The Last Continent

Terry Pratchett

Summary

This is the Discworld's last continent, a completely separate creation.

It's hot. It's dry ... very dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one now believes in. Practically everything that's not poisonous is venemous. But it's the best bloody place in the world, all right?

And it'll die in a few days, except...

Who is this hero striding across the red desert? Champion sheep shearer, horse rider, road warrior, beer drinker, bush ranger and someone who'll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he's sober? A man in a hat, whose Luggage follows him around on little legs, who's about to change history by preventing a swagman stealing a jumbuck by a billabong?

Yes ... all this place has between itself and wind-blown doom is Rincewind, the inept wizard who can't even spell wizard. He's the only hero left.

Still ... no worries, eh?

Terry Pratchett would like it to be known that The Last Continent is not a book about Australia. It's just vaguely australian.

Quotes

When gods get together they tell the story of one particular planet whose inhabitants watched, with mild interest, huge continent-wrecking slabs of ice slap into another world which was, in astronomical terms, right next door -- and then did nothing about it because that sort of thing only happens in Outer Space.

It would be terrible to think that some impatient deity might part the clouds and say, "Damn, are you lot still here? I thought you discovered slood ten thousand years ago! I've got ten trillion tons of ice arriving on Monday!"

Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him.

"I don't think I'm related to any apes," said the Senior Wrangler thoughtfully. "I mean, I'd know, wouldn't I? I'd get invited to their weddings and so on. My parents would have said something like, 'Don't worry about Uncle Charlie, he's supposed to smell like that,' wouldn't they?"

"Anyone called in a doctor?" he said.

"We got Donut Jimmy here this afternoon," said the Dean. "He tried to take his temperature but I'm afraid the Librarian bit him."

"He bit him? With a thermometer in his mouth?"

"Ah. Not exactly. There, in fact, you have rather discovered the reason for his biting."

Ponder knew he should never have let Ridcully look at the invisible writings. Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day?

Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting things when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.

Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.

His mental approach to [management] could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled "Me, who does the telling," and connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled "Everyone else."

...although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly.

Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There's no point in wondering what it was. Don't go digging things up in case they won't let you bury them again.

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.

...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.

"What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the Library?"

"Students."

[droit de mortis:] 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 it.

It tasted a little like chicken. When you are hungry enough, practically anything can.

Ridcully was good at doing without other people's sleep.

There were rooms containing rooms which, if you enetered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.

Tenure was automatic or, more accurately, non-existent. You found an empty room, turned up for meals as usual, and generally no one noticed, although if you were unfortunate you might attract students.

"Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "It's against reason. What's in it for them?"

"So how do you explain fossils, then?" said Ponder.

"Ah, you see, I don't," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. "It saves so much trouble in the long run."

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all.

Rincewind's hourglass [of life] looked like something created by a glassblower who'd had the hiccups in a time machine.

Death was familiar with the concept of the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the champion with a thousand faces. He'd refrained from commenting.

[Death] met heroes frequently, generally surrounded by, and this was important, the dead bodies of very nearly all their enemies and saying, "Vot the hell shust happened?"

"One opened up in one of the cellars once, all by itself," said the Dean. "Just a round black hole. Anything you put in it disappeared. So old Chancellor Weatherwax had a privy built over it."

"Very sensible idea," said Ridcully, still looking thoughtful.

"We thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I'm sure I don't need to draw you a picture."

"I shall certainly endeavor to make a study of any primitive grass-skirted people hereabouts," added the Dean, with a lawnmower look in his eyes.

"What's deadly about prawns?"

"Hah, see how you like a crate of them dropping off the crane on to your head."

He was also holding a boomerang, and it wasn't one of those toy ones that came back. This was one of the big, heavy, gently curved sort that didn't come back because it was sticking in something's ribcage. You could laugh at the idea of wooden weapons until you saw the kind of wood that grew here.

This might have struck someone else as rude, but Rincewind was always happy to see any heavily armed person walking away.

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

There may be strapping young wizards with copper-coloured skins and muscles as solid as a plank, but not after years of UU dinners. It gives senior wizards what they think is called gravitas but is more accurately called gravity.

...Mustrum Ridcully lit his pipe and cast a line on the end of which was such a fearsome array of spinners and weights that any fish it didn't hook it might successfully bludgeon.

