The Luggage landed with a thump, raised itself on its legs, and trotted away. The possible Professor of Revolvings stared at it.
`That? Oh, it's just the Luggage,' said Rincewind. The man didn't move. `Sapient pearwood, you know?' Rincewind carried on, watching him anxiously. `It's very clever wood. You can't get the very clever wood any more, not around here.'
`It moves about?' said the possible professor.
`Oh, yes. Everywhere,' said Rincewind.
`I know of no plant life that moves about!'
`Really? I wish I didn't,' said Rincewind, fervently, gripping the man a little tighter. `Come on, after a nice warm drink you'll-'
`I must examine it closely! I am aware, of course of the so-called Venus Fly-'
`Please don't!' Rincewind pleaded, pulling the man back. `You cannot botanise the Luggage!'
The bewildered man looked around with a desperation that was shading into anger.
`Who are you, sir? Where is this place? Why are all these people wearing pointy hats? Is this Oxford? What has happened to me!'
A chilly feeling was creeping over Rincewind. Quite probably, he alone of all the wizards had read Ponder's briefings as they arrived by surly porter; it paid to know what you might have to run away from. One had included a picture of a man who looked as if he was evolving all by himself, an effect caused by the riot of facial hair. This man was not that man. Not yet. But Rincewind could see that he would be.
`Um,' he said, `I think you should come and meet people.'
It seemed to the wizards that Mr Darwin took it all very well, after the initial and quite understandable screaming.
It helped that they told him quite a lot of lies. No one would like to be told that they came from a universe created quite by accident and, moreover, by the Dean. It could only cause bad feeling. If you were told you were meeting your maker, you'd want something better.
It was Ponder and Hex who solved that. Roundworld's history offered a lot of opportunities, after all.
`I didn't feel any lightning strike,' Darwin said, looking around the Uncommon Room.
`Ah, you wouldn't have done,' said Ponder. `The whole force of it threw you here.'
`Another world ... ' said Darwin. He looked at the wizards. `And you are ... magical practitioners ...'
`Do have a little more sherry,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. The sherry glass in Darwin's hand filled up again. `You create sherry?' he said, aghast.
`Oh no, that's done by grapes and sunshine and so on,' said Ridcully. `My colleague just moved it from the decanter over there. It's a simple trick.'
`We're all very good at it,' said the Dean cheerfully.
`Magic is basically just movin' stuff around,' said Ridcully, but Darwin was looking past him. The Librarian had just knuckled into the room, wearing the old green robe he wore for important occa sions or when he'd had a bath. He climbed into a chair and held up a glass; it filled instantly, and a banana dropped into it.
`That is Pongo pongo!' said Darwin, pointing a shaking finger. `An ape!'
`Well done that man!' said Ridcully. `You'd be amazed at how many people get that wrong! He's our Librarian. Very good at it, too. Now, Mr Darwin, there's a delicate matter we-'
`It's another vision, isn't it?' said Darwin. `It's my health, I know it. I have been working too hard.' He tapped the chair. `But this wood feels solid. This sherry is quite passable. But magic, I must tell you, does not exist!' Beside him, with a little gurgle, his glass refilled.
Just one moment, sir, please,' said Ponder. `Did you say another vision?'
Darwin put his head in his hands. `I though it was an epiphany,' he groaned. `I thought that God himself appeared unto me and explained His design. It made so much sense. I had relegated Him to the status of Prime Mover, but now I see that He is immanent in His creation, constantly imparting direction and meaning to it all ... or,' he looked up, blinking, `so I thought ... '
The wizards stood frozen. Then, very carefully, Ridcully said: `Divine visitation, eh? And when was this, exactly?'
`It would have been after breakfast,' moaned Darwin. `It was raining, and then I saw this strange beetle on the window. The room filled up with beetles-'
He stopped, mouth open; a thin blue haze surrounded him.
Ridcully lowered his hand.
`Well, well,' he said. `What about that, Mr Stibbons?'
Ponder was scrabbling desperately at the paper on his clipboard.
`I've no idea!' he said. `Hex hasn't mentioned it!'
The Archchancellor grinned the grim little grin of someone sensing that the game, at last, was afoot.
`Mono Island, remember?' said Ridcully, while Darwin stared blankly at nothing. `A god with a thing about beetles?'
`I'd rather forget,' Ponder shuddered. `But, but ... no, it couldn't be him. How could the God of Evolution get into Roundworld?'
`Same way the Auditors did?' said Ridcully. `All the spacetime continuumuum stuff we're doing, who's to say we aren't leaving a few doors ajar? Well, we can't let the barmy old boy run around there! You and Rincewind, meet me in the Great Hall in one hour!'
Ponder remembered the God of Evolution, who had been so proud of developing a creature even better fitted to survive than mankind. It had been a cockroach.
`We should go right away,' he said, firmly.
`Why? We can move in time!' said Ridcully. `The hour, Mr Stibbons, is for you to come up with some way to kill Auditors!'
`They're indestructible, sir!' `All right - ninety minutes!'
THE SECRETS OF LIFE
THE DISCWORLD VERSION OF DARWIN'S vision may not be quite what Roundworld's historians of science like to tell us, but the two will have been done converged on to the same timeline if the wizards manage to have will defeated the Auditors, so we can concentrate on the after-effects of that convergence. In any case some features are common to both versions of Darwinian history, including apes, beetles, and parasitic wasps. By contemplating these organisms, and many others - especially those con founded barnacles, of course - Darwin was led to his grand synthesis.
Today, no area of biology remains unaffected by the discovery of evolution. The evidence that today's species evolved from different ones, and that this process still continues, is overwhelming. Very little modern biology would make sense without the over-arching framework of evolution. If Darwin were reincarnated today, he would recognise many of his ideas, perhaps slightly reformulated, in the conventional scientific wisdom. The big principle of natural selection would be one of them. But he would also observe debate, perhaps even controversy, about this fundamental pillar of his thinking. Not whether natural selection happens, not whether it drives much of evolution; but whether it is the only driving force.
He would also find many new layers of detail filling some of the gaps in his theories. The most important and far-reaching of these is DNA, the magic molecule that carries genetic `information', the physical form of heredity. Darwin was sure that organisms could pass on their characteristics to their offspring, but he had no idea how this process was implemented, and what physical form it took. Today we are so familiar with the role of genes, and their chemical structure, that any discussion of evolution is likely to focus mainly on DNA chemistry. The role of natural selection, indeed the role of organisms, has been downgraded: the molecule has triumphed.
We want to convince you that it won't stay that way.
Evolution by natural selection, the great advance that Darwin and Wallace brought to public attention, is nowadays considered to be `obvious' by scientists of most persuasions and by most nonspecialists outside the US Bible Belt. This consensus has arisen partly because of a general perception that biology is `easy', it isn't a real, hard-to-understand science like chemistry or physics, and most people think that they know enough about it by a kind of osmosis from the general folk information. This assumption showed up amusingly at the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2001, when the Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees and two other eminent astronomers gave talks on `Life Out There'.