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The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle That’s the advantage of space It’s big enough to hold, practically anything, and so, eventually, it does People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousandand an elephant more than, two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the huinally designed for cooling the blood It believesabout size Turtles are a But the fact that there’s a big turtle is far less a than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere The reason for the story was a s There was humanity’s desire to do forbidden deeds merely because they were forbidden There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live beyond them There were die mysterious scrolls There was the cucue that one day, quite soon, it would be all over "Ah well, life goes on," people say when someone dies But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn’t It’s the universe that goes on Just as die deceased was getting the hang of everything it’s all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one case, a cucumber Why this has to be is one of the imponderables of life, in the face of which people either start to prayor beco of the story happened tens of thousands of years ago, on a wild and storht, when a speck of flame came down the es and jerks, as if the unseen person carrying it was sliding and falling from rock to rock At one point the line beca in a snowdrift at the bottoh the snow held the ser of the gods, and with a sense of humour of its ohipped the flame back into lifeAnd, after that, it never died The end of the story began high above the world, but got lower and lower as it circled doards the ancient andcould be bought and sold - and if they didn’t have what you wanted they could steal it for you So out a particular building beloas a trained Pointless Albatross and, by the standards of the world, was not particularly unusual (Compared to, say, the Republican Bees, who committeed rather than swarh, pointless It spent its entire life in a series of lazy journeys between the Rim and the Huh, and where was the point in that? This one was more or less tame Its beady mad eye spotted where, for reasons entirely beyond its comprehension, anchovies could be found And so It seeood deal to the albatross and from this it can be deduced that these albatrosses are, if not completely pointless, at least rather duht has been been said to be one of the great dreams of Mankind In fact it reatest dreareat dreae boots with teeth And no one says that one has to make sense Three busy hours later Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, was standing in the main hall of Unseen University, and he was impressed

The wizards, once they understood the urgency of a proble, could actually work quite fast Theira solution, as far as the Patrician could see, was by creative hubbub If the question was, What is the best spell for turning a book of poetry into a frog?", then the one tiling they would not do was look in any book with a title like Major Amphibian Spells in a Literary Environ They would argue about it instead, standing around a blackboard, seizing the chalk fro out bits of what the current chalk-holder riting before he’d finished the other end of the sentence So stood in the centre of the hall It looked, to the arts- educated Patrician, like a big lass surrounded by rubbish "Technically, my lord, an omniscope can see anywhere" said Arch chancellor Ridcully, as technically the head of All Known Wizardry(That is, all those wizards who knew Archchancellor Ridcully, and were prepared to be led) "Really? Remarkable"

"Anywhere and any time" Ridcully went on, apparently not impressed himself "How extremely useful"

"Yes, everyone says that," said Ridcully, kicking the floorcan see everywhere, it’s practically iet it to see anywhere At least, anywhere worth seeing And you’d be amazed at how many places there are in the universe And times, too"

"Twenty past one, for exa others, indeed Would you care to have a look, my lord?" Lord Vetinari advanced cautiously and peered into the big round glass He frowned "All I can see is what’s on the other side of it," he said "All, that’s because it’s set to here and now, sir" said a young wizard as still adjusting the device "Oh, I see? said die Patrician "We have these at the palace, in fact We call them win-dows? "Well, if I do this? said the wizard, and did solass, "it looks the other way" Lord Vetinari looked into his own face "And these we callto a child "I think not, sir" said the wizard "It takes aIt helps if you hold up your hand - -" Lord Vetinari gave him a severe look, but essayed a little wave "Oh How curious What is your na man?"

"Ponder Stibbons sir The new Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, sir You see, sir the trick isn’t to build an omniscope because, after all, that’s just a developet it to see what you want It’s like tuning a string, and if-"

"Sorry, what applied ic?" said the Patrician "Inadvisably, sir" said Ponder s that he could avoid the probleet it to the right area, sir The power drain is considerable: we ather around the device "Can you see into the future?" said Lord Vetinari "In theory yes, sir," said Ponder "But that would be highlywell, inadvisable, you see, because initial studies indicate that the fact of observation would collapse the waveform in phase space" Not a muscle moved on the Patrician’s face "Pardon me, I’m a little out of date on faculty staff" he said Are you the one who has to take the dried frog pills?"

