Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Yes, sir?’ said Ponder wearily.

  ‘Promote him. Whatever level he is, move him up one.’

  ‘I think that’ll send the wrong kind of signal,’ Ponder tried.

  ‘On the contrary, Mister Stibbons. It will send exactly the right message to the student body.’

  ‘But he disobeyed an express order, may I point out?’

  ‘That’s right. He showed independent thinking and a certain amount of pluck, and in the course of so doing added valuable data to our understanding of the Cabinet.’

  ‘But he might have destroyed the whole university, sir.’

  ‘Right, in which case he would have been vigorously disciplined, if we’d been able to find anything left of him. But he didn’t and he was lucky and we need lucky wizards. Promote him, on the direct order of me, not pp’d at all. Incidentally, how loud were his screams?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, the first one was so heartfelt that it kept going long after he’d run out of breath and apparently adopted an independent existence. Residual magic again. We’ve had to lock it in one of the cellars.’

  ‘Did he actually say what the bacon sandwich was like?’

  ‘Coming or leaving, sir?’ said Ponder.

  ‘Only coming, I think,’ said Ridcully. ‘I do have a vivid imagination after all.’

  ‘He said it was the most delightful bacon sandwich he’d ever eaten. It was the bacon sandwich that you dream of when you hear the words bacon sandwich and never, ever quite get.’

  ‘With brown sauce?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Of course. Apparently, it was the bacon sandwich to end all bacon sandwiches.’

  ‘It nearly did, for him, but isn’t that what you already know about the Cabinet? That it always delivers a perfect specimen?’

  ‘Actually, we know very little for certain,’ said Ponder. ‘What we do know is that it will hold nothing too large to fit inside a cube measuring 14.14 inches recurring on a side, that it will cease working if, we now know, a non-organic object is not replaced in it in 14.14 hours recurring, and that none of its contents are pink, although we do not know why this should be.’

  ‘But bacon is definitely organic, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully.

  Ponder sighed. ‘Yes, sir, we don’t know why that is either.’

  The Archchancellor took pity on him. ‘Perhaps it was one of those very crispy ones,’ he suggested kindly. ‘The kind that you can break between your fingers. I like that in a bacon sandwich.’

  The door swung open and there it was. Small, in the centre of a very large room . . .

  The Cabinet of Curiosity.

  ‘Do you think this is wise?’ said Ponder.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Ridcully. ‘Now find me a football.’

  On one wall was a white mask, such as one might wear to a carnival. Ponder turned towards it. ‘Hex. Please find me a ball suitable for the game of football.’

  ‘That mask is new?’ said Ridcully. ‘I thought Hex’s voice travelled in blit space?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It just comes out of the air, sir. But somehow, well, it feels better to have something to talk to.’

  ‘What shape football do you require?’ said Hex, his voice as smooth as clarified butter. ‘Oval or spherical?’

  ‘Spherical,’ said Ponder.

  Instantly the Cabinet shook.

  The thing had always worried Ridcully. It looked too smug, for a start. It seemed to be saying: You don’t know what you are doing. You use me as a kind of lucky dip and I bet you have never thought of how many dangerous things can fit into a fourteen-inch cube. In fact, Ridcully had thought about that, often at three in the morning, and never went into the room without a couple of subcritical spells in his pocket just in case. And then there was Nutt . . . Well, hope for the best and prepare for the worst, that was the UU way.

  A drawer slid out and went on sliding until it reached the wall and presumably continued to slide into some other hospitable set of dimensions, because it never turned up outside the room, no matter how often you looked.

  ‘Very smooth today,’ he observed, as another drawer rose up from under the floor and sprouted a further drawer exactly the same size as itself which began to move purposefully towards the far wall.

  ‘Yes. The lads at Brazeneck have come up with a new algorithm for handling wave spaces in higher-level blit. It speeds up something like the Cabinet by getting on for 2,000 Drinkies.’

  Ridcully frowned. ‘Did you just make that up?’

  ‘No, sir. Charlie Drinkie came up with it at Brazeneck. It’s a shorter way of saying 15,000 iterations to the first negative blit. And it’s a lot easier to remember.’

