Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  Ridcully hesitated, but you’d have had to be an experienced Ridcully watcher, like Ponder, to notice the moment. When the Archchancellor spoke, it was calmly and carefully, every word hammered on the anvil of self-control.

  ‘What a pleasant surprise, Mister Nobbs. Do show the Dean in. Oh, and please do not glance at Mister Stibbons for confirmation, thank you. I am still the Archchancellor in these parts. The only one, in fact. Is there a problem, Mister Stibbons?’

  ‘Well, sir, it is a bit public in here—’ Ponder stopped, because suddenly he had nobody’s attention. He hadn’t seen the ball bounce towards Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). Nor the vicious kick the latter gave it, just as he would an impertinent intrusion by a street urchin’s tin can. Ponder did see the ball curving majestically through the air, heading for the other end of the Hall where, behind the organ, rose the stained-glass window dedicated to Archchancellor Abasti, which on a daily basis showed one of several thousand scenes of a mystical or spiritual nature. The intuition with which Ponder had successfully calculated the distance and trajectory of the ball told him that the current glowing picture of ‘Bishop Horn realizing that the alligator quiche was an unwise choice’ had appeared just in time to be extremely unlucky.

  And then, like some new planet swimming into the ken of a watcher of the skies, as they are prone to do, a rusty red shape arose, unfolding as it came, snatched the ball out of the air and landed on the organ keyboard to the sound of gloing! in B flat.

  ‘Well done, that ape!’ the Archchancellor boomed. ‘A beautiful save, but, regrettably, against the rules!’

  To Ponder’s surprise there was a murmur of dissent from all the players. ‘I believe that decision may benefit from some consideration,’ said a small voice behind them.

  ‘Who said that?’ said Ridcully, spinning round and looking into the suddenly terrified little eyes of Nutt.

  ‘Nutt, sir. The candle dribbler. We met yesterday. I helped you with the ball . . . ?’

  ‘And you are telling me I’m wrong. Are you?’

  ‘I would rather you thought of me as suggesting a way in which you could be even more right.’

  Ridcully opened his mouth and then shut it again. I know what he is, he thought. Does he? Or did they spare him that?

  ‘Very well, Mister Nutt. Is there a point you wish to make?’

  ‘Yes, sir. What is the purpose of this game?’

  ‘To win, of course!’

  ‘Indeed. Regrettably, it is not being played that way.’

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘No, sir. The players all want to kick the ball.’

  ‘And so they should, surely?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Only if you believe the purpose of the game is healthy exercise, sir. Do you play chess?’

  ‘Well, I have done.’

  ‘And would you have thought it proper for all the pawns to swarm up the board in the hope of checkmating the king?’

  For a moment, Ridcully had a mental vision of Lord Vetinari holding aloft a solitary pawn and saying what it might become . . .

  ‘Oh, come now, that is quite different!’ he burst out.

  ‘Yes, but the skill lies in marshalling resources in the right way.’

  Ridcully saw a face appear behind Nutt, like a rising moon of wrath.

  ‘You don’t talk to the gentlemen, Nutt, it is not your place to take up their time with your chatter—’

  Ridcully writhed in sympathy with Nutt, all the more so because Smeems, as is the habit of such people, kept looking at the Archchancellor as if seeking and, worse, expecting approval of this petty tyranny.

  But authority must back up authority, in public at least, otherwise there is no authority, and therefore the senior authority is forced to back up the junior authority, even if he, the senior authority, believes that the junior authority is a tiresome little tit.

  ‘Thank you for your concern, Mister Smeems,’ he said, ‘but in fact I asked Mister Nutt his opinion of our little kick-about, since it is the game of the people and he is rather more people than I am. I will not keep him long from his duties, Mister Smeems, nor you from yours, which I know are both vital and pressing.’

  Small, insecure authority can spot, if it is sensible, when a larger authority is giving it a chance to save face.

  ‘Right you are, sir!’ said Smeems after only a second’s hesitation, and he scurried off to safety. The thing called Nutt appeared to be trembling.

  He thinks he’s done something wrong, Ridcully thought, and I shouldn’t think of him as a thing. Some wizard’s sense made him look round into the face of – what was the lad’s name? – Trevor Likely.

