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Terry Pratchett. Moving pictures
I would like to thank all the wonderful people who made this book
possible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you...
Watch ...
This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier.
(Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd
be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty
penultimate...)
And against the wash of stars a nebula hangs, vast and black, one red
giant gleaming like the madness of gods ...
And then the gleam is seen as the glint in a giant eye and it is
eclipsed by the blink of an eyelid and the darkness moves a flipper and
Great A'Tuin, star turtle, swims onward through the void.
On its back, four giant elephants. On their shoulders, rimmed with
water, glittering under its tiny orbiting sunlet, spinning majestically
around the mountains at its frozen Hub, lies the Discworld, world and mirror
of worlds. Nearly unreal.
Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual.
In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way
that they possess, say, weight. Some people are more real than others, for
example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real
people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into
one another all the time.
The Discworld is as unreal as it is possible to be while still being
just real enough to exist.
And just real enough to be in real trouble.
About thirty miles Turnwise of Ankh-Morpork the surf boomed on the
wind-blown, seagrass-waving, sand-dunecovered spit of land where the Circle
Sea met the Rim Ocean.
The hill itself was visible for miles. It wasn't very high, but lay
amongst the dunes like an upturned boat or a very unlucky whale, and was
covered in scrub trees. No rain fell here, if it could possibly avoid it.
Although the wind sculpted the dunes around it, the low summit of the hill
remained in an everlasting, ringing calm.
Nothing but the sand had changed here in hundreds of years.
Until now.
A crude but of driftwood had been built on the long curve of the beach,
although describing it as 'built' was a slander on skilled crude but
builders throughout the ages; if the sea had simply been left to pile the
wood up it might have done a better job.
And, inside, an old man had just died.
'Oh,' he said. He opened his eyes and looked around the interior of the
hut. He hadn't seen it very clearly for the past ten years.
Then he swung, if not his legs, then at least the memory of his legs
off the pallet of sea-heather and stood up. Then he went outside, into the
diamond-bright morning. He was interested to see that he was still wearing a
ghostly image of his ceremonial robe - stained and frayed, but still
recognizable as having originally been a dark red plush with gold frogging -
even though he was dead. Either your clothes died when you did, he thought,
or maybe you just mentally dressed yourself from force of habit.
Habit also led him to the pile of driftwood beside the hut. When. he
tried to gather a few sticks, though, his hands passed through them.
He swore.
It was then that he noticed a figure standing by the water's edge,
looking out to sea. It was leaning on a scythe. The wind whipped at its
black robes.
He started to hobble towards it, remembered he was dead, and began to
stride. He hadn't stridden for decades, but it was amazing how it all came
back to you.
Before he was halfway to the dark figure, it spoke to him.
DECCAN RIBOBE, it said.
'That's me.'
LAST KEEPER OF THE DOOR.
'Well, I suppose so.'
Death hesitated.
YOU ARE OR YOU AREN'T, he said.
Deccan scratched his nose. Of course, he thought, you have to be able
to touch yourself. Otherwise you'd fall to bits.
'Technic'ly, a Keeper has to be invested by the High Priestess,' he
said. 'And there ain't been a High Priestess for thousands o' years. See, I
just learned it all from old Tento, who lived here before me. He jus' said
to me one day, 'Deccan, it looks as though I'm dyin', so it's up to you now,
'cos if there's no-one left that remembers properly it'll all start
happening again and you know what that means." Well, fair enough. But that's
not what you'd call a proper investmenting, I'd say.'
He looked up at the sandy hill.
'There was jus' me and him,' he said. 'And then jus' me, remembering
Holy Wood. And now... ' He raised his hand to his mouth.
'Oo-er,' he said.
YES, said Death.
It would be wrong to say a look of panic passed across Deccan Ribobe's
face, because at that moment it was several yards away and wearing a sort of
fixed grin, as if it had seen the joke at last. But his spirit was
definitely worried.
'See, the thing is,' it said hastily, 'no-one ever comes here, see,
apart from the fishermen from the next bay, and they just leaves the fish
and runs off on account of superstition and I couldn't sort of go off to
find an apprentice or somethin' because of keepin' the fires alight and
doin' the chantin' ... '
YES.
'... It's a terrible responsibility, bein' the only one able to do your
job...'
YES, said Death.
'Well, of course, I'm not telling you anything ... '
NO.
' ... I mean, I was hopin' someone'd get shipwrecked or somethin', or
come treasure huntin', and I could explain it like old Tento explained it to
me, teach 'em the chants, get it all sorted out before I died ... '
YES?
'I s'pose there's no chance that I could sort of ... '
NO.
'Thought not,' said Deccan despondently.
He looked at the waves crashing down on the shore.
'Used to be a big city down there, thousands of years ago,' he said. 'I
mean, where the sea is. When it's stormy you can hear the ole temple bells
ringin' under the sea.'
I KNOW.
'I used to sit out here on windy nights, listenin'. Used to imagine all
them dead people down there, ringin' the bells.'
AND NOW WE MUST GO.
'Ole Tento said there was somethin' under the hill there that could
make people do things. Put strange fancies in their 'eads,' said Deccan,
reluctantly following the stalking figure. 'I never had any strange
fancies.'
BUT YOU WERE CHANTING, said Death. He snapped his fingers.
A horse ceased trying to graze the sparse dune grass and trotted up to
Death.