People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they've always meant to read, but an alchemical combination ofsun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Caper).

So something was going right for [Rincewind]. Out here in the red-hot wilderness something wanted him to stay alive. This was a worrying thought. No one ever wanted him alive for something nice.

A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes.

Rincewind: "I'm not frightened of you," he said. "Why should I be frightened of you?"
Kangaroo: "Well, I could kick your stomach out through your neck."

Kangaroo: "...that's the kangaroo language. I'm trying it out."
Rincewind: "What, one scratch for 'yes', one for 'no'?"
Kangaroo: "Yep."
Rincewind: "And that (nose) wrinkling?"
Kangaroo: "Oh, that means 'Come quick, someone's fallen down a deep hole.'"
Rincewind: "That one gets used a lot?"
Kangaroo: "You'd be amazed."

There was activity in front of the window. It centered around a vision in pink, although admittedly the sort of vision associated with the more erratic kind of hallucinogen.

There wasn't anything approaching a straight line anywhere on Mrs. Whitlow, until she found that something hadn't been dusted properly, when you could use her lips as a ruler.

Most of the faculty walked in dread of her. She had strange powers that they couldn't quite get a grip on, like the ability to get the beds made and the windows washed.

A wizard who could wield a staff crackling with power against dreadful monsters from some ghastly region was nevertheless quite capable of picking up a feather duster by the wrong end and seriously injuring himself with it.

"I'm trying to remember how you tell time by looking at the sun."

"I should leave it for a while," said the Senior Wrangler, squinting under his hand. "It's too bright to see the numbers at the moment."

The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame.

"We do not indulge in pranks."

"With us it's a fully fledged gold-embossed cock-up or nothing," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

"Will you stop talking about jam and be sensible for a moment!"

Rincewind lowered the sandwich. "Good grief, I hope not," he said. "I'm sitting in a cave in a country where everything bites you and it never rains and I'm talking, no offence, to a herbivore that smells of a carpet in a house where there are a lot of excitable puppies, and I've suddenly got this talent for finding jam sandwiches and inexplicable fairy cakes in unexpected places, and I've been shown something very odd in a picture on some old cave wall, and suddenly said kangaroo tells me time and space are all wrong and wants me to be sensible? What, when you get right down to it, is in it for me?"

Dean: "How hard can it be to build a boat? People with bones in their noses build boats. And we are the end product of thousands of years of enlightenment. Building a boat is not beyond men like us, Senior Wrangler."
Wrangler: "Quite, Dean."
Dean: "All we have to do is search this island until we find a book with a title like Practical Boat-Building For Beginners."

Rincewind: "I've got nothing? What sort of a quest is that? Can't you give me any hints?"
Scrappy: "You may have to drink some beer."
Rincewind: "Oh. Right. Well, I know how to do that."

[Rincewind] was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all.

A creature blundered out on to the sunset sands. It was large and seemed to be mainly head -- one huge, reptillian head that looked almost as big as the body below it. It walked on two large hind legs. There was a tail, but given the amount of teeth now showing at the other end the wizards weren't inclined to take in too much additional detail.

Ponder: "Stay still, sir! A lot of reptiles can't see you if you don't move!"
Dean: "I can assure you, at the speed I intend nothing is going to see me..."
Ridcully: "Can't see things that don't move? You mean we just have to wait for it to walk into a tree?"

"Most people call me Mad."

"Just 'Mad'? That's an... unuual name."

"It ain't a name."

There are many reasons for being friends with someone. The fact that he's pointing a deadly weapon at you is among the top four.

People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them. But if you were unarmed, they often stopped to talk. Admittedly, they tended to say things like, "You'll never guess what we're going to do to you, pal," but that took time.

Rincewind could do a lot with a few seconds. He could use them to live longer in.

In accordance with ancient narrative practice, the shot richocheted off someone's helmet and brought down an innocent bird some distance away, whose only role was to expire with a suitably humorous squawk.

Ponder: "You saw how quickly it changed, didn't you?"
Dean: "Well?"
Ponder: "That can't be natural."
Dean: "You're the one who says things naturally change into other things, Mister Stibbons."
Ponder: "But not that fast!"
Dean: "Have you ever seen any of this evolution happening?"
Ponder: "Well, of course not, no one has ever--"
Ridcully: "There you are, then. That might be the normal speed."

Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting-edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job. It was amazing how human traits and affairs cold so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big white balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity.

Ponder: "Please! What I was trying to get across, sir, is that anything you do in the past changes the future. The tiniest little actions can have huge consequences. You might ... tread on an ant now and it might entirely prevent someone from being born in the future!"
Ridcully: "Really?"
Ponder: "Yes, sir!"
Ridcully: "That's not a bad wheeze. There's one or two people history could do without. Any idea how we can find the right ants?"

There's a certain type of manager who is known by his call of "My door is always open" and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him.

Rincewind: "You said this was a big town."
Mad: "It's got a whole street. And a pub."

"Remember what we'd say in those days?" said the Senior Wrangler. "'Never trust a wizard over sixty-five'? Whatever happened?"

"We got past the age of sixty-five, Senior Wrangler."

"Ah, yes. And it turned out that we were trustworthy after all."

Ankh-Morpork beer was technically ale, that is to say, gravy made from hops. It had texture. It had flavour, even if you didn't always want to know what of. It had body. It had dregs. You could eat the last half-inch of it with a spoon.

You didn't usually get crocodiles serving behind a bar, but everyone else in this cavern of a place seemed to think it was perfectly normal. Mind you, the people in the bar included three sheep in overalls and a couple of kangaroos playing darts.

And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts.

He looked along the arm to a large angry face and an expression that said a lot of beer was looking for a fight and the rest of the body was happy to go along with it.

"You call that a knife?" The giant unsheathed one that'd be called a sword if it had been held in a normal-sized hand. "This is what I call a knife!"

Mad looked at it. Then he reached his hand around behind his back, and it came back holding something.

"Really? No worries. This," he said, "is what I call a crossbow."

Ridcully told jokes like a bullfrog did accountancy. They never added up.

"I'm all ears," said Rincewind. His eyes glazed for a moment. "No, I'm not, I'm all bladder."

The buzz of flies and a sort of universal smell drew Rincewind into a nearby hut. Some people would have liked to think of it as "the bathroom," although not after going inside.

Scrappy: "Haven't you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?"
Rincewind: "Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that, too. That's the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever."

"Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one."

"Yes, but it's the important one."

[The Wizards] were obviously social creatures, with some of the individuals designed for specific tasks. The hairy red one was designed for climbing trees, and the dreamy ant-stamping one for walking into them.

It put the Senior Wrangler in mind of Mrs. Whitlow, although currently rocks, trees, clouds and coconuts also reminded him of Mrs. Whitlow.

Dean: "I vote we load up with provisions and go."
Ridcully: "Where to?"
Dean: "Somewhere where fearsome reptiles don't suddenly turn into birds!"
Ridcully: "You'd prefer it the other way around?"

"Begone From This Place Or I Will Smite Thee!" he commanded.

"Why?"

The god looked taken aback. "Why? You can't ask why in this situation!"

"Why not?"

God: "Thou Must Go From This Place Lest I Visit Thee With Boils!"
Ridcully: "Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine."

The problem faced by the god was that, while he had never encountered wizards before, the wizards had in their student days met, more or less on a weekly basis, things that threatened them horribly as a matter of course. Boils didn't hold much of a menace when rogue demons had wanted to rip your head off and do terrible things down the hole.

"Your comments have been taken on board, Senior Wrangler. And they will be thrown over the side as soon as we leave harbour."

"Interesting. And what a curiously white leaf."

"No, it's a cotton handkerchief," said Ponder. "It's... made." He stopped there. He knew that handkerchiefs were made, and cotton was involved, and he had some vague recollection of looms and things, but when you got right down to it you obtained handkerchiefs by going into a shop and saying, "I'd like a dozen of the reinforced white ones, please, and how much do you charge for embroidering initials in the corners?"

"I mean, I tried. God knows I tried, and since that's me, I know what I'm talking about."

God: "I even told them, 'Thou Shalt Really Try to Get Along with One Another."
Dean: "Did it work?"
God: "I can't say for sure. Everyone was slaughtered by the followers of the god in the next valley who told them to kill everyone who didn't believe in him."

"Anyway, two gods of evolution wouldn't be a bad thing, would they?" said Ridcully. "Makes it a lot more interestin'. The one who's best at it would win."

