Rincewind, DM (Hon), Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, Reader in Cryptic Languages, Health and Safety Officer and about seventeen other positions no one else at Unseen University wanted, crawled reluctantly out of bed and walked slowly over to the Luggage and opened it. Just like every other morning for a goodly number of years, he took out his clothing for the day. As usual it was cleaned, pressed, neatly folded and smelled faintly of lavender.
Unlike in the earlier years, though, it had no patches, holes or rents. The Archchancellor had been as good as his word and when Rincewind performed "a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind" he had been awarded an Unseen University honorary faculty position which came with its own small suite of rooms, a place at the table in the Dining Hall, and annual new wardrobes. Rincewind found this extremely worrisome. Rincewind found nearly everything extremely worrisome and the better things got for him the more he worried. He had spent his entire life firmly convinced that the Multiverse was out to get him and had the scars to prove it. These were almost entirely on his back, having been inflicted as he ran hellbent for leather away1 from (fill in the blank here).
[ 1Some have asked where he was running to but the man always replied that the 'to' was infinitely less important than the 'from' and kept on running]
For some reason, though, the professor worried less and felt safer2 within UU's walls and so long as he didn't have to leave was slightly more relaxed--slightly. Today, however, was his weekly 'date' with Madame Lotus Blossom at the Counterweight Palace. Usually getting there was bad enough but since he always was accompanied by two trolls, his anxiety level didn't raise a great deal. However, lately she had started welcoming him with a cup of tea that was well-spiked with Tiger Oil3 and the following couple of hour's erotic delights only reinforced Rincewind's fear that some great catastrophe was in the offing.
[2 That's 'safer', not 'safe'. Sort of 'less endangered'.]
[3 An herbal potion concocted by the witch Hilta Goatfounder from the village of Ohulan Cutash. It is a remedy for any man who because if age, infirmity or over-familiarity is no longer up his lady's romantic hopes and expectations.]
It always put the poor man in a terrible quandary. He wanted to go because Lotus Blossom was very pretty and the prescribed (by the Archchancellor!) therapy no longer made him think of well-buttered mashed potatoes whenever he saw her. He had to go because Vice-Chancellor Stibbons thought that maintaining good relations with the woman (who was also the Peoples' Beneficent Republic of Agatea's head agent in Ankh-Morpork) was good for the faculty's menu. There was even an implication that if Rincewind failed to keep making Lotus Blossom happy his position at UU might be imperiled.
On the other hand, the professor was firmly convinced that every good thing that happened to him would be doubly over-balanced by something terrible the Multiverse was preparing for him. This led to him hiding under his bed as soon as he returned and staying there for the remainder of that day and all the next.
Then there was the Door. Rincewind's predecessor as Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography had been a private sort of man with big ears and a perpetual suntan. The latter was due to his somehow opening a connection to a tropical isle thousands of years in the past where he spent the entirety of Ankh-Morpork's frigid winters. The first opening had been through his window and was kept open by a stick. The rest of the faculty had discovered the man's secret and crawled through to enjoy the warmth, the surf and (in the case of the Archchancellor) the fishing. Mrs. Whitlow had come along bearing breakfast and in a momentary fit of neatness had removed the stick marooning all in a previous epoch.
Rincewind's 'great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind' had gotten everyone home and the man his own limited, unpaid position. The opening to Mono Island wasn't supposed to be part of the deal, even if the magical window had been found. However, Hex, the University's thinking engine, had its own ideas and odd sense of humor. It (he?) felt that since Rincewind's suite had originally had an opening to another 'place', it was part of the furniture and should be there again. Hence the Door.
Holes in Reality (Doors) were a well-known but frustrating magical phenomenon at UU. They showed up periodically causing great excitement among the students but always turned out to be uncontrollable. That is they did until Hex figured out the thauma-rithms to make them work on command. Now a Door was one of the perks that went along with promotion to Senior Faculty, and while Rincewind wasn't really Senior Faculty, Hex 'thought' he deserved a one. It opened onto a tropical beach somewhen that wasn't inhabited by a pesky god with a penchant for experimentation. That didn't mean it was safe, just less dangerous. Rincewind had stuck his head through once and quickly pulled it back. Visit a balmy seaside in the middle of winter? Not even! Something that wonderful was guaranteed to get him eaten by a shark or skull-cracked by a falling coconut.
Unfortunately, Madame Lotus Blossom was a very skilled interrogator as well as intelligence agent and had weaseled the Door's existence out of Rincewind. And once she knew about it, she insisted on an invitation to see it. And she was coming today! Worse yet, she promised to bring her 'teapot' along AND a beach towel. Warm sand, a beach towel, Tiger Oil and Lotus Blossom. Payback would surely be horrific.
*****
In the expanded suite the Senior Wrangler now shared with his beloved Mrs. Whitlow, the dear lady stood in front of the mirror and adjusted her sarong. She thought momentarily about pulling it down a little in front and exposing a bit more décolletage for Horace's benefit but deciding that since it would soon be hanging from a branch while the two of them enjoyed the delights of bathing in a tropical pool some thousands of years in the past, additional cleavage was redundant.
Yes, the Senior Wrangler was Senior Faculty and had his own Door. As did most, his, like Rincewind's, opened onto a tropical beach. Was it on Mono Island? Unlikely. The plants there were simply going about herbal businesses of their own with no innate desire to be helpful. Was it the same one as Rincewind's. Extremely unlikely. given the infinite number of balmy shores in the Multiverse. However, given that Hex's sense of humor was--let us say--puckish, the possibility was certainly there.
"Do you have the towels, dear?" she asked.
"Of course," the Senior Wrangler replied happily, "we mustn't get sand in uncomfortable places, after all."
He held the Door for her and she blew him a kiss as they left Ankh-Morpork's bitter, windy snow and ice for sunshine, warm sand, balmy surf and tropical fruit in abundance.
*****
Archchancellor Ridcully's response to freezing winter evenings is a comfortable armchair, a fire on the hearth and a large bottle of VSOP Quirmian brandy. Forty years of winters at the family estates in the Ramtops had left the man somewhat derisive of the rest of the faculty's complaints about Ankh-Morpork's cold months so while his Door did have an adjustment for a tropical beach, his only use for it was to go fishing in the surf. And even at that, the man usually kept his Door's setting on a long stretch of verdant chalk stream where he could tempt the resident trout with his own hand-tied flies. Tonight he was sharing hearth, blaze and bottle with his Vice-Chancellor Ponder Stibbons.
"Stibbons, my man, yer haven't been submittin' any outrageous requests for fundin', of late. Have yer run out of mysteries to unravel?"
