Reaper Man (Discworld #11)

Reaper Man (Discworld #11) Page 5

Another screw tinkled on to the floor by the fireplace.

The Archchancellor cleared his throat.

"Run?" he suggested.

The chandelier dropped.

Bits of table and crockery smashed into the walls.

Lumps of lethal tallow the size of a man's head whirred through the windows. A whole candle, propelled out of the wreckage at a freak velocity, was driven several inches into a door.

The Archchancellor disentangled himself from the remains of his chair.

"Bursar!" he yelled.

The Bursar was exhumed from the fireplace.

"Um, yes, Archchancellor?" he quavered.

"What was the meanin' of that?"

Ridcully's hat rose from his head.

It was a basic floppy-brimmed, pointy wizarding hat, but adapted to the Archchancellor's outgoing lifestyle. Fishing flies were stuck in it. A very small pistol crossbow was shoved in the hatband in case he saw something to shoot while out jogging, and Mustrum Ridcully had found that the pointy bit was just the right size for a small bottle of Bentinck's Very Old Peculiar Brandy. He was quite attached to his hat.

But it was no longer attached to him.

It drifted gently across the room. There was a faint but distinct gurgling noise.

The Archchancellor leapt to his feet. "Bugger that," he roared. "That stuff's nine dollars a fifth!" He made a leap for the hat, missed, and kept on going until he drifted to a halt several feet above the ground.

The Bursar raised a hand, nervously.

"Possibly woodworm?" he said.

"If there is any more of this," growled Ridcully, "anymore at all, d'you hear, I shall get very angry!"

He was dropped to the floor at the same time as the big doors opened. One of the college porters bustled in, followed by a squad of the Patrician's palace guard.

The guard captain looked the Archchancellor up and down with the expression of one to whom the word 'civilian' is pronounced in the same general tones as 'cockroach'.

"You the head chap?" he said.

The Archchancellor smoothed his robe and tried to straighten his beard.

"I am the Archchancellor of this university, yes," he said.

The guard captain looked curiously around the hall.

The students were all cowering down the far end. Splashed food covered most of the walls to ceiling height. Bits of furniture lay around the wreckage of the chandelier like trees around ground zero of a meteor strike.

Then he spoke with all the distaste of someone whose own further education had stopped at age nine, but who'd heard stories...

"Indulging in a bit of youthful high spirits, were we?" he said. "Throwin' a few bread rolls around, that kind of thing?"

"May I ask the meaning of this intrusion?" said Ridcully, coldly.

The guard captain leaned on his spear.

"Well," he said, "it's like this. The Patrician is barricaded in his bedroom on account of the furniture in the palace is zooming around the place like you wouldn't believe, the cooks won't even go back in the kitchen on account of what's happening in there..."

The wizards tried not to look at the spear's head. It was starting to unscrew itself.

"Anyway," the captain went on, oblivious to the faint metallic noises, "the Patrician calls through the keyhole, see, and says to me, "Douglas, I wonder if you wouldn't mind nipping down to the University and asking the head man if he would be so good as to step up here, if he's not too busy?" But I can always go back and tell him you're engagin' in a bit of student humour, if you like."

The spearhead was almost off the shaft.

"You listening to me?" said the captain suspiciously.

"Hmm? What?" said the Archchancellor, tearing his eyes away from the spinning metal. "Oh. Yes. Well, I can assure you, my man, that we are not the cause of -"

"Aargh!"

"Pardon?"

"The spearhead fell on my foot!"

"Did it?" said Ridcully, innocently.

The guard captain hopped up and down.

"Listen, are you bloody hocus-pocus merchants coming or not?" he said, between bounces. "The boss is not very happy. Not very happy at all."

A great formless cloud of Life drifted across the Discworld, like water building up behind a dam when the sluice gates are shut. With no Death to take the life force away when it was finished with, it had nowhere else to go.

Here and there it earthed itself in random poltergeist activity, like flickers of summer lightning before a big storm. Everything that exists, yearns to Live. That's what the cycle of life is all about. That's the engine that drives the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the very top - which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all that effort.

Everything that exists, yearns to live. Even things that are not alive. Things that have a kind of sub-life, a metaphorical life, an almost life. And now, in the same way that a sudden hot spell brings forth unnatural and exotic blooms...

There was something about the little globes. You had to pick them up and give them a shake, watch the pretty snowflakes swirl and glitter. And then take them home and put them on the mantelpiece.

And then forget about them.

The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one.

The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city.

The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else.

The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man.

The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly.

The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn't put a tax on knowledge.

The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged.

The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority.

The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long.

