The Last Continent

other.”
    The Archchancellor glanced at Ponder. “There likely to be a book like that in there, Stibbons?”
    “According to L-space theory, it’s practically certain, sir.”
    As one man, the wizards backed away from the doors.
    “We can’t let this nonsense go on,” said Ridcully. “We’ve got to cure the Librarian. It’s a magical illness, so we ought to be able to cook up a magical cure, oughtn’t we?”
    “That would be exceedingly dangerous, Archchancellor,” said the Dean. “His whole system is a mess of conflicting magical influences. There’s no knowing what adding more magic would do. He’s already got a freewheeling temporal gland. * Any more magic and…well, I don’t know what’ll happen.”
    “We’ll find out,” said Ridcully brusquely. “We need to be able to go into the Library. We’d be doing this for the college, Dean. And Unseen University is bigger than one man—”
    “—ape—”
    “—thank you, ape , and we must always remember that ‘I’ is the smallest letter in the alphabet.”
    There was another thud from beyond the doors.
    “Actually,” said the Senior Wrangler, “I think you’ll find that, depending on the font, ‘c’ or even ‘u’ are, in fact, even smaller. Well, shorter, anyw—”
    “Of course,” Ridcully went on, ignoring this as part of the University’s usual background logic, “I suppose I could appoint another librarian…got to be a senior chap who knows his way around…hmm…now let me see, do any names spring to mind? Dean?”
    “All right, all right !” said the Dean. “Have it your own way. As usual.”
    “Er…we can’t do it, sir,” Ponder ventured.
    “Oh?” said Ridcully. “Volunteering for a bit of bookshelf tidying yourself, are you?”
    “I mean we really can’t use magic to change him, sir. There’s a huge problem in the way.”
    “There are no problems, Mister Stibbons, there are only opportunities.”
    “Yes, sir. And the opportunity here is to find out the Librarian’s name.”
    There was a buzz of agreement from the other wizards.
    “The lad’s right,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Can’t magic a wizard without knowing his name. Basic rule.”
    “Well, we call him the Librarian,” said Ridcully. “Everyone calls him the Librarian. Won’t that do?”
    “That’s just a job description, sir.”
    Ridcully looked at his wizards. “One of us must know his name, surely? Good grief, I should hope we at least know our colleagues’ names . Isn’t that so…” He looked at the Dean, hesitated, and then said, “Dean?”
    “He’s been an ape for quite a while…Archchancellor,” said the Dean. “Most of his original colleagues have…passed on. Gone to the great Big Dinner in the Sky. We were going through one of those periods of droit de mortis.” *
    “Yes, but he’s got to be in the records somewhere .”
    The wizards thought about the great cliffs of stacked paper that constituted the University’s records.
    “The archivist has never found him,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    “Who’s the archivist?”
    “The Librarian, Archchancellor.”
    “Then at least he ought to be in the Year Book for the year he graduated.”
    “It’s a very funny thing,” said the Dean, “but a freak accident appears to have happened to every single copy of the Year Book for that year.”
    Ridcully noted his wooden expression. “Would it be an accident like a particular page being torn out leaving only a lingering bananary aroma?”
    “Lucky guess, Archchancellor.”
    Ridcully scratched his chin. “A pattern emerges,” he said.
    “You see, he’s always been dead set against anyone finding out his name,” said the Senior Wrangler. “He’s afraid we’ll try to turn him back into a human.” He looked meaningfully at the Dean, who put on an offended expression. “ Some people have been going around saying that an ape as Librarian is unsuitable .”
    “I merely expressed the view that it is against the traditions of the University—” the Dean began.
    “Which consist largely of niggling, big dinners and shouting damnfool things about keys in the middle of the night,” said Ridcully. “So I don’t think we—”
    The expressions on the faces of the other wizards made him turn around.
    The Librarian had entered the hall. He walked very slowly, because of the amount of clothing he’d put on; the sheer volume of coats and sweaters meant that his arms, instead of being used as extra