Interesting Times Read Free Page B

said the Dean, trying a new tack. “Everyone knows you can’t get that far by magic.”
    “Er. As a matter of fact you can, I think,” said a voice from the other end of the table.
    They all looked at Ponder Stibbons, the youngest and most depressingly keen member of the faculty. He was holding a complicated mechanism of sliding wooden bars and peering at the other wizards over the top of it.
    “Er. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” he added. “People used to think it was, but I’m pretty sure it’s all a matter of energy absorption and attention to relative velocities.”
    The statement was followed with the kind of mystified and suspicious silence that generally succeeded one of his remarks.
    “Relative velocities,” said Ridcully.
    “Yes, Archchancellor.” Ponder looked down at his prototype slide rule and waited. He knew that Ridcully would feel it necessary to add a comment at this point in order to demonstrate that he’d grasped something.
    “My mother could move like lightning when—”
    “I mean how fast things are going when compared to other things,” Ponder said quickly, but not quite quickly enough. “We should be able to work it out quite easily. Er. On Hex.”
    “Oh, no,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. “Not that. That’s meddling with things you don’t understand.”
    “Well, we are wizards,” said Ridcully. “We’re supposed to meddle with things we don’t understand. If we hung around waitin’ till we understood things we’d never get anything done.”
    “Look, I don’t mind summoning some demon and asking it,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “That’s normal. But building some mechanical contrivance to do your thinking for you, that’s…against Nature. Besides,” he added in slightly less foreboding tones, “last time you did a big problem on it the wretched thing broke and we had ants all over the place.”
    “We’ve sorted that out,” said Ponder. “We—”
    “I must admit there was a ram’s skull in the middle of it last time I looked,” said Ridcully.
    “We had to add that to do occult transformations,” said Ponder, “but—”
    “And cogwheels and springs,” the Archchancellor went on.
    “Well, the ants aren’t very good at differential analysis, so—”
    “And that strange wobbly thing with the cuckoo?”
    “The unreal time clock,” said Ponder. “Yes, we think that’s essential for working out—”
    “Anyway, it’s all quite immaterial, because I certainly have no intention of going anywhere,” said the Dean. “Send a student, if you must. We’ve got a lot of spare ones.”
    “Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A,” said the Bursar.
    The table fell silent.
    “Anyone understand that?” said Ridcully.
    The Bursar was not technically insane. He had passed through the rapids of insanity some time previously, and was now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. He was often quite coherent, although not by normal human standards.
    “Um, he’s going through yesterday again,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Backwards, this time.”
    “We should send the Bursar,” said the Dean firmly.
    “Certainly not! You probably can’t get dried frog pills there—”
    “Oook!”
    The Librarian re-entered the study at a bandylegged run, waving something in the air.
    It was red, or at least had at some time been red. It might well once have been a pointy hat, but the point had crumpled and most of the brim was burned away. A word had been embroidered on it in sequins. Many had been burned off, but:
    WIZZARD
    …could just be made out as pale letters on the scorched cloth.
    “I knew I’d seen it before,” said Ridcully. “On a shelf in the Library, right?”
    “Oook.”
    The Archchancellor inspected the remnant.
    “Wizzard?” he said. “What kind of sad, hopeless person needs to write WIZZARD on their hat?”
     
    A few bubbles broke the surface of the sea, causing the