Notes

1
   This is the one that grows only in certain parts of heathen Howondaland. It's twenty feet long, covered in spikes the colour of ear wax, and smells like an anteater that's eaten a very bad ant.
2
   In fact the Guild of Merchants' famous publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises now has an entire section entitled 'Soe you're a Barbaeriean Invader?' which has notes on night life, folklorique bargains in the bazaar and, under the heading 'Steppe-ing Out', a list of restaurants that do a dependable mares' milk and yak pudding. And many a pointedhelmeted vandal has trotted back to his freezing yurt wondering why he seems to be a great deal poorer and the apparent owner of a badly-woven rug, a litre of undrinkable wine and a stuffed purple donkey in a straw hat.
3
   The alternative was choosing of his own free will to be thrown into the scorpion pit.
4
   She was right about that, but only by coincidence.
5
   Lit.: 'Thingness-writer', or device for detecting and measuring disturbances in the fabric of reality.
6
   'Vunce again I am fallink in luf (lit., experiencing the pleasant feeling of being hit over the head with a rock by Chondrodite, the troll god of love).'
   Note: Chondrodite must not be confused with Gigalith, the troll god who gives trolls wisdom by hitting them on the head with a rock, or Silicarous, the troll god who brings trolls good fortune by hitting them on the head with a rock, or with the folk hero Monolith, who first wrested the secret of rocks from the gods.
7
   'Vy iss it I now am a blue colour?'
8
   'Vot is the action I should take at this time?'
9
   ' ... I can't help it. Hiya, big boy.'
10
   Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite, former Ankh-Morpork seamstress until her dreams led her to Holy Wood, where she found her skill with a needle was highly prized. Once a darner of casual socks, now a knitter of fake chain mail for trolls and able to run up a pair of harem trousers in a trice.
11
   Camels are far too intelligent to admit to being intelligent.
12
   Some of them have clipboards.
13
   Trolls' teeth are made of diamond.
14
   But were edited out of the finished production.
15
   Not for any particular religious reason. They just rather liked the effect when they grinned.
16
   All dwarfs have beards and wear many layers of clothing. Their courtships are largely concerned with finding out, in delicate and circumspect ways, what sex the other dwarf is.
17
   Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. 'Oograah' means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it.
18
   It was about a young ape who is abandoned in the big city and grows up being able to speak the language of humans.
19
   The Necrotelicomnicon was written by a Klatchian necromancer known to the world as Achmed the Mad, although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches. It is said that the book was written in one day after Achmed drank too much of the strange thick Klatchian coffee which doesn't just sober you up, but takes you through sobriety and out the other side, so that you glimpse the real universe beyond the clouds of warm self-delusion that sapient life usually generates around itself to stop it turning into a nutcake. Little is known about his life prior to this event, because the page headed 'About The Author' spontaneously combusted shortly after his death. However, a section headed 'Other Books By the Same Author' indicates that his previous published work was Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches's Book of Humorous Cat Stories, which might explain a lot.
20
   Apart from anything else, it gives brother a rather better excuse to fight brother than the normal one, viz, what his wife said about our Mam at Auntie Vera's funeral.
21
   49,873, according to Numbers Riktor's clockwork Celestial Enumerator.
22
   The ones living in stone buildings, anyway.
23
   By troll standards, this was Oscar Wilde at his best.
24
   In fact he called it 'oook'. But probably, in translation, it meant 'home'.
25
   Wizards who manage to avoid the ambitious attentions of other wizards tend to live for a long time. It seems even longer.
26
   On his part, that is. Their reluctance probably goes without saying.
27
   'We Can Rule You Wholesale'.
28
   He had a tidy mind.
29
   The trollish phrase is 'Other maddened grizzly bears to stun.'