The wizards said, what about easy terms?

The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn't want to know about the hard terms.

The wizards said that there was a ruler back in, oh, it would be the Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked.

The Patrician said that he would. He truly would.

In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes, they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let's say two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally-acceptable purposes.

It was this dynamic interplay of power blocs that made Ankh-Morpork such an interesting, stimulating and above all bloody dangerous place in which to live.

Senior wizards did not often get out and about on what Welkome to Ankh-Morporke probably called the thronged highways and intimate byways of the city, but it was instantly obvious that something was wrong. It wasn't that cobblestones didn't sometimes fly through the air, but usually someone had thrown them. They didn't normally float by themselves.

A door burst open and a suit of clothes came out, a pair of shoes dancing along behind it, a hat floating a few inches above the empty collar. Close behind them came a skinny man endeavouring to do with a hastily-snatched flannel what normally it took a whole pair of trousers to achieve.

"You come back here!" he screamed, as they rounded the corner. "I still owe seven dollars for you!"

A second pair of trousers scurried out into the street and hurried after them.

The wizards clustered together like a frightened animal with five pointed heads and ten legs, wondering who was going to be the first to comment.

"That's bloody amazing!" said the Archchancellor.

"Hmm?" said the Dean, trying to imply that he saw more amazing things than that all the time, and that in drawing attention to mere clothing running around by itself the Archchancellor was letting down the whole tone of wizardry.

"Oh, come on. I don't know many tailors round here who'd throw in a second pair of pants for a seven dollar suit," said Ridcully.

"Oh, " said the Dean.

"If it comes past again, try to trip it up so's I can have a look at the label."

A bedsheet squeezed through an upper window and flapped away across the rooftops.

"Y'know," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, trying to keep his voice calm and relaxed, "I don't think this is magic. It doesn't feel like magic."

The Senior Wrangler fished in one of the deep pockets of his robe. There was a muffled clanking and rustling and the occasional croak. Eventually he produced a dark blue glass cube. It had a dial on the front.

"You carry one of them around in your pocket?" said the Dean. "A valuable instrument like that?"

"What the hell is it?" said Ridcully.

"Amazingly sensitive magical measuring device," said the Dean. "Measures the density of a magical field. A thaumometer."

The Senior Wrangler proudly held the cube aloft and pressed a button on the side. A needle on the dial wobbled around a little bit and stopped.

"See?" said the Senior Wrangler. "'Just natural background, representing no hazard to the public."

"Speak up," said the Archchancellor. "I can't hear you above the noise."

Crashes and screams rose from the houses on either side of the street.

Mrs. Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small.

It wasn't a demanding job. Not many people who died in Ankh-Morpork showed much inclination to chat to their surviving relatives. Put as many mystic dimensions between you and them as possible, that was their motto. She filled in between engagements with dressmaking and church work - any church.

Mrs. Cake was very keen on religion, at least on Mrs. Cake's terms.

Evadne Cake was not one of those bead-curtain-and-incense mediums, partly because she didn't hold with incense but mainly because she was actually very good at her profession. A good conjurer can astound you with a simple box of matches and a perfectly ordinary deck of cards, if you would care to examine them, sir, you will see they are a perfectly ordinary deck of cards - he doesn't need the finger-nipping folding tables and complicated collapsible top hats of lesser prestidigitators. And, in the same way, Mrs. Cake didn't need much in the way of props. Even the industrial-grade crystal ball was only there as a sop to her customers. Mrs. Cake could actually read the future in a bowl of porridge. * She could have a revelation in a panful of frying bacon. She had spent a lifetime dabbling in the spirit world, except that in Evadne's case dabbling wasn't really apposite. She wasn't the dabbling kind. It was more a case of stamping into the spirit world and demanding to see the manager.

And, while making her breakfast and cutting up dogfood for Ludmilla, she started to hear voices. They were very faint. It wasn't that they were on the verge of hearing, because they were the kind of voices that ordinary ears can't hear. They were inside her head.

... watch what you're doing... where am I... quit shoving, there...

And then they faded again.

They were replaced by a squeaking noise from the next room. She pushed aside her boiled egg and waddled through the bead curtain.

The sound was coming from under the severe, no-nonsense hessian cover of her crystal ball.

Evadne went back into the kitchen and selected a heavy frying pan. She waved it through the air once or twice, getting the heft of it, and then crept towards the crystal under its hood.

Raising the pan ready to swat anything unpleasant, she twitched aside the cover.

The ball was turning slowly round and round on its stand.

Evadne watched it for a while. Then she drew the curtains, eased her weight down on the chair, took a deep breath and said, " Is there anybody there?"

