The Science of Discworld I

31. THE FUTURE IS NEWT

HEX WAS THINKING HARD AGAIN. Running the little universe was taking much less time than k had expected. It more or less ran itself now, in fact. The gravity operated without much attention, rainclouds formed with no major interference and rained every day. Balls went around one another.

HEX didn't think it was a shame about the crabs going. HEX had­n't thought it was marvellous that the crabs had turned up. HEX thought about the crabs as something that had happened. But it had been interesting to eavesdrop on Crabbity, the way the crabs named themselves, thought about the universe (in terms of crabs), had legends of the Great Crab clearly visible in the Moon, passed on in curious marks the thoughts of great crabs, and wrote down poetry about the nobility and frailty of crab life, being totally accu­rate, as it turned out, on this last point.

HEX wondered: if you have life, then intelligence will arise some­where. If you have intelligence, then extelligence will arise somewhere. If it doesn't, intelligence hasn't got much to be intelli­gent about. It was the difference between one little oceanic crustacean and an entire wall of chalk.

The machine also wondered if it should pass on these insights to the wizards, especially since they actually lived in one of the world's more interesting outcrops of extelligence. But HEX knew that its creators were infinitely cleverer than it was. And great masters of disguise, obviously.

The Lecturer in Recent Runes had designed a creature.

'Really, all we need is a basic limpet or whelk, to begin with,' he said, as they looked at the blackboard. 'We bring it back here where proper magic works, try a few growth spells, and then let Nature take its course. And, since these extinctions seem to be wiping out everything, it'll gradually become the dominant feature.'

'What's the scale again?' said Ridcully, critically.

'About two miles to the tip of the cone,' said the Lecturer. 'About four miles across the base.'

'Not very mobile, then,' said the Dean.

'The weight of the shell will certainly hamper it, but I imagine it should be able to move its own length in a year, perhaps two.'

'What'll it eat, then?'

'Everything else.'

'Such as...'

'Everything. I'd advise suction holes around the base here so that it can filter seawater for useful things like plankton.'

'Plankton being…?'

'Oh, whales, shoals offish and so on.'

The wizards looked long and hard at the huge cone-shaped object.

'Intelligence?' said Ridcully.

'What for?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'Ah.'

'It will withstand anything except a direct hit with a comet, and I estimate it'll have a lifespan of about 500,000 years.'

'And then it'll die?' said Ridcully.

'Yes. I estimate it will, by then, take it twenty-four hours and one second to absorb enough food to last it for twenty-four hours.'

'So after that it will be dead?'

'Yes.'

'Will it know?'

'Probably not.'

'Back to the drawing board, Senior Lecturer.'

Ponder sighed.

'It's no good ducking,' he said. 'That won't help. We're paying special attention to comets. We'll let you know in plenty of time.'

'You've got no idea what it was like!' said Rincewind, creeping along the beach. 'And the noise!'

'Have you seen the Luggage?'

'It certainly made my ears ring, I can tell you!'

'And the Luggage?'

'What? Oh ... gone. Have you looked at that side of the planet? There's a whole new set of mountain ranges!'

The wizards had let time run forward for a while after the strike. It made such a depressing mess of everything. Now, drawing on its bottomless reserves of bloodimindium, life was returning in strength. Crabs were already back although, here, at least, they did­n't seem inclined to make even simple structures. Perhaps something in their souls told them it'd be a waste of time in the long run.

Rincewind mentally crossed them off the list. Look for signs of intelligence, the Archchancellor had said. As far as Rincewind was concerned, anything really intelligent would be keeping out of the way of the wizards. If you saw a wizard looking at you, Rincewind would advise, then you should walk into a tree or say 'dur?'.

All along the beaches, and out below the surf, everything was acting with commendable stupidity.

A soft sound made him look down. He'd almost stepped on a fish.

It was some way from the water line, and squirming across the mud towards a pool of brackish water.