The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse. It is
danced under blue skies to celebrate the quickening of the soil and under
bare stars because it's springtime and with any luck the carbon dioxide will
unfreeze again. The imperative is felt by deep-sea beings who have never
seen the sun and urban humans whose only connection with the cycles of
nature is that their Volvo once ran over a sheep.
It is danced innocently by raggedy-bearded young mathematicians to an
inexpert accordion rendering of "Mrs Widgery's Lodger" and ruthlessly by
such as the Ninja Morris Men of New Ankh, who can do strange and terrible
things with a simple handkerchief and a bell. And it is never danced properly.
Except on the Discworld, which is flat and supported on the backs of four
elephants which travel through space on the shell of Great A'Tuin, the world
turtle. And even there, only in one place have they got it right. It's a small
village high in the Ramtop Mountains, where the big and simple secret is
handed down across the generations.
There, the men dance on the first day of spring, backwards and forwards,
bells tied under their knees, white shirts flapping. People come and watch.
There's an ox roast afterwards, and it's generally considered a nice day out
for all the family.
But that isn't the secret.
The secret is the other dance.
And that won't happen for a while yet.

There is a ticking, such as might be made by a clock. And, indeed, in the
sky there is a clock, and the ticking of freshly minted seconds flows out from
it.

At least, it looks a clock. But it is in fact exactly the opposite of a clock,
and the biggest hand goes around just once. There is a plain under a dim
sky. It is covered with gentle rolling curves that might remind you of
something else if you saw it from a long way away, and if you did see it from
a long way away you'd be very glad that you were, in fact, a long way away.
Three grey figures floated just above it. Exactly what they were can't be
described in normal language. Some people might call them cherubs,
although there was nothing rosycheeked about them. They might be
numbered among those who see to it that gravity operates and that time
stays separate from space.
Call them auditors. Auditors of reality.
They were in conversation without speaking. They didn't need to speak.
They just changed reality so that they had spoken.
One said, It has never happened before. Can it be done?
One said, It will have to be done. There is a personality. Personalities
come to an end. Only forces endure. It said this with a certain satisfaction.
One said, Besides... there have been irregularities. Where you get
personality, you get irregularities. Well-known fact.
One said, He has worked inefficiently?
One said, No. We can't get him there.
One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is
inefficient. We don't want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a
personality? Supposing it decided to like people?
One said, Got a crush on them, sort of thing?
One said, in a voice that would have been even chillier if it was not
already at absolute zero, No.
One said, Sorry. Just my little joke.
One said, Besides, sometimes he wonders about his job. Such
speculation is dangerous.
One said, No argument there.
One said, Then we are agreed?

One, who seemed to have been thinking about something, said, Just one
moment. Did you not just use the singular pronoun, 'my'? Not developing a
personality, are you?
One said, guiltily, Who? Us?
One said. Where there is personality, there is discord.
One said. Yes. Yes. Very true.
One said, All right. But watch it in future.
One said, Then we are agreed?

They looked up at the face of Azrael, outlined against the sky. In fact, it
?loas? the sky.
Azrael nodded, slowly.
One said, Very well. Where is this place?
One said, It is the Discworld. It rides through space on the back of a giant
turtle.
One said, Oh, one of that sort. I hate them.
One said, You're doing it again. You said 'I'.
One said, No! No! I didn't! I never said 'I'! . . . oh, bugger . . .
It burst into flame ?iyld? burned in the same way that a small cloud of
vapour burns, quickly and with no residual mess. Almost immediately,
another one appeared. It was identical in appearance to its vanished sibling.
One said, Let that be a lesson. To become a personality is to end. And
now . . . let us go.
Azrael watched them skim away.

It is hard to fathom the thoughts of a creature so big that, in real space,
his length would be measured only in terms of the speed of light. But he
turned his enormous bulk and, with eyes that stars could be lost in, sought
among the myriad worlds for a flat one.
On the back of a turtle. The Discworld - world and mirror of worlds.
It sounded interesting. And, in his prison of a billion years, Azrael was
bored.

