'Nighty-night,' said Albert.
The clock struck, twice, for the half-hour. It was still half past six.
And they were gone.
The sledge hurtled across the sky.
'She'll try to find out what this is all about, you know,' said Albert.
OH DEAR.
'Especially after you told her not to.'
YOU THINK SO?
'Yeah,' said Albert.
DEAR ME. I STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT HUMANS, DON'T I?
'Oh ... I dunno... ' said Albert.
OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE QUITE WRONG TO INVOLVE A HUMAN IN ALL THIS. THAT IS WHY, YOU WILL RECALL, I CLEARLY FORBADE HER TO TAKE AN INTEREST.
'Yeah ... you did. .
BESIDES, IT'S AGAINST THE RULES.
'You said them little grey buggers had already broken the rules.'
YES, BUT I CAN'T JUST WAVE A MAGIC WAND AND MAKE IT ALL BETTER. THERE MUST BE PROCEDURES. Death stared ahead for a moment and then shrugged. AND WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO. WE HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP.
'Well, the night is young,' said Albert, sitting back in the sacks.
THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD.
The pigs galloped on. Then, 'No, it ain't.'
I'M SORRY?
'The night isn't any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.'
YES, BUT IT'S MORE DRAMATIC.
'Oh. Right, then.'
Susan stood by the fireplace.
It wasn't as though she disliked Death. Death considered as an individual rather than life's final curtain was someone she couldn't help liking, in a strange kind of way.
Even so ...
The idea of the Grim Reaper filling the
Hogswatch stockings of the world didn't fit well in her head, no matter which way she twisted it. It was like trying to imagine Old Man Trouble as the Tooth Fairy. Oh, yes. Old Man Trouble ... now there was a nasty one for you...
But honestly, what kind of sick person went round creeping into little children's bedrooms all night?
Well, the Hogfather, of course, but...
There was a little tinkling sound from somewhere near the base of the Hogswatch tree.
The raven backed away from the shards of one of the glittering balls.
'Sorry,' it mumbled. 'Bit of a species reaction there. You know ... round, glittering sometimes you just gotta peck ...'
'That chocolate money belongs to the children!'
SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats, backing away from the shiny coins.
'Why's he doing this?'
SQUEAK.
'You don't know either?'
SQUEAK.
'Is there some kind of trouble? Did he do something to the real
Hogfather?'
SQUEAK.
'Why won't he tell me?'
SQUEAK.
'Thank you. You've been very helpful.'
Something ripped, behind her. She turned and saw the raven carefully removing a strip of red wrapping paper from a package.
'Stop that this minute!'
It looked up guiltily.
'It's only a little bit,' it said. 'No one's going to miss it.'
'What do you want it for, anyway?'
'We're attracted to bright colours, right? Automatic reaction.'
'That's jackdaws!'
'Damn. Is it?'
The Death of Rats nodded. SQUEAK.
'Oh, so suddenly you're Mr Ornithologist, are you?' snapped the raven.
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.
'Has he gone funny in the head?'
SQUEAK. The rat shrugged.
'But it could happen, couldn't it? He's very old, and I suppose he sees a lot of terrible things.'
SQUEAK.
'All the trouble in the world,' the raven translated.
'I understood,' said Susan. That was a talent, too. She didn't understand what the rat said. She just understood what it meant.
'There's something wrong and he won't tell me?' said Susan.
That made her even more angry.
'But Albert is in on it too,' she added.
She thought: thousands, millions of years in the same job. Not a nice one. It isn't always cheerful old men passing away at a great age. Sooner or later, it was bound to get anyone down.
Someone had to do something. It was like that time when Twyla's grandmother had started telling everyone that she was the Empress of Krull and had stopped wearing clothes.
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'. But someone ought to do something, and right now the whole pool of someones consisted of her, and no one else. Twyla's grandmother had ended up in a nursing home overlooking the sea at Quirm. That sort of option probably didn't apply here. Besides, he'd be unpopular with the other residents.
She concentrated. This was the simplest talent of them all. She was amazed that other people couldn't do it. She shut her eyes, placed her hands palm down in front of her at shoulder height, spread her fingers and lowered her hands.
When they were halfway down she heard the clock stop ticking. The last tick was longdrawn-out, like a death rattle.
Time stopped.
But duration continued.
She'd always wondered, when she was small, why visits to her grandfather could go on for days and yet, when they got back, the calendar was still plodding along as if they'd never been away.
Now she knew the why, although probably no human being would ever really understand the how. Sometimes, somewhere, somehow, the numbers on the clock did not count.
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. In the endless spaces between the clumsy seconds Death moved like a witch dancing through raindrops, never getting wet.
Humans could liv... No, humans couldn't live here, no, because even when you diluted a glass of wine with a bathful of water you might have more liquid but you still have the same amount of wine. A rubber band was still the same rubber band no matter how far it was stretched.
Humans could exist here, though.
It was never too cold, although the air did prickle like winter air on a sunny day. But out of human habit Susan got her cloak out of the closet.
SQUEAK.
'Haven't you got some mice and rats to see to, then?'
'Nah, 's pretty quiet just before Hogswatch,' said the raven, who was trying to fold the red paper between his claws. 'You get a lot of gerbils and hamsters and that in a few days, mind. When the kids forget to feed them or try to find out what makes them go.'
Of course, she'd be leaving the children. But it wasn't as if anything could happen to them. There wasn't any time for it to happen to them in.
She hurried down the stairs and let herself out of the front door.
Snow hung in the air. It was not a poetic description. It hovered like the stars. When flakes touched Susan they melted with little electric flashes.
There was a lot of traffic in the street, but it was fossilized in Time. She walked carefully between it until she reached the entrance to the park.
The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up AnkhMorpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white.
There was no noise. The curtains of snow shut out the city lights. A few yards into the park and she might as well be in the country.
She stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled.
Y'know, that could've been done with a bit more ceremony,' said the raven, who'd perched on a snowencrusted twig.
'Shut up.'
' 's good, though. Better than most women could do.'
'Shut up.'
They waited.
'Why have you stolen that piece of red paper from a little girl's present?' said Susan.
'I've got plans,' said the raven darkly.
They waited again.
She wondered what would happen if it didn't work. She wondered if the rat would snigger. It had the most annoying snigger in the world.
Then there were hoofbeats and the floating snow burst open and the horse was there.
Binky trotted round in a circle, and then stood and steamed.
He wasn't saddled. Death's horse didn't let you fall.
If I get on, Susan thought, it'll all start again. I'll be out of the light and into the world beyond this one. I'll fall off the tightrope.
But a voice inside her said, 'You want to, though, don't you ... ?'
Ten seconds later, there was only the snow.
The raven turned to the Death of Rats.
'Any idea where I can get some string?'
SQUEAK.
She was watched.
One said, Who is she?
One said, Do we remember that Death adopted a daughter? The young woman is her daughter.
One said, She is human?
One said, Mostly.
One said, Can she be killed?
One said, Oh, yes.
One said, Well, that's all right, then.
One said, Er ... we don't think we're going to get into trouble over this, do we? All this is not exactly ... authorized. We don't want questions asked.
One said, We have a duty to rid the universe of sloppy thinking.
One said, Everyone will be grateful when they find out.
Binky touched down lightly on Death's lawn.
Susan didn't bother with the front door but went round the back, which was never locked.
There had been changes. One significant change, at least.
There was a cat-flap in the door.
She stared at it.
After a second or two a ginger cat came through the flap, gave her an I'm-not-hungryand-you're-notinteresting look, and padded off into the gardens.
Susan pushed open the door into the kitchen.
Cats of every size and colour covered every surface. Hundreds of eyes swivelled to watch her.
It was Mrs Gammage all over again, she thought. The old woman was a regular in Biers for the company and was quite gaga, and 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 of them had their noses in a bowl of cream.
Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.
'Push off, the lot of you,' she said. 'I've never known him have pets.'
The cats gave her a look to indicate that they were intending to go somewhere else in any case and strolled off, licking their chops.
The bowl slowly filled up again.
They were obviously living cats. Only life had colour here. Everything else was created by Death. Colour, along with plumbing and music, were arts that escaped the grasp of his genius.
She left them in the kitchen and wandered along to the study.
There were changes here, too. By the look of it, he'd been trying to learn to play the violin again. He'd never been able to understand why he couldn't play music.
