Reaper Man (Discworld #11)

Reaper Man (Discworld #11) Page 12

"I'm definitely very mean, I think," said the Bursar.

"It's having no boots that does it," he added.

"I'll be mean if everyone else is," said the Senior Wrangler.

The Archchancellor turned back to the Dean.

"Yes," he said, "it appears that we are all mean."

"Yo!" said the Dean.

"Yo what?" said Ridcully.

"It's not a yo what, it's just a yo," said the Senior Wrangler, behind him. "It's a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and masculine bonding-ritual overtones."

"What? What? Like "jolly good"?" said Ridcully.

"I suppose so," said the Senior Wrangler, reluctantly.

Ridcully was pleased. Ankh-Morpork had never offered very good prospects for hunting. He'd never thought it was possible to have so much fun in his own university.

"Right, " he said. 'Let's get those heaps!"

"Yo!"

"Yo!"

"Yo!"

"Yo-yo."

Ridcully sighed. "Bursar?"

"Yes, Archchancellor?"

"Just try to understand, all right?"

Clouds piled up over the mountains. Bill Door strode up and down the first field, using one of the ordinary farm scythes; the sharpest one had been temporarily stored at the back of the barn, in case it was blunted by air convection. Some of Miss Flitworth's tenants followed behind him, binding the sheaves and stacking them. Miss Flitworth had never employed more than one man full time, Bill Door learned; she bought in other help as she needed it, to save pennies.

"Never seen a man cut corn with a scythe before," said one of them. "It's a sickle job."

They stopped for lunch, and ate it under the hedge.

Bill Door had never paid a great deal of attention to the names and faces of people, beyond that necessary for business. Corn stretched over the hillside; it was made up of individual stalks and to the eye of one stalk another stalk might be quite an impressive stalk, with a dozen amusing and distinctive little mannerisms that set it apart from all other stalks. But to the reaper man, all stalks start off as... just stalks.

Now he was beginning to recognise the little differences.

There was William Spigot and Gabby Wheels and Duke Bottomley. All old men, as far as Bill Door could judge, with skins like leather. There were young men and women in the village, but at a certain age they seemed to flip straight over to being old, without passing through any intermediate stage. And then they stayed old for a long time. Miss Flitworth had said that before they could start a graveyard in these parts they'd had to hit someone over the head with the shovel.

William Spigot was the one that sang when he worked, breaking into that long nasal whine which meant that folk song was about to be perpetrated. Gabby Wheels never said anything; this, Spigot had said, was why he had been called Gabby. Bill Door had failed to understand the logic of this, although it seemed transparent to the others.

And Duke Bottomley had been named by parents with upwardly-mobile if rather simplistic ideas about class structure; his brothers were Squire, Earl and King.

Now they sat in a row under the hedge, putting off the moment when they'd need to start work again. A glugging noise came from the end of the row.

"It's not been a bad old summer, then," said Spigot. "And good harvest weather for a change."

"Ah... many a slip 'twixt dress and drawers," said Duke. "Last night I saw a spider spinnin' its web backwards. That's a sure sign there's going to be a dretful storm."

"Don't see how spiders know things like that."

Gabby Wheels passed a big earthenware jug to Bill Door. Something sloshed.

WHAT IS THIS?

"Apple juice," said Spigot. The others laughed.

AH, said Bill Door. STRONG DISTILLED SPIRITS, GIVEN HUMOROUSLY TO THE UNSUSPECTING NEWCOMER, THUS TO AFFORD SIMPLE AMUSEMENT WHEN HE BECOMES INADVERTENTLY INEBRIATED.

"Cor," said Spigot. Bill Door took a long swig.

"And I saw swallows flying low," said Duke. "And partridges are heading for the woods. And there's a lot of big snails about. And -"

"I don't reckon any of them buggers knows the first thing about meteorology," said Spigot. "I reckon you goes around telling 'em. Eh, lads? Big storm comin', Mr. Spider, so get on and do somethin' folklorish."

Bill Door took another drink.

WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE BLACKSMITH IN THE VILLAGE?

Spigot nodded. 'That's Ned Simnel, down by the green. O'course, he's real busy about now, what with the harvest and all."

I HAVE SOME WORK FOR HIM.

Bill Door got up and strode away towards the gate.

He stopped. YES?

"You can leave the brandy behind, then."

