Unseen Academicals (10 page)

Her ever-straining ears caught the sound of next door’s front door
opening very slowly. Ha! Juliet jumped as Glenda suddenly loomed beside her.

‘Off somewhere?’

‘Gonna watch the game, ain’t I?’

Glenda glanced up the street. A figure was disappearing rapidly around the corner. She grinned a grim grin.

‘Oh yes. Good idea. I wasn’t doing anything. Just wait while I fetch my scarf, will you?’ To herself she added, You just keep walking, Johnny!

With a thump that caused pigeons to explode away like a detonating daisy, the Librarian landed on his chosen rooftop.

He liked football. Something about the shouting and the fighting appealed to his ancestral memories. And this was fascinating, because, strictly speaking, his ancestors had been blamelessly engaged for centuries as upstanding corn and feed merchants and, moreover, were allergic to heights.

He sat down on the parapet with his feet over the edge, and his nostrils flared as he snuffed up the scents rising from below.

It is said that the onlooker sees most of the game. But the Librarian could smell as well, and the game, seen from outside, was humanity. Not a day went past without his thanking the magical accident that had moved him a few little genes away from it. Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, ‘The mountain is, and is not.’ They would think, ‘The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.’

He peeled one now, in a preoccupied way, while watching the evolving tableau below. Not only does said onlooker see most of the game, he might even see more than one game.

This street was indeed a crescent, which would probably have an effect on tactics if the players had any truck with such high-flown concepts.

People were pouring in from either end and also from a couple of alleyways. Mostly they were male-extremely so. The women fell into two categories: those who had been tugged there by the ties of blood or
prospective matrimony (after which they could stop pretending that this bloody mess was in any way engrossing), and a number of elderly women of a ‘sweet old lady’ construction, who bawled indiscriminately, in a rising cloud of lavender and peppermint, screams of ‘Get ’im dahn an’ kick ’im inna nuts!’ and similar exhortations.

And there was another smell now, one he’d learned to recognize but could not quite fathom. It was the smell of Nutt. Tangled with it were the smells of tallow, cheap soap and shonky-shop clothing that the ape part of him categorized as belonging to ‘Tin Flinging Man’. He had been just another servant in the maze of the university, but now he was a friend of Nutt, and Nutt was important. He was also wrong. He had no place in the world, but he was in it, and the world was becoming aware of him soon enough.

The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing. There had been no space in the fabric of reality marked ‘simian librarian’ until he’d been dropped into one, and the ripples had made his life a very strange one.

Ah, another scent was riding the gentle updraught. It was easy: Screaming Banana Pie Woman. The Librarian liked her. Oh, she had screamed and run away the first time she’d seen him. They all did. But she had come back, and she’d smelled ashamed. She also respected the primacy of words, and, as a primate, so did he. And sometimes she baked him a banana pie, which was a kind act. The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you. She was a friend of Nutt, too. Nutt made friends easily for someone who had come from nowhere. Interesting…

The Librarian, despite appearances, liked order. Books about cabbages went on the Brassica shelves, (blit) UUSSFY890–9046 (antiblit1.1), although obviously
Mr Cauliflower’s Big Adventure
would be better placed in UUSS J3.2 (>blit) 9, while
The Tau of Cabbage
would certainly be a candidate for UUSS (blit+) 60-sp55-o9-hl (blit). To anyone familiar with a seven-dimensional library system in blit
dimensional space it was as clear as daylight, if you remembered to keep your eye on the blit.

Ah, and here came his fellow wizards, walking awkwardly in the chafing trousers and trying so hard not to stand out in a crowd that they would have stood out even more if the rest of the crowd had been the least bit interested.

Nobody noticed. It was enthralling and exciting at the same time, Ridcully concluded. Normally the pointy hat, robe and staff cleared the way faster than a troll with an axe.

They were being pushed! And shoved! But it was not as unpleasant as the words suggested. There were moderate pressures on all sides as people poured in behind, as though the wizards were standing chest deep in the sea, and were swaying and shifting to the slow rhythm of the tide.

‘My goodness,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Is this football? It’s a bit dull, isn’t it?’

‘Pies were mentioned,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, craning his neck.

‘People are still coming in, guv,’ said Ottomy.

‘But however do we see things?’

‘Depends on the Shove, guv. Usually people near the action shout out.’

‘Ah, I see a pie seller,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. He took a couple of steps forward, there was a random shift and sway in the crowd, and he vanished.

