Wheeler-Bell Twenty-Six
The Alpha Male Protocol
This was a pig to write. It didn't help that with the TV on in the background, a rock music documentary featured my favourite group of all time, the Blue Öyster Cult, so of course I had to break off and watch… and time-travel with added loops and paradoxes takes thought. There will be a Part Two picking up where this closes. Patience!
The Neurosurgery Labs, Caltech, Pasadena
Johanna adjusted the set of the unfamiliar surgical mask Amy had insisted she wear. Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz looked up from the patient on the table.
"She's stable." she reported.
Amy Farrah-Fowler reached a gloved finger down and gently raised the patient's eyelid. Seeing an alive but unresponsive eye, she nodded.
"Patient under deep anaesthesia. I believe we are ready to proceed. Is the operation site prepared, Doctor Smith-Rhodes?"
Johanna indicated that the belly had been shaven to the skin in the appropriate area. Amy nodded approval.
"Is the owner under deep anaesthesia?" Bernadette asked, pointedly.
"Howard and Leonard are dealing with that, Doctor Rostenkowski-Wolowitz. I believe they have by now applied the appropriate sedatives to Raj, and he is accepting of the need for this procedure."
Leonard and Howard were ensuring Raj got good and drunk somewhere where he was out of their way. Which meant he would not be bursting into the operating theatre – which was actually in Amy's labs at Caltech. Johanna was keen to see how veterinarian procedures were done on Roundworld, and had accepted the need for mask and gown.
"Errr…" Bernadette said.
Amy raised an eyebrow. She paused in lifting the scalpel.
"Is there a problem, Doctor Rostenkowski-Wolowitz?" she asked.
"I don't mind being the anaesthetist while you guys do the surgery." she said. "But could you, you know, put the screen up so I don't need to watch?"
There was a short pause whilst the patient's body was concealed by a vertical screen of green operating theatre material. It shielded the sight of what was going on at one end of Cinnamon from the biochemist who was acting as assistant and monitoring life signs.
"Thanks, guys." Bernadette said. She busied herself with observing anywhere except where incisions were being made.
"Primary incision being made in the lower belly." Amy reported, as if making a formal record. "A distressing amount of subcutaneous fat present."
"Hey, she gets lipo too. As part of the package." Bernadette remarked.
Johanna carefully removed the oozing body fat, reflecting that overweight patients could be difficult patients. You didn't want it draining into the abdominal cavity. Amy stood back whilst she prepared the operation site.
"Es clear es I cen get, Doctor Farrah-Fowler." she reported. Amy moved in for the next stage.
"Proceeding to separate external abdominal oblique muscles. Clamp, please, Doctor Smith-Rhodes. Now separating internal abdominal oblique muscles. So it's you and Penny travelling to your world next, Johanna?"
"Ja." Johanna said, reaching into the abdominal cavity with a retractor probe. "Although Ponder is to follow with Leonard, so thet the four of us may perform a few tesks together. Uterus located. I em now exteriorising uterus end fellopian tubes. Swab, please."
"Making the necessary excisions now. Stand by to clamp and tie off blood vessels." Amy said. Johanna deftly clamped and tied as Amy did what was necessary.
"Normally I would do this solo." Amy remarked. "It's good to have assistance from somebody who knows what she's doing."
"Ag, it's just that my patients are not normally this small." Johanna said. "The lest hysterectomy I performed was on a wildebeest."
Amy shrugged.
"At least all mammals have recognisable organs which are in approximately the places you expect them to be in." Amy said. "Which makes life so much easier. What was the surgical reason for neutering your wildebeest?"
Johanna explained, clinically, about how a difficult birth had caused complications to the mother and prolapse of the internal organ, necessitating heroic surgery to repair the damage. The mother had been saved at the price of losing the ability to conceive further calves.
"You look a little bit ill there, Doctor Rostenkowski-Wolowitz?" Amy said, as she and Johanna stitched.
"Umm… no, I'm OK!" Bernadette squeaked. She looked pale. "Does this sorrta thing happen a lot?"
