They came from somewhere else

 John Hoggard

Hurry up you’re late.  The show’s about to start. 

 The lights fade...

 Stop whistling this is supposed to be a serious introduction.

 The curtains roll back and the screen bursts into life.  Dolby Surround Sound blasts from the speakers, you feel like you’re surrounded by trumpets while the drums seem to boom from directly inside your skull.  For those who have missed this acoustical delight switch your imagination to ON.

 The screen is black except for a tiny dot of light in the centre.  Watch it grow.  It becomes elliptical and as it grows still further the ellipse becomes an all too familiar shape.  A mighty, asteroid crated shell, that huge head and enormous paddled legs beating a steady rhythm as it carries its burden through the vastness of space.  If this description has failed to jingle any mental bells then you’re watching the wrong show, but you can stay if you like, newcomers and converts are always welcome.

 As Great A’Tuin fills the screen the music begins to fade away, replaced by the steady roar of air moving at high speed as whatever vessel is producing these images hits the upper atmosphere of the Discworld. 

The image begins to swirl, whatever device this is was designed for space flight and has the aerodynamic capabilities of a house brick.

The rim of the Discworld slides off the edge of the screen.  Neat white writing appears over the images of rapidly approaching land mass.  It reads:-

 Terminal Guidance Failure...

Emergency deceleration Protocol initiated...

Failed....

Calculated survival rate based on current impact velocity...0%

...

...&*^$*(~@%£~#¬@...

 

            It was hot in Ankh-Morpork.  So hot the egg-seller in the market was selling his eggs soft or hard boiled only.

            CMOT Dibbler who had started early in the hope of selling some of his merchandise before people gave up and hid from the Disc’s normally benign sun, discovered that his half-cooked sausages-in-a-bun were now fully cooked sausages-in-a-bun.  The aroma was quite pleasant and he almost ate one.  Only the sudden thought of lost profit and more precisely, the thought of where Big Tuk, his supplier got the aforementioned supplies from[1], stopped him. 

            The Ankh, which never really flowed, but rather slid now had to contend with a baked hard outer crust, slowing its progress out to sea[2] still further.

            A young boy kicked his ball into the Ankh where it sat, hardly moving downstream at all.  This gave the young lad a moment to consider the possibility of risking the firmness of the crust and retrieving his prized possession.  A second before he took his first tentative step the ball spontaneously combusted, in a mixture of chemical compounds that if any first year chemistry student discovered them would grant an instant PhD.

            In a fit of anger the boy threw a rock at the spot where his ball once was.  The rock landed with a thud and sank about an inch into the crust.  A second later it exploded into a thousand tiny fragments.  The boy turned on this heels and ran back into the questionable safety of tinder dry wooden houses with a hundred open fires used for cooking.  Had he stayed five seconds longer he would have been the only person to have seen what happened next.

 A few yards away from the still smouldering carcass of the boy’s ball the crust that was the Ankh suddenly split and was sucked inwards to the accompanying sound of a wellington boot being pulled out of a muddy field.  The ultrasonic shockwave arrived a second or two later, with every dog in Ankh-Morpork baying to the sky as it swept over the twin cities.  Only then did people begin to point at the sky as a fiery shaft of light appeared in the heavens[3].  They watched in horror as it streaked downward towards the heart of the city and vanished behind the buildings lining the streets.  Everyone froze.  Conversations died mid-sentence, muggers paused mid-mugging and victims stopped, just for a moment, being victims.  They waited to be consumed in a fiery blast that would turn them into a shadow on the wall, or the voice of God, in fact any God, telling them to repent.

            No fiery death came and most people’s heads remained devoid of spiritual demands.  With nervous and embarrassed coughs people began to move on.  The noise of a city rushed back to fill the void of silence, washing it away as effortlessly as the morning tide sweeps away the footprints of a midnight stroll on the beach.

