Terry Pratchett - The Science of Discworld

by Terry Pratchett

  ’Perhaps some instability in the sun ...’ Ponder mused.

  ’Made by unskilled labour,’ said Archchancellor Ridcully. ’Bound to happen sooner or later. And then it’s nothing but frozen death, the tea-time of the gods and an eternity of cold.’

  ’Sniffleheim,’ said the Dean, who’d got to the sherry ahead of everyone else.

  ’According to HEX, the air of the planet has changed,’ said Ponder.

  ’A bit academic now, isn’t it?’ said the Senior Wrangler.

  ’Ah, I’ve got an idea!’ said the Dean, beaming. ’We can get HEX to reverse the thaumic flow in the cthonic matrix of the optimized bi-direction octagonate, can’t we?’

  ’Well, that’s the opinion of four glasses of sherry,’ said the Archchancellor briskly, to break the ensuing silence. ’However, if I may express a preference, something that isn’t complete gibberish would be more welcome next time, please. So, Mister Stibbons, is this the end of the world?’

  ’And if it is,’ said the Senior Wrangler, ’are we going to have a lot of heroes turning up?’

  ’What are you talking about, man?’ said Ridcully.

  ’Well, the Dean seems to think we’re like gods, and a great many mythologies suggest that when heroes die they go to feast forever in the halls of the gods,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ’I just need to know if I should alert the kitchens, that’s all’

  ’They’re only blobs,’ said Ridcully. ’What can they do that’s heroic?’

  ’I don’t know ... stealing something from the gods is a very clas­sical way,’ the Senior Wrangler mused.

  ’Are you saying we should check our pockets?’ said the Archchancellor.

  ’Well, I haven’t seen my penknife lately,’ said the Senior Wranger. ’It was just a thought, anyway.’

  Ridcully slapped the despondent Stibbons on the back.

  ’Chin up, lad!’ he roared. ’It was a wonderful effort! Admittedly the outcome was a lot of blobs with the intelligence of pea soup, but you shouldn’t let utter hopeless failure get you down.’

  ’We never do,’ said the Dean.

  It was after breakfast next day when Ponder Stibbons wandered into the High Energy Magic building. A scene of desolation met his eye. There were cups and plates everywhere. Paper littered the floor. Forgotten cigarettes had etched their charred trails on the edge of desks. A half-eaten sardine, cheese and blackcurrant pizza, untouched for days, was inching its way to safety.

  Sighing, he picked up a broom, and went over the tray contain­ing HEX’s overnight write-out.

  It seemed a lot fuller than he would have expected.

  ’Not just blobs - there’s all sorts of stuff! Some of it’s wiggling ...’

  ’Is that a plant or is it an animal?’

  ’I’msure it’s a plant.’

  ’Isn’t it... walking ... rather fast?’

  ’I don’t know I’ve never seen a plant walking before.’

  The wizardery of UU was filtering back in the building as the news got around. The senior members of the faculty were clustered around the omniscope, explaining to one another, now that the impossible had happened, that of course it had been inevitable.

  ’All those cracks under the sea,’ said the Dean. ’And the volca­noes, of course. Heat’s bound to build up over time.’

  ’That doesn’t explain all the different shapes, though,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ’I mean, the whole sea looks like somebody had just turned over a very big stone.’

  ’I suppose the blobs had time to consider their future when they were under the ice,’ said the Dean. ’It suppose you could think of it as a very long winter evening.’

  ’I vote for lavatories,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  ’Well, I’m sure we all do,’ said Ridcully. ’But why at this point?’

  ’I mean that the blobs were ... you know ... excusing themselves for millions and millions of years, then you’re get a lot of, er, manure ...’the Lecturer ventured.

  ’A shitload,’ said the Dean.

  ’Dean! Really!’

  ’Sorry, Archchancellor.’

  ’... and we know dunghills absolutely teem with life ...’ the Lecturer went on.