"No offense meant, of course, but if the choice is a trip on the briny deep or staying on a small island with someone trying to create a more inflammable cow then you can call me Salty Sam."

Crocodile: "I think maybe I'd better make you up the cure for drinking too much beer, mate."
Rincewind: "What's the cure?"
Crocodile: "More beer."

Rincewind: "This is a very strange country."
Crocodile: "We've got an opera house. That's cultcher."
Rincewind: "And ninety-three words for being sick?"
Crocodile: "Yeah, well, we're a very ... vocal people."

The Luggage had no brain as such, even though an outsider might well get the impression that it could think. What it did do was react, in quite complex ways, to its environment. Usually this involved finding something to kick, as is the case with most sapient creatures.

Most of the things Rincewind had associated with sheep, apart from the gravy and mint sauce, had to do with... sheepishness. But this was a ram, and the word association was suddenly... rampage.

Daggy: "You just sheared thirty sheep in two minutes!"
Rincewind: "Is that good?"
Daggy: "Good? No one takes two minutes for thirty sheep."
Rincewind: "Well, I'm sorry, but I can't go any faster."

It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just ... made things better. A shark's got your leg? No worries. You've been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You're dead? She'll be all right! No worries!

...it was obvious even to Rincewind's inexperienced eye that while you could race this horse, it wouldn't be sensible to race it against other horses. At least, ones that were alive.

One of the men said, "Why didn't you tell him about the drop-bears over that way?"

"He's a wizard, ain't he? He'll find out."

"Yeah, but only when they bloody drop on his head."

"Quickest way," said Daggy.

A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow's head. She'd decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way.

She'd had a very straightforward view of foreign parts ... They were inhabited by people who were more to be pitied than bullied because, really, they were like children. And they acted like savages.

[Footnote: Again, when people like Mrs. Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia.]

Ridcully: "I suppose he wouldn't have done anything stupid, would he?"
Dean: "Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!"
Ridcully: "Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean. Senior Wrangler! We're going to look for Stibbons."

Wrangler: "Mrs. Whitlow! How could we have forgotten her!"
Ridcully: "In your case, only by having a cold bath, Senior Wrangler."

"Er ... what's Ecksian for going mad with terrified fatigue and collapsing in a boneless heap?"

The men looked at one another.

"Isn't that 'snagged as a wombat's tonker'?"

"No, no, no, that's when you chuck a twister, isn't it?" said Clancy.

"What? Strewth, no. Chucking a twister's when ... when you ... yeah, it's when you ... yeah, it's when your nose ... Hang on, that's 'bend a smartie'..."

"Er--" said Rincewind, clutching his head.

"What? 'Bend a smartie' is when your ears get blocked underwater." Clancy looked uncertain, and then seemed to reach a decision. "Yeah, that's right!"

"Nah, that's 'gonging like a possum's armpit,' mate."

"Excuse me--" said Rincewind.

"That ain't right. 'Gonging like a possum's armpit' is when you crack a crusty. When your ears are stuffed like a Mudjee's kettle after a week of Fridays, that's 'stuck up like Morgan's mule.'"

--Fun with lingo

[The book] had consisted of lots of small pages on a central spiral. Each one showed the head, body or tail of some bird, fish or animal. It was possible for the sufficiently bored to shuffle and turn them so that you got, say, a creature with the head of a horse, the body of a beetle and the tail of a fish. The cover promised 'hours of fun' although, after the first three minutes, you couldn't help wondering what kind of person could make that kind of fun last for hours, and whether suffocating him as kindly as possible now would save the Serial Crimes Squad a lot of trouble in years to come.

God: "Oh yes, you can't beat a beetle when you're feeling down. Sometimes I think it's what it's all about, you know."
Ponder: "What all?"
God: "Everything. The whole thing. Trees, grass, flowers... What did you think it was all for?"
Ponder: "Well, I didn't think it was for beetles. What about, well, what about the elephant, for a start?"
God: "Dung."
Ponder: "What? That's rather a lot of trouble to go to just for dung, isn't it?"
God: "That's ecology for you, I'm afraid."

Ponder: "I mean, wouldn't it be nice if you ended up with some creature that started to think about the universe--?"
God: "Good gravy, I don't want anything poking around!"