  ‘So people you know at Brazeneck send you stuff ?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ponder.

  ‘For free?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Ponder, looking surprised. ‘The free sharing of information is central to the pursuit of natural philosophy.’

  ‘And so you tell them things, do you?’

  Ponder sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I don’t think I approve of that,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m all for the free sharing of information, provided it’s them sharing their information with us.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I think we’re rather hampered by the meaning of the word “sharing”.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Ridcully began and stopped. A sound so quiet that they had barely noticed it had stopped. The Cabinet of Curiosity had folded itself up and was once again just a piece of wooden furniture in the centre of the room, but as they looked at it its two front doors opened and a brown ball dropped on to the floor and bounced with a sound like gloing! Ridcully marched over and picked it up, turning it in his hands.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said, slamming it towards the floor. It bounced up past his head, but he was quick enough to catch it on the way down. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘What do you think of this, Stibbons?’ He flicked the ball into the air and kicked it hard across the room. It came back towards Ponder, who, to his own amazement, caught it.

  ‘Seems to have a life of its own.’ Ponder dropped it on to the floor and tried a kick.

  It flew.

  Ponder Stibbons was the quintessential, all-time holder of the one-hundred-metre note from his auntie, which also asked for him to be excused all sporting activities on account of his athlete’s ear, erratic stigmatism, a grumbling nose and a revolving spleen. By his own admission, he would rather run ten miles, leap a five-bar gate and climb a big hill than engage in any athletic activity.

  The ball sang to him. It sang gloing!

  A few minutes later, he and Ridcully walked back to the Great Hall, occasionally bouncing the ball on the flagstones. There was something about the sound of gloing! that made you want to hear it again.

  ‘You know, Ponder, I think you’ve been doing it all wrong. There are more things in Heaven and Disc than are dreamed of in our philosophies.’

  ‘I expect so, sir. I don’t have many things in my philosophies.’

  ‘It’s all about the ball,’ said Ridcully, slamming it down hard on the flagstones again and catching it. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll bring it here and see what happens. You gave the ball a mighty kick, Mister Stibbons, and yet you are, by your own admission, a wet and a weed.’

  ‘Yes, sir, and a wuss, and I am proud of the appellation. I’d better remind you, Archchancellor, that the thing mustn’t spend too long outside the Cabinet.’

  Gloing!

  ‘But we could make a copy, couldn’t we?’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s only leather stitched together, probably protecting a bladder of some sort. I bet any decent craftsman could make another one for us.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘The lights never go off on the Street of Cunning Artificers.’

  By now, they were back in the Great Hall and Ridcully looked around until his gaze lighted on two figures pushing a trolley laden with candles. ‘You lads, to me!’ he shouted. They stopped pushing the trol
ley and walked over to him. ‘Mister Stibbons here would like you to run an errand for him. It’s of considerable importance. Who are you?’

  ‘Trevor Likely, guv.’

  ‘Nutt, Archchancellor.’

  Ridcully’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes . . . Nutt,’ he said, and thought about the spells in his pocket. ‘The candle dribbler, yes? Well, you can make yourselves useful. Over to you, Mister Stibbons.’

  Ponder Stibbons held out the ball. ‘Have you any idea what this is?’

  Nutt took it out of his hands and bounced it on the tiles a couple of times.

  Gloing! Gloing!

  ‘Yes. It appears to be a simple sphere, although technically I believe it to be, in actual fact, a truncated icosahedron, made by stitching together a number of pentagons and hexagons of tough leather, and stitching means holes and holes let the air leak . . . Ah, there is lacing just here, you see? There must be some internal bladder – animal, probably. A balloon, as it were, for lightness and elasticity, encapsulated by leather, simple and elegant.’ He handed the ball back to Ponder, who was open-mouthed.

  ‘Do you know everything, Mister Nutt?’ he said with the sarcasm of a born pedagogue.

  Nutt’s reply was concentrated and there was a lengthy pause before he said, ‘I’m not sure about a lot of the detail, sir.’

