Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent

‘As far as we can gather, Archchancellor,’ said the Dean, ‘the poor chap couldn’t sleep and came down for a book—’

Ponder looked at the Library doors. A big strip of black and yellow tape had been stuck across them, along with a sign saying: Danger, Do Notte Enter in Any Circumʃtances. It was now hanging off, and the doors were ajar. This was no surprise. Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. This made signs rather a waste of time, but at least it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, ‘We told him not to.’

There was silence from the darkness on the other side of the doorway.

Ridcully extended a finger and pushed one door slightly.

Behind it something made a fluttering noise and the doors were slammed shut. The wizards jumped back.

‘Don’t risk it, Archchancellor!’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘I tried to go in earlier and the whole section of Critical Essays had gone critical!’

Blue light flickered under the doors.

Elsewhere, someone might have said, ‘It’s just books! Books aren’t dangerous!’ But even ordinary books are dangerous, and not only the ones like Make Gelignite the Professional Way . A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy {9} 9 Karl Marx spent a lot of time in the old Reading Room of the British Museum when he was writing Das Kapital . and suddenly thousands of people who haven’t even read it are dying because the ones who did haven’t got the joke. Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre.

And the Unseen University Library was a magical library, built on a very thin patch of space-time. There were books on distant shelves that hadn’t been written yet, books that never would be written. At least, not here. It had a circumference of a few hundred yards, but there was no known limit to its radius.

And in a magical library the books leak, and learn from one another …

‘They’ve started attacking anyone who goes in,’ moaned the Dean. ‘No one can control them when the Librarian’s not here!’

‘But we’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully. ‘It adds tone . What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the Library?’

‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely.

‘Hah, I remember when I was a student,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Old “Bogeyboy” Swallett took us on an expedition to find the Lost Reading Room. Three weeks we were wandering around. Had to eat our own boots.’

‘Did you find it?’ said the Dean.

‘No, but we found the remains of the previous year’s expedition.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We ate their boots, too.’

From beyond the door came a flapping, as of leather covers.

‘There’s some pretty vicious grimoires in there,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘They can take a man’s arm right off.’

‘Yes, but at least they don’t know about doorhandles,’ said the Dean.

‘They do if there’s a book in there somewhere called Doorknobs for Beginners ,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘They read each other.’

The Archchancellor glanced at Ponder. ‘There likely to be a book like that in there, Stibbons?’

‘According to L-space theory, it’s practically certain, sir.’

As one man, the wizards backed away from the doors.

‘We can’t let this nonsense go on,’ said Ridcully. ‘We’ve got to cure the Librarian. It’s a magical illness, so we ought to be able to cook up a magical cure, oughtn’t we?’

‘That would be exceedingly dangerous, Archchancellor,’ said the Dean. ‘His whole system is a mess of conflicting magical influences. There’s no knowing what adding more magic would do. He’s already got a freewheeling temporal gland. [6] Wizards are certain of the existence of the temporal gland, although not even the most invasive alchemist has ever found where it is located and current theory is that it has a non-corporeal existence, like a sort of ethereal appendix. It keeps track of how old your body is, and is so susceptible to the influence of a high magical field that it might even work in reverse, absorbing the body’s normal supplies of chrononine. The alchemists say it is the key to immortality, but they say that about orange juice, crusty bread and drinking your own urine. An alchemist would cut his own head off if he thought it’d make him live longer. Any more magic and … well, I don’t know what’ll happen.’

‘We’ll find out,’ said Ridcully brusquely. ‘We need to be able to go into the Library. We’d be doing this for the college, Dean. And Unseen University is bigger than one man—’

‘—ape—’

‘—thank you, ape , and we must always remember that “I” is the smallest letter in the alphabet.’

There was another thud from beyond the doors.

‘Actually,’ said the Senior Wrangler, ‘I think you’ll find that, depending on the font, “c” or even “u” are, in fact, even smaller. Well, shorter, anyw—’

‘Of course,’ Ridcully went on, ignoring this as part of the University’s usual background logic, ‘I suppose I could appoint another librarian … got to be a senior chap who knows his way around … hmm … now let me see, do any names spring to mind? Dean?’

‘All right, all right !’ said the Dean. ‘Have it your own way. As usual.’

‘Er … we can’t do it, sir,’ Ponder ventured.

‘Oh?’ said Ridcully. ‘Volunteering for a bit of bookshelf tidying yourself, are you?’

‘I mean we really can’t use magic to change him, sir. There’s a huge problem in the way.’

‘There are no problems, Mister Stibbons, there are only opportunities.’

‘Yes, sir. And the opportunity here is to find out the Librarian’s name.’

There was a buzz of agreement from the other wizards.

‘The lad’s right,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Can’t magic a wizard without knowing his name. Basic rule.’

‘Well, we call him the Librarian,’ said Ridcully. ‘Everyone calls him the Librarian. Won’t that do?’

‘That’s just a job description, sir.’

Ridcully looked at his wizards. ‘One of us must know his name, surely? Good grief, I should hope we at least know our colleagues’ names . Isn’t that so …’ He looked at the Dean, hesitated, and then said, ‘Dean?’

‘He’s been an ape for quite a while … Archchancellor,’ said the Dean. ‘Most of his original colleagues have … passed on. Gone to the great Big Dinner in the Sky. We were going through one of those periods of droit de mortis. [7] Broadly speaking, the acceleration of a wizard through the ranks of wizardry by killing off more senior wizards. It is a practice currently in abeyance, since a few enthusiastic attempts to remove Mustrum Ridcully resulted in one wizard being unable to hear properly for two weeks. Ridcully felt that there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. ’

‘Yes, but he’s got to be in the records somewhere .’

The wizards thought about the great cliffs of stacked paper that constituted the University’s records.

‘The archivist has never found him,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘Who’s the archivist?’