Slipping Between Worlds -

the fiftieth frenzied chapter. A fiftiteth chapter deserves some sort of celebration, even if the end is as far away as it ever was.

While Holtack and his men were being informed and educated about Dwarfs, the rest of the city of Ankh-Morpork was going about its everyday business. By mid-day, there had been twenty-three legal thefts, twelve authorised break-ins, four unlicenced muggings, two bona fide Assassinations, three acts of clumsy untutored style-free amateur inhumations of no conceivable interest to the Guild but of every concern to the Watch, twelve arrests for various lesser offences, and a hundred and seventeen acts of Negotiated Affection. Traffic on Short Street was backed up as far as the gate, and Traffic Division were happily booking people who didn't have a counter-inducement to offer. Two lost swamp dragons were rounded up and taken to the Sunshine Sanctuary. The Zoo noted a feral cat choose its moment and stroll fearlessly into the lion enclosure. A well-fed lion rolled over and burped happily as the cat ignored it and strolled unconcernedly over to the meat carcass the lions had recently gorged on. It hunkered down and began eating, as Senior Keeper Pontoon scratched his head and said "Bugger me, I've seen it all now."(1)

In pubs across the city, the first of what would be several thousand gallons of beer began to pour down the first of several thousand throats. Two such pints have been poured for a couple of old associates meeting in a pub. The fact the pub is the Ramkin Arms on Cheap Street is a private joke between the two, who have met here before. The Ramkin is also a large establishment doing a thriving mid-day trade. If people want to be anonymous here, it is easy.

"So what have you got?" the first man asked. He discreetly looked around to see if anyone was watching. Or listening. The second man grinned a rat-like little grin.

"What have you got?" he asked. "The usual payment?"

The first man frowned.

"I've known you for ten years, Jake." he said. "Ever since you worked at the Guild. I know you're reliable and the information you give...sell... to us has always been good. But look at it from my point of view. The Quirmian gentlemen who ask me to meet you for a drink from time to time are both, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody paranoid. They trust nobody. Sell them a dud, and that's your usefulness over and the money supply dries up. Worse than that, they will suspect me. And I can't afford that to happen. 'Specially since your current employer has got his own people in the spying game now, and they're getting to be good at it. Which means we get woe from both sides. Are you hearing me, Jake?"

Jake Matkin nodded.

"Take it from me, I'm being careful, Bill. You know I got the job at Ramkin Manor on a forged CV that very carefully omits the fact I worked for the Guild for five years. Monsieur.."

"Don't say it!" Bill hissed.

"...The Quirmian gentleman of whom you speak was very helpful in getting me fake references from a person who owed the Guild a favour. And Her Ladyship is a bloody good employer, she's kind and considerate and she makes sure all the staff get a Hogswatch present and floats enough cash for staff outings, it's His Lordship I'm worried about. And Plodder Willikins. He's slow, but if he ever finds out the Guild is matching my pay dollar for dollar and then some, then I'm as good as dead, Bill. So you can tell the Quirmians that now might be time for some danger money, right?"

And it'll ease my conscience for spying on Lady Sybil, Matkin thought. Say what you like, she's a bloody good woman. But her old man still sent my father and my brother to the Tanty.

Bill looked at him levelly. One of the portering staff at the Guild of Assassins, he was used to being asked to handle this sort of routine assignment that went over and above the job description. It got him a handsome tip from Monsieur leBalouard and Doctor Perdore. Well, the gentlemen preferred to put a necessary distance between themselves and their spies and contacts.

"The gentlemen asked me to express their appreciation of the information that your house-guest wants to learn about sword-fighting." Bill said. "It meant they were able to brief La Belle Dame Sans Merci to make him an offer he can't refuse."

"The old beldame?" Matkin said, confused. Bill sighed and rolled his eyes. He didn't speak much Quirmian, but he was proud of the bits of soldier-Quirmian he'd gleaned while in the regiments.(2)

"No, no, no. You know, Madame Sans-Culottes. Deux-Epées. Two-Swords. Hotlips. You know?"

"Oh, her?" Matkin was suddenly interested. "She's teaching him swords? The poor bugger really is an innocent abroad, isn't he?"

"Depending on which way it goes, he'll die. Or he'll die happy. Or both."