  ’They used to think that rubbish heaps actually generated rats,’ said Ridcully. ’Of course, that was just a superstition. It’s really seagulls. But you saying life is, as it were, advancing by eating dead men’s shoes? Or blobs, in this case. Not shoes, of course, because they didn’t have any feet. And wouldn’t have been bright enough to invent shoes even if they did. And even if they had been, they couldn’t have done. Because there was, at that time, nothing from which shoes might be made. But apart from that, the metaphor stands.’

  ’There still are blobs in there,’ said the Dean. ’There’s just lots of other things, too.’

  ’Any of it lookin’ intelligent?’ said Ridcully.

  ’I’mnot certain how we’d spot that at this stage ...’

  ’Simple. Is anything killing something it doesn’t intend to eat?’

  They stared into the teeming broth.

  ’Bit hard to define intentions, really,’ said the Dean, after a while.

  ’Well, does anything look as if it is about to become intelligent?’

  They watched again.

  ’That thing like two spiders joined together?’ said the Senior Wrangler after a while. ’It looks very thoughtful.’

  ’I think it looks very dead.’

  ’Look, I can see how we can settle this whole evolution business once and for all,’ said Ridcully, turning away. ’Mister Stibbons, can HEX use the omniscope to see if anything changes into anything else?’

  ’Over a moderately sized area, I think he probably can, sir.’

  ’Get it to pay attention to the land,’ said the Dean. ’Is there any­thing happening on the land?’

  ’There’s a certain greenishness, sir. Seaweed with attitude, really.’

  ’That’s where the interesting stuff will happen, mark my words. I don’t know what this universe is using for narrativium, but land’s where we’ll see any intelligent life.’

  ’How do you define intelligence?’ said Ridcully. ’In the long term, I mean.’

  ’Universities are a good sign,’ said the Dean, to general approval.

  ’You don’t think that perhaps fire and the wheel might be more universally indicative?’ said Ponder carefully.

  ’Not if you live in the water,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ’The sea’s the place here, I’ll be bound. On this world practically noth­ing happens on the land.’

  ’But in the water everything’s eating each other!’

  ’Then I’ll look forward to seeing what happens to the last one served,’ said the Senior Wrangler.

  ’No, when it comes to universities, the land’s the place,’ said the Dean. ’Paper won’t last five minutes under water. Wouldn’t you say so, Librarian?’

  The Librarian was still staring into the omniscope.

  ’Ook,’ he said.

  ’What’s that he said?’ said Ridcully.

  ’He said "I think the Senior Wrangler might be right",’ said Ponder, going over to the omniscope. ’Oh ... look at this ...’

  The creature had at least four eyes and ten tentacles. It was using some of the tentacles to manoeuvre a slab of rock against another slab.

  ’It’s building a bookcase?’ said Ridcully.

  ’Or possibly a crude rock shelter,’ said Ponder Stibbons.

  ’There we are, then,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ’Personal prop­erty. Once something is yours, of course you want to improve it. The first step on the road to progress.’

  ’I’m not sure it’s got actual legs,’ said Ponder.

  ’The first slither, then,’ said the Senior Wrangler, as the rock slipped from the creatures tentacles. ’We should help it,’ he added firmly. ’After all, it wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for us.’

  ’Hold on, hold on,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
’It’s only making a shelter. I mean, the Bower Bird builds intricate nests, doesn’t it? And the Clock Cuckoo even builds a clock for its mate, and no one says they’re intelligent as such.’

  ’Obviously not,’ said the Dean. ’They never get the numerals right, the clocks fall apart after a few months, and they generally lose two hours a day. That doesn’t sound like intelligence to me.’

  ’What are you suggesting, Runes?’ said Ridcully.

  ’Why don’t we send young Rincewind down again in that virtu-ally-there suit? With a trowel, perhaps, and an illustrated manual on basic construction?’

  ’Would they be able to see him?’ ,

  ’Er ... gentlemen ...’ said Ponder, who had been letting the eye of the omniscope drift further into the shallows.

  ’I don’t see why not,’ said Ridcully.

  ’Er ... there’s a ... there’s ...’

  ’It’s one thing to push planets around over millions of years, but at this level we couldn’t even give our builder down there a heavy pat on the back,’ said the Dean. ’Even if we knew which part of him was his back.’

