The Science of Discworld II - The Globe

7. CARGO CULT MAGIC

The phrase that kept occurring to Rincewind was cargo-cult. He'd run across it -he encountered most things by running across them - on isolated islands out on the big oceans.

Say that, once, a lost ship arrived, and while taking on food an water it handed out a few goodies to the helpful locals, like steel knives, arrowheads and fish-hooks[25]. And then it sailed away, and after a while the steel wore out and the arrowheads got lost.

What was needed was another ship. But not many ships came to these lonely islands. What was needed was a ship attractor. Some sort of decoy. And it didn't much matter if it was made out of bamboo and palm leaves, so long as it looked like a ship. Ships would be bound to be attracted to another ship, or else how did you get small boats?

As with many human activities, it made perfect sense, for certain-values of 'sense'.

Discworld magic was all about controlling the vast oceans of magic that poured though the world. All the Roundworld magicians could do was to build something like bamboo decoys on the shores of the big, cold, spinning universe, which pleaded: please let the magic come.

'It's terrible,' he said to Ponder, who was drawing a big circle on the floor, to Dee's fascination.

'They believe they live in our world. With the turtle and everything!'

'Yes, and that's strange because the rules here are quite easy to spot,' said Ponder. 'Things tend to become balls, and balls tend to move in circles. Once you work that out, everything else falls into place. In a curved movement, of course.'

He went back to chalking the circle.

The wizards had been staying in Dee's house. He seemed quite happy about this, in a mildly bemused way, like a peasant who had suddenly been visited by a family of unexpected relatives from the big city who were doing incomprehensible things but were rich and interesting.

The trouble was, Rincewind thought, that the wizards were explaining to Dee that magic didn't work while, at the same time, doing magic. A crystal ball was giving instructions. An ape was knuckling in and out of, for want of a better word, fresh air, and wandering around Dee's library making excited 'ook' noises and assembling the books to make a proper entrance in L-space. And the wizards themselves, as was their wont, prodded at things and argued at cross-purposes.

And Hex had tracked down the elves. It made no sense, but their descent on Roundworld had plunged through time and come to rest millions of years in the past.

Now the wizards had to get there. As Ponder explained, sometimes resorting to hand gestures for the hard of comprehension, this wasn't difficult. Time and space in the round universe were entirely subordinate. The wizards, being made of higher-order stuff, could quite easily be moved around within it by magic from the real world. There were additional, complex reasons, mostly quite hard to spell.

The wizards didn't understand almost all this, but they did like the idea of being high-order stuff.

'But there was nothing back there,' said the Dean, watching Ponder Work on the circle. 'There wasn't even anyone you could call people, Hex says.'

'There were monkeys,' said Rincewind. 'Things like monkeys, anyway.' He had his own thoughts on this score, although the accepted wisdom on Discworld was that monkeys were the descendants of people who had given up trying[26].

'Oh, the monkeys,' snapped Ridcully. 'I remember them. Completely useless. If you couldn't eat it or have sex with it, they just didn't want to know. They just mucked about.'

'I think this was even before that,' said Ponder. He stood up and brushed chalk dust off his robe.

'Hex thinks that the elves did something to ... something. Something that became humans.'

'Interfered with them?' said the Dean.

'Yes, sir. We know they can affect people's minds when they sing-'

'You said became humans? said Ridcully.

'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I really don't want to have that argument all over again, sir. On Roundworld, things become other things. At least, some of some things become other things. I'm not saying that happens on Discworld, sir, but Hex is quite certain that it happens here. Can we just pretend for a moment, sir, that this is true?'

'For the sake of argument?'

'Well, for the sake of not having an argument, sir, really,' said Ponder. Mustrum Ridcully on the subject of evolution could go on for far too long.

'All right, then,' said the Archchancellor with some reluctance.

'And we know, sir, that elves can really affect the minds of lesser creatures ...'

Rincewind let the words go over his head. He didn't need to be told this. He'd spent far more time in the field -and the ditch, the forest, hiding in the reeds, staggering across deserts -and had run into and away from elves a couple of times. They didn't like all the things that Rincewind thought made life worthwhile, like cities and cookery and not being hit over the head with rocks on a regular basis. He'd never been certain if they actually ate anything, other than for amusement; they acted as if what they really consumed was other creatures' fear.

