Interesting Times d-17 Read online

  "How will we know when he arrives?"

  "If he's the Great Wizard, we'll hear about it. And then—"

  "Gently Push Over The Forces of Repression!" they chorused.

  Two Fire Herb looked at the rest of the cadre. "Exactly," he said. "And then, comrades, we must strike at the very heart of the rottenness. We must storm the Winter Palace!"

  There was silence from the cadre. Then someone said, "Excuse me, Two Fire Herb, but it is June."

  "Then we can storm the Summer Palace!"

  A similar session, although without singing and with rather older participants, was taking place in Unseen University, although one member of the College Council had refused to come down from the chandelier. This was of some considerable annoyance to the Librarian, who usually occupied it.

  "All right, if you don't trust my calculations, then what are the alternatives?" said Ponder Stibbons hotly.

  "Boat?" said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

  "They sink," said Rincewind.

  "It'd get you there in no time at all," said the Senior Wrangler. "We're wizards, after all. We could give you your own bag of wind."

  "Ah. Forward the Dean," said Ridcully, pleasantly.

  "I heard that," said a voice from above.

  "Overland," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "Up around the Hub? It's ice practically all the way."

  "No," said Rincewind.

  "But you don't sink on ice."

  "No. You tip up and then you sink and then the ice hits you on the head. Also killer whales. And great big seals vif teece ike iff."

  "This is off the wall, I know," said the Bursar, brightly.

  "What is?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "A hook for hanging pictures on."

  There was a brief embarrassed silence.

  "Good lord, is it that time already?" said the Archchancellor, taking out his watch. "Ah, so it is. The bottle's in your left-hand pocket, old chap. Take three."

  "No, magic is the only way," said Ponder Stibbons. "It worked when we brought him here, didn't it?"

  "Oh, yes," said Rincewind. "Just send me thousands of miles with my pants on fire and you don't even know where I'll land? Oh, yes, that's ideal, that is."

  "Good," said Ridcully, a man impervious to sarcasm. "It's a big continent; we can't possibly miss it even with Mr Stibbons' precise calculations."

  "Supposing I end up crushed in the middle of a mountain?" said Rincewind.

  "Can't. The rock'll be brought back here when we do the spell," said Ponder, who hadn't liked the crack about his maths.

  "So I'll still be in the middle of a mountain but in a me-shaped hole," said Rincewind. "Oh, good. Instant fossil."

  "Don't worry," said Ridcully. "It's just a matter of… thingummy, you know, all that stuff about three right angles making a triangle…"

  "Is it possible you're talking about geometry?" said Rincewind, eyeing the door.

  "That kind of thing, yes. And you'll have your amazing Luggage item. Why, it'll practically be a holiday. It'll be easy. They probably just want to… to… ask you something, or something. And I hear you've got a talent for languages, so no problem there.[11] You'll probably be away for a couple of hours at the most. Why do you keep sayin' 'hah' under your breath?"

  "Was I?"

  "And everyone will be so grateful if you come back."

  Rincewind looked around — and, in one case, up — at the Council.

  "How will I get back?" he said.

  "Same way you went. We'll find you and bring you out. With surgical precision."

  Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-Morpork. It meant 'to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming, and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was'.

  But… if you put aside for the moment the certainty that something would definitely go horribly wrong, it looked foolproof. The trouble was that wizards were such ingenious fools.

  "And then I can have my old job back?"

  "Certainly."

  "And officially call myself a wizard?"

  "Of course. With any kind of spelling."

  "And never have to go anywhere again as long as I live?"

  "Fine. We'll actually ban you leaving the premises, if you like."

  "And a new hat?"

  "What?"

  "A new hat. This one's practically had it."

  "Two new hats."

  "Sequins?"

  "Of course. And those, you know, like glass chandelier things? Lots of those all round the brim. As many as you like. And we'll spell Wizzzard with three Z's.

  Rincewind sighed. "Oh, all right. I'll do it."

  Ponder's genius found itself rather cramped when it came to explaining things to people. And this was the case now, as the wizards forgathered to kick some serious magic.

  "Yes, but you see, Archchancellor, he's being sent to the opposite side of the Disc, you see—"

  Ridcully sighed. "It's spinnin', isn't it," he said. "We're all going the same way. It stands to reason. If people're going the other way just because they're on the Counterweight Continent we'd crash into them once a year. I mean twice."

  "Yes, yes, they're spinning the same way, of course, but the direction of motion is entirely opposite. I mean," said Ponder, lapsing into logic, "you have to think about vectors, you, you have to ask yourself: what direction would they go in if the Disc wasn't here?"

  The wizards stared at him.

  "Down," said Ridcully.

  "No, no, no, Archchancellor," said Ponder. "They wouldn't go down because there'd be nothing to pull them down, they—"

  "You don't need anything to pull you down. Down's where you go if there's nothing to keep you up."

  "They'd keep on going in the same direction!" shouted Ponder.

  "Right. Round and round," said Ridcully. He rubbed his hands together. "You've got to maintain a grip if you want to be a wizard, lad. How're we doing, Runes?"

