humorous scrubbin' brush in the shape of a duck... a perfectly ordinary bathroom. It is not, let me make myself quite clear, some kind of tropical beach. It doesn't look remotely like a tropical beach.'
He pointed out of the bathroom's open window, to where waves lapped languorously against a tree-fringed strand under a brilliant blue sky. The bathroom curtains flapped on a warm breeze.
a tropical beach,' he said. 'See? No similarity at all.'
After his nourishing meal that contained masses of essential vitamins and minerals and unfortunately quite a lot of taste as well, the man with 'Wizzard' on his hat settled down for some housekeeping, or as much as was possible in the absence of a house.
It consisted of chipping away at a piece of wood with a stone axe. He appeared to be making a very short plank, and the speed with which he was working suggested that he'd done this before.
A cockatoo settled in the tree above him to watch. Rincewind glared at it suspiciously.
When the plank had apparently been smoothed to his satisfaction he stood on it with one foot and, swaying, drew around the foot with a piece of charcoal from the fire. He did the same with the other foot, and then settled down to hack at the wood again.
The watcher in the waterhole realized that the man was making two foot-shaped boards.
Rincewind took a length of twine from his pocket. He'd found a particular creeper which, if you carefully peeled the bark off, would give you a terrible spotted rash. What he'd actually been looking for was a creeper which, if you carefully peeled off the bark, would give you a serviceable twine, and it had taken several more goes and various different rashes to find out which one this was.
If you made a hole in the soles and fed a loop of twine through it, into which a toe could be inserted, you ended up with some Ur-footwear. It made you shuffle like the Ascent of Man but, nevertheless, had some unexpected benefits. First, the steady flop-flop as you walked made you sound like two people to any dangerous creatures you were about to encounter, which, in Rincewind's recent experience, was any creature at all. Second, although they were impossible to run in they were easy to run out of, so that you were a smoking dot on the burning horizon while the enraged caterpillar or beetle was still looking at your shoes and wondering where the other person was.
He'd had to run away a lot. Every night he made a new pair of thonged sandals, and every day he left them somewhere in the desert.
When he'd finished them to his satisfaction he took a roll of thin bark from his pocket. Attached to it by a length of twine was a very precious small stub of pencil. He'd decided to keep a journal in the hope that this might help. He looked at the recent entries.
hot, flies. Dinner: honey ants. Attacked by honey ants. Fell into waterhole.
hot, flies. Dinner: either bush raisins or kangaroo droppings. Chased by hunters, don't know why. Fell into waterhole.
hot, flies. Dinner: blue-tongued lizard. Savaged by blue-tongued lizard. Chased by different hunters. Fell off cliff, bounced into tree, pissed on by small grey incontinent teddy bear, landed in a waterhole.
hot, flies. Dinner: some kind of roots which tasted like sick. This saved time.
hotter than yesterday, extra flies. V. thirsty.
hot. Delirious with thirst and flies. Nothing but nothing as far as the eye can see, with bushes in it. Decided to die, collapsed, fell down sand dune into waterhole.
He wrote very carefully and as small as possible:
hot, flies. Dinner: moth grubs.'
He stared at the writing. It said it all, really.
Why didn't people here like him? He'd meet some small tribe, everything'd be friendly, he'd pick up a few tips, get to know a few names, he'd build up a vocabulary, enough to chat about ordinary everyday things like the weather – and then suddenly they'd be chasing him away. After all, everyone talked about the weather, didn't they?
Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon – he'd run them all. Later, when he'd learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he'd been equally certain he wasn't one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren't. That didn't leave much room for fine details like what colour anyone was. But he'd be sitting by the campfire, trying out a simple conversation, and suddenly people would get upset over nothing at all and drive him off. You didn't expect people to get nasty just because you'd said something like, 'My word, when did it last rain here?' did you?
Rincewind sighed, picked up his stick, beat the hell out of a patch of ground, lay down and went to sleep.
Occasionally he screamed under his breath and his legs made running motions, which just showed that he was dreaming.
The waterhole rippled. It wasn't large, a mere puddle deep in a bush-filled gully between some rocks, and the liquid it contained could only be called water because geographers refuse to countenance words like 'souphole'.
Nevertheless it rippled, as though something had dropped into the centre. And what was odd about the ripples was that they didn't stop when they reached the edge of the water but continued outwards over the land as expanding circles of dim white light. When they reached Rincewind they broke up and flowed around him, so that now he was the centre of concentric lines of white dots, like strings of pearls.
The waterhole erupted. Something climbed up into the air and sped away across the night.
It zigzagged from rock to mountain to water-hole. And as the eye of observation rises, the travelling streak briefly illuminates other dim lines, hanging above the ground like smoke, so from above the whole land appears to have a circulatory system, or nerves...
A thousand miles from the sleeping wizard the line struck ground again, emerged in a cave, and passed across the walls like a searchlight.
It hovered in front of a huge, pointed rock for a moment and then, as if reaching a decision, shot up again into the sky.
The continent rolled below it as it returned. The light hit the waterhole without a splash but, once again, three or four ripples in something spread oui across the turbid water and the surrounding sand.
'Damn!'
They all heard the voice – thin, reedy and petulant. It came from everywhere around them.
Small soft white lights appeared in the air, spun around one another with increasing speed, and then imploded.
The god blinked, and rocked back and forth as he tried to steady himself.
'Oh, my goodness,' he said. 'What do I look like?'
He held up a hand in front of his face and flexed his fingers experimentally.
'Ah.'
The hand patted his face, his bald head, and lingered for a moment on the long white beard. He seemed puzzled.
'What's this?' he said.
'Er... a beard?' said Ponder.
The god looked down at his long white robe. 'Oh. Patriarchality? Oh, well... let me see, now...'
He seemed to pull himself together, focused his gaze on Ridcully, and his huge white eyebrows met like angry caterpillars.
'Begone from This Place Or I Will Smite Thee!' he commanded.
'Why?'
The god looked taken aback. 'Why? You can't ask why in this situation!'
'Why not?'
The god looked slightly panicky. 'Because... Thou Must Go from This Place Lest I Visit Thee with Boils!'
'Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine,' said Ridcully.
The god hesitated. 'What?' he said.
'Or cake,' said the Dean. 'Cake is a good present if you're visiting someone.'
'It depends on what kind of cake,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Sponge cake, I've always thought, is a bit of an insult. Something with a bit of marzipan is to be preferred.'
'Begone from this place lest I visit you with cake?' said the god.
'It's better than boils,' said Ridcully.
'Provided it's not sponge,' said the Senior Wrangler.
The problem faced by the god was that, while he had never encountered wizards before, the wizards had in their student days met, more or less on a weekly basis, things that threatened them horribly as a matter of course. Boils didn't hold much of a menace when rogue demons had wanted to rip your head off and do terrible things down the hole.
'Listen,' said the god, 'I happen to be the god in these parts, do you understand? I am, in fact, omnipotent!'
'I'd prefer that, what is it, you know, the cake with the pink and yellow squares—' muttered the Senior Wrangler, because wizards tend to follow a thought all the way through.
'You're a bit small, then,' said the Dean.
'And the sugary marzipan on the outside, marvellous stuff...'
The god finally realized what else had been bothering him. Scale was always tricky in these matters. Being three feet high was not adding anything to his authority.
'Damn!' he said again. 'Why am I so small?'
'Size isn't everything,' said Ridcully. 'People always smirk when they say that. I can't think why.'
'You're absolutely right!' snapped the god, as if Ridcully had triggered an entirely new train of thought. 'Look at amoebas, except that of course you can't because they're so small. Adaptable, efficient and practically immortal. Wonderful things, amoebas.' His little eyes misted over. 'Best day's work I ever did.'
'Excuse me, sir, but exactly what kind of god are you?' said Ponder.
'And is there cake or not?' said the Senior Wrangler.
The god glared up at him. 'I beg your pardon?' he said.
'I meant, what is it that you're the god of?' said Ponder.
'I said, what about this cake you're supposed to have?' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Senior Wrangler?'
'Yes, Archchancellor?'
'Cake is not the issue here.'
'But he said—'
'Your comments have been taken on board, Senior Wrangler. And they will be thrown over the side as soon as we leave harbour. Do continue, god, please.'
For a moment the god looked in a thunderbolt mood, and then sagged. He sat down on a rock.
'All that smiting talk doesn't really work, does it?' he said gloomily. 'You don't have to be nice about it. I could tell. I could give you boils, you understand, it's just that I can't really see the point. They clear up after a while, anyway. And it is rather bullying people, isn't it? To tell you the truth, I'm something of an atheist.'
'Sorry?' said Ridcully. 'You are an atheist god?'
The god looked at their expressions. 'Yes, I know,' he said. 'It's a bit of a bottomer, isn't it?' He stroked his long white beard. 'Why exactly have I got this?'
'You didn't shave this morning?' said Ridcully.
'I mean, I simply tried to appear in front of you in a form that you recognize as godly,' said the god. 'A long beard and a nightshirt seem to be the thing, although the facial hair is a little puzzling.'
'It's a sign of wisdom,' said Ridcully.
'Said to be,' said Ponder, who'd never been able to grow one.
'Wisdom: insight, acumen, learning,' said the god thoughtfully. 'Ah. The length of the hair improves the operation of the cognitive functions? Some sort of cooling arrangement, perhaps?'
'Never really thought about it,' said Ridcully.
The beard gets longer as more wisdom is acquired?' said the god.
'I'm not sure it's actually a case of cause and effect,' Ponder ventured.
'I'm afraid I don't get about as much as I should,' said the god sadly. To be frank, I find religion rather offensive.' He heaved a big sigh and seemed to look even smaller. 'Honest, I really do try but there are some days when life just gets me down... Oh, excuse me, liquid seems to be running out of my breathing tubes...'
'Would you like to blow your nose?' said Ponder.
The god looked panicky. 'Where to?'
'I mean, you sort of hold... Look, here's my handkerchief, you just sort of put it over your nose and sort of... well, snuffle into it.'
'Snuffle,' said the god. 'Interesting. And what a curiously white leaf.'
'No, it's a cotton handkerchief,' said Ponder. 'It's... made.' He stopped there. He knew that handkerchiefs were made, and cotton was involved, and he had some vague recollection of looms and things, but when you got right down to it you obtained handkerchiefs by going into a shop and saying, 'I'd like a dozen of the reinforced white ones, please, and how much do you charge for embroidering initials in the corners?'
'You mean... created?' said the god, suddenly very suspicious. 'Are you gods too?'
Beside his foot a small shoot pushed through the sand and began to grow rapidly.
'No, no,' said Ponder. 'Er... you just take some cotton and... hammer it flat, I think... and you get handkerchiefs.'
'Oh, then you're tool-using creatures,' said the god, relaxing a little. The shoot near his foot was already a plant now, and putting out leaves and a flowerbud.
He blew his nose loudly.
The wizards drew closer. They were not, of course, afraid of gods, but gods tended to have uncertain tempers and a wise man kept away from them. However, it's hard to be frightened of someone who's having a good blow.
'You're really the god in these parts?' said Ridcully.
The god sighed. 'Yes,' he said. 'I thought it would be so easy, you know. Just one small island. I could start all over again. Do it properly. But it's all going completely wrong.' Beside him the little plant opened a nondescript yellow flower.
'Start all over again?'
'Yes. You know... godliness.' The god waved a hand in the direction of the Hub.
'I used to work over there,' he said. 'Basic general godding. You know, making people out of clay, old toenails, and so on? And then sitting on mountaintops and casting thunderbolts and all the rest of it. Although,' he leaned forward and lowered his voice, 'very few gods can actually do that, you know.'
'Really?' said Ridcully, fascinated.
'Very hard thing to steer, lightning. Mostly we waited until a thunderbolt happened to hit some poor soul and then spake in a voice of thunder and said it was his fault for being a sinner. I mean, they were bound to have done something, weren't they?' The god blew his nose again. 'Quite depressing, really. Anyway... I suppose the rot set in when I tried to see if it was possible to breed a more inflammable cow.'
'Millennia,' said the Dean.
'Even longer,' Ridcully agreed. 'Survival of the fastest, eh? So I suggest we load up and go, gentlemen.'
'What, just like that?' said Ponder.
'Certainly. Why not?'
'But... but... but think of the things we could learn here!' said Ponder. 'The possibilities are breathtaking! At last there's a god who's actually got the right idea! At last we can get some answers to all the important questions! We could... we can... Look, we can't just go. I mean, not go! I mean... we're wizards, aren't we?'
He was aware that he had their full attention, something that wizards did not often give. Usually they defined 'listening' as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next. It was disconcerting.
Then the spell broke. The Senior Wrangler shook his head. 'Curious way of looking at things,' he said, turning away. 'So... I vote we take plenty of those cheese nuts, Archchancellor.'
'Good provisioning is the essence of successful exploration,' said the Dean. 'Quite a roomy vessel, too, so we needn't stint.'
Ridcully pulled himself aboard via a trailing tendril, and sniffed.
'Smells rather like pumpkin,' he said. 'Always liked pumpkin. A very versatile vegetable.'
Ponder put a hand over his eyes. 'Oh, really?' he said, wearily. 'A group of Unseen University wizards are seriously considering putting to sea on an edible boat?'
'Fried, boiled, a good base for a soup stock and, of course, excellent in pies,' said the Archchancellor happily. 'Also the seeds are a tasty snack.'
'Good with butter,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'I suppose there isn't a butter plant anywhere, is there?'
'There will be soon,' said the Dean. 'Give us a hand up, will you, Archchancellor?'
Ponder exploded. 'I don't believe this!' he said. 'You're turning your back on an astonishing god-given opportunity—'
'Absolutely, Mister Stibbons,' said Ridcully, from above. 'No offence meant, of course, but if the choice is a trip on the briny deep or staying on a small island with someone trying to create a more inflammable cow then you can call me Salty Sam.'
'Is this the poop deck?' said the Dean.
'I hope not,' said Ridcully briskly. 'You see, Stibbons—'
'Are you sure?' said the Dean.
'I'm sure, Dean. You see, Stibbons, when you've had a little more experience in these matters you'll learn that there's nothing more dangerous than a god with too much time on his hands—'
'Except an enraged mother bear,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'No, they're far more dangerous.'
'Not when they're really close.'
'If it was the poop deck, how would we know?' said the Dean.
Ponder shook his head. There were times when the desire to climb the thaumaturgical ladder was seriously blunted, and one of them was when you saw what was on top.
'I... I just don't know what to say,' he said. 'I am frankly astonished.'
'Well done, lad. So run along and get some bananas, will you? Green ones will keep better. And don't look so upset. When it comes to gods, I have to say, you can give me one of the make-out-of-clay-and-smite-'em brigade any day of the week. That's the kind of god you can deal with.'
'The practically human sort,' said the Dean.
'Exactly.'
'Call me overly picky,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, 'but I'd prefer not to be around a god who might suddenly decide I'd run faster with three extra legs.'
'Exactly. Is there something wrong, Stibbons? Oh, he's gone. Oh well, no doubt he'll be back. And... Dean?'
'Yes, Archchancellor?'
'I can't help thinking you're working up to some sort of horrible joke about a poop deck. I'd prefer not, if it's all the same to you.'
'You all right, mate?'
No one in the world had ever been so pleased to see Crocodile Crocodile before.
Rincewind let himself be pulled upright. His hand, against all expectation, was not blue and three times its normal size.
That bloody kangaroo...' he muttered, using the hand to wave away the eternal flies.
'What kangaroo waf that, mate?' said the crocodile, helping him back towards the pub.
Rincewind looked around. There were just the normal components of the local scenery – dry-looking bushes, red dirt and a million circling flies.
The one I was talking to just now.'
'I was juft fweeping up and I faw you dancing around yellin',' said Crocodile. 1 didn't fee no kangaroo.'
'It's probably a magic kangaroo,' said Rincewind wearily.
'Oh, right, a magic kangaroo,' said Crocodile. 'No worrieth. I think maybe I'd better make you up the cure for drinking too much beer, mate.'
'What's the cure?'
'More beer.'
'How much beer did I have last night, then?'
'Oh, about twenty pinth.'
'Don't be silly, no one can even hold that much beer!'
'Oh, you didn't hang on to much of it at all, mate. No worrieth. We like a man who can't hold hif beer.'
In the fetid fleapit of Rincewind's brain the projectionist of memory put on reel two. Recollection began to flicker. He shuddered.
'Was I... singing a song?' he said.
Too right. You kept pointing to the Roo Beer pofter and finging...' Crocodile's huge jaws moved as he tried to remember, ' "Tie my kangaroo up." Bloody good fong.'
'And then I...?'
Then you loft all your money playing Two Up with Daggy's shearing gang.'
'That's... I... there were these two coins, and the bloke'd toss them in the air, and you... had to bet on how they'd come down...'
'Right. And you kept bettin' they wouldn't come down at all. Paid it was bound to happen iooner or later. You got good odds, though.'
'I lost all the money Mad gave me?'
'Yep.'
'How was I paying for my beer, then?'
'Oh, the blokes were queueing up to buy it for you. They faid you were better than a day at the races.'
'And then I... there was something about sheep...' He looked horrified. 'Oh, no...'
'Oh, yeah. You faid, "Ftrain the fraying crones, a dollar a time for giving fheep a haircut? I could do a beaut foft job like that with my eyes fhut, too right no flaming worries by half bonza fhoot through ye gods this if good beer..." '
'Oh, gods. Did anyone hit me?'
'Nah, mate, they reckoned you were a good sport, 'specially when you wagered five hundred fquids that you could beat their best man at shearin'.'
'I couldn't've done that, I'm not a betting man!'
'Well, I am, and if you've been fhootin' a line I wouldn't give tuppence for your chances, Rinfo.'
'Rinso?' said Rincewind weakly. He looked at his beerglass. 'What's in this stuff?'
'Your mate Mad faid you were this big wizard and could kill people just by pointing at 'em and shoutin',' said Crocodile. 'I wouldn't mind feein' that.'
Rincewind looked up desperately and his eye caught the Roo Beer poster. It showed some of the damn silly trees they had here, and the arid red earth and – nothing else.
'Huh?'
'What's that?' said Crocodile.
'What happened to the kangaroo?' Rincewind said hoarsely.
'What kangaroo?'
'There was a kangaroo on that poster last night... wasn't there?'
Crocodile peered at the poster. 'I'm better at smell,' he admitted at last. 'But I got to admit, it smells like it's gorn.'
'Something very strange is going on here,' said Rincewind. 'This is a very strange country.'
'We've got an opera house,' Crocodile volunteered. 'That's cultcher.'
'And ninety-three words for being sick?'
'Yeah, well, we're a very... vocal people.'
'Did I really bet five hundred... What was it?'
'Squids.'
'... squids I haven't got?'
'Yup.'
'So I'll probably get killed if I lose, right?'
'Is that you?' said Rincewind, glancing at the distant ring of watchers.
'Hah, good one. Ready? They'll do what I do. They're like sheep, okay?'
The shearers watched as wool fell like rain.
That's somethin' you don't often see,' said one of them. Them standin' on their heads like that...'
The cartwheels is good,' said another shearer, lighting his pipe. 'I mean, for sheep.'
Rincewind just hung on to the shears. They had a life of their own. The sheep flung themselves against the clippers as if in a real hurry to get into something more comfortable. Fleeces curled around his ankles, then around his knees, rose above his waist... and then the shears were slicing the air, and sizzling as they cooled down.
Several dozen dazed sheep were watching him very suspiciously. So were the sheep-shearers.
'Er... have we started the competition yet?' he said.
'You just sheared thirty sheep in two minutes!' roared Daggy.
'Is that good?'
'Good? No one takes two minutes for thirty sheep.'
'Well, I'm sorry, but I can't go any faster.'
The shearers went into a huddle. Rincewind looked around for the ram, but it didn't seem to be there any more.
Finally, something seemed to have been settled. The shearers approached him in the cautious, oblique way of men trying to hang back and walk forward at the same time.
Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution.
'G'day!' he said nervously.
Rincewind gave him a friendly wave, and it was only halfway through when he remembered that he was still holding the shears. Daggy hadn't forgotten about them.
'Er... we ain't got five hundred squids till we get paid—'
Rincewind wasn't certain how to deal with this. 'No worries,' he said. This covered most things.
'... so if yew're gonna be around...'
'I just want to get to Bugarup as soon as possible,' said Rincewind.
Daggy kept smiling but turned around and went into another huddle with the rest of the shearers. Then he turned back.
'... maybe we could sell a few things...'
'I'm not bothered about the money, actually,' said Rincewind loudly. 'Just point me in the direction of Bugarup. No worries.'
'Yew don't want the money?'
'No worries.'
There was another huddle. Rincewind heard hissed comments of 'Get him outta here right now.'
Daggy turned back. 'I got a horse you can have,' he said. 'It's worth a squid or two.'
'No worries.'
'And then you'll be able to ride away...?'
'She'll be right. No worries.'
It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just... made things better. A shark's got your leg? No worries. You've been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You're dead? She'll be right! No worries! Oddly enough, it seemed to work.
'No worries,' he said again.
'Got to be worth a squid or two, that horse,' Daggy said again. 'Practically a bloody racehorse.'
There was some sniggering from the crowd.
'No worries?' said Rincewind.
Daggy looked for a moment as if he was entertaining the suggestion that maybe the horse was worth more than five hundred squid, but Rincewind was still dreamily holding on to the shears and he thought better of it.
'Get you to Bugarup in no time, that horse,' he said.
'No worries.'
A couple of minutes later it was obvious even to Rincewind's inexperienced eye that while you could race this horse, it wouldn't be sensible to race it against other horses. At least, ones that were alive. It was brown, stubby, mostly a thatch of mane, with hooves the size of soup bowls, and it had the shortest legs Rincewind had ever seen on anything with a saddle. The only way you could fall off would be to dig a hole in the ground first. It looked ideal. It was Rincewind's kind of horse.
'No worries,' he said. 'Actually... one small worry.'
He dropped the shears. The shearers took a step back.
Rincewind went over to the corral and looked down at the ground, which was churned from the hoofprints of the sheep. Then he looked at the back of the shearing shed. For a moment he was sure there was the outline of a kangaroo...
The shearers approached him cautiously as he banged on the sun-bleached planks, shouting, 'I know you're in there!' .
'Er, that's what we call wood,' said Daggy. 'Woo-od,' he added, for the hard-of-thinking. 'Made into a wa-all.'
'Did you see a kangaroo walk into this wall?' Rincewind demanded.
Daggy's wide brow furrowed a little. He took off his hat and wiped his head with his arm. He looked at the disappearing horse, and then at the sheds, and then at the other men. Several times he started to speak, shut his mouth before he could get the first word out, and glared around him again.
'Yew all know I've had it for bloody ages, right?' he demanded.
' 's right.'
'Ages.'
'Won it off'f a bloke.'
'Right. Yeah. Right. You must've done.'
Mrs Whitlow sat on a rock, combing her hair. A bush had sprouted several twigs with rows of blunt, closely set thorns just when she needed them.
Large, pink and very clean, she relaxed by the water like an amplified siren. Birds sang in the trees. Sparkling beetles hummed to and fro across the water.
If the Senior Wrangler had been present someone could have scraped him up and carried him away in a bucket.
Mrs Whitlow did not feel in any danger. The wizards were around, after all. She was mildly worried that the maids would be getting lazy since she wasn't there, but she could look forward to making their lives a living hell when she got back. The possibility of not getting back never entered her head.
A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow's head. She'd decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way.
She had a very straightforward view of foreign parts, or at least those more distant than her sister's house in Quirm where she spent a week's holiday every year. They were inhabited by people who were more to be pitied than blamed because, really, they were like children. And they acted like savages.
On the other hand, the scenery was nice and the weather was warm and nothing smelled very bad. She was definitely feeling the benefit, as she'd put it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Mrs Whitlow had left her corsets off.
The thing that the Senior Wrangler insisted on calling the 'melon boat' was, even the Dean admitted, very impressive.
There was a big space below deck, dark and veined and lined with curved black boards, very like giant sunflower seeds.
'Boat seeds,' said the Archchancellor. 'Probably make good ballast. Senior Wrangler, don't eat the wall, please.'
'I thought perhaps we could do with more cabin space,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Cabins possibly, staterooms no,' said Ridcully, heaving himself back on to the deck.
'Avast shipmate!' shouted the Dean, throwing a bunch of bananas on to the boat and climbing up behind them.
'Quite so. How do we sail this vegetable, Dean?'
'Oh, Ponder Stibbons knows all about that sort of thing.'
'And where is he?'
'Didn't he go off to fetch some bananas?'
They looked down at the beach, where the Bursar was stockpiling seaweed.
'He did seem a bit... upset,' said Ridcully.
'Can't imagine why.'
Ridcully glanced up at the central mountain, glowing in the afternoon sun.
'I suppose he wouldn't have done anything stupid, would he?' he said.
'Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!' said the Dean.
'Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean,' said Ridcully. He leaned down into the cabin. 'Senior Wrangler! We're going to look for Stibbons. And we ought to go and fetch Mrs Whitlow, too.'
There was a shriek from below. 'Mrs Whitlow! How could we have forgotten her!'
'In your case, only by having a cold bath, Senior Wrangler.'
As horses went, this one went slowly. It moved in a stolid, I-can-do-this-all-day manner that clearly said the only way you get me to go faster will be to push me off a cliff. It had a curious gait, somewhere faster than a trot but slower than a canter. The effect was a jolting slightly out of synchronization with the moment of inertia in any known human organ, causing everything inside Rincewind to bounce off everything else. Also, if he forgot for a second and lowered his legs, Snowy went on without him, and this meant that he had to run ahead and stand there like a croquet hoop until he caught him up.
But Snowy didn't bite, buck, roll over or gallop insanely away, which were the traits Rincewind had hitherto associated with horses. When Rincewind stopped for the night the horse wandered off a little way and ate a bush covered with leaves the thickness, smell and apparent edibility of linoleum.
He camped beside what he had heard called a 'billybong', which was just an expanse of churned earth with a tiny puddle of water welling up in the middle. Little green and blue birds were clustered around it, cheeping happily in the late afternoon light. They scattered when Rincewind lay down to drink, and scolded him from the trees.
When he sat up, one of them landed on his finger.
'Who's a pretty boy, then?' said Rincewind.
The noise stopped. Up on the branches the birds looked at one another. There wasn't much room in their heads for a new idea, but one had just turned up.
The sun dropped towards the horizon. Rince-wind poked very cautiously inside a hollow log and found a ham sandwich and a plate of cocktail sausages.
Up in the trees the budgerigars were in a huddle.
One of them said, very quietly, 'Wh...?'
Rincewind lay back. Even the flies were merely annoying. Things began to sizzle in the bushes. Snowy went and drank from the tiny pool with a noise like an inefficient suction pump trying to deal with an unlucky turtle.
It was, nevertheless, very peaceful.
Rincewind sat bolt upright. He knew what was about to happen when things were peaceful.
Up in the darkening branches a bird muttered, '... pre'y b'y...?'
He relaxed, but only a little.
'... 'sa prit' b'y...?'
Suddenly the birds stopped.
A branch creaked.
The drop-bear... dropped.
It was a close relative of the koala, although this doesn't mean very much. After all, the closest relative of the common elephant is about the size and shape of a rabbit. The drop-bear's most notable feature was its posterior, thick and heavily-padded to provide the maximum shock to the victim with the minimum shock to the bear. The initial blow rendered the prey unconscious, and then the bears could gather round to feed. It was a magnificent method of killing, since in other respects the bears were not very well built to be serious predators, and it was therefore particularly unfortunate for this bear that it chose, on this night, to drop on a man who might well have had 'Victim' written all over him but also had 'Wizzard' written on his hat, and that this hat, most significantly, came to a point.
Rincewind lumbered to his feet and ran into a few trees while he tried, with both hands on the brim, to lift his hat off his head. He managed it at last, stared in horror at the bear and its peculiarly confused expression, and shook it off and into the bushes. There were thumps around him as more bears, disoriented by this turn of events, hit the ground and bounced wildly.
In the trees the budgerigars woke up and, the simple message by now having had time to work its way into their brain cells, shrieked, 'Who's a pri'y boy, den?' A madly tumbling bear whirled past Rincewind's face.
Rincewind turned and ran towards Snowy, landing astride the horse's back, or where its back would have been had it been taller. Snowy obediently broke into his arrhythmical trot and headed into the darkness.
Rincewind looked down, swore and ran after his horse.
He held on tight as Snowy ran on like some small engine, leaving the bouncing bears behind, and didn't slow down until he was well away along the track and among bushes that were shorter than he was. Then he slid off.
What a bloody country!
There was a flurry of wings in the night and suddenly the bush was full of little birds.
'Wh'sa pri' boyden?'
Rincewind waved his hat at them and screamed a little, just to relieve his feelings. It didn't work. The budgerigars thought this was some sort of entertainment.
'Bug'roff!' they twittered.
Rincewind gave up, stamped on the ground a few times, and tried to sleep.
When he awoke, it was to a sound very much like a donkey being sawn in half. It was a kind of rhythmic scream of pain, anguished and forlorn, setting the teeth of the world on edge.
Rincewind raised his head cautiously over the scrub.
A windmill was spinning in the breeze, turning this way and that as stray gusts batted its tail fin.
Rincewind was seeing more of these, dotted across the landscape, and thought: If all the water's underground, that's a good idea...
There was a mob of sheep hanging around the base of this one. They didn't back off, but watched him carefully as he approached. He saw why. The trough below the pump was empty. The fan was spinning, grinding out its mournful squeak, but no water was coming out of the pipe.
The thirsty sheep looked up at him.
'Er... don't look at me,' he mumbled. I'm a wizard. We're not supposed to be good at machinery.'
No, but we are supposed to be good at magic, said an accusing voice in his head.
'Maybe I can see if something's come loose, though. Or something,' he muttered.
Impelled by the vaguely accusing woolly stares, he clambered up the rickety tower and tried to look efficient. There didn't seem to be anything wrong, except that the metallic groaning was getting louder.
'Can't see any—'
Something that had finally been tortured beyond endurance broke, somewhere down in the tower. It shook, and the windmill spun free, dragging a broken rod which smashed heavily on the windmill's casing with every revolution.
Rincewind half fell, half slid back down to the ground.
'Seems to be a bit of a technical fault,' he mumbled. A lump of cast iron smashed into the sand by his feet. 'Probably needs to be seen to by a qualified artificer. Probably invalidates the warranty if I mess around—'
A cracking noise from overhead made him dive for cover, which in this case was a rather surprised sheep. When the racket had died away the windmill's fan was bowling over through the scrub. As for the rest of it, if there had ever been any user-serviceable parts inside they very clearly weren't in there any more.
Rincewind took off his hat to mop his brow, but he wasn't quick enough. A pink tongue rasped across his forehead like damp sandpaper.
'Ow! Good grief! You lot really are thirsty, aren't you...?' He pulled the hat back on, right down to his ears just to be on the safe side. 1 could do with a drink myself, to tell the truth...'
He managed, after pushing a few sheep aside, to find a piece of broken windmill.
Wading with some difficulty through the press of silent bodies, he made his way to an area that was a little lower than the surrounding scrub, and contained a couple of trees whose leaves looked slightly fresher than the rest.
'Ow! G'd gr'f!' chattered the birds around him.
Two or three feet should do it, he thought as he shovelled the red soil aside. Amazing, really, all this water underground when it never rained at all. The whole place must be floating on water.
At three feet down the soil was barely damp. He sighed, and kept going.
'Oh, no, please...'
A tree had fallen down and bridged the gulf. It was very narrow, but Snowy wheeled on to it without slowing.
Both ends of the tree drummed up and down on the lip of the cliff. Pebbles began to fall away. Snowy bounced across the gap like a small ball and stepped off on the far side just before the treetrunk teetered and dropped on to the rocks.
'Please, no...'
There wasn't a cliff here, just a long slope of loose rocks. Snowy landed among them, and flared his nostrils as the entire slope of scree began to move.
Rincewind saw the herd gallop past in the narrow canyon bottom, far below.
Large rocks bounded alongside him as the horse continued down in his own personal landslide. One or two jumped and bounced ahead, smashing on to the canyon floor just behind the last of the herd.
Numb with fear and the shaking, Rincewind looked further along the canyon. It was blind. The end was another cliff...
Stone piled into stone, building a rough wall across the canyon floor. As the last boulder slammed into place Snowy landed on top of it, almost daintily.
He looked down at the penned herd, milling in confusion, and flared his nostrils. Rincewind was pretty sure horses couldn't snigger, but this one radiated an air of sniggerruity.
It was ten minutes later that the horsemen rode up. By then the herd was almost docile.
They looked at the horses. They looked at Rincewind, who grinned horribly and said, 'No worries.'
Very slowly, he didn't fall off Snowy. He simply swivelled sideways, with his feet still twisted together, until his head banged gently on the ground.
That was bloody great riding, mate!'
'Could someone separate my ankles, please? I fear they may have fused together.'
A couple of the riders dismounted and, after some effort, pulled him free.
The leader looked down at him. 'Name your price for that little battler, mate!' said Remorse.
'Er... three... er... squids?' said Rincewind, muzzily.
'What? For a wiry little devil like that? He's got to be worth a coupla hundred at least!'
'Three squids is all I've got...'
'I reckon a few of them rocks hit him on the head,' said one of the stockmen who were holding Rincewind up.
'I mean I'll buy him off'f you, mister,' said Remorse, patiently. 'Tell you what – two hundred squids, a bag of tucker and we'll set you right on the road to... Where was it he wanted to go, Clancy?'
'Bugarup,' murmured Rincewind.
'Oh, you don't wanna go to Bugarup,' said Remorse. 'Nothing in Bugarup but a bunch of wowsers and pooftahs.'
' 's okay, I like parrots,' mumbled Rincewind, who was just hoping that they would let him go so that he could hold on to the ground again. 'Er... what's Ecksian for going mad with terrified fatigue and collapsing in a boneless heap?'
The men looked at one another.
'Isn't that "snagged as a wombat's tonker"?'
'No, no, no, that's when you chuck a twister, isn't it?' said Clancy.
'What? Strewth, no. Chucking a twister's when... when you... yeah, it's when you... yeah, it's when your nose... Hang on, that's "bend a smartie"...'
'Er—' said Rincewind, clutching his head.
'What? "Bend a smartie" is when your ears get blocked underwater.' Clancy looked uncertain, and then seemed to reach a decision. 'Yeah, that's right!'
'Nah, that's "gonging like a possum's armpit", mate.'
'Excuse me—' said Rincewind.
'That ain't right. "Gonging like a possum's armpit" is when you crack a crusty. When your ears are stuffed like a Mudjee's kettle after a week of Fridays, that's "stuck up like Morgan's mule".'
'No, you're referrin' to "happier than Morgan's mule in a choccy patch"—'
'You mean "as fast as Morgan's mule after it ate Ma's crow pie".'
'How fast was that? Exactly?' said Rincewind.
They all stared at him.
Taster'n an eel in a snakepit, mate!' said Clancy. 'Don't you understand plain language?'
'Yeah,' said one of the men, 'he might be a fancy rider but I reckon he's dumber than a—'
'Don't anyone say anything!' shouted Rincewind. 'I'm feeling a lot better, all right? Just... all right, all right?' He straightened his ragged robe and adjusted his hat. 'Now, if you could just set me on the right road to Bugarup, I will not trespass further on your time. You may keep Snowy. He can bed down on a ceiling somewhere.'
'Oh, no, mister,' said Remorse. He reached into a shirt pocket, pulled out a bundle of notes and licked his thumb to count off twenty. 'I always pays me debts. You want to stay with us a while first? We could use another rider and it's tough going on the road by yourself. There's bush rangers about.'
Rincewind rubbed his head again. Now that his various bodily organs had wobbled their way back into their approximate positions he could get back to general low-key generalized dread.
They won't have to worry about me,' he mumbled. 'I promise not to light fires or feed the animals. Well, I say promise - most of the time they're trying to feed off me.'
Remorse shrugged.
'Just so long as there's no more of those damn dropping bears,' said Rincewind.
The men laughed.
'Drop-bears? Who's been feedin' you a line about drop-bears?'
'What do you mean?'
'There's no such thing as drop-bears! Someone must've seen you coming, mate!'
'Huh? They've got... they went,' Rincewind waved his arm, 'boing... all over the place... great big teeth...'
'I reckon he madder'n Morgan's mule, mate!' said Clancy.
The group went silent.
'How mad is that, then?' said Rincewind.
Clancy leaned on his saddle and looked nervously at the other men. He licked his lips. 'Well, it's...'
'Yes?'
'Well, it's... it's...' His face twisted up. 'It's...'
'Ver'...?' Rincewind hinted.
'Ver'...' Clancy mumbled, clutching the syllable like a lifeline.
'Hmm?'
'Ver... ry...'
'Keep going, keep going...'
'Ver... ry... mad?' said Clancy.
'Well done! See? So much easier,' said Rincewind. 'Someone mentioned something about food?'
Remorse nodded to one of the men, who handed Rincewind a sack.
'There's beer and veggies and stuff and, 'cos you're a good sport, we're giving you a tin of jam, too.'
'Gooseberry?'
'Yep.'
'And I'm wondering about your hat,' said Remorse. 'Why's there all corks round it?'
'Knocks the flies out,' said Rincewind.
'That works, does it?'
'Course not,' said Clancy. 'If'n it does, some-one'd have thought of it by now.'
'Yes. Me,' said Rincewind. 'No worries.'
'Makes you look a bit of a drongo, mate,' said Clancy.
'Oh, good,' said Rincewind. 'Which way's Bugarup?'
'Just turn left at the bottom of the canyon, mate.'
'That's all?'
'You can ask again when you meet the bush rangers.'
'They've got some sort of cabin or station, have they?'
'They've... Well, just remember they'll find you if you get lost.'
'Really? Oh, well, I suppose that's part of their job. Good day to you.'
'G'day.'
'No worries.'
The men watched Rincewind until he was out of sight.
'Didn't seem very bothered, did he?'
'He's a bit gujeroo, if you ask me.'
'Clancy?'
'Yes, boss?'
'You made that one up, didn't you...?'
'Well...'
'You bloody did, Clancy.'
Clancy looked embarrassed, but then rallied.
'All right, then,' he said hotly. 'What about that one you used yesterday, "as busy as a one-armed carpenter in Smackaroo"?'
'What about it?'
'I looked it up in the atlas and there's no such place, boss.'
'There damn well is!'
There isn't. Anyway, no one'd employ a one-armed carpenter, would they? So he wouldn't be busy, would he?'
'Listen, Clancy—'
'He'd go fishing or something, wouldn't he?'
'Clancy, we're supposed to be carving a new language out of the wilderness here—'
'Probably'd need someone to help him bait the line, but—'
'Clancy, will you shut up and go and get the horses?'
It took twenty minutes to roll enough of the rocks away, and five minutes after that Clancy reported back.
'Can't find the little bastard, boss. And we looked underneath all the others.'
'It couldn't have got past us!'
'Yes it could, boss. You saw it goin' up those cliffs. Probably miles away by now. You want I should go after that bloke?'
Remorse thought about it, and spat. 'No, we got the colt back. That's worth the money.' He stared reflectively down the canyon.
'You all right, boss?'
'Clancy, after we get back to the station, go on into town and call in at the Pastoral Hotel and bring back as many corks as they've got, willya?' Think it'll work, boss? He was as weird as...'
Clancy was pulled up by the look in his boss's eye.
'He was pretty weird,' he said. 'Weird, yeah. But smart, too. No flies on him.' Behind them, ifi the jumble of rocks and bushes at the end of the canyon, a drawing of a small horse became a drawing of a kangaroo and then faded into the stone.