"Hmm." said Matkin. "He's already survived a vampire. That one in the Watch. Sexpot Sally. Doesn't do blood these days, just sucks men dry of other bodily fluids. I saw him after she delivered him home. Couldn't tell arseholes from breakfast-time. But then, he is a Rupert and whatever planet he's from, it shows Ruperts are the same everywhere."

"Tell me about the vampire." Bill said. "They'll want to know about her. If he's made friends with a vampire..."

"More than made friends, according to Watch gossip."

"..then this is an extra complication. The Guild want this man, Jake. The Gentlemen have said this is very important. We do not want to upset the Gentlemen..."

Money was eventually discreetly exchanged. Across the pub, Detective Sergeant Jim Gerbilac of the Cable Street Particulars watched, having placed both men. He was off-duty and, for preference, had dropped into a pub other than the Bucket for a quiet reflective pie and a pint. But seeing a man he recognised as an Assassins' Guild employee having a surreptitious drink with a man he recognised as a footman at Ramkin Manor rang an alarm bell he couldn't ignore. And that arm movement. Had money changed hands? He'd mention it to André Loudweather when he got back to Cable Street. Commander Vimes might want to know.

Gerbilac was an experienced man, originally from the Shires, the Pullover region where while people spoke Quirmian, the area belonged to Ankh-Morpork owing to one of those long-time historical accidents. Gerbilac had got bored with policing in an area that had autonomous tax status, meaning the real villains could never be touched, and had applied to the City force. He had never looked back after that. Even if his then wife had screamed blue murder at the thought of leaving comfortable upscale Maillot, and moving to that place.(3)

But if people want to be anonymous in the Ramkin Arms, it is even easier for a plain-clothes policeman. The two surreptitious drinkers did not give him a single glance as he drank up and unhurriedly left.


And over at the Zoo, in the University's specialised research enclave, a conference was beginning. Watchmen guarded the doors and windows, and Assassins were discreetly patrolling the adjacent area, their very presence keeping the public away. Vetinari was presiding. He looked down with distaste at the Alien Queen, locked in her stasis field inside the octagram. Her still outline was just about visible inside the frosted glass, with a drift of caustic crystals piled up around it. Magical and mundane security was keeping the thing contained, for now. But Vetinari knew his city. He had the measure of its people. He'd witnessed the sort of things that could happen here. He therefore had no great confidence that this potentially City-threatening thing would stay contained. In this city, there was always something. Or somebody.

"I wish for this thing to be destroyed." he said, to the select group of advisors who had been invited. "Are there any ideas? Anyone?"

Lord Rust, who despite having no expertise and no discernable purpose here, save being the sort of person you have to invite to this sort of conference for political reasons, gave a braying laugh.

"Do we have to destroy it, Havelock?" he said, to general disbelief. "From what I understand, it's a sort of acid-breathing dragon. And it's just a pup. Can we not tame it? The brute'd be a powerful weapon of war. Nobody could fight it."

Vetinari frowned.

"Which is exactly what various foreign ambassadors are fearful of, Ronald. Prince Alladin of Klatch expressed his misgivings this morning. As did Lord Doublebloom of Agatea, Mijnheer van der Graaf of Rimwards Howondaland, His Excellency Seamus O'Hooligan of Hergen, Arch-Duke Ivan the Slightly Irritable of Far Zlobenia, and Sir Desmond Matterhorn, High Commissioner of Fourecks."

"How the dickens did they get to hear of it?" Rust demanded. "Damn' bloody foreigners sticking their noses in..."

"Sticking one's nose in," Vetinari interjected, "can be held to be the primary duty of an Embassy in a foreign country. All of these Embassies have a network of compatriots to call on in this city, as well as dedicated intelligence services, and in any case something which has been extensively covered in the Times cannot be accounted all that secret in the first place!"

Vetinari's cursory glance around the room took in Johanna Smith-Rhodes from the Guild of Assassins, Olga Romanoff of the City Watch, and Doctor Bruce Berwin from Bugarup University.