  ‘Do you have anything else to add, Mister Likely? Only I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

  ‘I gave Mister Stibbons the change and the receipt,’ said Trevor.

  ‘What is it you do around here, young man?’

  ‘I run the candle vats, guv.’

  ‘Oh, do you? We’re getting some very good dribbling from you fellows these days.’

  Trev appeared to let this pass. ‘Mister Nutt is not in any trouble, is he, guv?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  But what do I know? Ridcully asked himself. Mr Nutt, by definition, is trouble. But the Librarian says he potters about repairing things and is generally an amiable milksop, and he talks as though he’s giving a lecture.14 This little man, who actually, when you look at him, is not as little as he appears because he weighs himself down with humility . . . this little man was born with a name so fearsome some peasants chained him to an anvil because they were too scared to kill him. Perhaps Vetinari and his friends are right in their smug way and a leopard can change his shorts. I hope so, because if they aren’t, a leopard will be a picnic. And any minute now, the Dean is coming, damn his treacherous hide.

  ‘Only he’s my friend, guv.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. Everyone should have a friend.’

  ‘I’m not gonna let anyone touch ’im, guv.’

  ‘A brave ambition, young man, if I may say so. Nevertheless, Mister Nutt, why did you object when I pointed out that the Librarian, wonderful though his rising save was, was in infringement of the rules?’

  Nutt didn’t look up, but in a small voice said, ‘It was elegant. It was beautiful. The game should be beautiful, like a well-executed war.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think many people would say that war is very jolly,’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Beauty can be considered to be neutral, sir. It is not the same as nice or good.’

  ‘I thought it was the same as truth, though,’ said Ponder, trying to keep up.

  ‘Which is often horrible, sir, but Mister Librarian’s leap was both beautiful, sir, and good, sir, and therefore must be true and therefore the rule which should prevent him from doing it again would be proved to be neither beautiful nor true and would, indeed, be a false law.’

  ‘That’s right, guv,’ said Trev. ‘People will shout for that stuff.’

  ‘Do you mean that they’d cheer for a goal not achieved?’ said Ponder.

  ‘Of course they will! And groan! It’s something happening,’ Ridcully snorted. ‘You saw the game the other day! If you were lucky, you got a glimpse of a lot of large, grubby men fighting over a ball like a lump of wood. People want to see goals scored!’

  ‘And saved, remember!’ Trev pointed out.

  ‘Exactly, young man,’ agreed Ridcully. ‘It must be a game of speed. This is the year of the Pensive Hare, after all. People get bored so easily. No wonder there are fights. We need, do we not, to make a sport that is more exciting than beating other people over the head with big weapons.’

  ‘That one’s always been very popular,’ said Ponder doubtfully.

  ‘Well, we are wizards, after all. And now I must go and greet the bloody, the so-called Archchancellor of Brazeneck so-called College in the correct damn spirit of fraternal goodwill!’

  ‘So called,’ murmured Ponder, not quite softly enough.

  �
�What say?’ the Archchancellor bellowed.

  ‘Just wondering what you want me to do, Archchancellor?’

  ‘Do? Keep ’em playing! See who’s good at it! Work out what the most beautiful rules are,’ Ridcully called out, heading out of the Hall at speed.

  ‘By myself?’ said Ponder, horrified. ‘I’ve got a huge workload!’

  ‘Delegate!’

  ‘You know I’m hopeless at delegating, sir!’

  ‘Then delegate the job of delegating to someone who isn’t! Now, I must be off before he steals the silverware!’

  It was very rare for Glenda to take time off. Being the head of the Night Kitchen was a mental state, not a physical one. The only meal she ever ate at home was breakfast, and that was always in a hurry. But now she’d stolen some time to sell the dream. May Hedges was looking after the kitchen and she was reliable and got on with everyone and so there were no worries there.

  The sun had come out and now she knocked on the rear door of Mr Stronginthearm’s workshop. The dwarf opened the door with rouge all over his fingers. ‘Oh, hello, Glenda. How’s it going?’

  She thumped a wad of orders on the table proudly and opened the suitcase. It was empty. ‘And I need a lot more samples,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ said the dwarf. ‘When did you get these?’

  ‘This morning.’

