Science of Discworld III

by Terry Pratchett

  1 Pronounced ‘crazy’.

  2 This is a special usage devised by the anthropologist Lloyd Morgan in the 1880s, picked up by John Campbell Jr in an Analog editorial in the 1960s, then by Jack in The Privileged Ape: for tribal humans, everything is traditional, mandatory or forbidden; for barbarians, action is driven by honour, bravery, modesty, defiance of precedent; for citizens, some roles are tribal, some barbarian, we choose.

  3 Not quite including the confectionery, which was the surname of the originator; he came to England from the USA, and invented M&Ms too. That stands for ‘Mars and Mars’.

  4 Also egg-laying. Jack, reading Burroughs when young, was disturbed by the idea of their marriage bed …

  5 Rajith Dissanayake, ‘What did the Dodo look like?’ Biologist 51 (2004), 165–8.

  6 Although it does seem a little strange that Palestinian terrorists protect their genitals, for use in Paradise, when setting themselves up as suicide bombers.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE GOD OF EVOLUTION

  ‘DOING WELL BUT LOTS STILL TO BE DONE!’ barked Ridcully, striding out of the magic circle into the Great Hall. ‘Everything all right, Mr Stibbons?’

  ‘Yes, sir. You didn’t try to stop the God of Evolution talking to Darwin, did you?’

  ‘No, you said we shouldn’t,’ said Ridcully briskly.

  ‘Good. It had to happen,’ said Ponder. ‘So all we need to do now is persuade Mr Darwin—’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that, Stibbons,’ Ridcully interrupted, ‘and I have decided that you will now take Mr Darwin to meet our God of Evolution on his island,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘It’s quite safe.’

  Ponder went pale. ‘I’d really rather not go there, sir!’

  ‘However, you will, because I am Archchancellor and you are not’ said Ridcully. ‘Let’s see what he thinks of the wheeled elephant, eh?’

  Ponder glanced at Darwin, still in the blue glow of stasis. ‘That’s very dangerous, sir. Think of what he’ll be seeing! And it would be quite unethical to remove the memories that —’

  ‘I know I am Archchancellor, it’s written on my door!’ said Ridcully. ‘Show him his god, Mr Stibbons, and leave the worrying to me. Quickly, man. I want this all wrapped up by dinnertime!’

  A moment after Ponder and Darwin left, a small boulder and quite a lot of sand appeared and slid across the tiles of the Great Hall.

  ‘Well done, Mr Hex,’ said Ridcully.

  +++ Thank you, Archchancellor +++ Hex wrote.

  ‘I was kind of hoping we’d get the chairs back, though.’

  +++ I will see what I can do next time, Archchancellor +++

  And on Mono Island, Charles Darwin picked himself up from the beach and stared around.

  ‘Does this lend itself to any rational explanation, or is it more madness?’ he said to Ponder. ‘I have cut my hand quite badly!’

  At which point two little leaves pushed themselves out of the ground near his foot and, with amazing speed, became a plant. It threw up more leaves, then developed a single red flower which opened like an explosion and died like a spark to produce one single seed, which was white and fluffy.

  ‘Oh, a bandage plant,’ said Ponder, picking it. ‘Here you are, sir.’

  ‘How—’ Darwin began.

  ‘It just understood what you needed, sir,’ said Ponder, leading the way. ‘This is Mono Island, the home of the God of Evolution.’

  ‘A god of evolution?’ said Darwin, stumbling after him. ‘But evolution is a process inherent in—’

  ‘Ye – yes, I know what you’re thinking, sir. But things are different here. There is a god of evolution and he … improves things. That’s why we think everything here is desperate to get off the island, poor creatures. Somehow they know what you want and evolve as fast as they can in the hope you’ll pick them to take away.’

  ‘That is not possible! Evolution needs many thousands of years to—’

  ‘Pencil,’ said Ponder, calmly. A tree nearby shivered.

