Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ponder gloomily.

  ‘I would advise you, with this in mind, to forget all about Mister Nutt.’

  ‘Excuse me, Archchancellor, but that simply will not do!’

  Ridcully swayed backwards, like a man subjected to an attack by a hitherto comatose sheep.

  Ponder plunged on, because when you have dived off a cliff your only hope is to press for the abolition of gravity.

  ‘I have twelve jobs in this university,’ he said. ‘I do all the paperwork. I do all the adding up. In fact, I do everything that requires even a modicum of effort and responsibility! And I go on doing it even though Brazeneck have offered me the post of Bursar! With a staff ! I mean real people, not a stick with a knob on the end. Now . . . Will . . . You . . . Trust . . . Me? What is it about Nutt that is so important?’

  ‘The bastard tried to lure you away?’ said Ridcully. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless Dean! Is there nothing he will not stoop to? How much did—’

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ said Ponder quietly.

  There was a moment of silence and then Ridcully patted him a couple of times on the shoulder.

  ‘The problem with Mister Nutt is that people want to kill him.’

  ‘What people?’

  Ridcully stared into Ponder’s eyes. His lips moved. He squinted up and down like a man engaged in complex calculation. He shrugged.

  ‘Probably everybody,’ he said.

  ‘Please have some more of my wonderful apple pie,’ said Nutt. ‘But she gave it to you,’ said Trev, grinning. ‘I’d never ’ear the end of it if I ate your pie.’

  ‘But you are my friend, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. ‘And since it is my pie I can decide what to do with it.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Trev, waving it away. ‘But there is a little errand you can do for me, me being a kind and understanding boss what lets you work all the hours you want.’

  ‘Yes, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt.

  ‘Glenda will come in around midday. To be honest, she hardly ever leaves the place. I would like you to go and ask her the name of that girl who was up there tonight.’

  ‘The one who shouted at you, Mister Trev?’

  ‘The very same,’ said Trev.

  ‘Of course I will do that,’ said Nutt. ‘But why don’t you ask Miss Glenda yourself? She knows you.’

  Trev grinned again. ‘Yes, she does and that’s why I know she won’t tell me. If I am any judge, and I’m pretty sound, she would like to know you better. I’ve never met a lady so good at feelin’ sorry for people.’

  ‘There’s not much of me to know,’ said Nutt.

  Trev gave him a long, thoughtful glance. Nutt had not taken his eyes off his work. Trev had never seen anyone who could be so easily engrossed. Other people who ended up working in the vats were a bit weird, it was almost a requirement, but the little dark-grey fellow was somehow weird in the opposite direction. ‘You know, you ought to get out more, Mister Nutts,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I should like that at all,’ said Nutt, ‘and may I kindly remind you my name is not plural, thank you.’

  ‘’ave you ever seen a game of football?’

  ‘No, Mister Trev.’

  ‘Then I’ll take you to the match tomorrow. I don’t play, o’course, but I never miss a game if I can ’elp it,’ said Trev. ‘No edged weapons, prob’ly. The season starts soon, everyone’s warming up.’

  ‘Well, that is very kind of you, but I—’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll pick you up down ’ere at one o’clock.’

  ‘But people will look at me!’ said Nutt. And in his head he could hear Ladyship’s voice, calm and cool as ever: Do not stand out. Be part of the crowd.

  ‘No, they won’t. Trust me on that,’ said Trev. ‘I can sort that out. Enjoy your pie. I’m off.’

  He pulled a tin can out of his coat pocket, dropped it on to his foot, flicked it into the air, toed it a few times so it spun and twinkled like some celestial object and then kicked it very hard so it sailed off down the huge gloomy room a few feet above the vats, rattling slightly. Against all probability it stopped in its flight a few feet from the far wall, spun for a moment and then started to come back with, it seemed to the amazed Nutt, a greater speed than before.

  Trev caught it effortlessly and dropped it back into his pocket.

  ‘How can you do that, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt, astonished.

  ‘Never thought about it,’ said Trev. ‘But I always wonder why everyone else can’t. It’s just about the spinning. It’s not hard. See yer tomorrow, okay? And don’t forget that name.’