‘How is it now, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt, as people surged around them.

‘Hurts like buggery, excuse my Klatchian,’ muttered Trev, clutching his injured arm to his coat. ‘Are you sure you weren’t holding a hammer?’

‘No hammer, Mister Trev. I’m sorry, but you did ask me—’

‘I know, I know. Where did you learn to punch like that?’

‘Never learned, Mister Trev. I must never raise my hand to another person! But you went on so, and—’

‘I mean, you’re so skinny!’

‘Long bones, Mister Trev, long muscles. I really am very sorry!’

‘My fault, Gobbo, I didn’t know your own strength—’ Suddenly Trev shot forward, cannoning into Nutt.

‘Where’ve you been, my man?’ said the person who had just slapped him hard on the back. ‘We said to meet at the eel-pie stall!’

Now the speaker looked at Nutt and his eyes narrowed. ‘And who’s this stranger who thinks he’s one of us?’

He did not exactly glare at Nutt, but there was a definite sense of a weighing in the balance, and on unfriendly scales.

Trev brushed himself off, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed. ‘Hi, Andy. Er, this is Nutt. He works for me.’

‘What as? A bog brush?’ said Andy. There was laughter from the group behind him. Andy always got a laugh. It was the first thing you noticed, after the glint in his eye.

‘Andy’s dad is captain of Dimwell, Gobbo.’

‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Nutt, extending a hand.

‘Ooo, pleased to meet you, sir,’ Andy mimicked, and Trev grimaced as a calloused hand the size of a plate grasped Nutt’s cheese-straw fingers.

‘He’s got hands like a girl,’ Andy observed, taking a grip.

‘Mister Trev has been telling me wonderful things about the Dimmers, sir,’ said Nutt. Andy grunted. Trev saw his knuckles whiten with effort while Nutt chattered. ‘The camaraderie of the sport must be a wonderful thing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Andy grunted, finally managing to pull his hand away, his face full of angry puzzlement.

‘And this is my mate, Maxie,’ said Trev quickly, ‘and this is Carter the Farter—’

‘It’s Fartmeister now,’ said Carter.

‘Yeah, right. And this is Jumbo. You want to watch out for him. He’s a thief. Jumbo can pick a lock faster than you can pick your nose.’

The said Jumbo held up a small bronze badge. ‘Guild, of course,’ he said. ‘They nail your ears to the door else.’

‘You mean you break the law for a living?’ said Nutt, horrified.

‘Ain’t you ever heard of the Thieves’ Guild?’ said Andy.

‘Gobbo’s new,’ said Trev protectively. ‘Hasn’t got out much. He’s a goblin, from the high country.’

‘Coming down here, taking our jobs, yeah?’ said Carter.

‘Like, how often do you do a hand’s turn?’ said Trev.

‘Well, I might want to one day.’

‘Milking the cows when they come home?’ said Andy. This got another laugh, on cue. And that was the introductions sorted out, to Nutt’s surprise. He’d been expecting chicken theft to be mentioned. Instead, Carter pulled a couple of tin cans out of a pocket and tossed them to Nutt and Trev.

‘Did a few hours’ unloading down the docks, didn’t I?’ he said defensively, as though a bit of casual labour was some kind of offence. ‘This come off a boat from Fourecks.’

Jumbo fished in his pocket again and pulled out someone else’s watch.

‘Game on in five minutes,’ he declared. ‘Let’s shove…er, if that’s all right with you, Andy?’

Andy nodded. Jumbo looked relieved. It was always important that things were all right with Andy. And Andy was still watching Nutt as a cat watches an unexpectedly cheeky mouse, while massaging his hand.

Mr Ottomy cleared his throat, causing his red Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an indecisive sunset. Shouting in public, yes, he liked that, he was good at that. Speaking in public, now, that was a different kettle of humiliation.

‘Well, er, gents, what we will have here is your actual football, what is basically about the Shove, which is what you gentlemen will be doing soon—’

‘I thought we watched two groups of players vie with one another to get the ball in the opponents’ goal?’

‘Could be, sir, could very much be,’ the bledlow conceded, ‘but in the
streets, see, your actual supporters on both sides try and endeavour to shorten the length of the field, as it were, depending on the flow of play, so to speak.’

‘Like living walls, d’y’mean?’ said Ridcully.

‘That style of thing, sir, yes, sir,’ said Ottomy loyally.

