"De Chelonian Mobile"
Inspired by the throwaway line in "The Light Fantastic" about the research wizards - naturally celibate men - Borrowing the mind of Great A'Tuin. Add in the message from "Good Omens" about what al tapes played in cars eventually turn into...
"Sti-BONNS!"
It was the same tone of voice in which the Arch-chancellor had once bellowed "Bur-SARRRR!" in every expectation of immediate obedience and attention. In fact, the Bursar went stiff and straight and whimpered slightly, according to painful conditioning, but then he realised it wasn't meant for him, and he relaxed into a happy exploration of Dried Frog World, subsiding into his comfy chair in the Uncommon Room.
"Sti-BONNS!"
~~I BELIEVE IT IS FOR YOU, OLD MAN~~ said the eerie disembodied voice of Simon, from his wheelchair. Ponder Stibbons frowned. He'd have to do something about that voice, that put stresses and intonations in entirely the wrong places and made the poor chap sound like a golem with a speech impediment. But first… Ponder sighed, and put down the copy of New Alchemist magazine next to the Scientifick Pseudopolitian. He could catch up with the academic trade press later. But, in his unwanted but necessary roles a de facto acting Bursar, in addition to de facto acting Dean, as well as de facto acting Vice-Chancellor, he'd better go and find out what Ridcully wanted him for now.
Other members of the Faculty grinned mirthlessly as he scuttled out. As far as they were concerned, if the lad wanted all the work, he was welcome to it. Even if it did make him the second most powerful Wizard on the Disc, a consequence they had been slow to realise, they were all aware that ultimate power derived from the Arch-Chancellor's office. And it was, in the way of these things, exacting its price.
"You wanted to see me, sir?" Ponder asked, politely.
Mustrum Ridcully put his snooker cue down and picked up a report from the top of a teetering pile.
"Cost-cuttin', lad." he said, briskly. "All these damn' research committees that haven't met in decades, but I notice we still have wizards claimin' allowance expenses for. You know as well as I do that once we set a committee up, it's established until we actually make a decision to close it down again! And hell's bells, there are committees on this list from way back.
"The Enquirie Commityee Ynto Ye Dissapparition of Ye Kanzler Alberto Malyche, for instance. Have you any idea as to how long ago Chancellor Malich went missing, lad?"
"Twenty years ago, sir? I believe he briefly re-appeared and tried to take the university over again, but the Librarian and Professor Rincewind colluded to return him to Death…"(1)
"And we promptly set up a SECOND committee to review the evidence of the findings of the first, present an overview of the second coming of Malich, and to actively discourage a third, as I am told! But that first damn' committee has been in existence for two thousand years, man!"
"Surely none of the original members is still alive to claim attendance expenses, sir?"
Ridcully fixed Stibbons with a beady eye.
"They bequeath Committee membership in their will. Usually with a codicil to say "here's a nice little earner." I want it stoppin', lad!"
"Surely that's easy, if meetings are scheduled but nobody turns up? Nobody attends, therefore no attendance money."
"Not if the meetin's are scheduled for Committee Room 3B, lad."
"Ah" said Stibbons, realising the difficulty. Anything numbered 3B was subject to different rules of space and time. Wizards and students timetabled for lectures there, for instance, all took the point of view that if anything you could imagine was happening somewhere in an infinite Multiverse, then some other me is giving/attending the lecture, so I can stay in bed with a clear conscience. If it's a committee meeting, with paid expenses, then some other me is doing the work and I can legitimately stay at home and claim the pay, on the grounds that it's all me, ultimately, and it all evens out at the other end of the elasticated string.
"Deal with it, lad." said Ridcully, kindly.
"Now here's another one. The Grayt A'Tuin Projeccte. Says here this has been in continuous existence for fifteen hundred years. Care to tell me about it?"
Ponder was readier for this one.
"Isn't that the one where successive generations of research wizards sought to Borrow the inside of Great A'Tuin's head and find out what exactly He - or She – was thinking?"
