The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

look. ‘It is going to be very informative and interesting, isn’t it, Mister Stibbons. He’s going to tell us what he spent AM$55,879.45p on.’
    ‘And why he’s ruined a perfectly good squash court,’ said the Senior Wrangler, tapping the side of the thing with his squash racket.
    ‘And if this is
safe
,’ said the Dean. ‘I’m against dabbling in physics.’
    Ponder Stibbons winced.
    ‘I assure you, Dean, that the chances of anyone being killed by the, er, reacting engine are even greater than the chance of being knocked down while crossing the street,’ he said.
    ‘Really? Oh, well … all right then.’
    Ponder reconsidered the impromptu sentence he’d just uttered and decided, in the circumstances, not to correct it. Talking to the senior wizards was like building a house of cards; if you got
anything
to stay upright, you just breathed out gently and moved on.
    Ponder had invented a little system he’d called, in the privacy of his head, Lies-to-Wizards. It was for their own good, he told himself. There was no
point
in telling your bosses
everything
; they were busy men, they didn’t want
explanations
. There was no
point
in burdening them. What they wanted was little stories that they felt they could understand, and then they’d go away and stop worrying.
    He’d got his students to set up a small display at the far end of the squash court. Beside it, with pipes looping away through the wall into the High Energy Magic building next door, was a terminal to H EX , the University’s thinking engine. And beside that was a plinth on which was a very large red lever, around which someone had tied a pink ribbon.
    Ponder looked at his notes, and then surveyed the faculty.
    ‘Ahem …’ he began.
    ‘I’ve got a throat sweet somewhere,’ said the Senior Wrangler, patting his pockets.
    Ponder looked at his notes again, and a horrible sense of hopelessness overcame him. He realized that he could explain thaumic fission very well, provided that the person listening already knew all about it. With the senior wizards, though, he’d need to explain the meaning of every word. In some cases this would mean words like ‘the’ and ‘and’.
    He glanced down at the water jug on his lectern, and decided to extemporize.
    Ponder held up a glass of water.
    ‘Do you realize, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that the thaumic potential in this water … that is, I mean to say, the magical field generated by its narrativium content which tells it that it
is
water and lets it keep on being water instead of, haha, a pigeon or a frog … would, if we could release it, be enough to move this whole university all the way to the moon?’
    He beamed at them.
    ‘Better leave it in there, then,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
    Ponder’s smile froze.
    ‘Obviously we cannot extract
all
of it,’ he said, ‘But we –’
    ‘Enough to get a small part of the university to the moon?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    ‘The Dean could do with a holiday,’ said the Archchancellor.
    ‘I resent that remark, Archchancellor.’
    ‘Just trying to lighten the mood, Dean.’
    ‘
But we can
release just enough for all kinds of useful work,’ said Ponder, already struggling.
    ‘Like heating my study,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘My water jug was iced up
again
this morning.’
    ‘Exactly!’ said Ponder, striking out madly for a useful Lie-to-Wizards. ‘We can use it to boil a great big kettle! That’s all it is! It’s perfectly harmless! Not dangerous in any way! That’s why the University Council let me build it! You wouldn’t have let me build it if it was dangerous, would you?’
    He gulped down the water.
    As one man, the assembled wizards took several steps backwards.
    ‘Let us know what it’s like up there,’ said the Dean.
    ‘Bring us back some rocks. Or something,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    ‘Wave to us’, said the Senior Wrangler. ‘We’ve got quite a good telescope.’
    Ponder stared at the empty glass, and readjusted his mental sights once more.
    ‘Er, no,’ he said. ‘The fuel has to go inside the reacting engine, you see. And then … and then …’
    He gave up.
    ‘The magic goes round and round and it comes up under the boiler that we have plumbed in and the university will then be lovely and warm,’ he said. ‘Any questions?’
    ‘Where does the coal go?’ said the Dean. ‘It’s wicked what the dwarfs are charging these days.’
    ‘No, sir. No coal. The