The desk was a mess. Books lay open, piled on one another. They were the ones Susan had never learned to read. Some of the characters hovered above the pages or moved in complicated little patterns as they read you while you read them.
Intricate devices had been scattered across the top. They looked vaguely navigational, but on what oceans and under which stars?
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.
It looked as though he'd been trying to work something out.
NOT KLATCH. NOT HOWOWONDALAND. NOT THE EMPIRE. LET US SAY 20 MILLION CHILDREN AT 2LB OF TOYS PER CHILD.
EQUALS 17,857 TONS. 1,785 TONS PER HOUR.
MEMO: DON'T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO.
CUSHION.
She put the paper back carefully.
Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both. Death had picked up ... humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely.
The house even imitated human houses. Death had created a bedroom for himself, despite the fact that he never slept. If he really picked things up from humans, had he tried insanity? It was very popular, after all.
Perhaps, after all these millennia, he wanted to be nice.
She let herself into the Room of Lifetimers. She'd liked the sound of it, when she was a little girl. But now the hiss of sand from millions of hourglasses, and the little pings and pops as full ones vanished and new empty ones appeared, was not so enjoyable. Now she knew what was going on. Of course, everyone died sooner or later. It just wasn't right to be listening to it happening.
She was about to leave when she noticed the open door in a place where she had never seen a door before.
It was disguised. A whole section of shelving, complete with its whispering glasses, had swung out.
Susan pushed it back and forth with a finger. When it was shut, you'd have to look hard to see the crack.
There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers.
'Light,' she commanded. A couple of candles sprang into life.
The hourglasses were ... wrong.
The ones in the main room, however metaphorical they might be, were solid-looking things of wood and brass and glass. But these looked as though they were made of highlights and shadows with no real substance at all.
She peered at a large one.
The name in it was: OFFLER.
'The crocodile god?' she thought.
Well, gods had a life, presumably. But they never actually died, as far as she knew. They just dwindled away to a voice on the wind and a footnote in some textbook on religion.
There were other gods lined up. She recognized a few of them.
But there were smaller lifetimers on the shelf. When she saw the labels she nearly burst out laughing.
'The Tooth Fairy? The Sandman? John Barleycorn? The Soul Cake Duck? The God of what?'
She stepped back, and something crunched under her feet.
There were shards of glass on the floor. She reached down and picked up the biggest. Only a few letters remained of the name etched into the glass HOGFA...
'Oh, no ... it's true. Granddad, what have you done?'
When she left, the candles winked out. Darkness sprang back.
And in the darkness, among, the spilled sand, a faint sizzle and a tiny spark of light...
Mustrum Ridcully adjusted the towel around his waist.
'How're we doing, Mr Modo?'
The University gardener saluted.
'The tanks are full, Mr Archchancellor sir!' he said brightly. 'And I've been stoking the hotwater boilers an day!'
The other senior wizards clustered in the doorway.
'Really, Mustrum, I really think this is most unwise,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It was surely sealed up for a purpose.'
'Remember what it said on the door,' said the Dean.
'Oh, they just wrote that on it to keep people out,' said Ridcully, opening a fresh bar of soap.
'Wen, yes,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'That's right. That's what people do.'
'It's a bathroom,' said Ridcully. 'You are all acting as if it's some kind of a torture chamber.'
'A bathroom,' said the Dean, 'designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Archchancellor Weatherwax only used it once and then had it sealed up! Mustrum, I beg you to reconsider! It's a Johnson!'
There was something of a pause, because even Ridcully had to adjust his mind around this.
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. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. 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. It amounted to pretty much the same thing. But this never discouraged him, or the morbid curiosity of his clients. Music, landscape gardening, architecture — there was no start to his talents.
Nevertheless, it was a little bit surprising to find that Bloody Stupid had turned to bathroom design. But, as Ridcully said, it was known that he had designed and built several large musical organs and, when you got right down to it, it was all just plumbing, wasn't it?
The other wizards, who'd been there longer than the Archchancellor, took the view that if Bloody Stupid Johnson had built a fully functional bathroom he'd actually meant it to be something else.
'Y'know, I've always felt that Mr Johnson was a much maligned man,' said Ridcully, eventually.
'Well, yes, of course he was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, clearly exasperated. 'That's like saying that jam attracts wasps, you see.'
'Not everything he made worked badly,' said Ridcully stoutly, flourishing his scrubbing brush. 'Look at that thing they use down in the kitchens for peelin' the potatoes, for example.'
'Ah, you mean the thing with the brass plate on it saying "Improved Manicure Device", Archchancellor?'
'Listen, it's just water,' snapped Ridcully. 'Even Johnson couldn't do much harm with water. Modo, open the sluices!'
The rest of the wizards backed away as the gardener turned a couple of ornate brass wheels.
'I'm fed up with groping around for the soap like you fellows!' shouted the Archchancellor, as water gushed through hidden channels. 'Hygiene. That's the ticket!'
'Don't say we didn't warn you,' said the Dean, shutting the door.
'Er, I still haven't worked out where all the pipes lead, sir,' Modo ventured.
'We'll find out, never you fear,' said Ridcully happily. He removed his hat and put on a shower cap of his own design. In deference to his profession, it was pointy. He picked up a yellow rubber duck.
'Man the pumps, Mr Modo. Or dwarf them, of course, in your case.'
'Yes, Archchancellor.'
Modo hauled on a lever. The pipes started a hammering noise and steam leaked out of a few joints.
Ridcully took a last look around the bathroom.
It was a hidden treasure, no doubt about it. Say what you like, old Johnson must sometimes have got it right, even if it was only by accident. The entire room, including the floor and ceiling, had been tiled in white, blue and green. In the centre, under its crown of pipes, was Johnson's Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish, a sanitary poem in mahogany, rosewood and copper.
He'd got Modo to polish every pipe and brass tap until they gleamed. It had taken ages.
Ridcully shut the frosted door behind him.
The inventor of the ablutionary marvel had decided to make a mere shower a fully controllable experience, and one wall of the large cubicle held a marvellous panel covered with brass taps cast in the shape of mermaids and shells and, for some reason, pomegranates. There were separate feeds for salt water, hard water and soft water and huge wheels for accurate control of temperature. Ridcully inspected them with care.
Then he stood back, looked around at the tiles and sang, 'Mi, mi, mi!'
His voice reverberated back at him.
'A perfect echo!' said Ridcully, one of nature's bathroom baritones.
He picked up a speaking tube that had been installed to allow the bather to communicate with the engineer.
'All cisterns go, Mr Modo!'
'Aye, aye, sir!'
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.
A gentle shower of warm water, almost a caressing mist, enveloped him.
'My word!' he exclaimed, and tried another tap.
'Shower' turned out to be a little more invigorating. 'Torrent' made him gasp for breath and 'Deluge' sent him groping to the panel because the top of his head felt that it was being removed. 'Wave' sloshed a wall of warm salt water from one side of the cubicle to the other before it disappeared into the grating that was set into the middle of the floor.
'Are you all right, sir?' Modo called out.
'Marvellous! And there's a dozen knobs I haven't tried yet!'
Modo nodded, and tapped a valve. Ridcully's voice, raised in what he considered to be song, boomed out through the thick clouds of steam.
'Oh, IIIIIII knew a ... er ... an agricultural worker of some description, possibly a thatcher, And I knew him well, and he — he was a farmer, now I come to think of it — and he had a daughter and her name I can't recall at the moment,
And ... Where was P... Ah yes. Chorus:
Something something, a humorously shaped vegetable, a turnip, I believe, something something and the sweet nightingaleeeeaarggooooooh-ARGHH oh oh oh...'
The song shut off suddenly. All Modo could hear was a ferocious gushing noise.
'Archchancellor?'
After a moment a voice answered from near the ceiling. It sounded somewhat high and hesitant.
'Er . . . I wonder if you would be so very good as to shut the water off from out there, my dear chap? Er ... quite gently, if you wouldn't mind. . .'
Modo carefully spun a wheel. The gushing sound gradually subsided.
'Ah. Well done,' said the voice, but now from somewhere nearer floor level. 'Well. Jolly good job. I think we can definitely call it a success. Yes, indeed. Er. I wonder if you could help me walk for a moment. I inexplicably feel a little unsteady on my feet . . . '
Modo pushed open the door and helped Ridcully out and onto a bench. He looked rather pale.