...in that moment he knew that, despite the apparent beetle fixation, here was where he'd always wanted to be, at the cutting edge of the envelope in the fast lane of the state of the art.

"And all this, er, this sex is done by unskilled labour?"

-- God learns about reproduction

"The only thing I think I don't quite understand," he said, " is why any creature would want to spend time on all this..." he peered at his notes, "this sex, when they could be enjoying themselves ... Oh, dear, your associate seems to be choking this time, I'm afraid..."

-- God learns more about reproduction

God: "I'm afraid as a... well, species, we're not good with, you know, defiance. I'm so sorry. So sorry. Oh, dear. There I go again... I hope it's not going to be the city of Quint all over again. Of course, you know what happened there..."
Ponder: "I've never heard of the city of Quint."
God: "Yes, I suppose you wouldn't have. That's the whole point, really. It wasn't much of a city. It was mostly made of mud. Well, I say mud. Afterwards, of course, it was mainly ceramics."

"You know, the more I think about it, the more I can see that 'sex' will solve practically all my problems."

"Not everyone can say that," said Ridcully gravely.

It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.

"Can he do miracles, then?"

"I'm not sure. When we left they were talking about redesigning male babboons' behinds to make them more attractive."

"That'd be a miracle in my book, certainly."

Rincewind had eaten in many countries on the Disc, and sometimes he'd been able to complete an entire meal before having to run away.

Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn't it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food. In fact, when you thought about it beer was only a kind of runny bread, in fact, it 'd be better to use some of the beer in the soup! Beer soup! A few brain cells registered their doubt, but the rest of them grabbed them by the collar and said hoarsely, people cooked chicken in wine, didn't they?

...there'd been the time when it had seemed a really good idea to eat some flour and yeast and then drink some warm water, because he'd run out of bread and after all that was what the stomach saw, wasn't it?

Probably full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Most things you couldn't believe the taste of generally were...

Practically anyone will crack before a sheep cracks. A sheep hasn't got much that's crackable.

Ridcully's eyes twinkled behind the smoke and, not for the first time, Ponder suspected the man was sometimes rather cleverer than he appeared. It would not be hard.

Rincewind: "So what's going to happen to me?"
Warder: "Gonna hang you by the neck until you're dead, mate. Tomorrow morno."
Rincewind: "You couldn't perhaps just hang me by my neck until I'm sorry?"

He gazed around the cell. It looked as though whoever'd built it had unaccountably forgotten to include any useful trapdoors.

Rincewind: "Is there a chance that you're going to fall asleep in a chair opposite this cell with your keys fully exposed on a table in front of you?"
Warder: "I'd have to get someone to help me bring a table down here."

Warder: "Worked out what yew're gonna say on the gallows, have yer? Only some of the ballad-writers want to know, if yew wouldn't mind."
Rincewind: "Ballads?"
Warder: "Oh, yeah. There's three so far and I reckon there'll be ten by tomorra."
Rincewind: "How many of them have put 'too-ra-la, too-ra-la addity' in the chorus?"
Warder: "All of them."
Rincewind: "Oh, gods..."

...these men definitely had the heavy-set look of men who occupy the kind of job where the entrance examination is 'What is your name?' and they scrape through on the third try.

Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a "regional specialty," because all the term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their legs rather than eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: "Go on, have the dog's head stuffed with macerated cabbage and pork noses -- it's a regional specialty."

"Ah, supper," said Rincewind, as realization dawned. "This is one of those late-night, after-the-pub foods, right? And what kind of meat is in it? No, forget I asked, it's a stupid question. I know this sort of food. If you have to ask 'What kind of meat is in it?', you're too sober."

Warder: "Got any requests for your last breakfast?"
Rincewind: "Something that takes a really really long time to prepare?"

"Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?"

YES.

"Ghastly thought, really." Rincewind shuddered. "Oh, gods, I've just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die, and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?"

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED "LIVING."

The Ecksians didn't look like the kind of people who went in for torture, although it was always possible they might make him eat some more of their food.

Ponder: "We'll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour."
Ridcully: "Among wizards? Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards."
Ponder: "People acting out of character, then! Talking sense for two minutes, perhaps!"

Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it.

What Rincewind looked for in a good gaol were guards who, instead of ruining everyone's night by prowling around the corridors, got together in one room with a few tins and a pack of cards and relaxed. It made it so much more... friendly. And, of course, easier to walk past.

