Last Continent (36 page)

‘Why did he have to go to prison?'

‘We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?'

‘Why?'

‘It saves time.' She tried an unrelenting handle. ‘Damn! And the windows are too high . . .'

The ground trembled. Metal jangled, somewhere in the darkness. Dust moved in strange little waves across the floor.

‘Oh, not
again
,' said Neilette.

Now not only the dust moved. Tiny shapes scuttled across it, flowed around Rincewind's feet and sped under the locked door.

‘The spiders are leaving!' said Neilette.

‘Fine by me!' said Rincewind.

This time the tremor made the wall creak.

‘It's never been this bad,' Neilette muttered. ‘Find a ladder, we'll give the windows a go.'

Above them a ladder parted company from the wall and folded itself into a metal puzzle on the floor.

‘This may not seem a good time to ask,' said Rincewind, ‘but are you a kangaroo, by any chance?'

Far above them metal creaked and went on creaking, in a long-drawn wail of inorganic pain. Rincewind looked up, and saw the dome of the brewery gently dissolve into a hundred falling pieces of glass.

And, dropping through the middle of it, some of its lamps still burning, the grinning shape of the Roo Beer kangaroo.

‘Trunkie! Open up!' Neilette yelled.

‘No—' Rincewind began, but she grabbed him and dragged him and in front of him was an opening lid . . .

The world went dark.

There was wood underneath him. He tapped it, very carefully. And wood in front of him. And w—

‘Excuse
me
.'

‘We're
inside
the Luggage?'

‘Why not? That's how we got out of Cangoolie last week! Y'know, I think it may be a
magic
box.'

‘Do you
know
some of the things that have been inside it?'

‘Letitia kept her gin in it, I know that.'

Rincewind felt upwards, gingerly.

Maybe the Luggage had more than one inside. He'd suspected as much. Maybe it was like one of those conjuror's boxes where, after you'd put a penny in, the drawer miraculously slid around and it had gone. Rincewind had been given one of those as a toy when he was a kid. He'd lost almost two dollars before he gave up and threw the thing away . . .

His fingers touched what might have been a lid, and he pushed upwards.

They were still in the brewery. This came as some relief, considering where you might end up if you got into the Luggage. There was still the bowel-disturbing rumble, punctuated by clangs and tinkles as bits of rusted metal crashed down with lethal intent.

The big kangaroo sign was well alight.

In the smoke that rose from it were some pointy hats.

That is, the curls swirling and billowing around holes in the air looked very much like the three-dimensional silhouettes of a group of wizards.

Rincewind stepped out of the Luggage. ‘Oh, no, no, no,' he mumbled. ‘I only got here a couple of months ago. It's not my fault!'

‘They look like ghosts,' said Neilette. ‘Do you
know
them?'

‘No! But they're all mixed up with these earthquakes! And something called The Wet, whatever that was!'

‘That's just some old story, isn't it? Anyway, Mister Wizard, it might have escaped your notice that the place is filling up with smoke!
Which way did we come in?'

Rincewind looked around desperately. Smoke obscured everything.

‘Has this place got cellars?' he said.

‘Yeah! I used to play Mothers and Mothers with Noelene in them when we were kids. Look for hatches in the floor!'

And it was three minutes later that the ancient wooden hatchcover in the alley finally gave way under the Luggage's insistent pounding. Several rats poured out, followed by Rincewind and Neilette.

No one paid them any attention. A column of smoke was rising over the city. Watchmen and citizens were already forming a bucket chain and men with a battering ram were trying to break open the brewery's main doors.

‘We're well out of that,' Rincewind observed. ‘Oh, boy, yes.'

‘Hey, what's going on? Where's the bloody water gone?'

The cry came from a man working the handle of a pump out on the street, just as the pump gave a groan and the handle went limp. A watchman grabbed his arm.

‘There's another one in the yard over there! Get a wiggle on, mate!'