            The strange incident claimed only one victim, Harri Kipple, cat burglar, who, blessed with an ability to hear frequencies far above that of normal human hearing had turned mid-leap to find out where that bloody horrible noise was coming from.  He pondered as he fell the nine stories to his death what had possessed him to do such an incredibly stupid thing.  Whether he reached a conclusion before he became a lot shorter and thinner and generally more dead is unknown.

            At the bottom of the Ankh strange electronic thought processes were taking place.  The strange thing about them was that they were taking place at all.  Computers were busy doing the electronic equivalent of patting everything down and making sure that everything was still there.  It took an excruciatingly long nine nanoseconds for the answer to be confirmed as affirmative.  Had the Artificial Intelligence Network been set up to deal with emotion, it would have let out a long, deep sigh of relief.  What it actually did was:

 110010101010011010101010100101010101010101100001010101010

10101010001

11011010001

00101011010

 

Environmental sensor sweep initiated....

....Environment declared uninhabitable for....

...Silicon based life...

...

...Carbon based life...

...

...Decontamination process initiated...

...Detected organic material deemed ... UNSUITABLE[4]...

...Organic cleansing process initiated...

...Mineral conversion process initiated...

...Waiting....

             At the top of one of the many towers of the Unseen University there was a knock on the Archchancellors door.  It was the knock of somebody trying to be firm but polite which is why it sounded neither firm nor polite only irritating.

            “Yes,” bellowed Ridcully.  Ridcully always bellowed, it was his normal tone, except when he was speaking quietly in which case he merely shouted.

            “Archchancellor, there’s been a sign,” said a  voice from the other side of the door.

            Ridcully rolled his eyes heavenwards.  “Don’t be so bloody mystic Groundrunner.  It is you isn’t it?”

            “Yes Archchancellor.”

            “Then stop talking to me through the door and get in here.”  Ridcully didn’t like doors, especially wooden ones, they reminded him of trees.  Up in the Ramtops many an innocent looking tree suddenly developed huge claws and teeth.  Sometimes he’d barely have time to fire off a crossbow bolt.  The similarities jangled a few ancient memories.

            The door opened and the sight of young Groundrunner replaced the memory of a particularly huge bear he had killed when he was just sixteen.  He had the head mounted with the same bemused expression the bear had died with all those years ago.  The thought of its furrowed brow almost made Ridcully smile.

            “So,” began Ridcully as Groundrunner stepped into the Archchancellor’s office, “what’s this about a sign?”

            Groundrunner took a deep breath, this was going to be a long one.  “Well, this is the hottest day Ankh-Morpork has had since records began.  This morning all dogs in the city began howling as if to announce the fiery streak of light which appeared in the skies only a moment later, cutting into the Ankh like a surgeon’s scalpel into flesh.  Then two of the apprentices came back this evening to say the Ankh had started to run clear as it passed through the city.”

            “Firstly Groundrunner, stop reading those damn novels from Pseudopolis, they’re affecting your ability to talk properly.  Secondly, the University has only been keeping temperature records since last Thursday and dogs howl all the time, they don’t need a reason, they even howl when they see me.”

            “That’s because you kick them when they don’t get out of the way.”

            “Don’t interrupt Groundrunner.”

            “Sorry Archchancellor.”

            “The fiery streak of light was probably just a stray lightning bolt, brought on by the strange meteorological weather conditions.  Lastly what the hell were two apprentices doing outside the University walls....What do you mean the Ankh is running clear?”

            “It appears to have some water in it.  Apparently you can hear it gurgling along the riverbank instead of scraping like it normally does.”

            “Show me.  Now!”[5]

 

            Papa Grintus, mid grade beggar of the Beggars Guild carefully dragged himself off the main street and into a darkened alley.  From beneath his body two legs appeared where apparently only stumps had been.  He took the coins from his bowl and very carefully placed them, one-by-one into a heavy pouch.  Out here, so close to the Shades, there were a lot freelance thieves about and they could tell the clink of two gold dollar pieces from the clunk of two half dollar silver pieces at thirty yards.  Papa wasn’t taking any chances. 

            His ears, so sensitive that they could tell whether a potential mugger was carrying his weapon in his left or right hand due to the difference the weight made to the way that they walked, heard a strange little sound and turned Papa’s eyes to the correct direction automatically.

            Zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr-zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr.

            Papa’s pupils dilated taking in as much of the available light as possible.

            Zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr-zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr.

            Finally a tiny, human-like, figure emerged from the shadows and walked into the alley.  Papa watched it approach in amazement.  What a splendid little toy.  There were a lot of dwarf workshops in the area, they came here because it was cheap and none of the neighbours complained about the noise when they were fighting with the trolls, perhaps it was one of their gadgets.

            Zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr-zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr.

            He reached down and picked it up.  The legs continued for a moment and then stopped.  Papa was amazed by how heavy it was.  Micro-fusion engines are very heavy, but Papa wasn’t to know that.

            He grinned with delight as the little man’s left arm rose up and pointed at Papa.  A bright red light appeared at the end of the arm.  It was shining onto Papa’s forehead but Papa was unaware of this, he was more concerned with the sudden smell of burning flesh.  He stopped being concerned a moment later when the tiny but incredibly powerful laser beam cut through his skull and frazzled the brain inside.  He toppled forward knowing he was dead, just not knowing why.

            The little man clattered to the floor as it fell from Papa’s hand.  Rhurr-click-zip-click-click-rhurr, it went as it moved itself back into an upright position.

            Zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr-zip-zip-zip-zip-rhurr, it went as moved off back down the alley.  From the river, not a stone’s throw away, other tiny figures were emerging from the water.

 

            A little distance from the now deceased Papa Grintus, on the other side of the river, was Hide Park.  It was a park, just like any other park, in any other large city, in any universe.  It was a park only because it had more grass than houses and more litter than grass and nobody went there at night, even the muggers had stopped going because the only people left to mug was themselves. 

            The water in the park’s small lake fizzed and steamed.  It often did this, you’d be amazed what some people threw in park ponds, but now it fizzed like the can of soda handed to you by a smug looking friend whose backing away even as you take hold of the ring pull.  It was fizzing around the edges of something.  The type of something that if you slitted your eyes so you could only just see out and then peered out of the corner of your eye you still couldn’t quite see what it was, but you would know it was there, anyway.

            There was a scraping noise from the thing which wasn’t really there and when it stopped there was a splash a little distance from the fizzing water.  Above the surface of the water tiny motes of light appeared, swirling randomly, like an animated 3D dot-to-dot, or a million fireflies on an acid trip.  The lights moved towards the edge of the pond, leaving behind little islands of fizzing water.  When the lights reached the edge they vanished.  A few brown patches appeared on the grass as the water from the pond killed it off.  These brown patches had a definite, foot-shaped, quality about them, which was a worry considering their enormous size.  It almost made you glad you couldn’t see what had made them.

 

            Ridcully and Groundrunner walked through the streets of Ankh-Morpork keeping the Ankh in sight as they did so.  Even though the sun had set almost an hour ago the air and the stonework radiated the heat from the day making it uncomfortably hot, especially for Groundrunner who was almost running to keep up with Ridcully.

            “It doesn’t look any different,” noted Ridcully as they walked.  He sniffed.  “It doesn’t smell any different either,” he noted further.

            “Apparently the change is quite sudden, just down river of Misbegot bridge,” replied a panting Groundrunner.

            “Get out of the way!” bellowed Ridcully as some hapless old man exited a side street directly into the Archchancellor’s path.  “I don’t care what war you fought in,” he shouted as the old man tumbled away shouting at Ridcully, “if you marched as slow as that I’m surprised you kept up with the front-line.”

            As the two figures vanished into the gloom the old man considered his retort then stopped when five million years worth of genetic survival instinct tapped him on the proverbial shoulder and asked him to very slowly turn round.  He did this without seeming to move a single muscle, his feet simply rotating on a turntable of fear.  His eyes locked onto a hundred swarming fireflies flickering to the beat of some unheard tune.  However, if you let your eyes unfocused the fireflies seemed to be constrained within a shape, the shape of a huge....

