Chapter 7: Unseen University
Summary:
The night after the full moon. Unseen University, HEM building. Almost twenty-four hours since Remus and Tonks arrived.
Chapter Text
Rincewind slouched against the wall of Hex's room in the HEM building, watching the other wizards debate how to send the stranded Roundworlders home.
Ponder Stibbons explained to Archchancellor Ridcully, "The flux capacitors overload when we tell Hex to scale up the Roundworld Project. Yes, he, err, it, can move small objects, Archchancellor, but nothing more than a few beachballs. The first iteration of the Roundworld project used zero as a placeholder because it was assumed Hex would let more objects be programmed in. It still thinks we want beachballs. We're working on it." In the background Hex emitted the 'parp' noise it sounded every fourteen minutes whenever beachball function was enabled.
Ridcully was silent for a moment and then said, "Have you heard the story about how to get a mule's attention?"
"Sir?"
"It goes like this, 'First, get a two-by-four."
"A – what?"
"Piece of wood. Two inches thick, four inches wide. Length three, four feet."
"You can't hit Hex!" Ponder shrieked, having finally deciphered Ridcully's words. "He – it's got thousands of parts now; some of them came all the way from BhangBhangduc."
"Thaumaturgical two-by-four, young man. Surely there's an equivalent."
Rincewind wondered what one could do to threaten Hex. Interrupt its ant trail? Slow down the Glooper's flow? Those could make it work slower, but Hex didn't care about those. Ponder, he guessed, did not want to tell Ridcully it was mostly the reverse. When Hex tried to misbehave, and refused to work, Ponder typed in a string of symbols. When it solved a new problem, he typed HAVECOOKIE. Ponder was an expert now in Hex-wrangling, and when it overloaded on its first attempt and refused to try again, rejecting even cookie bribes, they had a real problem.
There was only one thing which could threaten Hex, and Rincewind didn't have any idea whether it would work. He was afraid Hex might retaliate for the threat. He wasn't certain Ponder would even consider the idea, as the usual outcome of removing the FTB was +++Mine!Waah+++ repeated constantly. Ponder had been stunned when a fluffy teddy bear appeared in Hex's workings. Hex had written a letter to the Hogfather, and received its wish. This required dangerous levels of belief from Hex, a sign it was becoming more sentient.
Rincewind fingered the crooked white token in the pocket of his robe. The blond girl had given it to him once when he was lost in Howondaland.
He'd been in Howondaland for a week, and it had not stopped raining. He'd been out searching for firewood in a damp forest, and then stumbled home with a few wet pieces. As he neared the cave he planned to sleep in, a young woman sat on a rock in front of his firepit.
"Oh, hello," she said. "I was worried that you'd been infected with wrackspurts. "
"What . . .?"
"They make people confused, and you were out in the wet a long time. Here." She took one of his wet logs, placed it in the pit, and tapped it with a thin wooden stick. "Incendio." Huge flames leaped up immediately.
"Thanks. Are you a witch?" Ponder wasn't sure. He'd never seen a witch wearing layered blue skirts and radish earrings, without a hat, but she'd cast a fire spell he wished he knew. In the light from the fire he saw that she was younger than he'd thought, possibly about sixteen, but without any fear of a strange man. That probably meant she could kill him with one spell from her stick. Wand. That was a wand.
"Yes. I've been observing the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. They've almost extinct on Earth, you know."
Seeing his confusion she added, "Wizards here call it Roundworld, although it isn't round, of course. It's flatter at the poles and bulges at the equator. But I suppose from the Disc you aren't able to see that."
"You're from – " Rincewind and Ponder had spent many nights drinking, while Ponder bloviated about research on theoretical Universes. He'd never imagined he'd meet anyone from such a bizarre world. Ponder had almost convinced him that gravity could bunch up in a ball, and pull people in all over a spherical world, so no one would fall off, but in the sober, hungover, light of morning they couldn't read the equations he'd written. The paper he'd written on had been mostly obliterated by wine stains.
"Yes," she smiled. "The Disc is filled with animals you don't see on Earth. I'm almost certain it's because the standing magic field on the Disc protects them, although at home they may be using disguises. Daddy thinks the Blibbering Humdinger is a symbiote secreting forgetfulness potion as an airborne defense for its carriers."
"I'm not sure we have any Blibbering Humdingers on the Disc," he admitted. "Or Crumpled Snorkacks.
"Crumple-Horned. That's because of the forgetfulness potion." Her voice was placid and light, and didn't resemble any witches he'd met. Magrat came close, but she didn't have a fixation on imaginary animals.
"I wanted to find hermit elephants on this trip. I've never seen them." She looked disappointed.