‘What about the goals?’

‘Oh, they’re allowed to move the goals, too.’

‘Sorry?’ said Ponder. ‘The spectators can move the goals?’

‘You have put your finger firmly on it, sir.’

‘But that’s sheer anarchy! It’s a mess!’

‘Some of the old boys do say the game has gone downhill, sir, that is true.’

‘Downhill, into and out through the bottom of the world, I’d say.’

‘Good one to play with magic, though,’ said Dr Hix. ‘Well worth a try.’

‘A word to the wise, sir,’ said Ottomy with unwitting accuracy, ‘but you’d be wearing your guts for garters if you tried it with some of the types who play these days. They take it seriously.’

‘Mister Ottomy, I’m sure none of my blokes wear garters—’ Ridcully stopped and listened to Ponder Stibbons’s whispered interjection and continued, ‘well, possibly one, two at most, and it would be a very dull world if we were all the same, that’s what I say.’ He looked around and shrugged. ‘So, this is football, is it? Rather a wizened shell of a game, yes? I, for one, don’t want to stand around all day in the rain while other people have all the fun. Let’s go and find the ball, gentlemen. We are wizards. That must count for something.’

‘I thought we were blokes now,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘Same thing,’ said Ridcully, straining to see over the heads of the crowd.

‘Surely not!’

‘Well,’ said Ridcully, ‘isn’t a bloke someone who likes drinking with his mates and without the company of women? Anyway, I’m fed up with this. Form up behind me, nevertheless. We’re going to see some football.’

The progress of the wizards astonished Ottomy and Nobbs, who had hitherto seen them as fluffy plump creatures quite divorced from real life. But to get to be a senior wizard and stay there called for deep reserves of determination, viciousness and the sugared arrogance that is the mark of every true gentleman, as in ‘Oh, was that your foot? I’m so
terribly
sorry.’

And, of course, there was Dr Hix, a good man to have in a tight spot because he was (by college statute) an officially bad person, in accordance with UU’s happy grasp of the inevitable.
*

A less mature organization than UU might have taken the view that the way forward would be to hunt such renegades down, at great risk and expense. UU, on the other hand, had given Hix and his team a department and a budget and a career structure, and also the chance to go out into dark caves occasionally and throw fireballs at unofficial evil wizards; it all worked rather well so long as nobody pointed out that the Department of Post-Mortem Communications was really, when you got right down to it, just a politer form of n*e*c*r*o*m*a*n*c*y, wasn’t it?

And so Dr Hix was now tolerated as a useful, if slightly irritating member of the Council largely because he was allowed (by statute) to say some of the naughty things that the other wizards would really have liked to say themselves. Someone with a widow’s peak, a skull ring, a sinister staff and a black robe was expected to spread a little evil around the place, although university statute had redefined acceptable evil in this case as being inconveniences on a par with shoelaces tied together or a brief attack of groinal itch. It wasn’t the most satisfactory of arrangements, but it was in the best UU tradition: Hix occupied, amiably, a niche that might otherwise be occupied by someone who really got off on the whole mouldering corpses and peeled skulls thing. Admittedly, he was always giving fellow wizards free tickets to the various amateur dramatic productions he was obsessively involved with,
but, on balance, they agreed, taking one thing with another, this was still better than peeled skulls.

For Hix, a crowd like this was too good to waste. Not only was there a plethora of bootlaces to be expertly tied together, but there were an awful lot of pockets as well. He always had some flyers for the next production in his robe,
*
and it wasn’t the same as picking pockets. Quite the reverse. He stuffed them into any he could find.

The day was all a mystery to Nutt, and it stayed a mystery, becoming a little more mysterious with every passing minute. In the distance a whistle was blown and somewhere in this moving, jostling, crushing and in most cases drinking mob of people there was a game going on, apparently. He had to take Trev’s word for it. There were
Oo
s and
Aah
s in the distance and the crowd ebbed and flowed in response. Trev and his chums, who called themselves, as far as Nutt could make out over the din, the Dimwell Massive Pussy, took advantage of every temporary space to move nearer and nearer to the mysterious game, holding their ground when the press went against them and pushing hard when an eddy went their way. Push, sway, shove…and something in this spoke to Nutt. It came up through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, and slid into his brain with a beguiling subtlety, warming him, stripping him away from himself and leaving him no more than a beating part of the living, moving thing around him.