'Yes, indeed,' said the Archchancellor, his eyes a little glazed. 'Astoundingly successful. Er. Just a minor point, Modo ...'
'Yes, sir?'
'There's a tap in there we perhaps should leave alone for now,' said Ridcully. 'I'd esteem it a service if you could go and make a little sign to hang on it.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Saying "Do not touch at all", or something like that.'
'Right, sir.'
'Hang it on the one marked "Old Faithful".'
'Yes, sir.'
'No need to mention it to the other fellows.'
'Yes. sir.'
'Ye gods, I've never felt so clean.'
From a vantage point among some ornamental tilework near the ceiling a small gnome in a bowler hat watched Ridcully carefully.
When Modo had gone the Archchancellor slowly began to dry himself on a big fluffy towel. As he got his composure back, so another song wormed its way under his breath.
'On the second day of Hogswatch I ... sent my true love back
A nasty little letter, hah, yes indeed, and a partridge in a pear tree ...'
The gnome slid down onto the tiles and crept up behind the briskly shaking shape.
Ridcully, after a few more trial runs, settled on a song which evolves somewhere on every planet where there are winters. It's often dragooned into the service of some local religion and a few words are changed, but it's really about things that have to do with gods only in the same way that roots have to do with leaves.
'...the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer ...'
Ridcully spun. A corner of wet towel caught the gnome on the ear and flicked it onto its back.
'I saw you creeping up!' roared the Archchancellor. 'What's the game, then? Small-time thief, are you?'
The gnome slid backwards on the soapy surface.
' 'ere, what's your game, mister, you ain't supposed to be able to see me!'
'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. What's in this bag?'
'You don't wanna open the bag, mister! You really don't wanna open the bag!'
'Why? What have you got in it?'
The gnome sagged. 'It ain't what's in it, mister. It's what'll come out. I has to let 'em out one at a time, no knowin' what'd happen if they all gets out at once!'
Ridcully looked interested, and started to undo the string.
'You'll really wish you hadn't, mister!' the gnome pleaded.
'Will I? What're you doing here, young man?'
The gnome gave up.
'Well ... you know the Tooth Fairy?'
'Yes. Of course,' said Ridcully.
'Well ... I ain't her. But ... it's sort of like the same business ...'
'What? You take things away?'
'Er not take away, as such. More sort of ... bring ...
'Ah ... like new teeth?'
'Er ... like new verrucas,' said the gnome.
Death threw the sack into the back of the sledge and climbed in after it.
'You're doing well, master,' said Albert.
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.'
Albert unscrewed the top off a bottle of cold tea. All the sherry had made him thirsty.
'Doing well, master,' he repeated, taking a pull. 'All the soot in the fireplace, the footprints, them swigged sherries, the sleigh tracks all over the roofs ... it's got to work.'
YOU THINK SO?
'Sure.'
AND I MADE SURE SOME OF THEM SAW ME. I KNOW IF THEY ARE PEEPING, Death added proudly.
'Well done, sir.'
YES.
'Though here's a tip, though. Just "Ho. Ho. Ho,— will do. Don't say, "Cower, brief mortals" unless you want them to grow up to be moneylenders or some such.'
HO. HO. HO.
'Yes, you're really getting the hang of it.' Albert looked down hurriedly at his notebook so that Death wouldn't see his face. 'Now, I got to tell you, master, what'll really do some good is a public appearance. Really.'
OH. I DON'T NORMALLY DO THEM.
'The Hogfather's more've a public figure, master. And one good public appearance'll do more good than any amount of letting kids see you by accident. Good for the old belief muscles.'
REALLY? HO. HO. HO.
'Right, right, that's really good, master. Where was I ... yes ... the shops'll be open late. Lots of kiddies get taken to see the Hogfather, you see. Not the real one, of course. just some ole geezer with a pillow up his jumper, saving yer presence, master.'
NOT REAL? HO. HO. HO.
'Oh, no. And you don't need...'
THE CHILDREN KNOW THIS? HO. HO. HO.
Albert scratched his nose. 'S'pose so, master.'
THIS SHOULD NOT BE. NO WONDER THERE HAS BEEN ... THIS DIFFICULTY. BELIEF WAS COMPROMISED? HO. HO. HO.
'Could be, master. Er, the "ho, ho ..."'
WHERE DOES THIS TRAVESTY TAKE PLACE? HO. HO. HO.
Albert gave up. 'Well, Crumley's in The Maul, for one. Very popular, the Hogfather Grotto. They always have a good Hogfather, apparently.'
LET'S GET THERE AND SLEIGH THEM. HO. HO. HO.
'Right you are, master.'
THAT WAS A PUNE OR PLAY ON WORDS, ALBERT. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED.
'I'm laughing like hell deep down, sir.'
HO. HO. HO.
Archchancellor Ridcully grinned.
He often grinned. He was one of those men who grinned even when they were annoyed, but right now he grinned because he was proud. A little sore still, perhaps, but still proud.
'Amazing bathroom, ain't it?' he said. 'They had it walled up, you know. Damn silly thing to do. I mean, perhaps there were a few teething troubles,' he shifted gingerly, 'but that's only to be expected. It's got everything, d'you see? Foot baths in the shape of clam shells, look. A whole wardrobe for dressing gowns. And that tub over there's got a big blower thingy so's you get bubbly water without even havin' to eat starchy food. And this thingy here with the mermaids holdin' it up's a special pot for your toenail clippings. It's got everything, this place.'
'A special pot for nail clippings?' said the Verruca Gnome.
'Oh, can't be too careful,' said Ridcully, lifting the lid of an ornate jar marked BATH SALTS and pulling out a bottle of wine. 'Get hold of something like someone's nail clipping and you've got 'em under your control. That's real old magic. Dawn of time stuff.'
He held the wine bottle up to the light.
'Should be cooled nicely by now,' he said, extracting the cork. 'Verrucas, eh?'
'Wish I knew why,' said the gnome.
'You mean you don't know?'
'Nope. Suddenly I wake up and I'm the Verruca Gnome.'
'Puzzling, that,' said Ridcully. 'My dad used to say the Verruca Gnome turned up if you walked around in bare feet but I never knew you existed. I thought he just made it up. I mean, tooth fairies, yes, and them little buggers that live in flowers, used to collect 'em myself as a lad, but can't recall anything about verrucas.' He drank thoughtfully. 'Cot a distant cousin called Verruca, as a matter of fact. It's quite a nice sound, when you come to think of it.'
He looked at the gnome over the top of his glass.
You didn't become Archchancellor without a feeling for subtle wrongness in a situation. Well, that wasn't quite true. It was more accurate to say that you didn't remain Archchancellor for very long.
'Good job, is it?' he said thoughtfully.
'Dandruff'd be better,' said the gnome. 'At least I'd be out in the fresh air.'
'I think we'd better check up on this,' said Ridcully. 'Of course, it might be nothing.'
'Oh, thank you,' said the Verruca Gnome, gloomily.
It was a magnificent Grotto this year, Vernon Crumley told himself. The staff had worked really hard. The Hogfather's sleigh was a work of art in itself, and the pigs looked really real and a wonderful shade of pink.
The Grotto took up nearly all of the first floor. One of the pixies had been Disciplined for smoking behind the Magic Tinkling Waterfall and the clockwork Dolls of All Nations showing how We Could All Get Along were a bit jerky and giving trouble but all in all, he told himself, it was a display to Delight the Hearts of Kiddies everywhere.
The kiddies were queueing up with their parents and watching the display owlishly.
And the money was coming in. Oh, how the money was coming in.
So that the staff would not be Tempted, Mr Crumley had set up an arrangement of overhead wires across the ceilings of the store. In the middle of each floor was a cashier in a little cage. Staff took money from customers, put it in a little clockwork cable car, sent it whizzing overhead to the cashier, who'd make change and start it rattling back again. Thus there was no possibility of Temptation, and the little trolleys were shooting back and forth like fireworks.
Mr Crumley loved Hogswatch. It was for. the Kiddies, after all.
He tucked his fingers in the pockets of his waistcoat and beamed.
'Everything going well, Miss Harding?'
'Yes, Mr Crumley,' said the cashier, meekly.
'Jolly good.' He looked at the pile of coins.
A bright little zig-zag crackled off them and earthed itself on the metal grille.
Mr Crumley blinked. In front of him sparks flashed off the steel rims of Miss Harding's spectacles.
