The Science of Discworld II

tied horseshoes and bits of iron to their staffs and had the look of high-order men prepared to kick low-order ass. Rincewind tucked the pages in his robe, picked up Hex and hurried over.
    â€˜I’ll just—’ he began.
    â€˜You’re coming, too. No arguing. And the Luggage,’ snapped Ridcully.
    â€˜But—’
    â€˜Otherwise we might have a talk about seven buckets of coal,’ the Archchancellor went on.
    He knew about the buckets. Rincewind swallowed.
    â€˜Leave Hex behind with the Librarian, will you?’ said Ponder. ‘He can keep an eye on Dr Dee.’
    â€˜Isn’t Hex coming?’ said Rincewind, alarmed at the prospect of losing the only entity at UU that seemed to have a grasp on things.
    â€˜There will be no suitable avatars,’ said Hex.
    â€˜He means no magic mirrors, no crystal balls,’ said Ponder. ‘Nothing that people expect to be magical. No people at all, where we’re going. Put Hex down. We’ll be back instantly, in any case. Ready, Hex?’
    For a moment the circle glowed, and the wizards vanished.
    Dr Dee turned to the Librarian.
    â€˜It works!’ he said. ‘The Great Seal works! Now I can—’
    He vanished. And the floor vanished. And the house vanished. And the city vanished. And the Librarian landed in the swamp.
    1 And new diseases, although it was quite hard to make bamboo models of these.
    2 The Librarian, on the other knuckly hand, held the view that humans were apes who had given up trying. They were the ones who simply couldn’t cut the mustard when it came to living in harmony with their environment, maintaining a workable social structure and, above all, sleeping while holding on.

EIGHT
PLANET OF THE APES
    â€˜W HAT A PIECE OF WORK is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!’
    But you wouldn’t want to watch him eat, close up …
    William Shakespeare was another key figure in the transition from medieval mysticism to post-Renaissance rationalism. We were going to mention him, but we had to wait for him to turn up in Roundworld.
    Shakespeare’s plays are a cornerstone of our present Western civilisation. 1 They led us from a confrontation between aristocratic barbarism and tradition-bound tribalism into real civilisation as we know it. And yet … he seems to be a contradiction: uplifting sentiments in a barbarous age. That’s because he was standing at a pivotal point in history. The elves have been seeking something that will become human, and will interfere with Roundworld to make sure they get it. Humans are superstitious. But the human condition can also create a Shakespeare. Though not in this version of history.
    The elves aren’t the only Discworld inhabitants that have interfered with Roundworld: the wizards have tried some ‘uplift’ of their own, in the sense of David Brin, and using the techniques of Arthur C. Clarke. Near the end of The Science of Discworld , the apes of Roundworld aresitting in their cave, watching a manifestation from another dimension, an enigmatic black rectangular slab … The Dean of Unseen University taps on it with his pointer, to attract attention, and chalks the letters R-O-C-K. ‘Rock. Can anyone tell me what you do with it?’ But all the apes are interested in is S-E-X.
    The next time the wizards look at Roundworld, the space elevator is collapsing. The planet’s inhabitants are heading out into the universe on vast ships made from the cores of comets.
    Something very dramatic has happened between the apes and the space elevator. What was it? The wizards have no idea. They doubt very much it could have had much to do with those apes, who were very much The Wrong Stuff.
    In the first volume of The Science of Discworld , we explored no further. We left a gap. It was a tiny part of the historical record on the geological timescales that governed everything up to the ape, but rather a big gap in terms of changes to the planet. But now even the wizards are aware that the apes, unpromising material as they may have been, did in fact evolve into the creatures that built the space elevator and fled from a very dangerous planet in search of, as Rincewind would put it, a place where you are not hit on the head with rocks on a regular basis. And, apparently, a key step in their evolution was