  Ponder heard a snigger behind him and felt himself redden. He’d been cheeked, by a dribbler, even if Nutt was the most incontinently erudite one he’d ever encountered.

  ‘Do you know where a copy of this may be made?’ said Ridcully loudly.

  ‘I expect so,’ said Nutt. ‘I believe dwarf rubber will be our friend here.’

  ‘There’s plenty of dwarfs up at Old Cobblers who could knock one up, guv,’ said Trev. ‘They’re good at this sort of thing, but they’d want paying, they always want paying. Nuffin’s on credit when you’re dealing with a dwarf.’

  ‘Give these young gentlemen twenty-five dollars, Mister Stibbons, will you?’

  ‘That’s a lot of money, Archchancellor.’

  ‘Yes, well, dwarfs, while the salt of the earth, don’t have much of a grasp of small numbers and I want this in a hurry. I’m sure I can trust Mister Likely and Mister Nutt with the money, can’t I?’ He said it jovially, but there was an edge to his voice. Trev, at least, got the message very quickly; a wizard could trust you because of the hellish future he could unleash on you if his trust was betrayed.

  ‘You can certainly trust us, guv.’

  ‘Yes, I thought I could,’ said Ridcully.

  When they had gone, Ponder Stibbons said, ‘You’re entrusting them with twenty-five dollars?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Ridcully cheerfully. ‘It will be interesting to see the outcome.’

  ‘Nevertheless, sir, I have to say that it was an unwise move.’

  ‘Thank you for your input, Mister Stibbons, but may I gently remind you who is the guv around here?’

  Glenda and Juliet took a trolley bus home, another huge extravagance but, of course, Glenda was carrying more money than she had ever seen at one go. She had stuffed the notes into her bodice, à la Madame, and it seemed to generate a heat of its own. You were safe on a troll. Anyone wanting to mug a troll would have to use a building on a stick.

  Juliet was quiet. This puzzled Glenda; she had expected her to bubble like a fountain full of soap flakes. The silence was unnerving.

  ‘Look. I know it was a lot of fun,’ Glenda said, ‘but showing off clothes isn’t like a real job, is it?’ No. Real jobs pay a lot less, she thought.

  Where had that come from? Jools hadn’t opened her mouth and the troll was still covered in mountain lichen and had a single-syllable vocabulary. It came from me, she thought. This is about dreams, isn’t it? She is a dream. I dare say the micromail is good stuff, but she made it sparkle. And what can I say? You help in the kitchen. You are useful and helpful, at least when you’re not daydreaming, but you don’t know how to keep accounts or plan a weekly menu. What would you do without me? How would you get on away from here, in foreign parts where folks are so odd?

  ‘I’ll have to open a bank account for you,’ she said aloud. ‘It’ll be our little secret, all right? It’ll be a nice little nest egg for you.’

  ‘And if Dad don’t know I’ve got the money he won’t get it off me and piss it against the wall,’ said Juliet, glancing up at the solemn, impassive face of the troll. If Glenda had known how to say ‘Pas devant le troll’ she would have done so. But it was true: Mr Stollop commanded that all family earnings were pooled, with him holding the pool, which was then pooled with his friends in the bar of the Turkey & Vegetables, and ultimately pooled again in the reeking alley behind it.

  She settled for: ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

  Gloing! Gloing!

  The new ball was magic, that’s what it was. It bounced back to Trev’s waiting hand as if by its own free will. For two pins he’d risk kicking it, but he and Nutt and the ball were already picking up a trail of curious street urchins such that he would be guaranteed never to see it again.

  ‘Are you really sure you know ’ow it works?’ he said to Nutt.

  ‘Oh, yes, Mister Trev. It’s a lot simpler than it looks, although the polyhedrons will need some work, but overall—’

  A hand landed on Trev’s shoulder. ‘Well, now. Trev Likely,’ said Andy. ‘And his little pet, harder to kill than a cockroach, by all accounts. Something’s going on, ain’t it, Trev? And you’re going to tell me what it is. Here, what’s that you’re holding?’

