The Last Continent (Discworld 22)

'Just tomato sauce,' said the Dean. 'It could have happened to anyone.'

'I meant about our being marooned on this island,' said Ridcully. 'Any ideas, anyone? We must tackle this as a team.'

'What shall we tell Mrs Whitlow?' whispered the Senior Wrangler. 'She thinks this is a prank.'

'Senior Wrangler, we are elderly, wise and experienced wizards,' said Ridcully. 'Students are prankers.'

'Pranksters, possibly,' mumbled Ponder Stibbons. 'Whatever. 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. 'I don't see why people are making such a fuss about a bit of tomato sauce that hardly even shows up,' muttered the Dean. 'No one brought any suitable spells?' said Ridcully. 'At four in the morning? For the beach?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Of course not.' Then we shall have to fall back on our own resources. There's bound to be a ship along sooner or later. The point is, gentlemen,' he added, 'that we are the product of a university education. I'm quite sure primitive people have no difficulties surviving in a place like this, and think of all the things we have that our rude forefathers lacked.'

'Mrs Whitlow, for a start,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'She wouldn't put up with rudeness of any sort,' the Senior Wrangler agreed. 'Do you know anything about boats, Dean? I believe you got a Brown for rowing when you were slimmer,' said Ridcully. 'Please note that this question did not raise the matter of sheets in any way.'

'Well, indeed, boat-building is not a difficult task,' said the Dean, surfacing. 'Even primitive people can build boats, and we are civilized men, after all.' Then you're head of the Boat-Building Committee,' said Ridcully. 'Senior Wrangler can help you. The rest of you fellows had better see if there's any fresh water. And food. Knock down a few coconuts. That sort of thing.'

'And what will you do, Archchancellor?' said the Senior Wrangler nastily. 'I shall be the Protein Acquisition Committee,' said Ridcully, waving his fishing rod.

'You going to stand here and fish again? What good's that going to do?'

'It might result in a fish dinner, Senior Wrangler.'

'Has anyone got any tobacco?' said the Dean. 'I'm dying for a smoke.' The wizards went off about their tasks, complaining and blaming one another. And just inside the forest, in the leafy debris, roots unfolded and a number of very small plants began to grow like hell . . . 'This is the last continent,' said Scrappy. 'It was . . . put together last, and . . . differently.'

'Looks pretty old to me,' said Rincewind. 'Ancient. Those hills look as old as the hills.'

'They were made thirty thousand years old,' said the kangaroo. 'Come on! They look millions of years old!'

'Yep. Thirty thousand years ago they were made a million years ago. Time here is,' the kangaroo shrugged, 'not the same. It was . . . glued together differently, right?'

'Search me,' said Rincewind. 'I'm a man sitting here listening to a kangaroo. I'm not arguing.'

'I'm trying to find words you might understand,' said the kangaroo reproachfully. 'Good, keep going, you'll get there. Want a jam sandwich? It's gooseberry.'

'No. Strictly herbivore, mate. Listen—'

'Unusual, gooseberry jam. I mean, you don't often see it. Raspberry and strawberry, yes, even blackcurrant. I shouldn't think more than one jar of jam in a hundred is gooseberry. Sorry, do go on.'

'You're taking this seriously, are you?'

'Am I smiling?'

'Have you ever noticed how time goes slower in big spaces?' The sandwich stopped halfway to Rincewind's mouth. 'Actually, that is true. But it only seems slower.'

'So? When this place was made there wasn't much space and time left over to work with, see? He had to bodge them together to make them work harder. Time happens to space and space happens to time—'

'You know, I think there could be plum in it, too?' said Rincewind, with his mouth full. 'And maybe some rhubarb. You'd be amazed how often they do that sort of thing. You know, stuff cheaper fruit in. I met this man in an inn once, he worked for a jam-maker in Ankh-Morpork, and he said they put in any old rubbish and some red dye, and I said what about the raspberry pips, and he said they make them out of wood. Wood! He said they'd got a machine for stamping 'em out. Can you believe that?'

'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?'

'Look, this place wasn't finished, right? It wasn't fitted in . . . turned around . . .' The kangaroo looked at Rincewind as if reading his mind, which was the case. 'You know like with a jigsaw puzzle? The last piece is the right shape but you have to turn it round to fit? Right? Now think of the piece as a bloody big continent that's got to be turned around through about nine dimensions and you're home and . . .'

'Dry?' 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—'