A couple of men tried the other pump. It made a choking noise, spat out a few drops of water and some damp rust, and gave up.

Rincewind swallowed. ‘I think the water's gone,' he said, flatly.

‘What do you mean,
gone
?' said Neilette. ‘There's
always
water. Huge great seas of it underground!'

‘Yes, but . . . it doesn't get filled up much, does it? It doesn't rain here.'

‘There you go aga—' She stopped. ‘What's it you know? You're looking shifty, Mister Wizard.'

Rincewind stared glumly up at the tower of smoke. There were twirling, tumbling sparks in it, rising in the heat and showering down over the city. Everything will be bone dry, he thought. It doesn't rain here. It— Hang on . . .

‘How do you know I'm a wizard?' he said.

‘It's written on your hat,' she said. ‘Badly.'

‘You know what a wizard
is
? This is a serious question. I'm not pushing a prawn.'

‘Everyone knows what a wizard is! We've got a university full of the useless mongrels!'

‘And you can show me where this is, can you?'

‘Find it yourself!' She tried to stride off through the milling crowd. He ran after her.

‘Please don't go! I need someone like you! As an interpreter!'

‘What do you mean? We speak the same language!'

‘Really? Stubbies here are really short shorts or small beer bottles. How often do newcomers confuse the two?'

Neilette actually smiled. ‘Not more than once.'

‘Just take me to this university of yours, will you?' said Rincewind. ‘I think I can feel a Famous Last Stand coming on.'

There was a brief scream of metal overhead and a windmill fan crashed down into the street.

‘And we'd better be quick,' he added.
‘Otherwise all there'll be to drink is beer.'

The Bursar laughed again as a series of little charcoal dots extended their legs, formed up and marched down the stone and across the sand in front of him. Behind him the trees were already loud with birdsong—

And then, sadly, with wizards as well.

He could hear the voices in the distance and, while wizards are always questioning the universe, they mainly direct the questions at other wizards and don't bother to listen to the answers.

‘—
certainly saw no trees when we arrived
.'

‘
Probably we didn't see them because of the rain, and the Senior Wrangler didn't see them because of Mrs Whitlow. And get a grip on yourself, will you, Dean? I'm sure you're getting young again! No one's impressed!
'

‘
I think I must just be naturally youthful, Archchancellor
.'

‘
Nothing to be proud of there! And please, someone, stop the Senior Wrangler getting a grip on hims— Oh, looks like someone's had a picnic
. . .'

The painter seemed engrossed in his work, and paid them no attention at all.

‘
I'm sure the Bursar went this way
—'

A little red mud coloured a complex curve and there, as if it had always been there, was a creature with the body of a giant rabbit, the expression of a camel and a tail that a lizard would be proud of. The wizards appeared around the rock just in time to see it scratch its ears.

‘Ye gods, what's
that
?'

‘Some sort of rat?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘Hey, look, Bursar's found one of the locals . . .' The Dean ambled across to the painter, who was watching the wizards with his mouth open. ‘Good morning, fellow. What's that thing called?'

The painter followed the pointing finger. ‘Kangaroo?' he said. The voice was a whisper, on the very cusp of hearing, but the ground trembled.

‘Kangaroo, eh?'

‘That might not be what it's called, sir,' said Ponder. ‘He might just be saying, “I don't know.”'

‘Can't see why not. He looks the sort of chap you find in this sort of place,' said the Dean. ‘Deep tan. Shortage of trousers. The sort of fellow who'd know what the wildlife is called, certainly.'

‘He just drew it,' said the Bursar.

‘Oh, did he? Very good artists, some of these chaps.'

‘He's not Rincewind, is he?' said Ridcully, who seldom bothered to remember faces. ‘I know he's a bit on the dark side, but a few months in the sun'd bake anyone.'

The other wizards drew together and looked around for any nearby sign of mobile rectangularity.

‘No hat,' said Ponder, and that was that.