Deccan was surprised to see that it left hoofprints in the sand. He'd
have expected sparks, or at least fused rock.
'Er,' he said, 'can you tell me, er ... what happens now?'
Death told him.
'Thought so,' said Deccan glumly.
Up on the low hill the fire that had been burning all night collapsed
in a
shower of ash. A few embers still glowed, though. Soon they would go
out.
.... ... .. . They went out. . .. ... ....
Nothing happened for a whole day. Then, in a little hollow on the edge
of the brooding hill, a few grains of sand shifted and left a tiny hole.
Something emerged. Something invisible. Something joyful and selfish
and marvellous. Something as intangible as an idea, which is exactly what it
was. A wild idea.
It was old in a way not measurable by any calendar known to Man and
what it had, right now, was memories and needs. It remembered life, in other
times and other universes. It needed people.
It rose against the stars, changing shape, coiling like smoke.
There were lights on the horizon.
It liked lights.
It regarded them for a few seconds and then, like an invisible arrow,
extended itself towards the city and sped away.
It liked action, too ...
And several weeks went past.
There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of
Discworld cities.
At least, there's a saying that there's a saying that all roads lead to
Ankh-Morpork.
And it's wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes
people just walk along them the wrong way.
Poets long ago gave up trying to describe the city. Now the more
cunning ones try to excuse it. They say, well, maybe it is smelly, maybe it
is overcrowded, maybe it is a bit like Hell would be if they shut the fires
off and stabled a herd of incontinent cows there for a year, but you must
admit that it is full of sheer, vibrant, dynamic life. And this is true,
even though it is poets that are saying it. But people who aren't poets say,
so what? Mattresses tend to be full of life too, and no-one writes odes to
them. Citizens hate living there and, if they have to move away on business
or adventure or, more usually, until some statute of limitations runs out,
can't wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They
put stickers on the backs of their carts saying 'Ankh-Morpork - Loathe It or
Leave It'. They call it The Big Wahooni, after the fruit.[1]
Every so often a ruler of the city builds a wall around Ankh-Morpork,
ostensibly to keep enemies out. But Ankh-Morpork doesn't fear enemies. In
fact it welcomes enemies, provided they are enemies with money to spend.[2]
It has survived flood, fire, hordes, revolutions and dragons. Sometimes by
accident, admittedly, but it has survived them. The cheerful and
irrecoverably venal spirit of the city has been proof against anything ...
Until now.
Boom.
The explosion removed the windows, the door and most of the chimney.
It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The
neighbours preferred explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon
over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you. Explosions
were part of the scenery, such as was left.
And this one was pretty good, even by the standards of local
connoisseurs. There was a deep red heart to the billowing black smoke which
you didn't often see. The bits of semi-molten brickwork were more molten
than usual. It was, they considered, quite impressive.
Boom.
A minute or two after the explosion a figure lurched out of the ragged
hole where the door had been. It had no hair, and what clothes it still had
were on fire.
It staggered up to the small crowd that was admiring the devastation
and by chance laid a sooty hand on a hot-meat-pie-and-sausage-in-a-bun
salesman called Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, who had an almost magical ability
to turn up wherever a sale might be made.
'Looking,' it said, in a dreamy, stunned voice, 'f'r a word. Tip of my
tongue.'
'Blister?' volunteered Throat.
He recovered his commercial senses. 'After an experience like that,' he
added, proffering a pastry case full of so much reclaimed organic debris
that it was very nearly sapient, 'what you need is to get a hot meat pie
inside you-' 'Nonono. 'S not blister. 'S what you say when you've discovered
something. You goes running out into the street shoutin',' said the
smouldering figure urgently. 'S'pecial word,' it added, its brow creasing
under the soot. The crowd, reluctantly satisfied that there were going to be
no more explosions, gathered around. This might be nearly as good.
'Yeah, that's right,' said an elderly man, filling his pipe. 'You runs
out shouting "Fire! Fire!" ' He looked triumphant.
' 'S not that ... '
'Or "Help!" or-'
'No, he's right,' said a woman with a basket of fish on her head.
'There's a special word. It's foreign.'
'Right, right,' said her neighbour. 'Special foreign word for people
who've discovered something. It was invented by some foreign bugger in his
bath-'
'Well,' said the pipe man, lighting it off the alchemist's smouldering
hat, 'I for one don't see why people in this city need to go round shouting
heathen lingo just 'cos they've had a bath. Anyway, look at him. He ain't
had a bath. He needs a bath, yes, but he ain't had one. What's he want to go
round shouting foreign lingo for? We've got perfectly satisfactory words for
shoutin'.'
'Like what?' said Cut-me-own-Throat:
The pipe-smoker hesitated. 'Well,' he said, 'like ... "I've discovered
something" ... or ... "Hooray" ... '
'No, I'm thinking about the bugger over Tsort way, or somewhere. He was
in his bath and he had this idea for something, and he ran out down the
street yelling.'
'Yelling what?'
'Dunno. P'raps "Give me a towel!" '
'Bet he'd be yellin' all right if he tried that sort of thing round
here,' said
Throat cheerfully. 'Now, ladies and gents, I have here some sausage in
a bun that'd make your-'
'Eureka,' said the soot-coloured one, swaying back and forth.
'What about it?' said Throat.
'No, that's the word. Eureka.' A worried grin spread across the black
features.
'It means "I have it".'