"And I'm sure at least three people present will soon be called to their respective Embassies to give an account of these proceedings. Lest anyone be in doubt, I welcome that. Full and frank disclosure will ease misgivings and foster reassurance. But, Ronald. Have you leant nothing? This thing is lethal. This thing is intelligent. This thing has its own agenda and cannot be tamed or bidden. It is deadly. I wish it to be destroyed, so that we have one less threat to concern ourselves with. Any ideas? No great rush."

There was a hushed shuffling silence and a general averting of eyes. Nobody wanted to be asked first.

Commander Vimes broke the silence.

"Golems, sir?" he ventured. "They're pretty much indestructible and acid-proof. Constable Nebbish used to work in a chemical factory. We had to seriously detoxify him before we let him out on the streets!"

Nebbish, when bought out from his lonely thankless task, had been a walking cloud of noxious chemical vapour. Even other golems had stood aside, as if this were some sort of terracotta BO. He had taken extensive baths in detoxicant solutions and a lot of steam-cleaning before being pronounced safe for the Watch-house and the streets.

Vetinari pondered this.

"It might work." he conceded. But then, we cannot afford to consider might or may work. I wish this solution to be completely infallible. What if the creature's strength is greater than a golem? We have no idea how large these things grow, although the inference to be drawn from the Roundworld moving picture is that they grow very large very quickly."

"Speaking of solutions, my Lord" said Joan Sanderson-Reeves, thoughtfully, "We know from experiment that strong caustics frighten it. What about dumping it in a bath of caustic potash and have a golem hold it down till it dissolves? That'd settle its hash!"

"Like Jeffrey, the Acid-Bath Killer of Pseudopolis, you mean?" asked Vimes. "Only not with acid."

Joan snorted.

"Acids would only strengthen it, Commander Vimes!" she said. "From her point of view, it'd be like a jolly long soak in a refreshing herbal bath!"

"That sounds...cruel." Johanna Smith-Rhodes said, doubtfully. She was temperamentally opposed to the prolonged suffering of animals, although she had delivered quick clean humane mercy killings when the situation called for it.

"Inhumation with extreme prejudice, Johanna." Joan reminded her colleague. "Sometimes the contract calls for it. Client pays a handsome surcharge, too!"

Vetinari acknowledged the Assassin input.

"But letting it free, even for a few seconds..." he mused. "And we still do not know if Golem strength will suffice. So many things we do not know about this creature. Save that it threatens the City."

He looked up.

"Arch-chancellor Ridcully?" he invited. "Can we use magic?"

"We already have, I think!" Ridcully boomed. "That's what's holdin' her there. But what gives me pause for thought, Havelock, is that we don't know for sure where this thing is from. Young Stibbons summarised the possibilities for you, and one of 'em is that this beast is from the Dungeon Dimensions. It could just be sittin' there pretendin' to be affected and biding its time, while it soaks up the magic we're thoughtfully feedin' it through the octagram. That's just a thought, you follow, but with the most important civic and political leaders gathered around the thing right now..."

There was a silence. Then Mrs Palm of the Seamstresses' Guild muttered

"I really wish you hadn't said that, Mustrum."

There was a chorus of murmured assent. All eyes turned to the baleful hunched shape of the Queen, who suddenly seemed slightly too small for the confining glass. Even the unheeded domestic who was industriously sweeping the floor turned to look.

Vetinari frowned.

"Escapee from the Dungeon Dimensions. A thing of dark imagination on Roundworld, made real here owing to the recent breach between the dimensions, inadvertently given shape and form here by our guests."

"Oh, yes." somebody murmured. "Our guests."

"Who are, even as we speak, performing a kind of penance and hopefully learning more about our City, as I require them to." the Patrician added, smoothly.

"Professor Stibbons has raised the possibility this might indeed be a most dangerous Dungeon Dimensions entity, one which has forsaken magic and chosen a more stable form. This implies great intelligence. And there is also Constable Romanoff's encounter with its mind, in which it purported to be a thing latent within our own world, which buds and comes to fruition when the time is right. In which case we need to know exactly how many other such seeds are out there. In due time, I propose to finance an expedition."

Johanna Smith-Rhodes perked up expectantly and tried to communicate her immediate availability for such a field trip. Vetinari smiled slightly.

"And when the time is right, I am sure the very best people can be sent out" he acknowledged. Johanna noted his gaze took her in, briefly, but it settled on...