The Grotto display changed. For just a fraction of a second Mr Crumley had the sensation of speed, as though what appeared had screeched to a halt. Which was ridiculous.
The four pink papier-mache pigs exploded. A cardboard snout bounced off Mr Crumley's head.
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 creatures were huge and grey and bristly and a cloud of acrid mist hung over each one.
And they didn't look sweet. There was nothing charming about them. One turned to look at him with small, red eyes, and didn't go 'oink', which was the sound that Mr Crumley, born and raised in the city, had always associated with pigs.
It went 'Ghnaaarrrwnnkh?'
The sleigh had changed, too. He'd been very pleased with that sleigh. It had delicate silver curly bits on it. He'd personally supervised the gluing on of every twinkling star. But the splendour of it was lying in glittering shards around a sledge that looked as though it had been built of crudely sawn tree trunks laid on two massive wooden runners. It looked ancient and there were faces carved on the wood, nasty crude grinning faces that looked quite out of place.
Parents were yelling and trying to pull their children away, but they weren't having much luck. The children were gravitating towards it like flies to jam.
Mr Crumley ran towards the terrible thing, waving his hands.
'Stop that! Stop that!' he screamed. 'You'll frighten the Kiddies!'
He heard a small boy behind him say, 'They 've got tusks! Cool!'
His sister said, 'Hey, look, that one's doing a wee!' A tremendous cloud of yellow steam arose. 'Look, it's going all the way to the stairs! All those who can't swim hold onto the banisters!'
'They eat you if you're bad, you know,' said a small girl with obvious approval. 'All up. Even the bones. They crunch them.'
Another, older, child opined: 'Don't be childish. They're not real. They've just got a wizard in to do the magic. Or it's all done by clockwork. Everyone knows they're not really r...'
One of the boars turned to look at him. The boy moved behind his mother.
Mr Crumley, tears of anger streaming clown his face, fought through the milling crowd until he reached the Hogfather's Grotto. He grabbed a frightened pixie.
'It's the Campaign for Equal Heights that've done this, isn't it!' he shouted. 'They're out to ruin me! And they're ruining it for all the Kiddies! Look at the lovely dolls!'
The pixie hesitated. Children were clustering around the pigs, despite the continued efforts of their mothers. The small girl was giving one of them an orange.
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 repeatedly in the ear. A chorus of small children was cheering them on indiscriminately.
'There's, er, there's more trouble in the Grotto, Mr Crum' the pixie began.
A red and white figure pushed its way through the crush and rammed a false beard into Mr Crumley's hands.
'That's it,' said the old man in the Hogfather costume. 'I don't mind the smell of oranges and the damp trousers but I ain't putting up with this.'
He stamped off through the queue. Mr Crumley heard him add, 'And he's not even doin' it right!'
Mr Crumley forced his way onward.
Someone was sitting in the big chair. There was a child on his knee. The figure was ... strange.
It was definitely in something like a Hogfather costume but Mr Crumley's eye kept slipping, it wouldn't focus, it skittered away and tried to put the figure on the very edge of vision. It was like trying to look at your own ear.
'What's going on here? What's going on here?' Crumley demanded.
A hand took his shoulder firmly. He turned round and looked into the face of a Grotto Pixie. At least, it was wearing the costume of a Grotto Pixie, although somewhat askew, as if it had been put on in a hurry.
'Who are you?'
The pixie took the soggy cigarette end out of its mouth and leered at him.
'Call me Uncle Heavy,' he said.
'You're not a pixie!'
'Nah, I'm a fairy cobbler, mister.'
Behind Crumley, a voice said:
AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN?
Mr Crumley turned in horror.
In front of — well, he had to think of it as the usurping Hogfather — was a small child of indeterminate sex who seemed to be mostly woollen bobble hat.
Mr Crumley knew how it was supposed to go. It was supposed to go like this: the child was always struck dumb and the attendant mother would lean forward and catch the Hogfather's eye and say very pointedly, in that voice adults use when they're conspiring against children:
'You want a Baby Tinkler Doll, don't you, Doreen? And the Just Like Mummy Cookery Set you've got in the window. And the Cut-Out Kitchen Range Book. And what do you say?'
And the stunned child would murmur "nk you' and get given a balloon or an orange.
This time, though, it didn't work like that.
Mother got as far as 'You want a ...'
WHY ARE YOUR HANDS ON BITS OF STRING, CHILD?
The child looked down the length of its arms to the dangling mittens affixed to its sleeves. It held them up for inspection.
'Clubs,' it said.
I SEE. VERY PRACTICAL.
'Are you weal?' said the bobble hat.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
The bobble hat 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 bobble hat had ever seen.
OH. ER ... GOOD.
'It had a gwate big ...'
WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH? said the Hogfather hurriedly.
Mother took her economic cue again, and said briskly: 'She wants a ...'
The Hogfather snapped his fingers impatiently. The mother's mouth slammed shut.
The child seemed to sense that here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and spoke quickly.
'I wanta narmy. Anna big castle wif pointy bits,' said the child. 'Anna swored.'
WHAT DO YOU SAY? prompted the Hogfather.
'A big swored?' said the child, after a pause for deep cogitation.
THAT'S RIGHT.
Uncle Heavy nudged the Hogfather.
'They're supposed to thank you,' he said.
ARE YOU SURE? PEOPLE DON'T, NORMALLY.
'I meant they thank the Hogfather,' Albert hissed. 'Which is you, right?'
YES, OF COURSE. AHEM. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SAY THANK YOU.
' 'nk you.'
AND BE GOOD. THIS IS PART OF THE ARRANGEMENT.
' 'es.'
THEN WE HAVE A CONTRACT.
The Hogfather reached into his sack and produced:
— a very large model castle with, as correctly interpreted, pointy blue cone roofs on turrets suitable for princesses to be locked in
— a box of several hundred assorted knights and warriors
— and a sword. It was four feet long and glinted along the blade.
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. THEY'RE 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.
Uncle Heavy whispered urgently.
REALLY? OH, WELL. IT'S NOT FOR ME TO ARGUE, I SUPPOSE.
The blade went wooden.
'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! I mean ... yes, of course, of course things are given away,' he corrected himself, aware that people were watching, 'but first they have to be bought, d'you see, I mean ... haha.' He laughed nervously, increasingly aware of the strangeness around him and the rangy look of Uncle Heavy. 'It's not as though the toys are made by little elves at the Hub, ahaha . — .'
'Damn right,' said Uncle Heavy sagely. 'You'd have to be a maniac even to think of giving an elf a chisel, less'n you want their initials carved on your forehead.'
'You mean this is all free?' said Doreen's mother sharply, not to be budged from what she saw as the central point.
Mr Crumley looked helplessly at the toys. They certainly didn't look like any of his stock.
Then he tried to look hard at the new Hogfather. Every cell in his brain was telling him that here was a fat jolly man in a red and white suit.
Well ... nearly every cell. A few of the sparkier ones were saying that his eyes were reporting something else, but they couldn't agree on what. A couple had shut down completely.
The words escaped through his teeth.
'It ... seems to be,' he said.
Although it was Hogswatch the University buildings were bustling. Wizards didn't go to bed early in any case,[14] and of course there was the Hogswatchnight Feast to look forward to at midnight.
It would give some idea of the scale of the Hogswatchnight Feast that a light snack at UU consisted of a mere three or four courses, not counting the cheese and nuts.
Some of the wizards had been practising for weeks. The Dean in particular could now lift a twenty-pound turkey on one fork. Having to wait until midnight merely put a healthy edge on appetites already professionally honed.
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.
Ridcully stepped out into the snow and turned up his collar. The lights were all on in the High Energy Magic Building.
'I don't know, I don't know,' he muttered. 'Hogswatchnight and they're still working. It's just not natural. When I was a student I'd have been sick twice by now...'
In fact Ponder Stibbons and his group of research students had made a concession to Hogswatchnight. They'd draped holly over Hex and put a paper hat on the big glass dome containing the main ant heap.
Every time he came in here, it seemed to Ridcully, something -more had been done to the ... engine, or thinking machine, or whatever it was. Sometimes stuff turned up overnight. Occasionally, according to Stibbons, Hex hims itself would draw plans for extra bits that he — it needed. It all gave Ridcully the willies, and an additional willy was engendered right now when he saw the Bursar sitting in front of the thing. For a moment, he forgot all about verrucas.
