WE NEED MORE BLOBS
RINCEWIND WAS FINDING, now that he was back at what appeared to be his real size, that he was coming to enjoy this world after all. It was so marvellously dull.
Every so often he'd be moved forward a few tens of millions of years. The sea levels would change. There seemed to be more land around, speckled with volcanoes. Sand was turning up on the edge of the sea. Yet the sheer vast ringing silence dominated everything. Oh, there'd be storms, and at night there were brilliant meteor showers that practically hissed across the sky, but these only underlined the absent symphony of life. He was rather pleased with 'symphony of life'. 'Mr Stibbons?' he said. 'Yes?' said Ponder 's voice in his helmet. 'There seem to be a lot of comets about.' 'Yes, they seem to go with roundworld systems. Is this a problem?'
'Aren't they going to crash into this world?' Rincewind heard the muted sounds of debate in the background, and then Ponder said: 'The Archchancellor says snowballs don't hurt.' 'Oh. Good.' 'We're going to move you on a few million years now. Ready?'
'Millions and millions of years of dullness,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'There are more blobs today,' said Ponder.
'Oh, good. We need more blobs.'
There was a yell from Rincewind. The wizards rushed to the omniscope.
'Good heavens,' said the Dean. 'Is that a higher lifeform?' 'I think? said Ponder, 'that seat cushions have inherited the world.'
They lay in the warm shallow water. They were dark green. They were reassuringly dull.
But the other things weren't.
Blobs drifted over the sea like giant eyeballs, black, purple, and green. The water itself was covered with them. A scum of them rolled in the surf. The aerial ones bobbed only a few inches above the waves, thick as fog, overshadowing one another in their fight for height.
'Have you ever seen anything like that?' said the Senior Wranger.
'Not legally,' said the Dean. A blob burst. Audio reception on the omniscope was not good, but the sound was, in short, phut. The stricken thing disappeared into the sea, and the floating blobs closed in over it.
'Get Rincewind to try to communicate with them,' said Ridcully.
'What have blobs got to talk about, sir?' said Ponder 'Besides, they're not making any noise. I don't think phut counts.'
'They're various colours,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Perhaps they communicate by changing colour? Like those sea creatures...' He snapped his fingers as an aid to memory.
'Lobsters?' the Dean supplied.
'Really?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'I didn't know they did that.'
'Oh yes,' said Ridcully. 'Red means "help!"'
'No, I think the Lecturer in Recent Runes is referring to squid,' said Ponder, who knew that this sort of thing could go on for a long time. He added hurriedly, 'I'll tell Rincewind to give it a try.'
Rincewind, apparently knee deep in blobs, said: 'What do you mean?'
'Well ... could you get embarrassed, perhaps?'
'No, but I'm getting angry!'
'That might work, if you get red enough. They'll think you want help.'
'Do you know there's something else here besides blobs?'
Some of the blobs trailed strands in the faint breeze blowing across the beach. When they tangled up on a blob gasbag, which put some stress on the line, the little blob on the end let go its grip on a rock, the line gradually shortened, and the gasbag bobbed onwards with its new passenger.
Rincewind saw them on a number of blobs. The blobs did not look healthy.
'Predators,' Ponder told him.
'I'm on a beach with predators?'
'If it really worries you, try not to look blobby. We'll keep an eye on them. Er ... the Faculty is of the opinion that intelligence is most likely to arise in creatures that eat lots of things.'
'Why?'
'Probably because they eat lots of things. We'll try a few big jumps in time, all right?'
'I suppose so.'
The world flickered ...
'Blobs.'
...flickered...
'The sea's a lot further away. There's a few floating blobs. More black blobs this time.'
... flickered ...
'Well out at sea, great rafts of purple blobs, some blobs in the air.'
...flickered ...
'Great steaming piles of onions!' 'What?' said Ponder.
'I knew it! I just knew it! This whole damn place was just lulling me into a false sense of security!' What's happening?' 'It's a snowball. The whole world's a giant snowball!'
THE ICEBERG COMETH
THE EARTH HAS BEEN A GIANT SNOWBALL on many occasions. It was a snowball 2.7 billion years ago, 2.2 billion years ago, and 2 billion years ago. It was a really cold snowball 800 million years ago, and this was followed by a series of global cold snaps that lasted until 600 million years ago. It reverted to snowball mode 300 million years ago, and has been that way on and off for most of the last 50 million years. Ice has played a significant part in the story of life. Just how significant a part, we are now beginning to appreciate.
We first began to realize this when we found evidence of the most recent snowball. About one and a half million years ago, round about the time that humans began to become the dominant species on Earth, the planet got very cold. The old name for this period was the Ice Age. We don't call it that any more because it wasn't one Age: we talk of 'glacial-interglacial cycles'. Is there a connection? Did the cold climate drive the naked ape to evolve enough intelligence to kill other animals and use their fur to keep warm? To discover and use fire?
This used to be a popular theory. It's possible. Probably not, though: there are too many holes in the logic. But a much earlier, and much more severe, Ice Age very nearly put a stop to the whole of that 'life' nonsense. And, ironically, its failure to do so may have unleashed the full diversity of life as we now know it.
Thanks to the pioneering insights of Louis Agassiz, Victorian scientists knew that the Earth had once been a lot colder than it is now, because they could see the evidence all around them, in the form of the shapes of valleys. In many parts of the world today you can find glaciers, huge 'rivers' of ice, which flow, very slowly, under the pressure of new ice forming further uphill. Glaciers carry large quantities of rock, and they gouge and grind their way along, forming valleys whose cross-section is shaped like a smooth U. All over Europe, indeed over much of the world, there are identical valleys, but no sign of ice for hundreds or thousands of miles. The Victorian geologists pieced together a picture that was a bit worrying in some ways, but reassuring overall. About 1.6 million years back, at the start of the Pleistocene era, the Earth suddenly became colder. The ice caps at the poles advanced, thanks to a rapid buildup of snow, and gouged out those U-shaped valleys. Then the ice retreated again. Four times in all, it was thought, the ice had advanced and retreated, with much of Europe being buried under a layer of ice several miles thick.
Still, there was no need to worry, the geologists said. We seemed to be safe and snug in the middle of a warm period, with no prospect of being buried under miles of ice for quite some time ...