The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did.
Wizards, when faced with danger, would immediately stop and argue amongst themselves about exactly what kind of danger it was. By the time everyone in the party understood, either it had become the sort of danger where your options are so very, very clear that you instantly take one of them or die, or it had got bored and gone away. Even danger has its pride.
When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful demi-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worried about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase 'in harm's way'.
It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the other kind of wizard.
His footsteps took him, almost without his being aware, along the gently winding path up the mountain. Strange creatures peered at him from the undergrowth on either side. Some of them looked like—
Wizards think in terms of books, and, now, one crept out from the shelves of Ponder's memory. It had been given to him when he was small. In fact, he'd still got it somewhere, filed away in a cardboard box.
It had consisted of lots of small pages on a central spiral. Each one showed the head, body or tail of some bird, fish or animal. It was possible for the sufficiently bored to shuffle and turn them so that you got, say, a creature with the head of a horse, the body of a beetle and the tail of a fish. The cover promised 'hours of fun' although, after the first three minutes, you couldn't help wondering what kind of person could make that kind of fun last for hours, and whether suffocating him as kindly as possible now would save the Serial Crimes Squad a lot of trouble in years to come. Ponder, however, had hours of fun.
Some of the creat— things in the undergrowth looked like the pages of that book. There were birds with beaks as long as their bodies. There were spiders the size of hands. Here and there the air shimmered like water. It resisted very gently as Ponder tried to walk through it, and then let him pass, but the birds and insects didn't seem inclined to follow him.
There were beetles everywhere.
Eventually, by easy stages, the winding path reached the top of the mountain. There was a tiny valley there, just below the peak. At the far end was a large cave mouth, lit by a blue glow within.
A large beetle sang past Ponder's ear.
The cave mouth opened into a cavern, filled with misty blue fog. There was a suggestion of complex shadows. And there were sounds -whistles, little zipping noises, the occasional thud or clang that suggested work going on somewhere in the mist.
Ponder brushed aside a beetle that had landed on his cheek and stared at the shape right in front of him.
It was the front half of an elephant.
The other half of the elephant, balancing against all probability on the two legs at the rear end, stood a few yards away. In between was... the rest of the elephant.
Ponder Stibbons told himself that if you cut an elephant in half and scooped out the middle, what you would get would be... well, mess. There wasn't much mess here. Pink and purple tubes had uncoiled neatly on to a workbench. A small stepladder led up into another complexity of tubes and bulky organs. There was a general feel of methodical work in progress. This wasn't the horror of an elephant in an explosive death. This was an elephant under construction.
Little clouds of white light spiralled in from all corners of the cavern, spun for a moment, and became the god of evolution, who was standing on the stepladder.
He blinked at Ponder. 'Oh, it's you,' he said. 'One of the pointy creatures. Can you tell me what happens when I do this?'
He reached inside the echoing depths of the front half. The elephant's ears flapped.
'The ears flapped,' squeaked Ponder.
The god emerged, beaming. 'It's amazing how difficult that is to achieve,' he said. 'Anyway... what do you think of it?'
Ponder swallowed. 'It's... very good,' he managed. He took a step back, bumped into something, and turned and looked into the gaping maw of a very large shark. It was in the middle of another... well, he had to think of it as a sort of biological scaffolding. It rolled an eye at him. Behind it, a much bigger whale was being assembled.
'It is, isn't it?' said the god.
Ponder tried to concentrate on the elephant. 'Although—' he said.
'Yes?'
'Are you sure about the wheels?'
The god looked concerned. 'You think they're too small? Not quite suitable for the veldt?'
'Er, probably not...'
'It's very hard to design an organic wheel, you know,' said the god reproachfully. 'They're little masterpieces.'
'You don't think just, you know, moving the legs about would be simpler?'
'Oh, we'd never get anywhere if I just copied earlier ideas,' said the god. 'Diversify and fill all niches, that's the ticket.'
'But is lying on your side in a mud hole with your wheels spinning a very important niche?' said Ponder.
The god looked at him, and then stared glumly at the half-completed elephant.
'Perhaps if I made the tyres bigger?' he said, hopefully yet in a hopeless voice.
'I don't think so,' said Ponder.
'Oh, you're probably right.' The little god's hands twitched. 'I don't know, I do try to diversify, but sometimes it's so difficult...'
Suddenly he ran across the crowded cave towards a huge pair of doors at the far end, and flung them open.
'I'm sorry, but I just have to do one,' said the god. 'They calm me down, you know.'
Ponder caught up. The cave beyond the doors was bigger than this one, and brilliantly lit. The air was full of small, bright things, hovering in their millions like beads on invisible strings.
'Beetles?' said Ponder.
There's nothing like a beetle when you're feeling depressed!' said the god. He'd stopped by a large metal desk and was feverishly opening drawers and pulling out boxes. 'Can you pass me that box of antennae? It's just on the shelf there. Oh yes, you can't beat a beetle when you're feeling down. Sometimes I think it's what it's all about, you know.'
'What all?' said Ponder.
The god swept an arm in an expansive gesture. 'Everything,' he said cheerfully. 'The whole thing. Trees, grass, flowers... What did you think it was all for?'
'What are they, then?' said the god. The wizards paused.
'Do go on, Mister Stibbons,' said the Arch-chancellor. 'We're all ears. Especially the elephant.'
'Well...' Ponder knew he was going red. 'Er... well, how do you get flowers and things at the moment?'
'I make them,' said the god. 'And then I keep an eye on them and see how they function and then when they wear out I make an improved version based on experimental results.' He frowned. 'Although the plants seem to be acting very oddly these days. What's the point of these seeds they keep making? I try to discourage it but they don't seem to listen.'
'I think... er... they're trying to invent sex, sir,' said Ponder. 'Er... sex is how you can... they can... creatures can... they can make the next... creatures.'
'You mean... elephants can make more elephants?'
'Yes, sir.'
'My word! Really?'
'Oh, yes.'
'How do they go about that? Calibrating the ear-waggling is particularly time-consuming. Do they use special tools?'
Ponder saw that the Dean was staring straight up at the ceiling, while the other wizards were also finding something apparently fascinating to look at that meant they could avoid one another's gaze.
'Um, in a way,' said Ponder. He knew that a sticky patch lay ahead and decided to give up. 'But really I don't know much about—'
'And workshops, presumably,' said the god. He took a book from his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear. 'Do you mind if I make notes?'
'They... er... the female...' Ponder tried.
'Female,' said the god obediently, writing this down.
'Well, she... one popular way... she... sort of makes the next one... inside her.'
The god stopped writing. 'Now I know that's not right,' he said. 'You can't make an elephant inside an elephant—'
'Er... a smaller version...'
'Ah, once again I have to point out the flaw. After a few such constructions you'd end up with an elephant the size of a rabbit.'
'Er, it gets bigger later...'
'Really? How?'
'It sort of... builds itself... er... from the inside...'
'And the other one, the one that is not the, uh, female? What is its part in all this? Is your colleague ill?'
The Senior Wrangler hammered the Dean hard on the back.
'It's all right,' squeaked the Dean, '... often have... these... coughing fits...'
The god scribbled industriously for a few seconds, and then stopped and chewed the end of his pencil thoughtfully.
'And all this, er, this sex is done by unskilled labour?' he said.
'Oh, yes.'
'No quality control of any description?'
'Er, no.'
'How does your species go about it?' said the god. He looked questioningly at Ponder.
'It... er... we... er...' Ponder stuttered.
'We avoid it,' said Ridcully. 'Nasty cough you've got there, Dean.'
'Really?' said the god. 'That's very interesting. What do you do instead? Split down the middle? That works beautifully for amoebas, but giraffes find it extremely difficult, I do know that.'
'What? No, we concentrate on higher things,' said Ridcully. 'And take cold baths, healthy morning runs, that sort of thing.'
'My goodness, I'd better make a note of that,' said the god, patting his robe. 'How does the process work, exactly? Do the females accompany you? These higher things... How high, precisely? This is a very interesting concept. Presumably extra orifices are required?'
'What? Pardon?' said Ponder.
'Getting creatures to make themselves, eh? I thought this whole seed business was just high spirits but, yes, I can see that it would save a lot of work, a lot of work. Of course, there'd have to be some extra effort at the design stage, certainly, but afterwards I suppose it'd practically run itself The god's hand blurred as he wrote, and he went on, 'Hmm, drives and imperatives, they're going to be vital... er... How does it work with, say, trees?'
'You just need Ponder's uncle and a paintbrush,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Sir!' said Ponder hotly.
The god gave them both a look of intelligent bewilderment, like a man who had just heard a joke told in a completely foreign language and isn't sure if the speaker has got to the punchline yet. Then he shrugged.
The only thing I think I don't quite understand', he said, 'is why any creature would want to spend time on all this...' he peered at his notes, 'this sex, when they could be enjoying themselves... Oh dear, your associate seems to be choking this time, I'm afraid...'
'Dean!' shouted Ridcully.
'I can't help noticing', said the god, 'that when sex is being discussed your faces redden and you tend to shift uneasily from one foot to the other. Is this some sort of signal?'
'Erm...'
'If you could just tell me how it all works...'
Embarrassment filled the air, huge and pink. If it were rock, you could have carved great hidden rose-red cities in it.
Ridcully smiled a petrified smile. 'Excuse us,' he said. 'Faculty meeting, gentlemen?'
Ponder watched the wizards go into a huddle. He could hear a few phrases above the susurration.
'... my father said, but of course I didn't believe... never raised its ugly head... Dean, will you shut up? We can't very well... cold showers, really
Ridcully turned back and flashed the stony smile again. 'Sex is, er, not something we talk about,' he said.
'Much,' said the Dean.
'Oh, I see,' said the god. 'Well, a practical demonstration would be so much more compre-hendable.'
'Er, we weren't, er... planning a...'
'Coo-eee! There you are, gentlemen!'
Mrs Whitlow entered the cave. The wizards went suddenly quiet, sensing in their wizardry minds that the introduction of Mrs Whitlow at this point was an electric fire in the swimming pool of life.
'Oh, another one of you,' said the god brightly. He focused. 'Or a different species, perhaps?'
Ponder felt that he had to say something. Mrs Whitlow was giving him a Look.
'Mrs, er, Whitlow is, er, a lady,' he said.
'Ah, I shall make a note of it,' said the god. 'And what sort of thing do they do?'
They're, um, the same species as, er, us,' said Ponder, miserably. 'Um... the... um...'
'Weaker sex,' Ridcully supplied.
'Sorry, you've lost me there,' said the god.
'Er... she's, um, er, a... of the female persuasion,' said Ponder.
The god smiled happily. 'Oh, how very convenient,' he said.
'Excuse me,' said Mrs Whitlow, in as sharp a tone as she cared to use around the wizards, 'but will someone introduce this gentleman to me?'
'Oh, yes, of course,' said Ridcully. 'Do excuse me. God, this is Mrs Whitlow. Mrs Whitlow, this is God. A god. God of this island, in fact. Uh...'
'Charmed, Ai'm sure,' said Mrs Whitlow. In Mrs Whitlow's book, gods were socially very acceptable, at least if they had proper human heads and wore clothes; they rated above High Priests and occupied the same level as Dukes.
'Should Ai kneel?' she said.
'Mwaaa,' whimpered the Senior Wrangler.
'Genuflection of any sort is not required,' said the god.
'He means no,' said Ponder.
'Oh, as you wish,' said Mrs Whitlow. She extended a hand.
The god grasped it and waggled her thumb backwards and forwards.
'Very practical,' he said. 'Opposable, I see. I think I should make a note of this. Do you brachi-ate? Are you bipedal by habit? Oh, I notice your eyebrows go up, too. Is this a signal of some sort? I also note that you are a different shape from the others and don't have a beard. I assume that means you are less wise?'
Ponder saw Mrs Whitlow's eyes narrow and her nostrils flare.
'Is there some sort of problem, sirs?' she said. 'Ai followed your footprints to that funny boat, and this was the only other path, so—'
'We were discussing sex,' said the god enthusiastically. 'It sounds very exciting, don't you think?'
The wizards held their breath. This was going to make the Dean's sheets look very minor.
'It's not a subject on which Ai would venture an opinion,' said Mrs Whitlow carefully.
'Mwaa,' squeaked the Senior Wrangler.
'No one seems to want to tell me,' said the god irritably. A spark leapt from his fingers and blew a very small crater in the floor, and that seemed to shock him as much as it did the wizards.
'Oh dear, what can you think of me? I'm so sorry!' he said. 'I'm afraid it's a sort of natural reaction if I get a bit, you know... testy.'
Everyone looked at the crater. The rock bubbled gently by Fender's feet. He didn't dare move his sandal, just in case he fainted.
'That was just... testy, was it?' said Ridcully.
'Well, it may have been more... vexed, I suppose,' said the god. 'I can't really help it, it's a god-given reflex. I'm afraid as a... well, species, we're not good with, you know, defiance. I'm so sorry. So sorry.' He blew his nose, and sat down on a half-finished panda. 'Oh, dear. There I go again...' A tiny bolt of lightning flashed off his thumb and exploded. 'I hope it's not going to be the city of Quint all over again. Of course, you know what happened there...'
'I've never heard of the city of Quint,' said Ponder.
'Yes, I suppose you wouldn't have,' said the god. 'That's the whole point, really. It wasn't much of a city. It was mostly made of mud. Well, I say mud. Afterwards, of course, it was mainly ceramics.' He turned a wretched face to them. 'You know those days you get when you just snap at everyone?'
Out of the corner of his eye Ponder had noticed that the wizards, in a rare show of unanimity, were shuffling sideways, very slowly, towards the door.
A much bigger thunderbolt blew a hole in the floor near the cave entrance.
'Oh dear, where can I put my face?' said the god. 'It's all subconscious, I'm afraid.'
'Could you get treatment for premature incineration?'
'Dean! This is not the time!'
'Sorry, Archchancellor.'
'If only they hadn't turned up their noses at my inflammable cows,' said the god, sparks fizzing off his beard. 'All right, I would agree that on hot days, in certain rare circumstances, they would spontaneously combust and burn down the village, but is that any excuse for ingratitude?'
Mrs Whitlow had been giving the god a long, cool stare. 'What exactly is it you wish to know?' she said.
'Huh?' said Ridcully.
'Well, Ai mean no offence, but Ai for one would like to get out of here without mai hair on fire,' said the housekeeper.
The god looked up. This male and female concept seems really rather promising,' he said, sniffing. 'But no one seems to want to go into detail...'
'Oh, that,' said Mrs Whitlow. She glanced at the wizards, and then gently pulled the god to his feet. 'If you will excuse me for one moment, gentlemen...'
The wizards watched them in even more shock than had attended the lightning display, and then the Chair of Indefinite Studies pulled his hat over his eyes.
'I daren't look,' he said, and added, 'What are they doing?'
'Er... just talking...' said Ponder.
'Talking?'
'And she's... sort of... waving her hands about.'
'Mwaa!' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Quick, someone, give him some air,' said Ridcully. 'Now she's laughing, isn't she?'
Both the housekeeper and the god looked around at the wizards. Mrs Whitlow nodded her head as if to reassure him that what she'd just told him was true, and they both laughed.
'That looked more like a snigger,' said the Dean severely.
'I'm not sure I actually approve of this,' said Ridcully, haughtily. 'Gods and mortal women, you know. You hear stories.'
'Gods turning themselves into bulls,' said the Dean.
'Swans, too,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'Showers of gold,' said the Dean.
'Yes,' said the Chair. He paused for a second. 'You know, I've often wondered about that one—'
'What's she describing now?'
'I think I'd rather not know, quite frankly.'
'Oh, look, someone please do something for the Senior Wrangler, will you?' said Ridcully. 'Loosen his clothing or something!'
They heard the god shout, 'It what?' Mrs Whitlow glanced around at the wizards and appeared to lower her voice.
'Did anyone ever meet Mr Whitlow?' said the Archchancellor.
'Well... no,' said the Dean. 'Not that I remember. I suppose we've all assumed that he's dead.'
'Anyone know what he died of?' Ridcully went on. 'Ah, quieten down... they're coming back...'
The god nodded cheerfully at them as he approached.
'Well, that's all sorted out,' he said, rubbing his hands together. 'I can't wait to see how it works in practice. You know, if I'd sat here for a hundred years I'd never have... well, really, no one could serious believe... I mean...' He started to chuckle at their frozen faces. 'That bit where he... and then she... Really, I'm amazed that anyone stops laughing long enough to... Still, I can see how it could work, and it certainly opens the door to some very interesting possibilities indeed...'
Mrs Whitlow was looking intently at the ceiling. There was perhaps just a hint in her stance and the way her rather expressive bosom moved that she was trying not to laugh. It was disconcerting. Mrs Whitlow never usually laughed at anything.
'Ah? Oh?' said Ridcully, edging towards the door. 'Really? Well done, then. So, I expect you don't need us any more, eh? Only we've got a boat to catch...'
'Yes, certainly, don't let me hold you up,' said the god, waving a hand vaguely. 'You know, the more I think about it, the more I can see that "sex" will solve practically all my problems.'
'Not everyone can say that,' said Ridcully gravely. 'Are you, er... joining us, Mrs, er, Whitlow?'
'Certainly, Archchancellor.'
'Er... jolly good. Well done. Ahem. And you, of course, Mister Stibbons...'
The god had wandered over to a workbench and was rummaging in boxes. The air glittered. Ponder looked up at the whale. It was clearly alive but... not at the moment. His gaze swept across the elephant-under-construction and past mysteriously organic-looking gantries, where shimmering blue light surrounded shapes as yet unrecognized, although one did appear to contain half a cow.
He carefully removed an exploring beetle from his ear. The point was, if he left now he'd always wonder...
'I think I'd like to stay,' he said.
'Good... er...' said the god, without looking around.
'Man,' said Ponder.
'Good man,' said the god.
'Are you sure?' said Ridcully.
'I don't think I've ever had a holiday,' said Ponder. 'I'd like to apply for time off to do research, sir.'
'But we're lost in the past, man!'
'Basic research, then,' said Ponder firmly. 'There's just so much to learn here, sir!'
'Really?'
'You've only got to look around, sir!'
'Well, I suppose I can't stop you if your mind's made up,' said the Archchancellor. 'We'll have to dock your pay, of course.'
'I don't think I've ever been paid, sir,' said Ponder.
The Dean nudged Ridcully and whispered in his car.
'And we need to know how the boat works,' Ridcully went on.
'What? Oh, it shouldn't be a problem,' said the god, looking up from his bench. 'It'll find somewhere with a different biogeographical signature, you see. It's all automatic. No sense in coming back to where you started from!' He waved a beetle leg in the air. There's a new continent going up turn wise of here. The boat'll probably head straight for a landmass that size.'
'New?' said Ridcully.
'Oh, yes. I've never been interested in that sort of thing myself, but you can hear the construction noises all night. It's certainly causing a mess.'
'Stibbons, are you sure you want to stay?' the Dean demanded.
'Er, yes...'
'I''m sure Mister Stibbons will uphold the fine traditions of the University!' said Ridcully heartily.
Ponder, who knew all about the traditions of the University, nodded very slightly. His heart was pounding. He hadn't even felt like this when he'd first worked out how to program Hex.
At last he'd found his proper place in the world. The future beckoned.
Dawn was breaking when the wizards ambled back down the mountain.
'Not a bad god, I thought,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'As gods go.'
'That was good coffee he made us,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'And didn't he grow the bush fast, once we explained what coffee was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
They strolled on. Mrs Whitlow was walking some way ahead, humming to herself. The wizards took care to remain at a respectful distance. They were aware that in some kind of obscure way she'd won, although they hadn't a clue what the game was.
'Funny of young Ponder to want to stay,' said the Senior Wrangler, desperately trying to think of anything except a vision in pink.