Most of the ceiling fell in.

After several minutes and a certain amount of struggle Mrs. Cake managed to get her head free.

"Ludmilla!"

There were soft footsteps in the passageway and then something come in from the back yard. It was clearly, even attractively female, in general shape, and wore a perfectly ordinary dress. It was also apparently suffering from a case of superfluous hair that not all the delicate pink razors in the world could erase. Also, teeth and fingernails were being worn long this season. You expected the whole thing to growl, but it spoke in a pleasant and definitely human voice.

"Mother?"

"Oi'm under 'ere."

The fearsome Ludmilla lifted up a huge joist and tossed it lightly aside. "What happened? Didn't you have your premonition switched on?"

"Oi turned it off to speak to the baker. Cor, that gave me a turn."

"I'll make you a cup of tea, shall I?"

"Now then, you know you always crushes teacups when it's your Time. "

"I'm getting better at it, " said Ludmilla.

"There's a good girl, but I'll do it myself, thanks all the same."

Mrs. Cake stood up, brushed the plaster dust off her apron, and said: "They shouted! They shouted! All at once!"

Modo the University gardener was weeding a rose bed when the ancient, velvet lawn beside him heaved and sprouted a hardy perennial Windle Poons, who blinked in the light.

"Is that you, Modo?"

"That's right, Mr. Poons," said the dwarf. 'Shall I give you a hand up?"

"I think I can manage, thank you."

"I've got a shovel in the shed, if you like."

"No, it's perfectly all right. " Windle pulled himself out of the grass and brushed the soil off the remains of his robe. "Sorry about your lawn," he added, looking down at the hole.

"Don't mention it, Mr. Poons."

"Did it take long to get it looking like that?"

"About five hundred years, I think."

"Gosh, I am sorry. I was aiming for the cellars, but I seem to have lost my bearings."

"Don't you worry about that, Mr. Poons," said the dwarf cheerfully. "Everything's growing like crazy anyway. I'll fill it in this afternoon and put some more seed down and five hundred years will just zoom past, you wait and see."

"The way things are going, I probably will," said Windle moodily. He looked around. 'Is the Archchancellor here?" he said.

"I saw them all going up to the palace," said the gardener.

"Then I think I'll just go and have a quick bath and a change of clothes. I wouldn't want to disturb anyone."

"I heard you wasn't just dead but buried too, " said the gardener, as Windle lurched off.

"That's right."

"Can't keep a good man down, eh?"

Windle turned back.

"By the way... where's Elm Street?"

Modo scratched an ear. "Isn't it that one off Treacle Mine Road?"

"Oh, yes. I remember."

Modo went back to his weeding.

The circular nature of Windle Poons' death didn't bother him much. After all, trees looked dead in the winter, burst forth again every spring. Dried up old seeds went in the ground, fresh young plants sprang up. Practically nothing ever died for long. Take compost, for example.

Modo believed in compost with the same passion that other people believed in gods. His compost heaps heaved and fermented and glowed faintly in the dark, perhaps because of the mysterious and possibly illegal ingredients Modo fed them, although nothing had ever been pried and, anyway, no-one was about to dig into one to see what was in it.

All dead stuff, but somehow alive. And it certainly grew roses. The Senior Wrangler had explained to Modo that his roses grew so big because it was a miracle of existence, but Modo privately thought that they just wanted to get as far away from the compost as possible.

The heaps were in for a treat tonight. The weeds were really doing well. He'd never known plants to grow so fast and luxuriantly. It must be all the compost, Modo thought.

By the time the wizards reached the palace it was in uproar. Pieces of furniture were gliding across the ceiling. A shoal of cutlery, like silvery minnows in mid-air, flashed past the Archchancellor and dived away down a corridor. The place seemed to be in the grip of a selective and tidy-minded hurricane.

Other people had already arrived. They included a group dressed very like the wizards in many ways, although there were important differences to the trained eye.

"Priests?" said the Dean. "Here? Before us?"

The two groups began very surreptitiously to adopt positions that left their hands free.

"What good are they?" said the Senior Wrangler.

There was a noticeable drop in metaphorical temperature.

A carpet undulated past.

The Archchancellor met the gaze of the enormous Chief Priest of Blind Io who, as senior priest of the senior god in the Discworld's rambling pantheon, was the nearest thing Ankh-Morpork had to a spokesman on religious affairs.

"Credulous fools," muttered the Senior Wrangler.

"Godless tinkerers," said a small acolyte, peering out from behind the Chief Priest's bully.

"Gullible idiots!"

"Atheistic scum!"

