Terry Pratchett - Science of Discworld

'Did any of you do this?' said Ridcully accusingly.

'Oh, come on? said the Dean. 'We don't even know what it is.'

Beyond the tangle of broken roadways the snow blew across deep trenches gouged out of the ground. Desolation reigned.

Ponder pointed towards the huge pyramid.

'Whatever we're looking for, it's in there,' he said.

The first thing the wizards noticed was the mournful bleating noise. It came and went in a regular way, on-off, on-off, and seemed to fill the entire structure.

The wizards wandered onwards, occasionally getting HEX to move them to different places. Nothing, they agreed, made much sense. The building was mostly full of roadways and loading docks, interspersed with massive pillars. It creaked, too, like an old galleon. They could hear the groaning noises, echoing far above. Occasionally, the ground trembled.

It was clear that important things happened in the centre. There were tubes, hundreds of feet high. The wizards recognized cranes, and failed to recognize huge engines of unknown purpose. Cables thick as a house rose into the darkness above.

Frost sparkled off everything.

Still the bleat went on.

'Look,' said Ponder.

Red words flashed on and off, high in the air.

'"A-L-A-A-M",' the Dean spelled out. 'I wonder why it's doing that? They seem to have invented magic, whoever they are. Getting letters to flash like that is quite difficult to do.'

Ponder disappeared for a moment, and then came back.

'HEX feels that this is a dumb-waiter,' he said. 'Er ... you know ... for lifting things to another level.'

'Going where?' said Ridcully.

'Er ... up, sir. Into that ... necklace around the world. HEX has been speaking to the intelligence here. It's a sort of HEX, sir. And it's nearly dead.'

'That's a shame,' said Ridcully He sniffed. 'Where's everyone gone, then?'

'Er ... they made huge ... sort of... big metal balls to live in. I know it sounds stupid, sir. But they've gone. Because of the ice. And there was a comet, too. Not very big. But it scared everyone. They built the ... the beanstalk things, and then they ... er ... mined metal out of floating rocks, and ... they left.'

'Where've they gone?'

'The ... intelligence isn't sure. It's forgotten. It says it's forgot­ten a lot.'

'Oh, I understand? said the Dean, who'd been trying to follow this, 'Everyone's climbed up a great big beanstalk?'

'Er ... sort of, Dean,' said Ponder, in his diplomatic voice. 'In a manner of speaking.'

'Certainly messed the place up before they went,' said Ridcully.

Rincewind had been watching a rat scuttle away into the debris, but the words sunk in and exploded in his head.

'Messed up?' he growled. 'How?'

'Say again?' said Ridcully.

'Did you see the weather report for this world?' said Rincewind, waving his hands in the air. 'Two miles of ice, followed by a light shower of rocks, with outbreaks of choking fog for the next thou­sand years? There will be widespread vulcanism as half a continent's worth of magma lets go, followed by a period of moun­tain building? And that's normal.'

'Yes, well...'

'Oh, yes, there are some nice quiet periods, everything settles down, and then, whammo!'

'There's no need to get so excited...'

'I've been here!' said Rincewind. 'This is how this place works ! And now, please, you tell me how, I mean how, can anything living on this world possibly mess it up? I mean, compared to what hap­pens anyway?' He paused, and gulped air. 'I mean, don't get me wrong, if you pick the right time, yes, sure, it's a great world for a holiday, ten thousand years, even a few million if you're lucky with the weather but, good grief, it's just not a serious proposition for anything long term. It's a great place to grow up on, but you would­n't want to live here. If any thing's got off, the best of luck to them.'

He waved a finger at the rat, who was watching them suspi­ciously. Underneath them, the ground trembled again.

'See him?' he said. 'We know what's going to happen. In a mil­lion years or so his kids are going to be saying, wow, what a great world the Big Rat made for us. Or it'll be the turn of the jellyfish, or something that's still bobbing around under the sea that we don't even know about yet! There's no future here! No, that's wrong ... I mean there's always a future, but it belongs to someone else. You know what chalk's made of here? Dead animals! The actual rock is made of dead animals! There were some ...'

Even in his overheated state, he paused. It probably wasn't a good idea to remind people about the apes. A vague, suspicious guilt was nudging him.

'There were these creatures,' he said, 'and they were using lime­stone caves. Limestone's made from ancient blobs, I saw it being made, like snow in the water ... and these creatures are living in the bones of their ancestors! Really! This place ... this place is a kalei­doscope. You smash it up, wait a moment, and there's another pretty pattern. And another one. And another o ...'He stopped. And sagged. 'Could I have a glass of water, please?'

'That was a very ... interesting speech,' said Ponder.

'A point of view, certainly,' said Ridcully.

The other wizards had, however, lost interest. They usually did, if the speeches were not given by them.

'Shall I tell you something else?' said Rincewind, a little more calmly. 'This world is an anvil. Everything here is between a rock and a hard place. Every single thing on it is the descendant of crea­tures that have survived everything the world could throw at them. I just hope they never get angry ...'

The Senior Wrangler and the Dean had ambled towards a huge cylinder. The word 'MAETNANS' was painted in large black let­ters on the side.

'Hey, you chaps!' the Dean shouted. 'There's something talking inhere ...'

The inside of the cylinder reminded the wizards of a lighthouse. There was a spiral staircase; shaped cupboards lined the walls. Lights glowed dimly, whole constellations of them. Certainly the builders of this thing had discovered magic.

The 'A-L-A-A-M' word still blinked on and off in the air.

'I wish that wretched thing would stop,' said the Senior Wrangler.

The light vanished. The sound stopped.

'They've probably invented demons,' said the Dean airily. 'Listen ... hello.'

A pleasant female voice said, 'Elevator Unstable.'

'Oh, magic ,'said Ridcully flatly. 'Well, we know how to deal with magic. We want to go up in the magic box, voice.'

'Do we?' said Ponder

'Anything better than staying in this gloomy place,' said Ridcully. 'It'd be quite an interestin' experience, too. We'll take one last look the world and then, well ... frankly, that's it.'

'Instability Rising', said the voice. It did not sound worried by the news.

'What did it say?' said the Dean. 'Sounded like name of a place,'

'Very good, very good,' said Ridcully 'Now let's be going shall we?'

The pattern of lights moved. Then the voice said, as if it'd been thinking it over, 'Emerjansi Override.'

The door slid shut. The cylinder jerked. Shortly afterwards, some pleasant music started, and didn't really get on anyone's nerves for several minutes.

The rat watched the thing rise up the cables in the centre of the pyramid.

The ground shook again.

Slowly, the web around the world came apart.

Ice walls had attacked some of the cable moorings on the ground, but instability was already there, working inexorably as it had done for the past few weeks, turning little movements into big movements.

Slowly, one cable broke free from its pyramid, glowing red-hot as it was jerked through the atmosphere, flailing across the sky.