Unseen Academicals (8 page)

‘What?’ With a shrug, the boy decided to gamble, what with having had no breakfast.

‘Loop Alley off the Scours, ’arp arsed one, an’ I’ve never seen you before in my life, got it?’

‘That is quite probable,’ said Ridcully, and snapped his fingers.

The tin dropped into the urchin’s waiting hand. He shook out the silver coin and grinned. ‘Best o’ luck to you, guv.’

‘Is there anything to eat at these affairs?’ said Ridcully, for whom lunchtime was a sacrament.

‘There’s pies, guv, pease pudding, jellied eel pies, pie and mash, lobster…pies, but mostly they are just pies. Just pies, sir. Made of pie.’

‘What kind?’

His informant looked shocked. ‘They’re pies, guv. You don’t ask.’

Ridcully nodded. ‘And as a final transaction, I’ll pay you one penny for a kick of your can.’

‘Tuppence,’ said the boy promptly.

‘You little scamp, we have a deal.’

Ridcully dropped the can on the toe of his boot, balanced it for a moment, then flicked it into the air and, as it came down, hit it with a roundhouse kick that sent it spinning over the crowd.

‘Not bad, granddad,’ said the kid, grinning. In the distance there was a yell and the sound of someone bent on retribution.

Ridcully plunged a hand into his pocket and looked down. ‘Two dollars to start running, kid. You won’t get a better deal today!’ The boy laughed, grabbed the coins and ran. Ridcully walked on sedately, while the years fell back on him like snow.

He found Ponder Stibbons pinning up a notice on the board just outside the Great Hall. He did this quite a lot. Ridcully assumed it made him feel better in some way.

He slapped Ponder on the back, causing him to spill drawing pins all over the flagstones.

‘It is a bulletin from the Ankh Committee on Safety, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder, scrabbling for the spinning, wayward pins.

‘This is a university of magic, Stibbons. We have no business with safety. Just being a wizard is unsafe, and so it should be.’

‘Yes, Archchancellor.’

‘But I should pick up all those pins if I were you, you can’t be too careful. Tell me-didn’t we use to have a sports master here?’

‘Yes, sir. Evans the Striped. He vanished about forty years ago, I believe.’

‘Killed? It was dead men’s shoes in those days, you know.’

‘I can’t imagine who would want his job. Apparently he evaporated while doing press-ups in the Great Hall one day.’

‘Evaporated? What kind of death is that for a wizard? Any wizard would die of shame if he just evaporated. We always leave
something
behind, even if it’s only smoke. Oh, well. Cometh the hour, cometh the…whatever. General comethness, perhaps. What is that thinking engine of yours doing these days?’

Ponder brightened. ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, Hex has just discovered a new particle. It travels faster than light in two directions at once!’

‘Can we make it do anything interesting?’

‘Well yes! It totally explodes Spolwhittle’s Trans-Congruency Theory!’

‘Good,’ said Ridcully cheerfully. ‘Just so long as something explodes. Since it’s finished exploding, set it to finding either Evans or a decent substitute. Sports masters are pretty elementary particles, it shouldn’t be difficult. And call a meeting of the Council in ten minutes. We are going to play football!’

Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness; this, Ridcully reflected as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got
its, correction,
her
boots on, since she would have to choose which pair–the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. Indeed, as a goddess she would have lots of shoes, and thus many choices: comfy shoes for home truths, hobnail boots for unpleasant truths, simple clogs for universal truths and possibly some kind of slipper for self-evident truth. More important right now was what kind of truth he was going to have to impart to his colleagues, and he decided not on the whole truth, but instead on nothing but the truth, which dispensed with the need for honesty.

‘Well, go on, then, what did he say?’

‘He responded to reasoned argument.’

‘He did? Where’s the catch?’

‘None. But he wants the rules to be more traditional.’

‘Surely not! Gather they are practically prehistoric as it is!’

‘And he wants the university to take the lead in all this, and quickly. Gentlemen, there is a game going to be played in about three hours’ time. I suggest we observe it. And to this end, I will require you to wear…trousers.’

