The Red Army met in secret session. They opened their meeting by singing revolutionary songs and, since disobedience to authority did not come easily to the Agatean character, these had titles like ‘Steady Progress And Limited Disobedience While Retaining Well-Formulated Good Manners’.
Then it was time for the news.
‘The Great Wizard will come. We sent the message, at great personal risk.
‘How will we know when he arrives?’
‘If he’s the Great Wizard, we’ll hear about it. And then—’
‘Gently Push Over The Forces of Repression!’ they chorused.
Two Fire Herb looked at the rest of the cadre. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘And then, comrades, we must strike at the very heart of the rottenness. We must storm the Winter Palace!’
There was silence from the cadre. Then someone said, ‘Excuse me, Two Fire Herb, but it is June.’
‘Then we can storm the Summer Palace!’
A similar session, although without singing and with rather older participants, was taking place in Unseen University, although one member of the College Council had refused to come down from the chandelier. This was of some considerable annoyance to the Librarian, who usually occupied it.
‘All right, if you don’t trust my calculations, then what are the alternatives?’ said Ponder Stibbons hotly.
‘Boat?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
‘They sink,’ said Rincewind.
‘It’d get you there in no time at all,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘We’re wizards, after all. We could give you your own bag of wind.’
‘Ah. Forward the Dean,’ said Ridcully, pleasantly. ‘I heard that,’ said a voice from above. ‘Overland,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Up around the Hub? It’s ice practically all the way.’
‘No,’ said Rincewind.
‘But you don’t sink on ice.’
‘No. You tip up and then you sink and then the ice hits you on the head. Also killer whales. And great big seals vif teece ike iff.’
‘This is off the wall, I know,’ said the Bursar, brightly.
‘What is?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
‘A hook for hanging pictures on.’
There was a brief embarrassed silence.
‘Good lord, is it that time already?’ said the Arch-chancellor, taking out his watch. ‘Ah, so it is. The bottle’s in your left-hand pocket, old chap. Take three.’
‘No, magic is the only way,’ said Ponder Stibbons. ‘It worked when we brought him here, didn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Rincewind. ‘Just send me thousands of miles with my pants on fire and you don’t even know where I’ll land? Oh, yes, that’s ideal, that is.’
‘Good,’ said Ridcully, a man impervious to sarcasm. ‘It’s a big continent; we can’t possibly miss it even with Mr Stibbons’ precise calculations.’
‘Supposing I end up crushed in the middle of a mountain?’ said Rincewind.
‘Can’t. The rock’ll be brought back here when we do the spell,’ said Ponder, who hadn’t liked the crack about his maths.
‘So I’ll still be in the middle of a mountain but in a me-shaped hole,’ said Rincewind. ‘Oh, good. Instant fossil.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s just a matter of . . . thingummy, you know, all that stuff about three right angles making a triangle . . .’
‘Is it possible you’re talking about geometry?’ said Rincewind, eyeing the door.
‘That kind of thing, yes. And you’ll have your amazing Luggage item. Why, it’ll practically be a holiday. It’ll be easy. They probably just want to . . . to . . . ask you something, or something. And I hear you’ve got a talent for languages, so no problem there.[11] You’ll probably be away for a couple of hours at the most. Why do you keep sayin’ “hah” under your breath?’
‘Was I?’
‘And everyone will be so grateful if you come back.’
Rincewind looked around – and, in one case, up – at the Council.
‘How will I get back?’ he said.
‘Same way you went. We’ll find you and bring you out. With surgical precision.’
Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-Morpork. It meant ‘to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming, and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was’.
But . . . if you put aside for the moment the certainty that something would definitely go horribly wrong, it looked foolproof. The trouble was that wizards were such ingenious fools.
‘And then I can have my old job back?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And officially call myself a wizard?’
‘Of course. With any kind of spelling.’
‘And never have to go anywhere again as long as I live?’
‘Fine. We’ll actually ban you leaving the premises, if you like.’
‘And a new hat?’
‘What?’
‘A new hat. This one’s practically had it.’
‘Two new hats.’
‘Sequins?’
‘Of course. And those, you know, like glass chandelier things? Lots of those all round the brim. As many as you like. And we’ll spell Wizzzard with three Z’s.