'Have what?' said Throat.
'It. At least, I had it. Octo-cellulose. Amazing stuff. Had it in my
hand. But I held it too close to the fire,' said the figure, in the
perplexed tones of the nearly concussed. 'V'ry important fact. Mus' make a
note of it. Don't let it get hot. V'ry important. Mus' write down v'ry
important fact.'
He tottered back into the smoking ruins.
Dibbler watched him go.
'Wonder what that was all about?' he said. Then he shrugged and raised
his voice to a shout. 'Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So fresh the pig
h'an't noticed they're gone!'
The glittering, swirling idea from the hill had watched all this. The
alchemist didn't even know it was there. All he knew was that he was being
unusually inventive today.
Now it had spotted the pie merchant's mind.
It knew that kind of mind. It loved minds like that. A mind that could
sell nightmare pies could sell dreams.
It leaped.
On a hill far away the breeze stirred the cold, grey ash.
Further down the hill, in a crack in a hollow between two rocks where a
dwarf juniper bush struggled for a Ping, a little trickle of sand began to
move.
Boom.
A fine film of plaster dust drifted down on to the desk of Mustrum
Ridcully, the new Archchancellor of Unseen University; just as he was trying
to tie a particularly difficult fly.
He glanced out of the stained-glass window. A smoke cloud was rising
over uptown Morpork.
'Bursaar!'
The Bursar arrived within a few seconds, out of breath. Loud noises
always upset him.
'It's the alchemists, Master,' he panted.
'That's the third time this week. Blasted firework merchants,' muttered
the Archchancellor.
'I'm afraid so, Master,' said the Bursar.
'What do they think they're doing?'
'I really couldn't say, Master,' said the Bursar, getting his breath
back.
'Alchemy has never interested me. It's altogether too ... too ... '
'Dangerous,' said the Archchancellor firmly. 'Lot of damn mixin' things
up and saying, hey, what'll happen if we add a drop of the yellow stuff, and
then goin' around without yer eyebrows for a fortnight.'
'I was going to say impractical,' said the Bursar. 'Trying to do things
the hard way when we have perfectly simple everyday magic available.'
'I thought they were trying to cure the philosopher's stones, or
somethin',' said the Archchancellor. 'Lot of damn nonsense, if you ask me.
Anyway, I'm off.'
As the Archchancellor began to sidle out of the room the Bursar hastily
waved a handful of papers at him.
'Before you go, Archchancellor,' he said desperately, 'I wonder if you
would just care to sign a few-'
'Not now, man,' snapped the Archchancellor. 'Got to see a man about a
horse, what?'
'What?'
'Right.' The door closed.
The Bursar stared at it, and sighed.
Unseen University had had many different kinds of Archchancellor over
the years.
Big ones, small ones, cunning ones, slightly insane ones, extremely
insane ones - they'd come, they'd served, in some cases not long enough for
anyone to be able to complete the official painting to be hung in the Great
Hall, and they'd died. The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same
prospects of longterm employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.
However, from the Bursar's point of view this didn't really have to
matter. The name might change occasionally, but what did matter was that
there always was an Archchancellor and the Archchancellor's most important
job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's
point of view, without reading them first.
This one was different. For one thing, he was hardly ever in, except to
change out of his muddy clothes. And he shouted at people. Usually at the
Bursar.
And yet, at the time, it had seemed a really good idea to elect an
Archchancellor who hadn't set foot in the University in forty years.
There had been so much in-fighting between the various orders of
wizardry in recent years that, just for once, the senior wizards had agreed
that what the University needed was a period of stability, so that they
could get on with their scheming and intriguing in peace and quiet for a few
months. A search of the records turned up Ridcully the Brown who, after
becoming a Seventh Level mage at the incredibly young age of twenty-seven,
had quit the University in order to look after his family's estates deep in
the country.
He looked ideal.
'Just the chap,' they all said. 'Clean sweep. New broom. A country
wizard. Back to the thingumajigs, the roots of wizardry. Jolly old boy with
a pipe and twinkly eyes. Sort of chap who can tell one herb from another,
roams-the-high-forest-with-every-beast-his-brother kind of thing. Sleeps
under the stars, like as not. Knows what the wind is saying, we shouldn't
wonder. Got a name for all the trees, you can bank on it. Speaks to the
birds, too.'
A messenger had been sent. Ridcully the Brown had sighed, cursed a bit,
found his staff in the kitchen garden where it had been supporting a
scarecrow, and had set out.
'And if he's any problem,' the wizards had added, in the privacy of
their own heads, 'anyone who talks to trees should be no trouble to get rid
of.'
And then he'd arrived, and it turned out that Ridcully the Brown did
speak to the birds. In fact he shouted at birds, and what he normally
shouted was, 'Winged you, yer bastard!'
The beasts of the field and fowls of the air did know Ridcully the
Brown. They'd got so good at patternrecognition that, for a radius of about
twenty miles around the Ridcully estates, they'd run, hide or in desperate
cases attack violently at the mere sight of a pointy hat.
Within twelve hours of arriving, Ridcully had installed a pack of
hunting dragons in the butler's pantry, fired his dreadful crossbow at the
ravens on the ancient Tower of Art, drunk a dozen bottles of red wine, and
rolled off to bed at two in the morning singing a song with words in it that
some of the older and more forgetful wizards had to look up.