The village forge was dark and stifling in the heat. But Bill Door had very good eyesight.

Something moved among a complicated heap of metal. It turned out to be the lower half of a man. His upper body was somewhere in the machinery, from which came the occasional grunt.

A hand shot out as Bill Door approached.

"Right. Give me three-eighths Gripley."

Bill looked around. A variety of tools were strewn around the forge. "Come on, come on," said a voice from somewhere in the machine.

Bill Door selected a piece of shaped metal at random, and placed it in the hand. It was drawn inside. There was metallic noise, and a grunt.

"I said a Gripley. This isn't a" - there was the scringeing noise of a piece of metal giving way ¨C "my thumb, my thumb, you made me" - there was a clang ¨C "aargh. That was my head. Now look what you've made me do. And the ratchet spring's snapped off the trunnion armature again, do you realise?"

NO. I AM SORRY.

There was a pause.

"Is that you, young Egbert?"

NO. IT IS ME, OLD BILL DOOR.

There was a series of thumps and twanging noises as the top half of the human extricated itself from the machinery, and turned out to belong to a young man with black curly hair, a black face, black shirt, and black apron. He wiped a cloth across his face, leaving a pink smear, and blinked the sweat out of his eyes.

"Who're you?"

GOOD OLD BILL DOOR? WORKING FOR MISS FLITWORTH?

"Oh, yes. The man in the fire? Hero of the hour, I heard. Put it there."

He extended a black hand. Bill Door looked at it blankly.

I AM SORRY. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT A THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY IS.

"I mean your hand, Mr. Door."

Bill Door hesitated, and then put his hand in the young man's palm. The oil-rimmed eyes glazed for a moment as the brain overruled the sense of touch, and then the smith smiled.

"The name's Simnel. What do you think, eh?"

IT'S A GOOD NAME.

"No, I mean the machine. Pretty ingenious, eh?"

Bill Door reguarded it with polite incomprehension. It looked, at first sight, like a portable windmill that had been attacked by an enormous insect, and at second sight like a touring torture chamber for an Inquisition that wanted to get out and about a bit and enjoy the fresh air. Mysterious jointed arms stuck out at various angles. There were belts, and long springs. The whole thing was mounted on spiked metal wheels.

"Of course, you're not seeing it at its best when it's standing still," said Simnel. "It needs a horse to pull it. At the moment, anyway. I've got one or two rather radical ideas in that direction," he added dreamily.

IT'S A DEVICE OF SOME SORT?

Simnel looked mildly affronted.

"I prefer the term machine," he said. "It will revolutionise farming methods, and drag them kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. My folk have had this forge for three hundred years, but Ned Simnel doesn't intend to spend the rest of his life nailing bits of bent metal on to horses, I call tell you."

Bill looked at him blankly. Then he bent down and glanced under the machine. A dozen sickles were bolted to a big horizontal wheel. Ingenious linkages took power from the wheels, via a selection of pulleys, to a whirligig arrangement of metal arms.

He began to experience a horrible feeling about the thing in front of him, but he asked anyway.

"Well, the heart of it all is this cam shaft," said Simnel, gratified at the interest. 'The power comes up via the pulley here, and the cams move the swaging arms - that's these things - and the combing gate, which is operated by the reciprocating mechanism, comes down just as the gripping shutter drops in this slot here, and of course at the same time the two brass balls go round and round and the flatting sheets carry off the straw while the grain drops with the aid of gravity down the riffling screw and into the hopper. Simple."

AND THE THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY?

"Good job you reminded me. " Simnel fished around among the debris on the floor, picked up a small knurled object, and screwed it on to a protruding piece of the mechanism. "Very important job. It stops the elliptical cam gradually sliding up the beam shaft and catching on the flange rebate, with disastrous results as you can no doubt imagine."

Simnel stood back and wiped his hands on a cloth, making them slightly more oily.

"I'm calling it the Combination Harvester," he said.

Bill Door felt very old. In fact he was very old. But he'd never felt it as much as this. Somewhere in the shadow of his soul he felt he knew, without the blacksmith explaining, what it was that the Combination Harvester was supposed to do.

OH.

"We're going to give it a trial run this afternoon up in old Peedbury's big field. It looks very promising, I must say. What you're looking at now, Mr. Door, is the future."

YES.

Bill Door ran his hand over the framework.

