taclipoka: переводы

→SOME QUESTIONS SHOULD NOT BE ASKED. However, someone always does,
'How does it work?' said Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Master of
Unseen
University.
This was the kind of question that Ponder Stibbons hated almost as much as
'How
much will it cost?' They were two of the hardest questions a researcher ever
had
to face. As the university's de facto head of magical development, he
especially
tried to avoid questions of finance at all costs.
'In quite a complex way.' he ventured at last.
'Ah.'
'What I'd like to know,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'is when we're going to
get
the squash court back.'
'You never play, Senior Wrangler,' said Ridcully, looking up at the towering
black construction that now occupied the centre of the old university
court.[3]
'I might want to one day. It'll be damn hard with that thing in the way,
that's
my point. We'll have to completely rewrite the rules.'
Outside, snow piled up against the high windows. This was turning
out to be
the
longest winter in living memory - so long, in fact, that living memory itself
was being shortened as some of the older citizens succumbed. The cold had
penetrated even the thick and ancient walls of Unseen University itself, to
the
general concern and annoyance of the faculty. Wizards can put up with any
amount
of deprivation and discomfort, provided it is not happening to them.
And so, at long last, Ponder Stibbons's project had been authorized.
He'd
been
waiting three years for it. His plea that splitting the thaum would push back
the boundaries of human knowledge had fallen on deaf ears; the wizards
considered that pushing back the boundaries of anything was akin to lifting up
a
very large, damp stone. His assertion that splitting the thaum might
significantly increase the sum total of human happiness met with the
rejoinder
that everyone seemed pretty happy enough already.
Finally he'd ventured that splitting the thaum would produce vast amounts of
raw
magic that could very easily be converted into cheap heat. That worked. The
Faculty were lukewarm on the subject
of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but
they were boiling hot on the subject of warm bedrooms.
Now the other senior wizards wandered around the suddenly-cramped court,
prodding the new thing. Their Archchancellor took out his pipe and
absent-mindedly knocked out the ashes on its matt black side.
'Um ... please don't do that, sir,' said Ponder.
'Why not?'
'There might be ... it might... there's a chance that...' Ponder stopped. 'It
will make the place untidy, sir,' he said.
'Ah. Good point. So it's not that the whole thing might explode, then?'
'Er ... no, sir. Haha,' said Ponder miserably. 'It'd take a lot more than
that,
sir -'
There was a whack as a squash ball ricocheted off the wall, rebounded off the
casing, and knocked the Archchancellor's pipe out of his mouth.
'That was you. Dean,' said Ridcully accusingly. 'Honestly, you fellows
haven't
taken any notice of this place in years and suddenly you all want to - Mr
Stibbons? Mr Stibbons?'
He nudged the small mound that was the hunched figure of the University's
chief
research wizard. Ponder Stibbons uncurled slightly and peered between his
fingers.
'I really think it might be a good idea if they stopped playing squash, sir,'
he
whispered.
'Me too. There's nothing worse than a sweaty wizard. Stop it, you fellows.
And
gather round. Mr Stibbons is going to do his presentation.'
The
Archchancellor
gave Ponder Stibbons a rather sharp look. 'It is going to be very informative
and interesting, isn't it, Mister Stibbons. He's going to tell us what he
spent
AM$55,879.45p on.'
'And why he's ruined a perfectly good squash court,' said the Senior
Wrangler,
tapping the side of the thing with his squash racket.
'And if this is safe? said the Dean. 'I'magainst dabbling in physics,'
Ponder Stibbons winced.
'I assure you, Dean, that the chances of anyone being killed by the, er,
reacting engine are even greater than the chance of being knocked down while
crossing the street,' he said.
'Really? Oh, well ... all right then.'
Ponder reconsidered the impromptu sentence he'd just uttered and decided, in
the
circumstances, not to correct it. Talking to the senior wizards was like
building a house of cards; if you got anything to stay upright, you just
breathed out gently and moved on.
Ponder had invented a little system he'd called, in the privacy of his head,
Lies-to-Wizards. It was for their own good, he told himself.
There was no
point
in telling your bosses everything; they were busy men, they didn't want
explanations. There was no point in burdening
them. What they wanted was
little
stories that they felt they could understand, and then they'd go away and
stop
worrying.
He'd got his students to set up a small display at the far end of the squash
court. Beside it, with pipes looping away through the wall into the High
Energy
Magic building next door, was a terminal
to HEX, the University's thinking
engine. And beside that was a plinth on which was a very large red lever,
around
which someone had tied a pink ribbon.
Ponder looked at his notes, and then surveyed the faculty.
'Ahem ...' he began.