And then he got up at five o'clock to go duck hunting down in the
marshes on the estuary.
And came back complaining that there wasn't a good trout fishin' river
for miles. (You couldn't fish in the river Ankh; you had to jump up and down
on the hooks even to make them sink.)
And he ordered beer with his breakfast.
And told jokes.
On the other hand, thought the Bursar, at least he didn't interfere
with the actual running of the University. Ridcully the Brown wasn't the
least interested in running anything except maybe a string of hounds. If you
couldn't shoot arrows at it, hunt it or hook it, he couldn't see much point
in it.
Beer at breakfast! The Bursar shuddered. Wizards weren't at their best
before noon, and breakfast in the Great Hall was a quiet, fragile occasion,
broken only by coughs, the quiet shuffling of the servants, and the
occasional groan. People shouting for kidneys and black pudding and beer
were a new phenomenon.
The only person not terrified of the ghastly man was old Windle Poons,
who was one hundred and thirty years old and deaf and, while an expert on
ancient magical writings, needed adequate. notice and a good run-up to deal
with the present day. He'd managed to absorb the fact that the new
Archchancellor was going to be one of those hedgerow-and-dickie-bird
chappies, it would take a week or two for him to grasp the change of events,
and in the meantime he made polite and civilized conversation based on what
little he could remember about Nature and things.
On the lines of:
'I expect it must be a, mm, a change for you, mm, sleeping in a real
bed, instead of under the, mm, stars?' And: 'These things, mm, here, are
called knives and forks, mm.' And: 'This, mm, green stuff on the scrambled
egg, mm, would it be parsley, do you think?'
But since the new Archchancellor never paid much attention to anything
anyone said while he was eating, and Poons never noticed that he wasn't
getting any answers, they got along quite well.
Anyway, the Bursar had other problems.
The Alchemists, for one thing. You couldn't trust alchemists. They were
too serious-minded.
Boom.
And that was the last one. Whole days went by without being punctuated
by small explosions. The city settled down again, which was a foolish thing
to do. What the Bursar failed to consider was that no more bangs doesn't
mean they've stopped doing it, whatever it is. It just means they're doing
it right.
It was midnight. The surf boomed on the beach, and made a
phosphorescent glow in the night. Around the ancient hill, though, the sound
seemed as dead as if it was arriving through several layers of velvet.
The hole in the sand was quite big now.
If you could put your ear to it, you might think you could hear
applause.
It was still midnight. A full moon glided above the smoke and fumes of
Ankh-Morpork, thankful that several thousand miles of sky lay between
it and them.
The Alchemists' Guildhall was new. It was always new. It had been
explosively demolished and rebuilt four times in the last two years, on the
last occasion without a lecture and demonstration room in the hope that this
might be a helpful move.
On this night a number of muffled figures entered the building in a
surreptitious fashion. After a few minutes the lights in a window on the top
floor dimmed and went out.
Well, nearly out.
Something was happening up there. A strange flickering filled the
window, very briefly. It was followed by a ragged cheering.
And there was a noise. Not a bang this time, but a strange mechanical
purring, like a happy cat at the bottom of a tin drum.
It went clickaclickaclickaclicka ... click.
It went on for several minutes, to a background of cheers. And then a
voice said:
'That's all, folks.'
'That's all what?' said the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, next morning.
The man in front of him shivered with fear.
'Don't know, lordship,' he said. 'They wouldn't let me in. They made me
wait outside the door, lordship.'
He twisted his forgers together nervously. The Patrician's stare had
him pinned.
It was a good stare, and one of the things it was good at was making
people go on talking when they thought they had finished.
Only the Patrician knew how many spies he had in the city. This
particular one was a servant in the Alchemists' Guild. He had once had the
misfortune to come up before the Patrician accused of malicious lingering,
and had then chosen of his own free will to become a spy.[3]
'That's all, lordship,' he whined. 'There was just this clicking noise
and this sort of flickery glow under the door. And, er, they said the
daylight here was wrong.'
'Wrong? How?'
'Er. Dunno, sir. just wrong, they said. They ought to go somewhere
where it was better, they said. Uh. And they told me to go and get them some
food.'
The Patrician yawned. There was something infinitely boring about the
antics of alchemists.
'Indeed,' he said.
'But they'd had their supper only fifteen minutes before,' the servant
blurted out.
'Perhaps whatever they were doing makes people hungry,' said the
Patrician.
'Yes, and the kitchen was all shut up for the night and I had to go and
buy a tray of hot sausages in buns from Throat Dibbler.'
'Indeed.' The Patrician looked down at the paperwork on his desk.
'Thank you.
You may go.'
'You know what, lordship? They liked them. They actually liked them!'
That the Alchemists had a Guild at all was remarkable. Wizards were
just as unco-operative, but they also were by nature hierarchical and
competitive. They needed organization. What was the good of being a wizard
of the Seventh Level if you didn't have six other levels to look down on and
the Eighth Level to aspire to? You needed other wizards to hate and despise.
Whereas every alchemist was an alchemist alone, working in darkened
rooms or hidden cellars and endlessly searching for the big casino - the
Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life. They tended to be thin, pink-eyed
men, with beards that weren't really beards but more like groups of
individual hairs clustering together for mutual protection, and many of them
had that vague, unworldly expression that you get from spending too much
time in the presence of boiling mercury.
It wasn't that alchemists hated other alchemists. They often didn't
notice them, or thought they were walruses.
