Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  Ponder coughed politely. ‘Mister, er, Likely, isn’t it? Your colleague speaks very highly of you. Won’t you join us?’

  ‘Sorry, guv, but I promised my old mum that I’d never play football. It’s a good way of gettin’ your head caved in!’

  ‘Trev Likely?’ roared Bledlow Nobbs (no relation). ‘Are you Dave Likely’s lad? He—’

  ‘Scored four goals, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Trev. ‘And then died in the street with the rain washing his blood down the gutter and someone’s smelly overcoat over him. The Prince of Football?’

  ‘Do we need a little talk, Mister Trev?’ Nutt said urgently.

  ‘No. No. I’m okay. Okay?’

  ‘This isn’t that kind of football, Trev,’ said Nutt soothingly.

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I promised my old mum.’

  ‘Then at least show them your moves, Mister Trev,’ Nutt pleaded. He turned to the players. ‘You must see this!’

  Trev sighed, but Nutt knew just how to wheedle. ‘All right, if it shuts you up,’ he said, and pulled a tin can out of his pocket, to much laughter.

  ‘See?’ he complained to Nutt. ‘They just think it’s a joke.’

  Nutt folded his arms. ‘Show them.’

  Trev dropped the can on to his foot and with hardly any effort flicked it on to his shoulder, where it rolled around his neck to his other shoulder and, after a tiny pause, righted itself. He shrugged it on to his other foot, spun it into the air, and let it tumble and spin on the toe of his boot with a faint rattling noise.

  Trev winked at Ponder Stibbons. ‘Don’t move, guv.’

  The can sprang off the boot and up into the air, then, as it fell, he hit it with a roundhouse kick, driving it at Ponder. The people behind Ponder dived out of the way as it growled past his face and went into orbit, appearing for a moment to give him a silver necklace until it broke away and dropped into Trev’s hand like a beached salmon.

  In the silence, Ponder pulled his thaumometer out of his pocket and glanced at it.

  ‘Natural background,’ he said flatly. ‘No magic involved. How did you do that, Mister Likely?’

  ‘You just ’ave to get the hang of it, guv. Getting the spins is the thing, but if I ’ave to think too much it don’t work.’

  ‘Can you do it with a ball?’

  ‘Dunno, never tried. But prob’ly no. Can’t get the long spin and the short spin, see? But you ort to be able to get somethin’ out of a ball.’

  ‘But how would that help us?’ said Hix.

  ‘Mastery of the ball is everything,’ said Nutt. ‘The planned rule will, I think, allow the keeper of the goal to handle the ball. This is vital. There is, however, no explicit ban on nodding the ball, kneeing the ball or blocking the ball with the chest and letting it drop neatly on to the foot. Remember, gentlemen, this ball flies. It will spend a lot of time in the air. You must learn not to think just about the ground.’

  ‘I feel sure that using the head would be considered illegal,’ said Ponder.

  ‘Sir, you presume a rule where there is none. Remember what I said about the real nature of the game.’

  Ponder saw Nutt’s little half-smile, and gave in. ‘Mister Nutt, I am delegating the selection and training of our football team to you. You will report to me, of course.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I will need the power to sequester team members from their normal duties when required.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I must agree to that. Very well, I shall leave the team in your hands,’ said Ponder, thinking: how many bags of old clothes use the word ‘sequester’ as if they’re used to it? Still, Ridcully likes the little goblin, if that’s what he is, and I’ve never seen the point of team games.

  ‘May I also, sir, request a very small budget?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘With all due respect to the exigencies of university finances,’ said Nutt, ‘I believe it is very necessary.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wish to take the team to the ballet.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Ponder snapped.

  ‘No, sir, it’s essential.’

  The next day there was a piece in the Times about the mysterious disappearance of the fabulous ‘Jewels’, which made Glenda smile. They just haven’t read their fairy stories, she thought as she left the house. If you want to find a beauty, you look for her in the ashes. Because Glenda was Glenda and would always irredeemably be Glenda to the core, she added: although the ovens in the Night Kitchen are scrupulously maintained at all times and all ashes are immediately disposed of.

