Reaper Man (22 page)

“Who says it’s thinking?” said the Archchancellor. “All it does is move. Who needs brains for that?
Prawns
move.”

He ran his fingers over the metalwork.

“Actually, prawns are quite intell—” the Senior Wrangler began.

“Shut up,” said Ridcully. “Hmm.
Is
this made, though?”

“It’s wire,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Wire’s something that you have to make. And there’s wheels. Hardly anything natural’s got wheels.”

“It’s just that up close, it looks—”

“—all one thing,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had knelt down painfully to inspect it the better. “Like one unit. Made all in one lump. Like a machine that’s been grown. But that’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe. Isn’t there a sort of cuckoo in the Ramtops that builds clocks to nest in?” said the Bursar.

“Yes, but that’s just courtship ritual,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes airily. “Besides, they keep lousy time.”

The trolley leapt for a gap in the wizards and would have made it except that the gap was occupied by the Bursar, who gave a scream and pitched forward into the basket. The trolley didn’t stop but rattled onward, toward the gates.

The Dean raised his staff. The Archchancellor grabbed it.

“You might hit the Bursar,” he said.

“Just one small fireball?”

“It’s tempting, but no. Come on. After it.”

“Yo!”

“If you like.”

The wizards lumbered in pursuit. Behind them, as yet unnoticed, a whole flock of the Archchancellor’s swearwords fluttered and buzzed. And Windle Poons was leading a small deputation to the Library.

The Librarian of Unseen University knuckled his way hurriedly across the floor as the door shook to a thunderous knocking.

“I know you’re in there,” came the voice of Windle Poons. “You must let us in. It’s
vitally
important.”

“Oook.”

“You won’t open the doors?”

“Oook!”

“Then you leave me no choice…”

Ancient blocks of masonry moved aside slowly. Mortar crumbled. Then part of the wall fell in, leaving Windle Poons standing in a Windle Poons-shaped hole. He coughed on the dust.

“I hate having to do that,” he said. “I can’t help feeling it’s pandering to popular prejudice.”

The Librarian landed on his shoulders. To the orangutan’s surprise, this made very little difference. A 300-pound orangutan usually had a noticeable effect on a person’s rate of progress, but Windle wore him like a collar.

“I think we need Ancient History,” he said. “I wonder, could you stop trying to twist my head off?”

The Librarian looked around wildly. It was a technique that normally never failed.

Then his nostrils flared.

The Librarian hadn’t always been an ape. Amagical library is a dangerous place to work, and he’d been turned into an orangutan as a result of a magical explosion. He’d been a quite inoffensive human, although by now so many people had come to terms with his new shape that few people remembered it. But with the change had come the key to a whole bundle of senses and racial memories. And one of the deepest, most fundamental, most borne-in-the-bone of all of them was to do with shapes. It went back to the dawn of sapience. Shapes with muzzles, teeth and four legs were, in the evolving simian mind, definitely filed under Bad News.

A very large wolf had padded through the hole in the wall, followed by an attractive young woman. The Librarian’s signal input was temporarily fused.

“Also,” said Windle, “it is just possible that I could knot your arms behind you.”

“Eeek!”

“He’s not an ordinary wolf. You’d better believe it.”

“Oook?”

Windle lowered his voice. “And she might not technically be a woman,” he added.

The Librarian looked at Ludmilla. His nostrils flared again. His brow wrinkled.

“Oook?”
.

“All right, I may have put that rather clumsily. Do let go, there’s a good fellow.”

The Librarian released his grip very cautiously and sank to the floor, keeping Windle between himself and Lupine.

Windle brushed mortar fragments off the remains of his robe.

“We need to find out,” he said, “about the lives of cities. Specifically, I need to know—”

There was a faint jangling noise.

A wire basket rolled nonchalantly around the massive stack of the nearest bookcase. It was full of books. It stopped as soon as it realized that it had been seen and contrived to look as though it had never moved at all.

