Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett [34]
The coach bounced over a pothole. The Librarian turned over in his sleep.
“Sounds like Psychotic Lord Hargon of Quirm to me,” said Ridcully, after a while.
“That’s right,” said Casanunda. “He was a devil for jokes like that. How many students can you get in an Iron Maiden, that kind of thing.”
“So this was at his place, then, was it?” said Ridcully.
“What? I don’t know,” said Ponder.
“Why not? You seem to know all about it.”
“I don’t think it was anywhere. It’s a puzzle.”
“Hang on,” said Casanunda, “I think I’ve worked it out. One question, right?”
“Yes,” said Ponder, relieved.
“And he can ask either guard?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, right. Well, in that case he goes up to the smallest guard and says, ‘Tell me which is the door to freedom if you don’t want to see the color of your kidneys and incidentally I’m walking through it behind you, so if you’re trying for the Mr. Clever Award just remember who’s going through it first.’”
“No, no, no!”
“Sounds logical to me,” said Ridcully. “Very good thinking.”
“But you haven’t got a weapon!”
“Yes I have. I wrested it from the guard while he was considering the question,” said Casanunda.
“Clever,” said Ridcully. “Now that, Mr. Stibbons, is logical thought. You could learn a lot from this man—”
“—dwarf—”
“—sorry, dwarf. He doesn’t go on about parasite universes all the time.”
“Parallel!” snapped Ponder, who had developed a very strong suspicion that Ridcully was getting it wrong on purpose.
“Which ones are the parasite ones, then?”
“There aren’t any! I mean, there aren’t any, Archchancellor.* Parallel universes, I said. Universes where things didn’t happen like—” He hesitated. “Well, you know that girl?”
“What girl?”
“The girl you wanted to marry?”
“How’d you know that?”
“You were talking about her just after lunch.”
“Was I? More fool me. Well, what about her?”
“Well…in a way, you did marry her,” said Ponder.
Ridcully shook his head. “Nope. Pretty certain I didn’t. You remember that sort of thing.”
“Ah, but not in this universe—”
The Librarian opened one eye.
“You suggestin’ I nipped into some other universe to get married?” said Ridcully.
“No! I mean, you got married in that universe and not in this universe,” said Ponder.
“Did I? What? A proper ceremony and everything?”
“Yes!”
“Hmm.” Ridcully stroked his beard. “You sure?”
“Certain, Archchancellor.”
“My word! I never knew that.”
Ponder felt he was getting somewhere.
“So—”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t I remember it?”
Ponder had been ready for this.
“Because the you in the other universe is different from the you here,” he said. “It was a different you that got married. He’s probably settled down somewhere. He’s probably a great-grandad by now.”
“He never writes, I know that,” said Ridcully. “And the bastard never invited me to the wedding.”
“Who?”
“Him.”
“But he’s you!”
“Is he? Huh! You’d think I’d think of me, wouldn’t you? What a bastard!”
It wasn’t that Ridcully was stupid. Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer. He had quite a powerful intellect, but it was powerful like a locomotive, and ran on rails and was therefore almost impossible to steer.
There are indeed such things as parallel universes, although parallel is hardly the right word—universes swoop and spiral around one another like some mad weaving machine or a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble.
And they branch. But, and this is important, not all the time. The universe doesn’t much care if you tread on a butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies. Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don’t make any effort to catch them.
Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone