Ripples of paradox spread out across the sea of causality.
Possibly the most important point that would have to be borne in mind by anyone outside the sum totality of the multiverse was that although the wizard and the tourist had indeed only recently appeared in an aircraft in mid-air, they had also at one and the same time been riding on that aeroplane in the normal course of things. That is to say: “while it was true that they had just appeared in this particular set of dimensions, it was also true that they had been living in them all along. It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.
The point is that several quintillion atoms had just materialized (however, they had not. See below) in a universe where they should not strictly have been. The usual upshot of this sort of thing is a vast explosion but, since universes are fairly resilient things, this particular universe had saved itself by instantaneously unravelling its spacetime continuum back to a point where the surplus atoms could safely be accommodated and then rapidly rewinding back to that circle of firelight which for want of a better term its inhabitants were wont to call The Present. This had of course changed history—there had been a few less wars, a few extra dinosaurs and so on— but on the whole the episode passed remarkably quietly.
Outside of this particular universe, however, the repercussions of the sudden double-take bounced to and fro across the face of The Sum of Things, bending whole dimensions and sinking galaxies without a trace.
All this was however totally lost on Dr Rjinswand, 33, a bachelor, born in Sweden, raised in New Jersey, and a specialist in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors. Anyway, he probably would not have believed any of it.
Zweiblumen still seemed to be unconscious. The stewardess, who had helped Rjinswand to his seat to the applause of the rest of the passengers, was bering over him anxiously.
“I radioed ahead,” she told Rjinswand “there’ll be an ambulance waiting when we land Uh, it says on the passenger list that you’re a doctor”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” said Rincewind hurriedly, it might be a different matter if he was a Magnox reactor of course.
“Is it shock of some kind?”
“I’ve never—”
Her sentence terminated in a tremendous crash from the rear of the plane. Several passengers screamed. A sudden gale of air swept every loose magazine and newspaper into a screaming whirlwind that twisted madly down the aisle.
Something else was coming up the aisle.
Something big and oblong and wooden and brassbound. It had hundreds of legs. If it was what it seemed —a walking chest of the kind that appeared in pirate stories brim full of ill-gotten gold and jewels—then what would have been its lid suddenly gaped open.
There were no jewels. But there were lots of big square teeth, white as sycamore, and a pulsating tongue, red as mahogany.
An ancient suitcase was coming to eat him.
Rjinswand clutched at the unconscious Zweiblumen for what little comfort there was there, and gibbered. He wished fervently that he was somewhere else…
There was a sudden darkness.
There was a brilliant flash.
The sudden departure of several quintillion atoms from a universe that they had no right to be in anyway caused a wild imbalance in the harmony of the Sum Totality which it tried frantically to retrieve, wiping out a number of subrealities in the process. Huge surges of raw magic boiled uncontrolled around the very foundations of the multiverse itself, welling up through every crevice into hitherto peaceful dimensions and causing novas, supernovas, stellar collisions, wild flights of geese and drowning of imaginary continents. Worlds as far away as the other end of time experienced brilliant sunsets of corruscating octarine as highly-charged magical particles roared through the atmosphere. In the cometary halo around the fabled Ice System of Zeret a noble comet died as a prince flamed across the sky.
All this was however lost on Rincewind as, clutching the inert Twoflower around the waist, he plunged towards the Disc’s sea several hundred feet below. Not even the convulsions of all the dimensions could break the iron Law of the Conservation of Energy, and Rjinswand’s brief journey in the plane had sufficed to carry him several hundred miles horizontally and seven thousand feet vertically.
The word “plane” flamed and died in Rincewind’s mind.
Was that a ship down there?
The cold waters of the Circle Sea roared up at him and sucked him down into their green, suffocating embrace. A moment later there was another splash as the luggage, still bearing a label carrying the powerful travelling rune TWA, also hit the sea.
Later on, they used it as a raft.
Close to the Edge
It had been a long time in the making. Now it was almost completed, and the slaves hacked away at the last clay remnants of the mantle.
Where other slaves were industriously rubbing its metal flanks with silver sand it was already beginning to gleam in the sun with the silken organic sheen of young bronze. It was still warm even after a week of cooling in the casting pit. The Arch-astronomer of Krull motioned lightly with his hand and his bearers set the throne down in the shadow of the hull.
Like a fish, he thought. A great flying fish. And of what seas?
“It is indeed magnificent,” he whispered. “A work of true art.”
“Craft,” said the thickset man by his side. The Arch-astronomer turned slowly and looked up at the man’s impassive face. It isn’t particularly hard for a face to look impassive-when there are two golden spheres where the eyes should be. They glowed disconcertingly.
“Craft, indeed,” said the astronomer, and smiled
“I would imagine that there is no greater craftsman on the entire disc than you, Goldeneyes. Would I be right?”
The craftsman paused, his naked body—naked at least, were it not for a toolbelt, a wrist abacus and a deep tan—tensing as he considered the implications of this last remark. The golden eyes appeared to be looking into some other world.
“The answer is both yes and no,” he said at last Some of the lesser astronomers behind the throne gasped at this lack of etiquette, but the Arch astronomer appeared not to have noticed it.
“Continue,” he said.
“There are some essential skills that I lack. Yet I am Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos,” said the craftsman. “I made the Metal Warriors that guard the Tomb of Pitchiu, I designed the Light Dams of the Great Nef, I built the Palace of the Seven Deserts. And yet—” he reached up and tapped one of his eyes, which rang faintly, “when I built the golem army for Pitchiu he loaded me down with gold and then, so that I would create no other work to rival my work for him, he had my eyes put out.”
“Wise but cruel,” said the Arch-astronomer sympathetically.
“Yah. So I learned to hear the temper of metals and to see with my fingers. I learned how to distinguish ores by taste and smell. I made these eyes, but I cannot make them see.
“Next I was summoned to build the Palace of the Seven Deserts, as a result of which the Emir showered me with silver and then, not entirely to my surprise, had my right hand cut off.”
“A grave hindrance in your line of business,” nodded the Arch-astronomer.
“I used some of the silver to make myself this new hand, putting to use my unrivalled knowledge of levers and fulcrums. It suffices. After I created the first great Light Dam, which had a capacity of 50,000 daylight hours, the tribal councils of the Nef loaded me down with fine silks and then hamstrung me so that I could not escape. As
