Anyone who wants to can get on the Internet and construct a webpage about UFOs, telling everybody who accesses that page that UFOs exist, they're out there in space, they come down to Earth, they abduct people, they steal their babies ... They do all these things and it's absolutely definite, because it's on the web.

A prominent astronomer was giving a talk about life on other planets and the possibility of aliens. He made out the scientific case that somewhere out in the galaxy intelligent aliens might exist. At that point a member of the audience put his hand up and said 'we know they exist: it's all over the Internet.'

On the other hand, you can access another page on the Internet and get a completely different view. On the Internet, the full diver­sity of views is, or at least can be represented. It is quite democratic; the views of the stupid and credulous carry as much weight as the views of those who can read without moving their lips. If you think that the Holocaust didn't actually happen, and you can shout loud enough, and you can design a good web page, then you can be in there slugging it out with other people who believe that recorded history should have some kind of connection with reality.

We are having to cope with multiplexity. We're grappling with the problem right now: it's why global politics has suddenly become a lot more complicated than it used to be. Answers are in short sup­ply, but one thing seems clear: rigid cultural fundamentalism isn't going to get us anywhere.

THE BLEAT GOES ON

EXTELLIGENCE BLOOMED, faster than HEX could cre­ate extra space in which to apprehend it. It reached the seas and spread out across the conti­nents, left the surface of the world, spun webs across the sky, reached the moon ... and went fur­ther, as intelligence sought things to be intelligent about.

Extelligence learned. Among many other things, it learned to fear.

The HEM filled up again as the wizards returned, unsteadily, from lunch.

'Ah, Rincewind,' said the Archchancellor. 'We're looking for a volunteer to go into the squash court and shut down the reactor, and we've found you. Well done.'

'Is it dangerous?' said Rincewind.

'That depends on how you define dangerous,' said Ridcully.

'Er ... liable to cause pain and an imminent cessation of respira­tion,' suggested Rincewind. 'A high risk of agony, a possible deficit of arms and legs, a terminal shortness of breath...'

Ridcully and Ponder went into a huddle. Rincewind heard them whispering. Then the Archchancellor turned, beaming.

'We've decided to come to a new definition,' he said. 'It is "not as dangerous as many other things". I beg you pardon ...' He leaned over as Ponder whispered urgently in his ear. 'Correction, "not as dangerous as some other things". There. I think that's clear.'

'Well, yes, you mean ... not as dangerous as some of the most dangerous things in the universe?'

'Yes, indeed. And among them, Rincewind, would be your refusal to go.' The Archchancellor walked over to the omniscope. 'Oh, another ice age,' he went on. 'Well, that is a surprise.'

Rincewind glanced at the Librarian, who shrugged. Only a few tens of thousands of years could have passed down there. The apes probably never knew what squashed them.

There was a lengthy rattle from HEX's write-out. Ponder walked over to read it.

'Er ... Archchancellor? HEX says he's found advanced intelli­gence on the planet.'

'Intelligent life? Down there? But the place is a snowball again!'

'Er ... not life, sir. Not exactly.'

'Hang on, what's this?' said the Dean.

There was, thin as a thread, a ring around the world. Spaced at regular distances were tiny dots, like beads, and from them more tiny lines descended towards the surface.

So did the wizards.

Wind howled across the tundra. The ice was only a few hundred miles away, even here at the equator.

The wizards faded into existence, and looked around them.

'What the hell happened here?' said Ridcully.

The landscape was a welter of scars and pits. Roads were visible where they had buckled up through the snow, and there were the ruins of what could only have been buildings. But half the horizon was filled with what looked very much like an etiolated version of one of the giant shellfish proposed by the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It must have been several miles across at the base, and extended upwards beyond the limit of vision.

'Did any of you do this?' said Ridcully accusingly.

'Oh, come on? said the Dean. 'We don't even know what it is.'

Beyond the tangle of broken roadways the snow blew across deep trenches gouged out of the ground. Desolation reigned.

Ponder pointed towards the huge pyramid.

'Whatever we're looking for, it's in there,' he said.

The first thing the wizards noticed was the mournful bleating noise. It came and went in a regular way, on-off, on-off, and seemed to fill the entire structure.

The wizards wandered onwards, occasionally getting HEX to move them to different places. Nothing, they agreed, made much sense. The building was mostly full of roadways and loading docks, interspersed with massive pillars. It creaked, too, like an old galleon. They could hear the groaning noises, echoing far above. Occasionally, the ground trembled.

It was clear that important things happened in the centre. There were tubes, hundreds of feet high. The wizards recognized cranes, and failed to recognize huge engines of unknown purpose. Cables thick as a house rose into the darkness above.

Frost sparkled off everything.

Still the bleat went on.

'Look,' said Ponder.

Red words flashed on and off, high in the air.

'"A-L-A-A-M",' the Dean spelled out. 'I wonder why it's doing that? They seem to have invented magic, whoever they are. Getting letters to flash like that is quite difficult to do.'

Ponder disappeared for a moment, and then came back.

'HEX feels that this is a dumb-waiter,' he said. 'Er ... you know ... for lifting things to another level.'

'Going where?' said Ridcully.

'Er ... up, sir. Into that ... necklace around the world. HEX has been speaking to the intelligence here. It's a sort of HEX, sir. And it's nearly dead.'

'That's a shame,' said Ridcully He sniffed. 'Where's everyone gone, then?'

'Er ... they made huge ... sort of... big metal balls to live in. I know it sounds stupid, sir. But they've gone. Because of the ice. And there was a comet, too. Not very big. But it scared everyone. They built the ... the beanstalk things, and then they ... er ... mined metal out of floating rocks, and ... they left.'

'Where've they gone?'

'The ... intelligence isn't sure. It's forgotten. It says it's forgot­ten a lot.'

'Oh, I understand? said the Dean, who'd been trying to follow this, 'Everyone's climbed up a great big beanstalk?'

'Er ... sort of, Dean,' said Ponder, in his diplomatic voice. 'In a manner of speaking.'

'Certainly messed the place up before they went,' said Ridcully.

Rincewind had been watching a rat scuttle away into the debris, but the words sunk in and exploded in his head.

'Messed up?' he growled. 'How?'

'Say again?' said Ridcully.

'Did you see the weather report for this world?' said Rincewind, waving his hands in the air. 'Two miles of ice, followed by a light shower of rocks, with outbreaks of choking fog for the next thou­sand years? There will be widespread vulcanism as half a continent's worth of magma lets go, followed by a period of moun­tain building? And that's normal.'