Unseen Academicals (28 page)

‘You wanna be one?’

‘Not really, Archchancellor. I think there should be one or two posts in this institution that I don’t hold.’

‘Yes, but they’ve just called their machine Pex! Hardly a great leap of ingenuity, is it?’

‘Oh, there are some significant differences. I believe he’s using chickens to generate the blit diametric,’ said Ponder.

‘Apparently so,’ said Ridcully. ‘Something like that, anyway.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Ponder. And it was quite a solid hmmm, possibly one you could moor a small boat to.

‘Something wrong?’ said Ridcully.

‘Oh, er, not really, Archchancellor. Did the former Dean mention anything about the need to totally rebuild the morphic resonator to allow for the necessary changes in the blit/slood interface?’

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Ridcully.

‘Oh,’ said Ponder, his face blank. ‘Well, Adrian is bound to get round to that. He
is
very clever.’

‘Yes, but it was all based on
your
work.
You
built Hex. And now they’re putting out that he’s some big clever clogs. He’s even on a cigarette card.’

‘That’s nice, sir. It’s good when researchers get recognition.’

Ridcully felt like a mosquito that was trying to sting a steel breastplate. ‘Hah, wizardry has certainly changed since my day,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ponder noncommittally.

‘And by the way, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully as he opened the door, ‘my day isn’t over yet.’

There was a yell in the distance. And then a crash. Ridcully smiled. The day had suddenly brightened up.

When he and Ponder reached the Great Hall, most of the team were gathered around one of their members lying on the floor, with Nutt kneeling over him.

‘What’s happened here?’ Ridcully demanded.

‘Badly bruised, sir. I shall put a compress on it.’

‘Ah.’ His gaze fell upon a large, brass-bound chest. It looked at first sight like any other chest, until you saw the tiny little toes poking out.

‘Rincewind’s luggage,’ he growled. ‘And where that is, Rincewind can’t be far in front. Rincewind!’

‘Actually, it wasn’t my fault,’ said Rincewind.

‘He’s right, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘I have to apologize for the fact that this was a group misapprehension. I understand it is a remarkably magical chest on hundreds of little legs and I am afraid that the gentlemen here believed that it would play football like stink, as they put it. In which surmise, I have to say, they were proved wrong.’

‘I tried to tell them,’ said the former Dean from the edge of the crowd. ‘Morning, Mustrum. Good team you have here.’

‘All its feet do is get in each other’s way,’ said Bengo Macarona. ‘And if it does get on top of the ball, it spins out of control and, alas, it crashed into Mister Sopworthy here.’

‘Oh, well, we learn by our mistakes,’ said Ridcully. ‘And now, do you happen to have something
nice
to show me?’

‘I think I have the very thing, Archchancellor,’ said a cheerful but reedy voice behind him.

Ridcully turned and looked into the face of a man with the shape and urgency of a piccolo. He seemed to be vibrating on the spot.

‘Professor Ritornello, Master of the Music,’ Ponder whispered into Ridcully’s ear.

‘Ah, Professor,’ said Ridcully smoothly, ‘and I see you have the choir with you.’

‘Yes indeed, Archchancellor, and I must tell you, I am thrilled and filled with inner light by what I have witnessed this morning! Without ado, I have penned a chant, such as you asked for!’

‘Did I?’ said Ridcully, out of the corner of his mouth.

‘You will remember that chanting was mentioned and so I thought it best to alert the professor,’ whispered Ponder.

‘Another pp, eh? Oh, well.’

‘Happily, it is based on the traditional plainchant or stolation form and is a valedicta, or hail to the winner. May I?’ said Professor Ritornello. ‘It is a cappella, of course.’

‘Go ahead, by all means,’ said Ridcully.

The Master of the Music pulled a short baton out of his sleeve. ‘I’ve put the name of Bengo Macarona in there for a marker at the moment, because he has apparently scored two fine “goals”, as I believe they are called,’ he said, dealing carefully with the word as one might deal with a large spider in the bathtub. Then he caught the eyes of his little flock, nodded, and:

After a minute and a half of this Ridcully coughed loudly, and the Master waved the choir into a stuttering silence.