Rincewind: "Um ... I know this may seem a somewhat esoteric question, but what's in the meat pies?"
Dibbler: "Meat."
Rincewind: "And what kind of meat?"
Dibbler: "Ah, you want one of the gourmet meat pies, then?"

There is no such thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato sauce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish 'n' chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can't use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don't apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It's just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort, and seek it out. It's as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book.

Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza.

He'd eaten Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler's sausages-in-a-bun, and Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala's funny-coloured antique eggs. And he'd survived, although there had been a few minutes when he'd hoped he wouldn't. He'd eaten Al-Jiblah's highly suspicious cous-cous, drunk the terrible yak-butter tea made by May-I-Never-Achieve-Enlightenment Dhiblang, forced down the topless, bottomless smorgasbord of Dib Diblossonson and tried not to chew the lumps of unmentionable blubber purveyed by May-I-Be-Kicked-In-My-Own-Ice-Hole Dibooki (his stomach heaved at the memory of that -- after all, it was one thing to butcher dead beached whales and quite another just to leave them there until they exploded into bite sized chunks of their own accord). As for the green beer made by Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dlang-Dlang...

He'd drunk and eaten all these things. Everywhere in the world, someone turned up out of some strange primal mould to sell him a really dreadful regional delicacy.

The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time.

...in the case of wizards non-magical fighting usually means flailing ineffectually at the opponent while trying to keep out of his way.

"At least I got higher marks than you and am noticably thinner than the Dean! Although a great many things are!"

The Dean took a deep breath, and when the Dean took a deep breath appreciably less air was left in the atmosphere.

Ridcully: "Are they sharks, do you think?"
Dean: "Could be tuna."
Wrangler: "How can you reliably tell the difference?"
Ponder: "You could count their teeth on the way down."

Ridcully flailed at a passing shark. "They won't attack you if you make a lot of noise and splash around," he said.

"I thought that's when they will attack you, sir," Ponder called out.

"Ah, an interesting practical experiment," said the Dean, craining to watch.

"Well, she knew the risks when she got the job," said the Dean.

"What?" said the Senior Wrangler. "Are you saying that before you apply for the job of housekeeper of a university you should seriously consider being eaten by sharks on the shores of some mysterious continent thousands of years before you are born?"

"She didn't ask that many questions at the interview, I know that."

"You mean you've got me cornered and you aren't going to arrest me?" he said.

"We-ell, it wouldn't look good in the ballad, would it?" said the guard. "You've got to think about these things." He leaned on the doorway. "Now, there's the old Post Office in Grurt Street. I reckon a man could hold out for two, maybe three days there, no worries. Then you could run out, we shoot you full of arrows, you utter some famous last words... kids'll be learnin' about you in school in a hundred years' time, I'll bet."

"I've made it to the docks, okay? I can outrun them! I can lie low! I know how to stow away, throw up, get discovered, be thrown over the side, stay afloat for two days by clinging to an old barrel and eating plankton sieved through my beard, carefully negotiate the treacherous coral reef surrounding an atoll and survive by eating yams!"

"That's a very special talent you got there," said the kangaroo.

Rincewind: "You mean this whole place is a prison?"
Scrappy: "Yep. But the Ecksians say this is the best bloody place in the world, so there's no point in going anywhere else anyway."

One of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather. [Footnote: This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell's Angels.]

Although Rincewind had covered quite a lot of the disc in his life, most of his recollections were like that -- a blur. Not through forgetfulness, but because of speed.

Darleen kicked a fishnet leg at a man trying to climb on the cart, causing with a stiletto heel what bromide in your tea is reputed to take several weeks to achieve.

"You know, I still think it would help if we thought of all this as a valuable opportunity," said Ridcully.

"That's true," said the Dean, sitting up. "It's not many times in your life you get the chance to die of hunger on some bleak continent thousands of years before you're born. We should make the most of it."

"Well, thank you," said the Dean, behind them. "I feel lovely and dry now, and I never did like my eyebrows all that much."

"I actually... hwee... feel like a twenty-four-year-old who has been hit by eighty years travelling at... hwee... speed."

Ponder: "And... hwee... now I think my memory's going..."
Ridcully: "What makes you think that?"
Ponder: "Think what?"

