Unseen Academicals (3 page)

The faculty stopped watching the door and looked at one another.

‘Ring a bell, anyone?’ said Ridcully.

‘Not a tinkle,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, cheerfully.

The Archchancellor turned to his left. ‘What about you, Dean? You know all the old—’

Ponder groaned. The rest of the wizards shut their eyes and braced themselves. This might be bad.

Ridcully stared down at two empty chairs, with the imprint of a buttock in each one. One or two of the faculty pulled their hats down over their faces. It had been two weeks now, and it had not got any better.

He took a deep breath and roared: ‘Traitor!’–which was a terrible thing to say to two dimples in leather.

The Chair of Indefinite Studies gave Ponder Stibbons a nudge, indicating that he was the chosen sacrifice for today, again.

Again.

‘Just for a handful of silver he left us!’ said Ridcully, to the universe in general.

Ponder cleared his throat. He’d really hoped the Megapode hunt would take the Archchancellor’s mind off the subject, but Ridcully’s mind kept on swinging back to the absent Dean the way a tongue plunges back to the site of a missing tooth.

‘Er, in point of fact, I believe his remuneration is at least—’ he began, but in Ridcully’s current mood no answer would be the right one.

‘Remuneration? Since when did a wizard work for wages? We are pure academics, Mister Stibbons! We do not care for mere money!’

Unfortunately, Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mental confusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an angry Archchancellor, were, to use the proper academic term, unhelpful. And he neglected to think strategically, always a mistake when talking to fellow academics, and as a result made the mistake of employing, as at this point, common sense.

‘That’s because we never actually pay for anything very much,’ he said, ‘and if anyone needs any petty cash they just help themselves from the big jar—’

‘We are part of the very fabric of the university, Mister Stibbons! We take only what we require! We do not seek wealth! And most certainly we do not accept a “post of vital importance which includes an attractive package of remuneration”, whatever the hells that means, “and other benefits including a generous pension”! A pension, mark you! When ever has a wizard retired?’

‘Well. Doctor Earwig—’ Ponder began, unable to stop himself.

‘He left to get married!’ snapped Ridcully. ‘That’s not retirin’, that’s the same as dyin’.’

‘What about Doctor Housemartin?’ Ponder went on.

The Lecturer in Recent Runes kicked him on the ankle, but Ponder merely said, ‘Ouch!’ and continued. ‘He left with a bad case of work-related frogs, sir!’

‘If you can’t stand the heat, get off the pot,’ muttered Ridcully. Things were subsiding a bit now, and the pointy hats were tentatively raised. The Archchancellor’s little moments only lasted a few minutes. This would have been more comforting were it not for the fact that at approximately five-minute intervals something suddenly reminded him of what he considered to be the Dean’s totally treasonable activity, to wit, applying for and getting a job at another university via a common advertisement in a newspaper. That was not how a prince of
magic behaved. He didn’t sit in front of a panel of drapers, greengrocers and bootmakers (wonderful people though they may be, salt of the earth, no doubt, but even so…) to be judged and assessed like some champion terrier (had his teeth counted, no doubt!). He’d let down the entire brotherhood of wizardry, that’s what he’d done—

There was a squeaking of wheels out in the corridor, and every wizard stiffened in anticipation. The door swung open and the first overloaded trolley was pushed in.

There was a series of sighs as every eye focused on the maid who was pushing it, and then some rather louder sighs when they realized that she was not, as it were, the intended.

She wasn’t ugly. She might be called homely, perhaps, but it was quite a nice home, clean and decent and with roses round the door and a welcome on the mat and an apple pie in the oven. But the thoughts of the wizards were, astonishingly, not on food at this point, although some of them were still a bit hazy as to why not.

She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her.
*

The faculty was crestfallen, but it brightened up considerably as the caravan of trolleys wound its way into the room. There was nothing like a 3 a.m. snack to raise the spirits, everyone knew that.

Well, Ponder thought, at least we’ve got through the evening without anything breaking. Better than Tuesday, at least.

It is a well-known fact in any organization that, if you want a job done, you should give it to someone who is already very busy. It has been the cause of a number of homicides, and in one case the death of a senior director from having his head shut repeatedly in quite a small filing cabinet.

