It's the night before Hogswatch. And it's too quiet.
There's snow, there're robins, there're trees covered with decorations, but there's a notable lack of the big fat man who delivers the toys...
He's gone.
Susan the governess has got to find him before morning, otherwise the sun won't rise. And unfortunately her only helpers are a raven with an eyeball fixation, the Death of Rats and an oh god of hangovers.
Worse still, someone is coming down the chimney. This time he's carrying a sack instead of a scythe, but there's something regrettably familiar...
HO. HO. HO.
It's true what they say.
"You'd better watch out..."
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.
* * *
The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell."
* * *
There was no doubt that whoever had shut [the door] wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it.
"And there's the sign, Ridcully," said the Dean. "You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says 'Do not, under any circumstances, open this door'?"
"Of course I've read it," said Ridcully. "Why d'yer think I want it opened?"
* * *
[Footnote: This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.]
* * *
Twyla: "I'm afwaid of the monster in the cellar, Thusan. It's going to eat me up."
Susan: What have I told you about trying to sound ingratiatingly cute, Twyla?"
Twyla: "You said I mustn't. You said that exaggerated lisping is a hanging offence and I only do it to get attention."
* * *
"Susan says don't get afraid, get angry."
* * *
The members of the Guild of Assassins considered themselves cultured men who enjoyed good music and food and literature. And they knew the value of human life. To a penny, in many cases.
* * *
In fact the [Assassins'] Guild, he liked to think, practised the ultimate democracy. You didn't need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone.
* * *
"I think we need to know something about you."
We are the people with three million dollars.
Downey took the point, although he didn't like it. Three million dollars could buy a lot of no questions.
* * *
It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labelled backwards. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whisky is topped up with eniru.
* * *
...the [Assassins'] Guild took young boys and gave them a splendid education and incidentally taught them how to kill, cleanly and dispassionately, for money and for the good of society, or at least that part of society that had money, and what other kind of society was there?
* * *
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvelous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.
* * *
There was no actual rule, Downey had to admit. It was just that, over the years, the [Assassins'] Guild had developed a certain ethos and members tended to be very neat about their work, even shutting doors behind them and generally tidying up as they went. Hurting the harmless was worse than a transgression against the moral fabric of society, it was a breach of good manners. It was worse even than that. It was bad taste.
* * *
"You meant to tread on that crack so that I'd have to thump some poor creature whose only fault is wanting to tear you limb from limb."
* * *
"Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs."
* * *
The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who wucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed.
* * *
The children refused to disbelieve in the monsters because, frankly, they knew damn well the things were there.
But she'd found that they could, very firmly, also believe in the poker.
* * *
She'd got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like "disemboweled" in everyday conversation.
* * *
After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.
* * *
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
* * *
She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.
* * *
"...and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions."
* * *
The previous governess had taught [the children] a prayer which included the hope that some god or other would take their soul if they died while they were asleep and, if Susan was any judge, had the underlying message that this would be a good thing.
One day, Susan averred, she'd hunt that woman down.
* * *
"Wherever people are obtuse and absurd ... and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach ... and when people are inanely credulous, thematically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering ... yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather."
* * *
"This one's mental."
"Eccentric."
"What's the difference?"
"A bag of cash."
* * *
"He's" -- the first speaker waved his hands vaguely, trying to get across the point that someone was a hamper of food, several folding chairs, a tablecloth, an assortment of cooking gear and an entire colony of ants short of a picnic -- "mental."
* * *
Peachy was not someone you generally asked questions of, except the sort that go like: "If-if-if-if I give you all my money could you possibly not break the other leg, thank you so much?"
* * *
If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like "This and that" or "The best I can", although in Banjo's case he'd have probably said "Dur?"
* * *
What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house.
* * *
They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C.
* * *
Many fine old educational establishments had dignified memorials in some hall listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch and country. The [Assassins'] Guild's was very similar, except for the question of whose life had been laid.
* * *
The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap and sidled along the wall in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated, that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation.
* * *
Everyone -- at least, everyone in "the business", and everyone in "the business" knew what "the business" was, and if you didn't know what "the business" was you weren't a businessman -- knew Mr. Brown.
* * *
He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right.
* * *
The omnipotent sight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said they can see the fall of every sparrow.
And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground.
* * *
Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.
* * *
The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of the pork pie because when you are the personification of the death of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.
* * *
ER ... HO. HO. HO.
-- Death makes a career move
* * *
This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr. Clever Dick in these parts..."
* * *
Death: I FEAR IT MAY BE TOO LATE. IT HAS SPREAD SO FAST AND BACK IN TIME, TOO.
Albert: "Never say die, master. That's our motto, eh?"
Death: I CAN'T SAY IT'S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE.
* * *
"Look, Death's Death. It's a full-time job right? It's not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting people's lawns."
* * *
Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didn't have families; some of them looked as though they might have had litters, or clutches.
* * *
Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor.
* * *
In Biers, unless you weren't choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent, because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope it was an olive.
* * *
He didn't meddle with the fabric of time and space, and they kept out of his greenhouses. The way [Modo] saw it, it was a partnership.
* * *
"It wasn't a good Hogswatch unless you'd eaten so much you were sick as a pig, master."
* * *
It was a strange but demonstrable fact that the sacks of toys carried by the Hogfather, no matter what they really contained, always appeared to have sticking out of the top a teddy bear, a toy soldier in the kind of colourful uniform that would stand out in a disco, a drum and a red-and-white candy cane. The actual contents always turned out to be something a bit garish and costing $5.99.
* * *
Mind you, the [toys] for the girls was just as depressing. It seemed to be nearly all horses. Most of them were grinning. Horses, Death felt, shouldn't grin. Any horse that was grinning was planning something.
* * *
"Here we are, here we are," said Albert. "James Riddle, aged eight."
HAH, YES. HE ACTUALLY SAYS IN HIS LETTER, "I BET YOU DON'T EXIST 'COS EVERYONE KNOWS ITS YORE PARENTS." OH YES, said Death, with what almost sounded like sarcasm, I'M SURE HIS PARENTS ARE JUST IMPATIENT TO BANG THEIR ELBOWS IN TWELVE FEET OF NARROW UNSWEPT CHIMNEY, I DON'T THINK.