After a while Ridcully took out his watch, which was one of the old-fashioned imp-driven ones and was reliably inaccurate. He flipped up the gold lid and stared patiently as the little creature pedalled the hands around. When the expostulating had not stopped after a minute and a half, he snapped the lid shut. The click had an effect that no amount of extra shouting could have achieved.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said gravely. ‘We must partake of the game of the people–from whom, I might add, we derive. Has any of us, in the last few decades, even seen the game being played? I thought not. We should get outside more. Now, I’m not asking you to do this for me, or even for the hundreds of people who work to provide us with a life in which discomfort so seldom rears its head. Yes, many other ugly heads have reared, it is true, but dinner has always beckoned. We are, fellow wizards, the city’s last line of defence against all the horrors that can be thrown against it. However, none of them are as potentially dangerous
as us. Yes, indeed. I don’t know what might happen if wizards were really hungry. So do this, I implore you on this one occasion, for the sake of the cheeseboard.’

There had been some nobler calls to arms in history, Ridcully would be the first to admit, but this one was well tailored to its target audience. There was some grumbling, but that was the same as saying that the sky was blue.

‘What about lunch?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes suspiciously.

‘We’ll eat early,’ said Ridcully, ‘and I am told that the pies at the game are just–amazing.’

Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth.

Nutt was already waiting with a proud but worried look on his face when Glenda got in to the Night Kitchen. She didn’t notice him at first, but she turned back from hanging her coat on its peg and there he was, holding a couple of dishes in front of him like shields.

She almost had to shade her eyes because they gleamed so brightly.

‘I hope this is all right,’ said Nutt nervously.

‘What have you done?’

‘I plated them with silver, miss.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘Oh, there’s all kinds of old stuff in the cellars and, well, I know how to do things. It won’t cause trouble for anyone, will it?’ Nutt added, looking suddenly anxious.

Glenda wondered if it would. It shouldn’t, but you could never be sure with Mrs Whitlow. Well, she could solve that problem by hiding them somewhere until they tarnished.

‘It’s kind of you to take the trouble. I generally have to chase people to get plates back. You are a real gentleman,’ she said, and his face lit up like a sunrise.

‘You are very kind,’ he beamed, ‘and a very handsome lady with your two enormous chests that indicate bountifulness and fecundity—’

The morning air froze in one enormous block. He could tell he’d said something wrong, but he had no idea what it was.

Glenda looked around to see if anyone had heard, but the huge gloomy room was otherwise empty. She was always the first one in and the last one out. Then she said, ‘Stay right there. Don’t you dare move an inch! Not an inch! And don’t steal any chickens!’ she commanded as an afterthought.

She should have trailed steam as she headed out of the room, her boots echoing on the flagstones. What a thing to come out with! Who did he think he was? Come to that, who did she think he was? And what did she think he was?

The cellars and undercrofts of the university were a small city in themselves, and bakers and butchers turned to look as she clattered past. She didn’t dare stop now; it would be too embarrassing.

If you knew all the passages and stairs, and if they stayed still for five minutes, it was possible to get to just about anywhere in the university without going above ground. Probably none of the wizards knew the maze. Not many of them cared to know the dull details of domestic management. Hah, they thought the dinners turned up by magic!

A small set of stone steps led up to the little door. Hardly anyone used it these days. The other girls wouldn’t go in there. But Glenda would. Even after the very first time that she had, in response to the bell, delivered the midnight banana, or rather had failed to deliver it on account of running away screaming, she knew she’d have to face it again. After all, we can’t help how we’re made, her mother had said, and nor can we help what a magical accident might turn us into through no fault of our own, as Mrs Whitlow had explained slightly more recently, when the screaming had stopped. And so Glenda had picked up the banana and had headed right back there.

Now, of course, she was surprised that anyone might find it odd that the custodian of all the knowledge that could be was a reddish brown and generally hung several feet above his desk, and she was pretty certain that she knew at least fourteen meanings of the word ‘ook’.

As it was daytime, the huge building beyond the little door was
bustling, insofar as the word can be applied to a library. She headed towards the nearest lesser librarian, who failed to look the other way in time, and demanded: ‘I need to see a dictionary of embarrassing words beginning with F!’