'The god seemed happy about it,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'He did say that designing sex was going to involve redesigning practically everything else.'
'I used to make snakes out of clay when I was a little boy,' said the Bursar happily.
'Well done, Bursar.'
'Doing the feet was the hard part.'
'I can't help thinking, though, that we may have... tinkered with the past, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'I don't see how,' said Ridcully. 'After all, the past happened before we got here.'
'Yes, but now we're here, we've changed it.'
'Then we changed it before.'
And that, they felt, pretty well summed it up. It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.
'It's jolly impressive to think that a University man will be helping to create a whole new approach to designing lifeforms,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'Indeed, yes,' said the Dean. 'Who says education is a bad thing, eh?'
'I can't imagine,' said Ridcully. 'Who?'
'Well, if they did, we could point to Ponder Stibbons and say, look at him, worked hard at his studies, paid attention to his tutors, and now he's sitting on the right hand of a god.'
'Won't that make it rather difficult for—' the Lecturer in Recent Runes began, but the Dean got there first.
'That means on the right-hand side of the god, Runes,' he said. 'Which, I suspect, makes him an angel. Technically.'
'Surely not. He's scared of heights. Anyway, he's made of flesh and blood, and I'm sure angels have to be made of... light or something. He could be a saint, though, I suppose.'
'Can he do miracles, then?'
'I'm not sure. When we left they were talking about redesigning male baboons' behinds to make them more attractive.'
The wizards thought about this for a while.
'That'd be a miracle in my book, certainly,' said Ridcully.
'Can't say that's how I'd choose to spend an afternoon, though,' said the Senior Wrangler, in a thoughtful voice.
'According to the god it's all to do with making creatures want to have... to engage in... to get to grips with making a new generation, when they could otherwise be spending their time in more... profitable activity. Apparently, a lot of animals will need a complete rebuild.'
'From the bottom up. Ahaha.'
'Thank you for your contribution, Dean.'
'So exactly how does it work, then?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'A female baboon sees a male baboon and says, "My word, that's a very colourful bottom and no mistake, let us engage in... nuptial activity"?'
'I must say I've often wondered about that sort of thing myself,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. Take frogs. Now, if I was a lady frog looking for a husband, I'd want to know about, well, size of legs, competence at catching flies—'
'Length of tongue,' said Ridcully. 'Dean, will you please take something for that cough?'
'Quite so,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Has he got a good pond, and so on. I can't say I'd base my choice on his ability to inflate his throat to the same size as his stomach and go rabbit, rabbit.'
'I believe it's ribbit, ribbit, Runes.'
'Are you sure?'
'I believe so, yes.'
'Which ones go rabbit, rabbit, then?'
'Rabbits, I believe.'
'Oh. Yes. Constantly, as I recall.'
'I've always thought sex was really a rather tasteless way of ensuring the continuity of the species,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as they reached the beach. 'I'm sure there could be something better. It's all very... old-fashioned, to my mind. And far too energetic.'
'Well, I'm generally in agreement, but what would you suggest instead?' said Ridcully.
'Bridge,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies firmly.
'Really? Bridge?'
'You mean the game with cards?' said the Dean.
'I don't see why not. It can be extremely exciting, very sociable, and requires no special equipment.'
'But you do need four people,' Ridcully pointed out.
'Ah, yes. I had not considered that. Yes, I can see that there could be problems. All right, then. How about... croquet? You can do that with two. Indeed, I've often enjoyed a quiet knockabout all by myself.'
Ridcully let a little more space come between him and the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'I fail to see how it could be utilized for the purpose of procreation,' he said carefully. 'Recreation, yes, I'll grant you that. But not procreation. I mean, how would it work?'
'He's the god,' sniffed the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He's supposed to sort out the details, isn't he?'
'But you think women would really decide to spend their life with a man just because he can swing a big mallet?' said the Dean.
'I suppose, when you come to think about it, that's no more ridic—' Ridcully began, and then stopped. 'I think we should leave this subject,' he said.
'I played croquet with him only last week,' hissed the Dean to Ridcully, as the Chair wandered off. 'I shan't be happy now until I've had a good bath!'
'We'll lock up his mallets when we get back, depend upon it,' Ridcully whispered.
'He's got books and books about croquet in his room, did you know that? Some of them have got coloured illustrations!'
'What of?'
'Famous croquet strokes,' said the Dean. 'I think we ought to take his mallet away.'
'Close to what I was thinking, Dean. Close,' said Ridcully.
Once a moderately jolly wizard camped by a dried-up waterhole under the shade of a tree that he was completely unable to identify. And he swore as he hacked and hacked at a can of beer, saying, 'What kind of idiots put beer in tins?'
By the time he managed to make a hole with a sharp stone the beer came out as high-speed froth, but he fielded as much as he could.
Apart from the beer, though, things were looking up. He'd checked the trees for drop-bears and, best of all, there was no sign of Scrappy.
He managed to pierce another tin, more carefully this time, and sucked thoughtfully at the contents.
What a country! Nothing was exactly what it turned out to be, even the sparrows talked, or at least tried to say, 'Who's a pretty boy, then?' and it never ever rained. And all the water hid underground, so they had to pump it out with windmills.
He'd passed another one as he left the canyon country. This one was still managing a trickle of water, but it had dried up to an occasional drip even as he watched it.
Damn! He should've picked up some water to take away while he was there.
'It's not my fault,' Rincewind muttered. 'I don't care what any kangaroo says. I just arrived here. I'm not responsible for the weather, for heaven's sake.'
They went on looking. He cracked. Practically anyone will crack before a sheep cracks. A sheep hasn't got much that's crackable.
'Oh, hell, maybe I can rig up some kind of bucket and pulley arrangement,' he said. 'It's not as though I've got any appointments today.'
He was digging a bit further, in the hope of getting deep enough before the water ran away completely, when he heard someone whistling.
He looked up, through the legs of the sheep. A man was creeping down across the dried-up waterhole, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. He'd failed to notice Rincewind because his gaze was fixed so intently on the milling sheep. He dropped the pack he'd been carrying, pulled out a sack, sidled towards a sheep all by itself, and leapt. It barely had time to bleat.
As he was stuffing it into the sack a voice said: That probably belongs to someone, you know.'
The man looked around hurriedly. The voice was coming from a group of sheep.
'I reckon you could get into serious trouble, stealing sheep. You'll regret it later on, I'm sure. Probably someone really cares about that sheep. Come on, let it go.'
The man stared around wildly.
'I mean, think about it,' the voice went on. 'You've got this nice country here, parrots and everything, and you're going to spoil it all by stealing someone's sheep that they've worked so hard to grow. I bet you wouldn't like to be remembered as a sheep-stealer— Oh.'
The man had dropped the sack and was running away very fast.
'Well, you didn't have to waltz off like that, I was only trying to appeal to your better nature!' said Rincewind, pulling himself up out of the hole.
He cupped his hands. 'And you've forgotten your camping stuff!' he shouted, after the disappearing dust.
The sack baa-ed.
Rincewind picked it up, and a noise behind him made him look round. There was another man watching him from the back of a horse. He was glaring.
Behind him were three men wearing identical helmets and jerkins and humourless expressions that had 'watchman' written all over them in slow handwriting. And all three were pointing crossbows at him.
That bottomless feeling that he had once again wandered into something that didn't concern him and was going to find it hard to wander out again grew within Rincewind.
He tried to smile.
'G'day!' he said. 'No worries, eh? I must say I'm really glad to see you drongos and no two ways about it!'
Ponder Stibbons cleared his throat.
'Where would you like me to start?' he said. 'I could probably finish off the elephant...'
'How are you at slime?'
Ponder hadn't considered a future as a slime designer, but everyone had to start somewhere.
'Fine,' he said. Tine.'
'Of course, slime just splits down the middle,' said the god, as they walked along rows of glowing, life-filled cubes while beetles sizzled overhead. 'Not a lot of future in that, really. It works all right for lower lifeforms but, frankly, it's a bit embarrassing for the more complicated creatures and positively lethal for horses. No, sex is going to be very, very useful, Ponder. It'll keep everything on its toes. And that will give us time to work on the big project.'
Ponder sighed. Ah... he knew there had to be a big project. The big project. A god wasn't going to do all this sort of thing just to make life better for inflammable cows.
'Could I help with that?' he said. 'I'm sure I could make a contribution.'
'Really? I thought perhaps animals and birds would be more up your... up your...' The god waved his hands vaguely. 'Up whatever you walk on. Where you live.'
'Well, yes, but they're a bit limited, aren't they?' said Ponder.
The god beamed. There's nothing like being near a happy god. It's like giving your brain a hot bath.
'Exactly!' he said. 'Limited! The very word! Each one stuck in some desert or jungle or mountain, relying on one or two foods, at the mercy of every vagary of the universe and wiped out by the merest change of climate. What a terrible waste!'
'That's right!' said Ponder. 'What you need is a creature that is resourceful and adaptable, am I right?'
'Oh, very well put, Ponder! I can see you've turned up at just the right time!' A pair of huge doors swung open in front of them, revealing a circular room with a shallow pyramid of steps in the centre. At the summit was another cloud of blue mist, in which occasional lights flared and died.
The future unrolled in front of Ponder Stibbons. His eyes were so bright that his glasses steamed, that he could probably scorch holes in thin paper. Oh, right... what more could any natural philosopher dream of? He'd got the theories, now he could do the practice.
And this time it'd be done properly. To hell with messing up the future! That's what the future was for. Oh, he'd been against it, that was true, but it'd been... well, when someone else was thinking of doing it. But now he'd got the ear of a god, and maybe some intelligence could be applied to the task of creating intelligence.
For a start, it ought to be possible to put together the human brain so that long beards weren't associated with wisdom, which would instead be seen to reside in those who were young and skinny and required glasses for close work.
'And... you've finished this?' he said, as they climbed the steps.
'Broadly, yes,' said the god. 'My greatest achievement. Frankly, it makes the elephants look very flimsy by comparison. But there's plenty of fine detail left to do, if you think you're up to it.'
'It'd be an honour,' said Ponder.
The blue mist was right in front of him. By the look of the sparks, something very important was happening in there.
'Do you give them any instructions before you let them out?' he said, his breathing shallow.
'A few simple ones,' said the god. He waved a wrinkled hand, and the glowing ball began to contract. 'Mostly they work things out themselves.'
'Of course, of course,' said Ponder. 'And I suppose if they go wrong we could always put them right with a few commandments.'
'Not really necessary,' said the god, as the blue ball vanished and revealed the pinnacle of creation. 'I find very simple instructions are quite sufficient. You know... "Head for dark places," that sort of thing. There! Isn't it perfect? What a piece of work! The sun will burn out, the seas will dry up, but this chap will be there, you mark my— Hello? Ponder?'
The Dean wet a finger and held it up. 'We have the wind on our starboard beam,' he said.
'That's good, is it?' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Could be, could be. Let's hope it can take us to this continent he mentioned. I'm getting nervous of islands.'
Ridcully finished hacking through the stem of the boat and threw it overboard.
At the top of the green mast the trumpet-like blooms appeared to tremble in the wind. The leaf sail creaked slowly into a different position.
'I'd say this was a miracle of nature', said the Dean, 'if we hadn't just met the person who did it. Rather spoils it, that.'
While wizards were not generally adventurous, they did understand that a vital part of any great undertaking is the securing of adequate provisions, which is why the boat was noticeably heavier in the water.
The Dean selected a natural cigar, lit it, and made a face. 'Not the best,' he said. 'Rather green.'
'We'll just have to rough it,' said Ridcully. 'What are you doing, Senior Wrangler?'
'Just preparing a little tray for Mrs Whitlow. A few choice things.'
The wizards glanced towards the crude awning they'd erected towards the prow. It wasn't that she'd actually asked for it. It was simply that she'd made some remark about how hot the sun was, as anyone might, and suddenly wizards were getting in each other's way as they vied with one another to cut poles and weave palm leaves. Perhaps never has so much intellectual effort gone into building a sunshade, which might have accounted for the wobble.
'Baah!'
'Shut up.'
'Baah?'
'Couldn't you have had a bath, or a dip or something? It's a bit agricultural in here.'
The wall, now his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, was covered with scrawls, and in particular those little wicket gate tallies drawn by prisoners who were counting the days. They were going to hang him in the morning, so that was one chore he wouldn't have to... Shut up, shut up.
Now he came to look closer, most of the counts went up to one.
He lay back with his eyes closed. Of course he'd get rescued, he'd always got rescued. Although, come to think of it, always in circumstances that put him in such a lot more danger than a prison cell usually held.
Well, he'd been in enough cells. There were ways to handle these things. The important thing was to be direct. He got up and banged on the bars until the warder sauntered along the corridor.
'Yes, mate?'
'I just want to get things sorted out,' said Rincewind. 'It's not as though I've got time to waste, okay?'
'Yep?'
'Is there any chance that you're going to fall asleep in a chair opposite this cell with your keys fully exposed on a table in front of you?'
They looked at the empty corridor.
'I'd have to get someone to help me bring a table down here,' said the warder doubtfully. 'Can't see it happening, mister. Sorry.'
'Right. Okay.' Rincewind thought for a moment. 'All right... Is my dinner likely to be brought in by a young lady carrying, and this is important, carrying a tray covered with a cloth?'
'No, 'cos I do the cooking.'
'Right.'
'Bread and water is what I'm good at.'
'Right, just checking.'
' 'ere, that sticky brown stuff they brought in with you is top stuff on bread, mister.'
'Be my guest.'
'I can feel the vitamins and minerals doing me a power of good.'
'No worries. Now... ah, yes. Laundry. Are there any big laundry baskets around, which will happily get tipped down a chute to the outside world?'
'Sorry, mister. There's an old washerwoman comes in to collect it.'
'Really?' Rincewind brightened. 'Ah, a washerwoman. Big lady, bulky dress, possibly wears a hood which can be pulled down to cover a lot of her face?'
'Yep, pretty much.'
'Well then, is she due in—?'
'She's my mum,' said the warder.
'Right, fine...'
They looked at one another.
'I reckon that about covers it, then,' said Rincewind. 'I hope you didn't mind me asking.'
'Bless yew, no! No worries! Happy to help. Worked out what yew're gonna say on the gallows, have yer? Only some of the ballad-writers want to know, if yew wouldn't mind.'
'Ballads?'
'Oh, yeah. There's three so far and I reckon there'll be ten by tomorra.'
Rincewind rolled his eyes. 'How many of them have put "too-ra-la, too-ra-la addity" in the chorus?' he asked.
'All of them.'
'Oh, gods...'
'And yew wouldn't mind changin' your name. would yew? Only they're sayin' "Rincewind" is a bit tricky to turn a line on. "Concernin' of a bush ranger, Rincewind was his name..." 's got the wrong sort of sound...'
'Well, I'm sorry. Perhaps you'd better let me go, then?'
'Ha, nice one. Now, if you want my advice, you'll keep it short when yew're up on the gallows,' said the warder. 'The best Famous Last Words are the shortest. Something simple gen'rally works best. Go easy on the swearin'.'
'Look, all I did was steal a sheep! And I didn't even do that! What's everyone so excited about?' said Rincewind desperately.
'Oh, very notorious crime, sheep-stealing,' said the warder cheerfully. 'Strikes a chord. Little man battlin' against the forces of brutal authority. People like that. You'll be remembered in song 'n' story, 'specially if yew come up with some good Last Words, like I said.' The warder hitched up his belt. 'To tell you the truth, a lot of people these days haven't even seen a bloody sheep, but hearing that someone's stolen one makes 'em feel proper Ecksians. It even does me good to have a proper criminal in the cells for once, instead of all these bloody politicians.'
Rincewind sat down on the bunk again, with his head in his hands.
'O' course, a famous escape is nearly as good as gettin' hanged,' said the warder, in the manner of someone trying to keep up someone else's spirits.
'Really,' said Rincewind.
'Yew ain't asked if the little grille in the floor there leads into the sewers,' the warder prompted.
Rincewind peered between his fingers. 'Does it?'
'We ain't got any sewers.'
'Thank you. You've been very helpful.'
The warden strolled off again, whistling.
Rincewind lay back on the bunk and closed his eyes again.
'Baah!'
'Shut up.'
' 'scuse me, mister...'
Rincewind groaned and sat up again. This time the voice was coming from the high, small, barred window.
'Yes, what is it?'
'Yew know when you was caught?'
'Well? What about it?'
'Er... what kind of a tree were you under?'
Rincewind looked up at the narrow square of blue the prisoner calls the sky. 'What kind of question is that to ask me?'
'It's for the ballad, see? Only it'd help if it was a name with three syllables...'
'How do I know? I didn't stop for a bit of botany!'
'All right, all right, fair enough,' said the hidden speaker. 'But would you mind telling me what you was doing just before you stole the sheep?'
'I didn't steal the sheep!'
'Right, right, okay... What was you doing just before you didn't steal the sheep...?'
'I don't know, I can't remember!'
'Were you boiling your billy, by any chance?'
'I'm not admitting to that! The way you people talk, that could mean anything!'
'Means cookin' something up in a tin.'
'Oh. Well, yes, I had been doing that, as it happens.'
'Good on yer!' Rincewind thought he heard the sound of scribbling. 'Shame you didn't die at the end, but you're gonna get hung so that's all right. Got a beaut tune for this one, you just can't stop whistling it... Well, of course you will, no worries.'
'Thank you for that.'
'Reckon you might be as famous as Tinhead Ned, mate.'
'Really.' Rincewind went and lay down on his bunk again.
'Yeah. They used to lock him up in that very cell you're in now, in fact. And he always escaped. No one knows how, 'cos that's a bloody good lock and he didn't bend any bars. He said they'd never build a jail that could hold him.'
'Thin fellow, was he?'
'Nope.'
'So he had a key or something.'
'Nope. Got to go now, mate. Oh, yeah, I remember. Er, do you think your ghost will be heard if people pass by the billybong, or not?'
'What?'
'It'd be helpful if it did. Makes a good last verse. Top stuff.'
'I don't know!'
'We-ell, I'll say it will, shall I? No one's gonna go back and check.'
'Don't let me stand in your way, then.'
'Bonza. I'll get these songsheets printed up in time for the hanging, don't you worry about that.'
'I won't.'
Rincewind lay back. Tinhead Ned again. That was just a joke, he could spot it. It was some kind of torture, telling him that anyone had ever escaped from a cell like this. They wanted him to run around rattling bars and things, but even he could see they were well set in and very heavy and the lock was bigger than his head.
He was just lying back on the bunk again when the warder turned up.
There were a couple of men with him. Rincewind was pretty sure there weren't any trolls here, because it was probably too hot for them and anyway there wouldn't be enough room for them on the driftwood, what with all those camels, but these men definitely had the heavy-set look of men who occupy the kind of job where the entrance examination is 'What is your name?' and they scrape through on the third try.
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46
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The sounds of the city filtered in.
After a while the pie rose again like a forgotten continent, sending a very small wave slopping against the edge of the bowl.
Rincewind lay back on the thin blanket and stared at the ceiling. Someone had even been writing on that, too. In fact...
Gdy Mat. Look at the hinjis. Ned.
Slowly, as if being raised by invisible strings, Rincewind turned and looked at the door.
The hinges were massive. They weren't screwed into the doorframe so that some clever prisoner might unscrew them. They were huge iron hooks, hammered into the stone itself, so that two heavy rings welded on to the door could drop right down on them. What was the man talking about?
He walked over and examined the lock closely. It drove a huge metal rod into the frame on its side and looked quite unpickable.
Rincewind stared at the door for some time. Then he rubbed his hands together and, gritting his teeth, tried to lift the door on the hinge side. Yes, there was just enough play...
It was possible to lift the rings off the spikes.
Then, if you pulled slightly and took a knee-wobbling step this way, you could yank the lock's rod out of its hole and the entire door into the cell.
And then a man could walk through and carefully rehang the door again and quietly wander away.
And that, Rincewind thought as he carefully manoeuvred the door back on to the hinges, was exactly what a stupid person would do.
