It was, indeed, a lovely day. It was warm, the sea murmured beautifully, the wind whispered in the trees. The Librarian knew he ought to be feeling better, but, instead, he was beginning to feel extremely uneasy.
He stared around him. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had gone to sleep with his book carefully shading his eyes. It had originally been entitled Principles of Thaumic Propagation but, because of the action of the sunlight and some specialized high-frequency vibrations from the sand granules on the beach, the words on the cover now read The Omega Conspiracy.[11]
In the middle distance was the window. It hung in the air, a simple square into a shadowy room. The Archchancellor hadn’t trusted the window catch and had propped up the window with a piece of wood. A warning label pinned to it showed that some thought had gone into the wording: ‘Do not remove this wood. Not even to see what happens. IMPORTANT!’
There appeared to be some forest behind the beach which rose a little way up the side of a small yet quite pointy mountain, certainly not tall enough to have snow on it.
Some of the trees lining the beach looked hauntingly familiar, and spoke to the Librarian of home. This was strange, because he had been born in Moon Pond Lane, Ankh-Morpork, next to the saddle-makers. But they spoke to the home in his bones. He had an urge to climb . . .
But there was something wrong with the trees. He looked down at the pretty shells on the beach. There was something wrong with them, too. Creepily, worryingly wrong.
A few birds wheeled overhead, and they were wrong. They were the right shape, as far as he knew, and they seemed to be making the right noises. But they were still wrong.
Oh, dear . . .
He tried to stop the sneeze as it gathered nasal momentum, but this is impossible for anyone who wants to continue to go through life with their eardrums.
There was a snort, a clattering sound, and the Librarian changed into something suitable for the beach.
It is often said about desert environments that there is in fact a lot of nutritious food around, if only you know what to look for.
Rincewind mused on this as he pulled a plate of chocolate-covered sponge cakes from their burrow. They had dried coconut flakes on them.
He turned the plate cautiously. Well, you couldn’t argue with it. He was finding food in the desert. In fact, he was even finding dessert in the desert.
Perhaps it was some special talent hitherto udiscovered by the kind people who had occasionally shared their food with him in the last few months. They hadn’t eaten this sort of thing.
They’d ground up seeds and dug up skinny yams and eaten things with more eyeballs than the Watch had found after that business with Medley the Medical Kleptomaniac.
So something was going right for him. Out here in the red-hot wilderness something wanted him to stay alive. This was a worrying thought. No one ever wanted him alive for something nice.
This was Rincewind after several months: his wizardly robe was quite short now. Bits had been torn off or used as string or, after some particularly resistant hors d’oeuvres, as bandages. It showed his knees, and wizards are nowhere near championship standard at knees. They tend to appear, as the book might put it, a knobbly savage.
But he’d kept his hat. He’d woven a new wide brim for it, and he’d had to restore the crown once or twice with fresh bits of robe, and most of the sequins had been replaced with bits of shell stitched on with grass, but it was still his hat, the same old hat. A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes. A wizard without a hat wasn’t anyone.
Although this particular wizard had a hat, he didn’t have keen enough eyes to see the drawing appear on a red rock half hidden in the scrub.
It started off like a bird. Then, without at any time being other than smears of ochre and charcoal that had been there for years, it began to change shape . . .
He set off towards the distant mountains. They’d been in view for several days. He hadn’t the faintest idea if they represented a sensible direction but at least they were one.
The ground shivered underfoot. It had been doing that once or twice a day for a while, and that was another odd thing, because this didn’t look like volcano country. This was the kind of country where, if you watched a large cliff for a few hundred years, you might see a rock drop off and you’d talk about it for ages. Everything about it said that it had got over all the more energetic geological exercises a long time ago and was a nice quiet country which, in other circumstances, a man might be at home in.
He became aware after a while that a kangaroo was watching him from the top of a small rock. He’d seen the things before, bounding away through the bushes. They didn’t usually hang around when there were humans about.
This one was stalking him. They were vegetarian, weren’t they? It wasn’t as though he was wearing green.
Finally it sprang out of the bushes and landed in front of him.
It brushed one ear with a paw, and gave Rincewind a meaningful look.
It brushed the other ear with the other paw, and wrinkled its nose.
‘Yes, fine, good,’ said Rincewind. He started to edge away, and then stopped. After all, it was just a big . . . well, rabbit, with a long tail and the kind of feet you normally see associated with red noses and baggy pants.
‘I’m not frightened of you,’ he said. ‘Why should I be frightened of you?’
‘Well,’ said the kangaroo, ‘I could kick your stomach out through your neck.’
‘Ah. You can talk?’
‘You’re a quick one,’ said the kangaroo. It rubbed an ear again.
‘Something wrong?’ said Rincewind.
‘No, that’s the kangaroo language. I’m trying it out.’
‘What, one scratch for “yes”, one for “no”? That sort of thing?’
The kangaroo scratched an ear, and then remembered itself. ‘Yep,’ it said. It wrinkled its nose.
‘And that wrinkling?’ said Rincewind.
‘Oh, that means “Come quick, someone’s fallen down a deep hole,” ‘ said the kangaroo.
‘That one gets used a lot?’
‘You’d be amazed.’
‘And . . . what’s kangaroo for “You are needed for a quest of the utmost importance”?’ said Rincewind, with guileful innocence.
‘You know, it’s funny you should ask that—’
The sandals barely moved. Rincewind rose from them like a man leaving the starting blocks, and when he landed his feet were already making running movements in the air.
After a while the kangaroo came alongside and accompanied him in a series of easy bounds.
‘Why are you running away without even listening to what I have to say?’
‘I’ve had long experience of being me,’ panted Rincewind. ‘I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to be dragged into things that shouldn’t concern me. And you’re just a hallucination caused by rich food on an empty stomach, so don’t you try to stop me!’
‘Stop you?’ said the kangaroo. ‘When you’re heading in the right direction?’
Rincewind tried to slow down, but his method of running was very efficiently based on the idea that stopping was the last thing he’d do. Legs still moving, he ran out over the empty air and plunged into the void.
The kangaroo looked down and, with a certain amount of satisfaction, wrinkled its nose.
‘Archchancellor!’
Ridcully awoke, and sat up. The Lecturer in Recent Runes was hurrying up, out of breath.
The Bursar and I went for a walk along the beach,’ he said. ‘And can you guess where we ended up?’
‘In Kiddling Street, Quirm,’ said Ridcully tartly, brushing an exploring beetle off his beard. ‘That little bit by the teashop, with the trees in it.’
That’s astonishing, Archchancellor. Because, you know, in fact, we didn’t. We wound up back here. We’re on a tiny island. Were you having a rest?’
‘A few moments’ cogitating,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any idea where we are yet, Mister Stibbons?’
Ponder looked up from his notebook. ‘I won’t be able to work that out precisely until sundown, sir. But I think we’re pretty close to the Rim.’
‘And I think we found where the Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography has been camping, said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He rummaged in a deep pocket. There was a camp, and a fireplace. Bamboo furniture and whatnot. Socks on a washing line. And this.’
He pulled out the remains of a small notebook. It was standard UU issue. Ridcully would never let anyone have a new one until they’d filled up every page on both sides.