"As I understand it, the biggest issue was working out if the Turtle was a He or a She in the first place!" Ridcully barked. "People were worried about what might happen if it met another dam' Star Turtle out there and they got the urge to do somethin' unhygienic. I trust I don't have to draw you a picture?"
Ponder shuddered. He wasn't against sex by any means – both he and his girlfriend had come to it later in life, at the turn of their thirties, and were industriously making up for lost time – but he was squeamish about the sort of way the Arch-chancellor might explain it. He changed the subject instead.
"Sir. At the time the Krullians were attempting to resolve the problem by expending the greater part of their gross domestic product in throwing exploration ships over the edge of the Disc when throw-off conditions were right – ie, when the normal rotation of the Disc put them directly above the Turtle's tail. The only drawback being was that retrieving the ship again was a distinctly hit-and-miss affair. The cable attached to it might snap under its own weight and mass; often the ship drifted so far away from the Disc that it could never be retrieved, and they only very rarely got anyone back. But it never stopped them trying!"(2)
They must have got some or two back? We discovered on that trip to the Moon that the Disc's blasted gravity field thingie draws things back to itself eventually."
Yes, sir. But you can't get much useful mission information out of a molten bronze meteor re-entering the atmosphere at a hundred thousand feet. And the Gods traditionally don't like anyone looking down on them, so they tended to view re-entrants as target practice for thunderbolts and lightning. Umm."
"So we at Unseen University chose to do different, as one of our University mottos declares."(3)
"Yes, sir. We had heard about the practice of Borrowing from witches. A noted thinker of the day had the brainwave. Why didn't we devote research time to attempting to Borrow Grand A'Tuin's mind, ride as passengers, and eavesdrop His - or Her – thoughts. This way we wouldn't lose too many people and it could be done at minimal research cost, as all it required was a quiet dark room and a couch."
Ponder paused, reflectively.
"Of course, we didn't realise how slow the thought processes would be in a mind that large. In the end, teams of wizards worked in shifts on the project. For over a thousand years."
"And all they could work out was that the Turtle was going somewhere and looking forward to arriving. And then we had the Time of the Red Star."(4)
Yes, sir. We started to receive urgent messages that some sort of arrival was imminent, and we stepped up the Project for the last thirty years before… before Professor Rincewind again saved the world." said Stibbons. He took a sly pleasure in watching Ridcully wince at being reminded. Such moments were few and he savoured them as guilty pleasures.
"And we realised that in all probability Great A'Tuin is more likely to be female. As - she – took an interest in them blasted eggs, and watched them hatch. Then.. she… shooed them off into safe deep space. As a mother would. Any news of them, Stibbons?"
"Our best telescopes and farseers have been watching, sir. But they're now getting beyond the range of anything except HEX."
Ridcully summarised.
"So all this rather took the wind out of this project, Stibbons. What urgency as remained evaporated as since the Star Turtle had now got to where it wanted to go, it really didn't have much left to think about."
"And the Project was having difficulty recruiting new graduate Wizards, sir. Lying there trying to slow your mind to turtle pace isn't exactly as exciting as working for Professor Hix in Necro…Post-Mortem Communications, after all."
"Are any of them still alive, Stibbons? All this was over twenty years ago, and they must have been old wizards then."
"I'll make enquiries, sir. I take it you want me to wrap up the Turtle Project?"
"Close it down, Stibbons. Just to cover our backs, write a report on the low probability of our turtle being ambushed by a randy male of the species, something to keep Vetinari and his Public Safety Committee happy, and I'll initial it for the Palace. Then round up any old wizards as are still alive, and I'll organise a retirement party and a gold clock for each of 'em."
The two wizards smiled and nodded. They worked together and understood each other.
"Now, Stibbons. The Hazard Investigation Committee into the Safe Use of Seven League Boots. Great gods, does anyone still try to use those blasted things? "
Ponder's inquiries, into where the last few dwindling threads of Project Turtle had gone to, led him, not to his great surprise, to the City Zoo. On its establishment a year or two previously, an entire University department had transferred out here, preferring to be in at the ground floor with purpose-built buildings to continue its research work, together with a place for the University's own animal population to be safely housed and gathered together, in such a way that it might even bring back some sort of net profit. Ridcully had been eager to assist – Thaumoturgy's blasted colonies of tigers and crocodiles needed secure mundane fences and concrete walls around the buggers, not just insecure and wonky magical restriction fields. They'd also devoured the occasional unwary student, which made for Paperwork, a thing Ridcully was keen to avoid. Also, if that girl was prepared to house and feed 'em, we cut her a deal on all the admission money people pay to see 'em!
And so the Unseen University School of Exo-zoology, Quasi-Zoology and Cryptozoology (incorporating the Department of Thamaturgy) had been born on the Zoo site.
It attracted lean and thoughtful young research wizards, men who found the animals they tended and the academic issues they raised to be so absorbing that they often needed to be reminded to eat.
Ponder Stibbons found the Foureksian exchange wizard Doctor Bruce Berwin among an admiring throng at the Tortoise and Giant Chelonian house. At first he spotted several Ankh-Morporkian mothers dragging children away, their faces set in stone, one muttering shouldn't be allowed, I dunno, take your kids to the Zoo to see the animals…
"Mummy, why did that big one climb onto the back of the smaller one?" This request was punctuated by a slap, and a scream of "I'm only asking!"
"Dr Berwin?"
The antipodean wizard turned and grinned.
"Ponder, yer drongo! Here, you blokes make room for Ponder!"
Mummy, why are those wizards taking iconographs when you're dragging me away?
Wizards are strange, that's why! Now come along! It isn't decent!
Bewin turned and addressed his iconograph.
"I want a low-down shot, Percy. One that shows relative angles of both shells to the horizontal plane. Can you get it?"
"Bleedin' pornography, if you ask me..." grumbled the imp as Berwin held the iconograph low and angled to the right.
"And a gross intrusion on their privacy, too!" it added, in a more muffled voice.
"Just do your flamin' job…" muttered Berwin, irritated. He turned to Ponder.
"That bloody lethal Sheila of yours was round here a few minutes ago." he remarked, as the iconograph whirred out a picture.
"She's still here!" a pointed voice said from towards the other end of the throng. The pointed voice appeared to be having three conversations at once.
"I'm sorry you've allowed yourself to get disgusted, Mrs Portent, but it is clearly stated on the ticket conditions thet you will see enimels in ELL conditions and states of nature. Thet is whet a Zoological Garden is FOR. The phrase "ell conditions end states of Nature" quite clearly indicates thet sometimes, inevitably, the visitor will see enimels mating. While we, the Zoo menegement, take ell reasonable precautions against enimels ettecking visitors, we elso hold the view thet the visitor should be broad-minded enough to eccept the inevitable. So I em sorry. No refunds. I'm sorry you feel thet wey but I hev here a cless of eleven and twelve year old students from the Essessins' Guild School, all of whom are being edult end grown-up ebout this YOU WILL STOP GIGGLING, MISS ASPREW! End WHET ARE YOU DOING, MR CARROTAGE? NO, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW. SEE ME LATER!
The disgruntled mother turned away, trailing children, and vowed she would go and see the Watch, that's what she'd do, exposing children to things like that, she didn't know…
Professor Berwin made an embarrassed nod to Johanna Smith-Rhodes, who was in the middle of withdrawing a Watch Special Constable's badge from a pouch, out to where the affronted zoo visitor could see it. Since both of them affected remarkably similar colonial garb – a khaki bush uniform, in one case worn with a wizard's pointy hat and in the other, with Assassin black – they looked like two people in similar professions from similar backgrounds who had arrived at an Understanding some time ago. (5)
"Well, you blokes" Berwin said, straightening up. "Early days yet and there's a lot more research to do on this one, but if it turns out Great A'Tuin is a Sheila, then we're all bloody well screwed!"