'I've got a throat sweet somewhere,' said the Senior Wrangler, patting his
pockets.
Ponder looked at his notes again, and a horrible sense of hopelessness
overcame
him. He realized that he could explain thaumic fission very well, provided
that
the person listening already knew all about it. With the senior wizards,
though,
he'd need to explain the meaning of every word. In some cases this would mean
words like 'the' and 'and'.
He glanced down at the water jug on his lectern, and decided to extemporize.
Ponder held up a glass of water.
'Do you realize, gentlemen,' he said, 'that the thaumic potential in this
water
... that is, I mean to say, the magical field generated by its narrativium
content which tells it that it is water and lets it keep on being water
instead
of, haha, a pigeon or a frog ... would, if we could release it, be enough to
move this whole university all the way to the moon?'
He beamed at them.
'Better leave it in there, then,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
Ponder's smile froze.
'Obviously we cannot extract all of it,' he said, 'But we -'
'Enough to get a small part of the university to the moon?' said the Lecturer
in
Recent Runes.
'The Dean could do with a holiday,' said the Archchancellor.
'I resent that remark, Archchancellor'
'Just trying to lighten the mood, Dean.'
'But we can release just enough for all kinds of useful work,' said Ponder,
already struggling.
'Like heating my study,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'My water jug was
iced up again this morning.'
'Exactly!' said Ponder, striking out madly for a useful Lie-to-Wizards. 'We
can
use it to boil a great big kettle! That's all it is! It's perfectly harmless!
Not dangerous in any way! That's why the University Council let me build it!
You
wouldn't have let me build it if it was dangerous, would you?'
He gulped down the water.
As one man, the assembled wizards took several steps backwards.
'Let us know what it's like up there,' said the Dean.
'Bring us back some rocks. Or something,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Wave to us', said the Senior Wrangler. 'We've got quite a good telescope.'
Ponder stared at the empty glass, and readjusted his mental sights once more.
'Er, no,' he said. 'The fuel has to go inside the reacting engine, you see.
And
then ... and then ...'
He gave up.
'The magic goes round and round and it comes up under the boiler that we have
plumbed in and the university will then be lovely and warm,' he said. 'Any
questions?'
'Where does the coal go?' said the Dean, 'It's wicked what the dwarfs are
charging these days.'
'No, sir. No coal. The heat is ... free,' said Ponder. A little bead of sweat
ran down his face.
'Really?' said the Dean. 'That'll be a saving, then, eh, Bursar? Eh? Where's
the
Bursar?'
'Ah ... er ... the Bursar is assisting me today, sir,' said Ponder. He
pointed
to the high gallery over the court. The Bursar was standing there, smiling
his
distant smile, and holding an axe. A rope was tied around the handrail,
looped
over a beam, and held a long heavy rod suspended over the centre of the
reaction
engine,
'It is ... er ... just possible that the engine may produce too much magic,'
said Ponder. 'The rod is lead, laminated with rowan wood. Together they
naturally damp down any magical reaction, you see. So if things get too ...
if
we want to settle things down, you see, he just chops through the rope and it
drops into the very centre of the reacting engine, you see.'
'What's that man standing next to him for?'
'That's Mr Turnipseed, my assistant. He's the backup fail-safe device.'
'What does he do, then?'
'His job is to shout "For gods' sakes cut the rope now!" sir.'
The wizard nodded at one another. By the standards of Ankh-Morpork, where the
common thumb was used as a temperature measuring device, this was health and
safety at work taken to extremes.
'Well, that all seems safe enough to me,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Where did you get the idea for this, Mister Stibbons?' said Ridcully.
'Well, er, a lot of it is from my own research, but I got quite a few leads
from
a careful reading of the Scrolls of Loko in the Library, sir.' Ponder
reckoned
he was safe enough there. The wizards liked ancient wisdom, provided it was
ancient enough. They felt wisdom was like wine, and got better the longer it
was
left alone. Something that hadn't been known for a few hundred years probably
wasn't worth knowing.
'Loko ... Loko ... Loko,' mused Ridcully. 'That's up on Uberwald, isn't it?'
That's right, sir.'
'Tryin' to bring it to mind,' Ridcully went on, rubbing his beard. 'Isn't
that
where there's that big deep valley with the ring of mountains
round it? Very
deep valley indeed, as I recall.'
'That's right, sir. According to the library catalogue the scrolls were found
in
a cave by the Crustley Expedition -'
'Lots of centaurs and fauns and other curiously shaped magical whatnots are
there, I remember reading.'
'Is there, sir?'
'Wasn't Stanmer Crustley the one who died of planets?'
'I'm not familiar with -'
'Extremely rare magical disease, I believe.'
