Unseen Academicals (39 page)

‘This isn’t fast enough!’ Glenda shouted after ten minutes of bouncing over the potholes. ‘I could run faster than this.’

‘I don’t think he’s gonna get that far,’ said Trev.

The sun was going down and the shadows were already drawing across the cabbage fields, but there was a figure on the road ahead, struggling. Trev jumped off.

‘Awk! Awk!’

‘It’s those wretched things,’ said Glenda, running up behind him. ‘Give me that lead pipe.’

Nutt was half crouched in the dust on the road. The Sisters of Perpetual Velocity were half flying and half flapping around him while he tried to protect his face with his hands. The passengers of the bus were quite unnoticed until the lead pipe arrived, followed very shortly by Glenda. It didn’t have the effect she’d hoped. The Sisters were indeed like birds. She couldn’t so much hit them as bat them through the air.

‘Awk! Awk!’

‘You stop trying to hurt him!’ she screamed. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong!’

Nutt raised an arm and grabbed her wrist. There wasn’t much pressure, but somehow she couldn’t move it at all. It was as if it had suddenly been embalmed in stone. ‘They’re not here to hurt me,’ he said. ‘They’re here to protect you.’

‘Who from?’

‘Me. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go.’

‘But I don’t need any protection from you. That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘They think you might,’ said Nutt. ‘But that is not the worst of it.’

The creatures were circling and the other passengers, sharing the endemic Ankh-Morpork taste for impromptu street theatre, had piled out and had become an appreciative audience, which clearly discomforted the Sisters.

‘What is the worst of it, then?’ said Glenda, waving the pipe at the nearest Sister, which jumped back out of the way.

‘They may be right.’

‘All right, so you’re an orc,’ said Trev. ‘So they used to eat people. Have you eaten anyone lately?’

‘No, Mister Trev.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’

‘You can’t arrest someone for something he hasn’t done,’ said one of the bus passengers, nodding sagely. ‘A fundamental law, that.’

‘What’s an orc?’ said the lady next to him.

‘Oh, back in the olden days up in Uberwald or somewhere they used to tear people to bits and eat them.’

‘That’s foreigners for you,’ said the woman.

‘But they’re all dead now,’ said the man.

‘That’s nice,’ said the woman. ‘Would anyone like some tea? I’ve got a flask.’

‘All dead, except me. But I am afraid that I am an orc,’ said Nutt. He looked up at Glenda. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You have been very kind, but I can see that being an orc will follow me around. There will be trouble. I would hate you to be involved.’

‘Awk! Awk!’

The woman unscrewed the top of her flask. ‘But you’re not about to eat anyone, are you, dear? If you feel really hungry I’ve got some macaroons.’ She looked at the nearest Sister and said, ‘What about you,
love? I know none of us can help how we’re made, but how come you’ve been made to look like a chicken?’

‘Awk! Awk!’

‘Danger! Danger!’

‘Dunno about that,’ said another passenger. ‘I don’t reckon he’s going to do anything.’

‘Please, please,’ said Nutt. There was a box lying on the road beside him. He tore it open frantically and started to pull things out of it.

They were candles. Knocking them over in his haste, picking them up in shaking fingers only to knock them over again, he finally had them upright on the flints of the road. He pulled matches out of another pocket, knelt down and once again got his shaking fingers tangled in themselves as he struggled to strike a match. Tears streamed down his face as the light of the candles rose.

Rose…and changed.

Blues, yellows, greens. They would go out for a few smoky seconds and then light again a different colour, to the oohs and aahs of the crowd.

‘See! See!’ said Nutt. ‘You like them? You like them?’

‘I think you could make yourself a lot of money out of that,’ said one of the passengers.

‘They’re lovely,’ said the old lady. ‘Honestly, the things you young people can do today.’

Nutt turned to the nearest Sister and spat, ‘I am not worthless, I have worth.’

‘My brother-in-law runs a novelty shop down in the smoke,’ said the erstwhile expert in orcs. ‘I’ll write his address down for you if you like? But I reckon that thing would go down very well on the kiddies’ birthday circuit.’

Glenda had watched all of this open-mouthed, as the kind of democracy practised by reasonable and amiable but not very clever people, the people whose education had never involved a book but had involved lots of other people, surrounded Nutt in its invisible, beneficent arms.