"Professor Rincewind, you appear agitated?" he inquired. The hapless Wizzard was trying to look small in the middle of the University delegation. He had been casting what he evidently hoped were discreet looks at the doors and windows. Ridcully suddenly looked smug.

"He's up to about six, would you think, Stibbons?" he stage whispered, audibly to everyone.

"At least six, sir." Ponder Stibbons confirmed.(4) "Actively looking for an escape route. But that's normal for Rincewind. We don't need to worry until he's up to eight."

Miss Pretty Butterfly, Agatean ninja and honorary Assassin, took a closer grip of his arm and scowled at him. It was generally agreed Butterfly was the ideal bodyguard for Rincewind. She actually liked him, for one thing.

"As Egregious Professor of Cruel and Un-natural Geography, a field trip to Karn-Li would suit you right down to the ground, Professor!" Vetinari said, genially. "Capital!"

Then he turned back to the Queen.

"I still need ideas, ladies and gentlemen". he reminded them. He became aware of an insistent hissed and whispered conversation going on. It had overtones of an irritated Rimwards Howondalandian trying to get a point across discreetly. The fact an excited Rimwards Howondalandian was trying to be discreet doomed the attempt to failure.(5)

"Miss Smith-Rhodes?" Vetinari said, smoothly. "You have a point to present?"

Johanna Smith-Rhodes, who had consistently expressed opposition to housing this thing in her Zoo for longer than it needed, stepped forward.

"Sir." she said. "I was running an idea pest Professor Stibbons for his consideration. We know thet when we delivered a care peckege to the Hive the other efternoon, severel exothermic elchemy devices in the right places completely destroyed the verdemmte place, end conclusively inhumed the old Queen."

Vetinari nodded. "That issue was, er, successfully taken care of, I agree." he agreed. "And I do appreciate the colourful idioms being introduced into our everyday discourse from Rimwards Howondaland. Linguistic input from around the Disc makes Morporkian such an expressive and versatile language. "(6)

"Indeed, sir." she said, carefully. She was aware one of Vetinari's own deadly weapons was to seemingly go off at a tangent, relaxing the listener into making further indiscretions, whilst he assembled an even deadlier torpedo of his own to aim and fire back.

"And you believe such a care package might deal with our current situation? Please explain." Vetinari invited her.

She stepped forward, trying to project the air of dealing with a rather slow class of students that, nonetheless, contained at least one with a flash of insight who could make the teacher look slow and ill-prepared. This, she thought, might end up like the occasion she tried to teach Arachne Webber about spiders. (7)

"I heve been speaking to Professor Stibbons ebout one possibility for disposal of this thing." she began, assembling her argument carefully. This was Vetinari, not a class of student Assassins. "Es you know, sir, the Professor end I hev collaborated on several potentially dangerous essignments in service of the city..." out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ponder grimace slightly and shudder. "Thet is because there ere skills the Guild of Essessins does not hev. From time to time we need to colleborate with professional colleagues et the Thieves' Guild or et the University, to esk their essistence end edvice."

She glared as a voice muttered something about "Yes, sometimes the collaboration's so good we can hear it in the street."

Ponder reddened.

"Sir, a big enough quentity of the right exothermic elchemy reagant cen destroy enything." she said.

"Miss Smith-Rhodes, I do not doubt you." Vetinari said, patiently. "But how do we know what is an appropriate quantity of the correct explosive for this thing? We are, unhappily, ignorant."

"Leonerd of Quirm hes an exciting theoreticel usege for the alchemicel substence known es Uselessium" she said, getting visibly excited. "End its alchemicel relative, Gaspodium. I hev not yet hed an opportunity to speak to our Visitors es much es I would like. But they essure me thet on Roundworld, this hes been perfected es en explosive thet can inhume en entire city!"

Vetinari blinked. He'd read the HEX printouts on the fate of the Roundworld cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He'd also read about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, as further proof that the Discworld would never devise New Clear Power if he, Vetinari, had anything to do with it. (8) And here was a trusted Assassin with a penchant for serious explosives who was clearly all in favour of trying it out to see if it worked...(9)

"Miss Smith-Rhodes," he said, trying to grab an extra second of thought, "Are you seriously considering we use an untried and potentially devastating explosive on this creature?"

