The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett [105]
The Dean’s clothes billowed up but did not, as it were, inflate to their old size. The hat in particular was big enough to rock on the Dean’s ears, which were redder and stuck out more than Ponder remembered.
Ridcully raised the hat.
“Push off, granddad,” said the Dean.
“Ah,” said the Archchancellor. “Thirteen years old, I’d say. Which explains a lot. Well, Dean, help us with the others, will you?”
“Why should I?” The adolescent Dean cracked his knuckles. “Hah! I’m young again and soon you’ll be dead! I’ve got my whole life ahead of me!”
“Firstly, you’ll spend it here, and secondly, Dean, you think it’s going to be jolly good fun being the Dean in a thirteen-year-old body, don’t you, but within a minute or two you’ll start forgetting it all, you see? The old temporal gland can’t allow you to remember being fourteen when you’re not even thirteen yet, you follow me? You’d know this stuff, Dean, if you weren’t forgetting. You’ll have to go through it all over again, Dean…ah…”
The brain has far less control over the body than the body does over the brain. And adolescence is not a good time. Nor is old age, for that matter, but at least the spots have cleared up, some of the more troublesome glands have settled down and you’re allowed to take a nap in the afternoons and twinkle at young women. In any case, the Dean’s body hadn’t experienced too much old age yet, whereas every junior spot, ache and twinge was firmly embossed on the morphic memory. Once, it decided, was enough.
The Dean expanded. Ponder noticed that his head in particular swelled up to fit his ears.
The Dean rubbed his spot-free face. “Five minutes wouldn’t have been bad,” he complained. “What was that all about?”
“Temporal uncertainty,” said Ridcully. “You’ve seen it before, didn’t you realize? What were you thinking of?”
“Sex.”
“Oh, yes, of course…silly of me, really.” Ridcully looked along the deserted beach. “Mister Stibbons thinks we can—” he began. “Ye gods! There are people here!”
A young woman was walking towards them. Swaying, anyway.
“My word,” said the Dean. “I suppose this isn’t Slakki, by any chance?”
“I thought they wore grass skirts…” said Ridcully. “What’s she wearing, Stibbons?”
“A sarong.”
“Looks right enough to me, haha,” said the Dean.
“Certainly makes a man wish he was fifty years younger,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
“Five minutes younger would do for me,” said the Dean. “Incidentally, did any of you notice that rather clever inadvertent joke just then? Stibbons said it was ‘a sarong’ and I—”
“What’s that she’s carrying?” said Ridcully.
“—no, listen, you see, I misheard him, in fact, and I—”
“Looks like…coconuts…” said Ponder, shading his eyes.
“This is a bit more like it,” said the Senior Wrangler.
“—because actually I thought he said, ‘It’s wrong,’ you see—”
“Certainly a coconut,” said Ridcully. “I’m not complaining, of course, but aren’t these sultry maids generally black-haired? Red doesn’t seem very typical.”
“—so I said—”
“I suppose you’d get coconuts here?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “They float, don’t they?”
“—and, listen, when Stibbons said ‘sarong,’ I thought he—”
“Something familiar about her,” Ridcully mused.
“Did you see that nut in the Museum of Quite Unusual Things?” said the Senior Wrangler. “Called the coco-de-mer and…” he permitted himself “…ha, very curious shape, you know, you’ll never guess who it used to put me in mind of…”
“It can’t be Mrs. Whitlow, can it?” said Ponder.
“As a matter of fact, I must admit that it—”
“Well, I thought it was mildly amusing, anyway,” said the Dean.
“It is Mrs. Whitlow,” said Ridcully.
“More of a nut, really, but—”
It dawned on the Senior Wrangler that the sky was a different color on his personal planet. He turned around, looked, said, “Mwaaa…” and fell gently to the sand.
“Ai don’t quate know what’s happened to Mister Librarian,” said Mrs. Whitlow, in a voice that made the Senior Wrangler twitch even in his swoon.
The coconut opened its eyes. It looked as if it had just