Another wizard, an older man, frowned pointedly and suggested a valid step in the research program might be to glue four evenly-spaced scale model elephants and a relief map of the Disc to the shells of all the female Giant Tortoises, so they could be closely observed when they came into heat and the degree of damage to the models might be scaled up.
Johanna's lips pursed. Ponder Stibbons winced.
"Observations, please, cless?" she said, pointedly. Her group of student Assassins, who had all just witnessed the mating of two giant tortoises, looked at each other, and then back to their teacher. One raised a hand.
"Er… please, miss. These are giant tortoises. From the Brown Islands. They are a land-dwelling species. Er."
Johanna smiled, slightly. "Cerry on." she invited. One of the other pupils took the baton.
"Er… from all observations, including those made from the spacecraft's crew that got to the Moon, the Great Turtle has more in common with the common sea-dwelling species than with any sort of land tortoise."
"Cerry on!" Johanna invited again, nodding emphatically.
"So… er…. The gentlemen from the University are perhaps looking at the wr… at an animal that may not be the best one for them to observe?"
Johanna smiled.
"Phresed correctly, end with commendeble tect, miss Bullmer! Excellent!"
She nodded and smiled at Ponder, then said
"In a moment or two we will ALL walk ecross to the Aquarium Hall. First, what did you pupils make of whet you hev jist seen?"
"We witnessed the satisfactory mating of two…"
Wrong. You witnessed a mating. It only becomes a setisfectory one if it results in fertilised eggs."
Ponder suddenly wondered why most of the Assasins and some of the wizards were looking at him. Johanna went on.
"There is every expectation, as the mother was still of egg-laying age. Elthough, et nearly two hundred years old, she may forget where she hes laid them, in which case we will hev to intervene and collect so es to incubate the eggs artificially."
Johanna carried on talking about the mating and egg-incubation times of giant tortoises until she was sure her pupils had got the gist, then she nodded to the Wizards.
"If your steff will follow me, Doctor Berwin. I will show you something of interest."
Berwin nodded. A mixed group of wizards and student Assassins followed Johanna down to the Aquarium Building, the newest set of habitats on the Zoo site.
"Dermochelys Coriacea" she said, indicating the large, blue-green lit, tank. The limitations of glass-creation being what they were on the Disc, the tank was at least fifty per cent metal and ceramic: but its construction allowed for regular viewing windows, about eight feet along by five deep.
"This is the largest species of deep-sea Turtle that lives in the Disc's oceans. Es yet we only hev immature specimens, but they will grow to perhaps six foot six in shell length elone. Seventy-eight inches, gentlemen. The largest lend tortoise grows to only fifty inches eccross. Four feet two inches, like the ones housed in the Zoo ebove. These sea-living turtles will weigh in et two thousand pounds. The tortoise only weighs in et thirteen hundred pounds. The ecquetic medium is more supportive of greater weight end size. You will elso note it ellows the turtle, however lerge it grows, greater freedom end more ethletic movement. Behold!"
Johanna stepped aside as a group of rounded, ovoid, shapes flashed past at speed, one performing a languid loop-the-loop. The audience rushed to the next viewing window to pick them up again.
"I will elso bring to your ettention the observations made during the recent trip into space. It would eppear thet the further something is removed from the Disc, the more weightless it epperently bevomes, until a sensation of there being no weight et ell is finally ettained. I should like to experience thet for myself sometime."
Ponder wondered for a moment who, in what distant time, would be the first Assassin to accomplish an inhumation in space. Then he chided himself for being ungallant, and listened to the rest of the lecture.
"Here, these are egile, graceful, even ecrobetic, creatures in their own environment. They are a long way removed from the slow end rather lumbering land relatives end in my opinion, as a natural history student, are a far better sterting point for eny speculations on the nature of Great a'Tuin. Here, in this tenk, is en environment as near to the weightlessness of Deep Space as you will find on the surface of the Disc."
Johanna paused for an instant.