"Why not, my Lord?" Johanna said, smiling. "Es my colleague Miss Senderson-Reeves hes said, inhumation with seriously extreme prejudice mey be the correct response here!"

"I didn't advocate going that far, m'dear!" Joan said, hurriedly, regretting her earlier insinuation that sometimes Johanna could be too nice about things. To a Rimwards Howondalandian, this could be interpreted as an insult...

Er.. Johanna..." said Sam Vimes, uncertainly. "You weren't there when we all witnessed the mess these things could make. They could blow an enormous hole in Roundworld, for one thing. Wasn't there a danger that one here could split the Disc in two? Seems a bit extreme!"

Vimes had made a very singular arrest on Roundworld. This had involved an unwelcome glimpse into the mentality of a General Rust of the United States Army, a man who even knowing what these things could do, had been put in charge of a mountain full of them, and was still prepared to use them out of a misplaced sense of duty.

"Cure worse than the disease!" somebody muttered.

"And besides" Vimes added, practically, "You'd have to shut down the time field on that bloody thing and transport it to somewhere miles away from the City. Leave it free for that length of time and who knows what it will do? It was bad enough having Olga fly it across the City."

Olga Romanoff scowled and shuddered. Her memory was still recent and fresh. She would not refuse an order to do it again – big things were at stake here – for she was a Far Zlobenian, one of a race prepared to go stoicly into the face of oblivion. Or in her case, swearing luridly at it.

"As I say, Mr Vimes, I work closely with Professor Stibbons." Johanna said. "From him, I have learnt much about wizard-megic."

Heads turned to look at her. Mustrum Ridcully threw a questioning and unfriendly glare at Ponder. Even Vetinari paused for a second, contemplating the idea of an Assassin with magical ability. He had strictly forbidden such dual-qualified people from existing. They were trouble.

"Not, my Lord, ectively." Johanna reassured him. "I hev no megickal ebility of my own. Knowing about the existence of certain spells is ecedemic to me. I would still need a wizard to ectivete them, end the Wizerds I know best would refuse to do such things unless they were essured they were not doing so egressively, or in anything other than an ecologically sound end environmentally beneficial way. But inevitably, I still know, but only in theory, what certain spells cen do."

"Miss Smith-Rhodes is one of two Assassins who act as my liaison people with the University, my Lord" Lord Downey intervened, smoothly. "She is trusted, and indeed an ideal person for this role."

"Demn' fine gel." agreed Mustrum Ridcully, who had a soft spot for Johanna. "Completely trustworthy, or I'd not have given her full access and a honorary Doctorate!"

"Indeed." Vetinari agreed. "But while the idea is a sound one – use of the most powerful reagant available, against an enemy of largely un-known strength and power – how do we employ it in such a way that the cure is not deadlier than the disease? And I'm sure I gave orders for Alchemists' Guild stocks of these explosive metals to be safely dispersed and disposed of?"

"Err..." said Mr Sendivoge, of the Alchemists' Guild. Vimes turned to glare at him.

"How much did you hide, Sendivoge?" he demanded. He'd been entrusted to oversee the disposal. "Olga, if I send you to assemble a squad – make it Trolls and Golems for safety... go and raid the Alchemists, would you?"

"No trolls, sir Samuel." Vetinari requested. "We do not need a repetition of the unseemly scenes where the former Constable Spodumene gave way to temptation and ate a substantial amount of uranium."

Vimes winced. Sending trolls to dispose of radioactive metals – which to them would have been like medical-grade pure heroin to humans – had not, in retrospect, been a good idea. It was reputed that after Spodumene had gone wild and dissappeared, thinking he had grown wings and become Clinkerbelle The Tooth Fairy, and could fly from the top of the Tump Tower, Chrysophrase had exhumed the irradiated corpse and ground it up for street drugs.

Sendivoge explained, hurriedly:

"You did get it all, Sir Samuel. But young alchemists persist in repeating the experiments. It's the only metal we've ever discovered that will change into other metals and, well, they keep hoping if they do it for long enough, they'll get gold..."

"Have the new stocks impounded, please, commander. Use golems." Vetinari said, patiently. Golems were immune to radioactivity and no drug had been found that would work on them.

Vimes nodded to Olga.