The Dean peered at the rock wall. ‘Quite good drawings for native art,' he said. ‘Interesting . . . lines.'

The Bursar nodded. As far as he could see, the
drawings were simply alive. They might be coloured earth on rock, but they were as alive as the kangaroo that'd just hopped away.

The old man was drawing a snake now. One wiggly line.

‘I remember seeing some of those palaces the Tezumen built in the jungle,' said the Dean, watching him. ‘Not an ounce of mortar in the whole place and the stones fit together so well you couldn't stick a knife between them. Hah, they were about the only things the Tezumen
didn't
stick a knife between,' he added. ‘Odd people, really. Very big on wholesale human sacrifice and cocoa. Not an obvious combination, to my mind. Kill fifty thousand people and then relax with a nice cup of hot chocolate. Excuse me, I used to be quite good at this.'

To the horror even of Ridcully the Dean took the piece of frayed twig out of the painter's hand and dabbed it gently on the rock.

‘See? A dot for the eye,' said the Dean, handing it back.

The painter gave him a sort of smile. That is, he showed his teeth. Like many other beings on astral planes of all kinds, he was puzzled by the wizards. They were people with the family-sized self-confidence that seems to be able to get away with anything. They generated an unconscious field which said that
of course
they should be there, but no one was to worry or fuss around tidying up the place on their account and just get on with what they were doing. The more impressionable victims were left with the feeling that they had
clipboards and were awarding marks.

Behind the Dean a snake wriggled away.

‘Anyone feel anything odd?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘My fingers tingled. Did any of you do any magic just then?'

The Dean picked up a burnt twig. The painter's mouth dropped open as the wizard drew a scratching line on the stone.

‘I think you might be offending him,' said Ponder.

‘Nonsense! A good artist is always prepared to learn,' said the Dean. ‘Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective—'

The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?

It sounded like quite an angry thought.

‘What's that you're drawing, Dean?' said the Senior Wrangler.

‘What does it look like? A bird, of course.'

The voice in the Bursar's head thought: but a bird must fly. Where are the wings?

‘This one's standing on the ground. You don't see the wings,' said the Dean, and then looked puzzled at having answered a question no one had asked. ‘Blast! You know, it's harder than it looks, drawing on a rock . . .'

I
always
see the wings, thought the voice in the Bursar's head. The Bursar fumbled for his dried frog pill bottle. The voices were never usually this
precise
.

‘Very
flat
bird,' said Ridcully. ‘Come on, Dean, our friend here isn't very happy. Let's go and work out a really good boat spell . . .'

‘Looks more like a weasel to me,' said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You've got the tail wrong.'

‘The stick slipped.'

‘A duck's fatter than that,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘You shouldn't try to show off, Dean. When was the last time you saw a duck that didn't have peas round it?'

‘Last week, actually!'

‘Yes, we had crispy duck. With plum sauce, I now recall. Here, let me have a go . . .'

‘Now you've given it three legs!'

‘I did
ask
for the stick! You snatched it away!'

‘Now look,' said Ridcully. ‘I'm a man who knows his ducks, and what you've got there is laughable. Give me that . . . thank
you
. You do a beak like
this
. . .'

‘That's on the wrong end and it's too big.'

‘You think
that
's a beak?'

‘Look, all three of you are barking up the wrong tree here. Give me that stick . . .'

‘Ah, but, you see, ducks don't bark! Hah! There's no need to snatch like that—'

Unseen University was built of stone – so built out of stone that in fact there were many places where it was hard to tell where wild rock ended and domesticated stone began.

It was hard to imagine what else you could build a university out of. If Rincewind had set out
to list possible materials he wouldn't have included corrugated iron sheets.

In response to some sort of wizardly ancestral memory, though, the sheets around the gates had been quite expertly bent and hammered into the shape of a stone arch. Over it, burned into the thin metal, were the words: NULLUS ANXIETAS.