The Theory of Narrativity
Chapter the 4th
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. Terry Pratchett owns everything in this series to great effect. No money is being made off of this story.
Description: Things get very strange as Mustrum Ridcully and Esmerelda Weatherwax get the chance to relive their youth in a rather literal fashion. And Ponder Stibbons is… out.
Authors note: there will be several references to reproductive science in this chapter, as well as one reference to the possible savaging of the male genetalia with a walking shoe.
Grune 23rd, AM 2000, Lancre Castle, Lancre, Discworld
A group of four huddled around a collection of singed, burned and partially melted objects, inspecting them for some clue as to what exactly had happened to their two acquaintances. The collection of two (formerly) pointed hats, two pair of boots, a cloak, a broach and several pieces of iron was arranged on a table in order of size.
"The hats?" A weary male voice asked. Verence was very near exasperation, for all the curiosity seekers Shawn had been made to turn away in the last hour. Also, the hats were probably the most important symbols of the magic-user… and their owners weren't going to like this one bit.
"Completely destroyed. The Archchancellors fishing lures are all fused; the tip is completely gone… it looks something exploded. The rest of it is pretty much burned to a crisp. Grannies hat isn't much better: the cone is completely burned away. Her hatpins are mostly alright; a bit warped, but alright." This was Magrat, examining the effects of their friends. Their boots suffered only minor damage and the clock and broach were remarkably intact.
"That should be good news for Mistress Weatherwax… right?" Asked Shawn hesitantly. Aside from that… one little complication, it had all ended rather well.
"Shawn…" Began Gytha "I think before we do anything we have to let them sort things out." She said slowly, looking towards a door. Indeed, while Mustrum was enthralled by his new state, Esme was only finding problem after problem.
Meanwhile…
On a bench along the wall of this room, two youths of about 20 sat with their heads hunched. One was a young woman of 21 who, in the correct light, would be considered 'handsome' or in polite company, 'plain' (1). Her pale blonde hair, fresh from getting scrubbed silly, hung loose about her shoulders after many failed attempts to get it set in its usual tight bun. Her features, while angular, did have a fullness and firmness about them that had lacked even this morning.
That's what happens when you get 42 years taken off of you in an instant.
The other youth was a boy of 18. He had brown hair, a beard that was very little more than wiry hairs demonstrating a primitive herding instinct and ears large enough to pick up radio. He was also a bit on the thin side, but not so beanpole scrawny as he had been at 15 or 16 (or as Rincewind currently was). Presently, he was staring intently at his right hand while snapping his fingers.
Eventually a flame of Octarine formed between his fingers. He smiled, looked towards the girl, but noticing her stony countenance, lost said smile. "Esme, you still can't be…"
"That's Mistress Weatherwax, Mustrum Ridcully!" Snapped Esmerelda. She didn't even look at him.
"It's not MY fault we're like this. And besides, doesn't it feel good not to have joint pains for once?" They'd been having this exact same argument every ten minutes for the last hour and besides it getting his nerves on edge, he was beginning to run out of positives in attempting to convince Esme of any benefit of their new state.
"Mustrum…" Esmerelda actually took the time to look at him. "I know exactly what happened. You've been using the 'Memory Lane' line of thought again, and this time it wasn't a mere detour. No, this was a sixteen-cart pile-up with 3 broken wrists, a dead ox and molasses everywhere… and now you've got me speaking in mety-fors! I didn't cause this, and it must've been someone what did!"
"Well, maybe someone did!" Exclaimed Mustrum, finally breaking under the strain. "Maybe it was a god… or a demon."
"No. Not even a god would be stupid enough to do this."
"Why? They afraid you'd climb up the Hub and give them what for?"
"You obviously don't know the reputation I've built up."
And it was true. He hadn't heard anything from her or obviously about her since his departure until the royal wedding. But if the small slice of humanity in the pub earlier was any indication, the witches had quite the reputation, being as widely known in the Ramtops as it was varied: many plains-born mocked them… soon replaced by fear when they witnessed what a witch could do, while locals of their communities treated them with a curious mixture of earned respect and just a little fear at how a witch presented herself. And with the rumours from Genua and the incident at the Ankh Morpork Opera House, Esmerelda and her coven had appeared to cover some distance.