The clock struck, twice, for the half-hour. It was still half past six.
And they were gone.
The sledge hurtled across the sky.
'She'll try to find out what this is all about, you know,' said Albert.
OH DEAR.
'Especially after you told her not to.'
YOU THINK SO?
'Yeah,' said Albert.
DEAR ME. I STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT HUMANS, DON'T I?
'Oh ... I dunno... ' said Albert.
OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE QUITE WRONG TO INVOLVE A HUMAN IN ALL THIS. THAT IS WHY, YOU WILL RECALL, I CLEARLY FORBADE HER TO TAKE AN INTEREST.
'Yeah ... you did. .
BESIDES, IT'S AGAINST THE RULES.
'You said them little grey buggers had already broken the rules.'
YES, BUT I CAN'T JUST WAVE A MAGIC WAND AND MAKE IT ALL BETTER. THERE MUST BE PROCEDURES. Death stared ahead for a moment and then shrugged. AND WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO. WE HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP.
'Well, the night is young,' said Albert, sitting back in the sacks.
THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD.
The pigs galloped on. Then, 'No, it ain't.'
I'M SORRY?
'The night isn't any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.'
YES, BUT IT'S MORE DRAMATIC.
'Oh. Right, then.'
Susan stood by the fireplace.
It wasn't as though she disliked Death. Death considered as an individual rather than life's final curtain was someone she couldn't help liking, in a strange kind of way.
Even so ...
The idea of the Grim Reaper filling the
Hogswatch stockings of the world didn't fit well in her head, no matter which way she twisted it. It was like trying to imagine Old Man Trouble as the Tooth Fairy. Oh, yes. Old Man Trouble ... now there was a nasty one for you...
But honestly, what kind of sick person went round creeping into little children's bedrooms all night?
Well, the Hogfather, of course, but...
There was a little tinkling sound from somewhere near the base of the Hogswatch tree.
The raven backed away from the shards of one of the glittering balls.
'Sorry,' it mumbled. 'Bit of a species reaction there. You know ... round, glittering sometimes you just gotta peck ...'
'That chocolate money belongs to the children!'
SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats, backing away from the shiny coins.
'Why's he doing this?'
SQUEAK.
'You don't know either?'
SQUEAK.
'Is there some kind of trouble? Did he do something to the real
Hogfather?'
SQUEAK.
'Why won't he tell me?'
SQUEAK.
'Thank you. You've been very helpful.'
Something ripped, behind her. She turned and saw the raven carefully removing a strip of red wrapping paper from a package.
'Stop that this minute!'
It looked up guiltily.
'It's only a little bit,' it said. 'No one's going to miss it.'
'What do you want it for, anyway?'
'We're attracted to bright colours, right? Automatic reaction.'
'That's jackdaws!'
'Damn. Is it?'
The Death of Rats nodded. SQUEAK.
'Oh, so suddenly you're Mr Ornithologist, are you?' snapped the raven.
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.
'Has he gone funny in the head?'
SQUEAK. The rat shrugged.
'But it could happen, couldn't it? He's very old, and I suppose he sees a lot of terrible things.'
SQUEAK.
'All the trouble in the world,' the raven translated.
'I understood,' said Susan. That was a talent, too. She didn't understand what the rat said. She just understood what it meant.
'There's something wrong and he won't tell me?' said Susan.
That made her even more angry.
'But Albert is in on it too,' she added.
She thought: thousands, millions of years in the same job. Not a nice one. It isn't always cheerful old men passing away at a great age. Sooner or later, it was bound to get anyone down.
Someone had to do something. It was like that time when Twyla's grandmother had started telling everyone that she was the Empress of Krull and had stopped wearing clothes.
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'. But someone ought to do something, and right now the whole pool of someones consisted of her, and no one else. Twyla's grandmother had ended up in a nursing home overlooking the sea at Quirm. That sort of option probably didn't apply here. Besides, he'd be unpopular with the other residents.
She concentrated. This was the simplest talent of them all. She was amazed that other people couldn't do it. She shut her eyes, placed her hands palm down in front of her at shoulder height, spread her fingers and lowered her hands.
When they were halfway down she heard the clock stop ticking. The last tick was longdrawn-out, like a death rattle.
Time stopped.
But duration continued.
She'd always wondered, when she was small, why visits to her grandfather could go on for days and yet, when they got back, the calendar was still plodding along as if they'd never been away.
Now she knew the why, although probably no human being would ever really understand the how. Sometimes, somewhere, somehow, the numbers on the clock did not count.
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. In the endless spaces between the clumsy seconds Death moved like a witch dancing through raindrops, never getting wet.
Humans could liv... No, humans couldn't live here, no, because even when you diluted a glass of wine with a bathful of water you might have more liquid but you still have the same amount of wine. A rubber band was still the same rubber band no matter how far it was stretched.
Humans could exist here, though.
It was never too cold, although the air did prickle like winter air on a sunny day. But out of human habit Susan got her cloak out of the closet.
SQUEAK.
'Haven't you got some mice and rats to see to, then?'
'Nah, 's pretty quiet just before Hogswatch,' said the raven, who was trying to fold the red paper between his claws. 'You get a lot of gerbils and hamsters and that in a few days, mind. When the kids forget to feed them or try to find out what makes them go.'
Of course, she'd be leaving the children. But it wasn't as if anything could happen to them. There wasn't any time for it to happen to them in.
She hurried down the stairs and let herself out of the front door.
Snow hung in the air. It was not a poetic description. It hovered like the stars. When flakes touched Susan they melted with little electric flashes.
There was a lot of traffic in the street, but it was fossilized in Time. She walked carefully between it until she reached the entrance to the park.
The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up AnkhMorpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white.
There was no noise. The curtains of snow shut out the city lights. A few yards into the park and she might as well be in the country.
She stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled.
Y'know, that could've been done with a bit more ceremony,' said the raven, who'd perched on a snowencrusted twig.
'Shut up.'
' 's good, though. Better than most women could do.'
'Shut up.'
They waited.
'Why have you stolen that piece of red paper from a little girl's present?' said Susan.
'I've got plans,' said the raven darkly.
They waited again.
She wondered what would happen if it didn't work. She wondered if the rat would snigger. It had the most annoying snigger in the world.
Then there were hoofbeats and the floating snow burst open and the horse was there.
Binky trotted round in a circle, and then stood and steamed.
He wasn't saddled. Death's horse didn't let you fall.
If I get on, Susan thought, it'll all start again. I'll be out of the light and into the world beyond this one. I'll fall off the tightrope.
But a voice inside her said, 'You want to, though, don't you ... ?'
Ten seconds later, there was only the snow.
The raven turned to the Death of Rats.
'Any idea where I can get some string?'
SQUEAK.
She was watched.
One said, Who is she?
One said, Do we remember that Death adopted a daughter? The young woman is her daughter.
One said, She is human?
One said, Mostly.
One said, Can she be killed?
One said, Oh, yes.
One said, Well, that's all right, then.
One said, Er ... we don't think we're going to get into trouble over this, do we? All this is not exactly ... authorized. We don't want questions asked.
One said, We have a duty to rid the universe of sloppy thinking.
One said, Everyone will be grateful when they find out.
Binky touched down lightly on Death's lawn.
Susan didn't bother with the front door but went round the back, which was never locked.
There had been changes. One significant change, at least.
There was a cat-flap in the door.
She stared at it.
After a second or two a ginger cat came through the flap, gave her an I'm-not-hungryand-you're-notinteresting look, and padded off into the gardens.
Susan pushed open the door into the kitchen.
Cats of every size and colour covered every surface. Hundreds of eyes swivelled to watch her.
It was Mrs Gammage all over again, she thought. The old woman was a regular in Biers for the company and was quite gaga, and 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 of them had their noses in a bowl of cream.
Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.
'Push off, the lot of you,' she said. 'I've never known him have pets.'
The cats gave her a look to indicate that they were intending to go somewhere else in any case and strolled off, licking their chops.
The bowl slowly filled up again.
They were obviously living cats. Only life had colour here. Everything else was created by Death. Colour, along with plumbing and music, were arts that escaped the grasp of his genius.
She left them in the kitchen and wandered along to the study.
There were changes here, too. By the look of it, he'd been trying to learn to play the violin again. He'd never been able to understand why he couldn't play music.
