'Well, go and fetch him, then! I suppose you do know where he is, do you?'

'Technically, yes, Archchancellor,' said Ponder quickly. 'But we're not sure quite where the place where he is is, if you follow me.'

Ridcully gave him another stare.

'You see, we think he's on EcksEcksEcksEcks, Archchancellor,' said Ponder.

'EcksEcks—'

'—EcksEcks, Archchancellor.'

'I thought no one knew where that place was,' said Ridcully.

'Exactly, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them into Ridcully's head.

'What's he doing there?'

'We don't really know, Archchancellor. If you remember, we believe he ended up there after that Agatean business...'

'What did he want to go there for?'

'I don't think he exactly wanted to,' said Ponder. 'Er... we sent him. It was a trivial error in bi-locational thaumaturgy that anyone could make.'

'But you made it, as I recall,' said Ridcully, whose memory could spring nasty surprises like that.

'I am a member of the team, sir,' said Ponder, pointedly.

'Well, if he doesn't want to be there, and we need him here, let's bring him b—'

The rest of the sentence was drowned out not by a noise but by a sort of bloom of quietness, which rolled over the wizards and was so oppressive and soft that they couldn't even hear their own heartbeats. Old Tom, the University's magical and tongueless bell, tolled out 2 a.m. by striking the silences.

'Er—' said Ponder. 'It's not as simple as that.'

Ridcully blinked. 'Why not?' he said. 'Bring him back by magic. We sent him there, we can bring him back.'

'Er... it'd take months to set it up properly, if you want him back right here,' said Ponder. 'If we get it wrong he'll end up arriving in a circle fifty feet wide.'

That's not a problem, is it? If we keep out of it he can land anywhere.'

'I don't think you quite understand, sir. The signal to noise ratio of any thaumic transfer over an uncertain distance, coupled with the Disc's own spin, will almost certainly result in a practical averaging of the arriving subject over an area of a couple of thousand square feet at least, sir.'

'Say again?'

Ponder took a deep breath. 'I mean he'll end up arriving as a circle. Fifty feet wide.'

'Ah. So he probably wouldn't be very good in the Library after that, then.'

'Only as a very large bookmark, sir.'

'All right, then, it's down to sheer geography. Who've we got who knows anything about geography?'

The miners emerged from the vertical shaft like ants leaving a burning nest. There were thumps and thuds from below, and at one point Strewth's hat shot up into the air, turned over a few times and dropped back.

There was silence for a while and then, bits cracking off it like errant pieces of shell on a newly hatched chick, the thing pulled itself out of the shaft and...

... looked around it.

The miners, crouched behind various bushes and sheds, were quite certain of this, even though the monster had no visible eyes.

It turned, its hundreds of little legs moving rather stiffly, as if they'd spent too much time buried in the ground.

Then, weaving slightly, it set off.

And far away in the shimmering red desert, the man in the pointy hat climbed carefully out of his hole. He held in both hands a bowl made of bark. It contained... lots of vitamins, valuable protein and essential fats. See? No mention of wriggling at all.

A fire was smouldering a little way away. He put the bowl down carefully and picked up a large stick, stood quietly for a moment and then suddenly began to hop around the fire, smacking the ground with the stick and shouting, 'Hah!' When the ground had been subdued to his apparent satisfaction he whacked at the bushes as if they had personally offended him, and bashed a couple of trees as well.

Finally he advanced on a couple of flat rocks, lifted up each one in turn, averted his eyes, shouted, 'Hah!' again and flailed blindly at the ground beneath.

The landscape having been acceptably pacified, he sat down to eat his supper before it escaped.

It tasted a little like chicken. When you are hungry enough, practically anything can.

And eyes watched him from the nearby water-hole. They were not the tiny eyes of the swarming beetles and tadpoles that made a careful examination of every handful he drank a vital gastronomic precaution. These were far older eyes, and currently without any physical component.

For weeks a man whose ability to find water was limited to checking if his feet were wet had survived in this oven-ready country by falling into waterholes. A man who thought of spiders as harmless little creatures had experienced only a couple of nasty shocks when, by now, this approach should have left him with arms the size of beer barrels that glowed in the dark. The man had even hit the seashore once and paddled in a little way to look at the pretty blue jellyfish, and it was all the watcher could do to see that he got a mere light sting which ceased to be agonizing after only a few days.

The waterhole bubbled and the ground trembled as if, despite the cloudless sky, there was a storm somewhere.

Now it was three o'clock in the morning. Ridcully was good at doing without other people's sleep.

Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.

And because it was so big it could afford to have an almost unlimited number of staff on the premises. Tenure was automatic or, more accurately, non-existent. You found an empty room, turned up for meals as usual, and generally no one noticed, although if you were unfortunate you might attract students. And if you looked hard enough in some of the outlying regions of the University, you could find an expert on anything.

You could even find an expert on finding an expert. The Professor of Recondite Architecture and Origami Map Folding had been woken up. been introduced to the Archchancellor, who had never set eyes on him before, and had produced a map of the University which would probably be accurate for the next few days and looked rather like a chrysanthemum in the act of exploding.

Finally, the wizards reached a door and Ridcully glared at the brass plate on it as if it had just been cheeky to him.

' "Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography",' he said. 'This looks like the one.'

'We must have walked miles,' said the Dean, leaning against the wall. 'I don't recognize any of this.'

Ridcully glanced around. The walls were stone but had at some time been painted in that very special institutional green that you get when an almost-finished cup of coffee is left standing for a couple of weeks. There was a board covered in balding and darker green felt on which had been optimistically thumbtacked the word 'Notices'. But from the looks of it there had never been any notices and never would be, ever. There was a smell of ancient dinners.

Ridcully shrugged, and knocked on the door.

'I don't remember him,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'I think I do,' said the Dean. 'Not a very promising boy. Had ears. Don't often see him around, though. Always has a suntan. Odd, that.'

'He's on the staff. If anyone knows anything about geography, he's our man.' Ridcully knocked again.

'Perhaps he's out,' said the Dean. That's where you mostly get geography, outside.'