Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘All night? I think I could walk it faster.’

  The man had the quiet, friendly air about him of someone who had found the best way to get through life was never to give much of a stuff about anything. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘I’ll wave to you as we go past.’

  Glenda looked down the length of the coach. It was half full of the kind of people who took the overnight bus because it wasn’t very expensive; the kind of people, in fact, who had brought their own dinner in a paper bag, and probably not a new paper bag at that.

  The three of them huddled. ‘It’s the only one we can afford,’ said Trev. ‘I don’t think we can even afford travel for one on the mail coaches.’

  ‘Can’t we try and bargain with him?’ said Glenda.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Trev. He walked back to the coach.

  ‘Hello again,’ said the driver.

  ‘When are you gonna leave?’ said Trev.

  ‘In about five minutes.’

  ‘So everyone who’s gonna be riding is on the coach.’

  Glenda glanced past the driver. The passenger behind him was very meticulously peeling a hardboiled egg.

  ‘Could be,’ said the driver.

  ‘Then why not leave right now,’ said Trev, ‘and go faster? It’s very important.’

  ‘Late-night,’ said the driver. ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Supposing I was to threaten you with this lead pipe, would you go any faster?’ said Trev.

  ‘Trevor Likely!’ said Glenda. ‘You can’t go around threatening people with lead pipes!’

  The driver looked down at Trev and said, ‘Can you run that past me again?’

  ‘I told you that I had this length of lead pipe,’ said Trev, banging it gently against the bus’s door. ‘Sorry, but we really need to get to Sto Lat.’

  ‘Oh, right, yes,’ said the driver, ‘I see your lead pipe,’ and he reached down to the other side of his seat, ‘and I will raise you this battle-axe and would remind you that if I were to cut you in arf, the law would be on my side, no offence meant. You must think I am some kind of fool, but you’re all hopping about like nits on a griddle, so what’s this all about then?’

  ‘We’ve got to catch up with our friend. He could be in danger,’ said Trev.

  ‘And it’s very romantic,’ said Juliet.

  The driver looked at her.

  ‘If you ’elp us catch up wiv him, I’ll give you a big kiss,’ she said.

  ‘There!’ said the driver to Trev. ‘Why didn’t you think of that?’

  ‘All right, I’ll give you a kiss as well,’ said Trev.

  ‘No thanks, sir,’ said the driver, clearly enjoying himself. ‘In your case I think I’ll go for the lead pipe, although please don’t try anything ’cos it’s a devil’s own job to get the bloodstains off the seats. Nothing seems to shift them.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll try to hit you with the lead pipe,’ said Trev. ‘We’re desperate.’

  ‘And we’ll give you some money,’ said Juliet.

  ‘Sorry?’ said the driver. ‘Do I get the kiss, the money and the lead pipe? I mean, I’d rather forgo the lead pipe for another kiss.’

  ‘Two kisses, a whole three dollars and no lead pipe,’ said Juliet.

  ‘Or just the lead pipe and I’ll take my chances,’ said Trev.

  Glenda, who had been watching them with a fascinated horror, said, ‘And I’ll give you a kiss as well if you like.’ She couldn’t help noticing that this didn’t move the stakes either way.

  ‘But what about my passengers?’ said the driver.

  All four of them looked into the back of the bus and realized that they were the subject of at least a dozen fascinated stares. ‘Go for the kiss!’ said a woman, holding a large laundry basket in front of her.

  ‘And the money!’ said one of the men.

  ‘I don’t give a stuff if she kisses him or hits him on the head with the lead pipe, so long as they drop us off first,’ said an old man towards the back of the bus.

  ‘Do any of us get kissed as well?’ said one half of a couple of giggling boys.

  ‘If you like,’ said Glenda viciously. They slumped back into their seats.

  Juliet grabbed the driver’s face and there was, for what seemed slightly too long, by the internal clocks of both Glenda and Trev, the sound of a tennis ball being sucked through the strings of a tennis racket. Juliet stepped back. The driver was smiling, in a slightly stunned and cross-eyed way. ‘Well, that was pretty much of a lead pipe!’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better drive,’ said Trev.

