+++Once again, pardon the strange formatting….+++
Chapter 5: The lessons of whiskey
After three hours and six complicated but unsuccessful spells, the wizards gathered in Ridcully's office.
"This will definitely work, Archchancellor."
"That's what you said earlier, Stibbons, about the Reverse Double-Flip Dimensional Jump," said Ridcully. "And Speckleton's Comonback Enhancer. Dean, did the Librarian give you anything useful?"
The Dean had arrived in Ridcully's office out of breath.
"There seems to be…ah… no reverse spell…ah… for Croggly's Sub-dimensional Discombobulator, Archchancellor," he said. "Even when the…ah…Librarian did a search under recombobulation, nothing came up."
The Lecturer in Recent Runes hustled into the office then, his face clouded with worry. "Archchancellor, I've looked and there seems to be no way the Ephebian Oops spell will help, and that usually fixes just about everything."
Ponder Stibbons stepped out from behind the Dean's bulk.
"Archchancellor, I really think my idea could work."
The Chair of Indefinite Studies arrived with the Bursar trailing behind him, singing happily about bunnies.
"No luck on my end, Archchancellor," said the Chair. "It's puzzling enough that the Patrician was sent to another dimension and nothing from there arrived here. But discombobulation is so unusual that there's nothing in my books that will help. I missed dinner looking through them!"
The other senior wizards paused in respectful silence.
"Well done, Chair," said Ridcully. "That shows dedication above and beyond the call of duty." He stared at the Chair for a moment. "However, that doesn't mean you're getting your croquet mallets back."
"Blast," said the Chair.
Ridcully got up from his desk and took the black knight piece out of a glass cabinet that otherwise contained creative fishing lures. He glanced at it, then examined it closer.
"That's strange…"
The wizards gathered around. It was plain to see that the face of Havelock Vetinari had changed. The fury that had been there before was gone.
"Looks happy," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "Maybe the other dimension agrees with him."
"Don't be ridiculous, Runes," said the Dean. "He doesn't belong there. It can't agree with him."
Ponder felt this was his moment.
"I don't think the Patrician likes the dimension one way or the other," he said nervously. "I think he's probably…" he took a deep breath, "…not the Patrician anymore."
The wizards stared at him.
"What's young Stibbons going on about, Mustrum?" said the Dean.
"What're you talking about, Stibbons?" said Ridcully.
Ponder tried to think of a way to explain that the wizards would understand.
"Do you have a bottle, Archchancellor?"
"Drinking? Now? You were about to explain something about the Patrician, Mister Stibbons!" said Ridcully.
"I don't want a drink, sir, I need a visual aid."
"You already have glasses," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "Thick ones too for such a young man."
"A visual aid, as in something I can use to show you what I'm about to say."
"Just say it and you don't have to show us," said the Chair.
Ponder, a patient young man in everything except what dealt directly with the senior faculty, was grateful when the Archchancellor fetched a half empty bottle of whiskey from his hat.
"Thank you, Archchancellor. This will do just fine." Ponder set the bottle on the desk, then placed a water glass next to it.
"Observe the liquid in the bottle," he said.
"That's whiskey, says so on the label," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Right. And do you see what shape it is?"
The wizards peered at the liquid, looked at one another, looked at Ponder, and shook their heads sadly. The boy was definitely coming unhinged.
"It's whiskey, Mister Stibbons," Ridcully said gently. "It doesn't have a shape."
"But it does, Archchancellor. Right now, isn't the whiskey holding the same shape as the bottle?"
The wizards peered at the bottle again. There wasn't much whiskey left but there was enough to see that it carried the shape of the bottle.
"He's right there," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
Ponder sighed with relief. The first hurdle had been cleared. "Now," he opened the bottle and poured some whiskey into the glass," what does the whiskey look like now?"
After a moment, the Senior Wrangler delivered the verdict.
"It looks like whiskey."
"What shape is it?"
"It doesn't…oh, yes. The glass, isn't it? It's shaped like the glass."
"Yes, sir," Ponder said with relief. "Exactly! When the whiskey was in the bottle it was shaped like the bottle. When I poured it into the glass, it took the shape of the glass."
The Dean nodded. "That's logical. That's what liquids do."
"Yes, and people too," Ponder said.
"You mean when I take a bath I take on the shape of the bath tub?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"No. I mean if you landed in another dimension where you weren't a wizard and no one thought you were a wizard, you might start to become someone else."
"Who?" The Dean asked.
Ponder threw up his hands. "I don't know! A…a carter, maybe."
The Dean drew himself up to his very full stature. "Me? A carter? Never!"
"But if you were dressed as a carter, everyone thought you were a carter and treated you like one, and you even started thinking like a carter with a carter's memories, that's what you'd become." In the face of the wizards' disbelief, Ponder felt his words needed a disclaimer. "I think," he added.
"Ridiculous theory, Mister Stibbons," said Ridcully. "The Dean has always been averse to manual labor."
Ponder went on like a suicidal deer that sees the headlights but can't get out of the road.
"All I'm saying is that the Patrician was discombobulated, he landed in another dimension and, if we're to guess from the chess figure, he took on the identity of a knight. You can't be a knight and a Patrician at the same time, just like the whiskey can't have the shape of the bottle and the glass at the same time. They have similar qualities – Vetinari won't completely stop being Vetinari just like whiskey doesn't taste different when it's in a different shape – but he will stop being a Patrician. He'll do things and think things he'd never do or think if he was his normal self. And if we don't bring him back soon, he may never be the same as he was…"
The wizards ignored the drama of Ponder's last words. Instead, they discussed the theory for a while. There were definite faults in the logic, mainly having to do with humans being a lot more complex than whiskey. But whiskey tasted better with soda and cured colds when drunk hot with a slice of lemon.
After partaking of a shot of the visual aid, the wizards were in a much better position to accept Ponder's words.
"All right, Mister Stibbons," said Ridcully. "If we take your theory as true, how does that help us bring the Patrician back?"
"I think we have to go to the Palace with the chess piece…"
"Yes…"
"To the spot where the Patrician was discombobulated…"
"Yes…"
"Find something that can act metaphorically as the identity of the Patrician…"
"You lost me, there."
Ponder took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
"We need a thing that says 'Patrician.' I don't know, maybe one of his robes, or his coat of arms or his papers. We have to find something that symbolizes him."
"We could talk to that bland young man that works for him," Ridcully said. "And once we have that?"
"Then we do Croggly's spell again."
The wizards gasped. "Can't be done!" the Dean said firmly. "It takes weeks of careful mental preparation, intensive study of--"
"Dean, I did it all by myself on the fly," Ridcully said. "I'm sure we can manage it again if we all pull together as a team."
The wizards argued for a while about the idea. Finally, Ridcully shouted for quiet.
"I've decided. Nothing else has worked so we're going to give Mister Stibbons' theory a try. We're university men, after all. Experiment is in the spirit of inquiry. So… Off to the Palace! Somebody tell the Librarian to bring the crossbows."
The wizards rushed out of the room. The Bursar stayed behind and finished off the whiskey all by himself.