His haughty glance softened somewhat when he realized she was a cook. Wizards always had a place in their hearts for cooks, because it was near their stomach.

‘Ah, then I think Birdcatcher’s
Discomforting Misusage
will be our friend here,’ he said cheerfully, and led her to a lectern, where she spent several enlightening minutes before heading back the way she had come, a little wiser and a great deal more embarrassed.

Nutt was still standing where she’d told him to stand, and looked terrified.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know what you meant,’ she said, and thought: abundant, productive and fruitful. Well, yes, I can see how he got there, worse luck, but that’s not me, not really me. I think. I hope.

‘Um, it was kind of you to say that about me,’ she said, ‘but you should have used more appropriate language.’

‘Ah, yes, I’m so sorry,’ said Nutt. ‘Mister Trev told me about this. I should not talk posh. I should have said that you have enormous t—’

‘Just stop there, will you? Trevor Likely is teaching
you
elocution?’

‘Don’t tell me, I know this one…You mean talkin’ proper?’ said Nutt. ‘Yes, and he’s promised to take me to the football,’ he added proudly.

This led to some explanation, which only made Glenda gloomy. Trev was right, of course. People who didn’t know long words tended to be edgy around people who did. That’s why her male neighbours, like Mr Stollop and his mates, distrusted nearly everybody. Their wives, on the other hand, shared a much larger if somewhat specialized vocabulary owing to the cheap romantic novels that passed like contraband from scullery to washhouse, in every street. That’s why Glenda knew ‘elocution’, ‘torrid’, ‘boudoir’ and ‘reticule’, although she wasn’t too certain about ‘reticule’ and ‘boudoir’, and avoided using them, which in
the general scheme of things was not hard. She was deeply suspicious about what a lady’s boudoir might be, and certainly wasn’t going to ask anybody, even in the Library, just in case they laughed.

‘And he’s going to take you to the football, is he? Mister Nutt, you will stand out like a diamond in a sweep’s earhole!’

Do not stand out from the crowd.
There were so many things to remember!

‘He says he will look after me,’ said Nutt, hanging his head. ‘Er, I was wondering who that nice young lady was who was in here last night,’ he added desperately, as transparent as air.

‘He asked you to ask me, right?’

Lie. Stay safe.
But Ladyship wasn’t here! And the nice apple-pie lady was right here in front of him! It was too complicated!

‘Yes,’ he said meekly.

And Glenda surprised herself. ‘Her name is Juliet, and she lives bang next door to me so he’d better not come round, okay? Juliet Stollop, see if he likes that.’

‘You fear he will press his suit?’

‘Her dad will press a lot more than that if he sees he’s a Dimmer supporter!’

Nutt looked blank, so she went on: ‘Don’t you know anything? Dimwell Old Pals? The football team? The Dollies are Dolly Sisters Football Club. Dollies hate the Dimmers, the Dimmers hate the Dollies! It’s always been like that!’

‘What could have caused such a difference between them?’

‘What? There is no difference between them, not when you’ve got past the colours! They’re two teams, alike in villainy! Dolly Sisters wears white and black, Dimwell wears pink and green. It’s all about football. Bloody, bloody, clogging, hacking, punching, gouging, silly football!’ The bitterness in Glenda’s voice would have soured cream.

‘But you have a Dolly Sisters scarf!’

‘When you live there, it’s safer that way. Anyway, you have to support your own.’

‘But is it not a game, like spillikins or halma or Thud?’

‘No! It’s more like war, but without the kindness and consideration!’

‘Oh, dear. But war is not kind, is it?’ said Nutt, bewilderment clouding his face.

‘No!’

‘Oh, I see. You were being ironic.’

She gave him a sideways look. ‘I might have been,’ she conceded. ‘You are an odd one, Mister Nutt. Where are you from, really?’

The old panic contained again.
Be harmless. Be helpful. Make friends. Lie.
But how did you lie to friends?

‘I must go,’ he said, scurrying down the stone steps. ‘Mister Trev will be waiting!’