‘Can’t see what you’re treading in, for one thing,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘One opened up in one of the cellars once, all by itself,’ said the Dean. ‘Just a round black hole. Anything you put in it just disappeared. So old Archchancellor Weatherwax had a privy built over it.’
‘Very sensible idea,’ said Ridcully, still looking thoughtful.
‘We thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture.’
‘I’ve never heard of these!’ said Ponder Stibbons. The possibilities are amazing!’
‘Everyone says that when they first hear about them,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘But when you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.’
‘But if you could get one to open above another you could drop something through the bottom hole and it’d come out of the top hole and fall through the bottom hole again . . . It’d reach meteoritic speed and the amount of power you could generate would be—’
That’s pretty much what happened between the attic and the cellar,’ said the Dean, taking a cold chicken leg. ‘Thank goodness for air friction, that’s all I’ll say.’
Ponder waved his hand gingerly through the window and felt the sun’s heat.
‘And no one’s ever studied them?’ he said.
The Senior Wrangler shrugged. ‘Studied what? They’re just holes. You get a lot of magic in one place, it kind of drops through the world like a hot steel ball through pork dripping. If it comes to the edge of something, it kind of fills it in.’
‘Stress points in the space-time continuinuin-uum . . .’ said Ponder. ‘There must be hundreds of uses—’
‘Hah, yes, no wonder our Egregious Professor is always so suntanned,’ said the Dean. ‘I feel he’s been cheating. Geography should be hard to get to. It shouldn’t be in your windowbox, is what I’m saying. You shouldn’t get at it just by sneaking out of the University.’
‘Well, he hasn’t, really, has he?’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘He’s really just extended his study a bit.’
‘Do you think that is EcksEcksEcksEcks, by any chance?’ said the Dean. ‘It certainly looks foreign.’
‘Well, there is sea,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘But would you say that it looks as if it is actually girting?’
‘It’s just . . . you know . . . sloshing.’
‘One would somehow imagine that sea that was girting something would look more, well . . . defiant,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘You know? Thundering waves and so on. Definitely sending a message to outsiders that it was girting this coast and they’d better be jolly respectful.’
‘Perhaps we could go right through and investigate,’ said Ponder.
‘Something dreadful’ll happen if we do,’ said the Senior Wrangler gloomily.
‘It hasn’t happened to the Bursar,’ said Ridcully.
The wizards crowded around. There was a figure standing in the surf. Its robe was rolled up above the knees. A few birds wheeled overhead. Palm trees waved in the background.
‘My word, he must have snuck out while we weren’t looking,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘Bursaar!’ Ridcully yelled.
The figure didn’t look round.
‘I don’t want to, you know, make trouble,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking wistfully at the sundrenched beach, ‘but it’s freezing cold in my bedroom and last night there was frost on my eiderdown. I don’t see any harm in a quick stroll in the warm.’
‘We’re here to help the Librarian!’ snapped Ridcully. Faint snores were coming from the volume entitled Ook.
‘My point exactly. The poor chap’d be a lot happier in those trees there.’
‘You mean we could wedge him in the branches?’ said the Archchancellor. ‘He’s still The Story of Ook.’
‘You know what I mean, Mustrum. A day at the seaside for him would be better than a . . . a day at the seaside, as it were. Let’s get out there, I’m freezing.’
‘Are you mad? There could be terrible monsters! Look at the poor chap standing there in the surf! That sea’s probably teeming with—’
‘Sharks,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘Right!’ said Ridcully. ‘And—’
‘Barracudas,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Marlins. Swordfish. Looks like somewhere out near the Rim to me. Fishermen say there’s fish there that’d take your arm off.’
‘Right,’ said Ridcully. ‘Right . . .’ There was a small but significant change in his tone. Everyone knew about the stuffed fish on his walls. Archchancellor Ridcully would hunt anything. The only cockerel still crowing within two hundred yards of the University these days stood under a cart to do it.