'Indeed, sir, but -
'Now I come to think about it, everyone on that expedition contracted
something
seriously magical within a few months of getting back,' Ridcully went on.
'Er, yes, sir. The suggestion was that there was some kind of curse on the
place. Ridiculous notion, of course.'
'I somehow feel I need to ask, Mister Stibbons ... what chance is there of
this
just blowin' up and destroyin' the entire university?'
Ponder's heart sank. He mentally scanned the sentence, and took refuge in
truth.
'None, sir.'
'Now try honesty, Mister Stibbons.' And that was the problem with the
Archchancellor. He mostly strode around the place shouting
at people, but
when
he did bother to get all his brain cells lined up he could point them
straight
at the nearest weak spot.
'Well ... in the unlikely event of it going seriously wrong, it ... wouldn't
just blow up the university, sir'
'What would it blow up, pray?'
'Er ... everything, sir.'
'Everything there is, you mean?'
'Within a radius of about fifty thousand miles out into space, sir, yes.
According to HEX it'd happen instantaneously. We wouldn't even know about it.'
'And the odds of this are ... ?'
'About fifty to one, sir.'
The wizards relaxed.
'That's pretty safe. I wouldn't bet on a horse at those odds,' said the
Senior
Wrangler. There was half an inch of ice on the inside of his bedroom windows.
Things like this give you a very personal view of risk.

→THE STORY STARTS HERE
ONCE UPON A TIME, there was Discworld. There still is an adequate supply.
Discworld is the flat world, carried through space on the back of a giant
turtle, which has been the source of - so far - twenty-three novels, four
maps,
an encylopaedia, two animated series, t-shirts, scarves, models, badges,
beer,
embroidery, pens, posters, and probably,
by the time this is published,
talcum
power and body splash (if not, it can only be a matter of time).
It has, in short, become immensely popular.
And Discworld runs on magic.
Roundworld - our home planet, and by extension the universe in which it sits
—
runs on rules. In fact, it simply runs. But we have watched the running, and
those observations and the ensuing deductions are the very basis of science.
Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a
group
of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a
specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in
flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people
who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ...
Perhaps we should try this another way. Is there a connection between magic
and
science? Can the magic of Discworld, with its eccentric wizards,
down-to-Earth
witches, obstinate trolls, fire-breathing dragons, talking dogs, and
personified
DEATH, shed any useful light on hard, rational, solid, Earthly science?
We think so.
We'll explain why in a moment, but first, let's make it clear what The
Science
of Discworld is not. There are several media tie-in The Science of... books
at
the moment, such as The Science of the X-Files and The Physics of Star Trek.
They will tell you about areas of today's science that may one day lead to
the
events or devices that the fiction depicts. Did aliens crash-land at Roswell?
Could an antimatter
warp drive ever be invented? Could we ever have the
ultra
long-life batteries that Scully and Mulder must be using in those torches of
theirs?
We could have taken that approach. We could, for example, have pointed out
that
Darwin's theory of evolution explains how lower lifeforms can evolve into
higher
ones, which in turn makes it entirely reasonable that a human should evolve
into
an orangutan (while remaining a librarian, since there is no higher life form
than a librarian). We could have speculated on which DNA sequence might
reliably
incorporate asbestos linings into the insides of dragons.
We might even have
attempted to explain how you could get a turtle ten thousand miles long.
We decided not to do these things, for a good reason ... um, two reasons.
The first is that it would be ... er ... dumb.
And this because of the second reason. Discworld does not run on scientific
lines. Why pretend that it might? Dragons don't breathe fire because they've
got
asbestos lungs - they breathe fire because everyone knows that's what dragons
do.
What runs Discworld is deeper than mere magic and more powerful
than pallid
science. It is narrative imperative, the power of story. It plays a role
similar
to that substance known as phlogiston, once believed to be that principle or
substance within inflammable things that enabled them to burn. In the
Discworld
universe, then, there is narrativium. It is part of the spin of every atom,
the
drift of every cloud. It is what causes them to be what they are and continue
to
exist and take part in the ongoing story of the world.
On Roundworld, things happen because the things want to happen.
[1] What
people
want does not greatly figure in the scheme of things, and the universe isn't
there to tell a story.
With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a
frog
into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.
That's the conventional view of Roundworld science. It misses a lot of what
actually makes science tick. Science doesn't just exist in the abstract. You
could grind the universe into its component particles
without finding a
single
trace of Science. Science is a structure created and maintained by people.
And
people choose what interests them, and what they consider to be significant
and,
quite often, they have thought narratively.
Narrativium is powerful stuff. We have always had a drive to paint stories on
to
the Universe. When humans first looked at the stars, which are great flaming
suns an unimaginable distance away, they saw in amongst them giant bulls,
dragons, and local heroes.
