The wail behind Ponder made him turn around. There were more piles of clothing where the wizards had been. He pulled aside the Dean’s hat just as a faint bloop suggested that Mustrum Ridcully had managed to regain full possession of his years again.
‘That the Dean, Stibbons?’
‘Could be, sir. Er … some of them have gone, sir!’
Ridcully looked unflustered. ‘Temporal gland acting up in the high field,’ he said. ‘Probably decided that since it’s thousands of years ago they’re not here. Don’t worry, they’ll come back when it works it out …’
Ponder suddenly felt breathless. ‘And … hwee … think this one’s the Lecturer in Recent Runes … hwee … of course … hwee … all babies look the … hwee … same.’
There was another wail from under the Senior Wrangler’s hat.
‘Bit of a … hwee … kindergarten here, sir,’ Ponder wheezed. His back creaked when he tried to stand upright.
‘Oh, they’ll probably come back if they don’t get fed,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s you that’ll be the problem, lad. I mean, sir.’
Ponder held his hands up in front of him. He could see the veins through the pale skin. He could nearly see the bones.
Around him the piles of clothing rose again as the wizards clambered back to their proper age.
‘How … old … hwee … I … ha … look?’ he panted. ‘Like someone who shouldn’t … hwee … start reading a long book?’
‘A long sentence,’ said Ridcully cheerfully, holding him up. ‘How old do you feel? In yourself?’
‘I … hwee … ought to feel … hwee … about twenty-four, sir,’ Ponder groaned. ‘I actually … hwee … feel like a twenty-four-year-old who has been hit by eighty years travelling at … hwee … high speed.’
‘Hold on to that thought. Your temporal gland knows how old you are.’
Ponder tried to concentrate, but it was hard. Part of him wanted to go to sleep. Part of him wanted to say, ‘Hah, you call this a temporal disturbance? You should’ve seen the temporal disturbances we will have been used to be going to get in my day.’ A pressing part of him was threatening that if he didn’t find a toilet it would make its own arrangements.
‘You’ve kept your hair,’ said the Senior Wrangler, encouragingly.
Ponder heard himself say, ‘Remember old “Cruddy” Trusset? Now there was a wizard who had … good … hair …’ He tried to get a grip. ‘He’s still alive, isn’t he?’ he wheezed. ‘He’s the same age as me. Oh, no … now I’m remembering only yesterday as if it was … hwee … seventy years ago!’
‘You can get over it,’ said Ridcully. ‘You’ve got to make it clear you’re not accepting it, you see. The important thing is not to panic.’
‘I am panicking,’ squeaked Ponder. ‘I’m just doing it very slowly! Why’ve I got this horrible feeling that I’m … hwee … falling forward all the … hwee … time?’
‘Oh, that’s just apprehensions of mortality,’ said Ridcully. ‘Everyone gets that.’
‘And … hwee … now I think my memory’s going …’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Think what? Speak up, you … hwee … man …’
Something exploded somewhere behind Ponder’s eyeballs and lifted him off the ground. For a moment he felt he had jumped into icy water.
The blood flowed back to his hands.
‘Well done, lad,’ said Ridcully. ‘Your hair’s going brown again, too.’
‘Ow …’ Ponder slumped to his knees. ‘It was like wearing a lead suit! I never want to go through that again!’
‘Suicide’s your best bet, then,’ said Ridcully.
‘Is this going to happen again?’
‘Probably. At least once, anyway.’
Ponder got to his feet with a steely look in his eyes. ‘Then let’s find whoever’s building this place and ask them to send us home,’ he growled.
‘They might not want to listen,’ said Ridcully. ‘Deities can be touchy.’
Ponder shook his sleeves to leave his hands free. For a wizard, this was equivalent to checking the functioning of a pump-action shotgun.
‘Then we’ll insist,’ he said.
‘Really, Stibbons? What about protection of the magical ecology?’
Ponder turned on him a look that would have opened a strongroom. Ridcully was in his seventies and spry even for wizards, who tended to live well into their second century if they survived their first fifty years. Ponder wasn’t sure how old he’d been, but he’d definitely thought he could hear a blade being sharpened. It was one thing to know you were on a journey, and quite, quite another to see your destination on the horizon.
‘It can get stuffed,’ he said.[22]
‘Well thought out, Mister Stibbons! I can see we’ll make a wizard of you yet. Ah, the Dean’s … oh …’
The Dean’s clothes billowed up but did not, as it were, inflate to their old size. The hat in particular was big enough to rock on the Dean’s ears, which were redder and stuck out more than Ponder remembered.
Ridcully raised the hat.
‘Push off, granddad,’ said the Dean.
‘Ah,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Thirteen years old, I’d say. Which explains a lot. Well, Dean, help us with the others, will you?’
‘Why should I?’ The adolescent Dean cracked his knuckles. ‘Hah! I’m young again and soon you’ll be dead! I’ve got my whole life ahead of me!’
‘Firstly, you’ll spend it here, and secondly, Dean, you think it’s going to be jolly good fun being the Dean in a thirteen-year-old body, don’t you, but within a minute or two you’ll start forgetting it all, you see? The old temporal gland can’t allow you to remember being fourteen when you’re not even thirteen yet, you follow me? You’d know this stuff, Dean, if you weren’t forgetting. You’ll have to go through it all over again, Dean … ah …’
The brain has far less control over the body than the body does over the brain. And adolescence is not a good time. Nor is old age, for that matter, but at least the spots have cleared up, some of the more troublesome glands have settled down and you’re allowed to take a nap in the afternoons and twinkle at young women. In any case, the Dean’s body hadn’t experienced too much old age yet, whereas every junior spot, ache and twinge was firmly embossed on the morphic memory. Once, it decided, was enough.
The Dean expanded. Ponder noticed that his head in particular swelled up to fit his ears.
The Dean rubbed his spot-free face. ‘Five minutes wouldn’t have been bad,’ he complained. ‘What was that all about?’
‘Temporal uncertainty,’ said Ridcully. ‘You’ve seen it before, didn’t you realize? What were you thinking of?’
‘Sex.’
‘Oh, yes, of course … silly of me, really.’ Ridcully looked along the deserted beach. ‘Mister Stibbons thinks we can—’ he began. ‘Ye gods! There are people here!’
A young woman was walking towards them. Swaying, anyway.
‘My word,’ said the Dean. ‘I suppose this isn’t Slakki, by any chance?’
‘I thought they wore grass skirts …’ said Ridcully. ‘What’s she wearing, Stibbons?’
‘A sarong.’
‘Looks right enough to me, haha,’{76} said the Dean.
22
It would be nice to say that this experience taught Ponder a valuable lesson and that he was a lot more considerate towards old people afterwards, and this was true for about five minutes.