* * *
"Did you check the list?"
YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?
"Definitely."
COULDN'T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE'S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE?
* * *
Death: AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I MAY GIVE HIM THIS KLATCHIAN WAR CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES?
Albert: "That's right."
Death: AND IF HE'S BEEN BAD?
Albert: "When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones. 's'mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year."
Death: OH DEAR. AND NOW?
Albert: "Sounds like socks."
* * *
News like Susan gets around. The bears had heard about the poker. Nuts and barries, their expressions seemed to say. That's what we're here for. Big sharp teeth? What big shar-- Oh, these big sharp teeth? They're just for, er, cracking nuts. And some of these berries can be really vicious.
* * *
Susan: "Now ... you won't be around here again, will you? Otherwise it'll be the blanket next time."
Bogeyman: "No!"
Susan: "I mean it. We'll put your head under the blanket."
Bogeyman: "No!"
Susan: "It's got fluffy bunnies on it..."
Bogeyman: "No!"
* * *
"Try number nineteen," said Susan, relenting a little. "The governess there doesn't believe in bogeymen. ...She believes in algebra, though."
"Ah. Nice." The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that could becaused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed.
* * *
"This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven delicatessen is that they hardly ever have eyeballs lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeballs! The world is full of small round things that aren't eyeballs!"
* * *
Fairies aren't necessarily little twinkly creatures. It's purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren't even visible. [Footnote: Such as the Electric Drill Chuck Key Fairy.]
* * *
Sideney was not a fool. He'd seen the way the others reacted around Teatime, and they were men who did things he'd only dreamed of. [Footnote: Not, that is, things that he wanted to do, or wanted done to him. Just things that he dreamed of, in the armpit of a bad night.]
* * *
Guard: "What're you doing here? Who are you?"
Teatime: "Ah, I'm glad you asked. I'm your worst nightmare!"
Guard: "You mean ... the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?"
Teatime: "Sorry?"
Guard: "Then you're the one about where I'm falling only instead of the ground underneath it's all--"
Teatime: "No, in fact I'm--"
Guard: "Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue..."
* * *
"This is Hogswatch! It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly, and -- and other things ending in olly!"
* * *
A couple of days earlier [Susan had] taken the children to the Hogfather's Grotto in one of the big shops in The Maul. Of course, it wasn't the real one, but it had turned out to be a fairly good actor in a red suit. There had been people dressed up as pixies, and a picket outside the shop by the Campaign for Equal Heights. None of the pixies had looked anything like Albert. If they had, people would have only gone into the grotto armed.
* * *
SOMEONE CHRISTENED THE CHILD TWYLA?
"I'm afraid so, but why--"
AND THE OTHER ONE GAWAIN?
"Yes. But look, how--"
WHY GAWAIN?
"I ... suppose it's a good strong name for a fighter..."
A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY, I SUSPECT.
* * *
SHE SAYS SHE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.
"In years, yes. In cynicism, she's about thirty-five."
* * *
But honestly, what kind of sick person went round creeping into little children's bedrooms all night?
Well, the Hogfather, of course, but...
* * *
Susan sat down and held out her hand.
The Death of Rats leapt onto it. She could feel its claws, like tiny pins.
It was just like those scenes where the sweet and pretty heroine sings a little duet with Mr Bluebird.
Similar, anyway.
In general outline, at least. But with more of a PG rating.
* * *
And Susan was bright enough to know that the phrase "Someone ought to do something" was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider "and that someone is me."
* * *
Between every rational moment were a billion irrational ones. Somewhere behind the hours there was a place where the Hogfather rode, the tooth fairies climbed their ladders, jack Frost drew his pictures, the Soul Cake Duck laid her chocolate eggs.
* * *
The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork.
* * *
...one of the symptoms of those going completely yoyo was that they broke out in chronic cats. Usually cats who'd mastered every detail of feline existence except the whereabouts of the dirt box.
* * *
Several pages of parchment had been filled up with Death's own handwriting. It was immediately recognizable. No one else Susan had ever met had handwriting with serifs.
* * *
The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn't among these small fry. ... Everything he built worked. It just didn't do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to design an ornamental fountain.
* * *
Ridcully opened the tap marked "Spray" and leapt aside, because part of him was still well aware that Johnson's inventiveness didn't just push the edge of the envelope but often went across the room and out through the wall of the sorting office.
* * *
"I'm a wizard! We can see things that are really there, you know," said Ridcully. "And in the case of the Bursar, things that aren't there, too."
* * *
THIS CUSHION IS STILL UNCOMFORTABLE, said Death, hitching his belt. I AM NOT USED TO A BIG FAT STOMACH.
"Just a stomach's the best I could do, master. You're starting off with a handicap, sort of thing."
* * *
"Just 'Ho. Ho. Ho' will do. Don't say 'Cower, brief mortals' unless you want them to grow up to be moneylenders or such."
* * *
"And that tub over there's got a big blower thingy so's you get bubbly water without even havin' to eat starchy food."
* * *
There, sweating and grunting in the place where the little piggies had been, were... well, he assumed they were pigs, because hippopotamuses didn't have pointy ears and rings through their noses.
* * *
But the animated display of Dolls of All Nations was definitely in trouble. The musical box underneath was still playing "Wouldn't It Be Nice If Everyone Was Nice" but the rods that animated the figures had got twisted out of shape, so that the Klatchian boy was rhythmically hitting the Omnian girl over the head with his ceremonial spear, while the girl in Agatean national costume was kicking a small Llamedosian druid repeated in the ear. A chorus of small children was cheering them on indiscriminately.
* * *
The [child] sniggered. "I saw your piggie do a wee!" it said, and implicit in the tone was the suggestion that this was unlikely to be dethroned as the most enthralling thing the [child] had ever seen.
* * *
The mother took a deep breath.
"You can't give her that!" she screamed. "It's not safe!"
