The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

the Senior Wrangler had professed great hopes. But at least the Luggage
could
be used to bring back any specimens stupid enough to swim into something sitting underwater with its lid open, and this included practically everything in the sea at the moment.
    Life in the round world seemed to possess a quality so prevalent that the wizards even discussed the idea that it was some conceptual element, which was perhaps trying to fill the gap left by the non-existent deitygen.
    ‘However,’ Ridcully announced, ‘Bloodimindium is not a good name.’
    ‘Perhaps if we change the accent slightly,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Blod-di-
min
-dium, do you think?’
    ‘They’ve certainly got a lot of it, whatever we call it,’ said the Dean. ‘It’s not a world to let a complete catastrophe get it down.’
    Things turned up. Shellfish suddenly seemed very popular. A theory gaining ground was that the world itself was generating them in some sort of automatic way.
    ‘Obviously, if you have too many rabbits, you need to invent foxes,’ said the Dean, at one of the regular meetings. ‘If you’ve got fish, and you want phosphates, you need seabirds.’
    ‘That only works if you have narrativium,’ said Ponder. ‘We’ve got no evidence, sir, that anything on the planet has any concept of causality. Things just live and die.’
    And then, on Thursday, the Senior Wrangler spotted a fish. A real, swimming fish.
    ‘There you are,’ he said triumphantly. ‘The seas are the natural home of life. Look at the land. It’s just rubbish, quite frankly.’
    ‘But the sea’s not
getting
anywhere,’ said Ridcully. ‘Look at those tentacled shellfish you were trying to educate yesterday. Even if you so much as made a sudden movement they just squirted ink at you and swam away.’
    ‘No, no, they were trying to
communicate
,’ the Senior Wrangler insisted. ‘Ink is a natural medium, after all. Don’t you get the impression that everything is
striving
? Look at them. You can
see
them thinking, can’t you?’
    There were a couple of the things in a tank behind him, peering out of their big spiral shells. The Senior Wrangler had the idea that they could be taught simple tasks, which they would then pass on to the other ammonites. They were turning out to be rather a disappointment. They might be good at thinking, ran the general view, but they were pants at actually doing anything about it.
    ‘That’s because here’s no point in being able to think if you haven’t got much to think about,’ said the Dean. ‘Damn all to think about in the sea. Tide comes in, tide goes out, everything’s damp, end of philosophical discourse.’
    ‘Now
these
are the chaps,’ he went on, strolling along to another tank . The Luggage had been quite good as a collector, provided the specimens didn’t appear to be threatening Rincewind.
    ‘Hmph,’ sniffed the Senior Wrangler. ‘Underwater woodlice.’
    ‘But there’s a lot of them,’ said the Dean. ‘And they have legs. I’ve seen them on the seashore.’
    ‘By accident. And they haven’t got anything to use as hands.’
    ‘Ah, well, I’m glad you’ve pointed that out …’ said the Dean, walking along to the next aquarium.
    It contained crabs.
    The Senior Wrangler had to admit that crabs looked a good contender for Highest Lifeform status. H EX had located some on the other side of the world that were moving along very well indeed, with small underwater cities guarded by carefully transplanted sea-anemones and what appeared to be shellfish farms. They had even invented a primitive form of warfare and had built statues, of sand and spit, apparently to famous crabs who had fallen in the struggle.
    The wizards went and had another look fifty thousand years later, after coffee. To the Dean’s glee, population pressure had forced the crabs on to the land as well. The architecture hadn’t improved, but there were now seaweed farms in the lagoons, and some apparently more stupid crabs had been enslaved for transport purposes and use in inter-clan campaigns. Several large rafts with crudely woven sails were moored in one lagoon, and swarming with crabs. It seemed that crabkind was planning a Great Leap Sideways.
    ‘Not
quite
there yet,’ said Ridcully. ‘But definitely very promising, Dean.’
    ‘You see, water’s too
easy
,’ said the Dean. ‘Your food floats by, there’s not much in the way of weather, there’s nothing to kick against … mark my words, the