‘No, we also think they taste like currants and plums,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Look, Archchancellor, there’s no mystery. Obviously wizards have been here before. This is the result of perfectly ordinary magic. Perhaps our lost geographer did a bit of experimenting. Or it’s sourcery, perhaps. Some of the things that got created in the old days, well, a cigarette bush is very small beer by comparison, eh?’
‘Talking of small beer . . .’ said the Dean, waving his hand, ‘pass me the rum, will you?’
‘Mrs Whitlow doesn’t approve of strong liquor,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
The Dean glanced at the housekeeper, who was daintily eating a banana, a feat which is quite hard to do.
He put down the coconut shell. ‘Well, she . . . I am . . . I don’t see . . . well, damn it all, that’s all I’ve got to say.’
‘Or bad language,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
‘I vote we take some of those bees back with us,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Marvellous little creatures. No footling around being content with making boring honey. You just reach up and pick one of these handy little wax containers and bob’s your uncle.’
‘She takes all the peel off slowly before she eats it. Oh, dear . . .’
‘Are you all right, Senior Wrangler? Is the heat getting to you?’
‘What? Eh? Hmm? Oh, nothing. Yes. Bees. Wonderful things.’
They glanced up at a couple of the bees, who were busying themselves around a flowering bush in the last of the light. They were leaving little black smoke trails.
‘Shooting around like little rockets,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Amazing.’
‘I’m still worried about those boots,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You’d think the man had been pulled right out of them.’
It’s a tiny island, man,’ said Ridcully. ‘All we’ve seen is birds, a few little squeaky things and a load of insects. You don’t get big fierce animals on islands you can practically throw a stone across. He must’ve just . . . felt a bit carefree. It’s a bit hot for boots here, anyway.’
‘So why haven’t we seen him?’
‘Hah! He’s probably lying low,’ said the Dean. ‘Ashamed to face us. Keeping a nice sunny island in your study is against University rules.’
‘Is it?’ said Ponder. ‘I’ve never seen it mentioned. How long has it been a rule?’
‘Ever since I’ve had to sleep in a freezing bedroom,’ said the Dean, darkly. ‘Pass the bread-and-butter-pudding fruit, will you?’
‘Ook,’ said the Librarian.
‘Ah, nice to see you your old shape, old chap,’ said Ridcully. ‘Try and keep it up for longer this time, eh?’
‘Ook.’
The Librarian was sitting behind a pile of fruit. Normally he wouldn’t question such a perfect piece of positioning, but now even the bananas were bothering him. There was the same sensation of wrongness. There were long yellow ones, and stubby ones, and red ones, and fat brown ones—
He stared at the remains of the fish. There was a big silver one, and a fat red one, and a small grey one, and a flat one a bit like a plaice—
‘Obviously some sourcerer landed here and wanted to make the place more homely,’ the Senior Wrangler was saying, but he sounded far off. The Librarian was counting.
The plum-pudding plant, the custard-squash vine, the chocolate coconut— He turned his head to look at the trees. And now he knew what he was looking for, he couldn’t see it anywhere.
The Senior Wrangler stopped talking as the ape scrambled to his knuckles and sped back to the high-tide line. The wizards watched in silence as he scrabbled through the heaped-up seashells. He came back with a double handful, which he dropped triumphantly in front of the Arch-chancellor.
‘Ook!’
‘What’s that, old chap?’
‘Ook!’
‘Yes, very pretty, but what’s—’
‘OOK!’
The Librarian seemed to remember what kind of intellects he was dealing with. He held up a finger and looked at Ridcully enquiringly. ‘Ook?’
‘Still not quite with you—’
Two fingers went up. ‘Ook ook?’
‘Not sure I fully—’
‘Ook ook ook!’
Ponder Stibbons looked at the three fingers now raised. ‘I think he’s counting, sir.’ The Librarian handed him a banana.
‘Ah, the old “How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?” game,’ said the Dean. ‘But usually we all have to have a bit more to drink first—’
The Librarian waved his hand at the fish, at the meal, at the shells and at the background of trees. One finger stabbed at the sky.
‘Ook!’
‘It’s all one to you?’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s one big place? It’s one to remember?’
The Librarian opened his mouth again, and then sneezed.