  The horse buses were not much faster than walking, but it wasn’t you doing the walking, and there were seats and a roof and a guard with a battle-axe and all in all it was, in the damp grey hours before dawn, good value for tuppence. Glenda and Juliet sat side by side, rocking gently to the sway, lost in their thoughts. At least Glenda was; Juliet could get lost in half a thought, if that.

  But Glenda had become an expert at knowing when Juliet was going to speak. It was rather like the sense a sailor has that the wind is going to change. There were little signs, as if a thought had to get the beautiful brain warmed up and spinning before anything could happen.

  ‘Who was that boy what come up for his bubble and squeak?’ she asked nonchalantly, or what she probably thought was nonchalantly, or again, what she might have thought was nonchalantly had she known that there was a word like nonchalantly.

  ‘That’s Trevor Likely,’ said Glenda. ‘And you don’t want anything to do with him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s a Dimmer! Fancies himself as a Face, too. And his dad was Big Dave Likely! Your dad would go mad if he heard you’d even talked to him.’

  ‘He’s got a lovely smile,’ said Juliet, with a wistfulness that rang all kinds of alarms for Glenda.

  ‘He’s a scallywag,’ she said firmly. ‘He’ll try on anything. Can’t keep his hands to himself, too.’

  ‘How come you knows that?’ said Juliet.

  That was another worrying thing about Juliet. Nothing much seemed to be going on between those perfect ears for hours on end and then a question like that would come spinning towards you with edges on it.

  ‘You know, you should try to speak better,’ Glenda said, to change the subject. ‘With your looks you could snag a man who thinks about more than beer and footie. Just speak with a little more class, eh? You don’t have to sound like—’

  ‘My fare, lady?’

  They looked up at the guard, who was holding his axe in a way that was very nearly not threatening. And when it came to looking up, this was not a long way. The axe’s owner was very short.

  Glenda gently pushed the weapon out of the way. ‘Don’t wave it about, Roger,’ she sighed. ‘It doesn’t impress.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Miss Glenda,’ said the dwarf, what was visible of his face behind the beard colouring with embarrassment. ‘It’s been a long shift. That will be fourpence, ladies. Sorry about the axe, but we’ve been getting people jumping off without paying.’

  ‘He ought to be sent back to where he came from,’ muttered Juliet, as the guard moved on along the bus. Glenda chose not to rise to this. As far as she had been able to tell, up until today, at least, her friend had no opinions of her own, and simply echoed anything other people said to her. But then she couldn’t resist. ‘That would be Treacle Mine Road, then. He was born in the city.’

  ‘He’s a Miners fan, then? I suppose it could be worse.’

  ‘I don’t think dwarfs bother much about football,’ said Glenda.

  ‘I don’t fink you can be a real Morporkian an’ not shout for your team,’ was the next piece of worn-out folk wisdom from Juliet. Glenda let this one pass. Sometimes, arguing with her friend was like punching mist. Besides, the plodding horses were laboriously passing their street. They got off without missing a step.

  The door to Juliet’s house was covered in the ancient remnants
of multiple layers of paint, or, rather, multiple layers of paint that had bubbled up into tiny little mountains over the years. It was always the cheapest paint possible. After all, you could afford to buy beer or you could afford to buy paint and you couldn’t drink paint unless you were Mr Johnson at number fourteen, who apparently drank it all the time.

  ‘Now, I won’t tell your dad that you were late,’ said Glenda, opening the door for her. ‘But I want you in early tomorrow, all right?’

  ‘Yes, Glenda,’ said Juliet meekly.

  ‘And no thinking about that Trevor Likely.’

  ‘Yes, Glenda.’ It was a meek reply, but Glenda recognized the sparkle. She’d seen it in the mirror once.

  But now she cooked an early breakfast for widow Crowdy, who occupied the house on the other side and couldn’t get about much these days, made her comfortable, did the chores in the rising light, and finally went to bed.

  Her last thought as she plummeted into sleep was: Don’t goblins steal chickens? Funny, he doesn’t look the type . . .

