The Science of Discworld II

You’ll soon find out.
    1 Cartesian, again, because of Descartes, whose cogito ergo sum and mind-is-different-stuff-from-matter still influence pop philosophy.
    2 Though Ian has a friend, an engineer named Len Reynolds, whose cat managed to type ‘FOR’ into his computer by walking on the keyboard. Three more letters, ‘MAT’, and the cat would have wiped his hard disc.

TWENTY-FIVE
PARAGON OF VEGETABLES
    T HE WINE-DARK SEA lapped the distant shore. Nice country, Rincewind thought. A bit like Ephebe. Grapes, olives, honey and fish and sunshine.
    He turned back to his group of proto-actors. They were having difficulty grasping the idea.
    â€˜Like the priests do in the temples?’ said a man. ‘Is that what you mean?’
    â€˜Yes, but you can … expand the idea,’ said Rincewind. ‘You can pretend to be the gods. Or anything else.’
    â€˜Wouldn’t we get into trouble?’
    â€˜Not if you did it respectfully,’ said Rincewind. ‘And people would … sort of see the gods. Seeing is believing, eh? Besides, children pretend to be other people all the time.’
    â€˜But that is childish play,’ said the man.
    â€˜People might pay to see you,’ said Rincewind. There was an immediate increase in interest. Human-shaped creatures were the same everywhere, Rincewind thought; if you got money for doing it, it had to be worth doing.
    â€˜Just gods?’ said a man.
    â€˜Oh, no. Anything at all,’ said Rincewind. ‘Gods, demons, nymphs, shepherds—’
    â€˜No, I couldn’t do a shepherd,’ said the possible thespian. ‘I’m a carpenter. I don’t know shepherding.’
    â€˜But you know godding?’
    â€˜Well, yeah, that’s just … thundering and shouting and that kind ofthing. Being a decent shepherd takes years of work.’
    â€˜You can’t expect us to act like people ,’ said another man. ‘That wouldn’t be right.’
    â€˜It’s not respectful,’ said a third man.
    Yes, we mustn’t change things, thought Rincewind. The elves like that thinking. We mustn’t change things, in case they end up different. Poor old Phocian …
    â€˜Well, can you do trees?’ he said. He was vaguely aware that actors warmed up by pretending to be trees, amongst other things, and this presumably prevented wooden performances.
    â€˜Trees are all right,’ said a man. ‘They’re quite magical. But it wouldn’t be respectful to our friend over there to ask us to be carpenters.’
    â€˜All right, then, trees. That’s a start. Now, stretch out your—’
    There was a roll of thunder and a goddess appeared. Her hair was in golden ringlets, her white robe flapped in the breeze, and there was an owl on her shoulder. The men ran away.
    â€˜Well, my little trickster,’ said the goddess, ‘and what are you teaching them?’
    Rincewind clapped a hand over one eye for a moment.
    â€˜That owl’s stuffed ,’ he said. ‘You can’t fool me! No animals stay around elves without going mad!’
    The image of the goddess wavered as the Queen tried to maintain control, but glamour is susceptible to disbelief.
    â€˜Oh, so brave?’ she said, defaulting to her usual appearance.
    She turned at a creaking noise behind her. The Luggage had tiptoed up and opened its lid.
    â€˜That doesn’t frighten me ,’ she said.
    â€˜Really? It frightens me,’ said Rincewind. ‘Anyway, I’m simply brushing up their acting skills. Absolutely no problem there, is there? You should love these people. There’s dryads, nymphs, satyrs, centaurs, harpies and big giants with one eye, unless that’s a joke about sex I haven’t fully understood yet. They believe in all of them and none of them exist! Except possibly the one-eyed giant, that one’s a bit of a puzzler.’
    â€˜We have seen their performances,’ said the Queen. ‘They are not respectful of their gods.’
    â€˜But seeing is believing, isn’t it? And you must admit, they’ve got a lot of gods. Dozens.’
    He gave her a friendly smile, while hoping that she was keeping away from the local cities. They had a lot of temples in them, and shrines all over the place, but they also had a number of men who, while taking care to invoke the gods on every occasion, then appeared to expound ideas that didn’t seem to have any