"Oh! I know where to find some. The Palace menagerie has a few." He sighed. "Of course, that's back home. In Ankh Morpork, and I don't quite know how to get back."
"That's okay," she said peaceably, "I do."
She'd pulled out what looked like an animal horn, a goat maybe, though it was squashed and crooked unlike any he'd ever seen.
"They shed them every year, you know, and I always pick up a new supply when I come back to the Disc." She handed it to him. "Hold this and shut your eyes. Visualize the place you want to be, in as much detail as you can, and count backwards from 100."
She held onto his arm as he imagined Unseen University, and he counted, "One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-"
Poof. He recognized the smell at once. It was the beloved scent of old paper, bananas, and primate.
"Eeek! Eeek eek oook!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he hurried to say, as he opened his eyes. "I didn't know we'd land right next to you."
They were not only in the Unseen University library, but standing next to the Librarian's desk. The orangutan reached out its long arms, probably to bounce him upside down on his head for a minute or so, but stopped as he saw Luna. She smiled. "I thought we might be coming here. Do you want some peanuts?" She opened her purse and pulled out a bag larger than itself. Rincewind thought about introducing the Luggage to what must be its spiritual companion, but the purse was so tiny it might make the Luggage miss its Agatean daughter.
"How did that work? What even is this thing?," he exclaimed, looking at the small object in his hand.
"I told you. It's from the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. They shed their horns every year. A Crumple-Horned Snorkack has advanced homing centers in its brain. They travel from NothingFjord to the Ramtops to dig dens, and then bring the young back to the Widdershins Ocean to hunt fish on the exact same beach each year. The mother Snorkack fills up on octarine grass before it hibernates, and its milk has more magic than any other animal."
"So the Snorkack's horns have . . .homing magic in them? Really?"
Rincewind brooded for a moment. He'd been thrown all over the Disc, and had never even heard of the Snorkack. A horn could have brought him home in an instant. The horn was warm in his palm, and he hastily pushed it inside a pocket of his robe.
"You came to pick up new ones? The magic wears off."
She nodded. "On Earth it does. Here, it might not. It might recharge from the high standing magic field. Is the Palace menagerie open now?"
The menagerie wasn't open, so they breakfasted at the new Quirmian-style café on Peach Pie Street. Luna loved the beignets, and ate three of them, licking the powdered sugar from her lips. He drank two cups of the strongest coffee on the Disc, surpassing even Klatchian Red Mountain, and watched her. Maybe she was older than he thought. Who knew how people aged on Roundworld. –
"Umm, err, uh, so, I don't know how old you are, or if you are, ah, seeing anyone? My name's Rincewind, by the way." He couldn't have sounded more awkward if he'd studied for hours, but he smiled in what he hoped was a sophisticated way.
"I'm Luna Lovegood. I don't go out with anyone, because I'm only a fourth-year, but I always carry Aquavirius Maggots." Her smile was as sweet as it had been all day, and now it scared him a bit.
"Uh, anti-viral maggots?"
"Aquavirius Maggots. They look like tiny brains. They can be ground to a fine powder and still grow to full size. They travel to the brain and infect it, you know."
"They . . . do?"
"Yes. If I'd thought you were the kind of person to be afraid of, I would have put some in your coffee. But I didn't. Can we see the hermit elephants now?"
"Of course." He had hurriedly paid, and they'd seen the hermit elephants, one of whom had just shed its protective hut for a larger one. She'd carried away a selection of long straws from the thatch, putting it into the tiny purse again.
"Goodbye, Rincewind. Maybe we'll meet again someday." Luna brought out her own Snorkack horn, closed her eyes, and disappeared.
He had never met Luna again, and also had never used the Snorkack horn. It had been a good-luck piece. As Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, he'd been kept out of unscheduled adventures for three years. He hoped the horn was staying charged in the standing magic field of the Disc and Unseen University. Before she left she told him that she went to the Unseen University of Roundworld, Hogwarts, which was in Scotland. That's where the strange witch and wizard were from, as Archchancellor Ridcully had informed them. He wondered whether they knew Luna. If he gave them his crumpled horn, they could probably reach home quickly. But would they be back in time? They'd been on the Disc twenty-six hours now.
"Ponder, old chap, got a moment?" Ridcully had turned to discuss the situation with a couple of HEM students. Rincewind didn't know them, but one apparently was Big Mad Drongo's younger brother.
"See here, Turnipseed, what do you think might get Hex's attention? We don't have time to waste." The student shrank under the full force of the Archchancellor's attention.
Ponder slipped away from Hex to join him.
"What's up? I can't leave Ridcully alone with Hex."
"I think I can get the Roundworld couple home, back to their school, but I don't know whether they would get there at the time they need. I went to the Lady Sybil earlier this evening. They're in the middle of a battle, the wizard said."