And so their tiny, despised Guild had never aspired to the powerful
status of the Guilds of, say, the Thieves or the Beggars or the Assassins,
but devoted itself instead to the aid of widows and families of those
alchemists who had taken an overly relaxed attitude to potassium cyanide,
for example, or had distilled some interesting fungi, drunk the result, and
then stepped off the roof to play with the fairies. There weren't actually
very many widows and orphans, of course, because alchemists found it
difficult to relate to other people long enough, and generally if they ever
managed to marry it was only to have someone to hold their crucibles.
By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had
discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.
Until now ...
Now they were full of the nervous excitement of those who have found an
unexpected fortune in their bank account and don't know whether to draw
people's attention to it or simply take the lot and run.
'The wizards aren't going to like it,' said one of them, a thin,
hesitant man called Lully. 'They're going to call it magic. You know they
get really pissed if they think you're doing magic and you're not a wizard.'
'There isn't any magic involved,' said Thomas Silverfish, the president
of the Guild.
'There's the imps.'
'That's not magic. That's just ordinary occult.'
'Well, there's the salamanders.'
'Perfectly normal natural history. Nothing wrong with that.'
'Well, all right. But they'll call it magic. You know what they're
like.'
The alchemists nodded gloomily.
'They're reactionaries,' said Sendivoge, the Guild secretary. 'Bloated
thaumocrats. And the other Guilds, too. What do they know about the march of
progress? What do they care? They could have been doing something like this
for years, but did they? Not them! Just think how we can make people's lives
so much ... well, better. The possibilities are immense.'
'Educational,' said Silverfish.
'Historical,' said Lully.
'And of course there's entertainment,' said Peavie, the Guild
treasurer. He was a small, nervous man. Most alchemists were nervous, in any
case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were
experimenting with was going to do next.
'Well, yes. Obviously some entertainment,' said Silverfish.
'Some of the great historical dramas,' said Peavie. 'Just picture the
scene! You get some actors together, they act it just once, and people all
over the Disc will be able to see it as many times as they like! A great
saving in wages, by the way,' he added.
'But tastefully done,' said Silverfish. 'We have a great responsibility
to see that nothing is done which is in any way ... ' his voice trailed off,
' ... you know ... coarse.'
'They'll stop us,' said Lully darkly. 'I know those wizards.'
'I've been giving that some thought,' said Silverfish. 'The light's too
bad here anyway. We agreed. We need clear skies. And we need to be a long
way away. I think I know just the place.'
'You know, I can't believe we're doing this,' said Peavie. 'A month ago
it was just a mad idea. And now it's all worked! It's just like magic! Only
not magical, if you see what I mean,' he added quickly.
'Not just illusion, but real illusion,' said Lully.
'I don't know if anyone's thought about this,' said Peavie, 'but this
could make us a bit of money. Um?'
'But that isn't important,' said Silverfish.
'No. No, of course not,' muttered Peavie. He glanced at the others.
'Shall we watch it again?' he said, shyly. 'I don't mind turning the
handle.
And, and ... well, I know I haven't contributed very much to this
project, but I did come up with this, er, this stuff.'
He pulled a very large bag from the pocket of his robe and dropped it
on the table. It fell over, and a few fluffy, white mis-shapen balls rolled
out.
The alchemists stared at it.
'What is it?' said Lully.
'Well,' said Peavie, uncomfortably, 'what you do is, you take some
corn, and you put it in, say, a Number 3 crucible, with some cooking oil,
you see, and then you put a plate or something on top of it, and when you
heat it up it goes bang,
I mean, not seriously bang, and when it's stopped banging you take the
plate off and it's metamorphosed into these, er, things ... ' He looked at
their uncomprehending faces. 'You can eat it,' he mumbled apologetically.
'If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.'
Silverfish reached out a chemical-stained hand and cautiously selected
a fluffy morsel. He chewed it thoughtfully.
'Don't really know why I did it,' said Peavie, blushing. 'Just sort of
had an idea that it was right.'
Silverfish went on chewing.
'Tastes like cardboard,' he said, after a while.
'Sorry,' said Peavie, trying to scoop the rest of the heap back into
the sack.
Silverfish laid a gentle hand on his arm.
'Mind you,' he said, selecting another puffed morsel, 'it does have a
certain something, doesn't it? They do seem right. What did you say it's
called?'
'Hasn't really got a name,' said Peavie. 'I just call it banged
grains.'
Silverfish took another one. 'Funny how you want to go on eating them,'
he said.
'Sort of more-ish. Banged grains? Right. Anyway ... gentlemen, let us
turn the handle one more time.'
Lully started to wind the film back into the unmagical lantern.
'You were saying you knew a place where we could really build up the
project and where the wizards wouldn't bother us?' he said.
Silverfish grabbed a handful of banged grains.
'It's along the coast a way,' he said. 'Nice and sunny and no-one ever
goes there these days. Nothing there but some wind-blown old forest and a
temple and sand dunes.'
'A temple? Gods can get really pissed if you-' Peavie began.
'Look,' said Silverfish, 'the whole area's been deserted for centuries.
There's nothing there. No people, no gods, no nothing. Just lots of sunlight
and land, waiting for us. It's our chance, lads. We're not allowed to make
magic, we can't make gold, we can't even make a living - so let's make
moving pictures. Let's make history!'