"Uterine prolapse? Eversion of the uterus via the vaginal channel following trauma such as, but not limited to, a difficult birth. It is common in all mammals. Including humans. Hysterectomy is only indicated if the prolapse cannot be restored by any other means." Amy remarked, dispassionately. "Final stiches going in. Routine operation complete. No complications."
"Well, she'll never be a mother now." Johanna said, stroking Cinnamon's head. "Es we told Rajesh, it will be for the best."
"She won't go into heat any more, either." Bernadette remarked, practically.
"I'm gled you talked him into this." Johanna said. Bernadette had spoken privately to Raj, with the rest of the gang in an adjacent room trying not to listen. It had been hard not to: Bernadette's voice had not been low or discreet in the end, making reference to how Ruth got her hand savaged needlessly, and how the only alternative to neutering had been strong veterinarian drugs that would supress Cinnamon going into heat, but which needed to be injected every damn time, Raj, with a greater risk of cancer and other life-shortening ailments the more often they were used. Best you bite the bullet and get her done by people who know what they're doing, and it only has to happen once. (1)
"Let me get the cone on." Amy said, applying the necessary after-operation device to prevent Cinnamon from worrying at her stitches. "Then I can move her to an observation cage and assign a student to keep an eye on her. To write the usual report as a grading exercise."
Johanna smiled. It was what students were for. She had no problem with this.
"So when do we go to your world?" Amy inquired. "I would prefer not to travel until I am sure Cinnamon has properly recovered. I consider I have a duty of care to her and definitely to Raj."
"Let's clear down, have a drink, end telk ebout thet." Johanna said. She set about tidying what was called "clinical waste" for correct disposal later, reaching for a yellow biohazard bag.
The Patrician's Palace, Ankh-Morpork
Havelock Vetinari, Lord Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, put down the report and steepled his fingers. He looked out of the window and took in the rooftop view across the Broadways in the direction of Unseen University. His secretary, Rufus Drumknott, watched him, knowing His Lordship's moods and assessing him to be intrigued and in good humour.
"Such a remarkable and intellectually stimulating city, Drumknott." he remarked, after a while. "It appears everything finds its way here, as if drawn by some primal force."
"The report concerning the new type of were-creature, sir?" Drumknott ventured.
Vetinari nodded.
"Which caused no small stir on Gleam Street." he said. "Forty-six Watch officers were drawn to the pursuit."
"Largely, I understand, from the bar of the Bucket." Drumknott agreed. "Although several active street patrols were pulled into the chase too."
"Joining the chase is a fundamental Watch instinct." Vetinari said. "The chase comes first, I believe. If the Watchman, while chasing, then discovers the nature of the thing he is chasing, that is a bonus. And so we all follow our imperative."
"Captain von Überwald was most thorough in her report." Drumknott remarked. "And Doctor Smith-Rhodes was nearby to add her observations."
"Ah yes." Vetinari said, thoughtfully. "Doctor Smith-Rhodes. Who admitted to bringing the were-person into the City, and assures us the young lady is under her personal wardship and supervision."
"Do you wish me to request Doctor Smith-Rhodes to attend on you directly, sir?"
Vetinari shook his head.
"It may come to that, Drumknott. Certainly an option. But at this moment in time she presents us with an interesting paradox. According to the log book on the porters' desk at the Guild of Assassins, she left the building yesterday evening to answer a call from the University, which I understand involved an escort contract to Professor Stibbons. She has not signed back into the premises. But I am informed, among other interesting things which appear to be happening in her vicinity, she is indeed present at the Guild and taking her morning classes as usual today. For some reason her skin is several shades darker, as if she has spent an appreciable period of time in a most agreeable warm sunny place. Overnight."
Vetinari resteepled his fingers.
"And when Arch-Chancellor Ridcully calls in at the High Energy Magic building this morning, he will find an invoice for over seven thousand dollars pertaining to the construction of something called a Travelling Engine. Professor Stibbons will discover, to his discomfort, he did not conceal this adequately. Mr Pony, of the Guild of Artificers, expressed his disquiet to me concerning this Travelling Engine, noting it harnesses technomancy similar to that which drove the Sorting Engine at the Post Office. I have his report here somewhere."
"Which Mr Pony describes, in his own eloquently chosen words, as sodding dangerous." Drumknott remarked.
