Reaper Man (2 page)

The young tree, which was a mere five thousand, one hundred and eleven years old, said: “What sort of Better Place?”

“We’re not sure,” said one of the clump. It trembled uneasily in a week-long gale. “But we think it involves…sawdust.”

Since the trees were unable even to sense any event that took place in less than a day, they never heard the sound of axes.

Windle Poons, oldest wizard in the entire faculty of Unseen University—

—home of magic, wizardry and big dinners—

—was also going to die.

He knew it, in a frail and shaky sort of way.

Of course, he mused, as he wheeled his wheelchair over the flagstones toward his ground-floor study, in a
general
sort of way everyone knew they were going to die, even the common people. No one knew where you were before you were born, but when you
were
born, it wasn’t long before you found you’d arrived with your return ticket already punched.

But wizards
really
knew. Not if death involved violence or murder, of course, but if the cause of death was simply a case of running out of life then…well, you knew. You generally got the premonition in time to return your library books and make sure your best suit was clean and borrow quite large sums of money from your friends.

He was one hundred and thirty. It occurred to him that for most of his life he’d been an old man. Didn’t seem fair, really.

And no one had said anything. He’d mentioned it in the Uncommon Room last week, and no one had taken the hint. And at lunch today they’d hardly spoken to him. Even his old so-called friends seemed to be avoiding him, and he wasn’t even
trying
to borrow money.

It was like not having your birthday remembered, only worse.

He was going to die all alone, and no one cared.

He bumped the door open with the wheel of the chair and fumbled on the table by the door for the tinder box.

That was another thing. Hardly anyone used tinder boxes these days. They bought the big smelly yellow matches the alchemists made. Windle disapproved. Fire was important. You shouldn’t be able to switch it on just like that, it didn’t show any respect. That was people these days, always rushing around and…fires. Yes, it had been a lot warmer in the old days, too. The kind of fires they had these days didn’t warm you up unless you were nearly on top of them. It was something in the wood…it was the wrong sort of wood. Everything was wrong these days. More
thin
. More fuzzy. No real life in anything. And the days were shorter. Mmm. Something had gone wrong with the days. They were shorter days. Mmm. Everyday took an age to go by, which was odd, because days
plural
went past like a stampede. There weren’t many things people wanted a 130-year-old wizard to do, and Windle had got into the habit of arriving at the dining-table up to two hours before each meal, simply to pass the time.

Endless days, going by fast. Didn’t make sense. Mmm. Mind you, you didn’t get the sense now that you used to get in the old days.

And they let the University be run by mere boys now. In the old days it had been run by
proper
wizards, great big men built like barges, the kinds of wizards you could look up to. Then suddenly they’d all gone off somewhere and Windle was being patronized by these boys who still had some of their own teeth. Like that Ridcully lad. Windle remembered him clearly. Thin lad, sticking-out ears, never wiped his nose properly, cried for his mother in the dorm on the first night. Always up to mischief. Someone had tried to tell Windle that Ridcully was Archchancellor now. Mmm. They must think he was daft.

Where was that damn tinder box? Fingers…you used to get proper fingers in the old days…

Someone pulled the covers off a lantern. Someone else pushed a drink into his groping hand.

“Surprise!”

In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present. (There was, of course, a present
before
the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.)

The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe give it all up and start again as a stand-up comedian on the scampi-in-a-casket circuit. It swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity.

Death stalked past the clock and into the somber gloom of his study. Albert, his servant, was waiting for him with the towel and dusters.

“Good morning, master.”

Death sat down silently in his big chair. Albert draped the towel over the angular shoulders.

“Another nice day,” he said, conversationally.

Death said nothing.

Albert flapped the polishing cloth and pulled back Death’s cowl.

A
LBERT
.

“Sir?”

Death pulled out the tiny golden timer.

D
O YOU SEE THIS
?

“Yes, sir. Very nice. Never seen one like that before. Whose is it?”

M
INE
.

Albert’s eyes swiveled sideways. On one corner of Death’s desk was a large timer in a black frame. It contained no sand.

“I thought that one was yours, sir?” he said.

I
T WAS
. N
OW THIS IS
. A
RETIREMENT PRESENT
. F
ROM
A
ZRAEL HIMSELF
.

Albert peered at the thing in Death’s hand.

“But…the sand, sir. It’s
pouring
.”

Q
UITE SO
.

“But that means…I mean…?”

I
T MEANS THAT ONE DAY THE SAND WILL ALL BE POURED
, A
LBERT
.

“I know that, sir, but…you…I thought Time was something that happened to other people, sir. Doesn’t it? Not to
you
, sir.” By the end of the sentence Albert’s voice was beseeching.

Death pulled off the towel and stood up.

C
OME WITH ME
.

“But you’re
Death
, master,” said Albert, running crab-legged after the tall figure as it led the way out into the hall and down the passage to the stable. “This isn’t some sort of joke, is it?” he added hopefully.

I
AM NOT KNOWN FOR MY SENSE OF FUN
.

“Well, of course not, no offense meant. But listen, you can’t die, because you’re Death, you’d have to happen to yourself, it’d be like that snake that eats its own tail—”

N
EVERTHELESS
, I
AM GOING TO DIE
. T
HERE IS NO APPEAL
.

“But what will happen to
me?
” Albert said. Terror glittered on his words like flakes of metal on the edge of a knife.

T
HERE WILL BE A NEW
D
EATH
.

Albert drew himself up.

“I really don’t think I could serve a new master,” he said.

T
HEN GO BACK INTO THE WORLD
. I
WILL GIVE YOU MONEY
. Y
OU HAVE BEEN A GOOD SERVANT
, A
LBERT
.