"Servile morons!"

"Childish conjurors!"

"Bloodthirsty priests!"

"Interfering wizards!"

Ridcully raised an eyebrow. The Chief Priest nodded very slightly.

They left the two groups hurling imprecations at each other from a safe distance and strolled nonchalantly towards a comparatively quiet part of the room where, beside a statue of one of the Patrician's predecessors, they turned and faced one another again.

"So... how are things in the god bothering business?" said Ridcully.

"We do our humble best. How is the dangerous meddling with things man was not meant to understand?"

"Pretty fair. Pretty fair. " Ridcully removed his hat and fished inside the pointy bit. "Can I offer you a drop of something?"

"Alcohol is a snare for the spirit. Would you care for a cigarette? I believe you people indulge."

"Not me. If I was to tell you what that stuff does to your lungs -"

Ridcully unscrewed the very tip of his hat and poured a generous measure of brandy into it.

"So, " he said, "what's happening?"

"We had an altar float up into the air and drop on us."

"A chandelier unscrewed itself. Everything's unscrewing itself. You know, I saw a suit of clothes run past on the way here? Two pairs of pants for seven dollars!"

"Hmm. Did you see the label?"

"Everything's throbbing, too. Notice the way everything's throbbing?"

"We thought it was you people."

"It's not magic. Suppose the gods aren't more than usually unhappy?"

"Apparently not."

Behind them, the priests and the wizards were screaming chin to chin.

The Chief Priest moved a little closer.

"I think I could be strong enough to master and defeat just a little snare," he said. "I haven't felt like this since Mrs. Cake was one of my flock."

"Mrs. Cake? What's a Mrs. Cake?"

"You have... ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions and things, yes? Terrible hazards of your ungodly profession?" said the Chief Priest.

"Yes."

"We have someone called Mrs. Cake."

Ridcully gave him an enquiring look.

"Don't ask," said the priest, shuddering. "Just be grateful you'll never have to find out."

Ridcully silently passed him the brandy.

"Just between the two of us," said the priest, "have you got any ideas about all this? The guards are trying to dig his lordship out. You know he'll want answers. I'm not even certain I know the questions."

"Not magic and not gods," said Ridcully. "Can I have the snare back? Thank you. Not magic and not gods. That doesn't leave us much, does it?"

"I suppose there's not some kind of magic you don't know about?"

"If there is, we don't know about it."

"Fair enough, " the priest conceded.

"I suppose it's not the gods up to a bit of ungodliness on the side?" said Ridcully, clutching at one last straw. "A couple of 'em had a bit of a tiff or something? Messing around with golden apples or something?"

"It's very quiet on the god front right now, " said the Chief Priest. His eyes glazed as he spoke, apparently reading from a script inside his head. "Hyperopia, goddess of shoes, thinks that Sandelfon, god of corridors, is the long-lost twin brother of Grune, god of unseasonal fruit. Who put the goat in the bed of Offler, the Crocodile God? Is Offler forging an alliance with Seven-handed Sek? Meanwhile, Hoki the Jokester is up to his old tricks -"

"Yes, yes, all right," said Ridcully. "I've never been able to get interested in all that stuff, myself."

Behind them, the Dean was trying to prevent the Lecturer in Recent Runes from attempting to turn the priest of Offler the Crocodile God into a set of matching suitcases, and the Bursar had a bad nosebleed from a lucky blow with a thurible.

"What we've got to present here, " said Ridcully, "is a united front. Right?"

"Agreed, " said the Chief Priest.

"Right. For now."

A small rug sinewaved past at eye level. The Chief Priest handed back the brandy bottle.

"Incidentally, mother says you haven't written lately, " he said.

"Yeah... " The other wizards would have been surprised at their Archchancellor's look of contrite embarrassment. "I've been busy. You know how it is."

"She said to be sure to remind you she's expecting both of us over for lunch on Hogswatchday."

"I haven't forgotten," said Ridcully, glumly. 'I'm looking forward to it. " He turned to the melee behind them.

"Cut it out, you fellows," he said.

"Brethren! Desist!" bellowed the Chief Priest.

The Senior Wrangler released his grip on the head of the high priest of the Cult of Hinki. A couple of curates stopped kicking the Bursar. There was a general adjustment of clothing, a finding of hats and a bout of embarrassed coughing.

"That's better," said Ridcully. "Now then, his Eminence the Chief Priest and myself have decided -"

The Dean glowered at a very small bishop.

"He kicked me! He kicked me!"

"Ooo! I never did, my son."

"You bloody well did," the Dean hissed. 'Sideways, so they wouldn't see!"