"Exactly so, Drumknott."
There was a pause. Drumknott coughed, diffidently.
"Doctor Smith-Rhodes, in her coda to the report, describes the girl, whom she calls simply Lucy, as a native of a settlement called Pasadena, which she believes is located in a place which has much in common with the Lower States of Aceria."
"An interesting choice of words, Drumknott. Miss Smith-Rhodes is a very scrupulous person who I believe would hesitate before telling an outright lie." Vetinari remarked. "I appreciate such people."
"A mystery indeed, sir." Drumknott remarked. "Without seeming to have gone anywhere at all, Doctor Smith-Rhodes develops a sun-tan consistent with several weeks spent in a hot sunny place. But it is midwinter here. She introduces a mystery girl to this city, who turns out to be a were-deer. A shy and easily startled young girl whose origins are mysterious. The Doctor is close to Professor Stibbons. Who commissions this travelling engine device…"
Drumknott looked up, startled, as the pieces began to fit. Vetinari smiled slightly.
"Exactly so, Drumknott. Time and space are more flexible than we think. Especially within the confines of the Roundworld Project."
"Do we intervene, sir?" Drumknott asked, diffidently. Vetinari smiled slightly and shook his head.
"I do not believe the City is under threat. I consider it would be informative to all concerned for the moment if we simply monitor. And observe what else is brought to us from the Roundworld. So far, with few exceptions, the Project has been educative and intellectually fruitful."
"And two of our city's intellectual community would not have travelled there without a good reason."
A palace servant knocked on the door and called for Mr Drumknott to attend downstairs, sir. In accordance with the Standing Order on Gifts of Foodstuffs.
"We had better go and see what we've been given this time by appreciative members of the public." Vetinari remarked. "My word, some of the ladies in this city appear to believe I need a square meal and fattening up."
"It's been a bit unproductive on that front since Glenda Sugarbean left, sir." Drumknott remarked.
"Indeed. But if that episode taught us anything, it was never to refuse a superlative pie." Vetinari said, drily. "Shall we go?"
2311 North los Robles, Pasadena
The Travelling Engine was fully laden. Several suitcases and hold-alls had been strapped to its framework. Johanna had insisted. HEX, with seeming bad grace, had consented reluctantly, remarking that he would be forced to restore the relative balance between worlds in some small but precise way. Pressed to elaborate, the thinking engine had said that any significant and permanent transfer of mass between the worlds needed to be equalised to prevent even the slightest distortion. The third law of thermodynamics demanded this. While he was certain Johanna and the others had not noticed at the time, when five cubic centimetres of rattlesnake venom had been sent back to the Roundworld during their wilderness expedition, he had felt obliged to counter-balance the transition by returning an equivalent mass from the Disc. Nothing important or significant. Nobody would have noticed perhaps thirty grammes of brick dust from a convenient construction site in Ankh-Morpork settling over the Sierra Madres.(2)
++You remain unaware of all the compensatory work required in facilitating your expedition. ++ HEX had complained, with a hint of unappreciated petulance. ++It requires planning and careful calculation on my part. ++
"Eppreciated, HEX." Johanna said, briefly. "You hev the stuff safely, Penny? Gut. Let us go."
Penny nodded from underneath and behind a stack of boxes and books stacked on her lap. A faint and interestingly delicious smell was in the air. She steeled herself, apprehensive after her last trip in the Engine and wondering what this one was likely to bring. Johanna had said she wanted to introduce Penny to people she knew, but had not elaborated.
++Leonard?++ Stand by for my return. ++I will reunite you with Penny on the Discworld.++ She will be perfectly safe.++
Leonard exchanged a quick kiss with Penny, then stood well back. The Engine Dopplered and hummed. Then it was gone.
Caltech, Pasadena
In their shared office at Caltech, Ruth N'Kweze, who it was agreed would remain on Roundworld for the moment, was continuing her researches. HEX had given her an Internet tutorial, and the idea that everything she needed to know about Roundworld was a click or two away was a concept that really excited her. (3)
The white population of the United States is historically composed of descendants of European immigrants. she wrote. The girl Lucy has a surname which I identify as being Brindisian…. Ruth paused. She made a necessary correction. That is, Italian. Italy is a region, a nation, an ethnicity and a language in Europe. Ruth paused again. It had to be absolutely watertight for Johanna. For seven years one of the minor dreads of students at the Guild School had been work returned with D-. See me. J S-R. written in red ink at the bottom.