The alchemists sat back and looked more cheerful.
'Yeah,' said Lully.
'Oh. Right,' said Peavie.
'Here's to moving pictures,' said Sendivoge, holding up a handful of
banged grains. 'How'd you hear about this place?'
'Oh, I-' Silverfish stopped. He looked puzzled. 'Don't know,' he said,
eventually. 'Can't ... quite remember. Must have heard about it once and
forgot it, and then it just popped into my head. You know how these things
happen.'
'Yeah,' said Lully. 'Like with me and the film. It was like I was
remembering how to do it. Funny old tricks the mind can play.'
'Yeah.'
'Yeah.'
' 'S'n idea whose time has come, see.'
'Yeah.'
'Yeah.'
'That must be it.'
A slightly worried silence settled over the table. It was the sound of
minds trying to put their mental fingers on something that was bothering
them.
The air seemed to glitter.
'What's this place called?' said Lully, eventually.
'Don't know what it was called in the old days,' said Silverfish,
leaning back and pulling the banged grains towards him. 'These days they
call it the Holy Wood.'
'Holy Wood,' said Lully. 'Sounds ... familiar.' There was another
silence while they thought about it.
It was broken by Sendivoge.
'Oh, well,' he said cheerfully, 'Holy Wood, here we come.'
'Yeah,' said Silverfish, shaking his head as if to dislodge a
disquieting thought. 'Funny thing, really. I've got. this feeling ... that
we've been going there ... all this time.'
Several thousand miles under Silverfish, Great A'Tuin the world turtle
sculled dreamily on through the starry night.
Reality is a curve.
That's not the problem. The problem is that there isn't as much as
there should be. According to some of the more mystical texts in the stacks
of the library of Unseen University - the Discworld's premier college of
wizardry and big dinners, whose collection of books is so massive that it
distorts Space and Time - at least nine-tenths of all the original reality
ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by
definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit
of a strain on things.
Outside the boundaries of the universes lie the raw realities, the
couldhave-beens, the might-bes, the neverweres, the wild ideas, all being
created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas.
Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin,
they can leak in.
And reality leaks out.
The effect is like one of those deep-sea geysers of hot water, around
which strange submarine creatures find enough warmth and food to make a
brief, tiny oasis of existence in an environment where there shouldn't be
any existence at all.
The idea of Holy Wood leaked innocently and joyfully into the
Discworld.
And reality leaked out.
And was found. For there are Things outside, whose ability to sniff out
tiny frail conglomerations of reality made the thing with the sharks and the
trace of blood seem very boring indeed. They began to gather.
A storm slid in across the sand dunes but, where it reached the low
hill, the clouds seemed to curve away. Only a few drops of rain hit the
parched soil, and the gale became nothing more than a faint breeze.
It blew sand over the long-dead remains of afire.
Further down the slope, near a hole that was now big enough for, say, a
badger, a small rock dislodged itself and rolled away.
A month went by quickly. It didn't want to hang around.
The Bursar knocked respectfully at the Archchancellor's door and then
opened it.
A crossbow bolt nailed his hat to the woodwork.
The Archchancellor lowered the bow and glared at him.
'Bloody dangerous thing to do, wasn't it?' he said. 'You could have
caused a nasty accident.'
The Bursar hadn't got where he was today, or rather where he had been
ten seconds ago, which was where a calm and self-assured personality was,
rather than where he was now, which was on the verge of a mild heart attack,
without a tremendous ability to recover from unexpected upsets.
He unpinned his hat from the target chalked on the ancient woodwork.
'No harm done,' he said. No voice could be as calm as that without
tremendous effort. 'You can barely see the hole. Why, er, are you shooting
at the door, Master?'
'Use your common sense, man! It's dark outside and the damn walls are
made of stone. You don't expect me to shoot at the damn walls?'
'Ah,' said the Bursar. 'The door is, er, five hundred years old, you
know,' he added, with finely-tuned reproach.
'Looks it,' said the Archchancellor, bluntly. 'Damn great black thing.
What we need around here, man, is a lot less stone and wood and a bit more
jolliness. A few sportin' prints, yer know. An ornament or two.'
'I shall see to it directly,' lied the Bursar smoothly. He remembered
the sheaf of papers under his arm. 'In the meantime, Master, perhaps you
would care to-'
'Right,' said the Archchancellor, ramming his pointed hat on his head.
'Good man. Now, got a sick dragon to see to. Little devil hasn't touched his
tar oil for days.'
'Your signature on one or two of-' the Bursar burbled hurriedly.
'Can't be havin' with all that stuff,' said the Archchancellor, waving
him away.
'Too much damn paper around here as it is. And-' He stared through the
Bursar, as if he had just remembered something. 'Saw a funny thing this
mornin',' he said. 'Saw a monkey in the quad. Bold as brass.'
'Oh, yes,' said the Bursar, cheerfully. 'That would be the Librarian.'
'Got a pet, has he?'
'No, you misunderstand me, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar cheerfully.
'That was the Librarian.'
The Archchancellor stared at him.
The Bursar's smile began to glaze.
'The Librarian's a monkey?'
It took some time for the Bursar to explain matters clearly, and then
the Archchancellor said: 'What yer tellin' me, then, is that this chap got
himself turned into a monkey by magic?'
'An accident in the Library, yes. Magical explosion. One minute a
human, next minute an orang-utan. And you mustn't call him a monkey, Master.