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather, IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
"She's a child!" shouted Crumley.
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
"What if she cuts herself?"
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.
* * *
"And she doesn't want all that other stuff!" said Doreen's mother, in the face of previous testimony. "She's a girl! Anyway, I can't afford big posh stuff like that!"
I THOUGHT I GAVE IT AWAY, said the Hogfather, sounding bewildered.
"You do?" said the mother.
"You do?" said Crumley, who'd been listening in horror. "You don't! That's our Merchandise! You can't give it away! Hogswatch isn't about giving it all away!"
* * *
Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like "Cosmic" and "Chaos" in the titles.
* * *
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a "Fill in name here" nature, secretly believes to be true.
* * *
Some of the wizards had been practising [for the feast] for weeks. The Dean in particular could now lift a twenty-pound turkey on one fork.
* * *
There was a general air of pleasant expectancy about the place, a general sizzling of salivary glands, a general careful assembling of the pills and powders against the time, many hours ahead, when eighteen courses would gang up somewhere below the ribcage and mount a counterattack.
* * *
Ponder:"It's all done by magic, Archchancellor."
Ridcully:"Ah. Right. None of that complicated business with springs and cogwheels and tubes and stuff, then."
Ponder:"That's right, sir. Just magic. Sufficiently advanced magic."
* * *
Ridcully:"Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff."
Ponder:"Oh, it's largely intuitive, Archchancellor. Obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though."
* * *
Ponder:"Of course, Hex doesn't actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking."
Ridcully:"Ah. Like the Dean. Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean's head?"
Ponder:"It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor."
Ridcully:"Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then."
* * *
Ridcully: "[Hex] just looks as though he's thinking, right?"
Ponder: "Er... yes."
Ridcully: "But he's not actually thinking?"
Ponder: "Er... no."
Ridcully: "So ... he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?"
Ponder: "Er... yes."
Ridcully: "Just like everyone else, then, really."
* * *
Raven: "You know there's some people up on the Ramtops who kill a wren at Hogswatch and walk around from house to house singing about it? With a whack-fol-oh-diddle-dildo. Very folkloric, very myffic."
Susan: "A wren? Why?"
Raven: "I dunno. Maybe someone said, hey, how'd you like to hunt this evil bastard of an eagle with his big sharp beak and great ripping talons, sort of thing, or how about instead you hunt this wren, which is basically about the size of a pea and goes 'twit'? Go on, you choose."
* * *
"Very occult bird, your basic raven," he said. "Blind Io the Thunder God used to have these myffic ravens that flew everywhere and told him everything that was going on."
"Used to?"
"Weeelll... you know how he's not got eyes in his face, just these, like, you know, free-floating eyeballs that go and zoom around..." The raven coughed in species embarrassment. "Bit of an accident waiting to happen, really."
* * *
"Don't worry, [Teatime] doesn't suspect you of anything."
"How d'you know?"
"You're still alive, yeah?"
* * *
Was the Hogfather a god? Why not? thought Susan. There were sacrifices, after all. All that sherry and pork pie. And he made commandments and rewarded the good and he knew what you were doing. If you believed, nice things happened to you.
* * *
"So where's all the lights?" it said. "Where's all the noise? Where's all the jolly little buggers in pointy hats and red and green suits, hitting wooden toys unconvincingly yet rhythmically with hammers?"
* * *
"Maybe the old Hogfather crashed his sleigh," the raven suggested.
SQUEAK?
"Well, it could've happened. Pigs are not notably aerodynamic, are they. And with all this snow, you know, poor visibility, big cloud ahead turns out too late to be a mountain, there's buggers in saffron robes looking down at you, poor devil tries to remember whether you're supposed to shove someone's head between your legs, then WHAM, and it's all over bar some lucky mountaineers making an awful lot of sausages and finding the flight recorder."
* * *
She kicked the snow aside elsewhere and found a wooden toy soldier in the kind of uniform that would only be inconspicuous if you wore it in a nightclub for chameleons on hard drugs.
* * *
"My head," said the boy. "My head. My head. My head. Feels awful. My head. Feels like someone's hitting it. My head. With a hammer."
Someone was. There was a small green and purple imp sitting amid the damp curls and holding a very large mallet. It gave Susan a friendly nod and brought the hammer down again.
* * *
"Who are you?"
"I ... think my name is Bilious. I'm the ... I'm the oh god of Hangovers."
"There's a God of Hangovers?"
"An oh god," he corrected. "When people witness me, you see, they clutch their head and say 'Oh God...'"
* * *
"You've heard of Bibulous, the God of Wine? ... Big fat man, wears vine leaves round his head, always pictured with a glass in his hand... Ow. Well, you know why he's so cheerful? Him and his big face? It's because he knows he's going to feel good in the morning! It's because it's me that--"
"--gets the hangovers?" said Susan.
"I don't even drink! Ow! But who is it who ends up head down in the privy every morning?"
* * *
"Excuse me, I think Im about to throw up my breakfast."
"It's the middle of the evening!"
"Is it? In that case, I think I'm about to throw up my dinner."
* * *
[Nobby] did not add, "And turning out for a rich bugger such as your good self is bound to put the officer concerned in the way of a seasonal bottle or two or some other tangible evidence of gratitude," because his entire stance said it for him.
* * *
Crumley: "How can we expect people to buy things if some Person is giving them away? Now please go and get him out of here."
Nobby: "Arrest the Hogfather, style of thing?"
Crumley: "Yes!"
Nobby: "On Hogswatchnight?"
Crumley: "Yes!"
Nobby: "In your shop?"
Crumley: "Yes!"
Nobby: "In front of all those kiddies?"
Crumley: "Y-- You think that will look bad?"
* * *
"They always gives me bath salts," complained Nobby. "And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can't think why, 'cos it's not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You'd think they'd take the hint, wouldn't you?"
* * *
"That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?"
* * *
"He's not dead," said Susan. "He's just resting."
"That's what they all say," the Senior Wrangler quavered.
-- But is he pining for the fjords?
* * *
IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather.
"You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?"
YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.
* * *
"Of course, my uncle used to swear at Wow-Wow Sauce," [Ridcully] added.
"You mean swear by, surely?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Possibly both," said Ridcully. "I know he once drank a whole bottle of it as a hangover cure and it certainly seemed to cure him. He looked very peaceful when they came to lay him out."
* * *
"Willow bark" said the Bursar.
"That's a good idea," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "It's an analgesic."
"Really? Well, possibly, though it's probably better to give it to him by mouth," said Ridcully.
* * *
Recent Runes: "Spold's Unstirring Divisor would do it. Very simply, too. You'd end up with a large beaker full of all the nastiness. Not difficult at all, if you don't mind the side effects."
Susan: "Tell me about the side effects."
Recent Runes: "The main one is that the rest of him would end up in a somewhat larger beaker."
Susan: "Alive?"
Recent Runes: "Broadly, yes. Living tissue, certainly. And definitely sober."
* * *
Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge throughout the ages.
"Why don't we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?" he said.
And Ridcully responded with the traditional response.
"It's got to be worth a try," he said.
* * *
The wizards spread like an opening flower. One moment they were gathered around Ridcully, the next they were standing close to various items of heavy furniture.
* * *
"And these fellows seem to have taken against [Wow-Wow Sauce] for some reason," [Ridcully] said, approaching the beaker.
"I prefer a sauce that doesn't mean you mustn't make any jolting movements for half an hour after using it," muttered the Dean.
"And that can't be used for breaking up small rocks," said the Senior Wrangler.
"Or getting rid of tree roots," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
"And which isn't actually outlawed in three cities," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
* * *
The wizards began to stand up and brush themselves off, giving one another the rather embarrassed grins of people who know that they've just been part of a synchronized making-a-fool-of-yourself team.
* * *
Wizards tended to roll well, or in any case are well padded enough to bounce.
* * *
"Careful, Archchancellor," said the Dean. "What you have there might represent pure sobriety."
Ridcully paused with the finger halfway to his lips.
"Good point," he said. "I don't want to start being sober at my time of life."
* * *
"How do we usually test stuff?"
"Generally we ask for student volunteers," said the Dean.
"What happens if we don't get any?"
"We give it to them anyway."
"Isn't that a bit unethical?"
"Not if we don't tell them, Archchancellor."
* * *
AND YOU WILL OF COURSE BE GOOD FOR ANOTHER YEAR?
The tiny remnant of basic Nobbyness wanted to say, "Er, how exactly do you define 'good', mister? Like, suppose there was just some stuff that no one'd miss, say? Or, f 'r instance, say a friend of mine was on patrol, sort of thing, and found a shopkeeper had left his door unlocked at night. I mean, anyone could walk in, right, but suppose this friend took one or two things, sort of like, you know, a gratuity, and then called the shopkeeper out and got him to lock up, that counts as 'good', does it?"
* * *
"This is disgusting, this whole business," said Constable Visit. "It's the worship of idols--"
"It's a genuine Burleigh and Stronginthearm double-action triple-cantilever crossbow with a polished walnut stock and engraved silver facings!"
"--a crass commercialization of a date which is purely of astronomical significance," said Visit, who seldom paid attention when he was in mid-denounce. "If it is to be celebrated at all, then--"
"I saw this in Bows and Ammo! It got Editor's Choice in the 'What To Buy When Rich Uncle Sidney Dies' category! They had to break both the reviewer's arms to get him to let go of it!"
* * *
It was a big drink. A very big and a very long drink. It was one of those special cocktails where each very sticky, very strong ingredient is poured in very slowly, so that they layer on top of one another. Drinks like this tend to get called Traffic Lights or Rainbow's Revenge or, in places where truth is more highly valued, Hello and Goodbye, Mr Brain Cell.
* * *
Dean: "I suppose we can all do that, can we? Anyone care to think up some new pixie?"
Runes: "Like the Hair Loss Fairy?"
Dean: "I am not losing my hair! It is just very finely spaced."
Runes: "Half on your head and half on your hairbrush."
Ridcully: "No sense in bein' bashful about goin' bald. Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean."
Runes: "Yes, they say, 'Look at him, he's got no hair.'"
* * *
"You're calling things into being," said Susan.
"Things like the Give the Dean a Huge Bag of Money Goblin?" said the Dean, who could think very quickly at times.
* * *
Bilious: "Tell me again who those people were."
Susan: "Some of the cleverest men in the world."
Bilious: "And I'm sober, am I?"
Susan: "Clever isn't the same as sensible, and they do say that if you wish to walk the path to wisdom then for your first step you must become as a small child."
Bilious: "Do you think they've heard about the second step?"
Susan: "Probably not, but sometimes they fall over it while they're running around shouting."
* * *
The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it.
* * *
"Er, how big would this sock-stealing thing be?" said the Senior Wrangler.
"Don't know," said Ridcully. He peered behind a stack of washboards. "Come to think of it, I must've lost a ton of socks over the years."
"Me too," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"So ... should we be looking in small places or very large places?" the Senior Wrangler went on, in the voice of one whose train of thought has just entered a long dark tunnel.
* * *
I THOUGHT IT WAS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY, said Death.
"Ah, well, yes, you see, one of the things that makes folks even more jolly is knowing there're people who ain't," said Albert, in a matter-of-fact voice.
* * *
"I gather the Archchancellor won't have milk in the University," said Susan. "He says he knows where it comes from and it's unhygienic. And that's a man who eats three eggs for breakfast every day, mark you."
* * *
"I just want to make sure I've got this clear," said the oh god in a reasonable tone of voice. "You think your grandfather is Death and you think he's acting strange?"
* * *
Albert: "...little match girls dying in the snow is part of what the Hogswatch spirit is all about, master ...But, look, it's all right, anyway, because she wakes up and it's all bright and shining and tinkling music and there's angels, master."
Death: AH. THEY TURN UP AT THE LAST MINUTE WITH WARM CLOTHES AND A HOT DRINK?
Albert: "...More sort of just after the last minute."
