Science of Discworld III

last Darwin said, ‘I think I see,’ in a tone of finality.
    ‘I’m sorry we had to—’ Ridcully began, but Darwin held up a hand.
    ‘I do know the truth of all this,’ he said.
    ‘You do? ’ said Ridcully. ‘Really?’
    ‘Indeed, a few years ago there was a rather popular novel published. A Christmas Carol . Did you read it?’
    Ponder looked down at the hitherto blank piece of paper on his clipboard. Hex had been told to be quiet; Charles Darwin was probably not in the right frame of mind for booming voices from the sky. But Hex was resourceful.
    ‘By Charles Dickens?’ said Ponder, trying not to look as though he was reading the writing that had suddenly filled the page. ‘The story of the redemption of a misanthrope via ghostly intervention?’
    ‘Quite so,’ said Darwin, still speaking in the careful, wooden voice. ‘It is clear to me that something similar is happening to me. You are not ghosts, of course, but aspects of my own mind. I was resting on a bank near my home. I had been wrestling at length with some of the perturbing implications of my work. It was a warm day. I fell asleep, and you, and that … god … and all this, are a kind of … pantomime in the theatre of my brain as my thinking resolves itself.’
    The wizards looked at one another. The Dean shrugged.
    Ridcully grinned. ‘Hold on to that thought, sir.’
    ‘And I feel sure that when I awake I will have reached a resolve,’ said Darwin, a man firmly nailing his thoughts in order. ‘And, I fervently trust I will have forgotten the means by which I did so. I certainly would not wish to recall the wheeled elephant. Or the poor crabs. And as for the dirigible whale …’
    ‘You want to forget?’ said Ridcully.
    ‘Oh, yes!’
    ‘Since that is your clear request, I have no doubt it will be the case,’ said Ridcully, glancing questioningly at Ponder. Ponder glanced at the clipboard and nodded. It was a direct request, after all. Ridcully was, Ponder noted, quite clever under all that shouting.
    Apparently relieved at this, Darwin looked around the hall again.
    ‘“I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls”, indeed,’ he said.
    The words ‘Reference to a popular song written by Michael W. Balfe, manager of the Lyceum Theatre, London, in 1841’ floated across Ponder’s clipboard.
    ‘I don’t recognise some of these very impressive skeletons,’ Darwin went on. ‘But that is Robert Owen’s Diplodocus carnegii , clearly …’
    He turned sharply.
    ‘Humanity survives, you say?’ he said. ‘It rode out to the stars on tamed comets?’
    ‘Something like that, Mr Darwin,’ said Ridcully.
    ‘And it flourishes?’
    ‘We don’t know. But it survives better that it would under a mile of ice, I suspect.’
    ‘It has a chance to survive,’ said Darwin.
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Even so … to trust your future to some frail craft speeding through the unknown void, prey to unthinkable dangers …’
    ‘That was what the dinosaurs did,’ said Ridcully. ‘And the crabs. And all the rest of them.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘I meant that this world is a pretty frail craft, if you take the long view.’
    ‘Ha. Nevertheless, some vestige of life surely survives every catastrophe,’ said Darwin, as if following a train of thought. ‘Deep under the sea, perhaps. In seeds and spores …’
    ‘And is that how it should be?’ said Ridcully. ‘New thinkin’ creatures arisin’ and being forever smashed down? If evolution didn’t stop at the edge of the sea, why should it stop at the edge of the air? The beach was once an unknown void. Surely the evidence that mankind has risen thus far may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future?’
    Ponder looked down at his clipboard. Hex had written: he is quoting Darwin.
    ‘An interesting thought, sir,’ said Darwin, and managed a smile. ‘And now, I think, I really should like to awaken.’
    Ridcully snapped his fingers.
    ‘We can get rid of those memories, can’t we?’ he said, as the blue glow enveloped Darwin yet again.
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Ponder. ‘He’s asked us to, so it’s ethically correct. Well done, sir. Hex can see to it.’
    ‘Well then,’ said Ridcully, rubbing his hands. ‘Send him back, Hex. With perhaps just a tiny recollection. A souvenir, as it were.’
    Darwin vanished. ‘Job done, gentlemen,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘All that remains now is to get back for—’
    ‘We ought to make sure there are no more Auditors left on