  It had been easy. Door after door seemed to have opened for her and every time a little voice in her head said, ‘Are you doing the right thing?’ a slightly deeper voice, which sounded remarkably like Madame Sharn, said, ‘He wants to make it. You want to sell it. They want to buy it. The dream goes round and round and so does the money.’

  ‘The lipstick went down very well,’ she said. ‘Those troll girls put it on with a trowel and I’m not kidding. So what you ought to do, sir, is sell a trowel. A pretty one, in a nice box with sprinkles on it.’

  He gave her an admiring look. ‘This isn’t like you, Glenda.’

  ‘Not sure about that,’ said Glenda, as more samples were dropped into the battered case. ‘Have you thought about getting into shoes?’

  ‘Do you think it would be worth a try? They don’t normally wear shoes.’

  ‘They didn’t wear lipstick until they moved here,’ said Glenda. ‘It could be the coming thing.’

  ‘But they’ve got feet like granite. They don’t need shoes.’

  ‘But they’ll want them,’ said Glenda. ‘You could be in on the ground floor, as it were.’

  Stronginthearm looked puzzled and Glenda remembered that even city dwarfs were used to the topsy-turvy language of home. ‘Oh, sorry, I meant to say the top floor.’

  ‘And then there’s dresses,’ said Glenda. ‘I’ve been looking around and no one makes proper dresses for trolls. They’re just outsized human dresses. And they’re cut to make the troll look smaller, but they’d be better if they were cut to make them look bigger. More like a troll and less like a fat human. You know, you want the clothing to shout, “I’m a great big troll lady and proud of it”.’

  ‘Have you been hit on the head with something?’ said Stronginthearm. ‘Because, if so, I’d like it to drop on me.’

  ‘Well, it’s spreading the dream, isn’t it?’ said Glenda, carefully arranging the samples in her suitcase. ‘It’s a bit more important than I thought.’

  She made fourteen more successful calls before calling it a day, posted the orders through Stronginthearm’s letterbox and, with a light case and uncharacteristically light heart, went back to work.

  ***

  Ridcully turned the corner and there, right in front of him, was . . . His mind spun as it sought for the correct mode of address: ‘Archchancellor’ was out of the question, ‘Dean’ too obvious an insult, ‘Two Chairs’ ditto with knobs on, and ‘ungrateful, backstabbing, slimy bastard’ took too long to say. What the hell was the bastard’s name? Great heavens, they’d been friends since their first day at UU . . . ‘Henry!’ he exploded. ‘What a pleasant surprise. What brings you here to our miserable and sadly out-of-date little university?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Mustrum. When I left, the lads were pushing back the boundaries of knowledge. It’s been a bit quiet since, I gather. By the way, this is Professor Turnipseed.’

  There appeared from behind the self-styled Archchancellor of Brazeneck, like a moonlet moving out of the shadow of a gas giant, a sheepish young man who instantly reminded Ridcully of Ponder Stibbons, although for the life of him he couldn’t make out why. Perhaps it was the look of someone permanently doing sums in his head, and not just proper sums either, but the sneaky sort with letters in them.

  ‘Oh, well, you know how it is with boundaries,’ Ridcully mumbled. ‘You look at what’s on the other side and you realize why there was a boundary in the first place. Good afternoon, Turnipseed. Your face is familiar.’

  ‘I used to work here, sir,’ said Turnipseed sheepishly.

  ‘Oh yes, I recall. In the High Energy Magic Department, yes?’ ‘A coming man, our Adrian,’ said the former Dean, proprietorially.

  ‘We have our own High Energy Magic Building now, you know. We call it the Higher Energy Magic Building, but I stress that this is only to avoid confusion. No slight on good old UU is intended. Adopt, adapt, improve, that’s my motto.’

  Well, if you adapted it then it’s now grab, copy and look innocent, Ridcully thought, but carefully. Senior wizards never rowed in public. The damage was apt to be appalling. No, politeness ruled, but with sharpened edges.

  ‘I doubt there will be any confusion, Henry. We are the senior college, after all. And of course I am the only Archchancellor in these parts.’

  ‘By custom and practice, Mustrum, and times are changing.’

