The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

…
    Eventually, after much walking and climbing, the Librarian was faced with a blank wall of books. He stepped up to them with librarianic confidence and they melted away in front of him.
    He was in some sort of study. It was book-lined, although with rather fewer than the Librarian would have expected to find in such an important node of L-space. Perhaps there was just the
one
book … and there it was, giving out L-radiation at a strength the Librarian had seldom encountered outside the seriously magical books in the locked cellars of Unseen University. It was a book and father of books, the progenitor of a whole race that would flutter down the centuries …
    It was also, unfortunately, still being written.
    The author, pen still in hand, was staring at the Librarian as if he’d seen a ghost.
    With the exception of his bald head and a beard that even a wizard would envy, he looked very, very much
like
the Librarian.
    ‘My goodness …’
    ‘Ook?’ The Librarian had not expected to be seen. The writer must have something very pertinent on his mind.
    ‘What manner of shade are you …?’
    ‘Ook.’ 1
    A hand reached out, tremulously. Feeling that something was expected of him, the Librarian reached out as well, and the tips of the fingers touched.
    The author blinked.
    ‘Tell me, then,’ he said, ‘is Man an ape, or is he an angel?’
    The Librarian knew this one.
    ‘Ook,’ he said, which meant: ape is best, because you don’t have to fly and you’re allowed sex, unless you work at Unseen University, worst luck.
    Then he backed away hurriedly, ooking apologetic noises about the minor error in the spacetime coordinates, and knuckled off through the interstices of L-space and grabbed the first book he found that had the word ‘Evolution’ in the title.
    The bearded man went on to write an even more amazing book. If only he had thought to use the word ‘
Ascent
’ there might not have been all that unpleasantness.
    But, there again, perhaps not.
    H EX let itself absorb more of the future … call it …
knowledge
. Words were so difficult. Everything was context. There was too much to learn. It was like trying to understand a giant machine when you didn’t understand a screwdriver.
    Sometimes H EX thought it was picking up fragmentary instructions. And, further away, much further away, there were little disjointed phrases in the soup of concepts which made sense but did not seem to be sensible. Some of them arrived unbidden.
    Even as H EX pondered this, another one arrived and offered an opportunity to make $$$$ While You Sit On Your Butt!!!!! He considered this unlikely.
    The title brought back by the Librarian was
The Young Person’s Guide to Evolution
.
    The Archchancellor turned the pages carefully. They were well illustrated. The Librarian knew his wizards.
    ‘And this is a good book on evolution?’ said the Archchancellor.
    ‘Ook.’
    ‘Well, it makes no sense to
me
,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘I mean t’say, what the hell is this picture all about?’
    It showed, on the left, a rather hunched-up, ape-like figure. As it crossed the page, it gradually arose and grew considerably less hairy until it was striding confidently towards the edge of the page, perhaps pleased that it had essayed this perilous journey without at any time showing its genitals.
    ‘Looks like me when I’m getting up in the mornings,’ said the Dean, who was reading over his shoulder.
    ‘Where’d the hair go?’ Ridcully demanded.
    ‘Well, some people shave,’ said the Dean.
    ‘This is a very
strange
book,’ said Ridcully, looking accusingly at the Librarian, who kept quiet because in fact he was a little worried. He rather suspected he might have altered history, or at least
a
history, and on his flight back to the safety of UU he’d seized the first book that looked as though it might be suitable for people with a very high IQ but a mental age of about ten. It had been in an empty byway, far off his usual planes of exploration, and there had been very small red chairs in it.
    ‘Oh, I get it. This is a fairy story,’ said Ridcully. ‘Frogs turnin’ into princes, that kind of thing. See here … there’s something like our blobs, and then these fishes, and then it’s a … a newt, and then it’s a big dragony type of thing and, hah, then it’s a mouse, then here’s an ape, and then it’s a man. This sort of thing happens all the time out in the really rural areas, you know, where some of the