            It was gone, the old man knew somehow it was headed down the street behind those two infernal wizards.  It was the same direction as the old man’s house.  He looked into the sky and at the stars shimmering in the heat haze.  What a pleasant evening for a walk his instincts thought.  He turned and moved away at the best pace a nonchalant run could produce.

 

            Ridcully and Groundrunner arrived at the point where the Ankh began to flow like, well a proper river should, only to find the most advantageous viewing spot of the street cordoned off.  That is to say,  Corporal Nobbs was stood in the middle of it drawing on a dog end.

            “Evening Gentlemen,” said Nobby as the two wizards approached.  “Can’t come this way,” he said lightly, “due to the fact that this street is now a Crime Scene.”

            “We have important business in this street Constable.”

            “Corporal,” corrected Nobby automatically.

            “We have important business in this street Corporal and I demand to pass,” growled Ridcully.

            “Sorry,” replied Nobby, “only people with the relevant authority may enter the Crime Scene in case they disturb vital evidence.”  He sounded like he was reading the words from a script.  What Nobby wanted to say was, “Captain Carrot says nobody gets past in case they muck up the body and stop us finding any clues,” but Carrot had carefully translated it for him and made him learn it.

            Ridcully considered turning Nobby into a toad, but after a moments thought he concluded somebody had already beaten him to it, with the added twist of leaving the toad still in its original human form.  It wasn’t that Ridcully lacked the power to turn Nobby into something nasty, what he lacked was the imagination to turn Nobby into something worse than what he already was.

            Ridcully rolled up a sleeve of his robes and made a fist.  He held it up to, or more precisely, down to, Nobby’s face.  “If you don’t let me through I’m going pound your face into so much pulp even your own mother wont recognise you[6].”

            Nobby eyed the organic sledge hammer that was Ridcully’s arm and decided that the most relevant authority right at this moment was that fist.  “Right you are then sir.  You’ll find Captain Carrot at the junction of Treacle Mine Road and the dockside,” said Nobby.

            “Thank you Constable.”

            “Corporal,” corrected Nobby.

            Ridcully unload his arm and strode into the gloom of the dockside.  Groundrunner shrugged at Nobby then ran off after Ridcully.   A moment or two later something slipped past Nobby and moved down the street in pursuit of the two wizards.  Before Nobby’s eyes could focus it was gone, perhaps it hadn’t been there at all, just a few sparkles of light.  It was just the shape...

            “Good evening,” said Nobby without turning round.

            GOOD EVENING.

            “You been for the beggar then?”

            YES.

            “A little unusual for you, a lowly beggar.  Something special was he?”

            YES.  HE WAS THE FIRST.

            “Something to do with the big bugger who just ran past me?”

            NOT DIRECTLY, BUT THERE IS A LINK.

            “You off then?”

            IN A MOMENT.

            Nobby got the feeling[7] Death wanted to ask him something.

            HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU SEEN ME NOW?

            “I’ve never seen you,” replied Nobby quickly.  “I make a point of never seeing you.”

            HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN ME?

            “I never see you all the time.  Sometimes I can go weeks without never seeing you.”

            I THOUGHT SO.  ARE YOU PERCHANCE THE EIGHTH SON OF AN EIGHTH SON?

            “Do all the son’s have to have the same mother?”

            I BELIEVE IT HELPS BUT NO, I DO NOT BELIEVE SO.

            “Might be then.  The Nobbs family tree looks more like grass cuttings than a tree.  Anything thing’s possible I s’pose.  Why?”

            There was no reply.  Relief overcame annoyance and Nobby’s heart, which had stopped in case it drew attention to itself, started beating again.

 

            As Ridcully strode through the dockside with Groundrunner trailing behind voices ahead guided his approach.

            “I’m at a loss sir,” came the unmistakable tones of Captain Carrot.  “I have no idea what killed him.”

            “What’s left of his brains dribbling out of the hole in his head may have contributed,” commented a sarcastic female voice.

            Ah, thought Ridcully, no doubt that was Constable Angua, Carrot’s faithful companion, so to speak. 

