Last Continent

by Pratchett, Terry

  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 ear.

  ‘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 turnwise 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 knock-about 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 jus
t 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.

  He looked at the food in the sack. There was a loaf of bread the size and weight of a cannonball, and some vegetables. But at least they were recognizable vegetables. There was even a potato.

  He held it up against the sunset.

  Rincewind had eaten in many countries on the Disc, and sometimes he’d been able to complete an entire meal before having to run away. And they’d always lacked something. Oh, people did great things with spices and olives and yams and rice and whatnot, but what he’d come to crave was the humble potato.

  Time was when a plate of mash or chips would have been his for the asking. All he’d needed to do was wander down to the kitchens and ask. Food was always available for the asking at Unseen University, you could say that for the place, even if you said it with your mouth full. And, ridiculous though it sounded now, he’d hardly ever done that. The dish of potatoes’d come past at mealtimes and he’d probably have a spoonful but, sometimes, he wouldn’t! He’d . . . let . . . the . . . dish . . . go . . . by. He’d have rice instead. Rice! All very nutritious in its way, but basically only grown where potatoes would’ve floated to the surface.

  He’d remember those times, sometimes, usually in his sleep, and wake up shouting, ‘Will you pass the potatoes, please!’

  Sometimes he remembered the melted butter. Those were the bad days.

  He placed the potato reverentially on the ground and tipped out the rest of the bag. There was an onion and some carrots. A tin of . . . tea, by the smell of it, and a little box of salt.

  A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.

  Soup! Nutritious and simple! You just boiled everything up! And, yes, he could use one of the empty beer tins, and make a fire, and chop up the vegetables, and the damp patch over there suggested there was water . . .

  He walked unsteadily over to have a look. There was a circular depression in the ground that looked as though it might have been some sort of pond once, and there was the usual cluster of slightly healthier than usual trees which you got in such places, but there was no sign of any water and he was too tired to dig.

  Then another insight struck him at the speed of beer. Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn’t it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food. In fact, when you thought about it, beer was only a kind of runny bread, in fact, it’d be better to use some of the beer in the soup! Beer soup! A few brain cells registered their doubt, but the rest of them grabbed them by the collar and said hoarsely, people cooked chicken in wine, didn’t they?

  It took him some time to hack one end off a tin, but eventually he had it standing in the fire with the chopped-up vegetables floating in the froth. A few more doubts assailed him at this point, but they were elbowed aside, especially when the smell that floated up made his mouth water and he’d opened another tin of beer as a pre-prandial appetizer.

  After a while he poked the vegetables with a stick. They were still pretty hard, even though a lot of the beer seemed to have boiled away. Was there something else he hadn’t done?

  Salt! Yes, that was it! Salt, marvellous stuff. He’d read where you went totally up the pole if you didn’t have any salt for a couple of weeks. That was probably why he was feeling so odd at the moment. He fumbled for the salt box and dropped a pinch in the tin.

  It was a medicinal herb, salt. Good for wounds, wasn’t it? And back in the really old days, hadn’t soldiers been paid in salt? Wasn’t that where the word salary came from? Must’ve been good, then. You went on a forced march all week, building your road as you went, then you fought the maddened blue-painted tribesmen of the Vexatii, and you force-marched all the way back home, and on Friday the centurion would turn up with a big sack and say, ‘Well done, lads! Here’s some salt!’

  It was amazing how well his mind was working.

  He peered at the salt box again, shrugged, and tipped it all in. When you thought about it like that, salt must really be an amazing food. And he hadn’t had any for weeks, so that was probably why his eyesight was acting up and he couldn’t feel his legs.

  He topped up the beer, too.

  He lay back with his head on a rock. Keep out of trouble and don’t get involved, that was the important thing. Look at those stars up there, with nothing to do all the time but sit there and shine. No one ever told them what to do, the lucky bastards . . .

  He woke up shivering. Something horrible had crawled into his mouth, and it was no great relief to find out that it was his tongue. It was chilly, and the horizon suggested dawn.

  There was also a pathetic sucking noise.

  Some sheep had invaded his camp during the night. One of them was trying to get its mouth around an empty beer tin. It stopped when it saw that he had woken up, and backed away a bit, but not too far, while fixing him with the penetrating gaze of a domesticated animal reminding its domesticator that they had a deal.

  His head ached.

  There had to be some water somewhere. He lurched to his feet and blinked at the horizon. There were . . . windmills and things, weren’t there? He remembered the stricken windmills from yesterday. Well, there was bound to be some water around, no matter what anyone said. Ye gods, he was thirsty.

  His gummed-up gaze fell upon last night’s magnificent experiment in cookery. Yeasty vegetable soup, what a wonderful idea. Exactly the sort of idea that sounds really good around one o’clock in the morning when you’ve had too much to drink.

  Now he remembered, with a shudder, some of the great wheezes he’d had on similar occasions. Spaghetti and custard, that’d been a good one. Deep-fried peas, that’d been another triumph. And then there’d been the time when it had seemed a really good idea to eat some flour and yeast and then drink some warm water, because he’d run out of bread and after all that was what the stomach saw, wasn’t it? The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always had some logic behind it. It just wasn’t the kind of logic you’d use around midday.

  Still, he’d have to e
at something and the dark brown goo that half filled the tin was the only available food in this vicinity that didn’t have at least six legs. He didn’t even think about eating mutton. You couldn’t, when it was looking at you so pathetically.

  He poked the goo with the stick. It gripped the wood like glue.

  ‘Gerroff!’

  A blob eventually came loose. Rincewind tasted it, gingerly. It was just possible that if you mixed yeasty beer and vegetables together you’d get—

  No, what you got was salty-tasting beery brown gunk.

  Odd, though . . . It was kind of horrible, but nevertheless Rincewind found himself having another taste.

  Oh, gods. Now he was really thirsty.

  He picked up the tin and staggered off towards some trees. That’s where you found water . . . you looked at where the trees were and, tired or not, you dug down.

  It took him half an hour to squash an empty beer tin and use it to dig a hole waist deep. His toes felt damp.

  Another half an hour took him to shoulder depth and a pair of wet ankles.

  Say what you like – that brown muck was good stuff. It was the runny equivalent of dwarf bread. You didn’t really believe what your mouth said you’d just tasted, so you had some more. Probably full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Most things you couldn’t believe the taste of generally were . . .

  By the time he raised his head he was surrounded by sheep, eyeing him cautiously in between longing glances into the damp depths.

  ‘It’s no good you lot looking at me like that,’ he said. They paid no attention. They carried on looking at him.

  ‘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.