Interesting Times

is to throw it and then sit down and argue about where it’s going to land. We want to change your position with that of something six thousand miles away which, whatever the Archchancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different direction. The key is precision . It’s no good using any old traveling spell. It’d come apart halfway, and so would you. I’m pretty sure that we’ll get you there in one or, at worst, two pieces. But we’ve no way of knowing the weight of the thing we change you with. If it’s pretty much the same weight as you, then it might just all work out provided you don’t mind jogging on the spot when you land. But if it’s a lot heavier than you, then my suspicion is that you’ll appear over there traveling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleepwalkers in clifftop villages in a very terminal way.
    “Er,” he said. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
    “Oh, that ,” said Rincewind. “No problem there. I’m good at that.”
    “We’re going to try to put you in the center of the continent, where Hunghung is believed to be,” said Ponder.
    “The capital city?”
    “Yes. Er.” Ponder felt guilty. “Look, whatever happens I’m sure you’ll get there alive, which is more than would happen if it’d just been left to them. And I’m pretty sure you’ll end up on the right continent.”
    “Oh, good.”
    “Come along , Mr. Stibbons. We’re all agog to hear how you wish us to do this,” said Ridcully.
    “Ah, er, yes. Right. Now, you, Mr. Rincewind, if you will go and stand in the center of the octagon…thank you. Um. You see, gentlemen, what has always been the problem with teleporting over large distances is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, * since the object teleported, that’s from tele , ‘I see,’ and porte , ‘to go,’ the whole meaning ‘I see it’s gone,’ er, the object teleported, er, no matter how large, is reduced to a thaumic particle and is therefore the subject of an eventually fatal dichotomy: it can either know what it is or where it is going, but not both. Er, the tension this creates in the morphic field eventually causes it to disintegrate, leaving the subject as a randomly shaped object, er, smeared across up to eleven dimensions. But I’m sure you all know this.”
    There was a snore from the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was suddenly giving a lecture in room 3B.
    Rincewind was grinning. At least, his mouth had gaped open and his teeth were showing.
    “Er, excuse me,” he said. “I don’t remember anyone saying anything about being sm—”
    “Of course,” said Ponder, “the subject would not, er, actually experience this—”
    “Oh.”
    “—as far as we know—”
    “What?”
    “—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—”
    “Eh?”
    “—to briefly witness the explosive discorporation.”
    “Hey?”
    “Now, we’re all familiar with the use of the spell as a fulcrum, er, so that one does not actually move one object but simply exchanges the position of two objects of similar mass. It is my aim tonight, er, to demonstrate that by imparting exactly the right amount of spin and the maximum velocity to the object—”
    “Me?”
    “—from the very first moment, it is virtually certain—”
    “Virtually?”
    “—to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles—”
    “ Up to? ”
    “—give or take ten percent—”
    “ Give or take? ”
    “So if you’d—excuse me, Dean, I’d be obliged if you’d stop dripping wax—if you’d all take up the positions I’ve marked on the floor…”
    Rincewind looked longingly towards the door. It was no distance at all for the experienced coward. He could just trot out of here and they could…they could…
    What could they do? They could just take his hat away and stop him ever coming back to the University. Now he came to think about it, they probably wouldn’t be bothered about the nailing bit if he was too much bother to find.
    And that was the problem. He wouldn’t be dead, but then neither would he be a wizard. And, he thought, as the wizards shuffled into position and screwed down the knobs on the ends of their staffs, not being able to think of himself as a wizard was being dead.
    The spell began.
    Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief? Just about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or aptitudes that he didn’t have.
    He was no good