"You are excused, Contable Romanoff." the Patrician said, smoothly. "A search warrant is implicit in my word of command. Take Leonard, please, he will know what to look for and how to safely re-assemble it as an explosive device."

There was silence as Olga left, escorting Leonard of Quirm, a man gleeful at being allowed a long-awaited chance to prove a point.

"Was that wise, sir?" somebody asked.

Vetinari frowned.

"Extra-ordinary threats call for extra-ordinary responses. Mr Boggis." he said. "And I know Leonard is intelligent and prudent. He will report a lack of success if he considers assembly of the device is just too dangerous or otherwise impractical. It also gives him something to do."

"Even if we do build a super-powerful bomb, sir," Vimes said. "How do we deliver it safely? If it takes the whole City with it as well as that thing..."

"I hev an idea for thet, Mr Vimes." Johanna said, urgently. "Based on what I know ebout certain megics, we do not move the creature et ell. Not even when the bomb is set up next to her. We ectivate the detonator here, on this spot."

There was general consternation. Vetinari raised an eyebrow.

"Here? In the Zoo? Your Zoo? Please explain." he invited her.

Johanna smiled.

"Doctor Berwin showed me the enclosure the Wizards hed devised for the Embiguous Puzuma on exhibit here. He was very proud of it. It heppens to be, es I understood him, not of this world et ell. Es I recell, it occupies a specially created dimension of space-time which is outside this world end the only window into it that shares our world is the viewing area. It is elso several thousand miles wide, in our terms. Whet if wizardy builds a similar new dimension eround this thing, so thet she is festened to the bomb end the bomb then explodes, efter a suitable delay, several thousand miles away inside the bubble? Hermless to us, but lethal to her!"

Vetenari looked up. A very slight smile crossed his lips. The Wizards present went into an excited huddle and started to loudly debate. Johanna smiled. She had not attended the emergency in the high Energy Magic Building where the fate of the Roundworld cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been debated. But other Assassins had. And Ponder was as wide-open to sypathetic interrogation from a pretty face who was inclined to be well-disposed towards him, just as much as Philip Holtack had been wide-open to Jocasta Wiggs. On a very specialised grapevine, something as exciting as a means to inhume an entire city with very extreme hyper-prejudice (10) is news that gets around quickly. Johanna was an Assassin. A well-balanced and in many ways likeable one, who outside a contract, or perhaps the presence of a very annoying person, would not dream of being uncivil or violent. Well, not much, anyway. She was certainly not a Jonathan Teatime and was a long way away from that. But oh, she wanted to watch an atom bomb go off. From a safe distance, naturally. Explosives of all kinds were her trade specialisation.

Vetinari smiled slightly.

"We seem to be getting somewhere and ideas appear to be emerging. Capital. Arch-Chancellor, your wizards have come to a conclusion?"

Mustrum Ridcully looked glum.

"I've just been reminded, sir, it took a long spell and a fair bit of input from HEX to do Maligree's Wonderful Garden to the size it had to be, to let that beast work up its full turn of speed. Took eight wizards, HEX, and most of a day. And what if Her Majesty here actually is a thing of magic and we just end up pourin' that amount of oomph into her?"

"Point taken, Arch-chancellor. Miss Smith-Rhodes?"

"There may be enother way, sir. Mr Ridcully. If this megicel field is currently slowing down time to the point where it is effectively frozen, is it possible to reverse time? I believe an interesting effect could be echieved by loading the creature with conventional exothermic elchemy reagants. We ignite the fuses. Then we send it twenty minutes back in time, end... BOOM!"

"But it would just go "BOOM!" in this room with us, you stupid girl!" Lord Rust exploded, "Where's the damn good in that?"

"It means when we see it re-appear in the room with us surrounded by smouldering fuses, we get twenty minutes to run!" Professor Rincewind said, practically.

"no, no, no, it doesn't work like that!" Mustrum Ridcully shouted. Listen, you fellows!"

As the argument rose in volume, Vetinari shook his head. He turned to the unheeded domestic, who stopped sweeping and looked quizzically up.

"If you'd be so kind, Mr Lu-Tze?" he requested. The saffron-robed monk grinned and gave a thumbs-up. He walked over to the Patrician, and all hubbub – and movement – in the room suddenly ceased.

