Science of Discworld

The air-breathing fishes that Rincewind had seen still seemed to be around, lurking in swamps and muddy beaches. Things changed, but still stayed the same.

And if there was any truth at all in Ponder's tentative theory that things did change into other things, it led to the depressing thought that, well, the world was filling up with quitters, creatures which -instead of staying where they were, and really making a go of life in the ocean or the swamp or wherever, were running away to lurk in some niche and grow legs. The kind offish that'd come out of water was, frankly, a disgrace to the species. It kept coughing all the time, like someone who'd just given up smoking.

And there was no purpose, Ridcully kept saying. Life was on land. According to the book, there should be some big lizards. But nothing seemed to be making much of an effort. The moment anything felt safe, it stopped bothering.

Rincewind, currently relaxing on a rock, rather liked it. There were large animals snuffling around in the greenery near the rock he was sitting on; in general shape and appearance, they looked like a small skinny hippopotamus designed in the dark by a complete amateur. They were hairy. They coughed, too.

Things that were doing sufficiently beetle-like things for him to think of them as beetles ambled across the ground.

Ponder had told him the continents were moving again, so he kept a firm grip on his rock just in case.

Best of all, nothing seemed to be thinking. Rincewind was convinced that no good came of that sort of thing.

The last few weeks of Discworld time had been instructive. The wizards had tentatively identified several dozen embryo civilizations, or at least creatures that seemed to be concerned about more than simply where their next meal was coming from. And where were they now? There was a squid one, HEX said, out in the really deep cold water. Apart from that, ice or fire or both at once came to the thinkers and the stupid alike. There was probably some kind of moral involved.

The air shimmered, and half a dozen ghostly figures appeared in front of him.

There were, in pale shadowy colours, the wizards. Silvery lines flickered across their bodies and, periodically, they flickered.

'Now, remember,' said Ponder Stibbons, and his voice sounded muffled, 'You are in fact still in the High Energy Magic building. If you walk slowly HEX will try to adjust your feet to local ground level. You'll have a limited ability to move things, although HEX will do the actual work...'

'Can we eat?' said the Senior Wrangler.

'No, sir. Your mouth isn't here.'

'Well, then, what am I talking out of?'

'Could be anyone's guess, sir,' said Ponder diplomatically. 'We can hear you because our ears are in the HEM, and you can hear the sounds made here because HEX is presenting you with an analogue of them. Don't worry about it. It'll seem quite natural after a while.'

The ghost of the Dean kicked at the soil. A fraction of a second later, a little heap of earth splashed up.

'Amazing!' he said, happily.

'Excuse me?' said Rincewind.

They turned.

'Oh, Rincewind,' said Ridcully, as one might say 'oh dear, it's raining'. 'It's you.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Mister Stibbons here's found a way of getting HEX to operate more than one virtually-there suit, d'you see? So we thought we'd come down and smell the roses.'

'Not for several hundred million years, sir,' said Ponder.

'Dull, isn't it,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, looking around. 'Not a lot going on. Lots of life, but it's just hanging around.'

Ridcully rubbed his hands together.

'Well, we're going to liven it up,' he said. 'We're going to move things forward fast while we're here. A few prods in the right place, that's what these creatures need.'

'The time travelling is not much fun,' said Rincewind. 'You tend to end up under a volcano or at the bottom of the sea.'

'We shall see,' said Ridcully firmly. 'I've had enough of this.

Look at those damn sloppy things over there. 'He cupped his hands and shouted, 'Life in the sea not good enough for you, eh? Skiving off, eh? Got a note from your mother, have you?' He lowered his hands. 'All right, Mister Stibbons ... tell HEX to take us forward, oh, fifty million years, hang on, what was that?'

Thunder rolled around the horizon.

'Probably just another snowball landing,' said Rincewind morosely. 'There's generally one around just when things are settled. It was in the sea, I expect. Stand by for the tidal wave.' He nodded at the browsing creatures, who had glanced up briefly.

'The Dean thinks all this hammering from rocks is making the life on this world very resilient,' said Ridcully.

'Well, that's certainly a point of view,' said Rincewind. 'But in a little while a wave the size of the University is going to wash this beach on to the top of those mountains over there. Then I expect the local volcanoes will all let go ... again ... so stand by for a country-sized sea of lava coming the other way. After that there'll probably be outbreaks of rain that you could use to etch copper, followed by a bit of a cold spell for a few years and some fog you could cut up in lumps.' He sniffed. 'That which does not kill you can give you a really bad headache.'

He glanced at the sky. Strange lightning was flickering between the clouds, and now there was a glow on the horizon.

'Damn,' he said, in the same tone of voice. 'This is going to be one of the times when the atmosphere catches fire. I hate it when that happens.'

Ridcully gave him a long blank look, and then said, 'Mister Stibbons?'

'Archchancellor?'

'Make that seventy thousand years, will you? And, er ... right now, if you would be so good.'

The wizard vanished.

All the insects stopped buzzing in the bushes.

The hairy lizards carried on placidly eating the leaves. Then, something made them look up…

The sun jerked across the sky, became very briefly a reddish-yellow band across a twilight hemisphere, and then the world was simply a grey mist. Below Rincewind's feet it was quite dark, and above him it was almost white. Around him, the greyness flickered.

'Is this what it always looks like?' said the Dean.

'Something has to stand still for a couple of thousand years before you see it at all,' said Rincewind.

'I thought it would be more exciting...'

The light flickered, and sun exploded into the sky, the wizards saw waves around them for a moment, and then there was darkness.

'I told you,' said Rincewind. 'We're under water.'

'The land sank under all the volcanoes?' said Ridcully.

'Probably just moved away,' said Rincewind. 'There's a lot of that sort of thing down here.'

They rose above the surface as HEX adjusted to the new conditions. A landmass was smeared on the horizon, under a bank of cloud.

'See?' said Rincewind. 'It's a pain. Time travel always means you end up walking.'

'hex, move us to the nearest land, please. Inland about ten miles,' said Ponder.

'You mean I could have just asked?' said Rincewind. 'All this time, I needn't have been walking?'

'Oh, yes.'

The landscape blurred for a second.

'You could have said,' said Rincewind accusingly, as they were rushed past, and sometimes through, a forest of giant ferns.

The view stabilized. The wizard had been through to the edge of the forest. Low-growing shrubs stretched away towards more ferns.