            Ridcully disliked werewolves intensely, what he found particularly annoying about werewolves was having to explain to the local authorities why you’d just shot a perfectly ordinary looking, if naked, person in the back under the pretence that you could have sworn you’d seen a wolf.

            “It’s a very neat hole and whatever made it must have been very hot because the wound has been cauterised.  There’s no bleeding at all,” continued Carrot, seemingly unaware of Angua’s tone.

            “Put it down as suicide for the moment,” said a third voice.

            “Suicide?” queried Angua.

            “Counting money in The Shades is fairly suicidal,” noted the third voice.

            “But he still has his money,” continued Angua.

            “Just goes to prove, you really can’t take it with you,” replied the voice.

            Ah yes, thought Ridcully, now I know who that is...

            “Good Evening Commander Vimes,” greeted Ridcully as he rounded the last corner of the street and walked up to the alley adjoining the dockside.

            “Oh, it’s you Ridcully,” said Vimes without looking up from the body of the beggar.  “And what brings you out on this fine evening?”

            “I’m making a study of a unique natural phenomenon,” replied Ridcully.

            “So you want to know why the river is running clear as well?”

            “Strange events such as this pique a wizard’s curiosity.”

            “Really?  I thought the only thing which piqued a wizard’s curiosity was whether he could get a sixth chicken drumstick onto his dinner plate without dislodging the ten roast potatoes already there.”

            “Those days are long gone Commander Vimes.  I believe in the maxim; sound of body, sound of mind.”

            “Sound of wheezing,” noted Angua as Groundrunner lurched round the corner.

            “Sorry, gasp, gasp, I took, gasp, a wrong turn, gasp, gasp,” said Groundrunner in between shuddering breaths.

            Vimes just shrugged his shoulders and grinned a told-you-so, grin.

            “Why did you run?” asked Ridcully.

            For a moment Groundrunner didn’t answer.  He took a few long, deep breaths then began.  “I suddenly felt like I was being watched and then I got this overpowering urge to run.  It felt like a really good idea at the time,” he added lamely.

            “Wizard’s intuition?” commented Angua.

            Ridcully turned to face Angua and was about to reply but stopped when he saw that she had suddenly developed a very lupine expression without her features apparently changing.  The transformation was so complete Ridcully felt a sudden urge to go for his crossbow.

            A little growl emerged from Angua’s throat.  It could have been mistaken for her clearing her throat, but only by a profoundly deaf corpse.

            “What is it?” asked Carrot.

            “We’re being watched,” replied Angua in a voice which was more human than wolf, but only just.

            “Where?” said Carrot spinning round.  “I can’t see anyone.”

            “Exactly,” she growled.

             “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Groundrunner quietly.

 

            From the river there was a sound of the world’s biggest champagne cork being fired through a bucketful of jelly.  Carrot reacted instantly.

            “Another one.  Everybody down!”

            Both Angua and Vimes dived to the floor.  Ridcully and Groundrunner stared at them in disbelief, then they alternately stared at the floor and sky as they tumbled head-over-heels.  If the Discworld ever developed a rail network, Ridcully would already be in a position to testify what being hit by a speeding locomotive felt like.

           

            Something fiery streaked across the night sky in front of Ridcully and struck the side of one of the wooden warehouses that lined the dockside.  A sound like a hundred Ramtop Pine trees being felled at the same instant pounded against Ridcully’s ears.  Then, a wave of heat passed over him that made the sticky night air feel cool in comparison.  Finally he was showered with fragments of wood and more strangely pieces of hot, bubbling fish.

 

            A roar filled the air.  A roar, verging on a scream.  It chilled Ridcully and the others to the bone.  The weight of Carrot was off him in a moment and Ridcully managed to roll over and see, just for an instant, a shape.  The outline was blurred, shown only by a few swirling lights and sticky globules of ex-fish.  Then it was gone, he could sense rather than see it’s departure.  Ridcully concentrated his vision in the Octarine end of the spectrum and he could still just about make out a blurred shape running back towards the centre of the city.  He watched for as long as he could but when his eyes threatened to disconnect themselves from his optic nerve he stopped.  Normal light swam back in, pallid in comparison the hues given to things by the magical eighth colour of the spectrum.  Even a black cat in a light tight room blazed like a beacon in Octarine light[8].  Very slowly, in case anything important fell off, Ridcully stood up.

