Interesting Times (6 page)

He’d become familiar with the study through long years at Unseen. Generally he was there to answer quite difficult questions, like “How can
anyone
get a negative mark in Basic Firemaking?” He’d spent a lot of time staring at the fixtures while people harangued him.

There had been changes here, too. Gone were the alembics and bubbling flagons that were the traditional props of wizardry; Ridcully’s study was dominated by a full-size snooker table, on which he’d piled papers until there was no room for any more and no sign of green felt. Ridcully assumed that anything people had time to write down couldn’t be important.

The stuffed heads of a number of surprised animals stared down at him. From the antlers of one stag hung a pair of corroded boots Ridcully had won as a Rowing Brown for the University in his youth.
^*

There was a large model of the Discworld on four wooden elephants in a corner of the room. Rincewind was familiar with it. Every student was…

The Counterweight Continent was a blob. It was a
shaped
blob; a not very inviting comma shape. Sailors had brought back news of it. They’d said that at one point it broke into a pattern of large islands, stretching around the Disc to the even more mysterious island of Bhangbhangduc and the completely mythical continent known only on the charts as “XXXX.”

Not that many sailors went near the Counterweight Continent. The Agatean Empire was known to ignore a very small amount of smuggling; presumably Ankh-Morpork had some things it wanted. But there was nothing official; a boat might come back loaded with silk and rare wood and, these days, a few wild-eyed refugees, or it might come back with its captain riveted upside-down to the mast, or it might not come back.

Rincewind had been very nearly everywhere, but the Counterweight Continent was an unknown land, or
terror incognita
. He couldn’t imagine why they’d want any kind of wizard.

Rincewind sighed. He knew what he should do now.

He shouldn’t even wait for the return of the Luggage from its argosy to the kitchens, from which the sound of yelling and something being repeatedly hit with a large brass preserving pan suggested it was going about his business.

He should just gather up what he could carry and get the hell out of here. He—

“Ah, Rincewind,” said the Archchancellor, who had an amazingly silent walk for such a large man. “Keen to leave, I see.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Rincewind. “Oh, yes. Very much so.”

The Red Army met in secret session. They opened their meeting by singing revolutionary songs and, since disobedience to authority did not come easily to the Agatean character, these had titles like “Steady Progress And Limited Disobedience While Retaining Well-Formulated Good Manners.”

Then it was time for the news.

“The Great Wizard
will
come. We sent the message, at great personal risk.”

“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.
^*
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 Wizard with three Zs.”

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, thank 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.

“Um. 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 traveling 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 traveling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleepwalkers 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 center 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 center 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,
^*
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—”