“The mobile stage,” breathed Windle Poons.

The wire basket tried to inch backward without appearing to move. Lupine growled.

“Is that what One-Man-Bucket was talking about?” said Ludmilla. The trolley vanished. The Librarian grunted, and went after it.

“Oh, yes. Something that would make itself useful,” said Windle, suddenly almost manically cheerful. “That’s how it’d work. First, something that you’d want to keep, and put away somewhere. Thousands wouldn’t get the right conditions, but that wouldn’t matter, because there would
be
thousands. And then the next stage would be something that would be handy, and get everywhere, and no one would ever think it had got there by itself. But it’s all happening at the wrong time!”

“But how can a city be alive? It’s only made up of dead parts!” said Ludmilla.

“So’re people. Take it from me. I
know
. But you are right. I think. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s all this extra life force. It’s…it’s tipping the balance. It’s turning something that isn’t really real into a reality. And it’s happening too early, and it’s happening too fast…”

There was a squeal from the Librarian. The trolley erupted from another row of shelves, wheels a blur, heading for the hole in the wall, with the orangutan hanging on grimly with one hand and flapping behind it like a very fat flag.

The wolf leapt.

“Lupine!” shouted Windle.

But from the days when the first cavemen rolled a slice of log down a hill, canines have also had a deep racial urge to chase anything on wheels. Lupine was already snapping at the trolley.

His jaws met on a wheel. There was a howl, a scream from the Librarian, and ape, wolf and wire basket ended up in a heap against the wall.

“Oh, the poor thing! Look at him!”

Ludmilla rushed across the floor and knelt down by the stricken wolf.

“It went right over his paws, look!”

“And he’s probably lost a couple of teeth,” said Windle. He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape’s eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.

He reached down and wrenched the wheels off the trolley.

“Olé,” said Windle.

“Oook?”

“No, Not ‘with milk’,” said Windle.

Lupine was having his head cradled in Ludmilla’s lap. He had lost a tooth, and his fur was a mess. He opened one eye and fixed Windle with a conspiratorial yellow stare while his ears were stroked. There’s a lucky dog, thought Windle, who’s going to push his luck and hold up a paw and whine.

“Right,” said Windle. “Now, Librarian…you were about to help us, I think.”

“Poor brave dog,” said Ludmilla.

Lupine raised a paw pathetically, and whined.

Burdened by the screaming form of the Bursar, the other wire basket couldn’t get up to the speed of its departed comrade. One wheel also trailed uselessly. It canted recklessly from side to side and nearly fell over as it shot through the gates, moving sideways.

“I can see it clear! I can see it clear!” screamed the Dean.

“Don’t! You might hit the Bursar!” bellowed Ridcully. “You might damage University property!”

But the Dean couldn’t hear for the roar of unaccustomed testosterone. A searing green fireball struck the skewing trolley. The air was filled with flying wheels.

Ridcully took a deep breath.

“You stupid—!” he screamed.

The word he uttered was unfamiliar to those wizards who had not had his robust country up-bringing and knew nothing of the finer points of animal husbandry. But it plopped into existence a few inches from his face; it was fat, round, black and glossy, with horrible eyebrows. It blew him an insectile raspberry and flew up to join the little swarm of curses.

“What the hell was that?”

A smaller thing flashed into existence by his ear.

Ridcully snatched at his hat.

“Damn!”—the swarm increased by one—“Something just bit me!”

A squadron of newly-hatched Blasteds made a valiant bid for freedom. He swatted at them ineffectually.

“Get away, you b—” he began.

“Don’t say it!” said the Senior Wrangler. “Shut up!”

People never told the Archchancellor to shut up. Shutting up was something that happened to other people. He shut up out of shock.

“I mean, every time you swear it comes alive,” said the Senior Wrangler hurriedly. “Ghastly little winged things pop out of the air.”

“Bloody hellfire!” said the Archchancellor.