"Thank you for coming." Vetinari said, sincerely. "As you can see we have a few little problems here. I suspect they are all inter-related."

The old monk nodded, sagely.

"Quantum. You get this sort of thing around quantum." he said, beginning to roll a cigarette from the remains of several dog-ends.

Vetinari frowned.

"If you have to smoke, Arch-Chancellor Ridcully has a packet of Necromancer cigarettes in his right robe pocket." he said, mildly. "They smell better, and I suspect would not be quite so third-hand."

He waited, placidly. Lu-Tze returned, this time smoking a tailor-made.

"Had to swap, else it would be theft." he said. "Mr Ridcully's one cigarette the less, but he's got three or four of my dog-ends to compensate him. He's a wizard. He'll never notice. Now what can I do for you, my Lord?"

"The Visitors." Vetinari said. "This vexatious situation here with the Queen. The breakthrough of the walls between worlds. People – and things – slipping between worlds."

"The old lady with the shopping trolley." Lu-Tze added. There was a meaningful pause. "We're looking for her too, sir. As are our people on Roundworld."

The Patrician was intrigued.

"You have people on Roundworld?" he asked.

"There are monasteries there too, sir". the old monk said. "Besides, our Abbot teaches the wise koan Do not worry about the other worlds and the other possibilities. We are there too. Wise teaching." (11)

"Wise indeed." Vetinari said. "But our first problem is here and in front of us. What can we do about it?"

Lu -Tze tutted and did the reverse whistle through his teeth. To Vetinari, it sounded like a tradesman who was just about to tell you the bill would be much, much, bigger than you anticipated. This was not a soothing thought.

"Big problem. Agreed, sir. You don't want one of these on the loose!"

"Have you seen them before?" Vetinari asked, politely.

"Not personally and not this close. But there was Karn-Li, ten thousand years ago. We had to sort that one out. I could pop back and ask, if you like. Take a day or two, though."

"Which we may not have." Vetinari mused. "Tell me, Miss Smith-Rhodes' idea. Is there any merit in it?"

"Well, to reverse time, you have first got to go through a point where all time is zero. Not a good move. Things get all glass-clock, if you see what I mean. She almost worked it out, though. Must come of being brought up in a grassy steppe and semi-desert with big horizons on all sides and not much to see. Gets you thinking, see. Like the Klatchians and their desert."

"But was she right?" Vetinari pressed.

"Clever girl. She was more than halfway there and I can see her reasoning. The thing is, sir, that if the thing is sent back twenty minutes in time but not in space... how fast can a world-turtle move in twenty minutes? We're still here. She will be several thousand miles behind us in deep space. It doesn't need the wizards spending a day and a lot of magic building an extra-dimensional bubble. This is quicker and simpler. We won't need any new clear devices, either. We realised something about deep space when one of our novices projected himself out there on the wrong end of a Zimmerman Tube. Clot. There's no air out there. No atmospheric pressure. Normally everything in a human body is under pressure. Keeps everything clean and neat and well packaged, yes? But take that outside pressure away..."

lu-Tze spread his arms expressively.

"Boom." he said.

"Boom." said Vetinari.

"Boom." agreed Lu-Tze. "

it might not even need a bomb. Everything's got to breathe, too."

Vetinari considered this. He looked around the very still and silent argument that had ceased to rage in the room.

"Can you do it?" he asked. "Push this thing twenty minutes back in time."

Vetinari made a mental note to recall Leonard of Quirm straight away. The desperation remedy of the New Clear Weapon would not now be required. So it was better not being built.

"We can do it, sir." Lu-Tze said. "Plenty of little cheats and sideways passages we've discovered. If I were you I'd give the wizards something to do. And get that clever girl to put a bomb together to go with her, one that makes lots of light, so you can pick it up on a telescope. It'll give 'em the warm glow that comes of having been needed."

"Proceed". Said Vetinari.

The room leapt back into noisy life, with the Patrician its one silent point, the fulcrum around which all else moved. The sheer force of his silence caused things to falter to an unsteady halt.

"I have decided." Vetinari said. "This is what we are going to do. Arch-chancellor Ridcully, your wizards will..."

