The Last Continent

Whitlow?”
    “Certainly, Archchancellor.”
    “Er…jolly good. Well done. Ahem. And you, of course, Mister Stibbons…”
    The god had wandered over to a workbench and was rummaging in boxes. The air glittered. Ponder looked up at the whale. It was clearly alive but…not at the moment. His gaze swept across the elephant-under-construction and past mysteriously organic-looking gantries, where shimmering blue light surrounded shapes as yet unrecognized, although one did appear to contain half a cow.
    He carefully removed an exploring beetle from his ear. The point was, if he left now he’d always wonder…
    “I think I’d like to stay,” he said.
    “Good…er…” said the god, without looking around.
    “Man,” said Ponder.
    “Good man,” said the god.
    “Are you sure ?” said Ridcully.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever had a holiday,” said Ponder. “I’d like to apply for time off to do research, sir.”
    “But we’re lost in the past, man!”
    “Basic research, then,” said Ponder firmly. “There’s just so much to learn here, sir!”
    “Really?”
    “You’ve only got to look around, sir!”
    “Well, I suppose I can’t stop you if your mind’s made up,” said the Archchancellor. “We’ll have to dock your pay, of course.”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever been paid, sir,” said Ponder.
    The Dean nudged Ridcully and whispered in his ear.
    “And we need to know how the boat works,” Ridcully went on.
    “What? Oh, it shouldn’t be a problem,” said the god, looking up from his bench. “It’ll find somewhere with a different biogeographical signature, you see. It’s all automatic. No sense in coming back to where you started from!” He waved a beetle leg in the air. “There’s a new continent going up turn-wise of here. The boat’ll probably head straight for a landmass that size.”
    “New?” said Ridcully.
    “Oh, yes. I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing myself, but you can hear the construction noises all night. It’s certainly causing a mess.”
    “Stibbons, are you sure you want to stay?” the Dean demanded.
    “Er, yes…”
    “I’m sure Mister Stibbons will uphold the fine traditions of the University!” said Ridcully heartily.
    Ponder, who knew all about the traditions of the University, nodded very slightly. His heart was pounding. He hadn’t even felt like this when he’d first worked out how to program Hex.
    At last he’d found his proper place in the world. The future beckoned.

    Dawn was breaking when the wizards ambled back down the mountain.
    “Not a bad god, I thought,” said the Senior Wrangler. “As gods go.”
    “That was good coffee he made us,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
    “And didn’t he grow the bush fast, once we explained what coffee was,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    They strolled on. Mrs. Whitlow was walking some way ahead, humming to herself. The wizards took care to remain at a respectful distance. They were aware that in some kind of obscure way she’d won, although they hadn’t a clue what the game was.
    “Funny of young Ponder to want to stay,” said the Senior Wrangler, desperately trying to think of anything except a vision in pink.
    “The god seemed happy about it,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “He did say that designing sex was going to involve redesigning practically everything else.”
    “I used to make snakes out of clay when I was a little boy,” said the Bursar happily.
    “Well done, Bursar.”
    “Doing the feet was the hard part.”
    “I can’t help thinking, though, that we may have…tinkered with the past, Archchancellor,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    “I don’t see how,” said Ridcully. “After all, the past happened before we got here.”
    “Ye, but now we’re here, we’ve changed it.”
    “Then we changed it before.”
    And that, they felt, pretty well summed it up. It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.
    “It’s jolly impressive to think that a University man will be helping to create a whole new approach to designing lifeforms,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
    “Indeed, yes,” said the Dean. “Who says education is a bad thing, eh?”
    “I can’t imagine,” said Ridcully. “Who?”
    “Well, if they did, we could point to Ponder Stibbons and say, look at him, worked hard at his studies, paid attention to his tutors, and now