It is therefore possible that the latent were-nature in her being is something imported, in her family line, from Italy. I would also need to test this by looking for other European ethnicities in her family line. Not everyone in the USA is "pure" in their lineage, I have discovered, and a typical American, several generations away from Europe, might combine one or more original ethnicities.
To begin with, Italy and its continental neighbours in Switzerland (4), Austria(5) and France(6) are characterised by high hills and mountainous terrain, especially in the Alpine mountains, where all four meet. Many cervine creatures are to be found in such high mountainous terrain.
Ruth sighed and sat back. She really needed to talk to Lucy, who, afterwards, she'd only seen exhausted and well out of it. She wondered if Amy could organise this for her; she had taken on the task of looking after Lucy and monitoring her recovery. Then a wicked thought struck her, based on something she'd been told about Johanna's interactions with Sheldon Cooper.
"Mr HEX?" she asked.
++I hear you, Ruth++
"Here, Johanna and I are two South Africans sharing an office. Is it possible to print out, in colour, a South African flag? A current one?"
Images flashed out on the screen. The printer hummed. After a while, Ruth smiled happily and located some drawing pins. She liked this flag, which evoked tribal art and painting. It would look good on the office door….
The Neurosurgery Labs, Caltech, Pasadena
Amy Farrah-Fowler was excited. For the fourth or fifth time, she ran through the analysis of the blood samples she'd taken from Lucy on her return from the Discworld. There was absolutely no error. Two or three hours before the samples had been taken, Lucy's blood chemistry had contained massive amounts of noradrenaline, ephenidrene, adrenaline and several other biochemical agents she had simply not been able to identify, sympathomimetic amines of an unknown type, and alkaloid phenethylamines. The known fight-or-flight drugs had decayed and broken down in the time since the transformation, but simple reverse calculation had told her they had gone massively off the scale in a way that would have killed most human beings. Or at least made them seriously ill.
The key must be in these un-known substances. They must mitigate the adverse effects of so much pseudomethamphetamine and derivatives in the system. Present in such quantities that most people would have suffered a degree of heart failure. Hopefully I can work on these partial biochemical and molecular structures I've been able to deduce. Refine them. Could Bernadette help? Is there anything in the scientific literature she has access to? Are these strange biochemicals the triggers to the were-state?
Amy frowned. She wanted more CAT-time, this time with Lucy as test subject. Something not entirely human had happened here. She slapped herself for being a sloppy thinker. If it happens to a human, even if only one in ten million, then it's human. However rare. It is still within the boundaries of human neurochemistry. There are seven billion of us. Our species throws up sports and oddities all the time.
She went back to studying the fragmentary chemical shapes she'd been able to extract, with computer assistance, from fast-disintegrating original traces. At least these made the shapes of known substances whose properties she could predict and understand. But with odd twists.
Sympathomimetics. Could these be the key to a second physical shape latent within the boundaries of the primary morphenogenetic? I need time on a DNA sequencer to see what might be going on at a deeper level still. We have RNA and DNA. Do werecreatures have a third, dynamic, code, let's call it XNA, that can over-ride and rewrite the first two helixes? And would Johanna's werewolf bezzie have a different trigger? Wolves are predators, deer are prey…. Could I talk the werewolf girl into giving me a blood sample, or samples? Before and after her transformation? (7)
Amy worked on, deeply fascinated by the new questions, but aware that there was no way – yet – she could dare write up this as a research paper without losing a lot of scientific credibility. She winced. Meeting Discworld people was, sure as Hell, a double-edged sword.
And, as Johanna, Penny and perhaps a hundred kilograms of Roundworld-originated goods arrived on the Disc, the Abbot of the History Monks looked up at the mountainside above Oi Dong and broke off his conversation with a group of his fellows. A large rock, he estimated maybe two hundred pounds, broke off from a mass and began rolling down the slope in a potentially avalanche-threatening way.
