died away, Marjorie said, as cheerfully as possible, ‘Is it true you have an orangutan librarian? I knew it! I’ve seen him before – and so have others, although it is seldom openly discussed, just in case. The first time was when I had to go down to the stacks, and he must have been surprised because he handed me a fresh banana skin and disappeared. The head librarian told me not to mention it to younger librarians, and whispered, “You are lucky if it happens once in a lifetime.” And the second time—’
‘Twice in a lifetime, Miss Daw?’ Ridcully beamed. ‘Let us make it three. I’ll take you to meet him shortly, but first, alas, I must go and have a chat with Mister Slant, who is our lawyer. I can hardly wait! The game is afoot! Yes, Mister Stibbons, you have a point?’
‘I do, Archchancellor. In a case like this I am sure that Lord Vetinari himself will want to be the adjudicator, to ensure fairness.’
‘What! But we made the Roundworld; it belongs to us as it is our creature. It’s not as if we just pulled it out of the air …’
Ponder fell on that statement like a chess player taking the opponent’s Queen. ‘But pulling it out of the air was exactly what we did, Archchancellor. Exactly! You could say that it was immanent in the air, but whose imminence? It’s going to be a very interesting case …’
‘This is a very interesting case,’ said Mister Slant, the foremost lawyer in Ankh-Morpork, and indeed the most dead – at least, the most dead person who could tell you that he was dead. He rustled the papers in front of him, or possibly – since Mister Slant was the hardest-working zombie in Ankh-Morpork – they were his hands. He looked over the table at Ridcully and his face looked … well, grave … and his voice crackled; regrettably, there was no other way of putting it.
‘You see, Archchancellor, this isn’t just a squabble over a horse or a house; it goes beyond the occult into unknown regions – expensive regions. I am aware that the Church of the Latter-Day Omnians is seeking support from other religious groups, and it is no secret that some of them don’t have all that much love for wizardry; they think of it as trespassing.’
Ridcully was outraged. ‘Trespass!?’
Mister Slant gave a chuckle, which ended, as ever, as a crackle. ‘If I judge the temperature in the ecclesiastical circles, they find the Omnians dangerously old-fashioned and lacking any understanding of compromise; in short, the Omnians simply know they are right – and that, Archchancellor, is that. Incidentally, I heard this afternoon that Lord Vetinari is prepared to take this case under his wing, as he is the highest temporal power, which means that his word will be law.’ He crackled through the papers on his desk again. ‘Ah, he can find time on Thursday.’
The next day, Marjorie Daw was awakened by Mrs Whitlow with a bowl of bowel-scouring muesli, a teapot full of Earl Green tea, two hard-boiled eggs, and a copy of what turned out to be the Ankh-Morpork Times. On the front page, in big letters, was the headline: THE CHALLENGE OF ROUND WORLD. There was of course also an editorial, but like so many scribblings of that ilk it soft-pedalled when talking about things like faith and gods; it chose instead to hurry hastily towards such anodyne old favourites like seeing everybody’s point of view, since religion was clearly a source of comfort for many people, and without respect for the other’s point of view there can be no debate.
She called it vamp-till-ready journalism, hanging back until the public position was overwhelming; in that way, nobody would get into trouble with the public, or have nasty letters in their in-tray. What the editor called Vox Populari was a lot of fun, however, certainly for those who got their fun by looking sideways at the world. The wizards’ absolute determination not to turn over Roundworld to the Omnians was causing people to think, sometimes without adequate equipment, which was signalled by such phrases as ‘I reckon’.
Marjorie was of the opinion, after years of working in libraries, that any philosophical remark that begins with ‘I reckon’ was probably unlikely to come up with a world-shattering insight or even a new un-shattered one.
She couldn’t help it; she had three degrees, a doctorate and could think in Greek – an excellent language for dealing