  ‘Or being changed, at least. But I wear the Archchancellor’s Hat, Henry, as worn by my predecessors down the centuries. The Hat, Henry, of supreme authority in the affairs of the Wise, the Cunning and the Crafty. The hat, in fact, on my head.’

  ‘It isn’t, you know,’ said Henry cheerfully. ‘You are wearing the everyday hat that you made yourself.’

  ‘It would be on my head if I wanted it to be!’

  Henry’s smile was glassy. ‘Of course, Mustrum, but the authority of the Hat has often been challenged.’

  ‘Almost correct, old chap. In fact, it is the ownership of the Hat that has, in the past, been disputed, but the Hat itself, never. Now, I note that you yourself are wearing a particularly spiffy hat of a magnificence that goes beyond the sublime, but it is just a hat, old boy, just a hat. No offence meant, of course, and I am sure that in another millennium it will have become weighted with dignity and wisdom. I can see that you have left plenty of room.’

  Turnipseed decided to make a run for the lavatories right now, and with a muted apology pushed past Ridcully and sped away.

  Oddly enough, the sudden lack of an audience lowered the tension rather than increased it.

  Henry pulled a slim packet out of his pocket. ‘Cigarette? I know that you roll your own, but Verdant and Scour make these specially for me and they are rather fine.’

  Ridcully took one, because a wizard, however haughty, who would not accept a free smoke or a drink would be in his coffin, but he took care not to notice the words ‘Archchancellor’s Choice’ in garish type on the packet.

  As he handed the packet back, something small and colourful dropped out on to the floor. Henry, with an agility unexpected in a wizard so far up the main sequence as described in the well-known Owlspring/Tips Diagram,15 reached down quickly and snatched it up, muttering something about ‘not letting it get dirty’.

  ‘You could eat your dinner off these floors,’ said Ridcully sharply, and probably would, he added to himself.

  ‘Only the collectors get so annoyed if there is a speck of dust on them and I give mine to the butler’s little boy,’ Henry went on blithely. He turned the pasteboard over and frowned. ‘Notable Wizards of our Time, No. 9 of 50: Dr Able Baker, BC (Hons), Fdl, Kp, PdF (escrow), Director of
Blit Studies, Brazeneck. I’m sure he’s already got this one.’ He dropped it into a waistcoat pocket. ‘Never mind, good for swapsies.’

  Ridcully could assess things quite fast, especially when fuelled by banked fires of rage.

  ‘The Wizla tobacco, snuff and rolling paper company,’ he said, ‘of Pseudopolis. Hmm, clever idea. Who’s in this from UU?’

  ‘Ah. Well, I have to admit that the Assembly and people of Pseudopolis are rather . . . patriotic in their outlook—’

  ‘I think the word is “parochial”, don’t you?’

  ‘Harsh words, considering that Ankh-Morpork’s the smuggest, most self-satisfied city in the world.’ This was self-evidently true, so Ridcully decided he hadn’t heard it.

  ‘You on one of these cards, then?’ he grunted.

  ‘They insisted, I’m afraid,’ said Henry. ‘I was born there, you see. Local boy and all that.’

  ‘And no one from UU,’ said Ridcully flatly.

  ‘Technically no, but Professor Turnipseed is in there as the inventor of Pex.’ As Henry said it, guilt and defiance fought for space in the sentence.

  ‘Pex?’ said Ridcully slowly. ‘You mean like Hex?’

  ‘Oh, no, not at all like Hex. Certainly not. The principle is quite different.’ Henry cleared his throat. ‘It’s run by chickens. They trigger the morphic resonator, or whatever it’s called. Your Hex, as I recall, utilizes ants, which are far less efficient.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We get eggs we can eat.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound all that different, you know.’

  ‘Oh, come now. They are hundreds of times bigger! And Pex is in a purpose-built room, not strung haphazardly all over the place. Professor Turnipseed knows what he is doing, and even you, Mustrum, must acknowledge that the river of progress is fed by a thousand springs!’

  ‘And they didn’t all rise in bloody Brazeneck!’ said Ridcully.

  They glared at one another. Professor Turnipseed poked his head around the corner and pulled it back very quickly.

  ‘If we were the men our fathers were, we’d be throwing fireballs by now,’ said Henry.