The desk was a mess. Books lay open, piled on one another. They were the ones Susan had never learned to read. Some of the characters hovered above the pages or moved in complicated little patterns as they read you while you read them.
Intricate devices had been scattered across the top. They looked vaguely navigational, but on what oceans and under which stars?
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.
It looked as though he'd been trying to work something out.
NOT KLATCH. NOT HOWOWONDALAND. NOT THE EMPIRE. LET US SAY 20 MILLION CHILDREN AT 2LB OF TOYS PER CHILD.
EQUALS 17,857 TONS. 1,785 TONS PER HOUR.
MEMO: DON'T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO.
CUSHION.
She put the paper back carefully.
Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both. Death had picked up ... humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely.
The house even imitated human houses. Death had created a bedroom for himself, despite the fact that he never slept. If he really picked things up from humans, had he tried insanity? It was very popular, after all.
Perhaps, after all these millennia, he wanted to be nice.
She let herself into the Room of Lifetimers. She'd liked the sound of it, when she was a little girl. But now the hiss of sand from millions of hourglasses, and the little pings and pops as full ones vanished and new empty ones appeared, was not so enjoyable. Now she knew what was going on. Of course, everyone died sooner or later. It just wasn't right to be listening to it happening.
She was about to leave when she noticed the open door in a place where she had never seen a door before.
It was disguised. A whole section of shelving, complete with its whispering glasses, had swung out.
Susan pushed it back and forth with a finger. When it was shut, you'd have to look hard to see the crack.
There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers.
'Light,' she commanded. A couple of candles sprang into life.
The hourglasses were ... wrong.
The ones in the main room, however metaphorical they might be, were solid-looking things of wood and brass and glass. But these looked as though they were made of highlights and shadows with no real substance at all.
She peered at a large one.
The name in it was: OFFLER.
'The crocodile god?' she thought.
Well, gods had a life, presumably. But they never actually died, as far as she knew. They just dwindled away to a voice on the wind and a footnote in some textbook on religion.
There were other gods lined up. She recognized a few of them.
But there were smaller lifetimers on the shelf. When she saw the labels she nearly burst out laughing.
'The Tooth Fairy? The Sandman? John Barleycorn? The Soul Cake Duck? The God of what?'
She stepped back, and something crunched under her feet.
There were shards of glass on the floor. She reached down and picked up the biggest. Only a few letters remained of the name etched into the glass HOGFA...
'Oh, no ... it's true. Granddad, what have you done?'
When she left, the candles winked out. Darkness sprang back.
And in the darkness, among, the spilled sand, a faint sizzle and a tiny spark of light...
Mustrum Ridcully adjusted the towel around his waist.
'How're we doing, Mr Modo?'
The University gardener saluted.
'The tanks are full, Mr Archchancellor sir!' he said brightly. 'And I've been stoking the hotwater boilers an day!'
The other senior wizards clustered in the doorway.
'Really, Mustrum, I really think this is most unwise,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It was surely sealed up for a purpose.'
'Remember what it said on the door,' said the Dean.
'Oh, they just wrote that on it to keep people out,' said Ridcully, opening a fresh bar of soap.
'Wen, yes,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'That's right. That's what people do.'
'It's a bathroom,' said Ridcully. 'You are all acting as if it's some kind of a torture chamber.'
'A bathroom,' said the Dean, 'designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Archchancellor Weatherwax only used it once and then had it sealed up! Mustrum, I beg you to reconsider! It's a Johnson!'
There was something of a pause, because even Ridcully had to adjust his mind around this.
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. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. 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. It amounted to pretty much the same thing. But this never discouraged him, or the morbid curiosity of his clients. Music, landscape gardening, architecture — there was no start to his talents.
Nevertheless, it was a little bit surprising to find that Bloody Stupid had turned to bathroom design. But, as Ridcully said, it was known that he had designed and built several large musical organs and, when you got right down to it, it was all just plumbing, wasn't it?
The other wizards, who'd been there longer than the Archchancellor, took the view that if Bloody Stupid Johnson had built a fully functional bathroom he'd actually meant it to be something else.
'Y'know, I've always felt that Mr Johnson was a much maligned man,' said Ridcully, eventually.
'Well, yes, of course he was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, clearly exasperated. 'That's like saying that jam attracts wasps, you see.'
'Not everything he made worked badly,' said Ridcully stoutly, flourishing his scrubbing brush. 'Look at that thing they use down in the kitchens for peelin' the potatoes, for example.'
'Ah, you mean the thing with the brass plate on it saying "Improved Manicure Device", Archchancellor?'
'Listen, it's just water,' snapped Ridcully. 'Even Johnson couldn't do much harm with water. Modo, open the sluices!'
The rest of the wizards backed away as the gardener turned a couple of ornate brass wheels.
'I'm fed up with groping around for the soap like you fellows!' shouted the Archchancellor, as water gushed through hidden channels. 'Hygiene. That's the ticket!'
'Don't say we didn't warn you,' said the Dean, shutting the door.
'Er, I still haven't worked out where all the pipes lead, sir,' Modo ventured.
'We'll find out, never you fear,' said Ridcully happily. He removed his hat and put on a shower cap of his own design. In deference to his profession, it was pointy. He picked up a yellow rubber duck.
'Man the pumps, Mr Modo. Or dwarf them, of course, in your case.'
'Yes, Archchancellor.'
Modo hauled on a lever. The pipes started a hammering noise and steam leaked out of a few joints.
Ridcully took a last look around the bathroom.
It was a hidden treasure, no doubt about it. Say what you like, old Johnson must sometimes have got it right, even if it was only by accident. The entire room, including the floor and ceiling, had been tiled in white, blue and green. In the centre, under its crown of pipes, was Johnson's Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish, a sanitary poem in mahogany, rosewood and copper.
He'd got Modo to polish every pipe and brass tap until they gleamed. It had taken ages.
Ridcully shut the frosted door behind him.
The inventor of the ablutionary marvel had decided to make a mere shower a fully controllable experience, and one wall of the large cubicle held a marvellous panel covered with brass taps cast in the shape of mermaids and shells and, for some reason, pomegranates. There were separate feeds for salt water, hard water and soft water and huge wheels for accurate control of temperature. Ridcully inspected them with care.
Then he stood back, looked around at the tiles and sang, 'Mi, mi, mi!'
His voice reverberated back at him.
'A perfect echo!' said Ridcully, one of nature's bathroom baritones.
He picked up a speaking tube that had been installed to allow the bather to communicate with the engineer.
'All cisterns go, Mr Modo!'
'Aye, aye, sir!'
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.
A gentle shower of warm water, almost a caressing mist, enveloped him.
'My word!' he exclaimed, and tried another tap.
'Shower' turned out to be a little more invigorating. 'Torrent' made him gasp for breath and 'Deluge' sent him groping to the panel because the top of his head felt that it was being removed. 'Wave' sloshed a wall of warm salt water from one side of the cubicle to the other before it disappeared into the grating that was set into the middle of the floor.
'Are you all right, sir?' Modo called out.
'Marvellous! And there's a dozen knobs I haven't tried yet!'
Modo nodded, and tapped a valve. Ridcully's voice, raised in what he considered to be song, boomed out through the thick clouds of steam.
'Oh, IIIIIII knew a ... er ... an agricultural worker of some description, possibly a thatcher, And I knew him well, and he — he was a farmer, now I come to think of it — and he had a daughter and her name I can't recall at the moment,
And ... Where was P... Ah yes. Chorus:
Something something, a humorously shaped vegetable, a turnip, I believe, something something and the sweet nightingaleeeeaarggooooooh-ARGHH oh oh oh...'
The song shut off suddenly. All Modo could hear was a ferocious gushing noise.
'Archchancellor?'
After a moment a voice answered from near the ceiling. It sounded somewhat high and hesitant.
'Er . . . I wonder if you would be so very good as to shut the water off from out there, my dear chap? Er ... quite gently, if you wouldn't mind. . .'
Modo carefully spun a wheel. The gushing sound gradually subsided.
'Ah. Well done,' said the voice, but now from somewhere nearer floor level. 'Well. Jolly good job. I think we can definitely call it a success. Yes, indeed. Er. I wonder if you could help me walk for a moment. I inexplicably feel a little unsteady on my feet . . . '
Modo pushed open the door and helped Ridcully out and onto a bench. He looked rather pale.