 

Death watched the small party rise to its feet and begin to pick bits of steaming fish remains off one another.  He held up two lifetimers.  In his left hand was that of Groundrunner, the other held that of Ridcully.  He stared into the lower bowl of each.  The sand in each had quite definitely ceased to move.  A thousand particles of sand floated between the upper and lower bowls.  Death cast an accusing glance into the night sky then shook each one hopefully.  The sand remained resolutely stationary, unmoved by Death’s efforts.

            BUGGER, said Death.

            He stalked through the group.  Both Ridcully and Groundrunner froze mid-breath, hanging onto it, just in case it was their last.

            Death stopped at Ridcully.  He turned to face the motionless wizard. 

            I’LL BE BACK, said Death before he continued on His way into the night.

            With Death gone Groundrunner felt it safe to faint and promptly did so.  Ridcully let out a sad little whine as the breath in his lungs squeezed its way out of his terrified throat.  Carrot and Vimes looked at Ridcully with bemused expressions.  Only Angua seemed to understand what Ridcully had been through and she shivered as she cast a final glance in the direction Death had gone.        

 

            With the immediate threat of Death, quite literally, gone, some of Ridcully’s wizardly overbearing returned.

            “What the hell was that!” he demanded.

            Vimes prodded a larger piece of smouldering fish with his boot.  “Probably an Ankh Spectrum trout.  Quite a rare breed.”

            “Getting rarer.  Do they often explode?” asked Ridcully, his tone lowering slightly.

            “Not often,” replied Vimes, “although this is the third we’ve seen tonight.  You see the oxygen level in the Ankh is so low, the Spectrum trout has developed an incredibly effective respiratory system to enable it to survive.  In water with a high oxygen content the system very quickly goes critical.  The fish tries to expend all the extra oxygen as quickly as it can.  As you can see the effects are quite terminal, both for the fish and quite often for innocent bystanders.”

            “Hmm, interesting though all that is Commander, and may I say how remarkably well informed you appear to be, I was originally referring, not to the fish, but to the thing that none of us could see.”

            Apart from the gurgle of the river, the squishy sound of various pieces of fish falling from the hole made in the wall of the warehouse and the general background noise of a city with half of its million inhabitants doing the night shift, it had gone very quiet.

            “What thing would this be?” asked Vimes cautiously.

            “I don’t know,” snapped Ridcully, “I couldn’t see it.”

            “Good,” replied Vimes.  “I couldn’t see it either.”

            “Will you two stop it,” interjected Angua.  “It doesn’t matter if you couldn’t see it.  I sensed it and we all heard it didn’t we?”

            In the silence there were several murmured ‘yesses’.

            There was another sound, quiet but growing louder.

            Reep, Reep.

            “Commander,” said Carrot.

            There was no response.         

            Reep, Reep.

            Carrot tried again.  “Commander.”

            Reep, REEP.

            “Huh? Yes what is it Carrot?”

            REEP, REEP!

            “You appearing to reeping, sir.”

            “What?  Oh, damn!” said Vimes reaching inside his jacket and pulling out a small black box.  Pulling open the front he stuck it against the side of his head.  He then spent the next few seconds frantically shouting at the box.

            “Speak up Sybil I can’t hear you.  What?  I can’t hear - I said, I can’t he- Hello?  Hello!  Bugger!”

            He pulled the box away from his ear and slammed the front shut.  There was a squeal of protest from the box.

            “Sorry,” said Vimes sliding open the front.  “Was it your hand?  OK,  I know it’s not your fault and that I shouldn’t take it out on you.  I’m sure once they upgrade your spell things will be much better.”

            Vimes closed the front again, more carefully this time and slipped the box back inside his jacket.