In UU, Ponder Stibbons was that busy man. He had come to enjoy it. For one thing, most of the jobs he was asked to do did not need doing, and most of the senior wizards did not care if they were not
done, provided they were not not done by themselves. Besides, Ponder was very good at thinking up efficient little systems to save time, and was, in particular, very proud of his system for writing the minutes of meetings, which he had devised with the help of Hex, the university’s increasingly useful thinking engine. A detailed analysis of past minutes, coupled with Hex’s enormous predictive abilities, meant that for a simple range of easily accessible givens, such as the agenda (which Ponder controlled in any case), the committee members, the time since breakfast, the time to dinner, and so on, in most cases the minutes could be written beforehand.

All in all, he considered that he was doing his bit in maintaining UU in its self-chosen course of amiable, dynamic stagnation. It was always a rewarding effort, knowing the alternative, to keep things that way.

But a page that turns itself was, to Ponder, an anomaly. Now, while the sound of the pre-breakfast supper grew around him, he smoothed out the page and read, carefully.

Glenda would have cheerfully broken a plate over Juliet’s sweet, empty head when the girl finally turned up in the Night Kitchen. At least, she would cheerfully have thought about it, in quite a deliberate way, but there was no point in losing her temper, because its target was not really much good at noticing what other people were thinking. There wasn’t a nasty bone in Juliet’s body, it’s just that she had a great deal of trouble homing in on the idea that someone was trying to be unpleasant to her.

So Glenda made do with ‘Where have you been? I told Mrs Whitlow you’d gone home ill. Your dad’ll be worried sick! And it looks bad to the other girls.’

Juliet slumped into a chair, with a movement so graceful that it seemed to sing.

‘Went to the football, didn’t I. You know, we were playing those buggers in Dimwell.’

‘Until three in the morning?’

‘That’s the rules, innit? Play until full time, first dead man or first score.’

‘Who won?’

‘Dunno.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘When we left it was being decided on head wounds. Anyway, I went with Rotten Johnny, didn’t I.’

‘I thought you’d broken up with him.’

‘He bought me supper, didn’t ’e.’

‘You shouldn’t have gone. That’s not the sort of thing you should do.’

‘Like you know?’ said Juliet, who sometimes thought that questions were answers.

‘Just do the washing-up, will you?’ said Glenda. And I’ll have to do it again after you, she thought, as her best friend drifted over to the line of big stone sinks. Juliet didn’t exactly wash dishes, she gave them a light baptism. Wizards weren’t the type of people who noticed yesterday’s dried egg on the plate, but Mrs Whitlow could see it from two rooms away.

Glenda liked Juliet, she really did, although sometimes she wondered why. Of course, they’d grown up together, but it had always amazed her that Juliet, who was so beautiful that boys went nervous and occasionally fainted as she passed, could be so, well, dumb about everything. In fact it was Glenda who had grown up. She wasn’t sure about Juliet; sometimes it seemed to Glenda that she had done the growing up for both of them.

‘Look, you just have to scrub a bit, that’s all,’ she snapped after a few seconds of listless dipping, and took the brush out of Juliet’s perfect hand, and then, as the grease was sent down the drain, she thought: I’ve done it again. Actually, I’ve done it again again. How many times is that? I even used to play with her dolls for her!

Plate after plate sparkled under Glenda’s hands. Nothing cleans stubborn stains like suppressed anger.

Rotten Johnny, she thought. Ye gods, he smells of cat wee! He’s the
only boy stupid enough to think he’s got a chance. Good grief, she’s got a figure like that and all she ever dates are total knobheads! What would she do without me?

After this brief excitement, the Night Kitchen settled into its routine and those who had been referred to as ‘the other girls’ got on with their familiar tasks. It has to be said that girlhood for most of them had ended a long time previously, but they were good workers and Glenda was proud of them. Mrs Hedges ran the cheeseboards like a champion. Mildred and Rachel, known officially on the payroll as the vegetable women, were good and reliable, and indeed it was Mildred who had come up with the famous recipe for beetroot and cream cheese sandwiches.

Everybody knew their job. Everybody
did
their job. The Night Kitchen was reliable and Glenda liked reliable.

