Reaper Man (12 page)

Someone had been drawing on the walls. The phraseology was exotic but the general tone was familiar enough:
Spooks of the world Arise, You have Nothing to lose but your Chains
and
The Silent Majority want Dead Rights
and
End vitalism now!!!

At the top was a landing, with one door opening off it. Once upon a time someone had hung on oil lamp from the ceiling, but it looked as though it had never been lit for thousands of years. An ancient spider, possibly living on the remains of the oil, watched him warily from its eyrie.

Windle looked at the card again, took a deep breath out of habit, and knocked.

The Archchancellor strode back into College in a fury, with the others trailing desperately behind him.

“Who is he going to call!
We’re
the wizards around here!”

“Yes, but we don’t actually know what’s happening, do we?” said the Dean.

“So we’re going to find out!” Ridcully growled. “I don’t know who
he’s
going to call, but I’m damn sure who
I’m
going to call.”

He halted abruptly. The rest of the wizards piled into him.

“Oh, no,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Please, not that!”

“Nothing to it,” said Ridcully. “Nothing to worry about. Read up on it last night, ’s’matterofact. You can do it with three bits of wood and—”

“Four cc of mouse blood,” said the Senior Wrangler mournfully. “You don’t even need that. You can use two bits of wood and an egg. It has to be a fresh egg, though.”

“Why?”

“I suppose the mouse feels happier about it.”

“No, I mean the egg.”

“Oh, who knows how an egg feels?”

“Anyway,” said the Dean, “it’s dangerous. I’ve always felt that he only stays in the octogram for the look of the thing. I hate it when he peers at you and seems to be counting.”

“Yes,” said the Senior Wrangler. “We don’t need to do that. We get over most things. Dragons, monsters. Rats. Remember the rats last year? Seemed to be everywhere. Lord Vetinari wouldn’t listen to us, oh no. He paid that glib bugger in the red and yellow tights a thousand gold pieces to get rid of ’em.”

“It worked, though,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Of course it bloody worked,” said the Dean. “It worked in Quirm and Sto Lat as well. He’d have got away with it in Pseudopolis as well if someone hadn’t recognized him. Mr. so-called Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents!”

“It’s no good trying to change the subject,” said Ridcully. “We’re going to do the Rite of AshKente. Right?”

“And summon Death,” said the Dean. “Oh, dear.”

“Nothing wrong with Death,” said Ridcully. “Professional fellow. Job to do. Fair and square. Play a straight bat, no problem. He’ll know what’s happening.”

“Oh, dear,” said the Dean again.

They reached the gateway. Mrs. Cake stepped forward, blocking the Archchancellor’s path.

Ridcully raised his eyebrows.

The Archchancellor was not the kind of man who takes a special pleasure in being brusque and rude to women. Or, to put it another way, he was brusque and rude to absolutely everyone, regardless of sex, which was equality of a sort. And if the following conversation had
not
been taking place between someone who listened to what people said several seconds before they said it, and someone who didn’t listen to what people said at all, everything might have been a lot different. Or perhaps it wouldn’t.

Mrs. Cake led with an answer.

“I’m not your good woman!” she snapped.

“And who are you, my good woman?” said the Archchancellor.

“Well, that’s no way to talk to a respectable person,” said Mrs. Cake.

“There’s no need to be offended,” said Ridcully.

“Oh blow, is that what I’m doin’?” said Mrs. Cake.

“Madam, why are you answering me before I’ve even said something?”

“What?”

“What d’you mean?”

“What do
you
mean?”

“What?”

They stared at one another, fixed in an unbreakable conversational deadlock. Then Mrs. Cake realized.

“Oi’m prematurely premoniting again,” she said. She stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it around with a squelching noise. “It’s all orlright now. Now, the reason—”

But Ridcully had had enough.

“Bursar,” he said, “give this woman a penny and send her about her business, will you?”

“What?” said Mrs. Cake, suddenly enraged beyond belief.

“There’s too much of this sort of thing these days,” said Ridcully to the Dean, as they strolled away.

“It’s the pressures and stresses of living in a big city,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I read that somewhere. It takes people in a funny way.”

They stepped through the wicket gate in one of the big doors and the Dean shut it in Mrs. Cake’s face.

“He might not come,” said the Senior Wrangler, as they crossed the quadrangle. “He didn’t come for poor old Windle’s farewell party.”

“He’ll come for the Rite,” said Ridcully. “It doesn’t just send him an invitation, it puts a bloody RSVP on it!”

“Oh, good. I like sherry,” said the Bursar.

“Shut up, Bursar.”

There was an alley, somewhere in the Shades, which was the most alley-ridden part of an alley-ridden city.

Something small and shiny rolled into it, and vanished in the darkness.

After a while, there were faint metallic noises.

The atmosphere in the Archchancellor’s study was very cold.

Eventually the Bursar quavered: “Maybe he’s busy?”

“Shut up,” said the wizards, in unison.

Something
was happening. The floor inside the chalked magic octogram was going white with frost.

“It’s never done that before,” said the Senior Wrangler.

“This is all wrong, you know,” said the Dean. “We should have some candles and some cauldrons and some stuff bubbling in crucibles and some glitter dust and some colored smoke—”

“The Rite doesn’t need any of that stuff,” said Ridcully sharply.

“
It
might not need them, but I do,” muttered the Dean. “Doing it without the right paraphernalia is like taking all your clothes off to have a bath.”

“That’s what I do,” said Ridcully.

“Humph. Well, each to his own, of course, but some of us like to think that we’re maintaining
standards
.”

“Perhaps he’s on holiday?” said the Bursar.