  "I… I can make out something," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, squinting into the crystal ball. "There's a lot of interference…"

  The wizards gathered round. White specks filled the crystal. There were vague shapes just visible in the mush. Some of them could be human.

  "Very peaceful place, the Agatean Empire," said Ridcully. "Very tranquil. Very cultured. They set great store in politeness."

  "Well, yes," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, "I heard it was because people who aren't tranquil and quiet get serious bits cut off, don't they? I heard the Empire has a tyrannical and repressive government!"

  "What form of government is that?" said Ponder Stibbons.

  "A tautology," said the Dean, from above.

  "How serious are these bits?" said Rincewind. They ignored him.

  "I heard that gold's very common there," said the Dean. "Lying around like dirt, they say. Rincewind could bring back a sackful."

  "I'd rather bring back all my bits," said Rincewind.

  After all, he thought, I'm only the one who's going to end up in the middle of it all. So please don't anyone bother to listen to me.

  "Can't you stop it blurring like that?" said the Archchancellor.

  "I'm sorry, Archchancellor—"

  "These bits… big bits or small bits?" said Rincewind, unheard.

  "Just find us an open space with something about the right size and weight."

  "It's very hard to—"

  "Very serious bits? Are we in arms and legs territory here?"

  "They say it's very boring there. Their biggest curse is 'May you live in interesting times', apparently."

  "There's a thing… it's very blurry. Looks like a wheelbarrow or something. Quite small, I think."

  "—or toes, ears, that kind of thing?"

  "Good, let's get started," said Ridcully.

  "Er, I think it'll help if he's a bit heavier than the thing we move here," said Ponder. "He won't arrive at any speed, then. I think—"

  "Yes, yes, t
hank you very much, Mister Stibbons, now get in the circle and let us see that staff crackle, there's a good chap."

  "Fingernails? Hair?"

  Rincewind tugged at the robe of Ponder Stibbons, who seemed slightly more sensible than the others.

  "Er. What's my next move here?" he said.

  "Urn. About six thousand miles, I hope," said Ponder Stibbons.

  "But… I mean… Have you got any advice?"

  Ponder wondered how to put things. He thought: I've done my best with Hex, but the actual business will be undertaken by a bunch of wizards whose idea of experimental procedure is to throw it and then sit down and argue about where it's going to land. We want to change your position with that of something six thousand miles away which, whatever the Archchancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different direction. The key is precision. It's no good using any old travelling spell. It'd come apart halfway, and so would you. I'm pretty sure that we'll get you there in one or, at worst, two pieces. But we've no way of knowing the weight of the thing we change you with. If it's pretty much the same weight as you, then it might just all work out provided you don't mind jogging on the spot when you land. But if it's a lot heavier than you, then my suspicion is that you'll appear over there travelling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleep-walkers in clifftop villages in a very terminal way.

  "Er," he said. "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

  "Oh, that," said Rincewind. "No problem there. I'm good at that."

  "We're going to try to put you in the centre of the continent, where Hunghung is believed to be," said Ponder.

  "The capital city?"

  "Yes. Er." Ponder felt guilty. "Look, whatever happens I'm sure you'll get there alive, which is more than would happen if it'd just been left to them. And I'm pretty sure you'll end up on the right continent."

  "Oh, good."

  "Come along, Mr Stibbons. We're all agog to hear how you wish us to do this," said Ridcully.

  "Ah, er, yes. Right. Now, you, Mr Rincewind, if you will go and stand in the centre of the octagon… thank you. Um. You see, gentlemen, what has always been the problem with teleporting over large distances is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,[12] since the object teleported, that's from tele, "I see", and porte, "to go", the whole meaning "I see it's gone", er, the object teleported, er, no matter how large, is reduced to a thaumic particle and is therefore the subject of an eventually fatal dichotomy: it can either know what it is or where it is going, but not both. Er, the tension this creates in the morphic field eventually causes it to disintegrate, leaving the subject as a randomly shaped object, er, smeared across up to eleven dimensions. But I'm sure you all know this."

  There was a snore from the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was suddenly giving a lecture in room 3B.

  Rincewind was grinning. At least, his mouth had gaped open and his teeth were showing.

  "Er, excuse me," he said. "I don't remember anyone saying anything about being sm—"

  "Of course," said Ponder, "the subject would not, er, actually experience this—"

  "Oh."

  "—as far as we know—"

  "What?"

  "—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—"

  "Eh?"

  "—briefly witness the explosive discorporation."

  "Hey?"

  "Now, we're all familiar with the use of the spell as a fulcrum, er, so that one does not actually move one object but simply exchanges the position of two objects of similar mass. It is my aim tonight, er, to demonstrate that by imparting exactly the right amount of spin and the maximum velocity to the object—"

  "Me?"

  "—from the very first moment, it is virtually cetain—"

  "Virtually?"

  "—to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles—"

  "Up to?"

  "—give or take ten per cent—"

  "Give or take?"