It was heartwarming, but Glenda’s heart was a little bit calloused on this score. It was the crab bucket at its best. Sentimental and forgiving; but get it wrong–one wrong word, one wrong liaison, one wrong thought–and those nurturing arms could so easily end in fists. Nutt was right: at best, being an orc was to live under a threat.

‘You lot have got no right treating the poor little devil like that,’ said the old lady, waving a finger at the nearest Sister. ‘If you want to live here, you have to do things our way, all right? And that means no pecking at people. That’s not how we do things in Ankh-Morpork.’

Even Glenda smiled at that one. Pecking was a picnic compared with what Ankh-Morpork could offer.

‘Vetinari’s letting all sorts in these days,’ said another passenger. ‘I won’t hear a word said against the dwarfs—’

‘Good,’ said a voice at his back. He moved aside and Glenda saw the dwarf standing behind him.

‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t see you there, what with you being so little,’ said the man who had nothing against dwarfs. ‘As I was saying, you lot just settle down and get on with it and are no trouble to anybody, but we’re getting some weird ones now.’

‘That woman they put in the Watch last month, for one,’ said the old lady. ‘The weird one from out Ephebe way. Gust of wind caught her sunglasses and three people turned into stone.’

‘She was a Medusa,’ said Glenda, who had read about that in the
Times
. ‘The wizards managed to turn them back again, though.’

‘Well, what I’m saying is,’ started the man who had nothing against dwarfs, ‘we don’t mind anyone, so long as they mind their own business and don’t do any funny stuff.’

This was the rhythm of the world to Glenda; she’d heard it so many times. But the feeling of the crowd was now very much against the Sisters. Sooner or later somebody was going to pick up a stone. ‘I’d get out of here now,’ she said, ‘get out and go back to the lady you work for. I should do that right now, if I were you.’

‘Awk! Awk!’ one of them screeched.

But there were brains in those strange-shaped heads. And the three
Sisters were clearly bright enough to want to keep them there and ran for it, hopping and leaping like herons until what seemed like cloaks turned out to be wings, which pounded on the air as they sought for height. There was a final scream of ‘Awk! Awk!’

The driver of the horse bus coughed. ‘Well, if that’s all sorted out then I suggest you all get back on board, please, ladies and gentlemen. And whoever. And don’t forget your candles, mister.’

Glenda helped Nutt on to a wooden seat. He was holding his toolbox tightly across his knees, as if it would offer some sort of protection. ‘Where were you trying to go?’ she said as the horses began to move.

‘Home,’ said Nutt.

‘Back to Her?’

‘She gave me worth,’ said Nutt. ‘I was nothing and she gave me worth.’

‘How can you say you were nothing?’ said Glenda. On the pair of seats in front of them, Trev and Juliet were whispering together.

‘I
was
nothing,’ said Nutt. ‘I
knew
nothing, I
understood
nothing, I had no understanding, I had no skill—’

‘But that doesn’t mean someone is worthless,’ said Glenda firmly.

‘It does,’ said Nutt. ‘But it does not mean they are bad. I was worthless. She showed me how to gain worth and now I have worth.’

Glenda had a feeling they were working from two different dictionaries. ‘What does “worth” mean, Mister Nutt?’

‘It means that you leave the world better than when you found it,’ said Nutt.

‘Good point,’ said the lady with the macaroons. ‘There’s far too many people around the place who wouldn’t dream of doing a hand’s turn.’

‘All right, but what about people who’re blind, for example?’ This from the hardboiled-egg man, sitting on the other side of the bus.

‘I know a blind bloke in Sto Lat who runs a bar,’ said an elderly gentleman. ‘Knows where everything is and when you put your money on the counter he knows if it’s the right change just by listening. He does all right. It’s amazing, he can pick out a dud sixpence halfway across a noisy bar.’

‘I don’t think there are absolutes,’ said Nutt. ‘I think what Ladyship meant was that you do the best you can with what you have.’

‘Sounds like a sensible lady,’ said the man who had nothing against dwarfs.

‘She’s a vampire,’ said Glenda maliciously.

‘Nothing against vampires, just so long as they keep themselves to themselves,’ said the macaroon lady, who was now engaged in licking something revoltingly pink. ‘We’ve got one working down at the kosher butcher’s on our street, and she’s as nice as you like.’

‘I don’t think it’s about what you end up with,’ said the dwarf. ‘It’s about what you end up with compared with what you started with.’

Glenda leaned back with a smile as attempts at philosophy bounced their way from seat to seat. She wasn’t at all certain about the whole thing, but Nutt was sitting there looking far less bedraggled and the rest of them were treating him as one of themselves.