"Now think, will you? Your own University's depertment of Estronomy has observed thet the World-Turtle has, within living memory, swerved, benked end even looped-the-loop. Perheps to avoid space debris or other cosmic hezerds that mey otherwise have imperilled the Disc, or perhaps because the Turtle shares something of the joy of life end being elive es these fellows here. Who is to know?
"But in all thet time, ere you ewere of ENYTHING falling off the Turtle? Enything et ell? Yesno?"
Johanna looked around the circle of back-lit blue-green faces. She smiled.
"I would contend thet the weightlessness of deep space combined with the Turtle's sense of duty of care for its load conspired to prevent this. Now let us take this logic one vital step further. I find it slightly amusing thet you cheps et the University appear to believe there is only one permissible mating position for all forms of chelonian enimels. You observe lend tortoises mating in that position, you make a great leap of faulty logic to essume thet World-turtles elso breed that way. End, understendebly, you start to fret for the safety of any cargo cerried upon their becks!"
There was a bout of student-Assassin giggling as the pupils worked it out before the wizards.
"If in deep water, the natural egility of the enimels opens up new possible mating positions, how much more is permissible in Deep Space?" she asked, rhetorically. "It is perhaps the case you Wizards heve been berking up the wrong branch of the Tree of Life for.. how long now?"
"Fifteen hundred years…" Ponder muttered, in a low voice.
"Thet long?" she said, with genuine surprise.
"I'm afraid so…" said Ponder.
"Er… has anyone actually observed water-turtles mating?" Doctor Berwin asked.
Johanna shook her head.
"We believe it happens in the deepest waters, away from our sight." She said. "But perhaps with a ceptive population living in an ideal hebitet, and a willing supply of observers, this gep in our knowledge could be filled?"
Johanna led them up to the outside world. One far older Wizard, a man trained to be slow on the uptake and to live some time behind the present, lingered.
"We'd need a really waterproof glue" he said, pensively. "You know, for the little elephants and the replica Disc…"
Friendly hands led him to the light.
"And Doctor Pedicult there is…"
"The last survivor of the project to Borrow Great A'Tuin's mind." Berwin confirmed, over tea in Johanna's office at the Zoo. "The last blokes on the Project were inherited by my Department and came over to the Zoo with me."
"And you still have the research files?" Ponder asked.
"I'll dig them out for you, Pon! " Berwin said, agreeably.
"As I recall, what could be interpreted didn't make much sense and what couldn't be interpreted made no sense at all. All a bloody big waste of time, if you ask me!"
Ponder sighed. He looked across to Johanna.
"How do you know?" he asked. For what she had said had made an awful lot of sense.
She returned a beatific happy smile.
"Several reasons, Ponder. One. I'm a natural scientist. I observe enimels. I em trained to think logically end directly. Two. I'm a woman. Three, unlike the majority of wizards I em not bound by a vow of celibacy Therefore I em not making wild guesses based on elmost no precticel fieldwork!"
Ponder reddened. Birwin grinned at him.
She reached over and took his hand.
"You helped too!" she said, soothingly.
"So we have a retirement party for Doctor Pedicult, thank him for his devoted work, and find him a quiet retirement berth." Ridcully grunted. "Valued colleague and all that, least we could do. And the gel's writing up an argument for us, based on her observations, which we can release to the Palace and other interested bodies. Joint inter-disciplinary work between the University and the Zoo, bringin' about a theoretical resolution to a problem which turns out to be not so big a problem after all. Good. "
Ridcully paused, and said "Has that gel got a first degree yet?"
"I believe the university of Witwatersrand in her native country is going to confer a degree on her, based on her achievements and contributions to the science of zoology, sir."
"Then we'll match it with a honorary Doctorate. Looks better on scientific papers, you follow?"
"Yes, sir." Ponder said, dutifully.
There was a contemplatative silence. Ridcully broke it.
"Stibbons?"
"Sir?"
"What was that wretched bloody damn' Turtle actually thinkin', for all those years? Got a transcript?"
Stibbons passed a depressingly slim folder over.