  "So if you'd — excuse me, Dean, I'd be obliged if you'd stop dripping wax — if you'd all take up the positions I've marked on the floor…"

  Rincewind looked longingly towards the door. It was no distance at all for the experienced coward. He could just trot out of here and they could… they could…

  What could they do? They could just take his hat away and stop him ever coming back to the University. Now he came to think about it, they probably wouldn't be bothered about the nailing bit if he was too much bother to find.

  And that was the problem. He wouldn't be dead, but then neither would he be a wizard. And, he thought, as the wizards shuffled into position and screwed down the knobs on the end of their staffs, not being able to think of himself as a wizard was being dead.

  The spell began.

  Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief? Just about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or aptitudes that he didn't have.

  He was no good at anything else. Wizardry was the only refuge. Well, actually he was no good at wizardry either, but at least he was definitively no good at it. He'd always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn't do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn't a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid. It was a vaguely noble thought that had kept him warm during those occasional 3 a.m. awakenings when he had evaluated his life and found it weighed a little less than a puff of warm hydrogen. And he probably had saved the world a few times, but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do something else. So you almost certainly didn't actually get any karmic points for that. It probably only counted if you started out by thinking in a loud way 'By criminy, it's jolly well time to save the world, and no two ways about it!' instead of 'Oh shit, this time I'm really going to die.'

  The spell continued.

  It didn't seem to be going very well.

  "Come on, you chaps," said Ridcully. "Put some backbone into it!"

  "Are you sure… it's… just something small?" said the Dean, who'd broken into a sweat.

  "Looks like a… wheelbarrow…" muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  The knob on the end of Ridcully's staff began to smoke.

  "Will you look at the magic I'm using!" he said.

  "What's goin' on, Mr Stibbons?"

  "Er. Of course, size isn't the same as mass…"

  And then, in the same way that it can take considerable effot to push at a sticking door and no effort at all to fall full length into the room beyond, the spell caught.

  Ponder hoped, afterwards, that what he saw was an optical illusion. Certainly no-one normally was suddenly stretched to about twelve feet tall and then snapped back into shape so fast that their boots ended up under their chin.

  There was a brief cry of 'Oooooohhhhshhhhhh—" which ended abruptly, and this was probably just as well.

  The first thing that struck Rincewind when he appeared on the Counterweight Continent was a cold sensation."

  The next things, in order of the direction of travel, were: a surprised man with a sword, another man with a sword, a third man who'd dropped his sword and was trying to run away, two other men who were less alert and didn't even see him, a small tree, about fifty yards of stunted undergrowth, a snowdrift, a bigger snowdrift, a few rocks, and one more and quite final snowdrift.

  Ridcully looked at Ponder Stibbons.

  "Well, he's gone," he said. "But aren't we supposed to get something back?"

  "I'm not sure the transit time is instantaneous," said Ponder.

  "You've got to allow for zooming-through-the-occult-dimensions time?"

  "Something like that. According to Hex, we might have to wait several—"

  Something appeared in the octagon with a 'pop', exactly where Rincewind had been, and rolled a few inches.

  It did, at least, have four small wheels such as might carry a cart. But these weren't workmanlike wheels; these were mere discs such as m
ay be put on something heavy for those rare occasions it needs to be moved.

  Above the wheels things became rather more interesting.

  There was a large round cylinder, like a barrel on its side. A considerable amount of effort had been put into its construction; large amounts of brass had gone into making it look like a very large, fat dog with its mouth open. A minor feature was a length of string, which was smoking and hissing because it was on fire.

  It didn't do anything dangerous. It just sat there, while the smouldering string slowly got shorter.

  The wizards gathered round.

  "Looks pretty heavy," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "A statue of a dog with a big mouth," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. That's rather dull."

  "Bit of a lap-dog, too," said Ridcully.

  "Lot of work gone into it," said the Dean. "Can't imagine why anyone'd want to set fire to it."

  Ridcully poked his head into the wide tube.

  "Some kind of big round ball in here," he said, his voice echoing a little. "Someone pass me a staff or something. I'll see if I can wiggle it out."

  Ponder was staring at the fizzing string.

  "Er," he said, "I… er… think we should all just step away from it, Archchancellor. Er. We should all just step back, yes, step back a little way. Er."

  "Hah, yes, really? So much for research," said Ridcully. "You don't mind messing around with cogwheels and ants but when it comes to really trying to find out how things work and—"

  "Getting your hands dirty," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "Yes, getting your hands dirty, you come over all shy."

  "It's not that, Archchancellor," said Ponder. "But I believe it may be dangerous."

  "I think I'm working it loose," said Ridcully, poking in the depths of the tube. "Come on, you fellows, tip the thing up a bit…"

  Ponder took a few more steps back. "Er, I really don't think—" he began.

  "Don't think, eh? Call yourself a wizard and you don't think? Blast! I've got my staff wedged now! That's what comes of listening to you when I should have been paying attention, Mr Stibbons."

  Ponder heard a scuffling behind him. The Librarian, with an animal's instinct for danger and a human's instinct for trouble, had upturned a table and was peering over the top of it with a small cauldron on his head, the handle under one of his chins like a strap.