* * *
Death looked down at the shape under the falling snow. Then he set the lifetimer on the air and touched it with a finger. A spark flashed across.
"You ain't really allowed to do that," said Albert, feeling wretched.
THE HOGFATHER CAN. THE HOGFATHER GIVES PRESENTS. THERE'S NO BETTER PRESENT THAN A FUTURE.
* * *
Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movement of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago.
* * *
Hex had raised the subject [of electricity] one night ... they'd tried rubbing balloons and glass rods until they'd been able to stick Adrian onto the ceiling, and it hadn't had any effect on Hex. Then they'd tried tying a lot of cats to a wheel which, when revolved against some beads of amber, caused any amount of electricity all over the plce. The wretched stuff hung around for days, but there didn't seem any way of ladling it into Hex and anyone no one could stand the noise.
* * *
Dean:"It's not like 'flu, Ridcully. Wisdom is ... well, instilled."
Ridcully:"We bring students here and hope they catch wisdom off us, don't we?"
Dean:"Well, metaphorically."
Ridcully:"And if you hang around with a bunch of idiots you're bound to become pretty daft yourself."
Dean:"I suppose in a manner of speaking..."
Ridcully:"And you've only got to talk to the poor old Bursar for five minutes and you think you're going a bit potty yourself, am I right? So Hex here has caught daftness off the Bursar. Simple. Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
* * *
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
* * *
"Damn," said Ponder. "It's crashed again."
Ridcully looked mystified. "Has it? I never even saw it take off."
"I mean its... its sort of gone a little bit mad," said Ponder.
"Ah," said Ridcully. "Well, we're experts at that around here."
* * *
Ridcully: "And this 'rebooting' business? Give it a good kicking, do you?"
Ponder: "Oh, no, of course, we... that is... well, yes, in fact. Adrian goes round the back and... er... prods it with his foot. But in a technical way."
* * *
Susan: "What did I just do?"
Bilious: "Er... you waved your hand through the table."
Susan: "You see?"
Bilious: "Um... I assume that most humans can't do that?"
Susan: "No!"
* * *
LITTLE MIRACLES ALL OVER THE PLACE, WITH MANY A MERY HO, HO, HO. TEACHING PEOPLE THE REAL MEANING OF HOGSWATCH, ALBERT.
"What, you mean that the pigs and cattle have all been slaughtred and with any luck everyone's got enough food for the winter?"
WELL, WHEN I SAY THE REAL MEANING--
"Some wretched devil's had his head chopped off in a wood somewhere 'cos he found a bean in his dinner and now the summer's going to come back?"
NOT EXACTLY THAT, BUT--
"Oh, you mean that they've chased down some poor beast and shot arrows up into their apple trees and now the shadows are going to go away?"
THAT IS DEFINITELY A MEANING, BUT I--
"Ah, then you're talking about the one where they light a bloody big bonfire to give the sun a hint and tell it to stop lurking under the horizon and do a proper day's work?"
* * *
"It's all about the sun, master. White snow and red blood and the sun. Always has been."
* * *
Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated "proper financial control" with the counting of paperclips.
* * *
Susan: "You know how stuff runs in families? Blue eyes, buck teeth, that sort of thing? Well, Death runs in my family."
Bilious: "Er... in everybody's family, doesn't it?"
* * *
A burning wheel always rolls out of flaming wreckage. Two men carrying a large sheet of glass always cross the road in front of any comedy actor involved in a crazy car chase. Some narrative conventions are so strong that equivalents happen even on planets where the rocks boil at noon.
* * *
"Is... is there a privy nearby?" mumbled their burden, through clammy lips.
"I believe it's through that arch over there," said Susan. "I've heard it's not very pleasant, though."
"That's not a rumour, that's a forecast," said the fat figure, and lurched off.
* * *
Bilious: "What's the Tooth Fairy?"
Susan: "Oh, you see her around a lot these days. Or them, rather. Its a sort of franchise operation. You get the ladder, the moneybelt and the pliers and you're set up."
Bilious: "Pliers?"
Susan: "If she can't make change she has to take an extra tooth on account."
* * *
There are those who believe that knowledge can only be recalled, that there was some Golden Age in the distant past when everything was known and the stones fitted together so you could hardly put a knife between them, you know, and it's obvious they had flying machines, right, because of the way the earthworks can only be seem from above, yeah? and there's this museum I read about where the found a pocket calculator under the altar of this ancient temple, you know what I'm saying? but the government hushed it up...
* * *
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
* * *
Ridcully: "I'm just saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature."
Senior Wrangler: "What's that mean?"
Dean: "Means we make things up as we go along."
* * *
"I don't hold with using that thinking machine," said the Dean. "I've said this before. It's meddling with the Cult. The occult has always been good enough for me, thank you very much."
* * *
It's because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, [Ponder] told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.
* * *
Death had the ultimate poker face.
* * *
Like many barmen, Igor kept a club under the bar to deal with those little upsets that occurred around closing time ... Igor's weapon of choice was a little different. It was tipped with silver (for werewolves), hung with garlic (for vampires) and wrapped around with a strip of blanket (for bogeymen). For everyone else the fact that it was two feet of solid bog-oak usually sufficed.
* * *
The man even had a fringe of worried hair and a small, worried moustache. And the voice suggested exactly that here was a man who, at the end of the world, would worry that it would be blamed on him.
* * *
"Have you any idea how hard it is to be normal? The things you have to remember? How to go to sleep? How to forget things? What doorknobs are for?"
Why ask him, she thought, as she looked at his shocked face. All that's normal for him is remembering to throw up what someone else drank.
* * *
Death was hereditary.
You got it from your ancestors.
* * *
Death: WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, SIRE?
King: "What is going on here, whoever you are, is some fine old Hogswatch charity! And who--"
Death: NO, IT'S NOT.
King: "What? How dare you--"
Death: WERE YOU HERE LAST MONTH? WILL YOU BE HERE NEXT WEEK? NO. BUT TONIGHT YOU WANTED TO FEEL ALL WARM INSIDE. TONIGHT YOU WILL WANT THEM TO SAY: WHAT A GOOD KING HE IS.
