The Last Continent

The wizards had made Mrs Whitlow a polite crude hut out of branches and big woven leaves. She bade them goodnight and demurely pulled some leaves across the entrance behind her.

'A very respectable lady, Mrs Whitlow,' said Ridcully. 'I think I'll turn in myself, too.'

There were already one or two sets of snores building up around the fire.

'I think someone ought to stand guard,' said Ponder.

'Good man,' muttered Ridcully, turning over.

Ponder gritted his teeth and turned to the Librarian, who was temporarily back in the land of the bipedal and was sitting gloomily wrapped in a blanket.

'At least I expect this is a home from home for you, eh, sir?'

The Librarian shook his head.

'Would you be interested in hearing what else is odd about this place?' said Ponder.

'Ook?'

'The driftwood. No one listens to me, but it's important. We must have dragged loads of stuff for the fire, and it's all natural timber, do you notice that? No bits of plank, no old crates, no tatty old sandals. Just... ordinary wood.'

'Ook?'

'That means we must be a long way off the normal shipping... oh, no... don't...'

The Librarian wrinkled his nose desperately.

'Quickly! Concentrate on having arms and legs! I mean living ones!'

The Librarian nodded miserably, and sneezed.

'Awk?' he said, when his shape had settled down again.

'Well,' said Ponder sadly. 'At least you're animate. Possibly rather large for a penguin, though. I think it's your body's survival strategy. It keeps trying to find a stable shape that works.'

'Awk?'

'Funny it can't seem to do anything about the red hair...'

The Librarian glared at him, shuffled a little way along the beach, and sagged into a heap.

Ponder looked around the fire. He seemed to be the man on watch, if only because no one else intended to do it. Well, wasn't that a surprise.

Things twittered in the trees. Phosphorescence glimmered on the sea. The stars were coming out.

He looked up at the stars. At least you could depend—

And, suddenly, he saw what else was wrong.

'Archchancellor!'

So how long have you been mad? No, not a good start, really... It was quite hard to know how to open the conversation.

'So... I didn't expect dwarfs here,' Rincewind said.

'Oh, the family blew in from NoThingfjord when I was a kid,' said Mad. 'Meant to go down the coast a bit, storm got up, next thing we're shipwrecked and up to our knees in parrots. Best thing that could've happened. Back there I'd be down some freezing cold mine picking bits of rock out of the walls but, over here, a dwarf can stand tall.'

'Really,' said Rincewind, his face carefully blank.

'But not too bloody tall!' Mad went on.

'Certainly not.'

'So we settled down, and now my dad's got a chain of bakeries in Bugarup.'

'Dwarf bread?' said Rincewind.

'Too right! That's what kept us going across thousands of miles of shark-infested ocean,' said Mad. 'If we hadn't had that sack of dwarf bread we'd—'

'—never have been able to club the sharks to death?' said Rincewind.

'Ah, you're a man who knows your breads.'

'Big place, Bugarup? Has it got a harbour?'

'People say so. Never been back there. I like the outdoor life.'

The ground trembled. The trees by the track shook, even though there was no wind.

'Sounds like a storm,' said Rincewind.

'What's one of them?'

'You know,' said Rincewind. 'Rain.'

'Aw, strain the flaming cows, you don't believe all that stuff, do you? My granddad used to go on about that when he'd been at the beer. It's just an old story. Water falling out of the sky? Do me a favour!'

'It never does that here?'

'Course not!'

'Happens quite a lot where I come from,' said Rincewind.

'Yeah? How's it get up into the sky, then? Water's heavy.'

'Oh, it... it... I think the sun sucks it up. Or something.'

'How?'

'I don't know. It just happens.'

'And then it drops out of the sky?'

'Yes!'

'For free?'

'Haven't you ever seen rain?'

'Look, everyone knows all the water's deep underground. That's only sense. It's heavy stuff, it leaks down. I never seen it floating around in the air, mate.'

'Well, how do you think it got on the ground in the first place?'

Mad looked astonished. 'How do mountains get on the ground?' he said.

'What? They're just there!'

'Oh, so they don't drop out of the sky?'

'Of course not! They're much heavier than air!'

'And water isn't? I've got a coupla drums of it under the cart and you'd sweat to lift 'em.'

'Aren't there any rivers here?'

'Course we've got rivers! This country's got everything, mate!'

'Well, how do you think the water gets into them?'

Mad looked genuinely puzzled. 'What'd we want water in the rivers for? What'd it do?'

'Flow out to sea—'

'Bloody waste! That's what you let it do where you come from, is it?'

'You don't let it, it... happens... it's what rivers do!'

Mad gave Rincewind a long hard look. 'Yep. And they call me mad,' he said.

Rincewind gave up. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. But the ground shook again.

Archchancellor Ridcully glared at the sky as if it was doing this to upset him personally.

'What, not one?' he said.