‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ said Ridcully, still covering the flagstones at an impressive rate, ‘but would it not have been digested by that point?’

‘Yes, sir. But it still went back to the Cabinet, of its own accord, you might say. That was quite an interesting discovery. We did not know that could happen.’

Ridcully stopped and Ponder bumped into him. ‘What exactly did happen to him?’

‘You wouldn’t want me to draw a picture, sir. However, the good news is that he will soon be out of the wheelchair. In fact, I gather he’s already walking quite well with a stick. How we discipline him is, of course, up to you, sir. The file is on your desk, as are, indeed, a considerable number of other documents.’

Ridcully strode off again. ‘He did it to see what would happen, did he?’ he said cheerfully.

‘So he said, sir,’ said Ponder.

‘And this was against my express orders, was it?’

‘Yes, absolutely definitely, sir,’ said Ponder, who knew his Archchancellor and already had an inkling of how this one was going to end. ‘And so therefore, sir, I must insist that he—’ He walked into Ridcully again because the man had stopped outside a large door on which was a bright red notice saying, ‘No Item To Be Removed From This Room Without The Express Permission Of The Archchancellor. Signed Ponder Stibbons pp Mustrum Ridcully.’

‘You signed this one for me?’ Ridcully said.

‘Yes, sir. You were busy at the time and we had agreed on this one.’

‘Yes, of course, but I don’t think that you should pp just like that. Remember what that young lady said about the UU.’

Ponder produced a large key and opened the door. ‘May I also remind you, Archchancellor, that we agreed a moratorium on the use of the Cabinet of Curiosity until we had cleaned up some of the residual magic in the building. We still don’t seem to have got rid of the squid.’

‘Did we agree, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully, turning around sharply, ‘or did you agree with yourself pp me, as it were?’

‘Well, er, I think I understood the spirit of your thinking, sir.’

‘Well, this is the spirit of pure research,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s research into how we can hope to save our cheeseboard. Many would say there could be no greater goal. As for young Floribunda… ’

‘Yes, sir?’ said Ponder wearily.

‘Promote him. Whatever level he is, move him up one.’

‘I think that’ll send the wrong kind of signal,’ Ponder tried.

‘On the contrary, Mister Stibbons. It will send exactly the right message to the student body.’

‘But he disobeyed an express order, may I point out?’

‘That’s right. He showed independent thinking and a certain amount of pluck, and in the course of so doing added valuable data to our understanding of the Cabinet.’

‘But he might have destroyed the whole university, sir.’

‘Right, in which case he would have been vigorously disciplined, if we’d been able to find anything left of him. But he didn’t and he was lucky and we need lucky wizards. Promote him, on the direct order of me, not pp’d at all. Incidentally, how loud were his screams?’

‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, the first one was so heartfelt that it kept going long after he’d run out of breath and apparently adopted an independent existence. Residual magic again. We’ve had to lock it in one of the cellars.’

‘Did he actually say what the bacon sandwich was like?’

‘Coming or leaving, sir?’ said Ponder.

‘Only coming, I think,’ said Ridcully. ‘I do have a vivid imagination after all.’

‘He said it was the most delightful bacon sandwich he’d ever eaten. It was the bacon sandwich that you dream of when you hear the words bacon sandwich and never, ever quite get.’

‘With brown sauce?’ said Ridcully.

‘Of course. Apparently, it was the bacon sandwich to end all bacon sandwiches.’

‘It nearly did, for him, but isn’t that what you already know about the Cabinet? That it always delivers a perfect specimen?’

‘Actually, we know very little for certain,’ said Ponder. ‘What we do know is that it will hold nothing too large to fit inside a cube measuring 14.14 inches recurring on a side, that it will cease working if, we now know, a non-organic object is not replaced in it in 14.14 hours recurring, and that none of its contents are pink, although we do not know why this should be.’

‘But bacon is definitely organic, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully.

Ponder sighed. ‘Yes, sir, we don’t know why that is either.’

The Archchancellor took pity on him. ‘Perhaps it was one of those very crispy ones,’ he suggested kindly. ‘The kind that you can break between your fingers. I like that in a bacon sandwich.’

The door swung open and there it was. Small, in the centre of a very large room…

The Cabinet of Curiosity.

‘Do you think this is wise?’ said Ponder.

‘Of course not,’ said Ridcully. ‘Now find me a football.’

On one wall was a white mask, such as one might wear to a carnival. Ponder turned towards it. ‘Hex. Please find me a ball suitable for the game of football.’

‘That mask is new?’ said Ridcully. ‘I thought Hex’s voice travelled in blit space?’

‘Yes, sir. It just comes out of the air, sir. But somehow, well, it feels better to have something to talk to.’

‘What shape football do you require?’ said Hex, his voice as smooth as clarified butter. ‘Oval or spherical?’

‘Spherical,’ said Ponder.

Instantly the Cabinet shook.

The thing had always worried Ridcully. It looked too smug, for a start. It seemed to be saying: You don’t know what you are doing. You use me as a kind of lucky dip and I bet you have never thought of how many dangerous things can fit into a fourteen-inch cube. In fact, Ridcully had thought about that, often at three in the morning, and never went into the room without a couple of sub-critical spells in his pocket just in case. And then there was Nutt… Well, hope for the best and prepare for the worst, that was the UU way.

A drawer slid out and went on sliding until it reached the wall and presumably continued to slide into some other hospitable set of dimensions, because it never turned up outside the room, no matter how often you looked.

‘Very smooth today,’ he observed, as another drawer rose up from under the floor and sprouted a further drawer exactly the same size as itself which began to move purposefully towards the far wall.

‘Yes. The lads at Brazeneck have come up with a new algorithm for handling wave spaces in higher-level blit. It speeds up something like the Cabinet by getting on for 2,000 Drinkies.’

Ridcully frowned. ‘Did you just make that up?’

‘No, sir. Charlie Drinkie came up with it at Brazeneck. It’s a shorter way of saying 15,000 iterations to the first negative blit. And it’s a lot easier to remember.’

‘So people you know at Brazeneck send you stuff?’ said Ridcully.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ponder.

‘For free?’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Ponder, looking surprised. ‘The free sharing of information is central to the pursuit of natural philosophy.’

‘And so you tell them things, do you?’

Ponder sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I don’t think I approve of that,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m all for the free sharing of information, provided it’s them sharing their information with us.’

‘Yes, sir, but I think we’re rather hampered by the meaning of the word “sharing”.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Ridcully began and stopped. A sound so quiet that they had barely noticed it had stopped. The Cabinet of Curiosity had folded itself up and was once again just a piece of wooden furniture in the centre of the room, but as they looked at it its two front doors opened and a brown ball dropped on to the floor and bounced with a sound like gloing! Ridcully marched over and picked it up, turning it in his hands.

‘Interesting,’ he said, slamming it towards the floor. It bounced up past his head, but he was quick enough to catch it on the way down. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘What do you think of this, Stibbons?’ He flicked the ball into the air and kicked it hard across the room. It came back towards Ponder, who, to his own amazement, caught it.