King: "Whatever it is, it's more than he's got! And all we've had from him is ingratitude--"
Death: YES, THAT DOES SPOIL IT, DOESN'T IT?
* * *
"I was brung up in a place like this."
DOES IT BRING TEARS TO YOUR EYES?
"A box of matches to me hand, more like."
* * *
"Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving people what they need to get."
* * *
IF I HAD A FIRST NAME, "DUTY" WOULD BE MY MIDDLE NAME.
* * *
Susan: "What're you doing?"
Bibious: "I thought I'd see what beer tastes like."
Susan: "You don't know what beer tastes like?"
Bibious: "Not on the way down, no. It's... quite different by the time it gets to me."
* * *
On the simple table by the bed was a small, rather crude portrait of a bulldog in a wig, although on closer inspection it might have been a woman.
* * *
...the only purpose of his existence was to have a headache and throw up. There were not a great many post-graduate jobs for which these were the main qualifications.
* * *
Susan: "The autobiography. Everyone has one. It writes down your life go along."
Bibious: "I've got one?"
Susan: "I expect so."
Bibious: "Oh, dear. 'Got up, was sick, wanted to die.' Not a gripping read, really."
* * *
Susan: "She's in a tower. From
what she saw, it was tall and white inside... but not outside? It didn't look real. ...And a river, but that wasn't right either. There were goldfish in it... but they were on top of the water."
Bibious: "Ah. Pollution."
* * *
"And there was blue sky but... she must have got this wrong... it says here there was only blue sky above..."
"Yep. Best place for the sky," said the oh god. "Sky underneath you, that probably means trouble."
* * *
A sense of familiarity was creeping up on Susan, but surreptitiously, dodging behind things whenever she tried to concentrate on it.
* * *
The shape of Death was the shape people had created for him, over the centuries. Why bony? Because bones were associated with death. He'd got a scythe because agricultural people could spot a decent metaphor. And he lived in a sombre land because the human imagination would be rather stretched to let him live somewhere nice with flowers.
* * *
"Would you be any good in a fight?"
"Yes. I could be sick on people."
* * *
It was a shack, somewhere out on the outskirts of the Plains town of Scrote. Scorte had a lot of outskirts, spread so widely ... that often people went through it without even knowing it was there, and really it only appeared on the maps because cartographers get embarassed about big empty spaces.
* * *
In short, Death came out of the stove. Exactly how would be difficult to describe without folding the page.
* * *
"What good's a god who gives you everything you want?"
* * *
"It's the hope that's important. Big part of believe, hope. Give people jam today and they'll just sit and eat it. Jam tomorrow, now -- that'll keep them going for ever."
AND YOU MEAN THAT BECAUSE OF THIS THE POOR GET POOR THINGS AND THE RICH GET RICH THINGS?
"'s right," said Albert. "That's the meaning of Hogswatch."
* * *
"I remember when I was a nipper, one Hogswatch I had my heart set on this huge model horse they had in the shop..." His face creased for a moment in a grim smile of recollection. "I remember I spent hours one day, cold as charity the weather was, I spent hours with my nose pressed up against the window... until they heard me callin', and unfroze me."
* * *
Albert: "O' course, I still hung up my stocking on Hogswatch Eve, and in the morning, you know, you know what? Our dad had put in this little horse he'd carved his very own self..."
Death: AH. AND THAT WAS WORTH MORE THAN ALL THE EXPENSIVE TOY HORSES IN THE WORLD, EH?
Albert: "No! It weren't. All I could think of was it wasnt the big horse in the window."
Death: BUT HOW MUCH BETTER TO HAVE A TOY CARVED WITH--
Albert: "No. Only grown-ups think like that. You're a selfish little bugger when you're seven."
* * *
"I suppose people'd say they've got the moon and the stars and suchlike."
I'M SURE THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THE PAPERWORK.
* * *
IT IS ... UNFAIR.
"That's life, master."
BUT I'M NOT.
"I meant this is how it's supposed to go, master," said Albert.
NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES.
* * *
[Death] thought that Hogswatch was all... plum pudding and brandy and ho ho ho and he didn't have the kind of mind that could ignore all the other stuff. And so it hurt him.
* * *
In any list of useful furniture, the one found at the bottom would be the umbrella stand.
* * *
[Death] tried to create these flashes of personality but somehow they betrayed themselves, they tried too hard, like an adolescent boy going out wearing an aftershave called "Rampant".
* * *
"Just hang on," she said. And then she said, "Hang on somewhere differently, I mean."
"I'm sorry, was that a problem?" said the oh god, shifting his grip.
"It might take too long to explain and you probably don't know all the words."
* * *
In the past, when Hex had been recalcitrant about its calculations ... Ponder had tried to sort things out calmly and logically.
It had never, ever occurred to him to contemplate hitting Hex with a mallet. But this was, in fact, what Ridcully was threatening to do.
What was impressive, and also more than a little worrying, was that Hex seemed to understand the concept.
* * *
"It wouldn't be Hogswatch when I was a kid without a pillowcase hanging by the fire--"
"A pillowcase?" said the Senior Wrangler, sharply.
"Well, you can't get much in a stocking," said the Dean.
* * *
The word for this, [Ridcully] had learned, was "cabin fever." When people had been cooped up for too long in the dark days of the winter, they always tended to get on one another's nerves, although there was probably a school of thought that would hold that spending your time in a university with more than five thousand known rooms, a huge library, the best kitchens in the city, its own brewery, dairy, extensive wine cellar, laundry, barber shop, cloisters and skittle alley was testing the definition of "cooped up" a little.
* * *
Mind you, wizards could get on one another's nerves in opposite corners of a very large field.
* * *
"It's Hogswatch! That's not the time for silly arguments, all right?"
"Oh, yes it is," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies glumly. "It's exactly the time for silly arguments. In our family we were lucky to get through dinner without a reprise of What A Shame Henry Didn't Go Into Business With Our Ron. Or Why Hasn't Anyone Taught Those Kids To Use A Knife? That was another favourite."
