The Last Continent (Discworld 22)

'Er . . .' said the Dean. It was only a little sound, but it had a certain portentous quality. They turned to look at him. He'd been peeling away the yellowing husk from something like a small bean pod. What he now held— 'Hah, yes, good joke,' said Ridcully. 'They certainly don't grow on—'

'I didn't do anything! Look, it's still got bits of pith and stuff on it!' said the Dean, waving the thing wildly. Ridcully took it, sniffed it, held it up to his ear and shook it, and then said quietly: 'Show me where you found it, will you?' The bush was in a small clearing. Dozens of the little green shoots hung down between its tiny leaves. Each was tipped by a flower, but the flowers were curling up and falling off. The crop was ripe. Multi-coloured beetles zoomed away from the bush as the Dean selected a pod and peeled it open, revealing a slightly damp white cylinder. He examined it for a few seconds, then put one end in his mouth, took a box of matches from a pocket in his hat, and lit up. 'Quite a smooth smoke,' he said. His hand shook slightly as he took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew a smoke ring. 'Cork filter, too,' he said. 'Er . . . well, both tobacco and cork are naturally occurring vegetable products,' quavered the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Chair?' said Ridcully.

'Yes, Archchancellor?'

'Shut up, will you?'

'Yes, Archchancellor.' Ponder Stibbons broke open a cork tip. There was a tiny ring of what well might have been— 'Seeds,' he said. 'But that can't be right, because—' The Dean, wreathed in blue smoke, had been staring at the nearby vines. 'Has it occurred to anyone else that those pods are remarkably rectangular?' he said. 'Go for it, Dean,' said Ridcully. A brown outer husk was pulled aside. 'Ah,' said the Dean. 'Biscuits. Just the thing with cheese.'

'Er . . ,' said Ponder. He pointed. Just beyond the bush a couple of boots lay on the ground. Rincewind ran his fingers over the cave wall. The ground shook again. 'What's causing that?' he said. 'Oh, some people say it's an earthquake, some say it's the country drying up, others say it's a giant snake rushing through the ground,' said Scrappy. 'Which is it?' The wrong sort of question.' They definitely looked like wizards, thought Rincewind. They had that basic cone shape familiar to anyone who had been to Unseen University. They were holding staffs. Even with the crude materials available to them the ancient artists had managed to portray the knobs on the ends. But UU hadn't even existed thirty thousand years ago . . . Then he noticed, for the first time, the drawing right at the end of the cave. There were a lot of the ochre handprints on top of it, almost – and the thought expanded in his mind in a sneaky way -as though someone had thought that they could hold it down on to the rock, prevent it – this was a silly thought, he knew – prevent it from getting out.

He brushed away some dust. 'Oh, no,' he mumbled. It was an oblong box. The artist hadn't got the hang of conventional perspective, but there was no doubt that he'd tried to paint hundreds of little legs. 'That's my Luggage!'

'Always the same, right?' said Scrappy, behind him. 'You arrive okay and your luggage ends up somewhere else.' Thousands of years in the past?'

'Could be a valuable antique.'

'It's got my clothes in it!'

'They'll probably be back in style, then.'

'You don't understand! It's a magical box! It's supposed to end up where I am!'

'It probably is where you are. Just not when.'

'What? Oh.'

'I told you time and space were all stirred up, didn't I? You wait till you're on your journey. There's places where there's several times happening at once and places where there's hardly any time at all, and times when there's hardly any place. You've got to sort it out, right?'

'What, like shuffling cards?' said Rincewind. He made a mental note about 'on your journey'. 'Yep.' That's impossible!'

'Y'know, I'd have said so too. But you will do it. Now, you'll have to concentrate about this bit, right?' Scrappy took a deep breath. 'I know you're going to do it because you've already done it.' Rincewind put his head in his hands. 'I told you about time and space here being mixed up,' said the kangaroo. 'I've already saved the country, have I?'

'Yep.'

'Oh, good. Well, that wasn't so difficult. I don't want much – a medal, perhaps, the grateful thanks of the population, maybe a small pension and a ticket home . . .' He looked up. 'I'm not going to get any of that, though, am I?'

'No, because—'

' said Rincewind. 'Bloody right!'

'Er . . . I know this may seem like a foolish question,' said Rincewind, trying to dislodge a gooseberry pip from a tooth cavity, 'but why me?'

'It's your fault. You arrived here and suddenly things had always been wrong.' Rincewind looked back towards the wall. The earth trembled again. 'Can you hop that past me again?' he said. 'Something went wrong in the past.' The kangaroo looked at Rincewind's blank, jam-smeared expression, and tried again. 'Your arrival caused a wrong note,' it ventured. 'What in?' The creature waved a paw vaguely. 'All this,' it said. 'You could call it a bloody multi-dimensional knuckle of localized phase space, or maybe you could just call it the song.'

Rincewind shrugged. 'I don't mind putting my hand up to killing a few spiders,' he said. 'But it was me or them. I mean some of those come at you at head height—'

'You changed history.'

'Oh, come on, a few spiders don't make that much difference, some of them were using their webs as trampolines, it was a case of “boing” and next moment—'

'No, not history from now on, history that's already happened,' said the kangaroo. 'I've changed things that already happened long ago?'

'Right.'

'By arriving here I changed what's already happened!'

'Yep. Look, time isn't as straightforward as you think—'