At moments like this cowardice was an exact science. There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic. Right now he was in a place of safety. It was, admittedly, the death cell, but the point was that it was perhaps the one place in this country where nothing bad was going to happen for a little while. The Ecksians didn't look like the kind of people who went in for torture, although it was always possible they might make him eat some more of their food. So, for the moment, he had time. Time to plan ahead, to consider his next move, to apply his intellect to the problem at hand.
He stared at the wall for a moment, and then stood up and gripped the bars.
Right. That seemed to be about long enough. Now to run like hell.
The green deck of the melon boat had been divided into a male and female section, for the sake of decency. This meant that most of the deck was occupied by Mrs Whitlow, who spent a lot of the time sunbathing behind a screen. Her privacy was assured by the wizards themselves, since at least three of them would probably kill any of the others who ventured within ten feet of the palm leaves.
There was definitely what Ponder's aunt, who'd raised him, would have called An Atmosphere.
'I still think I ought to climb the mast,' he protested.
'Ah! A peeping torn, eh?' snarled the Senior Wrangler.
'No, I just think it would be a good idea to see where the boat is going,' said Ponder. There're some big black clouds ahead.'
'Good, we could do with the rain,' snapped the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'In which case, I shall be honoured to make Mrs Whitlow a suitable shelter,' said the Dean.
Ponder walked back to the stern, where the Archchancellor was gloomily fishing.
'Honestly, you'd think Mrs Whitlow was the only woman in the world,' he said.
'Do you think she might be?' said Ridcully.
Ponder's mind raced, and hit some horrible speed bumps in his imagination. 'Surely not, sir!' he said.
'We don't know, Ponder. Still, look on the bright side. We may all be drowned.'
'Er... sir? Have you looked at the horizon?'
The everlasting storm was seven thousand miles long but only a mile wide, a great turning, boiling mass of enraged air circling the last continent like a family of foxes circling a henhouse. The clouds were mounded up all the way to the edge of the atmosphere – and they were ancient clouds now, clouds that had rolled around their tortured circuit for years, building up personality and hatred and, above all, voltage.
It was not a storm, it was a battle. Mere gales, a few hundred miles long, fought amongst themselves within the cloud wall. Lightning forked from thunderhead to thunderhead, rain fell and flashed into steam half a mile from the ground.
The air glowed.
And below, emerging from the ocean of potentiality in a rainstorm so thunderous that it was no more than a descending sea, rose the last continent.
On the wall of the deserted cell in Bugarup Gaol, among the scratches and stick drawings and tallies of a man's last few days, a drawing of a sheep became a drawing of a kangaroo and then faded completely into the stone.
'So?' said the Dean. 'We're in for a bit of a blow?' The grey line filled the immediate future like a dental appointment.
'I think it might be a lot worse,' said Ponder.
'Well, let's steer somewhere else, then.'
'There's no rudder, sir. And we don't know where anywhere else is. And we're low on water anyway.'
'Don't they say that a big bank of cloud means there's land ahead?' said the Dean.
'Bloody big land, then. EcksEcksEcksEcks, do you think?'
'I hope so, sir.' Above Ponder, the sail flapped and billowed. 'Wind's freshening, sir. I think the storm's sucking the air towards it. And... there's something else, I think. I wish I hadn't left my thaumometer on the beach, sir, because I think there's a very high level of background magic in this area.'
'What makes you say this, boy?' said the Dean.
'Well, for one thing everyone seems to be getting a bit tense, and wizards tend to get stro— to get touchy in the presence of large amounts of magic,' said Ponder. 'But my suspicions were first aroused when the Bursar developed planets.'
There were two of them, orbiting his head at a height of a few inches. As was so often the case with magical phenomena, they possessed virtual unreality and passed unscathed through him and one another. They were slightly transparent.
'Oh dear, Mugroop's Syndrome,' said Ridcully. 'Cerebral manifestation. Better than a canary down a coalmine, a sign like that.'
A little sub-routine in Ponder's head began a short countdown.
'Remember old "Dicky" Bird?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He—'
'Three! No, I don't, as a matter of fact. Do tell!' Ponder heard himself bark, louder than he would have done even if he had meant to vocalize his thoughts.
'Indeed I shall, Mister Stibbons,' said the Chair calmly. 'He was very susceptible to high magical fields, and if his mind wandered, as it might do when he was dozing off, sometimes around his head there'd be, hehehe, there'd be these little—'
'Yes, certainly,' said Ponder, quickly. 'We'll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour.'
'Among wizards?' said Ridcully. 'Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards.'
'People acting out of character, then!' Ponder shouted. Talking sense for two minutes together, perhaps! Acting like normal civilized people instead of a herd of self-regarding village idiots!'
'Stibbons, it's not like you to take that tone,' said Ridcully.
'That's what I mean!'
'Now then, Mustrum, go easy on him, we're all under a lot of stress,' said the Dean.
'Now he's doing it!' Ponder yelled, pointing a shaking finger. The Dean is normally never nice! Now he's being aggressively reasonable!'
Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they're simply trying to find enough to eat. When they've just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it's time to argue over the place settings.
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48
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Downhill was best. That's where they generally put docks, so as to have them close to the water.
Dodging and ducking across the streets brought him, suddenly, to the waterside. There were a few boats there. They were on the small side for a stowaway, but—
There were running footsteps in the dark!
These watchmen were too good!
This wasn't how it was supposed to go!
They weren't supposed to double-back. They weren't supposed to think.
He ran in the only direction left, along the waterfront.
There was a building there. At least, it... well, it had to be a building. No one could have left an open box of tissues that big.
Rincewind felt that a building should be a box with a pointed lid on it, basically, and it should be the approximate colour of whatever the local mud was. On the other hand, as the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle once remarked, it is never wise to object to the decor of a hidey-hole.
He bounded up the steps and circled around the strange white building. It seemed to be some kind of music hall. Opera, by the sound of it, although it was a damn funny place to sing opera, you couldn't imagine ladies with horns in a building that looked about to set sail, but no time to wonder about that, there was a door with some rubbish bins outside it and here was the door open...
'You from the agency, mate?'
Rincewind peered into the steam.
'An' I hope you can do puddings, 'cos cheffy's banging his head on the wall,' went on a figure emerging from the wisps. It was wearing a tall white hat.
'No worries,' said Rincewind, hopefully. 'Ah, this is a kitchen, is it?'
'You pullin' my leg?'
'Only I thought it was some kind of opera house or something—'
'Best bloody opera house in the world, mate. Come on, this way...'
It wasn't a very big kitchen and, like most of the ones Rincewind had been in, it was full of men working very hard at cross purposes.
'The boss upstairs only decided to throw a big dinner for the prima donna,' said the cook, forcing his way through the throng. 'And all of a sudden Charley sees the pudding staring him in the face.'
'Ah, right,' said Rincewind, on the basis that sooner or later he'd be given a clue.
'Boss says, you can do the pudding for her, Charley.'
'Just like that, eh?'
'He sez, it ought to be the best one yet, Charley.'
'No worries?'
'He sez, the great Nunco invented the Strawberry Sackville for Dame Wendy Sackville, and the famous chef Imposo created the Apple Glazier for Dame Margyreen Glazier, and your own father, Charley, honoured Dame Janeen Ormulu with the Orange Ormulu and tonight, Charley, it's your big chance.' The cook shook his head as he reached a table where a small man in a white uniform was sobbing uncontrollably into his hands. There was a stack of empty beer cans in front of him. 'Poor bastard's been on the beer ever since, and we thought we'd better get someone in. I'm a steak and prawns man, myself.'
'So, you want me to make a pudding? Named after an opera singer?' said Rincewind. 'That's the tradition, is it?'
'Yeah, and you'd better not let Charley down, mate. It's not his fault.'
'Oh, well...' Rincewind thought about puddings. Basically it was just fruit and cream and custard, wasn't it? And cakes and stuff. He couldn't see where the problem lay.
'No worries,' he said. 'I think I can knock up something right away.'
The kitchen became silent as the scurrying cooks stopped to watch him.
'First,' said Rincewind, 'what fruit have we got?'
'Peaches was all we could find at this time of night.'
'No worries. And we've got some cream?'
'Yep. Of course.'
'Fine, fine. Then all I need to know is the name of the lady in question...'
He felt the silence open up.
'She's a beaut singer, mind you,' said a cook, in a defensive tone of voice.
'Good. And her name?' said Rincewind.
'Er... that's the trouble, see,' said another cook.
'Why?'
Ponder opened his eyes. The water was calm, or at least calmer than it had been. There were even patches of blue sky above, although cloud banks were criss-crossing the air as if each were in possession of its own bag of wind.
His mouth tasted as though he'd been sucking a tin spoon.
Around him, some of the wizards managed to push themselves to their knees. The Dean frowned, removed his hat, and pulled out a small crab.
' 's a good boat,' he murmured.
The green mast stem still stood, although the leaf sail looked ragged. Nevertheless, the boat was tacking nicely against the wind off—
—the continent. It was a red wall, glowing under the thunder light.
Ridcully got uncertainly to his feet and pointed to it. 'Not far now!' he said.
The Dean actually growled. 'I've just about had enough of that insufferable cheerfulness,' he said. 'So just shut up, will you?'
'Enough of that. I am your Archchancellor, Dean,' said Ridcully.
'Well, let's just talk about that, shall we?' said the Dean, and Ponder saw the nasty gleam in his eye.
'This is hardly the time, Dean!'
'Exactly on what basis are you giving orders.
Ridcully? You're the Archchancellor of what, precisely? Unseen University doesn't even exist! Tell him, Senior Wrangler!'
'I don't have to if I don't want to,' sniffed the Senior Wrangler.
'What? What?' snapped the Dean.
'I don't believe I have to take orders from you, Dean!'
When the Bursar climbed up on deck a minute later the boat was already rocking. It was hard to say how many factions there were, since a wizard is capable of being a faction all by himself, but there were broadly two sides, both liaisons being as stable as an egg on a seesaw.
What amazed Ponder Stibbons, when he thought about it later, was that no one had yet resorted to using magic. The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time. Besides, no one had their staff, and no one had any spells handy, and in those circumstances it's easier to hit someone, although in the case of wizards non-magical fighting usually means flailing ineffectually at the opponent while trying to keep out of his way.
The Bursar's fixed smile faded a little.
'I got three per cent more than you in my finals!'
'Oh, and how do you know that, Dean?'
'I looked up the paper when you were appointed Archchancellor!'
'What? After forty years?'
'An examination is an examination!'
'Er...' the Bursar began.
'Ye gods, that's petty! That's just the sort of thing I'd expect from a student who even had a separate pen for red ink!'
'Hah! At least I didn't spend all my time drinking and betting and staying out at all hours!'
'Hah! I bloody well did, yes, and I learned the ways of the world and I still got nearly as many marks as you in spite of a prize-winning hangover, you puffed-up barrel of lard!'
'Oh? Oh? It's personal remarks now, is it?'
'Absolutely, Two-chairs! Let's have some personal remarks! We always said that walking behind you made people seasick!'
'I wonder if at this point...' said the Bursar.
The air crackled around the wizards. A wizard in a foul temper attracts magic like overripe fruit gets flies.
'You think I'd make a better Archchancellor, don't you, Bursar?' said the Dean.
The Bursar blinked his watery eyes. 'I, er, the two of you... er... many good points... er... perhaps this is the time to, er, make a common cause...'
They spent just a moment considering this.
'Well said,' said the Dean.
'Got a point,' said Ridcully.
'Because, you know, I've never liked the Lecturer in Recent Runes very much...'
'She didn't ask many questions at the interview, I know that.'
'Actually, we are worrying unduly,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Sharks have a very undeserved reputation as man-eaters. There is not a single authenticated case of a shark attacking anyone, despite what you may have heard. They are sophisticated and peaceful creatures with a rich family life and, far from being ominous harbingers of doom, have reputedly even befriended the occasional lost traveller. As hunters they are of course very efficient, and a full-grown shark can bring down even a moose with... er...'
He looked at their faces.
'Er... I think I might perhaps have got them confused with wolves,' he mumbled. 'I have, haven't I?'
They nodded, in unison.
'Er... sharks are the other ones, aren't they?' he went on. 'The vicious and merciless killers of the sea that don't even stop to chew?'
They nodded again.
'Oh dear. Where can I put my face...?'
'Some distance from a shark,' said Ridcully briskly. 'Come on, gentlemen. That's our housekeeper! Do you wish to make your own beds in future? Fireballs again, I think.'
'She's gone too far away—'
A red shape rocketed out of the sea beside Ridcully, curled through the air and slid below the surface again like a razorblade cutting into silk.
'What was that? Who of you did that?' he said.
A bow wave ripped its way to the cluster of triangular fins like a bowling ball heading down an alley. Then the water erupted.
'Ye gods, look at the way it's going at those sharks!'
'Is it a monster?'
'It's a dolphin, surely...'
'With red hair?'
'Surely it's not—'
A stricken shark barrelled past the Senior Wrangler. Behind it the water exploded again into the big red grin of the only dolphin ever to have a leathery face and orange hair all over its body.
'Eek?' said the Librarian.
'Well done, old chap!' shouted Ridcully across the water. 'I said you wouldn't let us down!'
'No, actually you didn't, sir, you said you thought—' Ponder began.
'Good choice of shape, too,' Ridcully continued loudly. 'Now, if you can sort of nudge us all together, then perhaps you could push us towards the shore? Are we all still here? Where's the Bursar?'
The Bursar was a small dot away on the right, paddling dreamily along.
'Well, he'll get there,' said Ridcully. 'Come on, let's get on to dry land.'
'That sea,' said the Senior Wrangler nervously, staring ahead as the seeds were jockeyed towards the shore like a string of overloaded barges, 'that sea... Does it look as though it's girting to you?'
'Certainly a very big sea,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You know, I don't think it's just the rain that's making the roaring. There may be a spot of surf.'
'A few waves won't do us any harm,' said Ridcully. 'At least water is soft.'
Ponder felt the board underneath him rise and fall as a long swell passed. An odd shape for a seed, he had to admit. Of course, nature paid a lot of attention to seeds, equipping them with little wings and sails and flotation chambers and other devices necessary to give them an edge over all the other seeds. These were just flattish versions of the Librarian's current shape, which was obviously intended for moving through water very fast.
'Er...' he said, to the universe in general. It meant: I wonder if we've really thought about this.
'Can't see any rocks ahead,' the Dean observed.
'Girting,' mused the Senior Wrangler, as if the word was nagging at him. That's a very definite sort of word, isn't it? Has a certain martial sort of sound.'
It occurred to Ponder that water is not exactly soft. He'd never been much of a one for sports when he was a boy, but he remembered playing with the other local lads and joining in all their games, such as Push Poncy Stibbons Into the Nettles or Tie Up Stibbo and Go Home for Tea, and there had been the time at the old swimming hole when they'd thrown him in off the top of the cliff. And it had hurt.
The flotilla gradually caught up with Mrs Whitlow, who was holding on to a floating tree and treading water. The tree already had its fair share of occupants – birds, lizards and, for some reason, a small camel trying to make itself comfortable in the branches.
The swell was heavier now. There was a deep, continuous booming underlying the noise of the rain.
'Ah, Mrs Whitlow,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'And what a nice tree. Even got leaves on, look.'
'We've come to save you,' said the Dean, in the face of the evidence.
'I think it might be a good idea if Mrs Whitlow hung on to a seed,' said Ponder. 'I really think that really might be a really good idea. I think the waves might be... slightly big...'
'Girting,' said the Senior Wrangler, morosely.
He looked towards the beach, and it wasn't ahead of them any more.
It was down there. It was at the bottom of a green hill. And the green was made of water. And, for some reason, it was getting taller.
'Look,' said Rincewind. 'Why can't you tell me her name? Presumably lots of people know it. I mean, it must be put on the posters and so on. It's only a name, isn't it? I don't see the problem.'
The cooks looked at one another. Then one coughed and said, 'She's... her name's... Dame Nellie... Butt.'
'But what?'
'Her name is Butt.'
Rincewind's lips moved silently. 'Oh,' he said.
The cooks nodded.
'Has Charley drunk all the beer, do you think?' Rincewind said, sitting down.
'Maybe we can find some bananas, Ron,' said another cook.
Rincewind's eyes unfocused and his lips moved again. 'Did you tell Charley that?' he said at last.
'Yep. Just before he broke down.'
There was the sound of running feet outside. One of the cooks looked out of the window.
'It's just the Watch. Probably after some poor bastard...'
Rincewind moved back slightly so that he was not obvious from the window.
Ron shuffled his feet. 'I reckon if we went and saw Idle Ahmed and got him to open up his shop we might get some—'
'Strawberries?' said Rincewind. The cooks shuddered. There was another sob from Charley.
'All his life he's been waiting for this,' said a cook. 'I call it bloody unfair. Remember when that little soprano left to marry that drover? He was miserable all week.'
'Yeah. Lisa Delight,' said Ron. 'A bit wobbly in mid-range but definitely showin' promise.'
'He was really pinning his hopes on her. He said a name like that'd even work with rhubarb.'
Charley howled.
'I think...' said Rincewind, slowly and thoughtfully.
'Yes?'
'I think I can see a way.'
'You can?' Even Charley raised his head.
'Well, you know how it is, the outsider sees most of the game... Let's go with the peaches, the cream, a bit of ice cream if you can make it, maybe a dash of brandy... Let's see, now...'
'Coconut flakes?' said Charley, looking up.
'Yes, why not?'
'Er... some tomato sauce, maybe?'
'I think not.'
'You'd better get a move on, they're halfway through the last act,' said Ron.
'She'll be right,' said Rincewind. 'Okay... halve the peaches, put them in a bowl with the other things, and then add the brandy and voila.'
'That some kind of foreign stuff?' said Charley.
'I don't think we've got any of that wollah.'
'Just add twice as much brandy, then,' said Rincewind. 'And there it is.'
'Yeah, but what's it called?' said Ron.
'I'm coming to that,' said Rincewind. 'Bowl, please, Charley. Thank you.' He held it aloft. 'Gentlemen... I give you... the Peach Nellie.'
A saucepan bubbled on a stove. Apart from that insistent little noise, and the distant strains of the opera, the room fell silent.
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53
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But still, one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather. Rincewind sidled politely past them, giving them a friendly nod and a wave whenever he saw one looking in his direction. For some reason, this caused more of them to take an interest in him.
There were groups of ladies, too, and there was no doubt that if EcksEcksEcksEcks was where a man could stand tall, so could a woman. Some of them were nevertheless very pretty, in an overstated kind of way, although the occasional moustache looked out of place, but Rincewind had been to foreign parts and knew that things could be a bit lush in the more rural regions.
There were more sequins than you usually saw. More feathers, too.
Then it dawned on him in a great rush of relief.
'Oh, this is a carnival, right?' he said aloud. This is the Galah they keep talking about.'
'Pardon you?' said a lady in a spangly blue dress, who was changing the wheel on a large purple cart.
'These are carnival floats, aren't they?' said Rincewind.
The woman gritted her teeth, rammed the new wheel into place and then released the axle. The can bounced down on to the cobbles.
'Damn, I think I broke a nail on that,' she said. She glanced at Rincewind. 'Yeah, this is the carnival. That dress has seen better days, hasn't it? Nice moustache, shame about the beard. It'd look good with a tint.'
Rincewind glanced back down the street. The floats and the press of people were hiding him from view, but this wouldn't last long.
'Er... could you help me, madam?' he said. 'Er... the Watch are after me.'
They can be so tiresome like that.'
There was a misunderstanding over a sheep.'
There so often is, mate.' She looked Rincewind up and down. 'You don't look like a country boy, I must say.'
'Me? I get nervous when I see a blade of grass, miss.'
She stared at him. 'You... haven't been here very long, have you, Mister...?'
'Rincewind, ma'am.'
