`Here,' said a muffled voice from under the sand.
`Sorry ... you head for that rock there. ..'
By degrees, with only the occasional curse, the wizards were able to get to their unseen feet.
`This is Mono Island, I recognise that mountain,' said Ridcully. `Look out for-'
`Why didn't we just bop him on the head?' said the Dean. `Just a tap on the noggin? Then we could have dragged him back here, end of problem.'
`But it's quantum,' said Rincewind. `We have to deal with what's happened. If we stop it happening before it happens, the other things we've. ..' he hesitated. `Look, it's quantum. Believe me, I'd prefer it the other way.'
`Anyway, you can't just bop gods on the head,' said Ridcully, now a faint outline against the distant ocean. `It doesn't usually work and it causes talk. The other gods would be bound to hear about it, too.'
`So? None of them like him. They exiled him here after he invented the hermit elephant!' said the Dean, who was also fading into view.
`It's the look of the thing,' said Ridcully. `They don't want to encourage deicide. Besides, look up there ...'
`Oh dear,' said Rincewind. `Auditors ...'
A grey cloud was rolling down the mountain. As it neared, it contracted upon itself, growing darker.
`They've learned things,' said Ridcully. `They've never done that before. Oh, well ... Rincewind, first line of defence, if you please. And hurry!'
Rincewind, who'd always operated on the assumption that if you carried a weapon you were giving the enemy something extra to hit you with, held up a placard. It read: GO AWAY.
`Stibbons says it should work,' said Ridcully, uncertainly.
The Auditors drew closer, merging until, now, only half a dozen were left. They were dark, and full of menace.
`Ah, they probably aren't the reading sort, then,' said Ridcully. `Gentlemen, it's chocolate time ...'
It had to be said that the most of the wizards were not natural aimers. A spell went where you wanted it to go. You just had to wave in the general direction. They'd never learned to be serious about pointing.
Some shots went home. When several hit an Auditor it let out a thin scream and began to break up into its component robes, which then evaporated. But one, slightly larger than the others, zigged and zagged through the tumbling chocolates. Auditors did learn here ... and the wizards were running out of chocolate.
`Hold it,' said the Dean, pointing his bow.
The shape stopped.
`Ah,' said the Dean, happily. 'Ha, I expect you are wondering, eh, I expect you are wondering, indeed, if I have any chocolate left? And as a matter of fact I'm no-'
`No,' said the Auditor, drifting forward.
`What? Pardon?'
`I am not wondering if you have any chocolate left,' said the dark apparition. `You have none left. The Higgs & Meakins Luxury Assortment comprises two each of: Walnut Whips, Strawberry Whirls, Caramel Bars, Violet Creams, Coffee Creams, Cherry Whips and Walnut Clusters and one each of Almond Delight, Vanilla Cup, Peach Cream, Coffee Fondue and Lemon Extravaganza.'
The Dean smiled the smile of a man whose Hogswatches had come all at once. He raised the bow.
`Then be so kind as to say good day to the Nougat Surprise!'
There was a twang. The sweet flew. For a moment the Auditor wavered, and the wizards held their breath. Then, with the slightest of whimpers, it faded into nothing.
`Everyone forgets the Nougat Surprise,' said the Dean, turning to the other wizards. `I suppose it's because it's so irredeemably awful.'
There was nothing but the sound of the sea for a few seconds. Then:
`Er ... well done, Dean,' said Ridcully.
`Thank you, Archchancellor.'
`A little too showy, nevertheless. I mean, you didn't have to chat to the thing.'
`I wasn't in fact sure if I had used the nougat,' said the Dean, still smiling. Quite an effort would be needed to wipe that smile away, Ridcully knew, and so he gave up.
'Good show, all the same,' he mumbled, and then raised his voice.
'If you can hear me, Hex ... back to the Great Hall, please.'
Nothing happened. An important part of transferring matter across the world is the moving of an equivalent mass the other way. This can take a while.
Then an oak table, three chairs and two spoons crashed into the beach. A moment later, the wizards vanished.
22. FORGET THE FACTS
IT'S THEORIES THAT MATTER.
Discworld does not have science as such. But it does have a variety of systems of causality, ranging from human intentions ('I'll just go out for a drink in the Mended Drum') to magical spells to a generalised narrativium that keeps local and general history close to the lines of `story'. Roundworld does have science, but it's difficult to discover the extent to which it determines, modifies, affects people's actions - technology does, of course, but does science? Science does affect what we do, what we think, but it doesn't change what we do and think because so much of our basic knowledge is simply accepted scientific `fact'.
Well, actually not `fact', but theory.
We search for theories because they organise facts. We do this, according to The Science of Discworld II, because we are really Pan narrans, the storytelling ape, not Homo sapiens, the wise man. We invent our own stories to help ourselves to live. For this reason we are not reliable when we collect `facts' for scientific purposes. Even the best scientists, and certainly the paid help and the student employees, are so full of what they want to find that there's no way that what they do find can relate to the real world more than to their own prejudices, biases, and wishes. However, we were all told at school that `science's facts are reliable', but that its theories - and even more so its working hypotheses - are and were constantly subject to criticism, and therefore to change. It was explained to us that Newton had been supplanted by Einstein, Lamarck by Darwin, Freud by Skinner ... So we were told that theories were constantly being supplanted, but that the observations on which they were based were reliable.
This is the reverse of the truth.
No teacher pointed out that many, perhaps most, of the basic assumptions of our intellectual world were scientific theories that had survived criticism ... from the place of Earth and Sol in the Milky Way galaxy to the fertilisation theory of human conception to subatomic physics producing atom bombs ... to Ohm's Law and the electrical energy grid, to medical tricks like the germ theory of dis ease, all the way to X-rays and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), not to mention chemical theories that reliably gave us nylon, polythene and detergents. These theories go unnoticed because they have become defaults, so completely accepted as `true' that we fail to paint them with emotional tags, and simply build them into our intellectual toolkit. Even though no teacher pointed out that they were scientific successes, they constitute much of the (regrettably but unavoidably) uninspiring parts of school science.
On these foundation beliefs we hang such glittering flesh as visits to Mars, new fertility techniques like ICSI, fusion power, new bactericides for kitchen surfaces - and for a minority of the more imaginative children, the wide and wonderful worlds of science fiction.
The theories of science, then, particularly the totally accepted ones like sperm-egg conception, polythene, and Earth-orbits-Sun, are good reliable science. They are continually tested against the real world when babies are conceived in fertility clinics, when people do the washing-up, or when astronauts circle the Earth in sunlight and shadow. An enormous mass of Roundworld science is built into our everyday world, and it's mostly reliable.