This human trait doesn't affect what the rules say - not much, anyway - but
it
does determine which rules we are willing to contemplate
in the first place.
Moreover, the rules of the universe have to be able to produce everything
that
we humans observe, which introduces a kind of narrative imperative into
science
too. Humans think in stories. Classically, at least, science itself has been
the
discovery
of 'stories' - think of all those books that had titles like The
Story of Mankind, The Descent ofMan, and, if it comes to that, A Brief
History
of Time.
Over and above the stories of science, though, Discworld can play an even
more
important role: What if? We can use Discworld for thought experiments about
what
science might have looked like if the universe had been different, or if the
history of science had followed a different route. We can look at science
from
the outside.
To a scientist, a thought experiment is an argument that you can run through
in
your head, after which you understand what's going on so well that there's no
need to do a real experiment, which is of course a great saving in time and
money and prevents you from getting
embarrassingly inconvenient results.
Discworld takes a more practical view - there, a thought experiment is one
that
you can't do and which wouldn't work if you could. But the kind of thought
experiment we have in mind is one that scientists carry out all the time,
usually without realizing it; and you don't need to do it, because the whole
point is that it wouldn't work. Many of the most important questions in
science,
and about our understanding of it, are not about how the universe actually
is.
They are about what would happen if the universe were different.
Someone asks 'why do zebras form herds?' You could answer this by an analysis
of
zebra sociology, psychology, and so on ... or you could ask a question of a
very
different kind: 'What would happen
if they didn't?' One fairly obvious
answer
to that is 'They'd be much more likely to get eaten by lions.' This
immediately
suggests that zebras form herds for self-protection - and now we've got some
insight into what zebras actually do by contemplating, for a moment, the
possibility that they might have done something else.
Another, more serious example is the question 'Is the solar system
stable?',
which means 'Could it change dramatically as a result of some tiny
disturbance?'
In 1887 King Oscar II of Sweden offered a prize of 2,500 crowns for the
answer
It took about a century for the world's mathematicians to come up with a
definite answer: 'Maybe'. (It was a good answer, but they didn't get paid.
The
prize had already been awarded to someone who didn't get the answer and whose
prizewinning article had a big mistake right at the most interesting part.
But
when he put it right, at his own expense, he invented Chaos Theory and paved
the
way for the 'maybe'. Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting
question.)
The point here is that stability is not about what a system is actually
doing:
it is about how the system would change if you disturbed it. Stability, by
definition, deals with 'what if?'.
Because a lot of science is really about this non-existent world of thought
experiments, our understanding of science must concern itself with worlds of
the
imagination as well as with worlds of reality.
Imagination, rather than mere
intelligence, is the truly human quality. And what better world of the
imagination to start from than Discworld? Discworld is a consistent,
well-developed universe with its own kinds of rules, and convincingly real
people live on it despite the substantial differences between their
universe's
rules and ours. Many of them also have a thoroughgoing grounding in 'common
sense', one of science's natural enemies.
Appearing regularly within the Discworld canon are the buildings and faculty
of
Unseen University, the Discworld's premier college
of magic. The wizards[2]
are
a lively bunch, always ready to open any door that has 'This door to be kept
shut' written on it or pick up anything that has just started to fizz. It
seemed
to us that they could be useful ...
If we, or they, compare Discworld's magic to Roundworld science,
the more
similarities and parallels we find. Clearly, as the wizards of Unseen
University
believe, this world is a parody of the Discworld one. And when we didn't
discover those, we found that the differences were very revealing. Science
takes
on a new character when you stop asking questions like 'What does newt DNA
look
like?' and instead ask 'I wonder how the wizards would react to this way of
thinking about newts?'
There is no science as such on Discworld. So we have put some there. By
magical
means, the wizards on Discworld must be led to create their own brand of
science
- some kind of pocket universe' in which magic no longer works, but rules do.
Then, as the wizards learn to understand how the rules make interesting
things
happen -rocks, bacteria, civilizations - we watch them watching ... well, us.
It's a sort of recursive thought experiment, or a Russian doll wherein the
smaller dolls are opened up to find the largest doll inside.
And then we found that ... ah, but that is another story.
TP, IS, & JC, DECEMBER 1998
PS We have, we are afraid, mentioned in the ensuing pages Schrodinger's Cat,
the
Twins Paradox, and that bit about shining a torch ahead of a spaceship
travelling at the speed of light. This is because, under the rules of the
Guild
of Science Writers, they have to be included. We have, however, tried to keep
them short.
We've managed to be very, very brief about the Trousers of Time, as well.