‘Is there something untoward, Archchancellor?’

‘Er, not as such, Master, but, er, do you not feel that it is a bit too, well, long?’ Ridcully was aware that the former Dean was not trying very hard to suppress a snigger.

‘Not at all. In fact, sir, I intend that when it is finished it will be scored for forty voices and, though I dare to say so, will be my masterwork!’

‘But it is something for
football fans
to sing, you see?’ said Ridcully.

‘Well then,’ said the Master, holding his baton in a rather threatening manner, ‘is it not the duty of the educated classes to raise the standards of the lower orders?’

‘He’s got a point there, Mustrum,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, and Ridcully felt his grandfather kick him in the heredity, and was glad that maid wasn’t here-what was her name now? Oh, yes, Glenda, smart woman-but although she was not there he saw something of her expression in Trev Likely’s face.

‘During the week, possibly,’ he snapped, ‘but not on Saturdays, I think. But very well done, anyway, and I look forward to hearing more of your efforts.’

The Master of the Music flounced out with the choir flouncing out in perfect unison behind him.

Ridcully rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, gentlemen, perhaps you could show me your moves.’

While the players spread out in the Hall, Nutt said, ‘I must say that Professor Macarona is excelling at the game. He clearly has excellent ball skills.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ridcully brightly.

‘The Librarian is, of course, an excellent keeper of the goal. Especially since he can stand in the middle and reach either side of it. I believe that it will be very hard for any of our opponents to get past him. And, of course, you will be partaking also, Archchancellor.’

‘Oh, you don’t become Archchancellor if you don’t get the hang of things quickly. I will just watch for now.’

He watched. After the second occasion when Macarona, like a silver streak, ran the length of the Hall to flick the ball into the opponents’ goal, Ridcully turned to Ponder and said, ‘We’re going to win, aren’t we?’

‘If indeed he is still playing for you,’ put in the former Dean.

‘Oh, come now, Henry. Can we at least agree to just play one game at a time here?’

‘Well, I think today’s session should end pretty soon, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘It’s the banquet tonight after all and it will take some time to get the place ready.’

‘Excuse me, guv, that’s right,’ said Trev behind him, ‘and we’ve got to get the chandelier down an’ put new candles in.’

‘Yes, but we have been practising a little demonstration for tonight. Maybe the Archchancellor would like to see it,’ said Nutt.

Ridcully looked at his watch. ‘Well, yes, Mister Nutt, but time is getting on and so I look forward to seeing it later. Splendid effort all round, though,’ he boomed.

The night market was setting up in Sator Square as Glenda and Juliet arrived for work. Ankh-Morpork lived on the street, where it got its food, entertainment and, in a city with a ferocious housing shortage, a place to hang around until there was space on a floor. Stalls had been set up anywhere, and flares filled the early-evening air with stink and, almost as a by-product, a certain amount of light.

Glenda could never resist looking, especially now. She was very good at all sorts of cookery, she really was, and it was important to keep that knowledge at the calm centre of her spinning brain. And there was Verity Pushpram, queen of the sea.

Glenda had a lot of time for Miss Pushpram, who was a self-made woman, although she could have used some help when it came to her eyes, which were set so far apart that she rather resembled a turbot.

But Verity, like the ocean that was making her fortune these days, had hidden depths, because she’d made enough to buy a boat, and then another boat and a whole aisle in the fish market. But she still woman-handled her barrow to the square most evenings, where she sold
whelks, shrimps, leather crabs, blossom prawns, monkey clams and her famous hot fish sticks.

Glenda often bought from her; there was the kind of respect you give to an equal who is, crucially, no threat to your own position.

‘Going to the big bun fight, girls?’ said Verity cheerfully, waving a halibut at them.

‘Yes,’ said Juliet proudly.

‘What, both of you?’ said Verity, with a glance towards Glenda, who said, firmly, ‘The Night Kitchen is expanding.’