Ridcully sighed quietly. "No, I don't. But I know that we have to find a way to reverse this if we're to show our faces in respected circles again. I can, sort of, understand why you're upset: A witch, especially one with a reputation such as yours, isn't supposed to be a young woman with piercing eyes and flaxen hair (and a nose you could chop wood with) anymore than the Archchancellor of Unseen University is supposed to be a boy with hardly any beard, no meat on his bones and hair that isn't grey." A bit of reflection on his own dilemma had allowed him a little insight, combined with his own crafts use of spectacle and ritual.
"And if we can't find a way to reverse it?" Asked the young Weatherwax, her voice not betraying any twinge of nervousness.
They both knew the answer, and neither of them enjoyed the prospect of having to grow old all over again just to get back to normal.
"Then Neither the Dean nor Recent Runes will ever let me live down being the second youngest Archchancellor in University history." Mustrum grumbled. He'd been haunted by that one thought for the last forty minutes, and was quite bothered by it.
"They're expecting us at the inn for the after-experiment party. We should go." This wasn't an invitation, just an important social fact as conveyed from Esmerelda. Mustrum, being a wizard and thus knowing the importance of social functions of any sort, did get up and head for the door, following Esme.
He just hoped Stibbons was having an easier time of it than he was. He had made quite an idiot of himself earlier trying to make conversation with Ms. Tockley, all because of his odd mixture of curiosity about the situation and worry for the young wizard. And he hoped Stibbons appreciated it.
Later That Night, Castle Wyvern, Aerie Building, Manhattan, NYC, Earth, July 23rd 2000.
Ponder Stibbons wasn't quite sure if this job was supposed to be an opportunity for bleeding edge research or a punishment for his wossname with Lucy.
On one hand, what he had already leaned about the connections between these 'Gargoyles', humans and the thaum, could fill a lecture set for an entire school year. He was almost certain that this world was not the same one as the Roundworld in the Micro-Universe; First of all, he had already detected the presence of several gods (which is to say, the lingering presence of one gigantic deity as well as a multitude of minor deities scattered across the globe) and determined a local Thaumic field of about 9.5 thaums, and, as a result, had inferred the existence of at least trace amounts of narrativium, especially on this island. On the other hand, he had already learned from the Librarian that these creatures were being hunted by a group of violent fanatics that had recently lost funding.
On top of that, he was getting some very unusual signals from the tall, blond man with the spectacles.
But, at the moment, the object occupying his full attention was… well; one could call them his 'clients'. Before him stood the great amethyst coloured figure of Goliath, leader of what was probably the largest clan (2) of gargoyles anywhere on earth. Beside him stood his mate and wedded wife, the human female Elisa Maza (who looked to Ponder to be vaguely Klatchian) as well as what look like various elders of this clan.
Beside Ponder himself stood the Librarian, who had been and was acting as an introductory and intermediary force before Stibbons could move a team from the HEM Building though L-space to the facilities here. He would be peaceful, as these beings had been warned about the dangers of the "M word". And behind Stibbons were David Xanatos and Matthew Bluestone, the men who had first brought this couples plight to the wizards attention.
Currently, Goliath held out his taloned hand in greeting. "You are the magus that Bluestone and… Xanatos hired?" he asked. Stibbons noticed the slight pause before the latter mans name, suggesting that there was some reluctance to fully accredit him, and perhaps a sign of some past conflict.
The Librarian nodded an affirmative and promptly sent a sharp nudge into Stibbons' lower thigh in order to get the wizard to actually respond to the greeting.
Stibbons took the males hand and proceeded to shake it. "Well, I am a wizard, if that's what you mean. And I am the one that was assigned to your problem after the Librarian was alerted to this case. The master of my college chose me because, among other things, I'm one of the only staff members interested in the more experimental aspects of magic, such as helping to rectify your problem." The handshake had ended, so the wizard decided to broach the actual subject. "So… you two want to have a baby?"
"Yes, actually." Said the human woman. The initial outline had said that she was one of hundreds of watch-humans in this city, and specifically a street-copper that had enjoyed a long friendship with these gargoyles… and a very apparent and (in the past year) very public romance with their clan leader. "We thought of adopting, but…" She stopped, already looking uncomfortable.
"What the good detective is trying to say is that adoption, while the easy choice on the surface, would be both largely impossible and also considered an unsuitable compromise by all parties." Answered the human David Xanatos in a tone that the man had cultivated over hundreds of high-level (and high stakes) business meetings. "Although anti-Gargoyle sentiment, and more specifically the wish to wipe them from the face of the planet, has waned to the to the point where the clans are in very little danger from the general populace, there is still a… reluctance among some to accept a relationship between a human and a gargoyle as legitimate and not comparable to certain practices involving livestock abuse. While I was doing some private inquiry into the adoption option, I found some of those people at the other end of many conversations. As is such, getting an adoption approved through official channels would be almost impossible. And any informal adoption would most likely reek of scandal." From the look on Detective Maza's face, she was quite surprised, but not quite pleased, to find out that Xanatos had been snooping on her behalf.