* * *
"Not a proper Hogswatch afternoon without wheels and bits of broken dolly everywhere and everyone whining. Assault and battery included."
* * *
"And don't forget the presents," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. "How... how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities... and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say 'How thoughtful, that will come in handy!' It's not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it's just less embarrassing."
* * *
"I've worked out," said the Senior Wrangler, "that over the years I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents--"
"Oh, everyone is," said the Chair. "You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when all the paper is cleared away is one slipper that's the wrong colour and a book about earwax."
* * *
The wizards shuddered. They weren't against the outdoors, it was simply their place in it they objected to.
* * *
The Cheerful Fairy was quite short and plump in a tweed skirt and shoes so sensible they could do their own tax returns...
* * *
Her gaze met that of the Senior Wrangler, who had probably never had a bright shining face in his entire life. He specialized in dull, sullen ones. The one he was wearing now would have won prizes.
* * *
One should always be wary of people who talk unashamedly of "fellowship and good cheer" as if it were something that can be applied to life like a poultice. Turn your back for a moment and they may well organizae a Maypole dance and, frankly, there's no option then but to try and make it to the treeline.
* * *
"The red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day." In fact, the hen is not the bird traditionally associated with heralding a new sunrise, but Mrs. Huggs, while collecting many old folk songs for posterity, has taken care to rewrite them where necessary to avoid, as she put it, "offending those of a refined disposition with unwarranted coarseness." Much to her surprise, people often couldn't spot the unwarranted coarseness until it had been pointed out to them.
Sometimes a chicken is nothing but a bird.
* * *
Their collecting tins were already full of donations for the poor of the city, or at least those sections of the poor who in Mrs Huggs' opinion were suitably picturesque and not too smelly and could be relied upon to say thank you.
* * *
If you could have taken the lid off the scene, there would have been chocolates inside. Or at least an interesting biscuit assortment.
* * *
Some people march to a different drummer. The drummer in question here must have been trained elsewhere, possibly by a different species on another planet.
* * *
Goodwill to all men was a phrase coined by someone who hadn't met Foul Ole Ron.
* * *
IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE, ALBERT.
"No, master, it's just a lot more expensive."
* * *
Duck Man: "My word. Here's a whole roast pig! And a big dish of roast potatoes, miraculously uncracked! And ... look ... isn't this caviar in the jar? Asparagus! Potted shrimp! My goodness! What were we going to have for Hogswatch dinner, Arnold?"
Arnold Sideways: "Old boots."
Duck Man: "Just old boots?"
Arnold Sideways: "Oh, no. Stuffed with mud, and with roast mud. 's good mud, too. I bin saving it up."
Duck Man: "Now we can have a merry feast of goose!"
Arnold Sideways: "All right. Can we stuff it with old boots?"
* * *
"I mean, the Hogfather doesn't drop down the chimney and pinch people's grub!"
THE BEGGARS WILL ENJOY IT, ALBERT.
"Well, yes, but--"
IT WASN'T STEALING. IT WAS JUST ... REDISTRIBUTION. IT WILL BE A GOOD DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD.
"No, it won't!"
THEN IT WILL BE A NAUGHTY DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD AND WILL PASS COMPLETELY UNNOTICED.
* * *
I can find the square root of 27.4 in my head. [Footnote: He'd have to admit that the answer would be "five and a bit", but at least he could come up with it.]
* * *
"I know how it's done. Get the look and the sauce right and you're three-quarters there."
"But it's all going to be old boots!" said the waiter.
"Prime aged beef," the manager corrected him.
* * *
You only had to look into Teatime's mismatched eyes to know one thing, which was this: that if Teatime wanted to find you he would not look everywhere. He'd look in only one place, which would be the place where you were hiding.
* * *
Ridcully: "Would he deliver to apes earlier than humans?"
Ponder: "Interesting point, sir. Possibly you're referring to my theory that humans may have in fact descended from apes, of course. A bold hypothesis which ought to sweep away the ignorance of centuries if the grants committee could just see their way clear to letting me hire a boat and sail around to the islands of--"
Ridcully: "I just thought he might deliver alphabetically."
* * *
Wizards know when they are going to die. [Footnote: They generally know in time to have their best robe cleaned, do some serious damage to the wine cellar and have a really good last meal. It's a nicer version of Death Row, with the bonus of no lawyers.]
* * *
"This isn't food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they'd stay at home, isn't that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn't cookery, Bill. This is cuisine."
* * *
Violet's eyes and mouth formed three Os. It was like looking at a pink bowling ball.
* * *
Bilious: "I warn you, there's a very good chance that I might be immortal."
Susan: "Yes, but we probably aren't."
Peachy: "Immortal, eh? So if I was to shoot you inna head, you wouldn't die?"
Bilious: "I suppose when you put it like that... I do know I feel pain..."
* * *
"There's not going to be any more violent deaths, are there?" [Sideney] said. "I just can't stand the sight of violent deaths!"
Teatime put a comforting arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm on your side. A violent death is the last thing that'll happen to you."
* * *
The boys had been brought up by Ma Lilywhite to be respectful to women as delicate and fragile creatures, and were soundly thrashed if disrespectful tendencies were perceived by Ma's incredibly sensitive radar. And it was truly incredibly sensitive. Ma could hear what you were doing three rooms away, a terrible thing for a growing lad.
* * *
Violet: "How can you be a self-employed god?"
Bilious: "Ah, well, you see, if any other god wants, perhaps, you know, a holiday or something, I cover for them. Yes. That's what I do. Oh, yes. I'm very busy. Rushed off my feet. They're always employing me. You've no idea. They don't think twice about pushing off for a month as a big white bull or a swan or something and it's always, 'Oh, Bilious, old chap, just take care of things while I'm away, will you? Answer the prayers and so on.' I hardly get a minute to myself but of course you can't turn down work these days."
* * *
Part of Bilious thought: I'm attracted to a girl who actually has to shut down all other brain functions in order to think about the order of the letters of the alphabet. On the other hand, she's attracted to someone who's wearing a toga that looks as though a family of weasels have had a party in it, so maybe I'll stop this thought right here.