A very large red seashell lay on the sand.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Ponder Stibbons.
‘That’s interesting,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘He’s turned into quite a good specimen of the giant conch. You can get a marvellous sound out of one of them if you blow in the pointy end . . .’
‘Volunteers?’ said the Dean, almost under his breath.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Ponder again.
‘What’s up with you?’ said the Dean.
‘There’s only one,’ said Ponder. ‘That’s what he was trying to tell us.’
‘One what?’ said Ridcully.
‘Of everything, sir. There’s only one of everything.’
It was, he thought later, a good dramatic line. People ought to have looked at one another in growing and horrified realization and said things like, ‘By George, you know, he’s right!’ But these were wizards, capable of thinking very big thoughts in very small chunks.
‘Don’t be daft, man,’ said Ridcully. There’s millions of the damn shells, for a start.’
‘Yes, sir, but look, they’re all different, sir. All the trees we found . . . there was only one of each sort, sir. Lots of banana trees, but they all produce different types of bananas. There was only one cigarette tree, wasn’t there?’
‘Lots of bees, though,’ said Ridcully.
‘But only one swarm,’ said Ponder.
‘Millions of beetles,’ said the Dean.
‘I don’t think I’ve seen two alike, sir.’
‘Well, that’s interesting,’ said Ridcully, ‘but I don’t see—’
‘One of anything doesn’t work, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘It can’t breed.’
‘Yes, but they’re only trees, Stibbons.’
‘Trees need males and females too, sir.’
‘They do?’
‘Yes, sir. Sometimes they’re different bits of the same tree, sir.’
‘What? You sure?’
‘Yes, sir. My uncle grew nuts, sir.’
‘Keep it down, boy, keep it down! Mrs Whitlow might hear you!’
Ponder was taken aback. ‘What, sir? But . . . well . . . she is Mrs Whitlow, sir . . .’
‘What’s that got to do with the price of feet?’
‘I mean . . . presumably there was a Mr Whitlow, sir?’
Ridcully’s face went wooden for a moment and his lips moved as he tried out various responses. Finally he settled, weakly, for: ‘That’s as maybe, but it all sounds pretty mucky to me.’
‘I’m afraid that’s nature for you, sir.’
‘I used to like walking through the woods on a nice spring morning, Stibbons. You mean to say the trees were at it like knives the whole time?’
Ponder’s horticultural knowledge found itself a little exhausted at this point. He tried to remember what he could about his uncle, who’d spent most of his life up a ladder.
‘I, er, think camel-hair brushes are sometimes involved—’ he began, but Ridcully’s expression told him that this wasn’t a welcome fact, so he went on, ‘Anyway, sir, ones don’t work. And there’s another thing, sir. Who smokes the ciga rettes? I mean, if the bush just hopes that butts are going to be dropped around the place, who does it think is going to smoke them?’
‘What?’
Ponder sighed. The point about fruit, sir, is that it’s a kind of lure. A bird’ll eat the fruit and then, er, drop the seeds somewhere. It’s the way the plant spreads its seeds around. But we’ve only seen birds and a few lizards on this island, so how—’
‘Ah, I see what you mean,’ said Ridcully. ‘You’re thinking: what kind of bird stops flyin’ around for a quick smoke?’
‘A puffin,’ said the Bursar.
‘Glad to see you’re still with us, Bursar,’ said Ridcully, without looking round.
‘Birds don’t smoke, sir. You’ve got to ask yourself what’s in it for the bush, you see? If there were people here, well, I suppose you might get a sort of nicotine tree eventually, because they’d smoke the cigarettes – I mean,’ he corrected himself, because he prided himself on his logical thought, ‘these things that look like cigarettes, and stub them out around the place, thus spreading the seeds which are in the filter. Some seeds need heat to germinate, sir. But if there aren’t any people, the bush doesn’t make any sense.’
‘We’re people,’ said the Dean. ‘And I like a smoke after supper. Everyone knows that.’
‘Yes, but with respect, sir, we’ve only been here a couple of hours and I doubt whether the news has spread all the way to small islands,’ said Ponder patiently, and with, as it turned out, one hundred per cent inaccuracy. That’s probably not long enough for one to evolve.’