“But if I go back—”

Y
ES
, said Death. Y
OU WILL DIE
.

In the warm, horsey gloom of the stable, Death’s pale horse looked up from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse’s name was Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed.

Death took the saddle down from its hook and glanced at Albert, who was suffering a crisis of conscience.

Thousands of years before, Albert had opted to serve Death rather than die. He wasn’t exactly immortal. Real time was forbidden in Death’s realm. There was only the ever-changing
now
, but it went on for a very long time. He had less than two months of real time left; he hoarded his days like bars of gold.

“I, er…” he began. “That is—”

Y
OU FEAR TO DIE
?

“It’s not that I don’t want…I mean, I’ve always…it’s just that life is a habit that’s hard to break…”

Death watched him curiously, as one might watch a beetle that had landed on its back and couldn’t turn over.

Finally Albert lapsed into silence.

I
UNDERSTAND
, said Death, unhooking Binky’s bridle.

“But you don’t seem worried! You’re really going to
die?
”

Y
ES
. I
T WILL BE A GREAT ADVENTURE
.

“It will? You’re not afraid?”

I
DO NOT KNOW HOW TO BE AFRAID
.

“I could show you, if you like,” Albert ventured.

N
O
. I
SHOULD LIKE TO LEARN BY MYSELF
. I
SHALL HAVE EXPERIENCES
. A
T LAST
.

“Master…if you go, will there be—?”

A
NEW
D
EATH WILL ARISE FROM THE MINDS OF THE LIVING
, A
LBERT
.

“Oh.” Albert looked relieved. “You don’t happen to know what he’ll be like, do you?”

NO.

“Perhaps I’d better, you know, clean the place up a bit, get an inventory prepared, that sort of thing?”

G
OOD IDEA
, said Death, as kindly as possible. W
HEN I SEE THE NEW
D
EATH
, I
SHALL HEARTILY RECOMMEND YOU
.

“Oh. You’ll see him, then?”

O
H
,
YES
.
A
ND
I MUST
LEAVE NOW
.

“What, so soon?”

C
ERTAINLY
. M
USTN’T WASTE
T
IME
! Death adjusted the saddle, and then turned and held the tiny hourglass proudly in front of Albert’s hooked nose.

S
EE
! I
HAVE
T
IME
. A
T LAST
, I
HAVE
T
IME
!

Albert backed away nervously.

“And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?” he said.

Death mounted his horse.

I
AM GOING TO
SPEND IT
.

The party was in full swing. The banner with the legend “Goodebye Windle 130 Gloriouse Years” was drooping a bit in the heat. Things were getting to the point where there was nothing to drink but the punch and nothing to eat but the strange yellow dip with highly suspicious tortillas and
nobody minded
. The wizards chatted with the forced jolliness of people who see one another all day and are now seeing one another all evening.

In the middle of it all Windle Poons sat with a huge glass of rum and a funny hat on his head. He was almost in tears.

“A genuine Going-Away party!” he kept muttering. “Haven’t had one of them since old ‘Scratcher’ Hocksole Went Away,” the capital letters fell into place easily, “back in, mm, the Year of the Intimidating, mm, Porpoise. Thought everyone had forgotten about ’em.”

“The Librarian looked up the details for us,” said the Bursar, indicating a large orangutan who was trying to blow into a party squeaker. “He also made the banana dip. I hope someone eats it soon.”

He leaned down.

“Can I help you to some more potato salad?” he said, in the loud deliberate voice used for talking to imbeciles and old people.

Windle cupped a trembling hand to his ear.

“What? What?”

“More! salad! Windle?”

“No, thank you.”

“Another sausage, then?”

“What?”

“Sausage!”

“They give me terrible gas all night,” said Windle. He considered this for a moment, and then took five.

“Er,” shouted the Bursar, “do you happen to know what time—?”

“Eh?”

“What! Time?”

“Half past nine,” said Windle, promptly if indistinctly.

“Well, that’s nice,” said the Bursar. “It gives you the rest of the evening, er, free.”

Windle rummaged in the dreadful recesses of his wheelchair, a graveyard for old cushions, dog-eared books and ancient, half-sucked sweets. He flourished a small green-covered book and pushed it into the Bursar’s hands.

The Bursar turned it over. Scrawled on the cover were the words: Windle Poons Hys Dyary. Apiece of bacon rind marked today’s date.

Under Things to Do, a crabbed hand had written: Die.

The Bursar couldn’t stop himself from turning the page.

Yes. Under tomorrow’s date, Things to Do: Get Born.

His gaze slid sideways to a small table at the side of the room. Despite the fact that the room was quite crowded, there was an area of clear floor around the table, as if it had some kind of personal space that no one was about to invade.

There had been special instructions in the Going Away ceremony concerning the table. It had to have a black cloth, with a few magic sigils embroidered on it. It had a plate, containing a selection of the better canapés. It had a glass of wine. After considerable discussion among the wizards, a funny paper hat had been added as well.

They all had an expectant look.

The Bursar took out his watch and flicked open the lid.

It was one of the new-fangled pocket watches, with hands. They pointed to a quarter past nine. He shook it. A small hatch opened under the 12 and a very small demon poked its head out and said, “Knock it off, guv’nor, I’m pedalling as fast as I can.”

He closed the watch again and looked around desperately. No one else seemed anxious to come too near Windle Poons. The Bursar felt it was up to him to make polite conversation. He surveyed possible topics. They all presented problems.

Windle Poons helped him out.

“I’m thinking of coming back as a woman,” he said conversationally.

The Bursar opened and shut his mouth a few times.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Poons went on. “I think it might, mm, be jolly good fun.”