  To her surprise, Juliet stepped out of her doorway at almost the same time and looked as if she was almost awake. ‘Do you think they’ll let me in on the banquet?’ she said as they waited for the bus.

  Theoretically yes, Glenda thought, but probably no, because she was a Night Kitchen girl. Even though she was Juliet, she would be tarred by Mrs Whitlow as a Night Kitchen girl. ‘Juliet, you shall go to the banquet,’ she said aloud, ‘and so shall I.’

  ‘But I think Mrs Whitlow won’t like that,’ said Juliet.

  Something was still bubbling inside Glenda. It had started in Shatta and lasted all day yesterday and there was still some left today. ‘I don’t care,’ she said.

  Juliet giggled and looked around in case Mrs Whitlow was hiding near the bus stop.

  And I really don’t care, Glenda thought. I don’t care. It was like drawing a sword.

  Ponder’s office always puzzled Mustrum Ridcully. The man used filing cabinets for heavens’ sake. Ridcully worked on the basis that anything you couldn’t remember wasn’t important and had developed the floor-heap method of document storage to a fine art.

  Ponder looked up. ‘Ah, good morning, Archchancellor.’

  ‘Just had a look in at the Hall,’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Yes, Archchancellor?’

  ‘Our lads were all doing ballet.’

  ‘Yes, Archchancellor.’

  ‘And there were some girls from the Opera House with those short dresses.’

  ‘Yes, Archchancellor. They’re helping the team.’

  Ridcully leaned over and put huge knuckles either side of the paper Ponder was working on. ‘Why? ’

  ‘Mister Nutt’s idea, Archchancellor. Apparently they must learn balance, poise and elegance.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Bledlow Nobbs try to stand on one leg? Let me tell you, it’s an immediate cure for melancholy.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Ponder, not looking up.

  ‘I thought the idea was to learn how to kick the ball into the goal.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but Mister Nutt has a philosophy.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘They’re runnin’ about all over the place, I know that,’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Yes, Mister Nutt and Mister Likely are preparing a little something extra for the banquet,’ said Ponder, getting up and opening the top drawer of a filing cabinet. The sight of filing cabinets opening tended to remind Ridcully that he should be elsewhere, but on this occasion the ruse failed to work.

  ‘Oh, and I believe we have some fresh balls.’

  ‘Mister Snorrisson knows an opportunity when he sees one.’

  ‘So it’s all going well, then?’ said Ridcully, in a kind of mystified voice.

  ‘Apparently so, sir.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d better leave it alone,’ said Ridcully. He hesitated, feeling at a bit of a loose end, and found another thread to pull. ‘And how are those rules coming along, Mister Stibbons?’

  ‘Oh, quite well, thank you, Archchancellor. I’m keeping in some of the ones from the street game, of course, to keep everybody happy. Some of them are quite strange.’

  ‘Mister Nutt is quite a decent chap, it appears.’

  ‘Oh yes, Archchancellor.’

  ‘Very good idea of his to redesign the goal, I thought. Makes it more fun.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to train, sir?’ said Ponder, pulling another document tow
ards him.

  ‘I am the captain! I do not need to train.’ Ridcully turned to leave and stopped with his hand on the doorknob. ‘Had a long chat with the former Dean last night. Decent soul at heart, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I understand the atmosphere in the Uncommon Room was very convivial, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. And expensive, he added to himself.

  ‘You know young Adrian Turnipseed is a professor?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Archchancellor.’

  ‘You wanna be one?’

  ‘Not really, Archchancellor. I think there should be one or two posts in this institution that I don’t hold.’

  ‘Yes, but they’ve just called their machine Pex! Hardly a great leap of ingenuity, is it?’

  ‘Oh, there are some significant differences. I believe he’s using chickens to generate the blit diametric,’ said Ponder.

  ‘Apparently so,’ said Ridcully. ‘Something like that, anyway.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Ponder. And it was quite a solid hmmm, possibly one you could moor a small boat to.

  ‘Something wrong?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Oh, er, not really, Archchancellor. Did the former Dean mention anything about the need to totally rebuild the morphic resonator to allow for the necessary changes in the blit/slood interface?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ponder, his face blank. ‘Well, Adrian is bound to get round to that. He is very clever.’

