Making Money

order to become the Chair of Indefinite Studies?” Moist persisted.
    “Oh, I just tend to say that for something to say,” said the wizard, opening a door and slamming it again quickly. “But right now I’m inclined to think I must have committed a few, and they must have been whoppers. It’s just unbearable at the moment, of course. They’re saying that everything in the whole wretched universe is technically indefinable, but what am I supposed to do about it? And of course this damn Cabinet is playing havoc with the place again; I thought we’d seen the last of it fifteen years ago…Oh, yes, mind the squid, we’re a bit puzzled about that, actually…ah, here’s the right door,” the Chair sniffed, “and it’s twenty-five feet away from where it ought to be. What did I tell you…”
    The door opened and then it was just a matter of knowing where to start. Moist opted for letting his jaw drop, which was clean and simple.
    The room was bigger than it ought to be. No room ought to be more than a mile across, especially when outside in the corridor, which looked quite ordinary if you ignored the giant squid, it appeared to have perfectly normal rooms on either side of it. It shouldn’t have a ceiling so high that you couldn’t see it, either. It simply should not fit.
    “It’s quite easy to do this, actually,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as they stared. “At least, so they tell me,” he added wistfully. “Apparently, if you shrink time you can expand space.”
    “How do they do that?” Moist asked, staring at the…structure that was the Cabinet of Curiosity.
    “I’m proud to say I haven’t got the faintest idea,” said the Chair. “Frankly, I’m afraid I got rather lost round about the time we stopped using dribbly candles. I know it’s technically my department but I find it best just to let them get on with it. They do insist on trying to explain things, which of course does not help…”
    Moist, if he’d had any mental picture at all, was expecting a cabinet. After all, that’s what it was called, yes?
    But what filled most of the impossible room was a tree, in the general shape of a venerable spreading oak. It was a tree in winter; there were no leaves. And then, when the mind had found a familiar, friendly simile, it had to come to terms with the fact that the tree was made of filing cabinets. They appeared to be wooden ones, but this didn’t help much.
    High up in what had to be called the branches, wizards on broomsticks were engaged in who-knew-what. They looked like insects.
    “It is a bit of a shock when you see it for the first time, isn’t it,” said a friendly voice.
    Moist looked around at a young wizard, at least by the standards of wizards, who had round spectacles, a clipboard, and the shiny sort of expression that says: I probably know more than you can possibly imagine, but I am still reasonably happy to talk even to people like you.
    “You’re Ponder Stibbons, right?” said Moist. “The only one who does any work in the university?”
    Other wizards turned their heads at this, and Ponder went red.
    “That’s quite untrue! I just pull my weight, like any other member of the faculty,” he said, but a slight tone to his voice suggested that perhaps the other faculty members had far too much weight and not enough pull. “I am in charge of the Cabinet Project, for my sins.”
    “Why? What did you do?” said Moist, at sea in a world of sin. “Something worse?”
    “Er…volunteered to take it over,” said Ponder. “And I have to say we have learned more in the last six months than in the past twenty-five years. The Cabinet is a truly amazing artifact.”
    “Where did you find it?”
    “In the attic, tucked behind a collection of stuffed frogs. We think people gave up trying to make it work years ago. Of course, that was back in the dribbly-candle era,” said Ponder, earning a snort from the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Modern techno-mancy is somewhat more useful.”
    “All right, then,” said Moist, “what does it do?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “How does it work?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “Where did it come from?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “Well, that seems to be all,” said Moist sarcastically. “Oh no, one last one: what is it? And let me tell you, I’m agog.”
    “That may be the wrong sort of question to ask,” said Ponder, shaking his head. “Technically it appears to be a classic Bag of Holding but with n