  ’Er ... something’s paddling, sir! Something’s going for a paddle, sir!’

  It was probably the strangest cry of warning since the famous ’Should the reactor have gone that colour?’ The wizards clustered around the omniscope.

  Something had gone for a paddle. It had hundreds of little legs.

  Rincewind was in his new office, filing rocks. He’d worked out quite a good system, based on size, shape, colour and twenty-seven other qualities including whether or not he felt that it was a friendly sort of rock.

  With careful attention to cross-referencing, he reckoned that dealing with just those rocks in this room would take him at least three quiet, blessed years.

  And he was therefore surprised to find himself picked up bodily and virtually carried towards the High Energy Magic building holding, in one hand, a hard square light grey rock and, in the other hand, a rock that appeared to be well disposed to people.

  ’Is this yours?’ roared Ridcully, stepping side to reveal the omniscope.

  The Luggage was now bobbing contently a few metres offshore.

  ’Er ...’ said Rincewind. ’Sort of mine.’

  ’So how did it get there?

  ’Er ... it’s probably looking for me,’ said Rincewind. ’Sometimes it loses track.’

  ’But that’s another universe!’ said the Dean.

  ’Sorry.’

  ’Can you call it back?’

  ’Good heavens, no. If I could call it back, I’d send it away.’

  ’Sapient pearwood is meta-magical and will track its owner absolutely anywhere in time and space,’ said Ponder.

  ’Yes, but not this bit!’ said Ridcully.

  ’I don’t recall "not this bit" ever being recorded as a valid sub­set of "time and space", sir,’ said Ponder. ’In fact, "not this bit" has never even been accepted as a valid part of any magical invocation, ever since the late Funnit the Foregetful tried to use it as a last-minute addition to his famously successful spell to destroy the entire tree he was sitting in.’

  ’The Luggage may consist of a subset of at least n dimensions which may co-exist with any other set of >n dimensions,’ said the Bursar.

  ’Don’t pay any attention, Stibbons,’ said Ridcully wearily. ’He’s been spouting this stuff ever since he tried to understand HEX’s write-out. It’s completely gibberish. What’s ’V, then, old chap?’

  ’Umpt,’ said the Bursar.

  ’Ah, imaginary numbers again,’ said the Dean. ’That’s the one he says should come between three and four.’

  ’There isn’t a number between three and four,’ said Ridcully.

  ’He imagines there is,’ said the Dean.

  ’Could we get inside the Luggage in order to physically go into the project universe?’ said Ponder.

  ’You could try,’ said Rincewind. ’I personally would rather saw my own nose off.’

  ’Ah. Really?’

  ’But the thought occurs,’ said Ridcully, ’that we can use it to bring things back. Eh?’

  Down under the warm water, the strange creature’s stone struc­ture collapsed for the umpteenth time.

  A week went past. On Tuesday a left-over snowball collided with the planet, causing considerable vexation to the wizards and destroying an entire species of net-weaving jellyfish of which the Senior Wrangler had professed great hopes. But at least the Luggage could be used to bring back any specimens stupid enough to swim into something sitting underwater with its lid open, and this included practically everything in the sea at the moment.

  Life in the round world seemed to possess a quality so prevalent that the wizards even discussed the idea that it was some conceptual element, which was perhaps trying to fill the gap left by the non­existent deitygen.

  ’However,’ Ridcully announced, ’Bloodimindium is not a good name.’

  ’Perhaps if we change the accent slightly,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ’Blod-di-min-dium, do you think?’

  ’They’ve certainly got a lot of it, whatever we call it,’ said the Dean. ’It’s not a world to let a complete catastrophe get it down.’

  Things turned up. Shellfish suddenly seemed very popular, A theory gaining ground was that the world itself was generating them in some sort of automatic way.

  ’Obviously, if you have too many rabbits, you need to invent foxes,’ said the Dean, at one of the regular meetings. ’If you’ve got fish, and you want phosphates, you need seabirds.’

  ’That only works if you have narrativium,’ said Ponder ’We’ve got no evidence, sir, that anything on the planet has any concept of causality. Things just live and die.’

