Last Continent (3 page)

The most coherent theory was one he recalled from his nurse when he was small. Monkeys, she'd averred, were bad little boys who hadn't come in when called, and seals were bad little boys who'd lazed around on the beach instead of attending to their lessons. She hadn't said that birds were bad little boys who'd gone too close to the cliff edge, and in any case jellyfish would be more likely, but Ponder couldn't help thinking
that, harmlessly insane though the woman had been, she might have had just the glimmerings of a point . . .

He was spending most nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers.

Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. The goal is the Theory of Everything, but Ponder would settle for the Theory of Something and, late at night, when Hex appeared to be sulking, he despaired of even a Theory of Anything.

And it might have surprised Ponder to learn that the senior wizards had come to approve of Hex, despite all the comments on the lines of ‘In
my
day we used to do our
own
thinking.' Wizardry was traditionally competitive, and, while UU was currently going through an extended period of peace and quiet, with none of the informal murders that had once made it such a terminally exciting place, a senior wizard always distrusted a young man who was going places since traditionally his route might be via your jugular.

Therefore there's something comforting in knowing that some of the best brains in the University, who a generation ago would be
coming up with some really exciting plans involving trick floorboards and exploding wallpaper, were spending all night in the High Energy Magic Building, trying to teach Hex to sing ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady', exulting at getting a machine to do after six hours' work something that any human off the street would do for tuppence, then sending out for banana-and-sushi pizza and falling asleep at the keyboard. Their seniors called it technomancy, and slept a little easier in their beds in the knowledge that Ponder and his students weren't sleeping in
theirs
.

Ponder must have nodded off, because he was awakened just before 2 a.m. by a scream and realized he was face down in half of his supper. He pulled a piece of banana-flavoured mackerel off his cheek, left Hex quietly clicking through its routine and followed the noises.

The commotion led him to the hall in front of the big doors leading to the Library. The Bursar was lying on the floor, being fanned with the Senior Wrangler's hat.

‘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 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
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
'

‘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?'

‘The Librarian, Archchancellor.'

‘Then at least he ought to be in the Year Book for the year he graduated.'

‘It's a very funny thing,' said the Dean, ‘but a freak accident appears to have happened to every single copy of the Year Book for that year.'

Ridcully noted his wooden expression. ‘Would it be an accident like a particular page being torn out leaving only a lingering bananary aroma?'

‘Lucky guess, Archchancellor.'

Ridcully scratched his chin. ‘A pattern emerges,' he said.

‘You see, he's
always
been dead set against anyone finding out his name,' said the Senior Wrangler. ‘He's afraid we'll try to turn him back into a human.' He looked meaningfully at the Dean, who put on an offended expression. ‘
Some
people have been going around saying that an ape as Librarian is
unsuitable
.'

‘I merely expressed the view that it is against the traditions of the University—' the Dean began.

‘Which consist largely of niggling, big dinners and shouting damnfool things about keys in the middle of the night,' said Ridcully. ‘So I don't think we—'

The expressions on the faces of the other wizards made him turn around.

The Librarian had entered the hall. He walked very slowly, because of the amount of clothing he'd put on; the sheer volume of coats and sweaters meant that his arms, instead of being used as extra feet, were sticking out very nearly horizontally on either side of his body. But the most horrifying aspect of the shuffling apparition was the red woolly hat.

It was jolly. It had a bobble on it. It had been knitted by Mrs Whitlow, who was technically an extremely good needlewoman, but if she had a fault it lay in failing to take into account the precise dimensions of the intended recipient. Several wizards had on occasion been presented with one of her creations, which often assumed they had three ankles or a neck two metres across. Most of the things were surreptitiously given
away to charitable institutions. You can say this about Ankh-Morpork – no matter how misshapen a garment, there will always be someone somewhere it would fit.

Mrs Whitlow's mistake here was the assumption that the Librarian, for whom she had considerable respect, would like a red bobble hat with side flaps that tied under his chin. Given that this would technically require that they be tied under his groin, he'd opted to let them flap loose.

He turned a sad face towards the wizards as he stopped outside the Library door. He reached for the handle. He said, in a very weak voice, ‘'k,' and then sneezed.

The pile of clothing settled. When the wizards pulled it away, they found underneath a very large, thick book bound in hairy red leather.

‘Says
Ook
on the cover,' said the Senior Wrangler after a while, in a rather strained voice.

‘Does it say who it's by?' said the Dean.

‘Bad taste, that man.'

‘I
meant
that maybe it'd be his real name.'

‘Can we look inside?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘There may be an index.'

‘Any volunteers to look inside the Librarian?' said Ridcully. ‘Don't all shout.'

‘The morphic instability responds to the environment,' said Ponder. ‘Isn't that interesting? He's near the Library, so it turns him into a book. Sort of . . . protective camouflage, you could say. It's as if he evolves to fit in with—'

‘Thank you, Mister Stibbons. And is there a point to this?'

‘Well, I assume we
can
look inside,' said Ponder. ‘A book is meant to be opened. There's even a black leather bookmark, see?'

‘Oh, that's a
bookmark
, is it?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who had been watching it nervously.

Ponder touched the book. It was warm. And it opened easily enough.

Every page was covered with ‘ook'.

‘Good dialogue, but the plot is a little dull.'

‘Dean! I'd be obliged if you'd take this seriously, please!' said Ridcully. He tapped his foot once or twice. ‘Anyone got any more ideas?'

The wizards stared at one another and shrugged.

‘I suppose . . .' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘Yes, Runes . . . Arnold, isn't it?'

‘No, Archchancellor . . .'

‘Well, out with it anyway.'

‘I suppose . . . I know this sounds ridiculous, but . . .'