"- have decided ¨C" repeated Ridcully, glaring at the Dean, "to pursue a solution to the current disturbances in a spirit of brotherhood and goodwill and that includes you, Senior Wrangler."

"I couldn't help it! He pushed me."

"Well! May you be forgiven!" said the Archdeacon of Thrume, stoutly.

There was a crash from above. A chaise-longue cantered down the stairs and smashed through the hall door.

"I think perhaps the guards are still trying to free the Patrician," said the High Priest. "Apparently even his secret passages locked themselves."

"All of them? I thought the sly devil had 'em everywhere," said Ridcully.

"All locked," said the High Priest. "All of them."

"Almost all of them," said a voice behind him.

Ridcully's tones did not change as he turned around, except that a slight extra syrup was added.

A figure had apparently stepped out of the wall. It was human, but only by default. Thin, pale, and clad all in dusty black, the Patrician always put Ridcully in mind of a predatory flamingo, if you could find a flamingo that was black and had the patience of a rock.

"Ah, Lord Vetinari," he said, "I am so glad you are unhurt."

"I will see you gentlemen in the Oblong Office, " said the Patrician. Behind him, a panel in the wall slid back noiselessly.

"I, um, I believe there are a number of guards upstairs trying to free ¨C" the Chief Priest began.

The Patrician waved a thin hand at him. "I wouldn't dream of stopping them," he said. 'It gives them something to do and makes them feel important. Otherwise they just have to stand around all day looking fierce and controlling their bladders. Come this way."

The leaders of the other Ankh-Morpork Guilds turned up in ones and twos, gradually filling the room.

The Patrician sat gloomily staring at the paper-work on his desk as they argued.

"Well, it's not us," said the head of the Alchemists.

"Things are always flying through the air when you fellows are around," said Ridcully.

"Yes, but that's only because of unforeseen exothermic reactions, " said the alchemist.

"Things keep blowing up," translated the deputy-head alchemist, without looking up.

"They may blow up, but they come down again. They don't flutter around and, e.g., start unscrewing themselves," said his chief, giving him a warning frown. 'Anyway, why'd we do it to ourselves? I tell you, it's hell in my workshop! There's stuff whizzing everywhere! Just before I came out, a huge and very expensive piece of glassware broke into splinters!"

"Marry, 'twas a sharp retort, " said a wretched voice.

The press of bodies moved aside to reveal the General Secretary and Chief Butt of the Guild of Fools and Joculators. He flinched under the attention, but he generally flinched all the time anyway. He had the look of a man whose face has been Ground Zero for one custard pie too many, whose trousers have been too often awash with whitewash, whose nerves would disintegrate completely at the sound of just one more whoopee-cushion. The other Guild leaders tried to be nice to him, in the same way that people try to be kind to other people who are standing on the ledges of very high buildings.

"What do you mean, Geoffrey?" said Ridcully, as kindly as he could.

The Fool gulped. 'Well, you see," he mumbled, "we have sharp as in splinters, and retort as in large glass alchemical vessel, and thus we get a pun on "sharp retort" which also means, well, a scathing answer. Sharp retort. You see? It's a play on words. Um. It's not very good, is it."

The Archchancellor looked into eyes like two runny eggs.

"Oh, a pun," he said. "Of course. Hohoho. " He waved a hand encouragingly at the others.

"Hohoho, " said the Chief Priest.

"Hohoho," said the leader of the Assassins' Guild.

"Hohoho," said the head Alchemist. "And, you know, what makes it even funnier is that it was actually an alembic."

"So what you're telling me," said the Patrician, as considerate hands led the Fool away, "is that none of you are responsible for these events?"

He gave Ridcully a meaningful look as he spoke.

The Archchancellor was about to answer when his eye was caught by a movement on the Patrician's desk.

There was a little model of the Palace in a glass globe. And next to it was a paperknife.

The paperknife was slowly bending.

"Well?" said the Patrician.

"Not us," said Ridcully, his voice hollow. The Patrician followed his gaze.

The knife was already curved like a bow.

The Patrician scanned the sheepish crowd until he found Captain Doxie of the City Guard Day Watch.

"Can't you do something?" he said.

"Er. Like what, sir? The knife? Er. I suppose I could arrest it for being bent."

Lord Vetinari threw his hands up in the air.

"So! It's not magic! It's not gods! It's not people! What is it? And who's going to stop it? Who am I going to call?"

Half an hour later the little globe had vanished.

No-one noticed. They never do.

Mrs. Cake knew who she was going to call.

"You there, One-Man-Bucket?" she said.

Then she ducked, just in case.