Pop. Pop.

The Bursar crawled dazed out of the tangled wreckage of the wire trolley. He found his pointy hat, dusted it off, tried it on, frowned, and took a wheel out of it. His colleagues didn’t seem to be paying him much attention.

He heard the Archchancellor say, “But I’ve always done it! Nothing wrong with a good swear, it keeps the blood flowing. Watch out, Dean, one of the bug—”

“Can’t you say something else?” shouted the Senior Wrangler, above the buzz and whine of the swarm.

“Like what?”

“Like…oh…like…darn.”

“Darn?”
.

“Yes, or maybe poot.”

“
Poot?
You want me to say
poot?
”

The Bursar crept up to the group. Arguing over petty details at times of dimensional emergency was a familiar wizardly trait.

“Mrs. Whitlow the housekeeper always says ‘Sugar!’ when she drops something,” he volunteered.

The Archchancellor turned on him.

“She may
say
sugar,” he growled, “but what she
means
is shi—”

The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself.

“Oh, darn,” he said miserably. The swear-words settled amiably on his hat.

“They like you,” said the Dean.

“You’re their daddy,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

Ridcully scowled. “You b—boys can stop being silly at your Archchancellor’s expense and da—jolly well find out what’s going on,” he said.

The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared.

“You’re doing fine,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Keep it up.”

“Darn darn darn,” said the Archchancellor. “Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty pootity poot.” He shook his head. “It’s no good, it doesn’t relieve my feelings one bit.”

“It’s cleared the air, at any rate,” said the Bursar.

They noticed his presence for the first time.

They looked at the remains of the trolley.

“Things zooming around,” said Ridcully. “Things coming alive.”

They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child.

The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates.

The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along gamely at the back of the crowd.

“What happened?”

“I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and ran away on me!”

“What about the child?”

“Search me. This woman had one of the baskets and she bought some peaches off of me an’ then—”

They all turned. A basket rattled out of the mouth of an alleyway, saw them, turned smartly and shot off across the square.

“But why?” said Ridcully.

“They’re so handy to put things in, right?” said the man. “I got to get them peaches. You know how they bruise.”

“And they’re all going in the same direction,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Anyone else notice that?”

“After them!” screamed the Dean. The other wizards, too bewildered to argue, lumbered after him.

“No—” Ridcully began, and realized that it was hopeless. And he was losing the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the history of bowdlerism.

“Darn them to Heck!” he yelled, and ran after the Dean.

Bill Door worked through the long heavy afternoon, at the head of a trail of binders and stackers.

Until there was a shout, and the men ran toward the hedge.

Iago Peedbury’s big field was right on the other side. His farmhands were wheeling the Combination Harvester through the gate.

Bill joined the others leaning over the hedge. The distant figure of Simnel could be seen, giving instructions. A frightened horse was backed into the shafts. The blacksmith climbed into the little metal seat in the middle of the machinery and took up the reins.

The horse walked forward. The sparge arms unfolded. The canvas sheets started to revolve, and probably the riffling screw was turning, but that didn’t matter because something somewhere went “clonk” and everything stopped.

From the crowd at the hedge there were shouts of “Get out and milk it!”, “We had one but the end fell off!”, “Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!” and other time-honored witticisms.

Simnel got down, held a whispered conversation with Peedbury and his men, and then disappeared into the machinery for a moment.

“It’ll never fly!”

“Veal will be cheap tomorrow!”

This time the Combination Harvester got several feet before one of the rotating sheets split and folded up.

By now some of the older men at the hedge were doubled up with laughter.

“Any old iron, sixpence a load!”

“Fetch the other one, this one’s broke!”

Simnel got down again. Distant catcalls drifted toward him as he untied the sheet and replaced it with a new one; he ignored them.

Without moving his gaze from the scene in the opposite field, Bill Door pulled a sharpening stone out of his pocket and began to hone his scythe, slowly and deliberately.