  ‘Actually, the pencil bush breeds true in the right soil,’ Ponder went on, walking over to it. ‘We’ve got some of these at the University. And the Chair of Indefinite Studies kept a cigarette tree going for months, but they got very tarry. Once most of them get far enough away from Mono Island they stop trying.’ He held one out. ‘Would you like a ripe pencil? They’re quite useful.’

  Darwin took the slim cylinder Ponder had plucked from the tree. It was warm, and still slightly moist.

  ‘This is Mono Island, you see,’ said Ponder, and pointed to the small mountain at the far end of the island. ‘Up there is where the god lives. Not a bad old boy, as gods go, but he will keep changing things all the time. When we met him he—’

  The bushes rustled, and Ponder dragged the bemused Darwin aside as something rattled down the path.

  ‘That’s a giant tortoise!’ said Darwin, as it trundled past. ‘That at least is something – oh!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s on wheels!’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s very keen on wheels. He thinks wheels should work.’

  The tortoise turned quite professionally and rolled to a halt by a cactus, which it proceeded to eat, daintily, until there was a hiss and it sagged sideways.

  ‘Oh,’ said a voice from the air. ‘Bad luck. Tyre bladder punctured. It’s the everlasting problem of the strength of the integument versus the usage rate of the mucus.’

  A skinny, rather preoccupied man, dressed in a grubby toga, appeared between the two of them. Beetles orbited him like wonderful little asteroids.

  ‘Deposition of metal may be our friend here,’ he said, and turning to Ponder as if to another old friend he went on: ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Ah, um, er … do you really need all that shell?’ said Ponder, hurriedly. Beetles, bright as tiny galaxies, landed on his robe.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said the old man. ‘Too heavy, perhaps? Oh … you seem familiar, young man. Have we met before?’

  ‘Ponder Stibbons, sir. I was here a few years ago. With some wizards,’ said Ponder, with care. He’d quite admired the God of Evolution, until he’d found that the god considered the cockroach to be the peak of the evolutionary pyramid.

  ‘Ah, yes. You had to leave in such a hurry, I recall,’ said the god, sadly. ‘It was—’

  ‘You! … you appeared in my room!’ said Darwin, who’d been staring at the god with his mouth open. ‘There were beetles everywhere!’ He stopped, his mouth opening and shutting for a while. ‘But you certainly are not … I thought you—’

  Ponder was ready for this.

  ‘You know about Olympus, sir?’ he said quickly.

  ‘What? This is Greece?’ said Darwin.

  ‘No, sir, but we’ve got lots of gods here. This, er, gentleman isn’t, as you might put it, the god. He’s just a god.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ said the God of Evolution, giving them a worried smile.

  ‘A god?’ Darwin demanded.

  ‘One of the nice ones,’ said Ponder quickly.

  ‘I like to think so,’ said the god, beaming happily. ‘Look, I need to check on how the whales are doing. Why don’t you come up the mountain for tea? I love to have visitors.’

  He vanished.

  ‘But the Greek gods were myths!’ Darwin burst out, staring at the suddenly empty space.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘Ours aren’t. On this world, gods are extremely real.’

  ‘He came through the wall!’ said Darwin, pointing angrily at the empty air. ‘He told me that he was immanent in all things!’

  ‘He tinkers a lot, certainly,’ said Ponder. ‘But only here.’

  ‘Tinkers!’

  ‘Shall we take a little walk up Mount Impossible?’ said Ponder.

  Most of Mount Impossible was hollow. You need a lot of space when you are trying to devise a dirigible whale.

  ‘It really should work,’ said the God of Evolution, over tea. ‘Without th
at heavy blubber and with an inflatable skeleton of which, I must say I am rather proud, it should do well on the routes of migratory birds. Larger maw, of course. Note the cloud-like camouflage, obviously required. Lifting is produced via bacteria in the gut which produce elevating gases. The dorsal sail and the flattened tail give a reasonable degree of steerability. All in all, a good piece of work. My main problem is devising a predator. The sea-air ballistic shark has proved quite unsatisfactory. I don’t know if you might have any suggestions, Mr Darwin?’