  ‘Not today, Andy,’ said Trev, backing away. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t end up in the Tanty with Mister One Drop measurin’ you up for a hemp collar.’

  ‘Me?’ said Andy innocently. ‘I didn’t do a thing! Can’t blame me for what a thicko Stollop does, but something is going on with the football, ain’t it? Vetinari wants to muck it about.’

  ‘Just leave it alone, will you?’ said Trev.

  There was more than the usual gang behind Andy. The Stollop brothers had sensibly spared the streets their presence lately, but people like Andy could always find followers. Like they said, it was better to be beside Andy than in front of him. And with Andy you never knew just when he was—

  The cutlass was out in one movement. That was Andy. Whatever it was inside that held back the primeval rage could flick off just like that. And here came the blade with Trev’s future written on it in very short words. And it stopped in mid air and Nutt’s voice said, ‘I believe I could squeeze with enough pressure, Andy, to make your bones grind and flow. There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. I truly believe that I could make every one of them useless with the slightest extra pressure. However, I would like to give you a chance to revise your current intentions.’

  Andy’s face was a mix of colours: a white that was almost blue and a rage that was almost crimson. He was trying to pull away and Nutt stood calmly and was completely immoveable. ‘Get ’im!’ Andy hissed at the world in general.

  ‘Could I regretfully remind you gentlemen that I have another hand?’ said Nutt.

  He must have squeezed because Andy yelped as his hand ground against the weapon’s handle.

  Trev knew all too well that Andy did not have friends, he had followers. They were looking at their stricken leader and they were looking at Nutt, and they could see very clearly not only that Nutt had a spare hand, but what he was capable of doing with it. They did not move.

  ‘Very well,’ said Nutt. ‘Perhaps this has been nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding. I am about to release my grip just enough for you to drop the cutlass, Mister Andy, please.’

  There was another intake of breath from Andy as the cutlass landed on the stones.

  ‘Now, if you would excuse us, Mister Trev and I are going to walk away.’

  ‘Take the bloody cutlass! Don’t leave the cutlass on the ground,’ said Trev.

  ‘I am sure Mister Andy would not come after us,’ said Nutt.

  �
�Are you bloody mad?’ said Trev. He reached down, snatched up the cutlass and said, ‘Let ’im go and let’s get a move on.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Nutt. He must have squeezed a little harder because now Andy slumped to his knees.

  Trev pulled Nutt away and towed him through the permanent city crowd. ‘That’s Andy!’ he said, hurrying them along. ‘You don’t expect logic with Andy. You don’t expect him to “learn the error of his ways”. Don’t look for any sense when Andy’s after you. Got that? Don’t try talkin’ to ’im as if ’e’s a human being. Now, keep up with me.’

  Dwarf shops were doing well these days, largely because they understood the first rule of merchandising, which is this: I have got goods for sale and the customer has got money. I should have the money and, regrettably, that involves the customer having my goods. To this end, therefore, I will not say ‘The one in the window is the last one we have, and we can’t sell it to you, because if we did no one would know we have them for sale’, or ‘We’ll probably have some more on Wednesday’, or ‘We just can’t keep them on the shelves’, or ‘I’m fed up with telling people there’s no demand for them’; I will make a sale by any means short of physical violence, because without one I am a waste of space.

  Glang Snorrisson lived by this rule, but he didn’t like people much, an affliction that affects many who have to deal with the general public over a long period, and the two people on the other side of his counter were making him edgy. One was small and looked harmless, but something so deep down in Glang’s psyche that it was probably stuffed in his genes was making him nervous. The other intru— customer was not much more than a boy and therefore likely to commit a crime any moment.

  Glang dealt with the situation by not understanding anything they said and uttering silly insults in his native tongue. There was hardly a risk. Only the Watch learned Dwarfish, and it came as a surprise when the worryingly harmless one said, in better Llamedos Dwarfish than Glang himself spoke these days: ‘Such incivility to the amiable stranger shames your beard and erases the writings of Tak, ancient merchant.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’ Trev asked, as Glang spluttered out apologies.