"Shall I ask the Procastrinator Hall to…"
The Abbot impatiently waved for silence. The large rolling mass of stone was throwing up dust and lesser stones now. But as they watched, both the boulder and the dustcloud winked out of existence. The monks heaved a collective sigh of relief.
"Somebody's on the ball, then." a monk observed. "Lu-Tze?"
"Don't look at me." the Sweeper objected, as he rolled a cigarette. "Didn't do a thing, me."
"Things come out of the Void for no apparent reason." Rinpo intoned, portentously. "And they also return to the Void for no apparent reason."
"Maybe." the Sweeper shrugged. "Or it could just be Qu mucking around."
"But if it wasn't us." the Abbot mused. "Then who?"
"Who cares? Didn't land on us, and that's as good as a result." Lu-Tze remarked.
"Call it the Void, then." said the Abbot. The monks walked on.
And on the Roundworld, a large, heavy, granite rock, weighing about two hundred pounds, spontaneously appeared in the Neskaupstaður region of Iceland, where geologists put it down to unexplained volcanic activity, and locals put it down to the trolls and the elves.(8)
The Guild of Assassins, Ankh-Morpork:
The Doppler stopped shifting, the light show strobed down, and the humming sound faded out.
"Nnnghhh…." said Penny.
Johana took a few seconds to let her head clear. She could hear barking dogs, slightly muffled, in the near distance. She frowned. Kaffee and Crème were back on the Roundworld with Ruth…. weren't they? This was definitely home, her apartment at the Guild. She could hear the familiar sounds of the School around her, Raven House getting ready to start its school day. Clattering of feet on the bare wood corridor and stairs, girls' voices… and that's me, sitting in my chair over there…
She did a double-take. She heard Penny make a "sweet freakin' Jesus!" noise. But no mistake. The twin sister she didn't know she had was sitting at the table, a stack of school exercise books next to her, with both elbows propped up and hands supporting her chin. She was looking at her with appraising interest.
"I knew you'd turn up around now." she said, in Vondalaans. "The situation mandates it."
Johanna thought quickly. Ponder had done something similar, hadn't he, to finesse the Housemate Agreement with Sheldon Cooper…
"I had, I think, better get the bags unpacked." Johanna said to herself.
"Ja." the other Johanna agreed. She now spoke Morporkian. "Penny? I eccept this may look strange. Please eccept thet for now, there are two of me. You will, I think, need two of those boxes end the essociated books for your next call. If you could put the rest in the kitchen for now? It is just over there. Thenk you."
"Er… sure thing." Penny said, bemused. She carefully sorted her burden and took what was not immediately required to the kitchen. The Johanna who had just arrived from Pasadena did some quick thinking. It had been agreed that she and Penny would make two strategic calls on people living in Ankh-Morpork. And her other self seemed perfectly aware of this. Therefore…
"You are me. But from some point in my future, ja-nie?" she said, in Vondalaans.
"Just as you are me, but from a point in my past." Johanna agreed. She closed the exercise book she had been marking and put down her feared red pen.
"Michael Rodwell from Viper House requires a little remedial teaching." She remarked. "That was a rushed and perfunctory essay."
"So you wish me to share the marking of assignments?" Johanna demanded. Her alternate smiled. "We'd get it done in half the time, ja!" she said.
Johanna studied herself. Still young-looking. No wrinkles yet. Spoke in a firm authoritative voice. She was relieved about that. Moved with a sort of grace. Still looking good, for thirty.
Penny returned from the kitchen. She saw the Johanna behind the desk push her chair back and stand up.
"Um. According to Leonard, you guys shouldn't touch or anything." she said. "Just in case, you know, you cancel each other out or stuff like that."
"Shall we try it?" one of the Johannas said to the other. Both grinned. Penny had come to know that grin. She yelped, and dived for cover behind the sofa.
Nothing happened as they shook hands. Penny cautiously raised her head.
"Thought it wouldn't." said Pasadena-Johanna.
"Didn't think so." said Ankh-Morpork Johanna. We hev still to get beck to our respective timelines. Cancelling each other out would create a peredox."
"Ja. Ponder is keen on warning egainst peredoxes."