A kind man by nature, Rincewind picked it up gingerly and car­ried it back to the sea. It flopped around in the shallows for a while and then, to his amazement, inched its way back on to the mud.

He put it back again, in deeper water this time.

Thirty seconds kter, it was back on the beach.

Rincewind crouched down, as the thing wiggled determinedly onwards.

'Would it help to talk to someone?' he said. 'I mean, you've got a good life out there in the sea, no sense in throwing it all away, is there? There's always a silver lining if you know where to look. Okay, okay, life's a beach. And you're a pretty ugly fish. But, you know, beauty is only sk- scale deep, and...'

'What's happening?' said Ponder's voice in his ear.

'I was talking to this fish,' said Rincewind.

'Why?'

'It keeps coming out of the water. It seems to want to go for whatever is the opposite of a paddle.'

'Well?'

'You told me to keep a look out for anything interesting.'

'The consensus here is that fish aren't interesting,' said Ponder. 'Fish are dull.'

'I can see bigger fish in the shallows,' said Rincewind. Terhaps it's trying to keep away from them?'

'Rincewind, fish are designed for living in water That's why they're fish. Go and find some crabs. And put the poor freakish thing back in the sea, for goodness' sake.'

'Perhaps a rethink is in order here,' said Ridcully.

'About the newts,' said Ponder.

'Newts is going far too far,' said the Dean. 'I've seen more shapely things in the privy.'

'I want the person who put the newts on this continent to own up right now,' said Ridcully.

'No one could,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'No one's seen the Luggage since the last comet. We couldn't get anything in there.'

'I know, because I had a tank of thaumically treated whelks all ready to go,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'And what, pray, am I supposed to do with them?'

'Some sort of chowder would appear to be in order,' said the Dean.

'Evolution makes things better,' said Ridcully. 'It can't make them different. All right, some rather dull amphibians seem to have turned up. But, and this is important, those fish Rincewind reported are still around. Now, if they were going to turn into things with legs, why are they still here?'

'Tadpoles are fish,' said the Bursar.

'But a tadpole knows it's going to be a frog,' said Ridcully patiently. 'There's no narrativium on this world. That fish couldn't be saying to itself "Ah, a new life beckons on dry land, walking around on things I haven't yet got a name for."' No, either the planet is somehow generating new life, or we're back to the old "hidden gods" theory.'

'It's all gone wrong, you know,' said the Dean. 'It's the bloodi-mindium. Even gods couldn't control this place. Once there's life, there's complete and utter chaos. Remember that book the Librarian brought back? It's a complete fantasy! Nothing seems to happen like that at all! Everything just does what it likes!'

'Progress is being made,' said Ponder.

'Big amphibians?' sneered the Senior Wrangler. 'And things were going so well in the sea. Remember those jellyfish that made nets? And the crabs even had a flourishing land civilization! They had practically got a culture!'

'They ate captured enemies alive' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, patiently.

'Well... yes. But with a certain amount of etiquette, at least,' the Senior Wrangler admitted. 'And in front of their sand statue of the Great Big Crab. They were obviously attempting to control their world. And what good did it do them? A million tons of white hot ice smack between the eyestalks. It's so upsetting.'

Terhaps they should have eaten more enemies,' said the Dean.

Terhaps sooner or later the pknet will get the message,' said Ridcully.

'Time for the giant whelks, perhaps?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, hopefully.

'Big newts is what we've got right now,' said Ridcully. He glanced at the Dean and Senior Wrangler. Ridcully hadn't main­tained his position atop the boiling heap of UU wizardry without a little political savvy. 'And newts, gentlemen, might be the way to go. Amphibians? At home in the water and on land? The best of both worlds, I fancy.'

The two wizards exchanged sheepish glances.

'Well ... I suppose ...' said the Senior Wrangler.

'Could be,' the Dean said grudgingly. 'Could be.'

'There we are then,' said Ridcully happily. 'The future is newt.'