Terry Pratchett - Moving pictures

The alchemists sat back and looked more cheerful.

'Yeah,' said Lully.

'Oh. Right,' said Peavie.

'Here's to moving pictures,' said Sendivoge, holding up a handful of banged grains. 'How'd you hear about this place?'

'Oh, I-' Silverfish stopped. He looked puzzled. 'Don't know,' he said, eventually. 'Can't ... quite remember. Must have heard about it once and forgot it, and then it just popped into my head. You know how these things happen.'

'Yeah,' said Lully. 'Like with me and the film. It was like I was remembering how to do it. Funny old tricks the mind can play.'

'Yeah.'

'Yeah.'

' 'S'n idea whose time has come, see.'

'Yeah.'

'Yeah.'

'That must be it.'

A slightly worried silence settled over the table. It was the sound of minds trying to put their mental fingers on something that was bothering them.

The air seemed to glitter.

'What's this place called?' said Lully, eventually.

'Don't know what it was called in the old days,' said Silverfish, leaning back and pulling the banged grains towards him. 'These days they call it the Holy Wood.'

'Holy Wood,' said Lully. 'Sounds ... familiar.' There was another silence while they thought about it.

It was broken by Sendivoge.

'Oh, well,' he said cheerfully, 'Holy Wood, here we come.'

'Yeah,' said Silverfish, shaking his head as if to dislodge a disquieting thought. 'Funny thing, really. I've got. this feeling ... that we've been going there ... all this time.'

Several thousand miles under Silverfish, Great A'Tuin the world turtle sculled dreamily on through the starry night.

Reality is a curve.That's not the problem. The problem is that there isn't as much as there should be. According to some of the more mystical texts in the stacks of the library of Unseen University

- the Discworld's premier college of wizardry and big dinners, whose collection of books is so massive that it distorts Space and Time -

- at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things.

Outside the boundaries of the universes lie the raw realities, the couldhave-beens, the might-bes, the neverweres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas.

Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.

And reality leaks out.

The effect is like one of those deep-sea geysers of hot water, around which strange submarine creatures find enough warmth and food to make a brief, tiny oasis of existence in an environment where there shouldn't be any existence at all.

The idea of Holy Wood leaked innocently and joyfully into the Discworld.

And reality leaked out.

And was found. For there are Things outside, whose ability to sniff out tiny frail conglomerations of reality made the thing with the sharks and the trace of blood seem very boring indeed. They began to gather.

A storm slid in across the sand dunes but, where it reached the low hill, the clouds seemed to curve away. Only a few drops of rain hit the parched soil, and the gale became nothing more than a faint breeze.

It blew sand over the long-dead remains of afire.

Further down the slope, near a hole that was now big enough for, say, a badger, a small rock dislodged itself and rolled away.

A month went by quickly. It didn't want to hang around.

The Bursar knocked respectfully at the Archchancellor's door and then opened it.

A crossbow bolt nailed his hat to the woodwork.

The Archchancellor lowered the bow and glared at him.

'Bloody dangerous thing to do, wasn't it?' he said. 'You could have caused a nasty accident.'

The Bursar hadn't got where he was today, or rather where he had been ten seconds ago, which was where a calm and self-assured personality was, rather than where he was now, which was on the verge of a mild heart attack, without a tremendous ability to recover from unexpected upsets.

He unpinned his hat from the target chalked on the ancient woodwork.

'No harm done,' he said. No voice could be as calm as that without tremendous effort. 'You can barely see the hole. Why, er, are you shooting at the door, Master?'

'Use your common sense, man! It's dark outside and the damn walls are made of stone. You don't expect me to shoot at the damn walls?'

'Ah,' said the Bursar. 'The door is, er, five hundred years old, you know,' he added, with finely-tuned reproach.

'Looks it,' said the Archchancellor, bluntly. 'Damn great black thing. What we need around here, man, is a lot less stone and wood and a bit more jolliness. A few sportin' prints, yer know. An ornament or two.'

'I shall see to it directly,' lied the Bursar smoothly. He remembered the sheaf of papers under his arm. 'In the meantime, Master, perhaps you would care to-'

'Right,' said the Archchancellor, ramming his pointed hat on his head. 'Good man. Now, got a sick dragon to see to. Little devil hasn't touched his tar oil for days.'

'Your signature on one or two of-' the Bursar burbled hurriedly.

'Can't be havin' with all that stuff,' said the Archchancellor, waving him away. 'Too much damn paper around here as it is. And-' He stared through the Bursar, as if he had just remembered something. 'Saw a funny thing this mornin',' he said. 'Saw a monkey in the quad. Bold as brass.'

'Oh, yes,' said the Bursar, cheerfully. 'That would be the Librarian.'

'Got a pet, has he?'

'No, you misunderstand me, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar cheerfully. 'That was the Librarian.'

The Archchancellor stared at him.

The Bursar's smile began to glaze.

'The Librarian's a monkey?'

It took some time for the Bursar to explain matters clearly, and then the Archchancellor said: 'What yer tellin' me, then, is that this chap got himself turned into a monkey by magic?'

'An accident in the Library, yes. Magical explosion. One minute a human, next minute an orang-utan. And you mustn't call him a monkey, Master. He's an ape.'

'Same damn difference, surely?'

'Apparently not. He gets very, er, aggressive if you call him a monkey.'

'He doesn't stick his bottom at people, does he?'

The Bursar closed his eyes and shuddered. 'No, Master. You're thinking of baboons.'

'Ah.' The Archchancellor considered this. 'Haven't got any of them workin' here, then?'

'No, Master. Just the Librarian, Master.'

'Can't have it. Can't have it, yer know. Can't have damn great hairy things shambling around the place,' said the Archchancellor firmly. 'Get rid of him.'

'Good grief, no! He's the best Librarian we've ever had. And tremendous value for money.'

'Why? What d'we pay him?'

'Peanuts,' said the Bursar promptly. 'Besides, he's the only one who knows how the Library actually works.'

'Turn him back, then. No life for a man, bein' a monkey.'

'Ape, Archchancellor. And he seems to prefer it, I'm afraid.'

'How d'yer know?' said the Archchancellor suspiciously. 'Speaks, does he?'

The Bursar hesitated. There was always this trouble with the Librarian. Everyone had got so accustomed to him it was hard to remember a time when the Library was not run by a yellow-fanged ape with the strength of three men. If the abnormal goes on long enough it becomes the normal. It was just that, when you came to explain it to a third party, it sounded odd. He coughed nervously.

'He says "cook", Archchancellor,' he said.

'And what's that mean?'

'Means "no", Archchancellor.'

'And how does he say "yes", then?'

The Bursar had been dreading this. ' "Oook", Archchancellor,' he said.

'That was the same oook as the other oook!'