'Well, get on the cart, Mister Rincewind. My name's Letitia.' She held out a rather large hand. He shook it, and then tried surreptitiously to massage some blood back into his fingers as he scrambled up.
The purple cart had been decorated with huge swathes of pink and lavender, and what looked like roses made out of paper. Boxes, also covered in cloth, had been set up in the centre to give a sort of raised dais.
'What d'you think?' said Letitia. The girls worked all arvo.'
The scheme was a bit too feminine for Rincewind's taste, but he'd been brought up to be polite. He snuggled down, as far out of view as possible.
'Very nice,' he said. 'Very gay.'
'Glad you think so.'
Up ahead somewhere a band started to play. There was a stirring as people got on to the floats or formed up to march. A couple of women climbed up into the purple cart, all sequins and long gloves, and stared at Rincewind.
'What the—' one began.
'Darleen – we have to talk,' said Letitia, from the front of the cart.
Rincewind watched them go into a huddle. Occasionally one of them would raise her head and give him an odd look, as if she was reassuring herself that he was here.
Fine big girls they had here, though. He wondered where they got their shoes from.
Rincewind was not intensively familiar with women. Quite a lot of his life that hadn't been spent at high speed had been passed within the walls of Unseen University, where women were broadly put in the same category as wallpaper or musical instruments – interesting in their way, and no doubt a small but important part of the proper structure of civilization but not, when you got right down to it, essential.
On these occasions when he had spent some time in the intimate company of a woman, it was generally when she was trying to either cut his head off or persuade him to a course of action that would probably get someone else to do it. When a came to women he was not, as it were, capable of much fine-tuning. A few neglected instincts were telling him that something was out of place, but he couldn't work out what it was.
The one addressed as Darleen strode down the can with a decisive and rather aggressive air. Rincewind pulled his hat off respectfully.
'Are you coming the raw prawn?' she demanded.
'Me? Certainly not, miss. No prawns at all. If I can just lie low until we're a few streets away, that's all I ask—'
'You know what this is, don't you?'
'Yes, miss. The carnival.' Rincewind swallowed. 'No worries there. Everyone likes dressing up, don't they?'
'But are you tellin' me you really think... I mean we... What are you staring at my hair for?'
'Er... I was wondering how you get it so sparkly. Are you on the stage at all?'
'We're moving, girls,' Letitia called back. 'Remember... pretty smiles. Leave him alone, Darleen, you don't know where he's been.'
The third woman, the one the others had called Neilette, was watching him curiously, and Rincewind felt that there was something not right about her. Her hair wasn't drab, but it certainly appeared to be when compared with that of her colleagues. She didn't seem to have enough make-up. She seemed, in short, slightly out of place.
Then he caught sight of a watchman ahead, and flung himself below the edge of the cart. A gap in the boards gave him a view, as the cart turned the corner, of the waiting crowds.
He'd been to quite a number of carnivals, although not usually on purpose. He'd even attended Fat Lunchtime in Genua, generally regarded as the biggest in the world, although he vaguely recalled that he'd been hanging upside down under one of the floats in order to escape pursuers, but right now he couldn't quite remember why he'd been chased and it was never wise to stop and ask. Although Rincewind had covered quite a lot of the Disc in his life, most of his recollections were like that – a blur. Not through forgetfulness, but because of speed.
This looked like the usual audience. A real carnival procession should only take place after the pubs have been open for a good long time. It adds to the spontaneity. There were cheers, whistles, jeers and catcalls. Up ahead, people were blowing horns. Dancers whirled past Rincewind's peephole.
He sat back and pulled a swathe of taffeta over his head. This sort of thing always took up a lot of Watch time, what with pickpockets and so on. He'd wait until they were in whatever bit of wasteground these things always ended up in, and drop quietly out of sight.
He glanced down.
These ladies were certainly into shoes in a big way. They had hundreds.
Hundreds of shoes, all lined up, peeking out from under a heap of women's clothing. Rincewind looked away. There was probably something morally wrong about staring at women's clothes without women in them.
His head turned back and looked at the shoes again. He was sure that several of them had moved—
A bottle shattered near his head. Glass showered around him. Up above, Darleen uttered a word he'd never have expected on the lips of a lady.
Rincewind raised his head cautiously and another bottle bounced off his hat.
'Some hoonies having a bit of fun,' said Darleen, through gritted teeth. There's always some joker— oh really?'
'Give us a kiss, mister?' said a young man who'd leapt on to the edge of the cart, waving a beer can happily.
Rincewind had seen some serious fighters in action, but no one had ever swung a punch like Darleen. Her eyes narrowed, her fist seemed to travel in a complete circle, it met the man's chin about halfway round and when he disappeared from the wizard's view he was still rising.
'Will you look at that?' Darleen demanded, waving her hand at Rincewind. 'Ripped! These evening gloves cost a fortune, the bastard!' A beer can sailed past her ear. 'Didja see who threw that? Didja? I saw yer, yer mazza! I'll stick my hand down yer throat and pull yer trousers up!'
The crowd roared their appreciation and derision at the same time. Rincewind caught sight of watchmen's helmets heading purposefully towards them.
'Er...' he said.
'Hey, that's him! That's Rinso the bush ranger!' someone yelled, pointing.
'It wasn't bushes, it was just a sheep!'
Rincewind wondered who'd said that, and realized it was him. And there was no escape. And the watchmen were looking up at him. And there was really no escape. The street was packed. There was another fight further up the procession. There were no nearby alleyways, the fugitive's friend. And the watchmen were fighting their way through the throng, with great difficulty. And the crowd were having the time of their lives. And the huge kangaroo beer sign gleamed overhead.
This was it, then. Time for a Famous Last Stand.
'What?' he said aloud. 'It's never time for a Famous Last Stand!'
He turned to Letitia. 'I should just like to thank you for trying to help me,' he said. 'It's a pleasure to meet some real ladies for once.'
They looked at one another.
'The pleasure's all ours,' said Letitia. 'Such a change to meet a real gentleman, isn't it, girls?'
Darken kicked a fishnet leg at a man trying to climb on the cart, causing with a stiletto heel what bromide in your tea is reputed to take several weeks to achieve.
'Too bloody true,' she said.
Rincewind leapt from the cart, landed on someone's shoulder, jumped again very briefly on to someone's head. It worked. Provided you kept moving, it really worked. A few hands grabbed at him and one or two cans were thrown, but there were also plenty of cries of 'Good on yer!' and That's the way!'
At last there was an alley. He jumped down from the last obliging shoulder and changed leg gear, and then found that the best way to describe the alley was as a cul-de-sac. The worst way was as an alley with three or four watchmen in it, who'd ducked in for a smoke.
They gave him that look of harassed policemen everywhere which said that, as an unwelcome intruder into their brief smoko, he was definitely going to be guilty of something. And then light dawned in the face of their sergeant.
'That's him!'
Out in the street people started yelling and screaming. These were not the beery shouts of the carnival. People were in real pain out there. They were also pressing in so tightly that there was no way out.
'I can explain everything,' said Rincewind, half aware of the growing noise. 'Well... most things. Some things, certainly. A few things. Look, about this sheep—'
Something brilliant passed over his head and landed on the cobbles between him and the guards.
It looked rather like a table wearing an evening dress, and it had hundreds of little feet.
They were wearing high heels.
Rincewind rolled into a ball and put his hands over his head, trying to block his ears until the noise had died away.
At the very edge of the sea, the surf bubbled and sucked at the sand. As the wavelet drew back it flowed around the splintered bulk of a tree.
The drifting wood's cargo of crabs and sand fleas waited for their moment and slid off cautiously, scuttling ashore ahead of the next wave.
The rain banged into the beach, running in miniature canyons of crumbling sand on its way to the sea. The crabs surged across these like a homesteaders' stampede, rushing to mark out territory on the endless, virgin beach.
They followed the salty tideline of weed and shells, scrambling over one another in their search for a space where a crab can proudly stand sideways and start a new life and eat the heady sand of freedom.
A few of them investigated a grey, sodden pointy hat that was tangled in seaweed, and then ran on to a more promising heap of soaked cloth which offered even more interesting holes and crevices.
One of them tried to climb into Ponder Stibbons's nose, and was snorted out again.
Ponder opened an eye. When he moved his head, the water filling his ears made a ringing noise.
The history of the last few minutes was complicated. He could remember rushing along a tube of green water, if such a thing were possible, and there had been several periods where the air and the sea and Ponder himself had been very closely entwined. Now he felt as though someone had. with great precision, hit every part of his body with a hammer.
'Get off, will you!'
Ponder reached up and pulled another crab out of his ear, and realized that he had lost his glasses. They were probably rolling at the bottom of the sea by now, frightening lobsters. So here he was, on an alien shore, and he'd be able to see everything really clearly provided everything was meant to be a blur.
'Am I dead this time?' It was the Dean's voice, from a little further away along the beach.
'No, you're still alive, sir,' said Ponder.
'Damn. Are you sure?'
There were other groans as bits of tidal debris turned out to be wizards mixed with seaweed.
'Are we all here?' said Ridcully, trying to get to his feet.
'I'm sure I'm not,' moaned the Dean.
'I don't see... Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully. 'Or the Bursar...'
Ponder sat up.
'There's... oh, dear... well, there's the Bursar...'
Out at sea a huge wave was building up. It towered higher and higher. And the Bursar was on top of it.
'Bursar!' Ridcully screamed.
The distant figure stood up on the seed and waved.
'He's standing up,' said Ridcully. 'Is he supposed to stand up on those things? He's not supposed to stand up, is he? I'm sure he shouldn't be standing up. YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO STAND UP, BURSAAAR! How... That's not supposed to happen, is it?'
The wave curled, but the Bursar seemed to be skimming down the side of it, skidding along the huge green wet wall like a man on one ski.
Ridcully turned to the other wizards. 'He can't do that, can he? He's walking up and down on it. Can he do that? The wave's curling over and he's just sliding gently along the... Oh, no...'
The foaming crest curled over the speeding wizard.
'That's it, then,' said Ridcully.
'Er... no...' said Ponder.
The Bursar reappeared further along the beach, expelled from the collapsing tube of water like an arrow from a bow. The wave crashed over behind him, striking the shore as if it had just offended it.
The seed changed direction, cruised gently over the backwash and crunched to a halt on the sand.
The Bursar stepped off. 'Hooray,' he said. 'My feet are wet. What a nice forest. Time for tea.'
He picked up the seed and rammed it point first in the sand. Then he wandered away up the beach.
'How did he do that?' said Ridcully. 'I mean, the man's crazier than a ferret! Damn good Bursar, of course.'
'Possibly the lack of mental balance means there's nothing to impede physical stability?' said Ponder wearily.
'You think so?'
'Not really, sir. I just said it for something to say.' Ponder tried to massage some life back into his legs, and started to count under his breath.
'Is there anything to eat here?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'Four,' said Ponder.
'I beg your pardon?'
'What? Oh, it was just some counting I was doing, sir. No, sir. There's probably fish and lobsters in the sea, but the land looks pretty bare to me.'
It did. Reddish sand stretched away through the greyish drizzle to bluish mountains. The only greenishness was the Dean's face and, suddenly, the shoots winding out of the Bursar's surfing seed. Leaves unfolded in the rain, tiny flowers opened with little plopping noises.
'Well, at least we'll have another boat,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'I doubt it, sir,' said Ponder. The god wasn't very good at breeding things.' And, indeed, the swelling fruit was not looking very boat-shaped.
It dawned on Rincewind that the girl clambering out of the Luggage was Neilette, the third member of Letitia's crew and the one who'd seemed quite plain compared to the others and certainly a lot less... well, noisy wasn't quite the word. Probably the word was 'expansive'. They filled the space around them to capacity. Take Darleen, a lady he'd last seen holding a man daintily by the collar so that she could punch him in the face. When she walked into a room, there'd be no one in it unaware that she had done so.
Neilette was just... ordinary. She brushed some dirt off her dress, and sighed.
'I could see there was going to be another fight so I hid in Trunkie,' she said.
'Trunkie, eh?' said Rincewind. The Luggage had the decency to look embarrassed.
'Sooner or later there's always a fight where Darleen goes,' said Neilette. 'You'd be amazed the things she can do with a stiletto heel.'
'I think I've seen one of them,' said Rincewind. 'Don't tell me the others. Um, can I help you? Only me and Trunkie here' – he gave the Luggage a kick – 'were heading off, weren't we, Trunkie?'
'Oh, don't kick her, she's been so useful,' said Neilette.
'Really?' said Rincewind. The Luggage turned around slowly so that he couldn't see the expression on its lock.
'Oh, yes. I reckon the miners in Cangoolie would've... been very unpleasant to Letitia if Trunkie hadn't stepped in.'
'Stepped on, I expect.'
'How did you know that?'
'Oh, the L—Trunkie is mine. We got separated.'
Neilette tried to arrange her hair. 'It's all right for the others,' she said. 'They just have to change wigs. Beer might be a good shampoo, but not when it's still in the tinnie.' She sighed. 'Oh, well. I suppose I'll have to find a way home, now.'
'Where do you live?'
'Worralorrasurfa. It's Rimwards.' She sighed again. 'Back to life in the banana-bending factory. So much for showbusiness!'
Then she burst into tears and sat down heavily on the Luggage.
Rincewind didn't know whether he should go into the 'pat, pat, there, there' routine. If she was like Darleen, he might lose an arm. He made what he hoped was a soothing yet non-aggressive mumble.
'I mean, I know I can't sing very well and I can't dance but, frankly, neither can Letitia and Darleen. When Darleen sings "Prancing Queen" you could slice bread with it. Not that they've been unkind,' she added quickly, polite even in the throes of woe, 'but really there's got to be more to life than getting beer thrown at you every night and being chased out of town.'
Rincewind felt confident enough to venture a 'there, there'. He didn't risk a 'pat, pat'.
'Really I only did it because of Noelene dropping out,' Neilette sobbed. 'And I'm about the same height and Letitia couldn't find anyone else in time and I needed the money and she said it would be okay provided people didn't notice my hands were so small...'
'Noelene being—?'
'My brother. I told him, trying for the surf championship is fine, and ballgowns are fine, but both together? I don't think so. Did you know what a nasty rash you can get from being rolled across coral? And next morning Letitia had this tour organized and, well, it seemed a good idea at the time.'
'Noelene...' Rincewind mused. That's an unusual name for a...'
'Darleen said you wouldn't understand.' Neilette stared into the middle distance. 'I think my brother worked in the factory too long,' she mused. 'He always was very impressionable. Anyway, I—'
'Oh, I get it, he's a female impersonator,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, I know about those. Old pantomime tradition. A couple of balloons, a straw wig and a few grubby jokes. Why, when I was a student, at Hogswatch parties old Farter Carter and Really Pants would put on a turn where—'
He was aware that she was giving him one of those long, slow looks.
Tell me,' she said. 'Do you get about much?'
'You'd be amazed,' said Rincewind.
'And you meet all kinds of people?'
'Generally the nastier kind, I have to admit.'
'Well, some men...' Neilette stopped. 'Really Pants? That was someone's name?'
'Not exactly. He was called Ronald Pants, so of course when anyone heard that they said—'
'Oh, is that all?' said Neilette. She stood up and blew her nose. 'I told the others I'd leave when we got to the Galah, so they'll understand. Being a... female impersonator is no job for a woman, which is what I am, incidentally. I'd hoped it was obvious, but in your case I thought I'd better mention it. Can you get us out of here, Trunkie?'
The Luggage wandered over to the wall at the end of the alley and kicked it until there was a decent-sized hole. On the way back it clogged a watchman who was unwise enough to stir.
'Er, I call him the Luggage,' said Rincewind helplessly.
'Really? We call her Trunkie.'
The wall opened up into a dark room. Crates were packed against the walls, covered with cobwebs.
'Oh, we're in the old brewery,' said Neilette. 'Well, the new one, really. Let's find a door.'
'Good idea,' said Rincewind, eyeing the spider-webs. 'New brewery? Looks pretty old to me...'
Neilette rattled a door. 'Locked,' she said. 'Come on, we'll find another one. Look, it's the new brewery because we built it to replace the one over the river. But it never worked. The beer went flat, or something. They all said it was haunted. Everyone knows that, don't they? We went back to the old brewery. My dad lost nearly all his money.'
'Why?'
'He owned it. Just about broke his heart, that did. He left it to me,' she tried another door, 'because, well, he never got on with Noelene, what with the, well, you know, or rather, obviously you don't... but it ruined the business, really. And Roo Beer used to be the best there was.'
'Can't you sell it? The site, I mean.'
'Here? A place where beer goes flat within five seconds? Can't give it away.'
Rincewind peered up at the big metal vats. 'Perhaps it was built on some old religious site,' he said. That sort of thing can happen, you know. Back home there was this fish restaurant that got built on a—'
Neilette rattled another unbudging door. That's what everyone thought,' she said. 'But apparently Dad asked all the local tribes and they said it wasn't. They said it wasn't any kind of sacred site. They said it was an unsacred site. Some chief went to prison to see the prime minister and said, 'Mate, your mob can dig it all up and drop it over the edge of the world, no worries." '
'Why did he have to go to prison?'
'We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?'
'Why?'
It saves time.' She tried an unrelenting handle. 'Damn! And the windows are too high...'
The ground trembled. Metal jangled, somewhere in the darkness. Dust moved in strange little waves across the floor.
'Oh, not again,' said Neilette.
Now not only the dust moved. Tiny shapes scuttled across it, flowed around Rincewind's feet and sped under the locked door.
The spiders are leaving!' said Neilette.
'Fine by me!' said Rincewind.
This time the tremor made the wall creak.
'It's never been this bad,' Neilette muttered. 'Find a ladder, we'll give the windows a go.'
Above them a ladder parted company from the wall and folded itself into a metal puzzle on the floor.
This may not seem a good time to ask,' said Rincewind, 'but are you a kangaroo, by any chance?'
Far above them metal creaked and went on creaking, in a long-drawn wail of inorganic pain. Rincewind looked up, and saw the dome of the brewery gently dissolve into a hundred falling pieces of glass.
And, dropping through the middle of it, some of its lamps still burning, the grinning shape of the Roo Beer kangaroo.