  ‘Yes, but it was all based on your work. You built Hex. And now they’re putting out that he’s some big clever clogs. He’s even on a cigarette card.’

  ‘That’s nice, sir. It’s good when researchers get recognition.’

  Ridcully felt like a mosquito that was trying to sting a steel breastplate. ‘Hah, wizardry has certainly changed since my day,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ponder noncommittally.

  ‘And by the way, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully as he opened the door, ‘my day isn’t over yet.’

  There was a yell in the distance. And then a crash. Ridcully smiled. The day had suddenly brightened up.

  When he and Ponder reached the Great Hall, most of the team were gathered around one of their members lying on the floor, with Nutt kneeling over him.

  ‘What’s happened here?’ Ridcully demanded.

  ‘Badly bruised, sir. I shall put a compress on it.’

  ‘Ah.’ His gaze fell upon a large, brass-bound chest. It looked at first sight like any other chest, until you saw the tiny little toes poking out.

  ‘Rincewind’s luggage,’ he growled. ‘And where that is, Rincewind can’t be far in front. Rincewind!’

  ‘Actually, it wasn’t my fault,’ said Rincewind.

  ‘He’s right, sir,’ said Nutt. ‘I have to apologize for the fact that this was a group misapprehension. I understand it is a remarkably magical chest on hundreds of little legs and I am afraid that the gentlemen here believed that it would play football like stink, as they put it. In which surmise, I have to say, they were proved wrong.’

  ‘I tried to tell them,’ said the former Dean from the edge of the crowd. ‘Morning, Mustrum. Good team you have here.’

  ‘All its feet do is get in each other’s way,’ said Bengo Macarona. ‘And if it does get on top of the ball, it spins out of control and, alas, it crashed into Mister Sopworthy here.’

  ‘Oh, well, we learn by our mistakes,’ said Ridcully. ‘And now, do you happen to have something nice to show me?’

  ‘I think I have the very thing, Archchancellor,’ said a cheerful but reedy voice behind him.

  Ridcully turned and looked into the face of a man with the shape and urgency of a piccolo. He seemed to be vibrating on the spot.

  ‘Professor Ritornello, Master of the Music,’ Ponder whispered into Ridcully’s ear.

  ‘Ah, Professor,’ said Ridcully smoothly, ‘and I see you have the choir with you.’

  ‘Yes indeed, Archchancellor, and I must tell you, I am thrilled and filled with inner light by what I have witnessed this morning! Without ado, I have penned a chant, such as you asked for!’

  ‘Did I?’ said Ridcully, out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘You will remember that chanting was mentioned and so I thought it best to alert the professor,’ whispered Ponder.

  ‘Another pp, eh? Oh, well.’

  ‘Happily, it is based on the traditional plainchant or stolation form and is a valedicta, or hail to the winner. May I?’ said Professor Ritornello. ‘It is a cappella, of course.’

  ‘Go ahead, by all means,’ said Ridcully.

  The Master of the Music pulled a short baton out of his sleeve. ‘I’ve put the name of Bengo Macarona in there for a marker at the moment, because he has apparently scored two fine “goals”, as I believe they are called,’ he said, dealing carefully with the word as one might deal with a large spider in the bathtub. Then he caught the eyes of his little flock, nodded, and:

  Hail the unique qualities of Magister Bengo Macarona! Of Macarona the unique qualities Hail! Hail the! Hail the! The singular talent possessed by no other! Hail! Hail the! Hail the bountiful gods! Who to the, two the— SINGULA SINGULAR SINGULA!

  After a minute and a half of this Ridcully coughed loudly, and the Master waved the choir into a stuttering silence.

  ‘Is there something untoward, Archchancellor?’

  ‘Er, not as such, Master, but, er, do you not feel that it is a bit too, well, long?’ Ridcully was aware that the former Dean was not trying very hard to suppress a snigger.

  ‘Not at all. In fact, sir, I intend that when it is finished it will be scored for forty voices and, though I dare to say so, will be my masterwork!’

