The Last Continent

activity compared to removing grape skins, and I happen to outrank you, Senior Wrangler.”
    “Indeed, Dean? And exactly how do you work that out?”
    “It’s not my opinion , man, it’s written into the Faculty structure!”
    “Of where, precisely?”
    “Have you gone totally Bursar? Unseen University, of course!”
    “And where is that, exactly?” said the Senior Wrangler, carefully arranging some lilies in a pleasing design.
    “Ye gods, man, it’s…it’s…” The Dean flapped a hand in the direction of the horizon, and his voice trailed off as certain facts of time and space bore in on him.
    “I’ll leave you to work it out, shall I?” said the Senior Wrangler, getting off his knees and raising the tray reverentially.
    “I’ll help!” shouted the Dean, lumbering to his feet.
    “It’s very light, I assure you—”
    “No, no, I can’t let you do it all by yourself!”
    Each holding the tray with one hand, and trying to push the other man away with the spare hand, they lurched forward, leaving a trail of spilt coconut milk and petals.
    Ridcully rolled his eyes. It must be the heat, he thought. He turned to the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was trying to tie a short log to a long stick with a piece of creeper.
    “I was just thinking,” he said, “that everyone’s gone a little bit mad except me and you…Er, what are you doing there?”
    “I was just wondering whether Mrs. Whitlow might like a game of croquet,” said the Chair. He waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially.
    The Archchancellor sighed and wandered off along the deck. The Librarian had gone back to being a deckchair as a suitable mode for shipboard life, and the Bursar had gone to sleep on him.
    The big leaf moved slightly. Ridcully got the feeling that the green trumpets on the mast were sniffing .
    The wizards were already a little way from shore, but he saw the column of dust come down the track. It stopped at the beach and became a dot, which plunged into the sea.
    The sail creaked again, and flapped as the wind grew.
    “Ahoy there!” shouted Ridcully.
    The distant figure waved for a moment and then continued swimming.
    Ridcully filled his pipe and watched with interest as Ponder Stibbons caught up with the boat.
    “Very well swum, if I may say so,” he said.
    “Permission to come aboard, sir?” said Ponder, treading water. “Could you throw down a creeper?”
    “Why, certainly.”
    The Archchancellor puffed his pipe as the wizard climbed aboard. “Possibly a record time over that distance, Mister Stibbons.”
    “Thank you, sir,” said Ponder, dripping water on the deck.
    “And may I congratulate you on being properly dressed. You are wearing your pointy hat, which is the sine qua non of a wizard in public.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “It is a good hat.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “They say a wizard without his hat is undressed, Mister Stibbons.”
    “So I have heard, sir.”
    “But in your case, I must point out, you are with your hat but you are still, in a very real sense, undressed.”
    “I thought the robe would slow me down, sir.”
    “And, while it is good to see you, Stibbons, albeit rather more of you than I would usually care to contemplate, I am moved to ask why you are, in fact, here.”
    “I suddenly felt it would be unfair to deprive the University of my services, sir.”
    “Really? A sudden rush of nostalgia for the old alma mater, eh?”
    “You could say that, sir.”
    Ridcully’s eyes twinkled behind the smoke and, not for the first time, Ponder suspected that the man was sometimes rather cleverer than he appeared. It would not be hard.
    The Archchancellor shrugged, removed his pipe, and poked around inside it to remove a particularly obstructive clinker.
    “The Senior Wrangler’s bathing costume is around somewhere,” he said. “I should put it on, if I were you. I suspect that offending Mrs. Whitlow at the moment will get you hanged. All right? And if there is anything you want to talk about, my door is always open.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Right now, of course, I don’t have a door.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Imagine it as being open, nevertheless.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    After all, Ponder thought as he slipped gratefully away, the wizards of UU were merely crazy. Not even the Bursar was insane .
    Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still see the God of Evolution beaming so happily as the cockroach stirred.

    Rincewind rattled the bars. “Don’t I get a