'Trunkie! Open up!' Neilette yelled.
|
| ||||||||||||||||||
60
There was a clang as the doors hit the floor. The wizards backed away. 'What the hell's that?' said one of them. 'Oh, that's my Luggage,' said Rincewind. 'It's made out of—' 'Not the box on legs! Isn't that a woman?' 'Don't ask him, he's not very quick at that sort of thing,' said Neilette, stepping in behind the Luggage. 'Sorry, but Trunkie got impatient.' 'We can't have women in the University!' shouted the Dean. 'They'll want to drink sherry!' 'No worries,' said the Archchancellor, waving a hand irritably. 'What's happened to the water. Boring?' 'It's all been used up, I suppose,' said Rincewind. 'So how can we get some more?' 'Why does everyone ask me? Don't you have some rainmaking spells or something?' 'There's that word again,' said the Dean. 'Water sprinkling out of the sky, eh? I'll believe that when I see it!' 'We tried making one of these – what were they called? Big white bags of water? The things some of the sailors say they see in the sky?' 'Clouds.' 'Right. They don't stay up, Boring. We threw one off the tower last week and it hit the Dean.' 'I've never believed those old stories,' said the Dean. 'And I reckon you mongrels waited till I was walking past.' 'You don't have to make them, they just happen,' said Rincewind. 'Look, I don't know how to make it rain. I thought any halfway decent wizard knew how to do a rainmaking spell,' he added, as someone who wouldn't know where to start. 'Really?' said the Archchancellor, with dangerous brightness. 'No offence meant,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'I'm sure this is a very good university, considering. Obviously it's not a real one, but it's amazingly good in the circumstances.' 'What's wrong with it?' said the Archchancellor. 'Well... your tower's a little bit on the small side, isn't it? I mean, even compared to the buildings around here? Not that there's—' 'I think we ought to show Mister Boring our tower,' said the Archchancellor. 'I don't think he's taking us seriously.' 'I've seen it,' said Rincewind. 'From the top?' 'No, obviously not from the top—' 'We haven't got time for this, Archchancellor,' said a small wizard. 'Let's send this wozza back to Hell and find something better.' 'Excuse me?' said Rincewind. 'By "Hell" do you mean some hot red place?' 'Yes!' 'Really? How do Ecksians know when they've got there? The beer's warmer?' 'No more arguing. This one turned up very fast when we did the summoning, so this is the one we need,' said the Archchancellor. 'Come along, Boring. This won't take a minute.' Ponder shook his head and wandered over to the fire. Mrs Whitlow was sitting demurely on a rock. In front of her, getting as close to the fire as possible, was the Librarian. He was still extremely small. Maybe his temporal gland had to take longer to work itself out, Ponder thought. 'What are the gentlemen doing?' said Mrs Whitlow. She had to raise her voice above the argument, but Mrs Whitlow would still have said. 'Is there some difficulty?' if she saw the wizards out on the lawn throwing fireballs at the monsters from the Dungeon Dimensions. She liked to be told these things. They've found a man drawing the most alive-looking pictures I've ever seen,' said Ponder. 'So now they're trying to teach him Art. By committee.' 'The gentlemen always take an interest,' said Mrs Whitlow. They always interfere,' said Ponder. 'I don't know what it is about wizards, they can't just watch. So far they're arguing about how to draw a duck and frankly I don't think a duck has four legs, which is what it's got so far. Honestly, Mrs Whitlow, they're like kittens in a feather-plucking shed... What's that?' The Librarian had tipped up the leather bag lying by the fire and was testing the contents for taste, in the way of young mammals everywhere. He picked up a flat, bent piece of wood, painted in lines of many colours – far more pigments than the old man had been using to paint, and Ponder wondered why. He tested it for palatability, banged it on the ground in a vaguely hopeful way, and threw it away. Then he pulled out a flat oval of wood on a piece of string, and tried chewing the string. 'Is that a yo-yo?' said Mrs Whitlow. 'We used to call them bullroarers when I was a kid,' said Ponder. 'You whirl it around over your head to make a funny noise.' He waved his hand vaguely in the air. 'Eeek?' 'Ooh, isn't that sweet? He's trying to do what you do!' The Librarian tried to whirl the string, wrapped it round his face and hit himself on the back of the head. 'Oh, the poor little thing! Take it off him, Mister Stibbons, do.' The Librarian bared some small fangs as Ponder unwound the string. 'I hope he's going to grow up soon,' he said. 'Otherwise the Library will be filled up with cardboard books about bunnies It really was a very stubby tower. The base was stonework, but about halfway the builders had got fed up and resorted to rusted tin sheets nailed on to a wooden framework. One rickety ladder led up. 'Very impressive,' sighed Rincewind. 'The view's even better from the top. Go on up.' The ladder shook under Rincewind's weight until he pulled himself up on to the planks, where he lay down and panted. Must be the beer and the excitement, he told himself. One short ladder shouldn't do this to me. 'Bracing air up here, isn't it?' said the Archchancellor, walking to the edge and waving a hand towards the city. 'Oh, certainly,' said Rincewind, tottering towards the corrugated battlements. 'Why, I expect you can see all the way to the gr— Aaargh!' The Archchancellor grabbed him and pulled him back. 'That's— It's—' Rincewind gasped. 'Want to go back down again?' Rincewind glared at the wizard and inched his way carefully back to the stairs. He looked down, ready at an instant's notice to draw his head back, and carefully counted the steps. Then he walked back gingerly to the parapet and risked looking over the edge. There was the fiery speck of the burning brewery. There was Bugarup, and its harbour... Rincewind raised his gaze. There was the red desert, glittering under the moonlight. 'How high is this?' he croaked. 'On the outside? About half a mile, we think,' said the Archchancellor. 'And on the inside?' 'You climbed it. Two storeys.' 'You're trying to tell me you've got a tower that's taller at the top than it is at the bottom?' 'Good, isn't it?' said the Archchancellor happily. 'That's... very clever,' said Rincewind. 'We're a clever country—' 'Rincewind!' The voice came from below. Rincewind looked very carefully down the steps. It was one of the wizards. 'Yes?' he said. 'Not you,' snapped the wizard. 'I want the Archchancellor!' 'I'm Rincewind,' said Rincewind. The Archchancellor tapped him on the shoulder. That's a coincidence,' he said. 'So am I.' Ponder very carefully handed the bullroarer back to the little Librarian. There, you can have it,' he said. 'I'm giving it to you and, in return, perhaps you can take your teeth out of my leg.' From the other side of the rock came the voice of reason: There's no need to fight, gentlemen. Let's vote on it: now, all those who think a duck has webbed feet, raise your hands...' The Librarian swung the thing a few more times. 'Doesn't seem to be a very good one,' said Ponder. 'Not much of a noise... honestly, how much longer are they going to be?' ... whum... 'Eek!' 'Yes, yes, very good...' ... whum... whum... whUUMMMMM... |
It was indeed dark in the cellars, but enough dim light filtered through the trapdoor for Rincewind to make out huge pipes in the gloom.
It was obvious that some time after the brewery had been closed, but before people had got around to securely locking every entrance, the cellars had been employed by young people as such places are when you live with your parents, the house is too small, and no one has got around to inventing the motorcar.
In short, they'd written on the walls. Rincewind could make out careful inscriptions telling posterity that, for example, B. Smoth Is A Pozza. While he didn't know what a pozza was, he was quite, quite sure that B. Smoth didn't want to be called one. It was amazing how slang seemed to radiate its meaning even in another language.
There was a thump behind him as the Luggage landed on the stone floor.
'Me old mate Trunkie,' said Rincewind. 'No worries!'
Another ladder was eased down and the wizards, with some care, joined him. Arch-chancellor Rincewind was holding a staff with a glowing end.
'Found anything?' he said.
'Well, yes. I wouldn't shake hands with anyone called B. Smoth,' said Rincewind.
'Oh, the Dean's not a bad bloke when you get to know him—What's up?'
Rincewind pointed to the far end of the room.
'There, on a door, someone had drawn some pointy hats, in red. They glistened in the light.
'My word. Blood,' said Rincewind.
His cousin ran a finger over it. 'It's ochre,' he said. 'Clay...'
The door led to another cellar. There were a few empty barrels, some broken crates, and nothing else except musty darkness.
Dust whirled up on the floor from the draught of their movement, in a series of tiny, inverted whirlwinds. Pointy hats again.
'Hmm, solid walls all round,' said Bill. 'Better pick a direction, mate.'
Rincewind had a drink, shut his eyes and pointed a finger at random.
'That way!'
The Luggage plunged forward and struck the brickwork, which fell away to reveal a dark space beyond.
Rincewind stuck his head through. All the builders had done was wall up and square off a part of a cave. From the feel of the air, it was quite a large one.
Neilette and the wizards climbed through behind him.
'I'm sure this place wasn't here when the brewery was built!' said Neilette.
'It's big,' said the Dean. 'How'd it get made?'
'Water,' said Rincewind.
'You what? Water makes great big holes in rock?'
'Yes. Don't ask me why— What was that?'
'What?'
'Did you hear something?'
'You said, "What was that?"'
Rincewind sighed. The cold air was sobering him up.
'You really are wizards, aren't you?' he said. 'Real honest-to-goodness wizards. You've got hats that're more brim than point, the whole university's made of tin, you've got a tiny tower which is, I must admit, good grief, a lot taller on the outside, but you're wizards all right, and will you now, please, shut up?'
In the silence there was, very faintly, a plink.
Rincewind stared into the depths of the cave. The light from the staffs only made them worse. It cast shadows. Darkness was just darkness, but anything could be hiding in shadows.
These caves must've been explored,' he said. It was a hope rather than a statement. History here was rather a rubbery thing.
'Never heard of 'em,' said the Dean.
'Points again, look,' said Bill, as they advanced.
'Just stalactites and stalagmites,' said Rincewind. 'I don't know how it works, but water drips on stuff and leaves piles of stuff. Takes thousands of years. Perfectly ordinary.'
'Is this the same kind of water that floats through the sky and gouges out big caves in rocks?' said the Dean.
'Er... yes... er, obviously,' said Rincewind.
'It's good luck for us we only have the drinking and washing sort, then.'
'Had,' said Rincewind.
There were hurrying feet behind them and a junior wizard ran up, holding a plate covered with a lid.
'Got the last one!' he said. 'It's a gourmet pie, too.'
He lifted the lid. Rincewind stared, and swallowed. 'Oh dear...'
'What's up?'
'Have you got some more of that beer? I think I might be losing... concentration...'
His cousin stepped forward, ripping the top off a can of Funnel web.
'Cartwright, you cover that pie up and keep it warm. Rincewind, you drink this.'
They watched him drain the tin.
'Right, mate,' said the Archchancellor. 'How about a nice meat pie upside down in a big bowl of mushy green peas covered with tomato sauce?'
He looked at the colour change on Rincewind's face, and nodded.
'You need another tin,' he said firmly.
They watched him drink this.
'Okay,' said the Archchancellor after a while. 'Now, Rincewind, how about a nice one of Fair Go's pie floaters, eh? Meat pie in pea soup and tomato sauce?'
Rincewind's face twitched a bit as amber blessings shut down vital protective systems.
'Sounds... good,' he said. 'Maybe with some coconut on the top?'
The wizards relaxed.
'So now we know,' said Archchancellor Rincewind. 'We've got to keep you just drunk enough so that Dibbler's pies sound tasty, but not so drunk that it causes lasting brain damage.'
'That's a very narrow window we've got there,' said the Dean.
Bill looked up at the roof, where the shadows danced among the stalactites, unless they were stalagmites.
'This is right under the city,' he said. 'How come we've never heard of it?'
'Good question,' said the Dean. The men who built the cellar must've seen it.'
Rincewind tried to think. 'It wasn't here then,' he said.
'You said these stalag things took thousands of—'
'They probably weren't here last month but now they've been here for thousands of years.' said Rincewind. He hiccuped. 'It's like your tower,' he said. Taller onna outside.'
'Huh?'
'Prob'ly only works here,' said Rincewind. The more geography you've got, the less hist'ry, ever notice that? More space, less time. I bet it only took a second or two for this place to be here for thousands of years, see? Shorter on the outside. Makes serfect pense.'
'I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that,' said the Dean.
Something nudged him in the back of the legs. He looked down at the Luggage. It was one of its habits to come up so close behind people that, when they looked down, they felt seriously over-feeted.
'Or this,' he added.
The wizards grew quieter as Rincewind led them onward. He wasn't sure who was leading him. Still, no worries.
Contrary to the usual procedures it began to grow lighter, although the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe. In this case, the rocks were glowing, not from some mysterious inner light but simply as though the sun were shining on them, just after dawn.
There are other imperatives that operate on the human brain. One says: the bigger the space, the softer the voice, and refers to the natural tendency to speak very, very quietly when stepping into somewhere huge. So when Archchancellor Rincewind stepped out into the big cave he said, 'Strewth, it's bloody big!' in a low whisper.
The Dean, however, shouted, 'Coo-eee!' because there's always one.
Stalactites crowded the cave here, too, and in the very centre a gigantic stalactite had almost touched its mirror-image stalagmite. The air was chokingly hot.
'This isn't right—' said Rincewind.
Plink.
They spotted the source of the noise eventually. A tiny trickle was making its way down the side of the stalactite and forming droplets that fell a few feet to the stalagmite.
Another drop formed while they watched, and hung there.
One of the wizards clambered up the dry slope and peered at it.
'It's not moving,' he said. 'The trickle's drying up. I think... it's evaporating.'
The Archchancellor turned to Rincewind. 'Well, we've followed you this far, mate,' he said. 'What now?'
'I think I could do with another b—'
'There's none left, mate.'
Rincewind looked desperately around the cave, and then at the huge translucent mass of limestone in front of him.
It was definitely pointy. It was also in the centre of the cave. It had a certain inevitability about it.
Odd, really, that something like this would form down here, shining away like a pearl in an oyster. The ground trembled again. Up there, people would already be getting thirsty, cursing the windmills as only an Ecksian could curse. The water was gone and that was very bad, and when the beer ran out people would really get angry...
The wizards were all waiting for him to do something.
All right, start with the rock. What did he know about rocks and caves in these parts?
There was a curious freedom at a time like this. He was going to be in real trouble whatever he did, so he might as well give this a try...
'I need some paint,' he said.
'What for?'
'For what I need,' said Rincewind.
'There's young Salid,' said the Dean. 'He's a bit of an arty blager. Let's go and kick his door down.'
'And bring some more beer!' Rincewind called after them.
Neilette patted Rincewind on the shoulder. 'Are you going to do some magic?' she said.
'I don't know if it counts as magic here,' said Rincewind. 'If it doesn't work, stand well back.'
'Is it going to be dangerous, then?'
'No, I might have to start running without looking where I'm going. But... this rock's warm. Have you noticed?'
She touched it. 'I see what you mean...'
'I was just thinking... Supposing someone was in a country who shouldn't be there? What would it do?'
'Oh, the Watch would catch him, I expect.'
'No, no, not the people. What would the land do? I think I need another drink, it made more sense then...'
'Okay, here we are, we couldn't find much, but there's some whitewash and some red paint and a tin of stuff which might be black paint or it could be tar oil.' The wizards hurried up. 'Not much in the way of brushes, though.'
Rincewind picked up a brush that looked as though it had once been used to whitewash a very rough wall and then to clean the teeth of some large creature, possibly a crocodile.
He'd never been any good at art, and this is a distinction quite hard to achieve in many education systems. Basic artistic skills and a familiarity with occult calligraphy are part of a wizard's early training, yet in Rincewind's fingers chalk broke and pencils shattered. It was probably due to a deep distrust of getting things down on paper when they were doing all right where they were.
Neilette handed him a tin of Funnelweb. Rincewind drank deeply and then dipped the brush in what might have been black paint and essayed a few upturned Vs on the rock, and some circles under the lines, with three dots in a V and a friendly little curve in each one.
He took another deep draught of the beer and saw what he was doing wrong. It was no good trying to be strictly true to life here; what he had to go for was an impression.
He sloshed wildly at the stone, humming madly under his breath.
'Anyone guess what it is yet?' he said, over his shoulder.
'Looks a bit modern to me,' said the Dean.
But Rincewind was into the swing of it now. Any fool could just copy what he saw, except possibly Rincewind, but surely the whole point was to try to paint a picture that moved, that definitely expressed the, the, the—
Definitely expressed it, anyway. You went the way the paint and the colour wanted you to go.
'You know,' said Neilette, 'the way the light falls on it and everything... it could be a group of wizards...'
Rincewind half closed his eyes. Perhaps it was the way that the shadows moved, but he had to admit he'd done a really good job. He slapped some more paint on.
'Looks like they're almost coming out of the stone,' said someone behind him, but the voice sounded muffled.
He felt as though he was falling into a hole. He'd had the sensation before, although usually it was when he was falling into a hole. The walls were fuzzy, as though they were streaking past him at a tremendous rate. The ground shook.
'Are we moving?' he said.
'Feels like it, doesn't it?' said Archchancellor Rincewind. 'But we're standing still!'
'Moving while standing still,' muttered Rincewind, and giggled. 'That's a good one!' He squinted happily at the beer can. 'Y'know,' he said, 'I can't stomach more than a pint or two of the ale we have at home but this stuff is like drinking lemonade! Has anyone got that meat pie—'
As loudly as a thunderstorm under the bed but as softly as two souffles colliding, past and present ran into one another.
They contained a lot of people.
'What's this?'
'Dean?'
'Yes?'
'You're not the Dean!'
'How dare you say that! Who are you!'
'Ook!'
'Stone the cows, there's a monkey in here!'
'No! No! I didn't say that! He said that!'
'Archchancellor?'
'Yes?'
'Yes?'
'What? How many of you are there?'
The darkness became a deep purple, shading to violet.
'Will you all stop shouting and listen to me!'
To Rincewind's amazement, they did.
'Look, the walls are getting closer! This place is trying not to exist!'
And, having done his duty to the community, he turned and ran over the shaking rock floor.
After a couple of seconds the Luggage passed him, which was always a bad sign.
He heard the voices behind him. Wizards had a hard job accepting the term 'clear and present danger'. They liked the kind you could argue about. But there is something about a rapidly descending ceiling that intrudes into the awareness of even the most quarrelsome.
'I'll save you, Mrs Whitlow!'
'Up the tunnel!'
'How fast are those walls closing in, would you say?'
'Shut up and run!'
Now Rincewind was passed by a large red, furry kangaroo. The Librarian's erratic morphism, having briefly turned him into a red stalactite as an obviously successful shape for surviving in caves, had finally taken on board the fact that it would make for a terminally lengthy survival in a cave that was rapidly getting smaller, and had flipped into a local morphic field built for speed.
Man, Luggage and kangaroo piled through the hole into the cellar and ended in a heap against the opposite side.
There was a rumbling behind them and wizards and women were fired out into the cellar with some speed, several of them landing on Rincewind. Behind the wall, the rock groaned and creaked, expelling these alien things in what, Rincewind thought, was a geological chunder.
Something flew out of the hole and hit him on the ear, but this was only a minor problem compared to the meat pie, which came out trailing mushy peas and tomato sauce and hit him in the mouth.
It wasn't, actually, all that bad.
The ability to ask questions like 'Where am I and who is the "I" that is asking?' is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish. The wizards from Unseen University, being perhaps the intellectual cream or certainly the cerebral yoghurt of their generation, passed through this stage within minutes. Wizards are very adept at certain ideas. One minute you're arguing over the shape of a duck's head and the next there are people telling you you've been inside a rock for thousands of years because time goes slower on the inside. This presents no great problem for a man who has found his way to the lavatory at Unseen University.
There were more important questions as they sat round the table in BU.
'Is there anything to eat?' said Ridcully.
'It's the middle of the night, sir.'
'You mean we missed dinner?'
'Thousands of years of dinners, Archchancellor.'
'Really? Better start catching up, then, Mister Stibbons. Still... nice little place you've got here... archchancellor.'
Ridcully pronounced the word very carefully in order to accentuate the lower case 'a'.
Archchancellor Rincewind gave him a fraternal nod. 'Thank you.'
'For a colony, of course. I daresay you do your best.'
'Why, thank you, Mustrum. I'd be happy to show you our tower later on.'
'It does look rather small.'
'So people say.'
'Rincewind, Rincewind... name rings a faint bell...' said Ridcully.
'We came looking for Rincewind, Archchancellor,' said Ponder, patiently.
'Is he? Done well for himself, then. Fresh air made a man of him, I see.'
'No, sir. Ours is the skinny one with the bad beard and the floppy hat, sir. You remember? The one sitting over there.'
Rincewind raised a hand diffidently. 'Er. Me,' he said.
Ridcully sniffed. 'Fair enough. What's that thing you're playing with, man?'
Rincewind held up the bullroarer. 'It came with you out of the cave,' he said. 'What were you doing with it?'
'Oh, some toy the Librarian found,' said Ponder.
'All sorted out, then,' said Ridcully. 'I say, this beer's good, isn't it? Very drinkable. Yes, I'm sure there's a lot we can learn from one another, archchancellor. You from us rather more than us from you, of course. Perhaps we could set up a student exchange, that sort of thing?'
'Good idea.'
'You can have six of mine in exchange for a decent lawnmower. Ours has broken.'
'The Arch— the archchancellor is trying to say that getting back might be rather hard, sir,' said Ponder. 'Apparently things ought to have changed now we're here. But they haven't.'
'Your Rincewind seemed to think that bringing you blokes here would make it rain,' said Bill. 'But it hasn't.'
... whumm...
'Oh, do stop playing with that thing, Rincewind,' said Ridcully. 'Well... Bill, it's obvious, isn't it? As more experienced wizards than you, we naturally know plenty of ways of making it rain. No problem there.'