            Vimes scanned the row of quizzically raised eyebrows.

            “Erm, it was Sybil’s idea.  A Mobile Demon.  It’s a crossbreed between those little voice imitating demons you get at side-shows and the telepathic ones fortune tellers use to con you out of half a dollar each year on Hogswatch night, by telling you exactly what you want to hear.  It was supposed to be so I could tell her when I was going to be late, but so far we haven’t managed more than three sentences that don’t involving phrases like, ‘Pardon?’ and ‘You’ll have to speak up.’  Apparently the demonologists blame the amount of residual magic leaking out of the Unseen University and intend to put up repeater octagrams around the city to help the demons focus better on their communication spells.”

            Ridcully, who had almost choked when Vimes had mentioned that the demonologists were involved, shook his head in amazement.  “It’ll never catch on.  Can you imagine if there were hundreds of these things making those horrible little noises with people just stopping in the middle of the street to answer them.  Nobody will do it Commander.  It’ll never happen.”

            Vimes shrugged.  “You’re probably right.  I’ll send Nobby round to see Sybil when we get back to the Watch.  He’s the only one I know who can eat as many biscuits as Sybil puts out and he doesn’t eat them I will,” he said ruefully patting his belly.

            “Does this call for ‘a plan of action’ Commander?” asked Carrot.

            “Indeed,” replied Vimes.  “Let’s get back to Short Street and see if we can’t piece together this jigsaw[9].”

            “What do we do with old Papa?” asked Angua.

            “I’ll get some of the lads to go round to the Beggars Guild and let them know what’s happened.  Mind you it’ll take them a week to beg a funeral and in this heat that’s one grave I don’t want to be stood down wind of.”

            The three City Guards began to move away from the body of the beggar and the remains of the exploding fish.

            “We’ll go back to the University and see if we can’t apply a magical angle to this,” called Ridcully after the disappearing guards.

            “You do that,” shouted back Vimes.  And keep out of our bloody way, he whispered under his breath.

           

            The building occupied by the High Energy Magic Project was, quite literally, in Chaos.

            “What the hell is going on Ponder!” bellowed Ridcully over the noise.  The air was thick with the tinny smell of high concentrations of localised magical output.

            Ponder didn’t answer immediately.  His thin framed weaved around HEX, the University’s first supercomputer, arms moving with a blur of motion as his hands pulled on various switches and levers.  Slowly the noise subsided and a multitude of small objects and creatures stopped swirling round the machine and dropped to the ground.

            Ridcully tried again.

            “What-”

            SMASH. Tinkle.

            “-is going-”

            Squeeeek.

            “-on.”

            “Be with you in less than two to the power four seconds Archchancellor,” replied Stibbons.

            Off to Ridcully’s left a large, horned sheep gave a ‘hic’ and fell over onto it’s side.

            Ponder shook his head sadly.  “Baggage,” he called, “the ram’s gone down again see what you can do.”

            An equally thin, pale and bespectacled wizard emerged from the shadow of HEX and moved over towards the seemingly comatose sheep.

            “I don’t understand it,” said Ponder, his frame sagging under some terrible, invisible weight.  He reached up into HEX and took down a box, disconnecting it from the pipes that fed into it.  He flipped the lid and peered inside.  A big grey rat had three small, white mice trapped in the corner of the box.  Ponder reached in and lifted the rat out.  It promptly bit him, squirmed free and vanished under the machine.

            “A rat.  I knew you couldn’t use a rat.  Completely incompatible with my original mouse drivers.  Baggage what’s up with the ram?”

            “I think its the Wurzells,” replied the junior wizard.

            “Any treatment?” asked Ponder sucking on his bleeding, rat bitten, finger.

            “Don’t know, I’m a wizard not a doctor, but I hear it’s a nasty virus.”

            “Go and fetch the vet.  Tell him if he comes now I’ll cast a spell that will stop his wife wanting to make love to him all the time.”

            “Ponder Stibbons!” snapped Ridcully.

