The Science of Discworld II - The Globe

17. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

People believed that elves could look like anything they wanted to, but this was, strictly speaking, wrong. Elves looked the same all the time (rather dull and grey, with large eyes, rather similar to bushbabies without the charm) but they could, without effort, cause others to see them differently.

Currently the Queen looked like a fashionable lady of the time, in black lace, sparkling here and there with diamonds. Only with a hand over one eye and extreme concentration could even a trained wizard dimly see the true nature of the elf, and even then his eye would water alarmingly.

Nevertheless, the wizards stood up when she entered. There's such a thing as courtesy, after all.

'Welcome to my world, gentlemen,' said the Queen, sitting down. Behind her, a couple of guards took up station either side of the door. 'Ours!' snarled the Dean. 'It's our world!'

'Let us continue to disagree, shall we?' said the Queen brightly. 'You may have constructed it, but it's our world now.'

'We have iron, you know,' said Ridcully. 'Would you like some tea, by the way? Foul stuff made without actual tea.'

'Much good may it do you. No, thank you,' said the Queen. 'Please note that my guards are human. So is your host. The Dean looks angry. 'You intend to fight here? When you have no magic? Be serious, gentlemen. You should be grateful, after all. This is a world without narrativium. Your strange humans were monkeys without stories. They did not know how the world was supposed to go. We gave them stories, and made them people.'

'You gave them gods and monsters,' said Ridcully. 'Stuff that stops people thinking straight.

Superstitions. Demons. Unicorns. Bogeymen.'

'You have bogeymen on your world, don't you?' said the Queen.

'Yes, we do. But outside, where we can get at 'em. They ain't stories. When you can see 'em, they don't have any power.'

'Like unicorns,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'When you meet one, you find out it's just a big sweaty horse. Looks nice, smells horsey.'

'And it's magical,' said the Queen, her eyes gleaming.

'Yes, but that's just another thing about it,' said Ridcully. 'Big, sweaty, magical. There's nothing mysterious about it. You just learn the rules.'

'But surely you should be pleased!' said the Queen, her eyes saying that she knew they weren't and was glad of it. 'Everyone here thinks this world is just like yours! Many people even believe that it is flat!'

'Yes, but back home they'd be right,' said Ridcully. 'Here they're just ignorant.'

'Well, there is not a single thing you can do about it,' said the Queen. 'This is our world, Mister Wizard. It's all stories. The religions here ... amazing! And the beliefs ... wonderful! The crop is bountiful, the harvest is rewarding. Do you know that more people believe in magic here than they do on your world?'

'We don't have to believe in it. It works!' snapped Ridcully.

'They believe in it here, and it doesn't,' said the Queen. 'And thus they believe in it even more, while ceasing to believe in themselves. Isn't it astonishing?'

She stood up. Most of the wizards went to stand up, too, and one or two of them got all the way.

Misogynists to a man, the wizards were therefore always punctiliously polite to ladies.

Here, you are just rather fussy old men,' she said. 'But we understand this world and we have had time to cultivate it. We like it. You can't take us away. Your humans need us. We are part of their world now.'

'This world, madam, has about another thousand years before all life is wiped out,' said Ridcully.

'Then there are other worlds,' said the Queen, lightly.

'That's all you have to say?'

'What else is there? Worlds begin and end,' said the Queen. 'That is how the universe works. That is the great circle of existence.'

'The great circle of existence, madam, can eat my underwear!' said Ridcully.

'Fine words,' said the Queen. 'You are good at concealing your true thoughts from me, but I can also see them in your face, nevertheless. You think you can still fight us and win. You have forgotten that there is no narrativium in this world. It does not know how stories should go.

Here, the third son of a king is probably just a useless weak prince. Here, there are no heroes, only degrees of villainy. An old lady gathering wood in the forest is just an old lady and not, as in your world, almost certainly a witch. Oh, there is a belief in witches. But a witch here is merely a method of ridding society of burdensome old ladies and an inexpensive way of keeping the fire going all night. Here, gentlemen, good does not ultimately triumph at the expense of a few bruises and a non-threatening shoulder wound. Here, evil is generally defeated by a more organised kind of evil. My world, gentlemen. Not yours. Good day to you.'