* * *
"I don't want to see! I don't want to see!" said Violet, looking over his shoulder.
* * *
"I am a remarkably truthful man, sir. Things said at University council meetings don't count."
* * *
"He looks as though he died of fright! What happened?"
"Well," said the Dean, "as far as I can tell, the Bursar opened his wardrobe and found the man inside."
"Really? I wouldn't have said the poor old Bursar was all that frightening."
* * *
"If we're not cheerful she bursts into tears," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "The Senior Wranger's doing some juggling for her at the moment."
"But he can't juggle!"
"I think that's cheering her up a bit."
* * *
"I just want to be clear about this," said Ridcully. "My senior wizards have spent the evening playing Hide and Seek?"
"Oh, not the whole evening," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "We played Grandmother's Footsteps and I Spy for quite a while until the Senior Wrangler made a scene just because we wouldn't let him spell chandelier with an S."
* * *
"Teeth?" said Ridcully. "Who goes around with a pocket full of teeth?"
"A very bad fighter?" said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
* * *
Here am I, thought Susan, a very practically minded governess who can add up faster upside down than most people can the right way up, climbing up a tooth-shaped tower belonging to the Tooth Fairy and armed with a sword belonging to Death...
Again! I wish one month, just one damn month, could go by without something like this happening to me.
* * *
Teatime danced excitedly. "A thief? Me? I'm not a thief, madam. But if I were, I would be the kind that steals fire from the gods."
"We've already got fire."
"There must be an upgrade by now."
* * *
Sideney prayed as he ran down the stairs. He didn't believe in any gods, since most wizards seldom like to encourage them, but he prayed anyway the fervent prayers of an atheist who hopes to be wrong.
* * *
"Hi!" she said brightly. "I'm the inner babysitter!"
* * *
Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound.
Always provided, of course, you couldn't hear the actual words.
* * *
Susan looked down at the new shape.
"Nope," she said. "It's horrible, but it doesn't frighten me. No, nor does that." It changed again, and again. "No, nor does my father. Good grief, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't you? I like spiders. Snakes don't worry me. Dogs? No. Rats are fine, I like rats. Sorry, is anyone frightened of that?"
-- It's damn hard to scare Death's granddaughter.
* * *
"I don't frighten easily," said Susan, "but you'd be amazed at how angry I can become."
* * *
When you were grown up you only feared, well, logical things. Poverty. Illness. Being found out. At least you weren't mad with terror because of something under the stairs. The world wasn't full of arbitrary light and shade.
* * *
The Auditors lived by consensus, which made picking scapegoats a little problematical. It brightened up. After all, if everyone was to blame, then it was no one's actual fault. That's what collective responsibility meant, after all.
* * *
Cheerful Fairy: "Who was the skinny one that kept making the funny faces for me?"
Senior Wrangler: "That was the Bursar... It's the dried frog pills, he eats them by the handful. I say, why don't--"
Cheerful Fairy: "Oh dear. I hope they're not addictive."
Senior Wrangler: "I'm sure he wouldn't keep on eating them if they were addictive."
* * *
"I really should talk to him, sir. He's had a near-death experience!"
"We all have. It's called 'living.'"
* * *
IT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT'S A HABIT THAT'S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU'LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER.
* * *
Susan: "You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
Death: REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASIES TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
Susan: "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little--"
Death: YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
Susan: "So we can believe the big ones?"
Death: YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
* * *
Death: STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A ... A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.
Susan: "Talent?"
Death: OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.
* * *
YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
* * *
The Senior Wrangler hummed cheerfully to himself as he ran a comb through his beard for the second time and liberally sprinkled it with what would turn out to be a preparation of weasel extract for demon removal rather than, as he had assumed, a pleasant masculine Scent. [Footnote: It was, in fact, a pleasant masculine scent. But only to female weasels.]
* * *
As far as Death was aware, the sole reason for any human association with pigs and lambs was as a prelude to chops and sausages. Quite why they should dress up for children's wallpaper as well was a mystery. Hello, little folk, this is what you're going to eat...
* * *
From the next room came the sound of someone trying to blow a whistle quietly.
Susan glanced at her grandfather.
"I don't remember them asking for anything that made a noise," she said.
OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?
* * *
Teatime looked down at the poker in his chest as he folded up.
"Oh, no," he said. "It couldn't have gone through you. There are so many ribs and things!"
There was another "pop" as Twyla extracted her thumb and said, "It only kills monsters."
* * *
"The children had to watch that!"
EDUCATIONAL. THE WORLD WILL TEACH THEM ABOUT MONSTERS SOON ENOUGH. LET THEM REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS THE POKER.
* * *
"What did he do it all for?" said Susan. "I mean, why? Money? Power?"
SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THE SHEER FASCINATION OF DOING IT, said Death. OR FOR FAME, OR BECAUSE THEY SHOULDN'T.
* * *
...this customer, he thought with considerable prescience, looked like someone who did not take no for an answer and seldom even bothered to ask the question.
* * *
Bloody Stupid Johnson's approach to music was similar to his approach in every field that was caressed by his genius in the same way that a potato field is touched by a late frost. Make it loud, he said. Make it wide. Make it all-embracing. And thus the Great Organ of Unseen University was the only one in the world where you could play an entire symphony scored for thunderstorm and squashed toad noises.
* * *
"I don't actually think," [Ponder] said, gloomily, "that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don't think I want to live in that kind of world."
"Er," said Mad Drongo, "you could always, you know, sort of say it needs to work with the FTB enabled..."
* * *
Beside him, Coffin Henry began one of his volcanic bouts of coughing, which even sounded green.
* * *
The beggars, despite being too disreputable even to belong to the Beggars' Guild, lived quite well by their own low standards. This was generally by careful application of the Certainty Principle. People would give them all sorts of things if they were certain to go away.
* * *
"And god bless us, every one," said Arnold Sideways.
The curtain of snow hid them from view.
"Which god?"
"Dunno. What've you got?"