Mort

'One down,' said Mort, climbing into the saddle. 'Come on. I've got a bad feeling about the next one, and we haven't much time.'

Albert materialised in the centre of Unseen University, in the same place, in fact, from which he had departed the world some two thousand years before.

He grunted with satisfaction and brushed a few specks of dust off his robe.

He became aware that he was being watched; on looking up, he discovered that he had flashed into existence under the stern marble gaze of himself.

He adjusted his spectacles and peered disapprovingly at the bronze plaque screwed to his pedestal. It said:

'Alberto Malich, Founder of This University. AM 1,222-1,289. 'We Will Not See His Like Again'.'

So much for prediction, he thought. And if they thought so much of him they could at least have hired a decent sculptor. It was disgraceful. The nose was all wrong. Call that a leg? People had been carving their names on it, too. He wouldn't be seen dead in a hat like that, either. Of course, if he could help it, he wouldn't be seen dead at all.

Albert aimed an octarine thunderbolt at the ghastly thing and grinned evilly as it exploded into dust.

'Right,' he said to the Disc at large, 'I'm back.' The tingle from the magic coursed all the way up his arm and started a warm glow in his mind. How he'd missed it, all these years.

Wizards came hurrying through the big double doors at the sound of the explosion and cleared the wrong conclusion from a standing start.

There was the pedestal, empty. There was a cloud of marble dust over everything. And striding out of it, muttering to himself, was Albert.

The wizards at the back of the crowd started to have it away as quickly and quietly as possible. There wasn't one of them that hadn't, at some time in his jolly youth, put a common bedroom utensil on old Albert's head or carved his name somewhere on the statue's chilly anatomy, or spilled beer on the pedestal. Worse than that, too, during Rag Week when the drink flowed quickly and the privy seemed too far to stagger. These had all seemed hilarious ideas at the time. They suddenly didn't, now.

Only two figures remained to face the statue's wrath, one because he had got his robe caught in the door and the other because he was, in fact, an ape and could therefore take a relaxed attitude to human affairs.

Albert grabbed the wizard, who was trying desperately to walk into the wall. The man squealed.

'All right, all right, I admit it! I was drunk at the time, believe me, didn't mean it, gosh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry —'

'What are you bleating about, man?' said Albert, genuinely puzzled.

'— so sorry, if I tried to tell you how sorry I am we'd —'

'Stop this bloody nonsense!' Albert glanced down at the little ape, who gave him a warm friendly smile. 'What's your name, man?'

'Yes, sir, I'll stop, sir, right away, no more nonsense, sir . . . Rincewind, sir. Assistant librarian, if it's all right by you.'

Albert looked him up and down. The man had a desperate scuffed look, like something left out for the laundry. He decided that if this was what wizarding had come to, someone ought to do something about it.

'What sort of librarian would have you for assistant?' he demanded irritably.

'Oook.'

Something like a warm soft leather glove tried to hold his hand.

'A monkey! In my university!'

'Orang-outang, sir. He used to be a wizard but got caught in some magic, sir, now he won't