The Last Continent

thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture.”
    “I’ve never heard of these!” said Ponder Stibbons. “The possibilities are amazing!”
    “Everyone says that when they first hear about them,” said the Senior Wrangler. “But when you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.”
    “But if you could get one to open above another you could drop something through the bottom hole and it’d come out of the top hole and fall through the bottom hole again…It’d reach meteoritic speed and the amount of power you could generate would be—”
    “That’s pretty much what happened between the attic and the cellar,” said the Dean, taking a cold chicken leg. “Thank goodness for air friction, that’s all I’ll say.”
    Ponder waved his hand gingerly through the window and felt the sun’s heat.
    “And no one’s ever studied them?” he said.
    The Senior Wrangler shrugged. “Studied what? They’re just holes. You get a lot of magic in one place, it kind of drops through the world like a hot steel ball through pork dripping. If it comes to the edge of something, it kind of fills it in.”
    “Stress points in the space-time continuinuinuum…” said Ponder. “There must be hundreds of uses—”
    “Hah, yes, no wonder our Egregious Professor is always so sun-tanned,” said the Dean. “I feel he’s been cheating. Geography should be hard to get to. It shouldn’t be in your windowbox, is what I’m saying. You shouldn’t get at it just by sneaking out of the University.”
    “Well, he hasn’t, really, has he?” said the Senior Wrangler. “He’s really just extended his study a bit.”
    “Do you think that is EcksEcksEcksEcks, by any chance?” said the Dean. “It certainly looks foreign.”
    “Well, there is sea,” said the Senior Wrangler. “But would you say that it looks as if it is actually girting ?”
    “It’s just…you know…sloshing.”
    “One would somehow imagine that sea that was girting something would look more, well…defiant,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “You know? Thundering waves and so on. Definitely sending a message to outsiders that it was girting this coast and they’d better be jolly respectful.”
    “Perhaps we could go right through and investigate,” said Ponder.
    “Something dreadful’ll happen if we do,” said the Senior Wrangler gloomily.
    “It hasn’t happened to the Bursar,” said Ridcully.
    The wizards crowded around. There was a figure standing in the surf. Its robe was rolled up above the knees. A few birds wheeled overhead. Palm trees waved in the background.
    “My word, he must have snuck out while we weren’t looking,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    “Bursar!” Ridcully yelled.
    The figure didn’t look round.
    “I don’t want to, you know, make trouble ,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking wistfully at the sundrenched beach, “but it’s freezing cold in my bedroom and last night there was frost on my eiderdown. I don’t see any harm in a quick stroll in the warm.”
    “We’re here to help the Librarian!” snapped Ridcully. Faint snores were coming from the volume entitled Ook .
    “My point exactly. The poor chap’d be a lot happier in those trees there.”
    “You mean we could wedge him in the branches?” said the Archchancellor. “He’s still The Story of Ook .”
    “You know what I mean, Mustrum. A day at the seaside for him would be better than a…a day at the seaside, as it were. Let’s get out there, I’m freezing.”
    “Are you mad? There could be terrible monsters! Look at the poor chap standing there in the surf! That sea’s probably teeming with—”
    “Sharks,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    “Right!” said Ridcully. “And—”
    “Barracudas,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Marlins. Swordfish. Looks like somewhere out near the Rim to me. Fishermen say there’s fish there that’d take your arm off.”
    “Right,” said Ridcully. “Right…” There was a small but significant change in his tone. Everyone knew about the stuffed fish on his walls. Arch-chancellor Ridcully would hunt anything . The only cockerel still crowing within two hundred yards of the