  The driver smiled at him. ‘I’ll drive, thank you very much, and don’t kid yourself, mister, I know a dicey one when I see one and you don’t come close. My old mum would be more likely to hit me with a lead pipe than you. Throw it away, why don’t you, or someone will give you a centre parting you won’t forget in a hurry.’

  He winked at Juliet. ‘What with one thing or another it’s a good idea to give the horses a bit of a run every now and again. All aboard for Sto Lat.’

  The horse buses did not usually travel very fast and the driver’s definition of a run was only marginally faster than what most people would call a walk, but he managed to get them up to something that at least meant they did not have the time to get bored by a passing tree.

  The bus was for people, as the driver had pointed out, who couldn’t afford speed but could afford time. In its construction, therefore, no expense had been attempted. It was really no more than a cart with double seats all the way along it from the driver’s slightly elevated bench. Tarpaulins on either side kept out the worst of the weather but fortunately still let in enough of the wind to mitigate the smell of the upholstery, which had experienced humanity in all its manifold moods and urgencies.

  Glenda got the impression that some of the travellers were regulars. An elderly woman was sitting quietly knitting. The boys were still engaged in the furtive giggling appropriate to their age, and a dwarf was staring out of the window without looking at anything in particular. No one really bothered about talking to anybody, except a man right at the back, who was having a continuous conversation with himself.

  ‘This isn’t fast enough!’ Glenda shouted after ten minutes of bouncing over the potholes. ‘I could run faster than this.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s gonna get that far,’ said Trev.

  The sun was going down and the shadows were already drawing across the cabbage fields, but there was a figure on the road ahead, struggling. Trev jumped off.

  ‘Awk! Awk!’

  ‘It’s those wretched things,’ said Glenda, running up behind him. ‘Give me that lead pipe.’

  Nutt was half crouched in the dust on the road. The Sisters of Perpetual Velocity were half flying and half flapping around him while he tried to protect his face with his hands. The passengers of the bus were quite unnoticed until the lead pipe arrived, followed very shortly by Glenda. It didn’t have the effect she’d hoped. The Sisters were indeed like birds. She couldn’t so much hit them as bat them through the air.

  ‘Awk! Awk!’

  ‘You stop trying to hurt him!’ she screamed. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong!’

  Nutt raised an arm and grabbed her wrist. There wasn’t much pressure, but somehow she couldn’t move it at all. It was as if it had suddenly been embalmed in stone. ‘They’re not here to hurt me,’ he said. ‘They’re here to protect you.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Me. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go.’

  ‘But I don’t need any protection from you. That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘They think you might,’ said Nutt. ‘But that is not the worst of it.’

  The creatures were circling and the other passengers, sharing the endemic Ankh-Morpork taste for impromptu street theatre, had piled out and had become an appreciative audience, which clearly discomforted the Sisters.

  ‘What is the worst of it, then?’ said Glenda, waving the pipe at the nearest Sister, which jump
ed back out of the way.

  ‘They may be right.’

  ‘All right, so you’re an orc,’ said Trev. ‘So they used to eat people. Have you eaten anyone lately?’

  ‘No, Mister Trev.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’

  ‘You can’t arrest someone for something he hasn’t done,’ said one of the bus passengers, nodding sagely. ‘A fundamental law, that.’

  ‘What’s an orc?’ said the lady next to him.

  ‘Oh, back in the olden days up in Uberwald or somewhere they used to tear people to bits and eat them.’

  ‘That’s foreigners for you,’ said the woman.

  ‘But they’re all dead now,’ said the man.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said the woman. ‘Would anyone like some tea? I’ve got a flask.’

  ‘All dead, except me. But I am afraid that I am an orc,’ said Nutt. He looked up at Glenda. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You have been very kind, but I can see that being an orc will follow me around. There will be trouble. I would hate you to be involved.’

  ‘Awk! Awk!’

  The woman unscrewed the top of her flask. ‘But you’re not about to eat anyone, are you, dear? If you feel really hungry I’ve got some macaroons.’ She looked at the nearest Sister and said, ‘What about you, love? I know none of us can help how we’re made, but how come you’ve been made to look like a chicken?’