Rincewind sighed. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll do it.’
Ponder’s genius found itself rather cramped when it came to explaining things to people. And this was the case now, as the wizards forgathered to kick some serious magic.
‘Yes, but you see, Archchancellor, he’s being sent to the opposite side of the Disc, you see—’ Ridcully sighed. ‘It’s spinnin’, isn’t it,’ he said. ‘We’re all going the same way. It stands to reason. If people’re going the other way just because they’re on the Counterweight Continent we’d crash into them once a year. I mean twice.’
‘Yes, yes, they’re spinning the same way, of course, but the direction of motion is entirely opposite. I mean,’ said Ponder, lapsing into logic, ‘you have to think about vectors, you, you have to ask yourself: what direction would they go in if the Disc wasn’t here?’
The wizards stared at him.
‘Down,’ said Ridcully.
‘No, no, no, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘They wouldn’t go down because there’d be nothing to pull them down, they—’
‘You don’t need anything to pull you down. Down’s where you go if there’s nothing to keep you up.’
‘They’d keep on going in the same direction!’ shouted Ponder.
‘Right. Round and round,’ said Ridcully. He rubbed his hands together. ‘You’ve got to maintain a grip if you want to be a wizard, lad. How’re we doing, Runes?’
‘I . . . I can make out something,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, squinting into the crystal ball. ‘There’s a lot of interference . . .’
The wizards gathered round. White specks filled the crystal. There were vague shapes just visible in the mush. Some of them could be human.
‘Very peaceful place, the Agatean Empire,’ said Ridcully. ‘Very tranquil. Very cultured. They set great store in politeness.’
‘Well, yes,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, ‘I heard it was because people who aren’t tranquil and quiet get serious bits cut off, don’t they? I heard the Empire has a tyrannical and repressive government!’
‘What form of government is that?’ said Ponder Stibbons.
‘A tautology,’ said the Dean, from above.
‘How serious are these bits?’ said Rincewind. They ignored him.
‘I heard that gold’s very common there,’ said the Dean. ‘Lying around like dirt, they say. Rincewind could bring back a sackful.’
‘I’d rather bring back all my bits,’ said Rincewind.
After all, he thought, I’m only the one who’s going to end up in the middle of it all. So please don’t anyone bother to listen to me.
‘Can’t you stop it blurring like that?’ said the Archchancellor.
‘I’m sorry, Archchancellor—’
‘These bits . . . big bits or small bits?’ said Rincewind, unheard.
‘Just find us an open space with something about the right size and weight.’
‘It’s very hard to—’
‘Very serious bits? Are we in arms and legs territory here?’
‘They say it’s very boring there. Their biggest curse is “May you live in interesting times”, apparently.’
‘There’s a thing . . . it’s very blurry. Looks like a wheelbarrow or something. Quite small, I think.’
‘—or toes, ears, that kind of thing?’
‘Good, let’s get started,’ said Ridcully.
‘Er, I think it’ll help if he’s a bit heavier than the thing we move here,’ said Ponder. ‘He won’t arrive at any speed, then. I think—’
‘Yes, yes, thank you very much, Mister Stibbons, now get in the circle and let us see that staff crackle, there’s a good chap.’
‘Fingernails? Hair?’
Rincewind tugged at the robe of Ponder Stibbons, who seemed slightly more sensible than the others.
‘Er. What’s my next move here?’ he said.
‘Urn. About six thousand miles, I hope,’ said Ponder Stibbons.
‘But . . . I mean . . . Have you got any advice?’
Ponder wondered how to put things. He thought: I’ve done my best with Hex, but the actual business will be undertaken by a bunch of wizards whose idea of experimental procedure is to throw it and then sit down and argue about where it’s going to land. We want to change your position with that of something six thousand miles away which, whatever the Arch-chancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different direction. The key is precision. It’s no good using any old travelling spell. It’d come apart halfway, and so would you. I’m pretty sure that we’ll get you there in one or, at worst, two pieces. But we’ve no way of knowing the weight of the thing we change you with. If it’s pretty much the same weight as you, then it might just all work out provided you don’t mind jogging on the spot when you land. But if it’s a lot heavier than you, then my suspicion is that you’ll appear over there travelling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleep-walkers in clifftop villages in a very terminal way.