AND THE HARVEST ITSELF?

"Hmm? What about it?"

WHAT WILL IT THINK OF IT? WILL IT KNOW?

Simnel wrinkled his nose. "Know? Know? It won't know anything. Corn's corn."

AND SIXPENCE IS SIXPENCE.

"Exactly. " Simnel hesitated. "What was it you were wanting?"

The tall figure ran a disconsolate finger over the oily mechanism.

"Mr. Door?"

PARDON? OH. YES. I HAD SOMETHING FOR YOU TO DO -

He strode out of the forge and returned almost immediately with something wrapped in silk. He unwrapped it carefully.

He'd made a new handle for the blade - not a straight one, such as they used in the mountains, but the heavy doublecurved handle of the plains.

"You want it beaten out? A new grass nail? Metalwork replacing?"

Bill Door shook his head.

I WANT IT KILLED.

"Killed?"

YES. TOTALLY. EVERY BIT DESTROYED. SO THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY DEAD.

"Nice scythe," said Simnel. 'Seems a shame. You've kept a good edge on it -"

DON'T TOUCH IT!

Simnel sucked his finger.

"Funny," he said, "I could have sworn I didn't touch it. My hand was inches away. Well, it's sharp, anyway."

He swished it through the air.

"Yes. Pretty sharp

He paused, stuck his little finger in his ear and swivelled it around a bit.

"You sure you know what you want?" he said.

Bill Door solemnly repeated his request.

Simnel shrugged. "Well, I suppose I could melt it and burn the handle," he said.

YES.

"Well, OK. It's your scythe. And you're basically right, of course. This is old technology now. Redundant."

I FEAR YOU MAY BE RIGHT.

Simnel jerked a grimy thumb towards the Combination Harvester. Bill Door knew it was made only of metal and canvas, and therefore couldn't possibly lurk. But it was lurking. Moreover, it was doing so with a chilling, metallic smugness.

"You could get Miss Flitworth to buy you one of these, Mr. Door. It'd be just the job for a one-man farm like that. I can see you now, up there, up in the breeze, with the belts clacking away and the sparge arms oscillating -"

NO.

"Go on. She could afford it. They say she's got boxes full of treasure from the old days. "

NO!

"Er -' Simnel hesitated. The last 'No' contained a threat more certain than the creak of thin ice on a deep river. It said that going any further could be the most foolhardy thing Simnel would ever do.

"I'm sure you know your own mind best," he mumbled.

YES.

"Then it'll just be, oh, call it a farthing for the scythe," Simnel gabbled. "Sorry about that, but it'll use a lot of coals, you see, and those dwarfs keep winding up the price of -"

HERE. IT MUST BE DONE BY TONIGHT.

Simnel didn't argue. Arguing would mean that Bill Door remained in the forge, and he was getting quite anxious that this should not be so.

"Fine, fine."

YOU UNDERSTAND?

"Right. Right."

FAREWELL, said Bill Door solemnly, and left.

Simnel shut the doors after him, and leaned against them. Whew. Nice man, of course, everyone was talking about him, it was just that after a couple of minutes in his presence you got a pins-and-needles sensation that someone was walking over your grave and it hadn't even been dug yet.

He wandered across the oily floor, filled the tea kettle and wedged it on a corner of the forge. He picked up a spanner to do some final adjustments to the Combination Harvester, and spotted the scythe leaning against the wall.

He tiptoed towards it, and realised that tiptoeing was an amazingly stupid thing to do. It wasn't alive. It couldn't hear. It just looked sharp.

He raised the spanner, and felt guilty about it. By Mr. Door had said - well, Mr. Door had said something very odd, using the wrong sort of words to use in talking about a mere implement. But he could hardly object to this.

Simnel brought the spanner down hard.

There was no resistance. He would have sworn, again, that the spanner sheared in two, as though it was made of bread, several inches from the edge of the blade.

He wondered if something could be so sharp that it began to possess, not just a sharp edge, but the very essence of sharpness itself, a field of absolute sharpness that actually extended beyond the last atoms of metal.

"Bloody hell "

And then he remembered that this was sloppy and superstitious thinking for a man who knew how to bevel a three eighths Gripley. You knew where you were with a reciprocating linkage. It either worked or it didn't. It certainly didn't present you with mysteries.

