'Who's Shakespeare?' said Ponder.

'The man,' said Rincewind, 'who wrote this.' He pushed a battered manuscript across the table.

'Read it out from where I've marked it, will you?'

Ponder adjusted his spectacles, and cleared his throat.

'What a piece of work is, er, this is awful handwriting ... '

'Let me,' said Ridcully, taking the pages. 'You don't have the voice for this sort of thing, Stibbons.' He glared at the paper, and then: 'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason ... how infinite in faculty ... in form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals ...'

He stopped.

And this man lives here?' he said.

'Potentially,' said Rincewind.

'This man stood knee deep in muck in a city with heads on spikes and wrote this?'

Rincewind beamed. 'Yes! In his world, he is probably the most influential playwright in the history of the species! Despite requiring a lot of tactful editing by most directors, because he had his bad days just like everyone else!'

'By "his world" you mean—?'

'Alternate worlds,' muttered Ponder, who was sulking. He'd once played the part of Third Goblin in a school play and felt that he had rather a good speaking voice.

'You mean he should be here but ain't?' Ridcully demanded.

T think he should be here but can't be,' said Rincewind. 'Look, these aren't the Shell Midden people, it's true, but artistically they're pretty low down the scale. Their theatre is awful, they haven't got any decent artists, they can't carve a decent statue - this world isn't what it should be.'

'And?' said Ponder, still smarting.

Rincewind signalled to the Librarian, who ambled around the table handing out small, green, cloth-bound books.

'This is another play he will write ... is ... writing ... wrote ... will have written,' he said. 'I think you'll agree that it could be very important ...'

The wizards read it. They read it again. They had a huge argument, but there was nothing unusual about that.

'It's an astonishin' play, in the circumstances,' said Ridcully, eventually. 'And some of it is a bit familiar!'

'Yes,' said Rincewind. And I think that's because he'll write it after listening to you. We need him to. This is a man who can tell the audience, tell the audience that they're watching a bunch of actors on a tiny stage and then make them see a huge battle, right there in front of their eyes.'

'Did I miss that bit?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, leafing hurriedly through the pages.

'That's in another play, Runes,' said Ridcully. 'Do try to keep up. Well, Rincewind? Let's assume, shall we, that we're going along with your plan? We have to make sure this man exists here and writes this play in this world, do we? Why?'

'Can I leave that to Stage Two, sir? It will become obvious, I hope, but you never know if there are elves listening.'

The wizards were automatically impressed by the idea that this was a two-stage plan, but Ridcully persisted: 'I put it to you, Rincewind, that this is exactly the kind of play elves would want him to write.'

'Yes, sir. That's because they're stupid. Not like you, sir.'

'We have Hex's computational power,' said Ponder. 'It should be possible to make sure he turns up in this world, I think.'

'Um ... yes,' said Rincewind. 'But first we have to make the world the kind he can turn up in. This may take a bit of work. Some travelling may be involved. Back in time ... for thousands of years…'

Firelight glowed off the cave walls. The wizards sat on one side of the fire, on the big rock ledge overlooking the scrubland. The Stinky Cave People sat on the other.

The cave people watched the wizards with something like awe, but only because they'd never seen people eat like that. It was Ridcully who'd suggested that people bearing huge amounts of food are welcome practically anywhere, but the other wizards considered that this was just an excuse for him to make a crude but serviceable bow and go and happily slaughter quite a lot of wildlife.

The wildlife was mostly leftovers now. The wizards moaned about the lack of onions, salt, pepper, garlic and, in Rincewind's case, potatoes, but there was certainly no lack of meat.

They'd spent two weeks doing this, in caves across the continent. They were getting used to it, although bowel movements were becoming a problem.

Rincewind, however, was sitting some way from the fire with Burnt Stick Man.

Being good at languages was, here, not such an important skill as simply making yourself understood. But Burnt Stick Man was a quick study, and Rincewind already had several weeks of practice. While the dialogue took place in inflections and emphasis based upon the syllable

'grunt' aided by gestures, the translation went like this:

'Okay, so you've mastered the idea of charcoal, but may I draw your attention to these pigments I have here? They're Whiiite, very simple, Redddd, like blood, and Yell-low, like, er, egg yolks.

Cluck cluck aaargh cackle? And this fourth colour is some sickly brown ochre I found which we'll call for the moment "baby poo".'

'With you so far, Pointy Hat Man.' This was conveyed by an enthusiastic nod.

'So here's the big tip. Not many people know this,' said Rincewind. 'You take your animals, right, which you've already been trying to draw, well done, but you what we call "colour" them. You have to work hard on this bit. A chewed piece of wood will be your friend here. See how by a careful mixture of tints I'm giving it a certain, oh, je ne sais quoi…'

'Hey, that looks like a real buffalo! Scary stuff!' 'It gets better. May I have the charcoal? Thank you. What's this?' Rincewind carefully drew another figure. 'Man with big [expressive gesture]?'

said Burnt Stick Man. 'What? Oh. Sorry, I got that wrong ... I mean this ...' 'Man with spear! Hey, he's throwing it at the buffalo!' Rincewind smiled. There had been a few false starts over the last couple of weeks, but Burnt Stick Man had exactly the right sort of mind. He was impressively simple, and people with truly simple minds were very rare.

'I knew there was something intelligent about you the moment I saw you,' he lied. 'Maybe it was the way your brow ridge came around the corner only two seconds before the rest of you did.'

Burnt Stick Man beamed. Rincewind went on: 'And the question you've got to ask yourself now is: how real is this picture, really? And where was the picture before I drew it? What is going to happen now it's on the wall?' The wizards watched from the circle of firelight. 'Why's the man poking at the picture?' said the Dean. 'I think he's learnin' about the power of symbols,' said Ridcully. 'Hey, if anyone doesn't want any more ribs I'll finish 'em.'

'No barbecue sauce,' moaned the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'How long before there's an agricultural revolution?'

'Could be a hundred thousand years, sir,' said Ponder. 'Perhaps a lot more.' The Lecturer in Recent Runes groaned and put his head in his hands.

Rincewind came and sat down. The rest of Burnt Stick Man's clan, greasy to the eyebrows with free food, watched him cautiously.

'That seemed to go well,' he said. 'He's definitely working out the link between pictures in his head and real life. Any potatoes yet?'

'Not for thousands of years,' groaned the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'Damn. I mean, here's meat. There should be potatoes. How hard is that for a world to understand? Vegetables are less complicated than meat!' He sighed, and then stared.

Burnt Stick Man, who had been staring motionless at the drawing for a while, ambled to another rock wall and picked up a spear. He squinted at the buffalo drawing, which did indeed seem to move as the firelight flickered, paused, and then hurled the spear at it and ducked behind a rock.