  ‘Awk! Awk!’

  ‘Danger! Danger!’

  ‘Dunno about that,’ said another passenger. ‘I don’t reckon he’s going to do anything.’

  ‘Please, please,’ said Nutt. There was a box lying on the road beside him. He tore it open frantically and started to pull things out of it.

  They were candles. Knocking them over in his haste, picking them up in shaking fingers only to knock them over again, he finally had them upright on the flints of the road. He pulled matches out of another pocket, knelt down and once again got his shaking fingers tangled in themselves as he struggled to strike a match. Tears streamed down his face as the light of the candles rose.

  Rose . . . and changed.

  Blues, yellows, greens. They would go out for a few smoky seconds and then light again a different colour, to the oohs and aahs of the crowd.

  ‘See! See!’ said Nutt. ‘You like them? You like them?’

  ‘I think you could make yourself a lot of money out of that,’ said one of the passengers.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ said the old lady. ‘Honestly, the things you young people can do today.’

  Nutt turned to the nearest Sister and spat, ‘I am not worthless, I have worth.’

  ‘My brother-in-law runs a novelty shop down in the smoke,’ said the erstwhile expert in orcs. ‘I’ll write his address down for you if you like? But I reckon that thing would go down very well on the kiddies’ birthday circuit.’

  Glenda had watched all of this open-mouthed, as the kind of democracy practised by reasonable and amiable but not very clever people, the people whose education had never involved a book but had involved lots of other people, surrounded Nutt in its invisible, beneficent arms.

  It was heartwarming, but Glenda’s heart was a little bit calloused on this score. It was the crab bucket at its best. Sentimental and forgiving; but get it wrong – one wrong word, one wrong liaison, one wrong thought – and those nurturing arms could so easily end in fists. Nutt was right: at best, being an orc was to live under a threat.

  ‘You lot have got no right treating the poor little devil like that,’ said the old lady, waving a finger at the nearest Sister. ‘If you want to live here, you have to do things our way, all right? And that means no pecking at people. That’s not how we do things in Ankh-Morpork.’

  Even Glenda smiled at that one. Pecking was a picnic compared with what Ankh-Morpork could offer.

  ‘Vetinari’s letting all sorts in these days,’ said another passenger. ‘I won’t hear a word said against the dwarfs—’

  ‘Good,’ said a voice at his back. He moved aside and Glenda saw the dwarf standing behind him.

  ‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t see you there, what with you being so little,’ said the man who had nothing against dwarfs. ‘As I was saying, you lot just settle down and get on with it and are no trouble to anybody, but we’re getting some weird ones now.’

  ‘That woman they put in the Watch last month, for one,’ said the old lady. ‘The weird one from out Ephebe way. Gust of wind caught her sunglasses and three people turned into stone.’

  ‘She was a Medusa,’ said Glenda, who had read about that in the Times. ‘The wizards managed to turn them back again, though.’

  ‘Well, what I’m saying is,’ started the man who had nothing against dwarfs, ‘we don’t mind anyone, so long as they mind their own business and don’t do any funny stuff.’

  This was the rhythm of the world to Glenda; she’d heard it so many times. But the feeling of the crowd was now very much against the Sisters. Sooner or later somebody was going to pick up a stone. ‘I’d get out of here now,’ she said, ‘get out and go back to the lady you work for. I should do that right now, if I were you.’

  ‘Awk! Awk!’ one of them screeched.

  But there were brains in those strange-shaped heads. And the three Sisters were clearly bright enough to want to keep them there and ran for it, hopping and leaping like herons until what seemed like cloaks turned out to be wings, which pounded on the air as they sought for height. There was a final scream of ‘Awk! Awk!’

  The driver of the horse bus coughed. ‘Well, if that’s all sorted out then I suggest you all get back on board, please, ladies and gentlemen. And whoever. And don’t forget your candles, mister.’

  Glenda helped Nutt on to a wooden seat. He was holding his toolbox tightly across his knees, as if it would offer some sort of protection. ‘Where were you trying to go?’ she said as the horses began to move.

  ‘Home,’ said Nutt.

  ‘Back to Her?’

  ‘She gave me worth,’ said Nutt. ‘I was nothing and she gave me worth.’

  ‘How can you say you were nothing?’ said Glenda. On the pair of seats in front of them, Trev and Juliet were whispering together.

  ‘I was nothing,’ said Nutt. ‘I knew nothing, I understood nothing, I had no understanding, I had no skill—’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean someone is worthless,’ said Glenda firmly.

  ‘It does,’ said Nutt. ‘But it does not mean they are bad. I was worthless. She showed me how to gain worth and now I have worth.’

  Glenda had a feeling they were working from two different dictionaries. ‘What does “worth” mean, Mister Nutt?’

  ‘It means that you leave the world better than when you found it,’ said Nutt.

  ‘Good point,’ said the lady with the macaroons. ‘There’s far too many people around the place who wouldn’t dream of doing a hand’s turn.’

  ‘All right, but what about people who’re blind, for example?’ This from the hardboiled-egg man, sitting on the other side of the bus.

  ‘I know a blind bloke in Sto Lat who runs a bar,’ said an elderly gentleman. ‘Knows where everything is and when you put your money on the counter he knows if it’s the right change just by listening. He does all right. It’s amazing, he can pick out a dud sixpence halfway across a noisy bar.’

  ‘I don’t think there are absolutes,’ said Nutt. ‘I think what Ladyship meant was that you do the best you can with what you have.’

  ‘Sounds like a sensible lady,’ said the man who had nothing against dwarfs.

  ‘She’s a vampire,’ said Glenda maliciously.

  ‘Nothing against vampires, just so long as they keep themselves to themselves,’ said the macaroon lady, who was now engaged in licking something revoltingly pink. ‘We’ve got one working down at the kosher butcher’s on our street, and she’s as nice as you like.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s about what you end up with,’ said the dwarf. ‘It’s about what you end up with compared with what yo
u started with.’

  Glenda leaned back with a smile as attempts at philosophy bounced their way from seat to seat. She wasn’t at all certain about the whole thing, but Nutt was sitting there looking far less bedraggled and the rest of them were treating him as one of themselves.

  There were dim lights ahead in the darkness. Glenda slipped from her seat and went up ahead to the driver. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

  ‘Another five minutes,’ said the driver.

  ‘Sorry about all that silly business with the lead pipe,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t happen,’ said the man cheerfully. ‘Believe me, we get all sorts on the night bus. At least no one’s thrown up. Quite an interestin’ lad you’ve got back there with you.’

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ said Glenda.

  ‘Of course, all he’s saying is you’ve got to do your best,’ said the driver. ‘And the more best you’re capable of, the more you should do. That’s it, really.’

  Glenda nodded. That did seem to be it, really. ‘Do you go straight back?’ she said.

  ‘No. Me and the horses are stopping here and will go back in the morning.’ He gave her the wry look of a man who’s heard a great many things, and surprisingly seen a great many things, when to those behind him he was just a head facing forward keeping an eye on the road. ‘That was a wonderful kiss she give me. I’ll tell you what, the bus will be in the yard, there’s plenty of straw around and if anyone was to have a bit of a kip, I wouldn’t know about it, would I? We’ll leave at six with fresh horses.’ He grinned at her expression. ‘I told you, we get all sorts on the late-night bus: kids running away from home, wives running away from husbands, husbands running away from other wives’ husbands. It’s called an omnibus, see, and omni means everything and damn near everything happens on this bus, that’s why I have the axe, see? But the way I see it, life can’t be all axe.’ He raised his voice: ‘Sto Lat coming up, folks! Return trip six o’clock prompt.’ He winked at Glenda. ‘And if you’re not there, I’ll go withoutcha,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to catch the bus at bus-catching time.’

  ‘Well, this hasn’t been so bad, has it?’ said Glenda, as the lights of the city grew bigger.

  ‘My dad’s going to fret,’ said Juliet.