He looked proudly at the Combination Harvester. Of course, you needed a horse to pull it. That spoiled things a bit. Horses belonged to Yesterday; Tomorrow belonged to the Combination Harvester and its descendants, which would make the world a cleaner and better place. It was just a matter of taking the horse out of the equation. He'd tried clockwork, and that wasn't powerful enough. Maybe if he tried winding a -

Behind him, the kettle boiled over and put the fire out.

Simnel fought his way through the steam. That was the bloody trouble, every time. Whenever someone was trying to do a bit of sensible thinking, there was always some pointless distraction.

Mrs. Cake drew the curtains.

"Who exactly is One-Man-Bucket?" said Windle.

She lit a couple of candles and sat down.

" 'e belonged to one of them heathen Howondaland tribes," she said shortly.

"Very strange name, One-Man-Bucket," said Windle.

"It's not 'is full name. " said Mrs. Cake darkly. 'Now, we've got to 'old 'ands. " She looked at him speculatively. "We need someone else."

"I could call Schleppel," said Windle.

"I ain't 'aving no bogey under my table trying to look up me drawers," said Mrs. Cake. 'Ludmilla!" she shouted. After a moment or two the bead curtain leading into the kitchen was swept aside and the young woman who had originally opened the door to Windle came in.

"Yes mother?"

"Sit down, girl. We need another one for the seancing."

"Yes, mother."

The girl smiled at Windle.

"This is Ludmilla," said Mrs. Cake shortly.

"Charmed, I'm sure," said Windle. Ludmilla gave him the bright, crystalline smile perfected by people who had long ago learned not to let their feelings show.

"We have already met," said Windle. It must be at least a day since full moon, he thought. All the signs are nearly gone. Nearly. Well, well, well...

"She's my shame," said Mrs. Cake.

"Mother, you do go on," said Ludmilla, without rancour.

"Join hands, " said Mrs. Cake.

They sat in the semi-darkness. Then Windle felt Mrs. Cake's hand being pulled away.

"Oi forgot about the glass," she said.

"I thought, Mrs. Cake, that you didn't hold with ouija boards and that sort of ¨C" Windle began.

There was a glugging noise from the sideboard. Mrs. Cake put a full glass on the tablecloth and sat down again.

"Oi don't," she said.

Silence descended again. Windle cleared his throat nervously.

Eventually Mrs. Cake said, "All right, One-Man-Bucket, oi knows you're there."

The glass moved. The amber liquid inside sloshed gently.

A bodiless voice quavered, greetings, pale face, from the happy hunting ground -

"You stop that," said Mrs. Cake. 'Everyone knows you got run over by a cart in Treacle Street because you was drunk, One-Man-Bucket."

s'not my fault. not my fault. is it my fault my great-grandad moved here? by rights I should have been mauled to death by a mountain lion or a giant mammoth or something. I bin denied my deathright.

"Mr. Poons here wants to ask you a question, One-Man-Bucket," said Mrs. Cake.

she is happy here and waiting for you to join her, said One-Man-Bucket.

"Who is?" said Windle.

This seemed to fox One-Man-Bucket. It was a line, that generally satisfied without further explanation.

who would you like? he asked cautiously. can I have that ?cerink? now?

"Not yet, One-Man-Bucket," said Mrs. Cake.

well, I need it. it's bloody crowded in here.

"What?" said Windle quickly. 'With ghosts, you mean?"

there's hundreds of 'em, said the voice of One-Man-Bucket.

Windle was disappointed.

"Only hundreds?" he said. "That doesn't sound a lot."

"Not many people become ghosts," said Mrs. Cake. 'To be a ghost, you got to have, like, serious unfinished business, or a terrible revenge to take, or a cosmic purpose in which you are just a pawn."

or a cruel thirst, said One-Man-Bucket.

"Will you hark at him," said Mrs. Cake.

I wanted to stay in the spirit world. or even wire and beer. hngh. hngh. hngh.

"So what happens to the life force if things stop living?" said Windle. 'Is that what's causing all this trouble?"

"You tell the man," said Mrs. Cake, when One-Man-Bucket seemed reluctant to answer.

what trouble you talking about?

"Things unscrewing. Clothes running around by themselves. Everyone feeling more alive. That sort of thing."

that? that's nothing. see, the life force leaks back where it can. you don't need to worry about that.

Windle put his hand over the glass.