"No, sir That’s the Bursar, sir," said Ponder "He has to have them because he’s insane, sir"

"Ah," said Lord Vetinari and now he did have an expression It was that of aas on his mind "What MrStibbons means, my lord," said the Archchancellor, "is that there are billions and billions of futures that, er, sort of exist, d’yer see? They’re all the possible shapes of the future But apparently the first one you actually look at is the one that becoht not be one you’d like Apparently it’s all to do with the Uncertainty Principle"

"And that is?"

"I’m not sure MrStibbons is the one who knows about that sort of thing"

An orangutan ae number of books under each arm Lord Vetinari looked at the hoses that snaked froh the open door and across the lawn toas it?the High Energy Magic building? He rey and full of guile They wouldn’t have allowed an Uncertainty Principle to exist for any length of time; if you weren’t certain, they’d say, ere you doing wrong? What you were uncertain of could kill you The omniscope flickered and showed a snowfield, with black mountains in the distance The wizard called Ponder Stibbons appeared to be very pleased with this I thought you said you could find hi?" said Vetinari to the Archchancellor Ponder Stibbons looked up "Do we have so that he has owned? So around?" he said "We could put it in the morphic resonator, connect that up to the omniscope and it’ll home in on hiic circles and dribbly candles?" said Lord Vetinari "Oh, they’re for e’re not in a hurry, sir" said Ponder "Cohen the Barbarian is not known for leaving things lying around I fear," said the Patrician "Bodies, perhaps All we know is that he is heading for Cori Celesti"

"The mountain at the Hub of the world, sir? Why?"

"I was hoping you would tell me, MrStibbons That’s why I’ain, with another load of books Another response of the wizards, when faced with a new and unique situation, was to look through their libraries to see if it had ever happened before This was, Lord Vetinari reflected, a good survival trait Itvery quietly in a building with very thick walls He looked again at the piece of paper in his hand Why were people so stupid? One sentence caught his eye: "He says the last hero ought to return what the first hero stole" And, of course, everyone knehat the first hero stole The gods play games with the fate of ods lack patience Cheating is part of the rules And gods play hard To lose all believers is, for a god, the end

But a believer who survives the gaains honour and extra belief Who ith the ods, of course Gods believe in belief There were always ods on Cori Celesti It looked, froions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch XXI, vl6) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side This is somewhat less than 500,000,000000,000,000,000 cubic feet Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this spate, this leaves about onethat every creature that could be called ’human’ is allowed in, and that the human race eventually totals a thousand tienerous aests that room has also been provided for soht - that pets are allowed) Not all gods lived there,bound to a particular country or in the case of the smaller ones, even one tree But it was a Good Address It here you hung your metaphysical equivalent of the shiny brass plate, like those ss in the smarter areas of major cities which nevertheless appear to house one hundred and fifty lawyers and accountants, presu The city’s domestic appearance was because, while people are influenced by gods, so gods are influenced by people Most gods were people-shaped: people don’t have ination, on the whole Even Offler the Crocodile God was only crocodile-headed Ask people to iod and they will, basically, come up with the idea of someone in a really baddemons, which is why there are so ods played on They soet all the way up the board It took a little longer for the rumour to spread around the city, but in twos and threes the leaders of the great Guilds hurried into the University Then the a se nal to clear the line for high-priority eency traffic, and then clack’d the little packets of doom to chancelleries and castles across the continent They were in code, of course If you have news about the end of the world, you don’t want everyone to know Lord Vetinari stared along the table A lot had been happening in the past few hours "If I entle to the authorities in Hunghung, the capital of the Agatean Eiz Cohen, formerly known to the world as Cohen the Barbarian, is well en route to the hoods with a device of considerable destructive power and the intention, apparently, of, in his words, "returning as stolen" And, in short, they ask us to stop him"