They must have loved humanity when they found it. Humanity was very creative, when it came to being frightened. It was good at filling the future full of dread.

And then it had gone and spoiled everything by using that wonderful, fear-generating mind for thinking up things to take the fear away -like calendars, locks, candles and stories. Stories in particular. Stories were where the monsters died.

While the wizards argued, Rincewind went to see what the Librarian was doing. The ape, shorn of his dress but still wearing his ruff to conform to local clothing standards, was as happy as, well, as happy as a librarian among books. Dee was quite a collector. Most of the books were about magic or numbers or magic and numbers. They weren't very magical, though. The pages didn't even turn by themselves.

The crystal sphere had been placed on a shelf, so that Hex could watch.

'The Archchancellor wants us all to go back and stop the elves,' said Rincewind, sitting down on a stack of titles. 'He thinks we can ambush them before they do anything. Me, I don't think it's going to work.'

Ook?' said the Librarian, sniffing a bestiary and laying it aside.

'Because things generally don't, that's why. Best laid plans, and all that. And these aren't best laid plans, anyway. "Let's get back there and beat the devils to death with big iron bars" is not, in my opinion, a best laid plan. What's funny?'

The Librarian's shoulders were shaking. He passed a book across to Rincewind, who read the passage that had been pointed out by a black fingernail.

He stopped reading, and stared at the Librarian.

It was uplifting. Oh, it was uplifting. Rincewind hadn't read anything like it. But ...

He'd spent the day in this city. There were dog fights and bear pits and that wasn't the worst of it.

He'd seen the heads on spikes over the gates. Of course, Ankh-Morpork had been bad, but Ankh Morpork had thousands of years of experience of being a big city and had become, well, sophisticated in its sins. This place was half farmyard.

The man who wrote this woke up every morning in a city that burned people alive and had still written this.

'—what a piece of work is a man ... how noble in reason ... how infinite in faculty ... in form, in moving, how express and admirable ...'

The Librarian was almost sobbing with laughter.

'Nothing to laugh at, it's a perfectly valid point of view," said Rincewind. He shuffled the pages.

'Who wrote this?' he said.

'According to the flows of L-space, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest playwrights who ever lived,' said Hex, from the shelf.

'What was his name?'

'His own spelling is inconsistent,' said Hex, 'but the consensus is that his name was William Shakespeare.'

'Does he exist on this world?'

'Yes. In one of the many alternate histories.'

'So not actually here, then?'

'No. The leading playwright in this city is Arthur J. Nightingale.'

'Is he any good?'

'He is the best they have. Objectively, he is dreadful. His play King Rufus III is widely considered the worst play ever written.'

'Oh.'

'Rincewind!' bellowed the Archchancellor.

The wizards were gathering in the circle. They had tied horseshoes and bits of iron to their staffs and had the look of high-order men prepared to kick low-order ass. Rincewind tucked the pages in his robe, picked up Hex and hurried over.

'I'll just—' he began.

'You're coming, too. No arguing. And the Luggage,' snapped Ridcully.

'But—'

'Otherwise we might have a talk about seven buckets of coal,' the Archchancellor went on.

He knew about the buckets. Rincewind swallowed.

'Leave Hex behind with the Librarian, will you?' said Ponder. 'He can keep an eye on Dr Dee.'

'Isn't Hex coming?' said Rincewind, alarmed at the prospect of losing the only entity at UU that seemed to have a grasp on things.

'There will be no suitable avatars,' said Hex.

'He means no magic mirrors, no crystal balls,' said Ponder. 'Nothing that people expect to be magical. No people at all, where we're going. Put Hex down. We'll be back instantly, in any case.

Ready, Hex?'

For a moment the circle glowed, and the wizards vanished.

Dr Dee turned to the Librarian.

'It works!' he said. 'The Great Seal works! Now I can—'

He vanished. And the floor vanished. And the house vanished. And the city vanished. And the Librarian landed in the swamp.