"You know." the local Johanna said, thoughtfully. "If we were two versions of Alice Band brought together from two different parts of her timeline, she would not just stop et shaking hends."
Johanna considered this. "Alice, I think, would take the experiment further. Now thet would be one for the wizards studying time-trevel peredoxes!"
"Alice, right." Penny said, cautiously. "She's the gay one?" And then it sunk in. "Guys, that's squicky!"
"You have to love Penny, don't you?" one Johanna said to the other. Both nodded.
"Perheps not so much squick, es a unique end never before ettempted form of masturbation." the other Johanna said, keeping an extremely poker face.
Penny considered this. Then all three burst out laughing.
"Err, Kaffee and Crème?" Penny asked. "We didn't bring those guys back with us. They're back in Pasadena. Sleeping off a big breakfast in my apartment. Ruth's in charge of them."
"Locked in my bedroom, for now." local-Johanna said, shrugging. "They came beck with me. I knew you were erriving, end I did not want them to see two of me. They would be confused."
"Elso best to keep them out of the kitchen" Pasadena-Johanna said, practically. "There is temptation there, for now."
"Ja. Temptation. Which brings me to whet hes to be done today. We do not hev long." said the local Johanna. "Listen to me. I know whet we ere ebout to discuss es from my point of view, I hev elready been there, stending where you ere now. I even remember the joke ebout Alice."
"But for me, this is my first time." said Pasadena-Johanna. "Is there a script we hev to follow? Ponder is very fussy ebout getting it right. I hev not yet seen him get really engry, but people tell me thet the lest time he did, he made Ridcully take a couple of steps beckwards. I would not like him to get thet engry with me."
"Yeah, saw that in Leonard once. You don't expect guys like Leonard to go really ape, so when they do it's a shocker." Penny said.
"I remember Penny saying thet too." local Johanna said. "Just es you will remember when you get to this part of the loop in time. I believe we should each say whet feels correct. Without intellectualising it. Then it will work out."
They unpacked the Travelling Engine, talking about the morning ahead while they unstrapped and stacked boxes and bundles. Penny gleaned they had a mission which involved making sales presentations to a couple of seriously influential guys. Done properly, it would ensure a steady flow of bucks, or the local equivalent of, which would sustain the Pasadena gang for their stay in this strange city.
++You are forgetting your third appointment this morning.++
HEX had remained silent during the introductions, but now needed to make a contribution.
"The third, HEX?" Johanna said, politely.
++I have been present, am present and will be present at all points during the existence of this time-loop.++ HEX said. ++Excuse my ambivalence in using a language designed to tell other apes where the best fruit is. ++It did not evolve to describe situations like this.++ I can confirm that where two versions of Johanna Smith-Rhodes encounter each other, they both speak their parts with 95% accuracy and no major temporal paradox is precipitated. ++ But the two versions have diverged enough to create a branch in time which is identical to the other in all respects.++Save that the newly-arrived Johanna and Penny will, later this morning, need to speak to the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari.++
"And that's bad, is it?" Penny asked.
The look on the faces of the two Johannas told its own story.
++I foresee a strong probability of success in the formal introduction if one precaution is taken. ++ HEX said, smoothly. ++But you can deal with that later. ++ I propose, as a matter of urgency and to avoid further temporal strain, to translocate you via the Engine to Unseen University.++ Arch-Chancellor Ridcully has just entered the High Energy Magic Building and he is about to find something that will make him extremely angry with Ponder Stibbons. ++ You will need to calm him and suggest a plan of action that will appeal to him and save Ponder – and myself - from censure. ++
"Better trevel, then." Johanna said. "Joan cen wait a few moments. Got the stuff, Penny? Take both, I think."
She leapt into a seat on the Engine. Penny followed her.
Local Johanna watched them impassively.
"I remember doing this too." she said. "It all works out, Johanna. When HEX brings you beck here, I will have gone to take the girls into breakfast, end then to my first cless. You will then be free to go into the School end find Joan, to make your sales pitch to her. Nice to meet you!"
They waved goodbye as the Engine hummed, Dopplered and disappeared.
