. . . whummwhummWHUMMWHUMMWHUMMMMwhumm.
All he had to do was cut across through the cloisters and . . .
PLIB.
All eight pottery elephants shot pellets at once. The resograph exploded, turning the roof into something like a pepper shaker.
After a minute or two Ponder got up, very carefully. His hat was simply a collection of holes held together by thread. A piece had been taken out of one of his ears.
'I only wanted a drink,' he said, muzzily. 'What's wrong with that?'
The Librarian crouched on the dome of the Library, watching the crowds scurrying through the streets as the monstrous figure lurched nearer.
He was slightly surprised to see it followed by some sort of spectral horse whose hooves made no sound on the cobbles.
And that was followed by a three-wheeled bathchair that took the corner on only two of them, sparks streaming away behind it. It was loaded down with wizards, all shouting at the tops of their voices. Occasionally one of them would lose his grip and have to run behind until he could get up enough speed to leap on again.
Three of them hadn't made it. That is, one of them had made it sufficiently to get a grip on the trailing leather cover, and the other two had made it just enough to grab the robe of the one in front, so that now, every time it took a bend, a tail of three wizards going 'whaaaaa' snapped wildly across the road behind it.
There were also a number of civilians, but if anything they were shouting louder than the wizards.
The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that was undoubtedly the 57th strangest.[28]
Up here the could very clearly hear the voices.
'-got to keep it turning! He can only make it work if you keep it turning! It's Holy Wood magic! He's making it work in the real world!' That was a girl's voice.
'All right, but the imps get very fractious if-' That was a man's voice under extreme pressure.
'Bugger the imps!'
'How can he make a horse?' That was the Dean. The Librarian recognized the whine. 'That's high-grade magic!'
'It's not a real horse, it's a moving-picture horse.' The girl again. 'You! You're slowing down!'
'I'm not! I'm not! Look, I'm turning the handle, I'm turning the handle!'
'He can't ride on a horse that isn't real!'
'You're a magician and you really believe that?'
'Wizard, actually.'
'Well, whatever. This isn't your kind of magic.'
The Librarian nodded, and then stopped listening. He had other things to do.
The Thing was almost level with the Tower of Art, and would soon turn to head for the Library. Things always homed in on the nearest source of magic. They needed it.
The Librarian had found a long iron pike in one of the University's mouldering storerooms. He held it carefully in one foot while he unfastened the rope he'd tied to the weathercock. It stretched all the way up to the top of the Tower; it had taken him all night to fix it up.
He surveyed the city below, and then pounded his chest and roared:
'AaaaAAAaaaAAA - hngh, hngh.'
Maybe the pounding wasn't entirely necessary, he thought, while he waited for the buzzing noises and little flashing lights to go away.
He gripped the pike in one hand, the rope in the other, and leapt.