"[Aging] was like wearing a lead suit! I never want to go through that again!"

"Suicide's your best bet, then," said Ridcully.

"Is this going to happen again?"

"Probably. At least once, anyway."

The brain has far less control over the body than the body does over the brain. And adolescence is not a good time. Nor is old age, for that matter, but at least the spots have cleared up, some of the more troublesome glands have settled down and you're allowed to take a nap in the afternoons and twinkle at young women.

...it seemed to the Bursar that there were other people here. He couldn't see them or hear them, but something in his bones sensed them. However, the Bursar was also quite accustomed to the presence of people who couldn't be seen or heard by anyone else, and had spent many a pleasant hour in conversation with historical figures and, sometimes, the wall.

"Is that my underwear? Would I be seen dead in something like that? Yes, as a matter of fact I suspect I would."

"Tell me," she said. "Do you get about much?"

"You'd be amazed," said Rincewind.

"And you meet all kinds of people?"

"Generally the nastier kind, I have to admit."

The Luggage wandered over to the wall at the end of the alley and kicked it until there was a decent-sized hole. On the way back it clogged a watchman who was unwise enough to stir.

Neilette: "We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?"
Rincewind: "Why?"
Neilette: "It saves time."

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

Rincewind: "Please don't go! I need someone like you! As an interpreter!"
Neilette: "What do you mean? We speak the same language!"
Rincewind: "Really? Stubbies here are really short shorts or small beer bottles. How often do newcomers confuse the two?"
Neilette: "Not more than once."

"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."

"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?

All the buildings were low but had big wide roofs, giving the effect you might get if someone stepped on a lot of square mushrooms. If they had been painted, it had been an historical event, probably coming somewhere between Fire and the Invention of the Wheel.

"Excuse me?" said Rincewind. "By 'Hell' do you mean some hot red place?"

"Yes!"

"Really? How do Ecksians know when they've got there? The beer's warmer?"

--  Australia  Ecksecksecksecks vs. Hell

"You got a first name? Mine's Bill."

" 's a good name, Bill Rincewind. Dunno if I've even got a first name."

"What do people usually call you, mate?"

"Well, they usually say, 'Stop him!'" said Rincewind, and took a deep draught of beer. "Of course, that's just a nickname. When they want to be formal they shout 'Don't let him get away!'"

Rincewind had never studied meteorology, although he had been an end-user all his life.

"Can I have another beer? It's amazing, it doesn't feem to have any essect on me, no matter how much I dnirk. Helps me think clearerer."

...Ecksians weren't the kind of people to let a brewery burn. It didn't matter that there was no beer in it. There was a principle at stake.

"So now we know," said Archchancellor Rincewind. "We've got to keep you just drunk enough so that Dibbler's pies sound tasty, but not so drunk that it causes lasting brain damage."

"That's a very narrow range we've got there," said the Dean.

"Prob'ly only works here," said Rincewind. "The more geography you've got, the less hist'ry, ever notice that? More space, less time. I bet it only took a second or two for this place to be here for thousands of years, see? Shorter on the outside. Makes serfect pense."

"I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that," said the Dean.

...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.

There was a curious freedom at a time like this. He was going to be in real trouble whatever he did, so he might as well give this a try...

Wizards had a hard job accepting the term "clear and present danger". They liked the kind you could argue about.

The ability to ask questions like "Where am I and who is the 'I' that is asking?" is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish. [Footnote: Although of course it's not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations.]

"Still... nice little place you've got here... archchancellor."

Ridcully pronounced the word very carefully in order to accentuate the lower case 'a'.

Ridcully: "Perhaps we could set up a student exchange, that sort of thing?"
Bill: "Good idea."
Ridcully: "You can have six of mine in exchange for a decent lawnmower. Ours has broken."

Neilette: "You wouldn't like to stay? You look like someone with ideas."
Rincewind: "It's a nice offer, but I think I ought to stick to what I do best."
Neilette: "But everyone says you're no good at magic!"
Rincewind: "Er ... yes, well, being no good at magic is what I do best."

"You keep one of the best condemned cells I've ever stayed in, and I've been in a few."

Bill: "Want to stay here? I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference."
Rincewind: "Did he? What did he say?"
Bill: "He said if I could get you to do any work for me I'd be lucky."