The Truth

people in the universe have also had the misplaced belief that they can safely ignore gravity, mostly after taking some local equivalent of dried frog pills, and that has led to much extra work for elementary physics and caused brief traffic jams in the street below. When a wizard hallucinates that he can fly, things are different.
    “Bursaar! You come down here right this minute!” Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully barked through his megaphone. “You know what I said about going higher than the walls!”
    The Bursar floated gently down towards the lawn.
    “You wanted me, Archchancellor?”
    Ridcully waved a piece of paper at him.
    “You were tellin’ me the other day we were spendin’ a ton of money with the engraver, weren’t you?” he barked.
    The Bursar got his mind up to something approaching the correct speed.
    “I was?” he said.
    “Breakin’ the budget, you said. Remember it distinctly.”
    A few cogs meshed in the jittery gearbox of the Bursar’s brain.
    “Oh, yes. Yes. Very true,” he said. Another gear clonked into place. “A fortune every year, I’m afraid. The Guild of Engravers—”
    “Chap here says”—the Archchancellor glanced at the sheet—“he can do us ten copies of a thousand words each for a dollar. Is that cheap?”
    “I think, uh, there must be a miscarving there, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar, finally managing to get his voice into the smooth and soothing tones he found best in dealing with Ridcully. “That sum would not keep him in boxwood.”
    “Says here”—rustle—“down to ten-point size,” said Ridcully.
    The Bursar lost control for a moment.
    “Ridiculous!”
    “What?”
    “Sorry, Archchancellor. I mean, that can’t be right. Even if anyone could consistently carve that fine, the wood would crumble after a couple of impressions.”
    “Know about this sort of thing, do you?”
    “Well, my great-uncle was an engraver, Archchancellor. And the print bill is a major drain, as you know. I think I can say with some justification that I have been able to keep the Guild down to a very—”
    “Don’t they invite you to their annual blowout?”
    “Well, as a major customer of course the University is invited to their official dinner, and as the designated officer I naturally see it as part of my duties to—”
    “Fifteen courses, I heard.”
    “—and of course there is our policy of maintaining a friendly relationship with the other Gui—”
    “ Not including the nuts and coffee.”
    The Bursar hesitated. The Archchancellor tended to combine wooden-headed stupidity with distressing insight.
    “The problem, Archchancellor,” he tried, “is that we have always been very much against using movable type printing for magic purposes because—”
    “Yes, yes, I know all about that ,” said the Archchancellor. “But there’s all the other stuff, more of it every day…forms and charts and gods know what. You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office—”
    “Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.”
    “Clean desk, clean mind,” said the Archchancellor. He thrust the leaflet into the Bursar’s hand.
    “Just you trot down there, why don’t you, and see if it’s just a lot of hot air. But walk, please.”

    William felt drawn back to the sheds behind the Bucket next day. Apart from anything else, he had nothing to do and he didn’t like being useless.
    There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
    The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who’s been pinching my beer?
    And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman’s eye.
    William was one of the glassless. And this was odd, because he’d been born into a family that not only had a very large glass indeed but could afford to have people discreetly standing around with bottles to keep it filled up.
    It was self-imposed