The high Energy Magic Building, Unseen University
Mustrum Ridcully got up early in the mornings. This always disconcerted wizards who were not used to this. And whenever he visited the High Energy Magic Building first thing before breakfast, he tended to meet the other sort of early-morning wizards, who achieved this by the simple resort of not having bothered to go to bed the previous night.
"Don't mind me, you fellows!" he boomed, as his presence was recognised. "You men just carry on with what you were doing. Where's Stibbons, by the way?"
++He is elsewhere, Arch-Chancellor.++ said the calm voice of HEX. ++His return here is anticipated later this morning. ++Within the next half-hour, in fact.++
Ridcully grunted and bent over the desk used by Ponder Stibbons. It would discomfort Ponder immensely to learn that his boss was beginning to work out strategies for dealing with him. Like making intelligent guesses as to where Ponder would conceal an inconvenient invoice for the expenditure of several thousand dollars' worth of University finance.
Ridcully grunted as he found a likely-looking book.
Whatmere's Guide To Double-Entry Book-keeping in Magical Professions. he read. The indispensable guide to financial record-keeping for the modern Wizard or magical practitioner, in 576 concise pages!
There was a piece of folded paper in between the pages. He extracted it. It was an invoice, payable to the Guild of Artificers, for the construction of a bespoke Time Travelling-Engine, payment to the tune of AM$7,650.43 welcomed by the end of the month.
He nodded. The rumours were true, then. Vetinari had dropped him a broad hint. He took a deep breath.
"STI-IBBBBONS!" he yelled.
As if on cue, something materialised in the HEM. Ridcully watched the Engine return, impassively. He recognised one of the people on it. The other was un-known to him. But both were female. He stalked over.
"Doctor Smith-Rhodes." He said, with exaggerated patience. "I don't suppose you'd care to enlighten me as to what the blue bloody blazes is going on around here in me absence?"
And then the other person looked up at him. She was capable of derailing his train of thought.
"Errr…hi…." Penny said, uncertainly.
Ridcully softened. It was suddenly hard to stay angry.
"Come over here, m'dears, where we can talk…" he said gallantly.
(1) "She really does sound like my mom." Howard had said, uneasily. Leonard had patted his shoulder and poured him another drink.
(2) HEX had done this sort of thing before. Reasoning that the returned compensatory mass should go to a place where it would be unobserved and hard to find, he had dumped a large rock from the Ramtop Mountains in Antarctica. Where Roundworld geologists had found it, decided excitedly that anomalies in its structure proved it to be not of Earthly origin, and jumped to the conclusion that it was a meteorite from Mars thrown up by, we don't know, some perturbation on the surface of the planet and thrown into orbit, eventually to fall on our world. Narrativium has a short half-life and decays quickly on Roundworld. But before it goes, decaying into its next stage of Plausibilium, it has a marked effect on the minds of those encountering it, and causes them to be creatively imaginative.
(3) HEX had urgently counselled Ruth on this one and reminded her he was there to provide discernment where it was called for. When she found a site called Chimpout when searching for material on the habits and ethnology of chimpanzees, her initial enthusiasm and naivety about everything on the Internet being true would vanish like spit on hot coals. "Chimpout" is a seriously racist site comparing black people to… well, you get the picture. I was researching chimps, the animal sort, too. This kind of thing has you first reading in appalled fascination, then wanting a hot bath and brain-bleach afterwards.
(4) – aspects of Switzerland mutually intrude with Discworld's Überwald
(5) - the Discworld's Austria-like country is also Überwald, but its more warlike aggressive aspects, as well as its pride-in-inverse-proportions-to-military-competence, belong to its neighbour Borogravia.
(6) Quirm, of course. Guided by HEX, Ruth would note all these things in helpful scholastic footnotes, as well as noting the unfortunate quirk of truly egregious geography that made France, Italy and Germany (the other referent for Überwald) into near-neighbours. And some really big fights happen over disputed property boundaries and garden features, as the Watch well knew.
(7) 101 THINGS NOT TO DO ON THE DISCWORLD: To ask Angua von Überwald for a blood sample, so as to isolate the neurological and biochemical triggers behind the werewolf transformation.
(8) They were very careful not to disturb it, and walked carefully around it at a respectful distance, so as not to annoy the Elves. Elves and Iceland somehow went together.