  ‘But it is something for football fans to sing, you see?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘Well then,’ said the Master, holding his baton in a rather threatening manner, ‘is it not the duty of the educated classes to raise the standards of the lower orders?’

  ‘He’s got a point there, Mustrum,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, and Ridcully felt his grandfather kick him in the heredity, and was glad that maid wasn’t here – what was her name now? Oh, yes, Glenda, smart woman – but although she was not there he saw something of her expression in Trev Likely’s face.

  ‘During the week, possibly,’ he snapped, ‘but not on Saturdays, I think. But very well done, anyway, and I look forward to hearing more of your efforts.’

  The Master of the Music flounced out with the choir flouncing out in perfect unison behind him.

  Ridcully rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, gentlemen, perhaps you could show me your moves.’

  While the players spread out in the Hall, Nutt said, ‘I must say that Professor Macarona is excelling at the game. He clearly has excellent ball skills.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ridcully brightly.

  ‘The Librarian is, of course, an excellent keeper of the goal. Especially since he can stand in the middle and reach either side of it. I believe that it will be very hard for any of our opponents to get past him. And, of course, you will be partaking also, Archchancellor.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t become Archchancellor if you don’t get the hang of things quickly. I will just watch for now.’

  He watched. After the second occasion when Macarona, like a silver streak, ran the length of the Hall to flick the ball into the opponents’ goal, Ridcully turned to Ponder and said, ‘We’re going to win, aren’t we?’

  ‘If indeed he is still playing for you,’ put in the former Dean.

  ‘Oh, come now, Henry. Can we at least agree to just play one game at a time here?’

  ‘Well, I think today’s session should end pretty soon, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘It’s the banquet tonight after all and it will take some time to get the place ready.’

  ‘Excuse me, guv, that’s right,’ said Trev behind him, ‘and we’ve got to get the chandelier down an’ put new candles in.’

  ‘Yes, but we have been practising a little demon
stration for tonight. Maybe the Archchancellor would like to see it,’ said Nutt.

  Ridcully looked at his watch. ‘Well, yes, Mister Nutt, but time is getting on and so I look forward to seeing it later. Splendid effort all round, though,’ he boomed.

  The night market was setting up in Sator Square as Glenda and Juliet arrived for work. Ankh-Morpork lived on the street, where it got its food, entertainment and, in a city with a ferocious housing shortage, a place to hang around until there was space on a floor. Stalls had been set up anywhere, and flares filled the early-evening air with stink and, almost as a by-product, a certain amount of light.

  Glenda could never resist looking, especially now. She was very good at all sorts of cookery, she really was, and it was important to keep that knowledge at the calm centre of her spinning brain. And there was Verity Pushpram, queen of the sea.

  Glenda had a lot of time for Miss Pushpram, who was a self-made woman, although she could have used some help when it came to her eyes, which were set so far apart that she rather resembled a turbot.

  But Verity, like the ocean that was making her fortune these days, had hidden depths, because she’d made enough to buy a boat, and then another boat and a whole aisle in the fish market. But she still womanhandled her barrow to the square most evenings, where she sold whelks, shrimps, leather crabs, blossom prawns, monkey clams and her famous hot fish sticks.

  Glenda often bought from her; there was the kind of respect you give to an equal who is, crucially, no threat to your own position.

  ‘Going to the big bun fight, girls?’ said Verity cheerfully, waving a halibut at them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliet proudly.

  ‘What, both of you?’ said Verity, with a glance towards Glenda, who said, firmly, ‘The Night Kitchen is expanding.’

  ‘Oh well, so long as you’re having fun,’ said Verity, looking, in theory, from one to the other. ‘Here, have one of these, they’re lovely. My treat.’

  She reached down and picked a crab out of a bucket. As it came up it turned out that three more were hanging on to it.

  ‘A crab necklace?’ giggled Juliet.

  ‘Oh, that’s crabs for you,’ said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. ‘Thick as planks, the lot of them. That’s why you can keep them in a bucket without a lid. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. Yes, as thick as planks.’ Verity held the crab over an ominously bubbling cauldron. ‘Shall I cook it for you now?’