            The young wizard shrugged.  “It’s just Tiberius’ Morphic Attractor.  It’ll wear off in less than twenty hours anyway, but he doesn’t know that.  I imagine he’s getting quite desperate by now.”

            As Baggage dashed off into the night Ridcully tried one final time.  “Ponder, what the hell is going on?” 

            “It’s those idiot Druids on the Sto Plains.  They’ve complete buggered Henge, their stone circle number cruncher.  Bit of a tourist attraction you see, the ‘worlds oldest computer.  People wanted to see it you see, feel the residual power of a million processed numbers trapped in the granite memory.  So some up and coming young programmer suggests that they could charge for people to walk around.  Fine, science and commercialism can work hand-in-hand and memory upgrades are expensive.  You couldn’t imagine how much they’re charging for a sixty-four ton granite memory block these days.”

            Ridcully shook his head slowly.  After this was over he would take Ponder out hunting, show him what the sun looked like and if that didn’t work he’d have to shoot him.

            “Then,” continued Ponder, “they decide that this is really profitable, if only they could get more people in.  So..” Ponder took a deep shuddering breath, he was almost crying, “they moved the stones to make the circle bigger.”

            “This is a bad thing,” guessed Ridcully.

            Ponder lifted his head.  His eyes were glazed and staring into the middle distance.  “Bad,” he repeated, the word given that special syrup-like quality obtained only by the emotionally overwrought.  “It crashed when the sun came up.  They managed to restart it with some clever arrangement of mirrors but when they asked it what one plus one was it took nine hours to come back with the answer five...ish.”

                “So what’s that got to do with this?” Ridcully asked, pointing at both the machine and the mayhem it had apparently caused.

            “They were supposed to check some of the algorithms of a new program I’ve written for Hex.”  He reached up and patted the machine affectionately.

            Forget the hunt, thought Ridcully, straight to the shooting.

            “But the Druids didn’t tell me Henge couldn’t check if the sun would come up tomorrow never mind some very complex mathematical equations.  So I ran the program and...”  He waved vaguely in the direction of the Universe as if the sweeping gesture would explain everything.

            “So what was your program supposed to do?” asked Ridcully dreading the answer.

            “It was supposed to calculate whether the sun would come up tomorrow,” replied Ponder.

            Ridcully mentally shook his head sadly.  It’s too late even to shoot him, he thought.

            “I have it on good authority that it will,” said Ridcully. 

            “Ah, but at what time will it come up?”

            Ridcully felt like he was swimming in treacle, it was only a matter of time before his brain gave up and died a sugary death.

            “You tell me,” he said cautiously.

            “Approximately zero point zero zero zero zero three times the time it takes the Dean to eat a small pork-pie later than it did today.  That’s as close as we can get without Hex’s help.”

            “You mean the sun rises later every day?”

            “Yes and sets later as well.”

            Ridcully didn’t much like numbers but he was pretty quick off the mark when it came to basic principles.  “You mean it’s slowing down?”

            “Yes.”

            “So eventually it’ll stop?”

            “No.  Eventually it will slow down enough that it will fall into the Discworld destroying it utterly.”

            This was not the best news Ridcully had ever heard.  “When,” he asked.

            “About another four million rotations of the Disc.”

            Numbers again.  Ridcully started a quick mentally calculation, forgot to carry a two and gave up.  It was too far away to worry about and he had more pressing matters.  He had to snap Ponder out of this.  “Ponder,” he said gently.

            “Yes,” said Stibbons looking up, just in time to see the fist but too late to do anything about it.

 

            The Watch House was a hive of activity.  Vimes had sent Nobby off to see Sybil and Gutwrencher to see the Beggars before he[10] went off duty.  Several guards were vying for position to speak to Vimes.  This was a bad sign, decided Vimes.  Normally the lads couldn’t wait to get down the pub after the shift.  In fact a lot of them often woke with their faces stuck to a table top just in time to start their shift the following night. 

            Vimes strode through them and went to his office.  He slammed the door shut leaned up against it and waited.  A minute or so later there was a knock.

            Vimes stepped away.