The Last Continent (Discworld 22)

'Still not quite with you—' Two fingers went up. 'Ook ook?'

'Not sure I fully—'

'Ook ook ook!' Ponder Stibbons looked at the three fingers now raised. 'I think he's counting, sir.' The Librarian handed him a banana.

'Ah, the old “How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?” game,' said the Dean. 'But usually we all have to have a bit more to drink first—' The Librarian waved his hand at the fish, at the meal, at the shells and at the background of trees. One finger stabbed at the sky. 'Ook!'

'It's all one to you?' said Ridcully. 'It's one big place? It's one to remember?' The Librarian opened his mouth again, and then sneezed. A very large red seashell lay on the sand. 'Oh, dear,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'That's interesting,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He's turned into quite a good specimen of the giant conch. You can get a marvellous sound out of one of them if you blow in the pointy end . . .'

'Volunteers?' said the Dean, almost under his breath. 'Oh, dear,' said Ponder again. 'What's up with you?' said the Dean. 'There's only one,' said Ponder. 'That's what he was trying to tell us.'

'One what?' said Ridcully. 'Of everything, sir. There's only one of everything.' It was, he thought later, a good dramatic line. People ought to have looked at one another in growing and horrified realization and said things like, 'By George, you know, he's right!' But these were wizards, capable of thinking very big thoughts in very small chunks. 'Don't be daft, man,' said Ridcully. There's millions of the damn shells, for a start.'

'Yes, sir, but look, they're all different, sir. All the trees we found . . . there was only one of each sort, sir. Lots of banana trees, but they all produce different types of bananas. There was only one cigarette tree, wasn't there?'

'Lots of bees, though,' said Ridcully. 'But only one swarm,' said Ponder. 'Millions of beetles,' said the Dean. 'I don't think I've seen two alike, sir.'

'Well, that's interesting,' said Ridcully, 'but I don't see—'

'One of anything doesn't work, sir,' said Ponder. 'It can't breed.'

'Yes, but they're only trees, Stibbons.'

'Trees need males and females too, sir.'

'They do?'

'Yes, sir. Sometimes they're different bits of the same tree, sir.'

'What? You sure?'

'Yes, sir. My uncle grew nuts, sir.'

'Keep it down, boy, keep it down! Mrs Whitlow might hear you!' Ponder was taken aback. 'What, sir? But . . . well . . . she is Mrs Whitlow, sir . . .'

'What's that got to do with the price of feet?'

'I mean . . . presumably there was a Mr Whitlow, sir?' Ridcully's face went wooden for a moment and his lips moved as he tried out various responses. Finally he settled, weakly, for: 'That's as maybe, but it all sounds pretty mucky to me.'

'I'm afraid that's nature for you, sir.'

'I used to like walking through the woods on a nice spring morning, Stibbons. You mean to say the trees were at it like knives the whole time?' Ponder's horticultural knowledge found itself a little exhausted at this point. He tried to remember what he could about his uncle, who'd spent most of his life up a ladder. 'I, er, think camel-hair brushes are sometimes involved—' he began, but Ridcully's expression told him that this wasn't a welcome fact, so he went on, 'Anyway, sir, ones don't work. And there's another thing, sir. Who smokes the ciga rettes? I mean, if the bush just hopes that butts are going to be dropped around the place, who does it think is going to smoke them?'

'What?' Ponder sighed. The point about fruit, sir, is that it's a kind of lure. A bird'll eat the fruit and then, er, drop the seeds somewhere. It's the way the plant spreads its seeds around. But we've only seen birds and a few lizards on this island, so how—'

'Ah, I see what you mean,' said Ridcully. 'You're thinking: what kind of bird stops flyin' around for a quick smoke?'

'A puffin,' said the Bursar. 'Glad to see you're still with us, Bursar,' said Ridcully, without looking round. 'Birds don't smoke, sir. You've got to ask yourself what's in it for the bush, you see? If there were people here, well, I suppose you might get a sort of nicotine tree eventually, because they'd smoke the cigarettes – I mean,' he corrected himself, because he prided himself on his logical thought, 'these things that look like cigarettes, and stub them out around the place, thus spreading the seeds which are in the filter. Some seeds need heat to germinate, sir. But if there aren't any people, the bush doesn't make any sense.'

'We're people,' said the Dean. 'And I like a smoke after supper. Everyone knows that.'

'Yes, but with respect, sir, we've only been here a couple of hours and I doubt whether the news has spread all the way to small islands,' said Ponder patiently, and with, as it turned out, one hundred per cent inaccuracy. That's probably not long enough for one to evolve.'

'Are you tellin' me', said Ridcully, like a man with something on his mind, 'that you think when you eat an apple you're helping it to . . .' He stopped. 'It was bad enough about the trees.' He sniffed. 'I shall stick to eating fish. At least they make their own arrangements. At a decent distance, I understand. And you know what I think about evolution, Mister Stibbons. If it happens, and frankly I've always considered it a bit of a fairy story, it has to happen fast. Look at lemmings, for one thing.'

'Lemmings, sir?'

'Right. The little blighters keep chargin' over cliffs, right? And how many have ever changed into birds on the way down, eh? Eh?'