‘Oh well, so long as you’re having fun,’ said Verity, looking, in theory, from one to the other. ‘Here, have one of these, they’re lovely. My treat.’

She reached down and picked a crab out of a bucket. As it came up it turned out that three more were hanging on to it.

‘A crab necklace?’ giggled Juliet.

‘Oh, that’s crabs for you,’ said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. ‘Thick as planks, the lot of them. That’s why you can keep them in a bucket without a lid. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. Yes, as thick as planks.’ Verity held the crab over an ominously bubbling cauldron. ‘Shall I cook it for you now?’

‘No!’ said Glenda, much louder than she had intended.

‘Are you okay, dear?’ Verity enquired. ‘You look a bit ill.’

‘I’m fine. Fine. Just a touch of a sore throat, that’s all.’ Crab bucket, she thought. I thought Pepe was talking nonsense. ‘Erm, can you just truss it up for us? It’s going to be a long night.’

‘Right you are,’ said Miss Pushpram, expertly wrapping the unresisting crab in twine. ‘You know what to do, that’s certain. Lovely crabs, these, real good eating. But thick as planks.’

Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried towards the Night Kitchen. That’s how it works. People from the Sisters
disapproving
when a girl takes the trolley bus. That’s crab bucket. Practically everything my mum ever told me, that’s crab bucket. Practically everything I’ve ever told Juliet, that’s crab bucket, too. Maybe it’s just another word for the Shove. It’s so nice and warm on the inside that you forget that there’s
an outside. The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you…The realization had her mind on fire.

A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say ‘Do not do this’ in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.

And custom and practice as embodied by Mrs Whitlow was that the Night Kitchen staff should not go above stairs, to where the light was comparatively clean and had not already been through a lot of other eyeballs. Well, Glenda had done that, and nothing bad had happened, had it? So now Glenda strode towards the Great Hall, her serviceable shoes hitting the floor enough to hurt. The Day girls said nothing as she marched in behind them. There was nothing for them to say. The real unwritten rule was that girls on the dumpy side didn’t serve at table when guests were present, and Glenda had decided tonight that she couldn’t read unwritten rules. Besides, there was a row already going on. The servants who were laying out the cutlery were trying to keep an eye on it, which subsequently meant that more than one guest had to eat with two spoons.

Glenda was amazed to see the Candle Knave waving his hands at Trev and Nutt, and she headed for them. She did not like Smeems very much; a man could be dogmatic, and that was all right, or he could be stupid, and no harm done, but stupid and dogmatic at the same time was too much, especially fluxed with body odour.

‘What’s this all about?’

It worked. The right tone from a woman with her arms folded always bounces an answer out of an unprepared man before he has time to think, and even before he has time to think up a lie.

‘They raised the chandelier! They raised it without lighting the candles! We won’t have enough time now to get it down and up again before the guests come in!’

‘But, Mister Smeems—’ Trev began.

‘And all I get is talking back and lies,’ Smeems complained bitterly.

‘But I can light them from here, Mister Smeems.’ Nutt spoke quietly, even his voice huddling.

‘Don’t give me that! Even wizards can’t do that without getting wax all over the place, you little—’

‘That’s enough, Mister Smeems,’ said a voice that to Glenda’s surprise turned out to be hers. ‘
Can
you light them, Mister Nutt?’

‘Yes, miss. At the right time.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Glenda. ‘I suggest you leave it to Mister Nutt.’ Smeems looked at her, and she could see there was, as it were, an invisible mallet in his thinking, a feeling that he might get into some trouble here.

‘I should run along now,’ she said.

‘I can’t stand around. I’m a man with responsibilities.’ Smeems looked wrong-footed and bewildered, but from his point of view absence was a good idea. Glenda almost saw his brain reach the conclusion. Not being there diluted the blame for whatever it was that was going to go wrong. ‘Can’t stand around,’ he repeated. ‘Ha! You’d all be in the dark if it wasn’t for me!’ With that, he grabbed his greasy bag and scuttled off.

Glenda turned to Nutt. He can’t possibly make himself smaller, she told herself. His clothes would fit him even worse than they do already. I must be imagining it.