Ridcully opened it, and read silently for a while.
"This doesn't make a dam' bit of sense at all, Stibbons!"
"I'm afraid not, sir. The best guess, as this was the only part of the Turtle Transcript that could be interpreted as words, given the volume of what was called "nonsense coding" that accompanied it, is that Great A'Tuin was, er, listening to music. Something that was playing at his – or her – pace of thought and was totally intelligible to him – or her – and which lessened the tedium of interstellar travel."
Ridcully harrumphed, and cleared his throat.
"But what sort of bloody lyrics are these, man?"
He recited the unfamiliar words, awkwardly.
"(Anywhere the wind blows)
I don't want to die
Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-o
I'm just a poor boy nobody loves me
(He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from these… warm sausages?
Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
(Ich weill nicht!)! No, we will not let you go
Let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go
Let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go
Let me go (Will not let you go)
Let me go (Will not let you go) (Never, never, never, never)
"It doesn't make any dratted sense, Stibbons!
"Patience, sir. Patience".
Let me go, o, o, o, o
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
(Oh mama mia, mama mia) Mama Mia, let me go
Beelzebub has the devil put aside for me, for me, for me!
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye!
So you think you can love me and leave me to die!
Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here…
(Oooh yeah, Oooh yeah)
Nothing really matters;
Anyone can see;
Nothing really matters;
Nothing really matters to me;
Any way the wind blows..."
Ridcully put the transcript down.
"And good University fundin's been goin' on this, Stibbons?" he inquired, in a voice of icy calm.
Ponder blinked, then replied.
"Well, sir, according to the best analytical minds, it was meant to be set to music, And when the Project started, we didn't have HEX, of course. So I've got HEX and Professor Ritornello, the Master of Music, looking at the Dark Coding to see if it translates to any known musical form. HEX has a theory.
"Apparently, starting from infinity, that is all the pieces of music it is theoretically possible to listen to on a long journey, they all, eventually, condense into one, the longer the journey takes. The probability matrix collapses and you end up with –er - scaramouches and fandangos."
"Go and do something else, Stibbons." Said the Arch-chancellor, wearily.
"Very good, sir" said Ponder, who still had a Scientifick Pseudopolitian to finish. And he was having dinner with Johanna later.
Plugged into headphones in the High Energy Magic Building, Professor Ritornello, Master of the Music, carried on attempting to transcribe the Turtle Sonata, his heart and body resonating to the unearthly Music of the Spheres and his head having run out of dollar signs. He could retire on this one...
++FAR OUT, MAN++ said HEX. ++ THERE IS SOME REALLY GROOVY MUSIC IN THE ROUNDWORLD ARCHIVE, PROFESSOR++ PINK FLOYD, FOR INSTANCE++
(1) See Terry Pratchett, Mort.
(2) A primitive omniscope device linking a fated exploratory ship recorded the final conversation with a crew before it drifted out of communications reach. Although by then, the crew were probably running out of breathable oxygen and were hallucinating. A transcript released to Unseen University, when a more liberally-minded Arch-Mage took power in Krull and opened communications with the wider world, read
This is Major Thom to Krull Control. Roger on taking protein pills and confirm all helmets on. . And I'm floating in a most peculiar way. And the stars look very different today. Here am I floatin' 'round my tin can far above the world. Note the Discworld is blue and there's nothing I can do
Ground control to major Thom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, major Thom?
Can you hear me, major Thom?
Can you hear me, major Thom?
At this point the omniscope faded to black.
(3) Do Different is the mission statement of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, this author's academic alma mater.
(4) See Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic.
(5) In fact, they had played the "Call this a knife?" game, which is mandatory for all Fourecksians arriving in a big city(6) . Johanna had watched politely as Berwin brought out his twelve-inch Bowie, and had then trumped him with her Howondalandian jungle machete. "Well, I'd cell thet a knife" she had said.
(6) But optional for Howondalandians, who tend to have larger longer bladed weapons, especially if they are also Assassins.