"Did you, by chance, try anything else after that avenue was exhausted?" Asked the wizard, knowing (in an academic sense) that there were often other options to this sort of problem, options rarely talked about by the temple-going middle class of Ankh.
"Well…" Started one of the elders, a male, from behind the couple. "There was a suggestion of using a human male's 'sperm' to fertilize one of Elisa's eggs… which I took to mean that Goliath would allow his mate to lay with another man in order for her to be with child. Several possible donors were brought up, but it pretty much collapsed when Elisa basically threatened to castrate Bluestone with her shoe if the discussion went any farther." (3)
At the back of the room, Matthew Bluestone groaned. "For the record, I did not recommend myself. I was actually uncomfortable with it and tried to avoid the whole mess. Until Fox… That would be Mrs. Xanatos, his wife." Matt pointed at David. "Suggested that I be the donor. Like Tammany over there said, it ended right there."
The last of the roundtable explanations then came from the unusual man with the spectacles and what now appeared to be a right fist made out of grey stone. "The last and most ideological reason for wanting an independent pregnancy, of course, comes from the need to both comply with the wishes of Goliath and Detective Maza and to dispel the notion that such a union is bestial in nature by successfully producing offspring."
He glanced towards some of the older members of the committee of Elders. One of them nodded curtly. "There have been legends of Human/Gargoyle pairings resulting in offspring; myths and tales told on lonely battlements out of boredom or lewd rumours exchanged by scullery maids. And usually including dangerous amounts of either direct magic or magical fallout from an earlier spell."
He continued, "One additional clue comes from fossils closely guarded by the (Illuminati) Society. They show that approximately 6000 years ago, Gargoyle kind suddenly changed from a mostly saurian species that possessed only pterosaur-like wings and mouths that were beaked and muzzled into the much more humanlike species possessing hair, humanlike vocal chords, flat humanoid faces and more diverse wing structures. Additional changes included more humanlike genitalia as well as mammary glands in the females."
He paused. "That particular change is actually what forced gargoyle kind to make contact with humanity, with infant hatchlings of the new type needing milk instead of simply smashed meat and plant material for food. For several rookery hatchings, as the story goes, the clans had to rely on human wet-nurses to nurse hatchlings, until the first rookery born with these changes had children of their own, and the females could nurse the young after they hatched."
"And to get to the point," Interrupted Xanatos "these fossils also provide evidence of a retrovirus, one that was apparently responsible for the creation of the species from its dinosaurian origins. This virus was apparently dormant for millions of years until it was reactivated and absorbed various human traits and effectively welded them onto the gargoyle genetic structure. And we believe that it was magic that reawakened it." He walked forward until he stood by Stibbons on his opposite side from the Librarian. "What we want you to do, Mr. Stibbons, is to use the virus to make it so that Goliath and Detective Maza are reproductively compatible. Do you feel it can be done?"
Ponder thought for a moment. "We may have to do some additional research into the Gargoyles breeding cycle… I'll also need to familiarize myself with your devices, of course. But I believe we can affect conception in, say… four to six months."
Everyone in the room then went into a loose huddle, and then, after what sounded like a heated discussion, turned back to the otherworldly pair. It was Elisa Maza who spoke the two most critical words of the entire meeting. "You're Hired." And Stibbons would have been a fool if he didn't see the look of hesitant hope on her face.
At his side, The Librarian gave a quadruple thumbs-up from where he sat and smiled an impossibly wide simian grin. Seeing that, Stibbons still didn't feel entirely happy about this situation, but his feelings did not especially matter at the moment.
He had work to do.
1. And covered in unused horse bedding, a scarecrow.
2. A term applied mostly because of their past residence on the western coast of the Scottish highlands, while human anthropologists would more likely classify this group as a 'band', owing to their numbers, genetic variance and hunter/gatherer lifestyle.
3. In certain other stories, solutions such as this were used to work around the human/gargoyle incompatibility. In others, magic was used. And in one, there was simple, biological compatibility from the start. I like to think that I am the first writer to bring in outside contractors to help with this dilemma.