He's an ape.'
'Same damn difference, surely?'
'Apparently not. He gets very, er, aggressive if you call him a
monkey.'
'He doesn't stick his bottom at people, does he?'
The Bursar closed his eyes and shuddered. 'No, Master. You're thinking
of baboons.'
'Ah.' The Archchancellor considered this. 'Haven't got any of them
workin' here, then?'
'No, Master. Just the Librarian, Master.'
'Can't have it. Can't have it, yer know. Can't have damn great hairy
things shambling around the place,' said the Archchancellor firmly. 'Get rid
of him.'
'Good grief, no! He's the best Librarian we've ever had. And tremendous
value for money.'
'Why? What d'we pay him?'
'Peanuts,' said the Bursar promptly. 'Besides, he's the only one who
knows how the Library actually works.'
'Turn him back, then. No life for a man, bein' a monkey.'
'Ape, Archchancellor. And he seems to prefer it, I'm afraid.'
'How d'yer know?' said the Archchancellor suspiciously. 'Speaks, does
he?'
The Bursar hesitated. There was always this trouble with the Librarian.
Everyone had got so accustomed to him it was hard to remember a time when
the Library was not run by a yellow-fanged ape with the strength of three
men. If the abnormal goes on long enough it becomes the normal. It was just
that, when you came to explain it to a third party, it sounded odd. He
coughed nervously.
'He says "cook", Archchancellor,' he said.
'And what's that mean?'
'Means "no", Archchancellor.'
'And how does he say "yes", then?'
The Bursar had been dreading this. ' "Oook", Archchancellor,' he said.
'That was the same oook as the other oook!'
'Oh, no. No. I assure you. There's a different inflection ... I mean,
when you get used to ... ,' the Bursar shrugged. 'I suppose we've just got
into the way of understanding him, Archchancellor.'
'Well, at least he keeps himself fit,' said the Archchancellor nastily.
'Not like the rest of you fellows. I went into the Uncommon Room this
morning, and it was full of chaps snoring!'
'That would be the senior masters, Master,' said the Bursar. 'I would
say they are supremely fit, myself.'
'Fit? The Dean looks like a man who's swallered a bed!'
'Ah, but Master,' said the Bursar, smiling indulgently, 'the word
"fit", as I understand it, means "appropriate to a purpose", and I would say
the body of the Dean is supremely appropriate to the purpose of sitting
around all day and eating big heavy meals.' The Bursar permitted himself a
little smile.
The Archchancellor gave him a look so old-fashioned it might have
belonged to an ammonite.
'That a joke?' he said, in the suspicious tones of someone who wouldn't
really understand the term 'sense of humour' even if you sat down for an
hour and explained it to him with diagrams.
'I was just making an observation, Master,' said the Bursar cautiously.
The Archchancellor shook his head. 'Can't stand jokes. Can't stand
chaps goin' around tryin' to be funny the whole time. Comes of spendin' too
much time sitting indoors. A few twenty-mile runs and the Dean'd be a
different man.'
'Well, yes,' said the Bursar. 'He'd be dead.'
'He'd be healthy.'
'Yes, but still dead.'
The Archchancellor irritably shuffled the papers on his desk.
'Slackness,' he muttered. 'Far too much of it going on. Whole place
gone to pot. People goin' round sleepin' all day and turnin' into monkeys
the whole time. We never even thought of turnin' into a monkey when I was a
student.' He looked up irritably.
'What was it you wanted?' he snapped.
'What?' said the Bursar, unnerved.
'You wanted me to do somethin', didn't you? You came in to ask me to do
somethin'. Probably because I'm the only feller here not fast asleep or
sittin' in a tree whoopin' every mornin',' the Archchancellor added.
'Er. I think that's gibbons, Archchancellor.'
'What? What? Do try and make some sense, man!'
The Bursar pulled himself together. He didn't see why he had to be
treated like this.
'In fact, I wanted to see you about one of the students, Master,' he
said coldly.
'Students?' barked the Archchancellor.
'Yes, Master. You know? They're the thinner ones with the pale faces?
Because we're a university? They come with the whole thing, like rats-'
'I thought we paid people to deal with 'em.'
'The teaching staff. Yes. But sometimes ... well, I wonder,
Archchancellor, if you would care to look at these examination results ... '
It was midnight - not the same midnight as before, but a very similar
midnight. Old Tom, the tongueless bell in the University bell tower, had
just tolled its twelve sonorous silences.
Rainclouds squeezed their last few drops over the city. Ankh-Morpork
sprawled under a few damp stars, as real as a brick.
Ponder Stibbons, student wizard, put down his book and rubbed his face.
'All right,' he said. 'Ask me anything. Go on. Anything at all.'
Victor Tugelbend, student wizard, picked up his battered copy of
Necrotelicomnicon Discussed for Students, with Practical Experiments and
turned the pages at random. He was lying on Ponder's bed. At least, his
shoulder blades were. His body extended up the wall. This is a perfectly
normal position for a student taking his ease.
'OK,' he said. 'Right. OK? What, right, what is the name of the
outerdimensional monster whose distinctive cry is "Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat"?'
'Yob Soddoth,' said Ponder promptly.
'Yeah. How does the monster Tshup Aklathep, Infernal Star Toad with A
Million Young, torture its victims to death?'