‘And that jungle,’ said the Senior Wrangler, sniffing. ‘Looks pretty damn dangerous to me. Could be anything in it. Fatal. Could be tigers and gorillas and elephants and pineapples. I wouldn’t go near it. I’m with you, Archchancellor. Better to freeze here than look some rabid man-eater in the eye.’
Ridcully’s own eyes were burning bright. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Tigers, eh?’ he said. Then his expression changed. ‘Pineapples?
‘Deadly,’ said the Senior Wrangler firmly. ‘One of them got my aunt. We couldn’t get it off her. I told her that’s not the way you’re supposed to eat them, but would she listen?’
The Dean looked sidelong at his Archchancellor. It was the glance of a man who also didn’t want another night in a frigid bedroom and had suddenly worked out where the levers were.
‘That gets my vote, Mustrum,’ he said. ‘Catch me going through some hole in space on to some warm beach with a sea teeming with huge fish and a jungle full of hunting trophies.’ He yawned like a bad poker player. ‘No, it’s me for my nice freezing bed, I don’t know about you. Archchancellor?’
‘I think—’ Ridcully began.
‘Yes?’
‘Clams,’ said the Senior Wrangler, shaking his head. ‘Looks just the beach for the devils. You just ask my cousin. You’ll have to find a good medium first, though. They shouldn’t ooze green, I said. They shouldn’t bubble, I told him. But would he listen?’
The Archchancellor was currently amongst those who wouldn’t. ‘You think that taking him out there would be just the thing for the Librarian, do you?’ he said. ‘Just the tonic for the poor old chap, an hour or two under that sun?’
‘But I expect we ought to be ready to protect him, eh, Archchancellor?’ the Dean said, innocently.
‘Why, yes, I really hadn’t thought of that,’ said Ridcully. ‘Hmm, yes. Important point. Better get them to bring down my 500-pound crossbow with the armour-piercing arrows and my home taxidermy outfit. And all ten fishing rods. And all four tackle boxes. And the big set of scales.’
‘Good thinking, Archchancellor,’ said the Dean. ‘He may want to take a swim when he’s feeling better.’
‘In that case,’ said Ponder, ‘I think I’ll get my thaumodalite and my notebooks. It’s vital to work out where we are. It could be EcksEcksEcksEcks, I suppose. It looks very foreign.’
‘I suppose I’d better fetch my reptile press and my herbarium,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who had got there eventually. ‘Much may be learned from the plants here, I’ll wager.’
‘I shall certainly endeavour to make a study of any primitive grass-skirted peoples hereabouts,’ added the Dean, with a lawnmower look in his eyes.
‘What about you, Runes?’ said Ridcully.
‘Me? Oh, er . . .’ The Lecturer in Recent Runes looked wildly at his colleagues, who were nodding frantically at him. ‘Er . . . this would be a good time to catch up on my reading, obviously.’
‘Right,’ said Ridcully. ‘Because we are not, and I want to make this very clear, we are not doing this in order to enjoy ourselves, is that understood?’
‘What about the Senior Wrangler?’ said the Dean nastily.
‘Me? Enjoy it? There might even be prawns out there,’ said the Senior Wrangler miserably.
Ridcully hesitated. The other wizards shrugged when he glanced at them. ‘Look, old chap,’ he said eventually, ‘I think I understood about the clams, and I’ve got a sort of mental picture about your granny and the pineapple—’
‘—my aunt—’
‘—your aunt and the pineapple, but . . . What’s deadly about prawns?’
‘Hah, see how you like a crate of them dropping off the crane on to your head,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘My uncle didn’t, I can tell you!’
‘Okay, I think I understand. Important safety tip, everyone,’ said Ridcully. ‘Avoid all crates. Understood? But we are not here on some kind of holiday! Do you all understand me?’
‘Absolutely,’ said the wizards in unison.
They all understood him.
Rincewind awoke with a scream, to get it over with.
Then he saw the man watching him.