Interesting Times

'Er, excuse me,' he said. 'I don't remember anyone saying anything about being sm—'

'Of course,' said Ponder, 'the subject would not, er, actually experience this—'

'Oh.'

'—as far as we know—'

'What?'

'—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—'

'Eh?'

'—briefly witness the explosive discorporation.'

'Hey?'

'Now, we're all familiar with the use of the spell as a fulcrum, er, so that one does not actually move one object but simply exchanges the position of two objects of similar mass. It is my aim tonight, er, to demonstrate that by imparting exactly the right amount of spin and the maximum velocity to the object—'

'Me?'

'—from the very first moment, it is virtually cetain—'

'Virtually?'

'—to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles—'

'Up to?'

'—give or take ten per cent—'

'Give or take?'

'So if you'd — excuse me, Dean, I'd be obliged if you'd stop dripping wax — if you'd all take up the positions I've marked on the floor…'

Rincewind looked longingly towards the door. It was no distance at all for the experienced coward. He could just trot out of here and they could… they could…

What could they do? They could just take his hat away and stop him ever coming back to the University. Now he came to think about it, they probably wouldn't be bothered about the nailing bit if he was too much bother to find.

And that was the problem. He wouldn't be dead, but then neither would he be a wizard. And, he thought, as the wizards shuffled into position and screwed down the knobs on the end of their staffs, not being able to think of himself as a wizard was being dead.

The spell began.

Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief? Just about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or aptitudes that he didn't have.

He was no good at anything else. Wizardry was the only refuge. Well, actually he was no good at wizardry either, but at least he was definitively no good at it. He'd always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn't do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn't a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid. It was a vaguely noble thought that had kept him warm during those occasional 3 a.m. awakenings when he had evaluated his life and found it weighed a little less than a puff of warm hydrogen. And he probably had saved the world a few times, but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do something else. So you almost certainly didn't actually get any karmic points for that. It probably only counted if you started out by thinking in a loud way 'By criminy, it's jolly well time to save the world, and no two ways about it!' instead of 'Oh shit, this time I'm really going to die.'

The spell continued.

It didn't seem to be going very well.

'Come on, you chaps,' said Ridcully. 'Put some backbone into it!'

'Are you sure… it's… just something small?' said the Dean, who'd broken into a sweat.

'Looks like a… wheelbarrow…' muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

The knob on the end of Ridcully's staff began to smoke.

'Will you look at the magic I'm using!' he said.

'What's goin' on, Mr Stibbons?'

'Er. Of course, size isn't the same as mass…'

And then, in the same way that it can take considerable effot to push at a sticking door and no effort at all to fall full length into the room beyond, the spell caught.

Ponder hoped, afterwards, that what he saw was an optical illusion. Certainly no-one normally was suddenly stretched to about twelve feet tall and then snapped back into shape so fast that their boots ended up under their chin.

There was a brief cry of 'Oooooohhhhshhhhhh—' which ended abruptly, and this was probably just as well.

The first thing that struck Rincewind when he appeared on the Counterweight Continent was a cold sensation.'

The next things, in order of the direction of travel, were: a surprised man with a sword, another man with a sword, a third man who'd dropped his sword and was trying to run away, two other men who were less alert and didn't even see him, a small tree, about fifty yards of stunted undergrowth, a snowdrift, a bigger snowdrift, a few rocks, and one more and quite final snowdrift.

Ridcully looked at Ponder Stibbons.

'Well, he's gone,' he said. 'But aren't we supposed to get something back?'

'I'm not sure the transit time is instantaneous,' said Ponder.

'You've got to allow for zooming-through-the-occult-dimensions time?'

'Something like that. According to Hex, we might have to wait several—'

Something appeared in the octagon with a 'pop', exactly where Rincewind had been, and rolled a few inches.

It did, at least, have four small wheels such as might carry a cart. But these weren't workmanlike wheels; these were mere discs such as may be put on something heavy for those rare occasions it needs to be moved.

Above the wheels things became rather more interesting.

There was a large round cylinder, like a barrel on its side. A considerable amount of effort had been put into its construction; large amounts of brass had gone into making it look like a very large, fat dog with its mouth open. A minor feature was a length of string, which was smoking and hissing because it was on fire.

It didn't do anything dangerous. It just sat there, while the smouldering string slowly got shorter.

The wizards gathered round.

'Looks pretty heavy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'A statue of a dog with a big mouth,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. That's rather dull.'

'Bit of a lap-dog, too,' said Ridcully.

'Lot of work gone into it,' said the Dean. 'Can't imagine why anyone'd want to set fire to it.'

Ridcully poked his head into the wide tube.

'Some kind of big round ball in here,' he said, his voice echoing a little. 'Someone pass me a staff or something. I'll see if I can wiggle it out.'

Ponder was staring at the fizzing string.

'Er,' he said, 'I… er… think we should all just step away from it, Archchancellor. Er. We should all just step back, yes, step back a little way. Er.'

'Hah, yes, really? So much for research,' said Ridcully. 'You don't mind messing around with cogwheels and ants but when it comes to really trying to find out how things work and—'

'Getting your hands dirty,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'Yes, getting your hands dirty, you come over all shy.'

'It's not that, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'But I believe it may be dangerous.'

'I think I'm working it loose,' said Ridcully, poking in the depths of the tube. 'Come on, you fellows, tip the thing up a bit…'