Rincewind had entered the Lady Sybil at the same time as Remus arrived. It hadn't taken much for the surgeon to leave in a huff, once he was informed by Captain Angua that the stranger was a werewolf.
"He can gut a deer in twenty seconds. Imagine how much less time it would take for a human." Both werewolves had smiled at the surgeon with all their teeth.
Rincewind continued, "His name is Remus Lupin, don't ask me what his parents were thinking; apparently he died – almost died – first. His wife – wizards can marry there, oddly - is a witch. Her name is Nymphadora, and she was trying to find him when she was attacked." He pulled out the Snorkack horn. "I met a girl from their school a few years ago. She gave me this, said it was the horn of a Crumpled Snorkack. Apparently we have them on the Disc. She said we might not see them because they have symbiotes -never mind. It pulled us from Howondaland to the library in two seconds."
Rincewind didn't tell Ponder that everyone in the wounded witch's room noticed the pointy hat which proclaimed him to be a "Wizzard." They had given furtive glances and looked away quickly. Remus had curled his lip, which Rincewind thought was quite unnecessary.
The dumpling shaped witch had reacted differently. She gave him a broad grin that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency, and winked. "I always like a young man with an independent attitude."
He had smiled at her. She looked like someone would give him potatoes by the barrel-full, his major criterion for female attractiveness. Maybe he could tell the Archchancellor he needed to get sent to Lancre.
"Huh. You never told me about the snorkel horn."
Rincewind pulled his wandering mind back to Ponder. "Snorkack horn. I was afraid someone would take it away. I hoped that if I got lost again, I could use it to get back. But I think they need it more. Here." He dropped the horn into Ponder's hand.
"Thank you. I'll show it to Hex. I've got an idea, too, but Ridcully is going to think I'm bonkers."
"He already thinks everyone in the HEM is bonkers. You know he hates research magic."
Ponder sighed. "This is slightly more bonkers. I can't tell him why I want to try this."
Rincewind laughed. "Is it crazier than the FTB?"
"Umm, it's about that. Do you remember when Commander Vimes was in the past and we got him out again? He'd been in the past for several days, and came back in less than an hour. (Ponder didn't know of the role of the Time Monks; old men in orange robes banging drums never seem dangerous. Hex never told anyone it liked the drums and had cooperated with the narrativium.)
"Yes?"
"Hex's maths calculated the time of his return to one decimal place. I noticed that the FTB vibrated and became warm during the calculation."
"That's a little strange," Rincewind agreed. "You never told anyone?"
Ponder took off his glasses and wiped them nervously. "Uh, no. You know the Archchancellor doesn't understand that Hex is growing more sentient. I think Ridcully's completely wrong about wanting to threaten Hex."
"And here I thought Ridcully had a prescient mind with deep understanding."
They both snorted, albeit quietly.
"I thought, well, what if I gave him an incentive and told him – it - I needed a calculation to three decimal places? It could mean return back almost to the same minute." Ponder slipped his glasses back on.
"What did you have in mind? You told me he's refusing cookies."
"Don't think me mad, but I wondered whether the FTB wanted company. It's alone, doesn't have any friends or family."
"Ponder, have you been stealing the Bursar's dried frog pills? That sounds daft."
"Well, what have we got to lose? Come here." Ponder ducked into a small storeroom, and opened a bag hidden on the highest shelf. He pulled out three teddy bears. A large one had a pink hair ribbon, wore a dress, and hugged two smaller ones to her arms.
Rincewind goggled at them and then put out his hand to stroke their plush fur. They were the softest thing he had ever touched, and were crafted in three different colors. The mother bear was a dark cinnamon. One of her babies was a deep charcoal black while the other was gold. He reached out reverently and took the black cub, smiling foolishly.
"You're right. Hex will be thrilled. Do you really think he will be able to calculate better?" Rincewind cuddled the baby FTB.
"I have no idea. Could you get the Archchancellor to leave? I don't want him to see me installing this."
"Hmm. I'm writing another volume of the XXXX book."
"The one with 29 volumes already?"
"That's the one. He's very interested in Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses, and Lichens of Terror Incognita. He thought I didn't say enough about the drop bear. I'm sure I could get him away to yell at me about it. You're going to owe me a big one."
Ponder nodded. "Get going then. I'm not sure how much time it will take after installation. Hex will still have to download it and get to an initiation state. The calibration is more delicate than anything I've ever attempted. The Roundworlders aren't ready to go back, right?"
"No. They're still weak. I think you might have another day. Okay, wish us luck." Rincewind bopped Ponder's nose playfully and they stepped out of the storeroom.