Cultures are merging and reforming into a global multiculture. It's hard to predict what it will look like, because this is an emergent process and it hasn't finished emerging yet. It may be something quite different from the giant US shopping mall that is generally envisaged. That's what makes today's world so fascinating - and so dangerous.

Ultimately, the idea that we are controlling our universe is an illusion. All we know is a relatively small number of tricks, plus one great generic trick for generating more small tricks.

That generic trick is the scientific method. It pays off.

We have also the trick of telling stories that work. By this stage in our evolution, we are spending most of our lives in them. 'Real life' -that is, the real life for most of us, with its MOT

tests and paper wealth and social systems -is a fantasy that we all buy into, and it works precisely because we all buy into it.

Poor old Phocian tried hard, but found that the old stories weren't true when he hadn't quite got as far as constructing a new one. He performed a reality check, and found that there wasn't one at least, not one he'd like to believe was real. He suddenly saw a universe with no map. We've got quite good at mapping, since then.

PARAGON OF ANIMALS

The wizards went back to Dee's House in sombre mood, and spent the rest of the week sitting around and getting on one another's nerves. In ways they couldn't quite articulate, they'd been upset by the story.

'Science is dangerous,' said Ridcully at last. 'We'll leave it alone.'

'I think it's like with wizards,' said the Dean, relieved to be having a conversation again. 'You need to have more than one of them, otherwise they get funny ideas.'

'True, old friend,' said Ridcully, probably for the first time in his life. 'So ... science is not for us.

We'll rely on common sense to see us through.'

'That's right,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Who cares about trotting horses anyway? If they fall over they've only got themselves to blame.'

'As a basis for our discussion,' said Ridcully, 'let us agree on what we have discovered so far, shall we?'

'Yes. It's that whatever we do, the elves always win,' said the Dean. 'Er ... I know this may sound stupid ...' Rincewind began. 'Yes. It probably will,' said the Dean. You haven't been doing very much since we got back, have you?'

'Well, not really,' said Rincewind. 'Just walking around, you know. Looking at things.'

'Exactly! You haven't read a single book, am I correct? What good is walking around?'

'Well, you get exercise,' said Rincewind. 'And you notice things. Yesterday the Librarian and I went to the theatre.

They'd got the cheapest ticket, but the Librarian paid for two bags of nuts.

They'd found, once they had settled into this period, that there was no point in trying to disguise the Librarian too heavily. With a jerkin, a big floppy hood and a false beard he looked, on the whole, an improvement on most of the people in the cheap seats, the cheap seats in this case being so cheap they consisted, in fact, of standing up. The cheap feets, in fact.

The play had been called The Hunchback King, by Arthur J. Nightingale. It hadn't been very good. In fact, Rincewind had never seen a worse-written play. The Librarian had amused himself throughout by surreptitiously bouncing nuts off the king's fake hump. But people had watched it in rapt fascination, especially the scene where the king was addressing his nobles and uttered the memorable line: 'Now is the December of our discontent -I want whichever bastard is doing that to stop right now!'

A bad play but a good audience, Rincewind mused after they had been thrown out. Oh, the play was a vast improvement on anything the Shell Midden Folk could have dreamed up, which would have to be called 'If We'd Invented Paint We Could Watch It Dry', but the lines sounded wrong and the whole thing was laboured and had no flow. Nevertheless, the faces of the watchers had been locked on the stage. On a thought, Rincewind had put a hand over one eye and, concentrating fearfully, surveyed the theatre. The one available eye watered considerably but had revealed, up in the expensive seats, several elves. They liked plays, too. Obviously. They wanted people to be imaginative. They'd given people so much imagination that it was constantly hungry. It would even consume the plays of Mr Nightingale.

Imagination created monsters. It made you afraid of the dark, but not of the dark's real dangers. It peopled the night with terrors of its own.

So, therefore ... Rincewind had an idea.

'] think we should stop trying to influence the philosophers and scholars,' he said. 'People with minds like that believe all sort of things all the time. You can't stop them. And science is just too weird. I keep thinking of that poor man—'

'Yes, yes, yes, we've been through all this,' said Ridcully wearily. 'Get to the point, Rincewind.

What have you got to say that's new?' 'We could try teaching people art,' said Rincewind. 'Art?'

said the Dean. 'Art's for slackers! That'd make things worse!' 'Painting and sculpture and theatre,'

Rincewind went on. 'I don't think we should try to stop what the elves began. I think we ought to encourage it as much as possible. Help the people here to get really good at imagining things.

They're not quite there yet.'

'But that's just what the elves want, man!' snapped Ridcully. 'Yes!' said Rincewind, almost drunk with the novelty of having an idea that didn't include running away. 'Let's help the elves! Let's help them to destroy themselves.'

The wizards sat in silence. Then Ridcully said: 'What are you talking about?'

'At the theatre I saw lots of people who wanted to believe that the world is different from the reality they see around them,' said Rincewind. 'We could—' He sought a way into Ridcully's famously hard-to-open mind. 'Well, you know the Bursar?' he said.

'A gentlemen of whose existence I am aware on a daily basis,' said Ridcully gravely. 'And I'm only glad that this time we've left him with his aunt.'

'And you remember how we cured his insanity?' 'We didn't cure it,' said Ridcully. 'We just doctored his medicine so that he permanently hallucinates that he is sane.'

'Exactly! You use the disease as the cure, sir! We made him more insane, so now he's sane again.

Mostly. Apart from the bouts of weightlessness, and, er, that business with the—'

'Yes, yes, all right,' said Ridcully. 'But I'm still waiting for the point of this.'

'Are you talking about fighting like those monks up near the Hub?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Skinny little chaps who can throw big men through the air?'

'Something like that, sir,' said Rincewind.

Ridcully prodded Ponder Stibbons.

'Did I miss a bit of conversation there?' he said.

'I think Rincewind means that if we take the elves' work even further it'll somehow end up defeating them,' said Ponder.

'Could that work?'

'Archchancellor, I can't think of anything better,' said Ponder. 'Belief doesn't have the same power on this world as it does on ours, but it is still pretty strong. Even so, the elves are here.

They are a fixture.'

'But we know they ... sort of feed on people,' said Rincewind. 'We want them to go away. Um ...

and I've got a plan.'

'You have a plan,' said Ridcully, in a hollow voice. 'Does anyone else have a plan? Anyone?

Anyone? Someone?'

There was no reply.

'The play I saw was awful,' said Rincewind. 'These people might be a lot more creative than the Shell Midden People, but they've still got a long way to go. My plan ... well, I want us to move this world into the path of history that contains someone called William Shakespeare. And absolutely does not contain Arthur J. Nightingale.'