And two hours later HEX projected a view of the starscape behind the World Turtle onto a wall where everyone could see it. There was a cheer as a bright new star briefly appeared, passing to nova and then fading again, quite a few thousand miles behind the Turtle.

Johanna Smith-Rhodes looked down at a perfectly octagonal hole in the floorboards. She expressed her regret it had taken the floor with it. A few forlorn crystals of caustic potash were liquefying on the wood.

"Nobody's perfect, m'dear." Ridcully said, smugly.

And so passed the Queen.

Meanwhile, in far Karn-Li, something scrabbled at the desert sand...


(1) This is not invention. This kind of thing does happen in zoos. Your average feral moggie survives traffic, inclement weather, infrequent feeding, dogs, foxes, attempted cruelty from people, et c. It is not going to be fazed by some bloody overgrown tabby it can easily outrun, and in any case I can clearly see the fat bastard's eaten its fill and it's just lying there. There's still good eating on those bones, and I'm having a share. Lions are well used to smaller predators and scavengers homing in on the remains of their kills. If the smaller scavenger picks the moment where the pride is glutted and sleeping it off, it can get in, feed and get out again with impunity.

(2) Every bit as appalling and mangled as the French learnt by British soldiers in two world wars, or that used by Nanny Ogg whilst abroad.

(3) Yes, I know That wonderful piece of pre-Midsomer Murders hokum, Bergerac, is currently being repeated on TV. Jim Bergerac (John Nettles, who later moved to police Midsomer, an English county with a murder rate ten times higher than New York) is a dedicated policeman in the Channel Island of Jersey, link-man to French police on the mainland, and aware the real crooks in the off-shore tax haven cannot be touched as they take very good care to ensure their crimes remain legal. He too has a detached wife who cannot come to terms with the fact he is a copper to his core and she will always be his second love, after policing.

(4) After experimentation and close observation, Ponder Stibbons had devised the Rincewind Scale for assessing the degree of danger and peril inherent inherent in any magically risky environment. This went from zero - a completely boring and risk-free environment – through eight – Rincewind makes an escape by fastest possible means – to Ten – Rincewind makes it into the next country, or indeed continent, from the source of imminent catastrophe, death, or destruction. Wizards were adopting it as a reliable indicator of risk.

(5) Have you ever seen a South African trying to be discreet? Doesn't work.

(6) A care package assembled to meet the bespoke needs of the recipient really does take care of a situation. In the old South Africa, a care package was a black-humour idiom for a letterbomb delivered in the post. Generally handcrafted with care and devotion by the state Assassins of the Bureau of State Security. Johanna has used this gambit to pull off at least one contracted inhumation. Two, if you counted the little incident at Home that drew her to Assassins' Guild attention in the first place.

(7) Arachne Webber was a student Assassin whose knowledge of spiders was so specialised and in-depth that she even ended up teaching Johanna. (See my story There's Nothing like A New Pair of Eyes...) In the canon, her specialised knowledge as a graduate Assassin led to Dark Clerk status and a lucrative contract from Vetinari. (Snuff).

(8) See my fiction Doppelgangers. This may be listed as a Discworld/Good Omens crossover, as Crowley and Aziraphile have cameo appearances. In which Rincewind again merges with his Roundworld alter ego Rjinswand at a place called Three Mile Island, and for just a few vital seconds, the fate of the Earth is in the trembling hands of a Wizzard who knows nothing about nuclear power.

(9) Unofficially, South Africa, like its ally and co-researcher Israel, is a nuclear power. Just before the end of apartheid, there was an unexplained explosion in the south Atlantic, a couple of thousand miles away from the nearest landfall in South Africa. This suggested to the suspicious that a ship containing an unattributed atom bomb had been towed out and detonated. (There had been a lot of South African naval activity in the area, and satellite pictures compared after the event suggested six ships had left Simonstown but only five had returned.) It is interesting to speculate if a real-life Johanna might have been involved.

(10) Such as the United States collectively felt against Japan in the summer of 1945.

(11) The Abbot explicitly says this in Thief of Time.To go to TP[s other fiction, although it is never formally explained or described as such, where do you think Johnny Maxwell learns to slice time, after Mrs Tachyon takes him back to wartime Britain? The History Monks also have a clear need to run her to ground before she busts more timelines up...