  Ponder looked at Darwin. The poor man, his face grey, was staring up at the two whales who were cruising gently near the roof of the cave.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘The god would like to know what could attack this,’ Ponder prompted.

  ‘Yes, the grey people said you were very interested in evolution,’ said the god.

  ‘The grey people?’ said Ponder.

  ‘Oh yes, you know. You see them flying around sometimes. They said someone really wanted to listen to my views. I was so pleased. Lots of people just laugh.’

  Darwin looked around the celestial workshop and said: ‘I cannot see anything to laugh at in an elephant with sails, sir!’

  ‘Exactly! It was the big ears that gave me the clue there,’ said the god cheerfully. ‘Making them bigger was simplicity itself. It can do twenty-five miles an hour across the open veldt in a good wind!’

  ‘Until a wheel bursts,’ said Darwin, flatly.

  ‘I’m sure once they get the idea it will all work,’ said the god.

  ‘You don’t think it might be better to let things evolve by themselves?’ said Darwin.

  ‘My dear sir, it’s so dull,’ said the god. ‘Four legs, two eyes one mouth … so few are prepared to experiment.’

  Once again Darwin looked around the glowing interior of Mount Impossible. Ponder watched him take in the details: the cage of web-winged octo-monkeys that in theory could skim across the canopy for hundreds of yards, the Phaseolus coccineus giganticus that actually bred true, if there was any possible use for a beanstalk that could grow half a mile high … and everywhere the animals, often in stages of assembly or disassembly but all quite contentedly alive in a little mist of holiness.

  ‘Mr, er, Stibbons, I should like to go … home now, please,’ said Darwin, who had gone pale. ‘This has all been most … instructive, but I should like to go home.’

  ‘Oh dear, people are always rushing off,’ said the god, sadly. ‘But still, I hope I have been of help, Mr Darwin?’

  ‘Indeed, I believe you have,’ said Darwin, grimly.

  The god accompanied them to the mouth of the cave, beetles streaming behind him in a cloud.

  ‘Do call again,’ he said, as they wandered off down the track. ‘I do like to—’

  He was interrupted by a noise like all the party balloons in the world being let down at once. It was long and drawn out and full of melancholy.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the God of Evolution, hurrying back inside, ‘not the whales!’

  Darwin was silent as they walked to the beach. He was even more silent as they passed the wheeled tortoise, which was limping in circles. The silence was deafening when Ponder summoned Hex. When they appeared in the Great Hall his silence, apart from a brief scream during the actual travelling, was a huge infectious silence that was contagious.

  The assembled wizards shuffled their feet. Dark rage radiated off their visitor.

  ‘How did it go, Stibbons?’ whispered Ridcully.

  ‘Er, the God of Evolution was his usual self, sir.’

  ‘Was he? Ah, good—’

  ‘I wish, very clearly, to awaken from this nightmare,’ said Darwin, abruptly.

  The wizards stared at the man, who was quivering with rage.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ Ridcully said quietly. ‘We can help you wake up. Excuse us a moment.’

  He waved a hand; once again the blue shimmer surrounded their visitor. ‘Gentlemen, if you please?’

  He beckoned to the other senior wizards, who clustered around him.

  ‘We can put him back without him having any memory of anything that happened here, right?’ he said. ‘Mr Stibbons?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Hex could do it. But as I said, sir, it wouldn’t be very ethical to mess around with his mind.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t like anyone to think we’re unethical,’ said Ridcully firmly. He glared around. ‘Anyone object? Good. You see, I’ve been taking to Hex. I’d like to give him something to remember. We owe him that, at least.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ said Ponder. ‘Won’t it make things worse?’

  ‘I’d like him to know why we did all this, even if it’s only for a moment!’

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, Mustrum?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  The Archchancellor hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But it’s mine. And we’re going to do it.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A LACK OF SERGEANTS

  WHAT WAS IT ABOUT VICTORIAN ENGLAND, and what led up to it, that made it so progressive, inventive and innovative? Why was it so different from Russia, China, and all the other nations that seem to have stagnated during the nineteenth century – accumulating wealth, but lacking a middle class full of engineers, sea captains, clerics, and scientists? We would not expect there to be one simple answer, one trick that Victorian England discovered but other nations did not. That would satisfy the innate human wish for a single thin causal chain, but as we’ve seen, history doesn’t work like that.