  At half past eight, a neighbour woke her up by throwing gravel at her window. He wanted her to come and look at his father, described as ‘poorly’, and the day began. She had never needed to buy an alarm clock.

  Why did other people need so much sleep? It was a permanent puzzle for Nutt. It got boring by himself.

  Back in the castle in Uberwald there had always been someone around to talk to. Ladyship liked the night-time and wouldn’t go out in bright sunshine at all, so a lot of visitors came then. He had to stay out of sight, of course, but he knew all the passages in the walls and all the secret spy-holes. He saw the fine gentlemen, always in black, and the dwarfs with iron armour that gleamed like gold (later, down in his cellar that smelled of salt and thunderstorms, Igor showed him how it was made). There were trolls, too, looking a bit more polished than the ones he’d learned to run away from in the forests. He especially remembered the troll that shone like a jewel (Igor said his skin was made of living diamond). That alone would have been enough to glue him into Nutt’s memory, but there had been that moment, one day when the diamond troll was seated at the big table with other trolls and dwarfs, when the diamond eyes had looked up and had seen Nutt, looking through a tiny, hidden spy-hole at the other end of the room. Nutt was convinced of it. He’d jerked away from the hole so quickly that he’d banged his head on the wall opposite.

  He’d grown to know his way around all the cellars and workshops in Ladyship’s castle. Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.

  Those had been good days. Everywhere he went, men stopped work to show him how to plane and carve and mould and fettle and smelt iron and make horseshoes – but not how to fit them, because any horse went mad when he entered the stables. One once kicked the boards out of the rear wall.

  That particular afternoon he went up to the library, where Miss Healstether found him a book on scent. He read it so fast that his eyes should have left trails on the paper. He certainly left a trail in the library: the twenty-two volumes of Brakefast’s Compendium of Odours were soon stacked on the long lectern, followed by Spout’s Trumpet of Equestrianism, and then, via a detour through the history section, Nutt plunged into the folklore section, with Miss Healstether pedalling after him on the mobile library steps.

  She watched him with a kind of gratified awe. He’d been barely able to read when he’d arrived, but the goblin boy had set out to improve his reading as a boxer trains for a fight. And he was fighting something, but she wasn’t sure in her own mind what it was and, of course, Ladyship never explained. He would sit all night under the lamp, book of the moment in front of him, dictionary and thesaurus on either side, wringing the meaning out of every word, punching ceaselessly at his own ignorance.

  When she came in the next morning there was a dictionary of Dwarfish and a copy of Postalume’s The Speech of Trolls on the lectern too.

  Surely it’s not right to learn like this, she told herself. It can’t be settling properly. You can’t just fork it into your head. Learning has to be digested. You don’t just have to know, you have to comprehend.

  She mentioned this to Fassel, the smith, who said, ‘Look, miss, he came up to me the other day and said he’d watched a smith before, and could he have a go? Well, you know her ladyship’s orders, so I gave him a bit of bar stock and showed him the hammer and tongs and next minute he was going at it like – well, hammer and tongs! Turned out a nice little knife, very nice indeed. He thinks about things. You can see his ugly little mush working it all out. Have you ever met a goblin before?’

  ‘Strange you should ask,’ she told him. ‘Our catalogue says we’ve got one of the very few copies of J. P. Bunderbell’s Five Hours and Sixteen Minutes Among the Goblins of Far Uberwald, but I can’t find it anywhere. It’s priceless.’

  ‘Five hours and sixteen minutes doesn’t sound very long,’ said the smith.

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But according to a lecture Mr Blunderbell gave to the Ankh-Morpork Trespassers’ Society,’7 said Miss Healstether, ‘it was about five hours too long. He said they ranged in size from unpleasantly large to disgustingly small, had about the same level of culture as yogurt and spent their time picking their own noses and missing. A complete waste of space, he said. It caused quite a stir. Anthropologists are not supposed to write that sort of thing.’

  ‘And young Nutt is one of them?’