... whumm...
'Look, lad, take that thing outside, will you?'
The Librarian was sitting at the top of the tin tower, with a leaf over his head.
'Something odd, see?' said Rincewind, dangling the bullroarer from its string. 'I've only got to wiggle my hand a bit and it swings right round.'
'... ook...'
The Librarian sneezed.
'... awk...'
'Er... now you're some sort of large bird...' said Rincewind. 'You are in a bad way, aren't you? Still, once I tell them your name...'
The Librarian changed shape and moved fast. There was a very short period of time in which a lot happened.
'Ah,' said Rincewind calmly when it seemed to be over. 'Well, let us start with what we know. I can't see. The reason I can't see is that my robe is hanging over my eyes. From this I can deduce that I am upside down. You are gripping my ankles. Correction, one ankle, so obviously you are holding me upside down. We are at the top of the tower. This means...'
He fell silent.
'All right, let's start again,' he said. 'Let's start by me not telling anyone your name.'
The Librarian let go.
Rincewind dropped a few inches on to the planks of the tower.
'You know, that was a really mean trick you just did,' he said.
'Ook.'
'We'll say no more about it, shall we?'
Rincewind looked up at the big, empty sky. It ought to be raining. He'd done everything he was supposed to do, hadn't he? And all that had happened was that the Faculty of UU was down there being condescending about everything. It wasn't even as if they could do a rainmaking spell. For one of those to work you needed some rain around to start with. In fact, it was prudent to make sure that some heavy-looking clouds were being blown in your direction.
And if it wasn't raining then probably those terrible currents they talked about were still around, too.
It wasn't a bad country. They were big on hats. They were big on big hats. He could save up and buy a farm on the Never-Never and watch sheep. After all, they fed themselves and they made more sheep. All you had to do was pick the wool off occasionally. The Luggage'd probably settle down to being a sheepdog.
Except... that there wasn't any more water. No more sheep, no more farms. Mad, and Crocodile Crocodile, the lovely ladies Darleen and Letitia, Remorse and his horses, all those people who'd shown him how to find the things you could eat without throwing up too often... all drying up, and blowing away...
Him, too.
G'DAY.
'Ook?'
'Oh, no...' Rincewind moaned.
THROAT A BIT PARCHED?
'Look, you're not supposed to—'
IT'S ALL RIGHT, I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT DOWN IN THE CITY. THERE'S BEEN A FIGHT OVER THE LAST BOTTLE OF BEER. HOWEVER, LET ME ASSURE YOU OF MY PERSONAL ATTENTION AT ALL TIMES.
'Well, thank you. When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!'
Death faded.
'The cheek of him, turning up like that! We're not dead yet,' shouted Rincewind to the burning sky. 'There's lots we could do! If we could get to the Hub we could cut loose a big iceberg and tow it here and that'd give us plenty of water... if we could get to the Hub! Where there's hope there's life, I'll have you know! I'll find a way! Somewhere there's a way of making rain!'
Death had gone.
Rincewind swung the bullroarer menacingly. 'And don't come back!'
'Ook!'
The Librarian gripped Rincewind's arm, and sniffed the air.
Then Rincewind caught the smell too.
Rincewind spoke a fairly primitive language, and it had no word for 'that smell you get after rain' other than 'that smell you get after rain'. Anyone trying to describe the smell would have to flounder among words like moisture, heat, vapour and, with a following wind, exhalation.
Nevertheless, there was the smell you get after rain. In this burning land, it was like a brief jewel in the air.
Rincewind whirled the piece of wood again. It made noise out of all proportion to the movement, and there was that smell again.
He turned it over. It was still just a wooden oval. There weren't any markings on it.
He gripped the end of the string and whirled the thing experimentally a few more times.
'Did you notice that when it did this—' he began.
It wouldn't stop. He couldn't lower his arm.
'Er... I think it wants to be spun,' he said.
'Ook!'
'You think I should?'
'Ook!'
'That's very helpful. Oooh—'
The Librarian ducked.
Rincewind spun. He couldn't see the wood now because the string was getting longer with each turn. A blur curved through the air some way from the tower, getting further away with each spin.
The sound of it was a long-drawn-out drone.
When it was well out over the city it exploded in a thunderclap. But something still whirled on the end of the line, like a tight silver cloud, throwing out a trail of white particles that made a spiral that sped out wider and wider.
The Librarian was flat on his face with his hands over his head.
Air roared up the side of the tower, carrying dust, wind, heat and budgerigars. Rincewind's robe flapped around his chin.
Letting go was unthinkable. He wasn't even sure if he could, until it wanted him to.
Thin as smoke now, the spiral drifted out into the heat haze.
(... and out over the red desert and the unheeding kangaroos, and as the tail of it flew out over the coast and into the wall of storms the warring airs melted peacefully together... the clouds stopped their stately spin around the last continent, boiled up in confusion and thunderheads, reversed their direction and began to fall inwards...)
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'And that's what we call lightning,' said Ridcully.
Archchancellor Rincewind got up and tried to brush mud off his robe, then found out why you cannot do this.
'It's not usually as big as that, though,' Ridcully went on.
'Oh. Good.'
There was a clank from the steaming debris where the tower had stood, and a sheet of metal was pushed aside. Slowly, with much mutual aid and many false starts, two blackened figures emerged. One of them was still wearing a hat, which was on fire although the rain was putting out the flames.
Leaning against one another, weaving from side to side, they approached the wizards.
One of them said, 'Ook,' very quietly and fell backwards.
The other one looked Wearily at the two archchancellors, and saluted. This caused a spark to leap from its fingers and burn its ear.
'Er, Rincewind,' it said.
'And what have you been up to while we've been doing all this hard work, pray?' said Ridcully.
Rincewind looked around, very slowly.
Occasional little blue streaks crackled in his beard.
'Well, that all seemed to go pretty well, really. All things considered,' he said, and fell full length into a puddle.
It rained. After that, it rained. Then it rained some more. The clouds were stacked like impatient charter flights over the coast, low on fuel, jockeying for position, and raining. Above all, raining.
Floodwater roared down the rocks and scoured out the ancient muddy waterholes. A species of tiny shrimps whose world for thousands of years had been one small hole under a stone were picked up and carried wholesale into a lake that was spreading faster than a man could run. There had been fewer than a thousand of them. There were a lot more next day. Even if the shrimps had been able to count how many, they were far too busy to bother.
In the new estuaries, rich in sudden silt and unexpected food, a few fish began the experiment of a salt-free diet. The mangroves started their stop-motion conquests of the new mudbanks.
It went on raining.
Then it rained some more.
After that, it rained.
It was some days later.
The ship rose and fell gently by the dock. The water around it was red with suspended silt in which a few leaves and twigs floated.
'A week or two to NoThingfjord and we're practically home,' said Ridcully.
'Practically on the same continent, anyway,' said the Dean.
'Quite an int'resting long vacation, really,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Probably the longest ever,' said Ponder. 'Did Mrs Whitlow like her stateroom?'
'I for one will quite enjoy bunking down in the hold,' said the Senior Wrangler loyally.
'The bilges, actually,' said Ponder. 'The hold's full. Of opals, beer, sheep, wool and bananas.'
'Where's the Librarian?' said Ridcully.
'In the hold, sir.'
'Yes, I suppose it was silly of me to ask. Still, nice to see him his old self again.'
'I think it may have been the lightning, sir. He's certainly very lively now.'
And Rincewind sat on the Luggage, down on the dock.
Somehow, he felt, something should be happening. The worst time in your life was when nothing much was going on, because that meant that something bad was about to hit you. For some strange reason.
He could be back in the University Library in a month or so, and then ho! for a life of stacking books. One dull day after another, with occasional periods of boredom. He could hardly wait. Every minute not being a minute wasted was, well, a minute wasted. Excitement? That could happen to other people.
He'd watched the merchants loading the ship. It was pretty low in the water, because there would be so many Ecksian things the rest of the world wanted. Of course, it'd come back light, because it was hard to think of any bloody thing it could bloody import that was better than any bloody thing in EcksEcksEcksEcks.
There were even a few more passengers willing to see the world, and most of them were young.
'Hey, aren't you one of the foreign wizards?'
The speaker was a young man carrying a very large knapsack topped by a bedroll. He seemed to be the impromptu leader of a small group of similarly overloaded people, with wide, open faces and slightly worried expressions.
'You can tell, can't you?' said Rincewind. 'Er... you wanted something?'
'D'yew think we can buy a cart in this place NoThingfjord?'
'Yes, I should think so.'
'Only me and Clive and Shirl and Gerleen were thinkin' of picking one up and driving to—' He looked around.
'Ankh-Morpork,' said Shirl.
'Right, and then selling it, and gettin' a job for a while, having a look round, y'know... for a while. That'd be right?'
Rincewind glanced at the others trooping up the gangplank. Since the invention of the dung beetle, which had in fact happened not too far away, it was probable that no creature had ever carried so much weight.
'I can see it catching on,' he said.
'No worries!'
'But... er...'
'Yes, mate?'
'Do you mind not humming that tune? It was only a sheep, and I didn't even steal it...'
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Neilette. Letitia and Darleen were standing behind her, grinning. It was ten in the morning. They were wearing sequinned evening gowns.
'Budge up,' she said, and settled down beside him. 'We just thought... well, we've come to say, you know, thanks and everything. Letitia and Darleen are coming in with me and we're going to open up the brewery again.'
Rincewind glanced up at the ladies.
'I've had enough beer thrown at me, I ought to know something about it,' said Letitia. 'Although I do think we could make it a more attractive colour. It's so...' she waved a large, be-ringed hand irritably, '... aggressively masculine.'
'Pink would be nice,' said Rincewind. 'And you could put in a pickled onion on a stick, perhaps.'
'Bloody good suggestion!' said Darleen, slapping him so hard on the back that his hat fell over his eyes.
'You wouldn't like to stay?' said Neilette. 'You look like someone with ideas.'
Rincewind considered this attractive proposition, and then shook his head.
'It's a nice offer, but I think I ought to stick to what I do best,' he said.
'But everyone says you're no good at magic!' said Neilette.
'Er... yes, well, being no good at magic is what I do best,' said Rincewind. Thanks all the same.'
'At least let me give you a big wet sloppy kiss,' said Darleen, grabbing his shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye Rincewind saw Neilette's foot stamp down.
'All right, all right!' said Darleen, letting go and hopping away. 'It wasn't as if I was going to bite him, miss!'
Neilette gave Rincewind a peck on the cheek.
'Well, drop in whenever you're passing,' she said.
'Certainly will!' said Rincewind. 'I'll look for the pubs with the mauve umbrellas outside, shall I?'
Neilette gave him a wave and Darleen made an amusing gesture as they walked away, almost bumping into a group of men in white. One of them shouted, 'Hey, there he is... Sorry, ladies...'
'Oh, hello, Charley... Ron...' said Rincewind, as the chefs bore down on him.
'Heard you wuzzas was leavin',' said Ron. 'Wouldn't be fair to let you go without shaking you by the hand, Charley said.'
The Peach Nellie went down a treat,' said Charley, beaming broadly.
'Glad to hear it,' said Rincewind. 'Good to see you looking so cheerful.'
'It gets better!' said Ron. There's a new soprano just been taken on and she's a winner if I'm any judge and... no, Charley, you tell him her name...'
'Germaine Trifle,' said Charley. A wider grin would have resulted in the top of his head slipping off.
'I'm very happy for you,' said Rincewind. 'Start whipping that cream right now, y'hear?'
Ron patted him on the shoulder. 'We could always do with another hand in the kitchens,' he said. 'Just say the word, mate.'
'Well, it's very kind of you, and when I pull another tissue out of a box I'll always remember you blokes at the Opera House, but—'
'There he is!'
The gaoler and the captain of the guard were jogging along the quay. The gaoler was waving encouragingly at him.
'Nah, nah, it's all right, you don't have to run!' he shouted. 'We've got a pardon for you!'
'Pardon?' said Rincewind.
'That's right!' The gaoler reached him, and fought for breath. 'Signed... by... the prime minister,' he managed. 'Says you're a... good bloke and we're not to... hang you...' He straightened up. 'Mind you, we wouldn't do that anyway, not now. Best bloody escape we've ever bloody had since Tinhead Ned!'
Rincewind looked down at the writing on the official lined prison notepaper.
'Oh. Good,' he said weakly. 'At least someone thinks I didn't steal the damn thing.'
'Oh, everyone knows you stole it,' said the gaoler happily. 'But after that escape, we-ell... and that chase, eh? Bluey here says he's never seen anyone run like you, and that's a fact!'
The guard punched Rincewind playfully on the arm. 'Good on yer, mate,' he said, grinning. 'But we'll catch yer next time!'
Rincewind looked blankly at the pardon. 'You mean I'm getting this for being a good sport?'
'No worries!' said the gaoler. 'And there's a queue of farmers sayin' if you want to steal one of their sheep next time that'd be bonza, just so long as they get a verse in the ballad.'
Rincewind gave up. 'What can I say?' he said. 'You keep one of the best condemned cells I've ever stayed in, and I've been in a few.' He looked at the glow of admiration in their faces and decided that, since fortune had been kind, it was time to give something back. 'Er... I'd take it kindly, though, if you'd never ever redecorate that cell.'
'No worries. Here, I thought we ought to give you this,' said the gaoler, handing him a little giftwrapped package. 'Got no use for it now, eh?'
Rincewind unwrapped the hempen rope.
'I'm lost for words,' he said. 'How thoughtful. I'm bound to find lots of uses for it. And what's this... sandwiches?'
'Y'know that sticky brown stuff you made? Well, all the lads tried it and they all went "yukk" and then they all wanted some more, so we tried cooking up a batch,' said the gaoler. 'I was thinking of going into business. You don't mind, do you?'
'No worries. Be my guest.'
'Good on yer!'
Someone else wandered up as he watched them hurry away.
'I heard you were going back,' said Bill Rincewind. 'Want to stay on here? I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference.'
'Did he? What did he say?'
'He said if I could get you to do any work for me I'd be lucky,' said Bill.
Rincewind looked around at the city, glistening under the rain.
'It's a nice offer,' he said. 'But... oh, I dunno... all this sun, sea, surf and sand wouldn't be good for me. Thanks all the same.'
'You sure?'
'Yes.'
Bill Rincewind held out his hand. 'No worries,' he said. I'll send you a card at Hogswatch, and some bit of clothing that doesn't fit properly. I'd better get back to the university now, I've got all the staff up on the roof mending the leaks...'
And that was it.
Rincewind sat for a while watching the last of the passengers get aboard, and took a final look around the rain-soaked harbour. Then he stood up.
'Come on, then,' he said.
The Luggage followed him up the gangplank, and they went home.
It rained.
The flood gurgled along ancient creek beds and overflowed, spreading out in a lacework of gullies and rivulets.
Further rain ensued.
Near the centre of the last continent, where waterfalls streamed down the flanks of a great red rock that steamed with the heat of a ten-thousand-year summer, a small naked boy sat in the branches of a tree along with three bears, several possums, innumerable parrots and a camel.
Apart from the rock, the world was a sea.
And someone was wading through it. He was an old man, carrying a leather bag on his back.
He stopped, waist deep in swirling water, and looked up at the sky.
Something was coming. The clouds were twisting, spinning, leaving a silvery hole all the way up to the blue sky, and there was a sound that you might get if you took a roll of thunder and stretched it out thin.
A dot appeared, growing bigger. The man raised a skinny arm and, suddenly, it was holding an oval of wood that trailed a cord, which hit his hand with a slap.
The rain stopped.
The last few drops hammered out a little rhythm that said: now we know where you are, we'll be coming back...
The boy laughed.
The old man looked up, caught sight of him, and grinned. He tucked the bullroarer into the string around his waist and took up a boomerang painted in more colours than the boy had ever seen in one place together.
The man tossed it up and caught it a couple of times and then, glancing sideways to make sure his audience was watching him, he hurled it.
It rose into the sky and went on climbing, long past the point where any normal thing should have started to fall back. It grew bigger, too. The clouds parted to let it through. And then it stopped, as if suddenly nailed to the sky.
Like sheep which, having been driven to a pasture, can now spread out at their leisure, the clouds began to drift. Afternoon sunlight sliced through into the still waters. The boomerang hung in the sky, and the boy thought he would have to find a new word for the way the colours glowed.
In the meantime, he looked down at the water and tried out the word he'd been taught by his grandfather, who'd been taught it by his grandfather, and which had been kept for thousands of years for when it would be needed.
It meant the smell after rain.
It had, he thought, been well worth waiting for.
Much easier to discover than fire, and only slightly harder to discover than water.
Not why is it anything. Just why it is.
A cross between a porter and a proctor. A bledlow is not chosen for his imagination, because he usually doesn't have any.
Ankh-Morpork's leading vet, generally called in by people faced with ailments too serious to be trusted to the general medical profession. Doughnut's one blind spot was his tendency to assume that every patient was, to a greater or lesser extent, a racehorse.
In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual.
Wizards are certain of the existence of the temporal gland, although not even the most invasive alchemist has ever found where it is located and current theory is that it has a non-corporeal existence, like a sort of ethereal appendix. It keeps track of how old your body is, and is so susceptible to the influence of a high magical field that it might even work in reverse, absorbing the body's normal supplies of chrono-nine. The alchemists say it is the key to immortality, but they say that about orange juice, crusty bread and drinking your own urine. An alchemist would cut his own head off if he thought it'd make him live longer.
Broadly speaking, the acceleration of a wizard through the ranks of wizardry by killing off more senior wizards. It is a practice currently in abeyance, since a few enthusiastic attempts to remove Mustrum Ridcully resulted in one wizard being unable to hear properly for two weeks. Ridcully felt that there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it.
Sometimes Ponder thought his skill with Hex was because Hex was very dever and very stupid at the same time. If you wanted it to understand something, you had to break the idea down into bite-sized pieces and make absolutely sure there was no room for any misunderstanding. The quiet hours with Hex were often a picnic after five minutes with the senior wizards.
The Lecturer in Creative Uncertainty, for example, held rather smugly that he was in a state of both in-ness and outness until such time as anyone knocked on his door and collapsed the field, and that it was impossible to be categorical before that event. Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.
Wizards also enjoy a bit of fun but never have much of a chance to develop the appropriate vocabulary.
This isn't magic. It is a simple universal law. People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they've always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Capern). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way round. It's just as well for the Librarian that he sneezed when he did, or he might have ended up a thousand pages thick and crammed with weapons specifications.
The Senior Wrangler had once walked past Mrs Whitlow's rooms when the door was open, and he'd caught sight of the bare, headless, armless dressmaker's dummy that she used to make all her own clothes. He'd had to go and lie down quietly after that and, ever since, had thought about Mrs Whitlow in a special way.
Wizards lack the HW chromosome in their genes. Feminist researchers have isolated this as the one which allows people to see the washing-up in the sinks before the life forms grow-ing there have actually invented the wheel. Or discovered slood.
There's a certain type of manager who is known by his call of 'My door is always open' and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him. In Ridcully's case, however, he meant, 'My door is alvays open because then, when I'm bored, I can fire my crossbow right across the hall and into the target just above the Bursar's desk.'
That is to say, she secretly considered them to be vicious, selfish and untrustworthy.
Again, when people like Mrs Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia.
Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he'd ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book, who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing that they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten.
Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a 'regional speciality', because all the term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: 'Go on, have the dog's head stuffed with macerated cabbage and pork noses – it's a regional speciality.'
In fact it's the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr Spock's ears falling off.
There is no such thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato saucce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish 'n' chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can't use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don't apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It's just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort and seek it out. It's as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book.
Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza.
This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell's Angels.
It would be nice to say that this experience taught Ponder a valuable lesson and that he was a lot more considerate towards old people afterwards, and this was true for about five minutes.
Although of course it's not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations.
The one on the first floor, with the curious gravitational anomaly.