Terry Pratchett: The Science of Discworld II - The Globe

On this day, Rincewind carried the buckets inside and tipped the coal on the heap in the corner.

Something behind him went 'gloink'.

It was a small, subtle and yet curiously intrusive sound, and it accompanied the appearance, on a shelf above Rincewind's desk, of a beer bottle where no beer bottle had hitherto been.

He took it down and stared at it. It had recently contained a pint of Winkle's Old Peculiar. There was absolutely nothing ethereal about it, except that it was blue. The label was the wrong colour and full of spelling mistakes but it was mostly there, right down to the warning in tiny, tiny print: May Contain Nuts [3] Lord Vetinari, the Patrician and supreme ruler of the city, took proper food labeling very seriously. Unfortunately, he sought the advice of the wizards of Unseen University on this one, and posed the question thusly: 'Can you, taking into account multi-dimensional phase space, meta-statistical anomaly and the laws of probability, guarantee that anything with absolute certainty contains no nuts at all?' After several days, they had to conclude that the answer was 'no'. Lord Vetinari refused to accept 'Probably does not contain nuts' because he considered it unhelpful. .

Now it contained a note.

He removed this with some care, and unrolled it, and read it.

Then he stared at the thing beside the beer bottle. It was a glass globe, about a foot across, and contained, floating within it, a smaller blue-and-fluffy-white globe.

The smaller globe was a world, and the space inside the globe was infinitely large. The world and indeed the whole universe of which it was part had been created by the wizards of Unseen University more or less by accident, and the fact that it had ended up on a shelf in Rincewind's tiny study was an accurate indication of how interested they were in it once the initial excitement had worn off.

Rincewind watched the world, sometimes, through an omniscope. It mostly had ice ages, and was less engrossing than an ant farm. Sometimes he shook it up to see if it would make it interesting, but this never seemed to have much of an effect.

Now he looked back at the note.

It was extremely puzzling. And the university had someone to deal with things like that.

Ponder Stibbons, like Rincewind, also had a number of jobs. However, instead of aspiring to seven, he perspired at three. He had long been the Reader in Invisible Writings, had drifted into the new post as Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and had walked in all innocence into the office of Praelector, which is a university title meaning 'person who gets given the nuisance jobs'.

That meant that he was in charge in the absence of the senior members of the faculty. And, currently, this being the spring break, they were absent. And so were the students. The University was, therefore, running at near peak efficiency.

Ponder smoothed out the beer-smelling paper and read: TELL STIBBONS GET HERE AT ONCE. BRING LIBRARIAN. WAS IN FOREST, AM IN

ROUND WORLD. FOOD GOOD, BEER AWFUL. WIZARDS USELESS. ELVES HERE

TOO. DIRTY DEEDS AFOOT.

RIDCULLY

He looked up at the humming, clicking, busy bulk of Hex, the University's magical thinking engine, then, with great care, he placed the message on a tray that was part of the machine's rambling structure.

A mechanical eyeball about a foot across lowered itself carefully from the ceiling. Ponder didn't know how it worked, except that it contained vast amounts of incredibly finely drawn tubing.

Hex had drawn up the plans one night and Ponder had taken them along to the gnome jewellers; he'd long ago lost track of what Hex was doing. The machine changed almost on a daily basis.

The write-out began to clatter and produced the message:

+++ Elves have entered Roundworld. This is to be expected. +++

'Expected?' said Ponder.

+++ Their world is a parasite universe. It needs a host +++

Ponder turned to Rincewind. 'Do you understand any of this?' he said.

'No,' said Rincewind. 'But I've run into elves.'

'And?'

'And then I've run away from them. You don't hang around elves. They're not my field, unless they're doing fretwork. Anyway, there's nothing on Roundworld at the moment.'

'I thought you did a report on the various species that kept turning up there?'

'You read that?'

'I read all the papers that get circulated,' said Ponder.

'You do?'

'You said that every so often some kind of intelligent life turns up, hangs around for a few million years, and then dies out because the air freezes or the continents explode or a giant rock smacks into the sea.'

'That's right,' said Rincewind. 'Currently the globe is a snowball again.'

'So what is the faculty doing there now?'

'Drinking beer, apparently.'

'When the whole world is frozen?'

'Perhaps it's lager.'

'But they are supposed to be running around in the woods, pulling together, solving problems and firing paint spells at one another,' said Ponder.

'What for?'

'Didn't you read the memo he sent out?'

Rincewind shuddered. 'Oh, I never read those,' he said.

'He took everyone off into the woods to build a dynamic team ethos,' said Ponder. 'It's one of the Archchancellor's Big Ideas. He says that if the faculty gets to know one another better, they'll be a happier, more efficient team.'

'But they do know one another! They've known one another for ages! That's why they don't like one another very much! They won't stand for being turned into a happy and efficient team!'

'Especially on a ball of ice,' said Ponder. 'They're supposed to be in woods fifty miles away, not in a glass globe in your study! There is no way to get into Roundworld without using a considerable amount of magic, and the Archchancellor has banned me from running the thaumic reactor at anything like full power.'

Rincewind looked again at the message from the bottle.

'How did the bottle get out?' he said.

Hex printed:

+++ I did that. I still maintain a watch on Roundworld. And I have been developing interesting procedures. It is now quite easy for me to reproduce an artefact in the real world +++

'Why didn't you tell us the Archchancellor needed help?' sighed Ponder.

+++ They were having such fun trying to send the bottle +++

'Can't you just bring them out, then?'

+++ Yes +++

'In that case—'

'Hold on,' said Rincewind, remembering the blue beerbottle and the spelling mistakes. 'Can you bring them out alive?

Hex seemed affronted.

+++ Certainly. With a probability of 94.37 per cent +++

'Not great odds,' said Ponder, 'But perhaps—'

'Hold on again,' said Rincewind, still thinking about that bottle. ' 'Humans aren't bottles. How about alive, with fully functioning brains and all organs and limbs in the right place?'

Unusually, Hex paused before replying.

+++ There will be unavoidable minor changes +++

'How minor, exactly.'

+++ I cannot guarantee reacquiring more than one of every 1 organ+++

There was a long, chilly silence from the wizards.

+++ Is this a problem? +++

'Maybe there's another way?' said Rincewind.

'What makes you think that?'

'The note asks for the Librarian.'

In the heat of the night, magic moved on silent feet.

One horizon was red with the setting sun. This world went around a central star. The elves did not know this and, if they had done, it would not have bothered them. They never bothered with detail of that kind. The universe had given rise to life in many strange places, but the elves were not interested in that, either.

This world had created lots of life. Up until now, none of it had ever had what the elves considered to be potential. But this time, there was definite promise.

Of course, it had iron, too. The elves hated iron. But this time, the rewards were worth the risk.