'Yes, indeed,' said the Archchancellor, his eyes a little glazed. 'Astoundingly successful. Er. Just a minor point, Modo ...'
'Yes, sir?'
'There's a tap in there we perhaps should leave alone for now,' said Ridcully. 'I'd esteem it a service if you could go and make a little sign to hang on it.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Saying "Do not touch at all", or something like that.'
'Right, sir.'
'Hang it on the one marked "Old Faithful".'
'Yes, sir.'
'No need to mention it to the other fellows.'
'Yes. sir.'
'Ye gods, I've never felt so clean.'
From a vantage point among some ornamental tilework near the ceiling a small gnome in a bowler hat watched Ridcully carefully.
When Modo had gone the Archchancellor slowly began to dry himself on a big fluffy towel. As he got his composure back, so another song wormed its way under his breath.
'On the second day of Hogswatch I ... sent my true love back
A nasty little letter, hah, yes indeed, and a partridge in a pear tree ...'
The gnome slid down onto the tiles and crept up behind the briskly shaking shape.
Ridcully, after a few more trial runs, settled on a song which evolves somewhere on every planet where there are winters. It's often dragooned into the service of some local religion and a few words are changed, but it's really about things that have to do with gods only in the same way that roots have to do with leaves.
'...the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer ...'
Ridcully spun. A corner of wet towel caught the gnome on the ear and flicked it onto its back.
'I saw you creeping up!' roared the Archchancellor. 'What's the game, then? Small-time thief, are you?'
The gnome slid backwards on the soapy surface.
' 'ere, what's your game, mister, you ain't supposed to be able to see me!'
'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. What's in this bag?'
'You don't wanna open the bag, mister! You really don't wanna open the bag!'
'Why? What have you got in it?'
The gnome sagged. 'It ain't what's in it, mister. It's what'll come out. I has to let 'em out one at a time, no knowin' what'd happen if they all gets out at once!'
Ridcully looked interested, and started to undo the string.
'You'll really wish you hadn't, mister!' the gnome pleaded.
'Will I? What're you doing here, young man?'
The gnome gave up.
'Well ... you know the Tooth Fairy?'
'Yes. Of course,' said Ridcully.
'Well ... I ain't her. But ... it's sort of like the same business ...'
'What? You take things away?'
'Er not take away, as such. More sort of ... bring ...
'Ah ... like new teeth?'
'Er ... like new verrucas,' said the gnome.
Death threw the sack into the back of the sledge and climbed in after it.
'You're doing well, master,' said Albert.
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.'
Albert unscrewed the top off a bottle of cold tea. All the sherry had made him thirsty.
'Doing well, master,' he repeated, taking a pull. 'All the soot in the fireplace, the footprints, them swigged sherries, the sleigh tracks all over the roofs ... it's got to work.'
YOU THINK SO?
'Sure.'
AND I MADE SURE SOME OF THEM SAW ME. I KNOW IF THEY ARE PEEPING, Death added proudly.
'Well done, sir.'
YES.
'Though here's a tip, though. Just "Ho. Ho. Ho,— will do. Don't say, "Cower, brief mortals" unless you want them to grow up to be moneylenders or some such.'
HO. HO. HO.
'Yes, you're really getting the hang of it.' Albert looked down hurriedly at his notebook so that Death wouldn't see his face. 'Now, I got to tell you, master, what'll really do some good is a public appearance. Really.'
OH. I DON'T NORMALLY DO THEM.
'The Hogfather's more've a public figure, master. And one good public appearance'll do more good than any amount of letting kids see you by accident. Good for the old belief muscles.'
REALLY? HO. HO. HO.
'Right, right, that's really good, master. Where was I ... yes ... the shops'll be open late. Lots of kiddies get taken to see the Hogfather, you see. Not the real one, of course. just some ole geezer with a pillow up his jumper, saving yer presence, master.'
NOT REAL? HO. HO. HO.
'Oh, no. And you don't need...'
THE CHILDREN KNOW THIS? HO. HO. HO.
Albert scratched his nose. 'S'pose so, master.'
THIS SHOULD NOT BE. NO WONDER THERE HAS BEEN ... THIS DIFFICULTY. BELIEF WAS COMPROMISED? HO. HO. HO.
'Could be, master. Er, the "ho, ho ..."'
WHERE DOES THIS TRAVESTY TAKE PLACE? HO. HO. HO.
Albert gave up. 'Well, Crumley's in The Maul, for one. Very popular, the Hogfather Grotto. They always have a good Hogfather, apparently.'
LET'S GET THERE AND SLEIGH THEM. HO. HO. HO.
'Right you are, master.'
THAT WAS A PUNE OR PLAY ON WORDS, ALBERT. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED.
'I'm laughing like hell deep down, sir.'
HO. HO. HO.
Archchancellor Ridcully grinned.
He often grinned. He was one of those men who grinned even when they were annoyed, but right now he grinned because he was proud. A little sore still, perhaps, but still proud.
'Amazing bathroom, ain't it?' he said. 'They had it walled up, you know. Damn silly thing to do. I mean, perhaps there were a few teething troubles,' he shifted gingerly, 'but that's only to be expected. It's got everything, d'you see? Foot baths in the shape of clam shells, look. A whole wardrobe for dressing gowns. And that tub over there's got a big blower thingy so's you get bubbly water without even havin' to eat starchy food. And this thingy here with the mermaids holdin' it up's a special pot for your toenail clippings. It's got everything, this place.'
'A special pot for nail clippings?' said the Verruca Gnome.
'Oh, can't be too careful,' said Ridcully, lifting the lid of an ornate jar marked BATH SALTS and pulling out a bottle of wine. 'Get hold of something like someone's nail clipping and you've got 'em under your control. That's real old magic. Dawn of time stuff.'
He held the wine bottle up to the light.
'Should be cooled nicely by now,' he said, extracting the cork. 'Verrucas, eh?'
'Wish I knew why,' said the gnome.
'You mean you don't know?'
'Nope. Suddenly I wake up and I'm the Verruca Gnome.'
'Puzzling, that,' said Ridcully. 'My dad used to say the Verruca Gnome turned up if you walked around in bare feet but I never knew you existed. I thought he just made it up. I mean, tooth fairies, yes, and them little buggers that live in flowers, used to collect 'em myself as a lad, but can't recall anything about verrucas.' He drank thoughtfully. 'Cot a distant cousin called Verruca, as a matter of fact. It's quite a nice sound, when you come to think of it.'
He looked at the gnome over the top of his glass.
You didn't become Archchancellor without a feeling for subtle wrongness in a situation. Well, that wasn't quite true. It was more accurate to say that you didn't remain Archchancellor for very long.
'Good job, is it?' he said thoughtfully.
'Dandruff'd be better,' said the gnome. 'At least I'd be out in the fresh air.'
'I think we'd better check up on this,' said Ridcully. 'Of course, it might be nothing.'
'Oh, thank you,' said the Verruca Gnome, gloomily.
It was a magnificent Grotto this year, Vernon Crumley told himself. The staff had worked really hard. The Hogfather's sleigh was a work of art in itself, and the pigs looked really real and a wonderful shade of pink.
The Grotto took up nearly all of the first floor. One of the pixies had been Disciplined for smoking behind the Magic Tinkling Waterfall and the clockwork Dolls of All Nations showing how We Could All Get Along were a bit jerky and giving trouble but all in all, he told himself, it was a display to Delight the Hearts of Kiddies everywhere.
The kiddies were queueing up with their parents and watching the display owlishly.
And the money was coming in. Oh, how the money was coming in.
So that the staff would not be Tempted, Mr Crumley had set up an arrangement of overhead wires across the ceilings of the store. In the middle of each floor was a cashier in a little cage. Staff took money from customers, put it in a little clockwork cable car, sent it whizzing overhead to the cashier, who'd make change and start it rattling back again. Thus there was no possibility of Temptation, and the little trolleys were shooting back and forth like fireworks.
Mr Crumley loved Hogswatch. It was for. the Kiddies, after all.
He tucked his fingers in the pockets of his waistcoat and beamed.
'Everything going well, Miss Harding?'
'Yes, Mr Crumley,' said the cashier, meekly.
'Jolly good.' He looked at the pile of coins.
A bright little zig-zag crackled off them and earthed itself on the metal grille.
Mr Crumley blinked. In front of him sparks flashed off the steel rims of Miss Harding's spectacles.