And then she was gone.

The wizards sat down again. Outside, the carriage rattled away.

'Quite well spoken for an elf, I thought,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Good turn of phrase.'

And that's it? said Ridcully. 'We can't do anything?'

'We don't have any magic, sir,' said Ponder.

'But we do know everythin' is goin' to turn out all right, though, don't we?' said Ridcully. 'We know that people get off the planet before the next big wallop, right? We saw the evidence.

Right?'

Ponder sighed.

'Yes, sir. But it might not happen. It's like the Shell Midden people.'

'They didn t happen?'

'Not ... here, sir,' said Ponder.

'Ah. And you're goin' to say "it's because of quantum" at some point?' 'I hadn't intended to, sir, but you're on the right lines.'

'So ... when we left them, did they pop out of existence?'

'No, sir. We did.'

'Oh. Well, so long as someone did ...' said Ridcully. Any thoughts, gentlemen?'

'We could go to the pub again?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, hopefully.

'No,' said Ridcully. 'This is serious.'

'So am I.'

'I don't see what we can do,' said the Dean. 'The humans here needed the elves to tinker with their heads. When we stopped that, we got the Shell Midden people. When we didn't stop it, we got people like Dee, head half full of rubbish.'

'I know someone who'd be right at home with this problem,' said Ridcully, thoughtfully. 'Mister Stibbons, we would be able to get back home now, wouldn't we? Just to send a semaphore message?'

'Yes, sir, but there's no need for that. Hex can do that directly,' said Ponder, before he could stop himself.

'How?' said Ridcully.

'I ... er ... connected him up to the semaphore just after you left, sir. Er ... it was just a matter of pulleys and things. Er ... I installed a little set of repeater arms on the roof of the High Energy Magic Building. Er ... and employed a gargoyle to do the watching, and we needed one anyway, because the pigeons up there have really got too numerous ... er ...'

'So Hex can send and receive messages?' said Ridcully.

'Yes, sir. All the time. Er ...'

'But that costs a fortune! Is it coming out of your budget, man?'

'Er, no, sir, because it's actually quite cheap, er ... it's free, actually ..." Ponder went for broke.

'Hex worked out the codes, you see. The gargoyles up on the big tower don't bother about where the signals are coming from, they just notice the codes, so, er, Hex started by adding the codes for the Assassins' Guild or the Fools' Guilds to the messages and, er, they probably didn't notice the extra amount on their bills because they're using the clacks all the time these days—'

'So ... we're stealing? said Ridcully.

'Well, er, yes, sir, in a way, but it's hard to know exactly what. Last month Hex worked out the semaphore company's own codes so his messages travel as part of their internal signalling, sir.

No one gets billed for that.'

'This is very disturbing news, Stibbons,' said Ridcully sternly.

'Yes, sir,' said Ponder, looking at his feet.

'I feel I must ask you a rather difficult and worrying question: is it likely that anyone will find out?'

'Oh, no, sir. It's impossible to trace.'

'Impossible?'

'Yes, sir. Every week Hex sends a message to company headquarters readjusting the total of messages sent, sir. Anyway, there's so many I don't think anyone checks.'

'Oh? Well, that's all right then,' said Ridcully. 'It never really happens, and no one can find out it's us in any case. Can we send all our messages that way?'

"Well, technically yes, sir, but I think that might be abusing the—'

'We are academics, Stibbons,' said the Dean. 'And information should be allowed to flow freely.'

'Exactly,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'An untrammelled flow of information is essential to a progressive society. This is the age of the semaphore, after all.'

'Obviously it flows to us,' said Ridcully.

'Oh, certainly,' said the Dean. 'We don't want it flowing away from us. We're talking about flow here, not spread.'

'You wanted a message sent?' said Ponder, before the wizards got too deeply into this.

'And we really don't have to pay?' said Ridcully.

Ponder sighed. 'No, sir.'

'Jolly good,' said the Archchancellor. 'Have this one sent to the kingdom of Lancre, will you?

They've only got one clacks tower. Got your notebook? Message begins:

"To Mistress Esmerelda Weatherwax. How are you? I am fine. An interesting problem has arisen ..."