Science of Discworld III

sherry glass in Darwin’s hand filled up again.
    ‘You create sherry?’ he said, aghast.
    ‘Oh no, that’s done by grapes and sunshine and so on,’ said Ridcully. ‘My colleague just moved it from the decanter over there. It’s a simple trick.’
    ‘We’re all very good at it,’ said the Dean cheerfully.
    ‘Magic is basically just movin’ stuff around,’ said Ridcully, but Darwin was looking past him. The Librarian had just knuckled into the room, wearing the old green robe he wore for important occasions or when he’d had a bath. He climbed into a chair and held up a glass; it filled instantly, and a banana dropped into it.
    ‘That is Pongo pongo! ’ said Darwin, pointing a shaking finger. ‘An ape!’
    ‘Well done that man!’ said Ridcully. ‘You’d be amazed at how many people get that wrong! He’s our Librarian. Very good at it, too. Now, Mr Darwin, there’s a delicate matter we—’
    ‘It’s another vision, isn’t it?’ said Darwin. ‘It’s my health, I know it. I have been working too hard.’ He tapped the chair. ‘But this wood feels solid. This sherry is quite passable. But magic, I musttell you, does not exist!’ Beside him, with a little gurgle, his glass refilled.
    ‘Just one moment, sir, please,’ said Ponder. ‘Did you say another vision?’
    Darwin put his head in his hands. ‘I though it was an epiphany,’ he groaned. ‘I thought that God himself appeared unto me and explained His design. It made so much sense. I had relegated Him to the status of Prime Mover, but now I see that He is immanent in His creation, constantly imparting direction and meaning to it all … or,’ he looked up, blinking, ‘so I thought …’
    The wizards stood frozen. Then, very carefully, Ridcully said: ‘Divine visitation, eh? And when was this, exactly?’
    ‘It would have been after breakfast,’ moaned Darwin. ‘It was raining, and then I saw this strange beetle on the window. The room filled up with beetles—’
    He stopped, mouth open; a thin blue haze surrounded him.
    Ridcully lowered his hand.
    ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘What about that , Mr Stibbons?’
    Ponder was scrabbling desperately at the paper on his clipboard.
    ‘I’ve no idea!’ he said. ‘Hex hasn’t mentioned it!’
    The Archchancellor grinned the grim little grin of someone sensing that the game, at last, was afoot.
    ‘Mono Island, remember?’ said Ridcully, while Darwin stared blankly at nothing. ‘A god with a thing about beetles?’
    ‘I’d rather forget,’ Ponder shuddered. ‘But, but … no, it couldn’t be him . How could the God of Evolution get into Roundworld?’
    ‘Same way the Auditors did?’ said Ridcully. ‘All the spacetime continuumuum stuff we’re doing, who’s to say we aren’t leaving a few doors ajar? Well, we can’t let the barmy old boy run around there! You and Rincewind, meet me in the Great Hall in one hour!’
    Ponder remembered the God of Evolution, who had been so proud of developing a creature even better fitted to survive than mankind. It had been a cockroach.
    ‘We should go right away,’ he said; firmly.
    ‘Why? We can move in time!’ said Ridcully. ‘The hour, Mr Stibbons, is for you to come up with some way to kill Auditors!’
    ‘They’re indestructible, sir!’
    ‘All right – ninety minutes!’

TWENTY
THE SECRETS OF LIFE
    T HE D ISCWORLD VERSION OF D ARWIN’S vision may not be quite what Roundworld’s historians of science like to tell us, but the two will have been done converged on to the same timeline if the wizards manage to have will defeated the Auditors, so we can concentrate on the after-effects of that convergence. In any case some features are common to both versions of Darwinian history, including apes, beetles, and parasitic wasps. By contemplating these organisms, and many others – especially those confounded barnacles, of course – Darwin was led to his grand synthesis.
    Today, no area of biology remains unaffected by the discovery of evolution. The evidence that today’s species evolved from different ones, and that this process still continues, is overwhelming. Very little modern biology would make sense without the over-arching framework of evolution. If Darwin were reincarnated today, he would recognise many of his ideas, perhaps slightly reformulated, in the conventional scientific wisdom. The big principle of natural selection would be one of them. But he would also observe debate, perhaps even controversy, about