It was against the code of the Igors to complain, and Igor was painfully aware of how far he'd gone astray on that one already. 'Thooner or later,' as his mother used to tell him, they all violated the complaining rule, at least a little. But now he was working with his distant cousin Igor on a task of utmost importance, so he needed to be circumspect.
"You thure turned him into a neigh-thayer, I'll give you that. And thuch a lovely thade on the thkin," Igor said to him. "You mutht tell me how you managed it."
Igor nodded and chose to concentrate on the distasteful task at hand. All Igors were experts at carrying out escapes – their own, anyway. Arranging an accidental and inconspicuous escape for a violet villain who now sounded like the jackass he was presented a more difficult challenge. The City Watch could act their parts well enough, especially when they had all the excuses they needed for seeming distracted. Quirke the Jerk, as the prisoner had been dubbed, didn't strike Igor as having enough intelligence to manage a getaway if he were led by the nose through one. Yet Quirke had to believe that the escape was all his idea. He mustn't suspect a thing once he got out of the lockup, most especially not that he'd be followed every inch of the way to whatever New Guard hideout he bolted for. Mr. Lipwig had been very clear on that point and intended to handle much of the shadowing assignment himself.
"If I'm right," cousin Igor murmured, watching the dials on his seize-mometer, "the next thaking event thould come very thoon."
The tremor came right on schedule. Objects on shelves started to rattle, sounds of people swearing and exclaiming drifted from upstairs. Igor signaled to Igor and at the push of a button, tiny explosive charges detonated and the outer wall of 'Mayonnaise' Quirke's tanty cell crumbled like a sand castle.1 The minor quake continued for another minute or so before the ground settled back down, but the commotion was far from over. Up above whistles and a clang of alarm bells sounded, if without many running footsteps to accompany them.
"Think it'th working?" Igor asked Igor.
"Only one way to know for thertain," Igor answered, opening a concealed door in the Pseudopolis Yard laboratory that had a ramp leading up to an alleyway off of one street. From a hidden venue in the alley they watched their handiwork's result. Quirke was doing a runner, as inconspicuously as a purple, braying man in a conspicuous, rumpled uniform could, while groups of panicked people came out onto the street and blocked his path every which way as members of the City Watch appeared not to see him.
Just as Quirke was almost vanished from the Igors' view, he crashed straight into a young man running in the opposite direction with a wooden spoon in one hand. Following that young man were two others of the same age being chased by a quartet of wizards, one of whom was an orangutan, and all of whom collapsed into a pile as a highly localized storm of custard pies came raining down on them.
"Doeth thith thort of thing happen often?" Igor asked Igor.
Igor sighed.
"If Mithter Lipwig ith involved in any way, I'd have to thay yeth."
[* * * *]
"No doubt about it, Gentlemen," Archchancellor Ridcully boomed, "the quakes are getting stronger. Stibbons – status report!"
Ponder Stibbons didn't look up from the report Hex was printing out but blinked, wiped his glasses, and checked the report again before answering.
"Er . . . according to Hex, the shaking activity is not only getting stronger, the interval between events is getting shorter."
"We can tell that for ourselves, man!" Ridcully rapped the end of his staff on the floor in a way that made the other wizards wince. "Tell us something about the situation we don't know. Why isn't it working?"
It, in the Archchancellor's case, meant the effort the wizards had been expending to redirect the flow of magics disrupted by the iron octogram. Nearly the whole wizard staff of Unseen University had been pressed to the vital task, even to the extent of skipping several meals and snack breaks per day and additional cutbacks on leisure time. Such extraordinary sacrifice, the Archchancellor's tone implied, should not be going unrewarded.
"There seem to be other forces at work." Stibbons continued to ponder the printout. "Hex believes that beings from another realm-"
"What – the blasted Dungeon Dimensions again?" Ridcully spluttered. "I thought we settled their hash enough last year."
The younger wizard shook his head.
"Not the demons this time, Archchancellor. It's coming from someplace else. Hex hasn't been able to narrow the search of the source enough to pinpoint it, but someone or something out there is trying to counteract what we're doing. Also-"
"There's more?"
"Er . . . yes," Stibbons muttered with the air of a man who knows he is going to be blamed for something that isn't his fault. "The iron octogram is still largely intact. The railway tracks are being repositioned, but some of the mine owners are refusing to divert their ore and rubbish piles."
"Refusing!" Ridcully roared. "It's the end of our world if they don't!"
"Yes, Archchancellor. But some of them don't believe that. Or they think it's got nothing to do with them." Stibbons wiped some of the senior wizard's spittle off his glasses. "They just don't seem to be willing to listen to reason."
"I don't expect them to listen to reason, Professor Stibbons! I expect them to listen to orders!" The Archchancellor banged his fist down so hard next to Hex' console that some of the equipment rattled. "Nobody refuses a wizard!2 By thunder, I'll set the Head of Post-Mortem Communications on 'em all if they don't shape up! Or better yet, the Librarian!"
Ponder Stibbons shank back even further in his seat, a move which did not escape the Archchancellor's attention.
"Do you have a problem with that, potential ex-faculty member Stibbons?"
Fear was not the only reason for the awkward silence that followed the question. When you are the one teaching member of the Unseen University staff expected to do most of the actual teaching and, for that matter the majority of all work in general, as Ponder Stibbons was, release from those responsibilities was less a threat than a pipe dream. But Ponder was practical enough to know how pipe dreams ended up.
"The thing is," he finally replied, "we don't know where Professor Hix or the Librarian are at the moment. They aren't here."
"Hrrmm . . . ." Ridcully's response wasn't an explosion but a puzzled murmur. "Must be something vital going on if the Librarian is involved. Hix too? Hard to see what could be more important than what we're doing here right now but . . . ." The Archchancellor's forehead furrowed. "Any other wizards missing, Stibbons?"
"Uh, yes." Ponder Stibbons undocked. "Professor Macarona is gone too and, um, Rincewind."
"Pah, Rincewind!" Ridcully scoffed, before pausing to consider. "Though the man has his uses I suppose . . . ."
The other wizards in the chamber nodded in agreement. None of them actually uttered the words 'lightning rod,' but several tried to lower their posture just a bit. Rincewind was always handy to keep around as long as you didn't have to be near him at the time.
"And Dr. Macarona as well, eh? A damn bad business." Ridcully adjusted his outer robe, jammed his pointed hat more firmly onto his head and marched toward the door.
"Wait!" Stibbons called before he could stop himself. "Where are you going?"
"To find our missing wizards, of course! " The Archchancellor shouted. "And to have a few words with some mine owners while I'm at it! We'll need every wizard we can get if we're to succeed! In the meantime, I'll expect you lot to double your efforts and make it snappy! Stibbons, get Hex to give you more answers – and better ones. If someone's trying to stop us, we need to stop them first. I want to know who our enemy is and I want to know now!"
[* * * *]
1 The normal Klatchian variety of sand castle, that is. No one would attempt to use water or sand from the river Ankh, the most polluted body of water on the Discworld, since little 'Bergie' Johnson attempted it fifty years earlier and inadvertently created a small, indestructible hull breaker that has forced ships coming into Ankh-Morpork to detour around it ever since.
2 Which saying goes a long way toward explaining why there are so many frogs, cockroaches, mice and other small creatures on the Disc named Nobody. It also explains why B.S. Johnson was never in want of steady employment during his lifetime, much to the continuing sorrow of numerous individuals.