  Equally, though, it’s unsatisfying just to list lots of possible contributory causes – the East India Company … Harrison’s excellent chronometer, which helped to make the British Empire so profitable and made aristocratic families send their younger sons fairly safely out into the Empire, from which they came back wiser and richer … Quakers and other nonconformist sects, which were tolerated by the Anglican Church … the Lunar Society’s progeny, including the Royal Society and the Linnaean Society … the College of Apprentices … Parliament and the pretence of democracy, so that a middle class could rise from the merging of junior aristocrats who came back from the Empire to found pickle factories in Manchester … artisans who were coming into towns looking for satisfying jobs. We could make the list ten times longer, though in most cases we wouldn’t be sure about genuine causal connections. And even with ten times as many ‘causes’, we would still have to say ‘all of the above’.

  Are such factors a cause of historical differences, or a consequence? That’s not a sensible question if you insist on a yes/no answer – very probably the answer should be ‘both’. A modern analogue would be to ask whether today’s space-oriented engineers and scientists are a cause of the success of space films and nailed-down science-fiction stories – or did the early scientifically oriented SF stories, with their sense of wonder at the sheer vastness and mystery of outer space, fire those engineers, when young, with the desire to turn fiction into fact? It must have been both, of course.

  The early Victorian apprentices in pottery, ironworking, brick firing, and even bricklaying were respected by, and respected, their masters. Together they laid down enduring monuments for future generations. Similarly, early trains and canals connected all the major cities, and connected factories to their suppliers and customers. This transport system paved the way to the wonderful economic network that Edwardian Britain inherited from the Victorians. These systems were not static, to be admired for what they had achieved. They were dynamic, they changed, they were processes as much as achievements. They changed the way succeeding generations thought about where and how they lived. Even today, our cities rely heavily on what the Victorians built, especially when it comes to sewerage and water supplies.

  The resulting changes in thinking fuelled further changes. The combination of cause and consequence is an example of what we have elsewhere called complicity.1 This phenomenon arises when two conceptually distinct systems interact recursively, each repeatedly changing the o
ther, so that they co-evolve. A typical outcome is that together they work their way into territory that would have been inaccessible to either alone. Complicity is not mere ‘interaction’, where the systems join forces to achieve some joint outcome, but are not themselves greatly affected as a result. It is far more drastic, and it changes everything. It can even erase its own origins, so that neither of the original separate systems remains.

  The social innovations that were (arguably but not solely) triggered by Victorian ingenuity and drive are just like that. Because there was selection, and because the best growth often occurs in the best run and best designed parts of growing systems, there was recursion. The next generation was inspired by the previous generation’s successes, and their noble mistakes, and built a better world. What we might call the Channel Tunnel Syndrome occurs quite often in capitalist, democratic societies, but not in totalitarian states or even in nations like, say, today’s Arab states or twentieth-century India. And particularly not in nineteenth-century Russia or China: both were rich, but they had no respectable middle class.

  The Victorian middle class was respected both by the workers whose lives they exploited – and opened up – and by the aristocrats, whose increasingly international outlook was progressively integrated with trade. Russia and China had political systems without an economically powerful, shareholding middle class, which could start or follow fashions, and support romantic, visionary ventures. Today, the British will still support a Channel Tunnel venture or a Beagle-2 Mars lander, because such things are romantic and possibly heroic, even though they are unlikely to be very profitable. A lengthy historical record shows very clearly that the first attempt at any major tunnel usually collapses financially – though after the tunnel is successfully built – often after a long series of attempts to shore up a failing enterprise. Then the ruins are bought for a song, occasionally nationalised or considerably financed by government or some other major capital source, and the resulting business can stand on the shoulders of the first. Only some rather strained economics has so far kept the original companies involved in the Channel Tunnel in business, at least on the British side of the Channel where everything was done by private enterprise.