  ‘Yes, that puzzled me, too. Did you see him yesterday? There’s something about him that frightens horses, so he came to the library and found some old book about the Horseman’s Word. They were a kind of secret society, which knew how to make special oils that would make horses obey them. Then he spent the afternoon down in Igor’s crypt, brewing up gods know what, and this morning he was riding a horse around the yard! It wasn’t happy, mind you, but he was winning.’

  ‘I’m surprised his ugly little head doesn’t explode,’ said Fassel.

  ‘Ha!’ Miss Healstether sounded bitter. ‘Stand by, then, because he’s discovered the Bonk School.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Not that, them. Philosophers. Well, I say philosophers, but, well . . .’

  ‘Oh, the mucky ones,’ said Fassel cheerfully.

  ‘I wouldn’t say mucky,’ said Miss Healstether, and this was true. A ladylike librarian would not employ that word in the presence of a smith, especially one who was grinning. ‘Let’s say “indelicate”, shall we?’

  There is not a lot of call for delicacy on an anvil, so the smith continued unabashed: ‘They are the ones who go on about what happens if ladies don’t get enough mutton, and they say cigars are—’

  ‘That is a fallacy!’

  ‘That’s right, that’s what I read.’ The smith was clearly enjoying this. ‘And Ladyship lets him read this stuff ?’

  ‘Indeed, she very nearly insists. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.’ Or him, come to that, she thought to herself.

  There was a limit to how many candles he should make, Trev had told Nutt. It looked bad if he made too many, Trev explained. The pointy hats might decide that they didn’t need all the people. That made sense to Nutt. What would No Face and Concrete and Weepy Mukko do? They would have nowhere else to go. They had to live in a simple world; they too easily got knocked down by life in this one.

  He’d tried wandering around the other cellars, but there was nothing much happening at night, and people gave him funny looks. Ladyship did not rule here. But wizards are a messy lot and nobody tidied up much and lived to tell the tale, so all sorts of old storerooms and junk-filled workshops became his for the use of. And there was so much for a lad with keen night vision to find. He had already seen some luminous spoon ants carrying a fork, and, to his surprise, the forgotten mazes were home to that very rare indoorovore, the Uncommon Sock Eater. There were some things living up in the pipes, too, which periodically murmur
ed, ‘Awk! Awk!’ Who knew what strange monsters made their home here?

  He cleaned the pie plates very carefully indeed. Glenda had been kind to him. He must show that he was kind, too. It was important to be kind. And he knew where to find some acid.

  Lord Vetinari’s personal secretary stepped into the Oblong Office with barely a disturbance in the air. His lordship glanced up. ‘Ah, Drumknott. I think I shall have to write to the Times again. I am certain that one down, six across and nine down appeared in that same combination three months ago. On a Friday, I believe.’ He dropped the crossword page on to the desk with a look of disdain. ‘So much for a Free Press.’

  ‘Well done, my lord. The Archchancellor has just entered the palace.’ Vetinari smiled. ‘He must have looked at the calendar at last. Thank goodness they have Ponder Stibbons. Show him straight in after the customary wait.’

  Five minutes later, Mustrum Ridcully was ushered in.

  ‘Archchancellor! To what urgent matter do I owe this visit? Our usual meeting is not until the day after tomorrow, I believe.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Ridcully. As he sat down, a very large sherry was placed in front of him.8 ‘Well, Havelock, the fact of the matter is—’

  ‘But it is in fact quite providential that you have arrived just now,’ Vetinari went on, ignoring him, ‘because a problem has arisen on which I would like your advice.’

  ‘Oh? Really?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. It concerns this wretched game called foot-the-ball . . .’

  ‘It does?’

  The glass, now in Ridcully’s hand, trembled not a fraction. He’d held his job for a long time, right back to the days when a wizard who blinked died.

  ‘One has to move with the times, of course,’ said the Patrician, shaking his head.

  ‘We tend not to, over the road,’ said Ridcully. ‘It only encourages them.’

  ‘People do not understand the limits of tyranny,’ said Vetinari, as if talking to himself. ‘They think that because I can do what I like I can do what I like. A moment’s thought reveals, of course, that this cannot be so.’