She had a home to go to and made sure she went to it at least once a day, but the Night Kitchen was where she lived. It was her fortress.

Ponder Stibbons stared at the page in front of him. His mind filled up with nasty questions, the biggest and nastiest of which was simply: Is there any way at all in which people can make out that this is my fault? No. Good!

‘Er, there is one tradition here that regrettably we don’t appear to have honoured for some considerable time, Archchancellor,’ he said, managing to keep the concern out of his voice.

‘Well, does that matter?’ said Ridcully, stretching.

‘It is traditional, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder reproachfully. ‘Although I might go so far as to say that not observing it has now, alas, become the tradition.’

‘Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?’ said Ridcully. ‘If we can make a tradition of not observing another tradition, then that’s doubly traditional, eh? What’s the problem?’

‘It’s Archchancellor Preserved Bigger’s Bequest,’ said the Master of The Traditions. ‘The university does very well out of the Bigger estates. They were a very rich family.’

‘Hmm, yes. Name rings a faint bell. Decent of him. So?’

‘Er, I would have been happier had my predecessor paid a little more attention to some of the traditions,’ said Ponder, who believed in drip-feeding bad news.

‘Well, he
was
dead.’

‘Yes, of course. Perhaps, sir, we should, ahem, start a tradition of checking on the health of the Master of The Traditions?’

‘Oh, he was quite healthy,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Just dead. Quite healthy for a dead man.’

‘He was a pile of dust, Archchancellor!’

‘That’s not the same as being ill, exactly,’ said Ridcully, who believed in never giving in. ‘Broadly speaking, it’s stable.’

Ponder said, ‘There is a condition attached to the bequest. It’s in the small print, sir.’

‘Oh, I never bother with small print, Stibbons!’

‘I do, sir. It says: “…and thys shall follow as long as the University shall enter a team in the game of foot-the-ball or Poore Boys’ Funne”.’

‘Porree boy’s funny?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Ridcully.

‘Ridiculous or not, Archchancellor, that is the condition of the bequest.’

‘But we stopped taking part in that years ago,’ said Ridcully. ‘Mobs in the streets, kicking and punching and yelling…and they were the players! Mark you, the spectators were nearly as bad! There were hundreds of men in a team! A game could go on for days! That’s why it was stopped.’

‘Actually, it has never been stopped as such, Archchancellor,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘
We
stopped, yes, and so did the guilds. It was no longer a game for gentlemen.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said the Master of The Traditions, running a finger down the page, ‘such are the terms. There are all sorts of other conditions. Oh, dear. Oh, calamity. Oh, surely not…’

His lips moved silently as he read on. The room craned as one neck.

‘Well, out with it, man!’ roared Ridcully.

‘I think I’d like to check a few things,’ said the Master of The
Traditions. ‘I would not wish to worry you unduly.’ He glanced down. ‘Oh, hells’ bells!’

‘What are you talking about, man?’

‘Well, it looks as though—No, it would be unfair to spoil your evening, Archchancellor,’ Ponder protested. ‘I must be reading this wrongly. He surely can’t mean—Oh, good heavens…’

‘In a nutshell, please, Stibbons,’ growled Ridcully. ‘I believe I am the Archchancellor of this university? I’m sure it says so on my door.’

‘Of course, Archchancellor, but it would be quite wrong of me to—’

‘I appreciate that you do not wish to spoil my evening, sir,’ said Ridcully. ‘But I would not hesitate to spoil your day tomorrow. With that in mind, what the hells are you talking about?’

‘Er, it would appear, Archchancellor, that, er…When was the last game we took part in, do you know?’

‘Anyone?’ said Ridcully to the room in general. A mumbled discussion produced a consensus on the theme of ‘Around twenty years, give or take.’

‘Give or take what, exactly?’ said Ponder, who hated this kind of thing.

‘Oh, you know. Something of that order. In the general vicinity of, so to speak. Round about then. You know.’

‘About?’ said Ponder. ‘Can we be more
precise?
’

‘Why?’

‘Because if the university hasn’t played in the Poor Boys’ Fun for a period of twenty years or more, the bequest reverts to any surviving relatives of Archchancellor Bigger.’