The Last Continent

roof in a solid sheet and cutting a channel in the lawn.
    Archchancellor Rincewind stopped abruptly and reached out to the water like a man not sure if the stove is hot.
    “Out of the sky?” he said. He pushed his way out through the liquid curtain. Then he took off his hat and held it upside down to catch the rain.
    The crowd had filled the university grounds and spilled out into the surrounding streets. Every face was turned upwards.
    “And those dark things?” Archchancellor Rincewind called out.
    “They are the clouds, archchancellor.”
    “There’s a hell of a lot of them!”
    There were. They piled up over the tower in an enormous, spreading black thunderhead.
    A couple of people looked down long enough to see the group of soaked wizards, and there were some cheers. And suddenly they were the new center of attention, and being picked up and carried shoulder high.
    “They think we did it!” shouted Archchancellor Rincewind, as he was borne aloft.
    “Who’s to say we didn’t?” shouted Ridcully, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially.
    “Er…” someone began.
    Ridcully didn’t even look round. “Shut up, Mister Stibbons,” he said.
    “Shutting up, sir.”
    “Can you hear that thunder?” said Ridcully, as a rumble rolled across the city. “We’d better take cover…”
    The clouds above the tower were rising like water against a dam. Ponder said afterwards the fact that the BU tower was very short and extremely tall at the same time might have been the problem, since the storm was trying to go around it, over it and through it, all at the same time.
    From the ground the clouds seemed to open up slowly, leaving a glowing, spreading chimney filled with the blue haze of electrical discharges…
    …and pounced. One solid blue bolt hit the tower at every height all at once, which is technically impossible. Pieces of wood and corrugated iron roared into the air and rained down across the city.
    Then there was just a sizzling, and the rushing of the rain.
    The crowd stood up again, cautiously, but the fireworks were over.
    “And that’s what we call lightning,” said Ridcully.
    Archchancellor Rincewind got up and tried to brush mud off his robe, then found out why you cannot do this.
    “It’s not usually as big as that, though,” Ridcully went on.
    “Oh. Good.”
    There was a clank from the steaming debris where the tower had stood, and a sheet of metal was pushed aside. Slowly, with much mutual aid and many false starts, two blackened figures emerged. One of them was still wearing a hat, which was on fire although the rain was putting out the flames.
    Leaning against one another, weaving from side to side, they approached the wizards.
    One of them said, “Ook,” very quietly and fell backwards.
    The other one looked blearily at the two arch-chancellors, and saluted. This caused a spark to leap from its fingers and burn its ear.
    “Er, Rincewind,” it said.
    “And what have you been up to while we’ve been doing all this hard work, pray?” said Ridcully.
    Rincewind looked around, very slowly. Occasional little blue streaks crackled in his beard.
    “Well, that all seemed to go pretty well, really. All things considered,” he said, and fell full length into a puddle.

    It rained. After that, it rained. Then it rained some more. The clouds were stacked like impatient charter flights over the coast, low on fuel, jockeying for position, and raining. Above all, raining.
    Floodwater roared down the rocks and scoured out the ancient muddy waterholes. A species of tiny shrimps whose world for thousands of years had been one small hole under a stone were picked up and carried wholesale into a lake that was spreading faster than a man could run. There had been fewer than a thousand of them. There were a lot more next day. Even if the shrimps had been able to count how many, they were far too busy to bother.
    In the new estuaries, rich in sudden silt and unexpected food, a few fish began the experiment of a salt-free diet. The mangroves started their stop-motion conquests of the new mudbanks.
    It went on raining.
    Then it rained some more.
    After that, it rained.

    It was some days later.
    The ship rose and fell gently by the dock. The water around it was red with suspended silt in which a few leaves and twigs floated.
    “A week or two to NoThingfjord and we’re practically home,” said Ridcully.
    “Practically on the same continent, anyway,” said the Dean.
    “Quite an