There were dim lights ahead in the darkness. Glenda slipped from her seat and went up ahead to the driver. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

‘Another five minutes,’ said the driver.

‘Sorry about all that silly business with the lead pipe,’ she said.

‘Didn’t happen,’ said the man cheerfully. ‘Believe me, we get all sorts on the night bus. At least no one’s thrown up. Quite an interestin’ lad you’ve got back there with you.’

‘You’ve no idea,’ said Glenda.

‘Of course, all he’s saying is you’ve got to do your best,’ said the driver. ‘And the more best you’re capable of, the more you should do. That’s it, really.’

Glenda nodded. That did seem to be it, really. ‘Do you go straight back?’ she said.

‘No. Me and the horses are stopping here and will go back in the morning.’ He gave her the wry look of a man who’s heard a great many things, and surprisingly seen a great many things, when to those behind him he was just a head facing forward keeping an eye on the road. ‘That was a wonderful kiss she give me. I’ll tell you what, the bus will be in the yard, there’s plenty of straw around and if anyone was to have a bit
of a kip, I wouldn’t know about it, would I? We’ll leave at six with fresh horses.’ He grinned at her expression. ‘I told you, we get all sorts on the late-night bus: kids running away from home, wives running away from husbands, husbands running away from other wives’ husbands. It’s called an omnibus, see, and omni means everything and damn near everything happens on this bus, that’s why I have the axe, see? But the way I see it, life can’t be all axe.’ He raised his voice: ‘Sto Lat coming up, folks! Return trip six o’clock prompt.’ He winked at Glenda. ‘And if you’re not there, I’ll go withoutcha,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to catch the bus at bus-catching time.’

‘Well, this hasn’t been so bad, has it?’ said Glenda, as the lights of the city grew bigger.

‘My dad’s going to fret,’ said Juliet.

‘He’ll think you’re with me.’

Trev said nothing. By the rules of the street, being exposed in front of your want-to-be girlfriend as the kind of man who can so easily be seen not to be the kind of man that would have the guts to belt someone over the head with a length of lead pipe was extremely shaming, although no one seemed to have noticed this.

‘Looks like a bit of trouble ahead,’ the driver called back. ‘The Lancre Flyer ain’t gone.’

All they could see were flares and lantern lights, illuminating the big coaching inn outside the city gate, where several coaches were standing. As they drew nearer, he called to one of the skinny, bandy-legged and weaselly-looking men who seemed to self-generate around any establishment that involved the movement of horses. ‘Flyer not gone?’ he enquired.

The weaselly man removed a cigarette end from his mouth. ‘ ’orse frowed a shoe.’

‘Well? They’ve got a smith ’ere, ain’t they? Speed the mails and all that.’

‘He’s not speedin’ nuffink on account of him just laminating his hand to the anvil,’ said the man.

‘There’ll be the devil to pay if the Flyer don’t go,’ said the driver.
‘That’s post, that is. You should be able to set your watch by the Flyer.’

Nutt stood up. ‘I could certainly re-shoe a horse for you, sir,’ he said, picking up his wooden toolbox. ‘Perhaps you had better go and tell someone.’

The man sidled off and the bus came to rest in the big yard, where a rather better dressed man came hurrying up. ‘One of you a smith?’ he enquired, looking directly at Glenda.

‘Me,’ said Nutt.

The man stared. ‘You don’t look much like a smith, sir.’

‘Contrary to popular belief, most smiths are on the wiry side rather than bulky. It’s all a matter of sinews rather than muscle.’

‘And you know your way around an anvil, do you?’

‘You would be amazed, sir.’

‘There’s shoes in the smithy,’ said the man. ‘You’ll have to work one to size.’

‘I know how to do that,’ said Nutt. ‘Mister Trev, I would be glad if you would come and help me with the bellows.’

The inn was huge and crowded, because as with coaching inns everywhere its day lasted for twenty-four hours and not a moment less. There were no meal times, as such. Hot food for those who could afford it was available all the time and cold cuts of meat were on a large trestle in the main room. People arrived, were emptied and refilled in the speediest time possible and sent on their way again because the space was needed for the next arrivals. There never seemed to be a moment without the jangle of harnesses. Glenda found a quiet corner. ‘I tell you what,’ she said to Juliet, ‘go and fetch some sandwiches for the lads.’