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,’ said the Dean.
‘Certainly makes a man wish he was fifty years younger,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
‘Five minutes younger would do for me,’ said the Dean. ‘Incidentally, did any of you notice that rather clever inadvertent joke just then? Stibbons said it was “a sarong” and I—’
‘What’s that she’s carrying?’ said Ridcully.
‘—no, listen, you see, I misheard him, in fact, and I—’
‘Looks like . . . coconuts . . .’ said Ponder, shading his eyes. ‘This is a bit more like it,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘—because actually I thought he said, “It’s wrong,” you see—’
‘Certainly a coconut,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m not complaining, of course, but aren’t these sultry maids generally black-haired? Red doesn’t seem very typical.’
‘—so I said—’
‘I suppose you’d get coconuts here?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘They float, don’t they?’
‘—and, listen, when Stibbons said “sarong”, I thought he—’
‘Something familiar about her,’ Ridcully mused.
‘Did you see that nut in the Museum of Quite Unusual Things?’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Called the coco-de-mer and . . .’ he permitted himself ‘. . . ha, very curious shape, you know, you’ll never guess who it used to put me in mind of . . .’
‘It can’t be Mrs Whitlow, can it?’ said Ponder.
‘As a matter of fact, I must admit that it—’
‘Well, I thought it was mildly amusing, anyway,’ said the Dean.
‘It is Mrs Whitlow,’ said Ridcully.
‘More of a nut, really, but—’
It dawned on the Senior Wrangler that the sky was a different colour on his personal planet. He turned around, looked, said, ‘Mwaaa . . .’ and fell gently to the sand.
‘Ai don’t quate know what’s happened to Mister Librarian,’ said Mrs Whitlow, in a voice that made the Senior Wrangler twitch even in his swoon.
The coconut opened its eyes. It looked as if it had just seen something truly horrific, but this is a normal expression for baby orang-utans and in any case it was looking at the Dean.
‘Eek!’ it said.
Ridcully coughed. ‘Well, at least he’s the right shape,’ he said. ‘And, er, you, Mrs Whitlow? How do you feel?’
‘Mwaa . . .’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘Very well indeed, thank you,’ said Mrs Whitlow. This country agrees with me. I don’t know whether it was the swim, but Ai haven’t felt quate so buoyant in years. But Ai looked around and there was this dear little ape just sitting there.’
‘Ponder, would you mind just throwing the Senior Wrangler in the sea for a moment?’ said Ridcully. ‘Nowhere too deep. Don’t worry if it steams.’ He took Mrs Whitlow’s spare hand.
‘I don’t want to worry you, dear Mrs Whitlow,’ he said, ‘but I think something is shortly going to come as a big shock to you. First of all, and please don’t misunderstand me, it might be a good idea to loosen your clothing.’ He swallowed. ‘Slightly.’
The Bursar had experienced some changes of age as he wandered through the wet but barren land, but to a man capable of being a vase of flowers for an entire afternoon this was barely a mild distraction.
What had caught his eye was a fire. It was burning bits of driftwood, and the flames were edged with blue from the salt.
Close to it was a sack made of some sort of animal skins.
The damp earth beside the Bursar stirred and a tree erupted, growing so fast that the rain steamed off the unfolding leaves. This did not surprise him. Few things did. Besides, he’d never seen a tree growing before, so he did not know how fast it was supposed to go.
Then several more trees exploded around him. One grew so fast that it went all the way from sapling to half-rotten trunk in a few seconds.
And it seemed to the Bursar that there were other people here. He couldn’t see them or hear them, but something in his bones sensed them. However, the Bursar was also quite accustomed to the presence of people who couldn’t be seen or heard by anyone else, and had spent many a pleasant hour in conversation with historical figures and, sometimes, the wall.
All in all the Bursar was, depending on your outlook, the most or least suitable person to encounter deity on a first-hand basis.
An old man walked around a rock and was halfway to the fire before he noticed the wizard.
Like Rincewind, the Bursar had no room in his head for racism. As a skin colour black came as quite a relief compared to some of the colours he’d seen, although he’d never seen anyone quite so black as the man now staring at him. At least, the Bursar assumed he was staring. The eyes were so deep set that he couldn’t be sure.
The Bursar, who had been properly brought up. said, ‘Hooray, there’s a rosebush?’
The old man gave him a rather puzzled nod. He walked over to the dead tree and pulled off a branch, which he pushed into the fire. Then he sat down and watched it as though watching wood char was the most engrossing thing in the world.
The Bursar sat down on a rock and waited. If the game was patience, then two could play at it.
The old man kept glancing up at him. The Bursar kept smiling. Once or twice he gave the man a little wave.
Finally the burning branch was pulled out of the fire. The old man picked up the leather sack in his other hand and walked off among the rocks. The Bursar followed him.
There was an overhang here under a small cliff, shielding a stretch of vertical rock from the rain. It was the kind of tempting surface that would, in Ankh-Morpork, have already been covered so thickly with so many posters, signs and graffiti that if you’d removed the wall the general accretion would still have stood up.