The Grotto display changed. For just a fraction of a second Mr Crumley had the sensation of speed, as though what appeared had screeched to a halt. Which was ridiculous.
The four pink papier-mache pigs exploded. A cardboard snout bounced off Mr Crumley's head.
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 creatures were huge and grey and bristly and a cloud of acrid mist hung over each one.
And they didn't look sweet. There was nothing charming about them. One turned to look at him with small, red eyes, and didn't go 'oink', which was the sound that Mr Crumley, born and raised in the city, had always associated with pigs.
It went 'Ghnaaarrrwnnkh?'
The sleigh had changed, too. He'd been very pleased with that sleigh. It had delicate silver curly bits on it. He'd personally supervised the gluing on of every twinkling star. But the splendour of it was lying in glittering shards around a sledge that looked as though it had been built of crudely sawn tree trunks laid on two massive wooden runners. It looked ancient and there were faces carved on the wood, nasty crude grinning faces that looked quite out of place.
Parents were yelling and trying to pull their children away, but they weren't having much luck. The children were gravitating towards it like flies to jam.
Mr Crumley ran towards the terrible thing, waving his hands.
'Stop that! Stop that!' he screamed. 'You'll frighten the Kiddies!'
He heard a small boy behind him say, 'They 've got tusks! Cool!'
His sister said, 'Hey, look, that one's doing a wee!' A tremendous cloud of yellow steam arose. 'Look, it's going all the way to the stairs! All those who can't swim hold onto the banisters!'
'They eat you if you're bad, you know,' said a small girl with obvious approval. 'All up. Even the bones. They crunch them.'
Another, older, child opined: 'Don't be childish. They're not real. They've just got a wizard in to do the magic. Or it's all done by clockwork. Everyone knows they're not really r...'
One of the boars turned to look at him. The boy moved behind his mother.
Mr Crumley, tears of anger streaming clown his face, fought through the milling crowd until he reached the Hogfather's Grotto. He grabbed a frightened pixie.
'It's the Campaign for Equal Heights that've done this, isn't it!' he shouted. 'They're out to ruin me! And they're ruining it for all the Kiddies! Look at the lovely dolls!'
The pixie hesitated. Children were clustering around the pigs, despite the continued efforts of their mothers. The small girl was giving one of them an orange.
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 repeatedly in the ear. A chorus of small children was cheering them on indiscriminately.
'There's, er, there's more trouble in the Grotto, Mr Crum' the pixie began.
A red and white figure pushed its way through the crush and rammed a false beard into Mr Crumley's hands.
'That's it,' said the old man in the Hogfather costume. 'I don't mind the smell of oranges and the damp trousers but I ain't putting up with this.'
He stamped off through the queue. Mr Crumley heard him add, 'And he's not even doin' it right!'
Mr Crumley forced his way onward.
Someone was sitting in the big chair. There was a child on his knee. The figure was ... strange.
It was definitely in something like a Hogfather costume but Mr Crumley's eye kept slipping, it wouldn't focus, it skittered away and tried to put the figure on the very edge of vision. It was like trying to look at your own ear.
'What's going on here? What's going on here?' Crumley demanded.
A hand took his shoulder firmly. He turned round and looked into the face of a Grotto Pixie. At least, it was wearing the costume of a Grotto Pixie, although somewhat askew, as if it had been put on in a hurry.
'Who are you?'
The pixie took the soggy cigarette end out of its mouth and leered at him.
'Call me Uncle Heavy,' he said.
'You're not a pixie!'
'Nah, I'm a fairy cobbler, mister.'
Behind Crumley, a voice said:
AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN?
Mr Crumley turned in horror.
In front of — well, he had to think of it as the usurping Hogfather — was a small child of indeterminate sex who seemed to be mostly woollen bobble hat.
Mr Crumley knew how it was supposed to go. It was supposed to go like this: the child was always struck dumb and the attendant mother would lean forward and catch the Hogfather's eye and say very pointedly, in that voice adults use when they're conspiring against children:
'You want a Baby Tinkler Doll, don't you, Doreen? And the Just Like Mummy Cookery Set you've got in the window. And the Cut-Out Kitchen Range Book. And what do you say?'
And the stunned child would murmur "nk you' and get given a balloon or an orange.
This time, though, it didn't work like that.
Mother got as far as 'You want a ...'
WHY ARE YOUR HANDS ON BITS OF STRING, CHILD?
The child looked down the length of its arms to the dangling mittens affixed to its sleeves. It held them up for inspection.
'Clubs,' it said.
I SEE. VERY PRACTICAL.
'Are you weal?' said the bobble hat.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
The bobble hat 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 bobble hat had ever seen.
OH. ER ... GOOD.
'It had a gwate big ...'
WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH? said the Hogfather hurriedly.
Mother took her economic cue again, and said briskly: 'She wants a ...'
The Hogfather snapped his fingers impatiently. The mother's mouth slammed shut.
The child seemed to sense that here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and spoke quickly.
'I wanta narmy. Anna big castle wif pointy bits,' said the child. 'Anna swored.'
WHAT DO YOU SAY? prompted the Hogfather.
'A big swored?' said the child, after a pause for deep cogitation.
THAT'S RIGHT.
Uncle Heavy nudged the Hogfather.
'They're supposed to thank you,' he said.
ARE YOU SURE? PEOPLE DON'T, NORMALLY.
'I meant they thank the Hogfather,' Albert hissed. 'Which is you, right?'
YES, OF COURSE. AHEM. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SAY THANK YOU.
' 'nk you.'
AND BE GOOD. THIS IS PART OF THE ARRANGEMENT.
' 'es.'
THEN WE HAVE A CONTRACT.
The Hogfather reached into his sack and produced:
— a very large model castle with, as correctly interpreted, pointy blue cone roofs on turrets suitable for princesses to be locked in
— a box of several hundred assorted knights and warriors
— and a sword. It was four feet long and glinted along the blade.
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. THEY'RE 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.
Uncle Heavy whispered urgently.
REALLY? OH, WELL. IT'S NOT FOR ME TO ARGUE, I SUPPOSE.
The blade went wooden.
'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! I mean ... yes, of course, of course things are given away,' he corrected himself, aware that people were watching, 'but first they have to be bought, d'you see, I mean ... haha.' He laughed nervously, increasingly aware of the strangeness around him and the rangy look of Uncle Heavy. 'It's not as though the toys are made by little elves at the Hub, ahaha . — .'
'Damn right,' said Uncle Heavy sagely. 'You'd have to be a maniac even to think of giving an elf a chisel, less'n you want their initials carved on your forehead.'
'You mean this is all free?' said Doreen's mother sharply, not to be budged from what she saw as the central point.
Mr Crumley looked helplessly at the toys. They certainly didn't look like any of his stock.
Then he tried to look hard at the new Hogfather. Every cell in his brain was telling him that here was a fat jolly man in a red and white suit.
Well ... nearly every cell. A few of the sparkier ones were saying that his eyes were reporting something else, but they couldn't agree on what. A couple had shut down completely.
The words escaped through his teeth.
'It ... seems to be,' he said.
Although it was Hogswatch the University buildings were bustling. Wizards didn't go to bed early in any case,[14] and of course there was the Hogswatchnight Feast to look forward to at midnight.
It would give some idea of the scale of the Hogswatchnight Feast that a light snack at UU consisted of a mere three or four courses, not counting the cheese and nuts.
Some of the wizards had been practising for weeks. The Dean in particular could now lift a twenty-pound turkey on one fork. Having to wait until midnight merely put a healthy edge on appetites already professionally honed.
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.
Ridcully stepped out into the snow and turned up his collar. The lights were all on in the High Energy Magic Building.
'I don't know, I don't know,' he muttered. 'Hogswatchnight and they're still working. It's just not natural. When I was a student I'd have been sick twice by now...'
In fact Ponder Stibbons and his group of research students had made a concession to Hogswatchnight. They'd draped holly over Hex and put a paper hat on the big glass dome containing the main ant heap.
Every time he came in here, it seemed to Ridcully, something -more had been done to the ... engine, or thinking machine, or whatever it was. Sometimes stuff turned up overnight. Occasionally, according to Stibbons, Hex hims itself would draw plans for extra bits that he — it needed. It all gave Ridcully the willies, and an additional willy was engendered right now when he saw the Bursar sitting in front of the thing. For a moment, he forgot all about verrucas.