'It ... don't tell me ... it holds them down and shows them pictures of
its children until their brains implode.'
'Yep. Always wondered how that happens, myself,' said Victor, flicking
through the pages. 'I suppose after you've said "Yes, he's got your eyes"
for the thousandth time you're about ready to commit suicide in any case.'
'You know an awful lot, Victor,' said Ponder admiringly. 'I'm amazed
you're still a student.'
'Er, yes,' said Victor. 'Er. Just unlucky at exams, I guess.'
'Go on,' said Ponder, 'Ask me one more.'
Victor opened the book again.
There was a moment's silence.
Then he said, 'Where's Holy Wood?'
Ponder shut his eyes and pounded his forehead. 'Hang on, hang on ...
don't tell me ... ' He opened his eyes. 'What do you mean, where's Holy
Wood?' he added sharply. 'I don't remember anything about any Holy Wood.'
Victor stared down at the page. There was nothing about any Holy Wood
there.
'I could have sworn I heard ... I think my mind must be wandering,' he
finished lamely. 'It must be all this revision.'
'Yes. It really gets to you, doesn't it? But it'll be worth it, to be a
wizard.'
'Yes,' said Victor. 'Can't wait.'
Ponder shut the book.
'Rain's stopped. Let's go over the wall,' he said. 'We deserve a
drink.'
Victor waggled a finger. 'Just one drink, then. Got to keep sober,' he
said.
'It's Finals tomorrow. Got to keep a clear head!'
'Huh!' said Ponder.
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many
worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and
subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of
understanding of this simple fact.
But Victor had a special reason for keeping alert.
He might make a mistake, and pass.
His dead uncle had left him a small fortune not to be a wizard. He
hadn't realized it when he'd drawn up the will, but that's what the old man
had done.
He thought he was helping his nephew through college, but Victor
Tugelbend was a very bright young lad in an oblique sort of way and had
reasoned thusly:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a wizard? Well, you
got a certain amount of prestige, but you were often in dangerous situations
and certainly always at risk of being killed by a fellow mage. He saw no
future in being a well-respected corpse.
On the other hand ...
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a student wizard?
You got quite a lot of free time, a certain amount of licence in matters
like drinking a lot of ale and singing bawdy songs, no-one tried to kill you
much except in the ordinary, everyday Ankh-Morpork way of things and, thanks
to the legacy, you also got a modest but comfortable style of living. Of
course, you didn't get much in the way of prestige but at least you were
alive to know this.
So Victor had devoted a considerable amount of energy in studying
firstly the terms of the will, the byzantine examination regulations of
Unseen University, and every examination paper of the last fifty years.
The pass mark in Finals was 88.
Failing would be easy. Any idiot can fail.
Victor's uncle had been no fool. One of the conditions of the legacy
was that, should Victor ever achieve a mark of less than 80, the money
supply would dry up like thin spit on a hot stove.
He'd won, in a way. Few students had ever studied as hard as Victor. It
was said that his knowledge of magic rivalled that of some of the top
wizards. He spent hours in a comfy chair in the Library, reading grimoires.
He researched answer formats and exam techniques. He listened to lectures
until he could quote them by heart. He was generally considered by the staff
to be the brightest and certainly the busiest student for decades and, at
every Finals, he carefully and competently got a mark of 84.
It was uncanny.
The Archchancellor reached the last page.
Eventually he said: 'Ah. I see. Feel sorry for the lad, do you?'
'I don't think you quite see what I mean,' said the Bursar.
'Fairly obvious to me,' said the Archchancellor. 'Lad keeps coming
within an ace of passin'.' He pulled out one of the papers. 'Anyway, it says
here he passed three years ago. Got 91.'
'Yes, Archchancellor. But he appealed.'
'Appealed? Against passin'?'
'He said he didn't think the examiners had. noticed that he got the
allotropes of octiron wrong in question six. He said he couldn't live with
his conscience. He said it would haunt him for the rest of his days if he
succeeded unfairly over better and more worthy students. You'll notice he
got only 82 and 83 in the next two exams.'
'Why's that?'
'We think he was playing safe, Master.'
The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the desk.
'Can't have this,' he said. 'Can't have someone goin' around almost
bein' a wizard and laughin' at us up his, his - what's it that people laugh
up?'
'My feelings exactly,' purred the Bursar.
'We should send him up,' said the Archchancellor firmly.
'Down, Master,' said the Bursar. 'Sending him up would mean making
spiteful and satirical comments about him.'
'Yes. Good thinkin'. Let's do that,' said the Archchancellor.
'No, Master,' said the Bursar patiently. 'He's sending us up, so we
send him down.'
'Right. Balance things up,' said the Archchancellor. The Bursar rolled
his eyes.
'Or down,' the Archchancellor added. 'So you want me to give him his
marchin' orders, eh? Just send him along in the morning and-'
'No, Archchancellor. We can't do it just like that.'
'We can't? I thought we were in charge here!'
'Yes, but you have to be extremely careful when dealing with Master
Tugelbend. He's an expert on procedures. So what I thought we could do is
give him this paper in the finals tomorrow.'
The Archchancellor took the proferred document. His lips moved silently
as he read it.
'Just one question.'
'Yes. And he'll either pass or fail. I'd like to see him manage 84 per
cent on that.'
In a sense which his tutors couldn't quite define, much to their
annoyance, Victor Tugelbend was also the la...
