'We'll find them and bring them back!' said Ponder. 'How hard can it be?'
'It can be incredibly hard! There's elves there! You know elves! They are dangerous! Drop your guard for a moment and they can control your mind!'
'They chased me through some woods once,' said Ponder. 'They are very frightening. I remember writing that down in my diary.'
'You wrote down in your diary that you were scared?'
Yes. Why not? Don't you?'
'I haven't got a big enough diary. But it makes no sense! There's nothing on the Roundworld that elves would be interested in! They like to have ... slaves. And we've never seen anything evolve that's bright enough to be a slave.'
'You might have missed something,' said Ponder.
'No, I say you, you say we,' said Rincewind.
They both stared at the globe.
'Look, it's like having a pot plant,' said Ponder. 'If it has greenfly, you try to squash them.'
'I never do that,' said Rincewind. 'Greenfly may be small, but there's a lot of them ...'
'It was a metaphor, Rincewind,' said Ponder, wearily.
'... I mean, supposing they decide to gang up?'
'Rincewind, you are the only other person here who knows anything at all about Roundworld.
You will come with us or ... or ... I'll tell the Archchancellor about the seven buckets.'
'How do you know about the seven buckets?'
'And I'll explain to him how all of your jobs could easily be done by a simple set of instructions for Hex, too. It'd take me about, oh, thirty seconds. Let's see ...
# Rincewind SUB WAIT
WAIT
RETURN
Or possibly RUN RINCEWIND'
'You wouldn't do that!' said Rincewind. 'Would you?'
'Certainly. Now, are you coming? Oh, and bring the Luggage.'
Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass, and on that simple equation rests the whole of L- space. It is via L-space that all books are connected (quoting the ones before them, and influencing the ones that come after). But there is no time in L-space. Nor is there, strictly speaking, any space. Nevertheless, L-space is infinitely large and connects all libraries, everywhere and everywhen. It's never further than the other side of the bookshelf, yet only the most senior and respected librarians know the way in.
From inside, L-space looked to Rincewind like a library designed by someone who did not have to worry about time, budget, strength of materials or physics. There are some laws, though, that are coded into the very nature of the universe, and one is: There Is Never Enough Shelf Space.11
He turned and looked back. They'd entered L-space by walking through what had looked like a solid wall of books. He knew it was a solid wall, he'd taken books off those shelves before now.
You had to be a very senior Librarian indeed to know in what precise circumstances you could step straight through it.
He could still see the library through the gap, but it faded from view as he watched. What remained was books. Mountains of books. Hills and valleys of books. Perilous precipices of books. Even in what passed for the sky, which was a sort of blue grey, there was a distant suggestion of books. There is never enough shelf space, anywhere.
Ponder was carrying a considerable amount of magical equipment. Rincewind, being a more experienced traveller, was carrying as little weight as possible. Everything else was being carried by the Luggage, which looked like a sea chest but with a number of pink, human-like and fully operational feet.
'Under the rules of the Roundworld, magic can't work,' said Ponder, as they followed the Librarian. 'Won't the Luggage stop existing?'
'It's worth a try,' said Rincewind, who felt that owning a semi-sapient and occasionally homicidal box on legs reduced his opportunities to make live friends, 'but it doesn't usually worry about rules. They bend round it. Anyway, it's already been there before, for a very long time, without any damage. To the Luggage, anyway.'
The walls of books shifted as the wizards approached; in fact, each step radically changed the nature of the bookscape which was in any case, said Ponder, a mere metaphorical depiction created by their brains to allow them to deal with the unimaginable reality. The shifting perspective would have given most people a serious headache at least, but Unseen University had rooms where the gravity moved around during the course of a day, one corridor of infinite length and several windows that only existed on one side of their walls. Life at UU reduced your capacity for surprise by quite a lot.
Occasionally the Librarian would stop, and sniff at the books nearest to him. At last he said 'ook', quietly, and pointed to another stack of books. There were, drawn gently on the spine of an old leather-bound volume, some chalk marks.
'Librarian-sign,' said Rincewind. 'He's been here before. We're close to Roundworld book-space.'
'How could he—' Ponder began, and then said: 'Oh. I see. Er ... Roundworld exists in L-space even before we created it? I mean yes, obviously I know that's true, but even so—'
Rincewind took a book from a pile near him. The cover was brightly coloured and made of paper, suggesting an absence of cows on the originating world, and had the title: Sleep Well My Lovely Falcon. The words inside made even less sense.
'It might not have been worth our trouble,' he said.
The Librarian said 'ook', which Rincewind understood as 'I'm going to get into real trouble with the Secret Masters of the Library for this day's work'.
Then the ape appeared to triangulate on the bookscape around him and knuckled forward, and vanished.
Ponder looked at Rincewind. 'Did you see how he did that?' he said and then a hairy red arm appeared out of the air and jerked him off his feet. A moment later the same thing happened to Rincewind.
It wasn't much of a library, but Rincewind knew how this worked. Two books were a library - for a lot of people, two books were an enormous library. But even one book could be a library, if it was a book that made a big enough dimple in L-space. A book with a title like 100 Ways with Broccoli was unlikely to be one such, whereas A Relationship Between Capital and labour might be, especially if it has an appendix on making explosives. The deeply magical and interminably ancient volumes in the Library of UU strained the fabric L-space like a baby elephant on a worn- out trampoline, leaving it so thin that the Library was a potent and easy portal.
Sometimes, though, even one book could do that. Even one line. Even one word, in the right place and the right time.
The room was large, panelled and sparsely furnished. Quite a lot of paperwork was strewn on a desk. Quill pens lay by an inkwell. A window looked out on to broad gardens, where it was raining. A skull lent a homely touch.
Rincewind leaned down and tapped it.
'Hello?' he said. He looked up at the others.
'Well, the one in the Dean's office can sing comic songs,' he said defensively. He stared at the paperwork on the desk. It was covered in symbols which had a magical look, although he didn't recognise any of them. On the other side of the room, the Librarian was leafing through one of the books. Strangely, they weren't on shelves. Some were neatly piled, others locked in boxes, or at least in boxes that were locked until the Librarian tried to lift the lid.
Occasionally he pursed his lips and blew a disdainful raspberry.
'Ook,' he muttered.
'Alchemy?' said Rincewind. 'Oh dear. That stuff never works.' He lifted up what looked like a small leather hatbox, and removed the lid. 'This is more like it!' he said, and pulled out a ball of smoky quartz. 'Our man is definitely a wizard!'
'This is very bad,' said Ponder, staring at a device in his hand. "Very, very bad indeed.'
'What is?' said Rincewind, turning around quickly.