  And then, on Thursday, the Senior Wrangler spotted a fish. A real, swimming fish.

  ’There you are,’ he said triumphantly. ’The seas are the natural home of life. Look at the land. It’s just rubbish, quite frankly.’

  ’But the sea’s not getting anywhere,’ said Ridcully. ’Look at those tentacled shellfish you were trying to educate yesterday. Even if you so much as made a sudden movement they just squirted ink at you and swam away.’

  ’No, no, they were trying to communicate,’ the Senior Wrangler insisted. ’Ink is a natural medium, after all. Don’t you get the impression that everything is striving? Look at them. You can see them thinking, can’t you?’

  There were a couple of the things in a tank behind him, peering out of their big spiral shells. The Senior Wrangler had the idea that they could be taught simple tasks, which they would then pass on to the other ammonites. They were turning out to be rather a dis­appointment. They might be good at thinking, ran the general view, but they were pants at actually doing anything about it.

  ’That’s because here’s no point in being able to think if you haven’t got much to think about,’ said the Dean. ’Damn all to think about in the sea. Tide comes in, tide goes out, everything’s damp, end of philosophical discourse.’

  ’Now these are the chaps,’ he went on, strolling along to another tank. The Luggage had been quite good as a collector, provided the specimens didn’t appear to be threatening Rincewind.

  ’Hmph,’ sniffed the Senior Wrangler. ’Underwater woodlice.’

  ’But there’s a lot of them,’ said the Dean. ’And they have legs. I’ve seen them on the seashore.’

  ’By accident. And they haven’t got anything to use as hands.’

  ’Ah, well, I’m glad you’ve pointed that out ...’ said the Dean, walking along to the next aquarium.

  It contained crabs.

  The Senior Wrangler had to admit that crabs looked a good con­tender for Highest Lifeform status. HEX had located some on the other side of the world that were moving along very well indeed, with small underwater cities guarded by carefully transplanted sea-anemones and what appeared to be shellfish farms. They had even invented a primitive form of warfare and had built statues, of sand and spit, apparently to famo
us crabs who had fallen in the struggle.

  The wizards went and had another look fifty thousand years later, after coffee. To the Dean’s glee, population pressure had forced the crabs on to the land as well. The architecture hadn’t improved, but there were now seaweed farms in the lagoons, and some apparently more stupid crabs had been enslaved for transport purposes and use in inter-clan campaigns. Several large rafts with crudely woven sails were moored in one lagoon, and swarming with crabs. It seemed that crabkind was planning a Great Leap Sideways..

  ’Not quite there yet,’ said Ridcully. ’But definitely very promis­ing, Dean.’

  ’You see, water’s too easy,’ said the Dean. ’Your food floats by, there’s not much in the way of weather, there’s nothing to kick against... mark my words, the land is the place for building a bit of backbone ...’

  There was a clatter from HEX, and the field of vision of the omniscope was pulled back rapidly until the world was just a mar­ble floating in space.

  ’Oh dear,’ said the Archchancellor, pointing to a trail of gas, ’Incoming.’

  The wizards watched gloomily as a large part of one hemisphere became a cauldron of steam and fire.

  ’Is this going to happen every time?’ said the Dean, as the smoke died away and spread out across the seas.

  ’I blame the over-large sun and all those planets,’ said Ridcully.

  ’And you fellows should have cleared out the snowballs. Sooner or later, they fall in.’

  ’It’d just be nice for a species to make a go of things for five min­utes without being frozen solid or broiled,’ said the Senior Wrangler.

  ’That’s life,’ said Ridcully.

  ’But not for long,’ said the Senior Wrangler.

  There was a whimper from behind them.

  Rincewind hung in the air, the outline of the virtually-there suit shimmering around him.

  ’What’s up with him?’ said Ridcully.

  ’Er ... I asked him to investigate the crab civilization, sir.’

  "The one the comet just landed on?’

  ’Yes, sir. A billion tons of rock have just evaporated around him, sir.’

  ’It couldn’t have hurt him, though, could it?’ ’Probably made him jump, sir.’

  THIRTY