“Oh, yes,” sneered the Dean. “On a beach somewhere? A few iced drinks and a Kiss Me Quick hat?”

“Hold on. Hold on. Someone’s coming,” hissed the Senior Wrangler.

The faint outlines of a hooded figure appeared above the octogram. It wavered constantly, as if it was being seen through superheated air.

“That’s him,” said the Dean.

“No it isn’t,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s just a gray ro—there’s nothing in—”

He stopped.

It turned, slowly. It was filled out, suggesting a wearer, but at the same time had a feeling of hollowness, as if it was merely a shape for something with no shape of its own. The hood was empty.

The emptiness watched the wizards for a few seconds and then focused on the Archchancellor.

It said, Who are you?

Ridcully swallowed. “Er. Mustrum Ridcully. Archchancellor.”

The hood nodded. The Dean stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it around. The robe wasn’t talking. Nothing was being heard. It was just that, afterward, you had a sudden memory of what had just failed to be said and no knowledge of how it had got there.

The hood said, You are a superior being on this world?

Ridcully looked at the other wizards. The Dean glared.

“Well…you know…yes…first among equals and all that sort of thing…yes…” Ridcully managed.

He was told, We bring good news.

“Good news? Good news?” Ridcully squirmed under the gazerless gaze. “Oh,
good
. That
is
good news.”

He was told, Death has retired.

“Pardon?”

He was told, Death has retired.

“Oh? That is…news…” said Ridcully uncertainly. “Uh. How? Exactly…how?”

He was told, We apologize for the recent lapse in standards.

“Lapse?” said the Archchancellor, now totally mystified. “Well, uh, I’m not sure there’s been a…I mean, of course the fella was always knockin’ around, but most of the time we hardly…”

He was told, It has all been most irregular.

“It has? Has it? Oh, well, can’t have irregularity,” said the Archchancellor.

He was told, It must have been terrible.

“Well, I…that is…I suppose we…I’m not sure…must it?”

He was told, But now the burden is removed. Rejoice. That is all. There will be a short transitional period before a suitable candidate presents itself, and then normal service will be resumed. In the meantime, we apologize for any unavoidable inconvenience caused by superfluous life effects.

The figure wavered and began to fade.

The Archchancellor waved his hands desperately.

“Wait!” he said. “You can’t just go like that! I command you to stay! What service? What does it all mean? Who are you?”

The hood turned back toward him and said, We are nothing.

“That’s no help! What is your name?”

We are oblivion.

The figure vanished.

The wizards fell silent. The frost in the octogram began to sublime back into air.

“Oh-oh,” said the Bursar.

“Short transitional period? Is that what this is?” said the Dean.

The floor shook.

“Oh-oh,” said the Bursar again.

“That doesn’t explain why everything is living a life of its own,” said the Senior Wrangler.

“Hold on…hold on,” said Ridcully, “If people are coming to the end of their life and leaving their bodies and everything, but Death isn’t taking them away—”

“Then that means they’re queueing up here,” said the Dean.

“With nowhere to go.”

“Not just people,” said the Senior Wrangler. “It must be everything. Every thing that dies.”

“Filling up the world with life force,” said Ridcully. The wizards were speaking in a monotone, everyone’s mind running ahead of the conversation to the distant horror of the conclusion.

“Hanging around with nothing to do,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Ghosts.”

“Poltergeist activity.”

“Good grief.” 60

“Hang on, though,” said the Bursar, who had managed to catch up with events. “Why should that worry us? We don’t have anything to fear from the dead, do we? After all, they’re just people who are dead. They’re just ordinary people. People like us.”

The wizards thought about this. They looked at one another. They started to shout, all at once.

No one remembered the bit about suitable candidates.

Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.

People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiraling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief résumé of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

Belief creates other things.

It created Death. Not death, which is merely a technical term for a state caused by prolonged absence of life, but Death, the personality. He evolved, as it were, along with life. As soon as a living thing was even dimly aware of the concept of suddenly becoming a non-living thing, there was Death. He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that was already millions of years old.

And now he had gone. But belief doesn’t stop. Belief goes right on believing. And since the focal point of belief had been lost, new points sprang up. Small as yet, not very powerful. The private deaths of every species, no longer united but specific.

In the stream, black-scaled, swam the new Death of Mayflies. In the forests, invisible, a creature of sound only, drifted the chop-chop-chop of the Death of Trees.

Over the desert a dark and empty shell moved purposefully, half an inch above the ground…the Death of Tortoises.

The Death of Humanity hadn’t been finished yet. Humans can believe some very complex things.

It’s like the difference between off-the-peg and bespoke.

The metallic sounds stopped coming from the alley.

Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise.

And, finally, there was a very faint jangling sound, disappearing into the distance.

“Don’t stand in the doorway, friend. Don’t block up the hall. Come on in.”

Windle Poons blinked in the gloom.

When his eyes became accustomed to it, he realized that there was a semi-circle of chairs in an otherwise rather bare and dusty room. They were all occupied.

In the center—at the focus, as it were, of the half circle—was a small table at which someone had been seated. They were now advancing toward him, with their hand out and a big smile on their face.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” they said. “You’re a zombie, right?”

“Er.” Windle Poons had never seen anyone with such a pallid skin, such as there was of it, before. Or wearing clothes that looked as if they’d been washed in razor blades and smelled as though someone had not only died in them but was
still
in them. Or sporting a Glad To Be Gray badge.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose so. Only they buried me, you see, and there was this card—” He held it out, like a shield.

“’Course there was.
’Course
there was,” said the figure.

He’s going to want me to shake hands, Windle thought. If I do, I just know I’m going to end up with more fingers than I started with. Oh, my goodness. Will I end up like that?