"But there's something I should be worrying about, isn't there," he said flatly. "It's to do with the little glass souvenirs."

don't like to say.

"Do tell him."

It was Ludmilla's voice - deep but, somehow, attractive. Lupine was watching her intently.

Windle smiled. That was one of the advantages about being dead. You spotted things the living ignored.

One-Man-Bucket sounded shrill and petulant.

what's he going to do if I tell him, then? I could get into heap big trouble for that sort of thing.

"Well, can you tell me if I guess right?" said Windle.

ye-ess. maybe.

"You don't have to say anythin'," said Mrs. Cake. "Just knock twice for yes and once for no, like in the old days."

oh, all right.

"Go on, Mr. Poons," said Ludmilla. She had the kind of voice Windle wanted to stroke.

He cleared his throat.

"I think," he began, "that is, I think they're some sort of eggs. I thought... why breakfast? and then I thought... eggs..."

Knock.

"Oh. Well, perhaps it was a rather silly idea..."

sorry, was it once for yes or twice for yes ?

" 'voice!" snapped the medium.

KNOCK. KNOCK.

"Ah," breathed Windle. 'And they hatch into something with wheels on?"

twice for yes, was it?

"Roight!"

KNOCK. KNOCK.

"I thought so. I thought so! I found one under my floor that tried to hatch where there wasn't enough room!" crowed Windle. Then he frowned.

"But hatch into what?"

Mustrum Ridcully trotted into his study and took his wizard's staff from its rack over the fireplace. He licked his finger and gingerly touched the top of the staff.

There was a small octarine spark and a smell of greasy tin.

He headed back for the door.

Then he turned around slowly, because his brain had just had time to analyse the study's cluttered contents and spot the oddity.

"What the hell's that doin' there?" he said.

He prodded it with the tip of the staff. It gave a jingling noise and rolled a little way.

It looked vaguely, but not very much, like the sort of thing the maids trundled around loaded with mops and fresh linen and whatever it was maids pushed around. Ridcully made a mental note to take it up with the housekeeper. Then he forgot about it.

"Damn wire wheely things are gettin' everywhere," he muttered.

Upon the word "damn", something like a large blue-bottle with cat-sized dentures flopped out of the air, fluttered madly as it took stock of its surroundings, and then flew after the unheeding Archchancellor.

The words of wizards have power. And swearwords have power. And with life force practically crystallising out of the air, it had to find outlets wherever it could.

cities. said One-Man-Bucket. I think they're city eggs.

The senior wizards gathered again in the Great Hall.

Even the Senior Wrangler was feeling a certain excitement. It was considered bad form to use magic against fellow wizards, and using it against civilians was unsporting. It did you good to have a really righteous zap occasionally.

The Archchancellor looked them over.

"Dean, why have you got stripes all over your face?" he enquired.

"Camouflage, Archchancellor."

"Camouflage, eh?"

"Yo, Archchancellor."

"Oh, well. So long as you feel happy in yourself, that's what matters."

They crept out towards the patch of ground that had been Modo's little territory. At least, most of them crept. The Dean advanced in a series of spinning leaps, occasionally flattening himself against the wall, and saying 'Hut! Hut! Hut!" under his breath.

He was absolutely crestfallen when the other heaps turned out to be still where Modo had built them. The gardener, who had tagged along behind and had twice nearly been flattened by the Dean, fussed around them for a while.

"They're just lying low," said the Dean. 'I say we blow up the godsdamn -"

"They're not even warm yet," said Modo. "That one must have been the oldest."

"You mean we haven't got anything to fight?" said the Archchancellor.

The ground shook underfoot. And then there was a faint jangling noise, from the direction of the cloisters.

Ridcully frowned.

"Someone 's pushing those damn wire baskety things around again," he said. 'There was one in my study tonight."

"Huh," said the Senior Wrangler. "There was one in my bedroom. I opened the wardrobe and there it was."

"In your wardrobe? What'd you put it in there for?" said Ridcully.

"I didn't. I told you. It was probably the students. It's their kind of humour. One of them put a hairbrush in my bed once."

"I fell over one earlier," said the Archchancellor, "and then when I looked round for it, someone had taken it away."

The jingling noise got closer.

"Right, Mr. So-called Clever Dick Young-fella-me-lad," said Ridcully, tapping his staff once or twice on his palm in a meaningful way.

The wizards backed up against the wall.