And this is the room where the future pours into the past via the pinch of
the now.
Timers line the walls. Not hour-glasses, although they have the same
shape. Not egg-timers, such as you might buy as a souvenir attached to a small board with the name of the holiday
resort of your choice jauntily inscribed on it by someone with the same
sense of style as a jelly doughnut. It's not even sand in there. It's seconds,
endlessly turning the maybe into the was. And every lifetimer has a name on
it. And the room is full of the soft hissing of people living.
Picture the scene . . .
And now add the sharp clicking of bone on stone, getting closer.
A dark shape crosses the field of vision and moves up the endless
shelves of sibilant glassware. Click, click. Here's a glass with the top bulb
nearly empty. Bone fingers rise and reach out. Select. And another. Select.
And more. Many, many more. Select, Select.
It's all in a day's work. Or it would be, if days existed here.
Click, click, a~, the dark shape moves patiently along the rows.
And stops.
And hesitates.
Because here's a small gold timer, not much bigger than a watch. It
wasn't there yesterday, or wouldn't have been if yesterdays existed here.
Bony fingers close around it and hold it up to the light. It's got a name on
it, in small capital letters.
The name is DEATH.
Death put down the timer, and then picked it up again. The sands of time
were already pouring through. He turned it over experimentally, just in case.
The sand went on pouring, only now it was going upwards. He hadn't really
expected anything else.
It meant that, even if tomorrows could exist here, there weren't going to
be any. Not any more.
There was a movement in the air behind him. Death turned slowly, and
addressed the figure that wavered indistinctly in the gloom.

WHY?
It told him.
BUT THAT IS . . . NOT RIGHT.
It told him that No, it was right.
Not a muscle moved on Death's face, because he hadn't got any.
I SHALL APPEAL.
It told him, he should know that there was no appeal. Never any appeal.
Never any appeal.
Death thought about this, and then he said:
I HAVE ALWAYS DONE MY DUTY AS I SAW FIT.
The figure floated closer. It looked vaguely like a grey-robed and hooded
monk.
It told him, We know. That is why we're letting you keep the horse.

The sun was near the horizon.
The shortest-lived creatures on the Disc were mayflies, which barely make
it through twenty-four hours. Two of the oldest zigzagged aimlessly over the
waters of a trout stream, discussing history with some younger members of
the evening hatching.
'You don't get the kind of sun now that you used to get, ' said one of
them.
'You're right there. We had proper sun in the good old hours. It were all
yellow. None of this red stuff.'
'It were higher, too.'
'It was. You're right.'
'And nymphs and larvae showed you a bit of respect.'
'They did. They did,' said the other mayfly vehemently.
'I reckon, if mayflies these hours behaved a bit better, we'd still be having
proper sun.'
The younger mayflies listened politely.
'I remember, ' said one of the oldest mayflies, 'when all this was fields, as
far as you could see.'

The younger mayflies looked around.
'It's still fields,' one of them ventured, after a polite interval.
'I remember when it was better fields,' said the old mayfly sharply.
'Yeah, ' said his colleague.'And there was a cow.'
'That's right! You're right! I remember that cow! Stood right over there for,
oh, forty, fifty minutes. It was brown, as I recall.'
'You don't get cows like that these hours.'
'You don't get cows at all.'
'What's a cow?' said one of the hatchlings.
'See?' said the oldest mayfly triumphantly.'That's modern Ephemeroptera
for you.' It paused.'What were we doing before we were talking about the
sun?'
'Zigzagging aimlessly over the water,' said one of the young flies; This
was a fair bet in any case.
'No, before that.'
'Er . . . you were telling us about the Great Trout.'
'Ah. Yes. Right. The Trout. Well, you see, if you've been a good mayfly,
zigzagging up and down properly -' '- taking heed of your elders and betters -
'
'- yes, and taking heed of your elders and betters,
then eventually the Great Trout -'
Clop
Clop
'Yes?' said one of the younger mayflies.
There was no reply.
'The Great Trout what?' said another mayfly, nervously.
They looked down at a series of expanding concentric rings on the water.
'The holy sign!' said a mayfly.'I remember being told about that! A Great
Circle in the water! Thus shall be the sign of the Great Trout!'

The oldest of the young mayflies watched the waterthoughtfully.
It was beginning to realise that, as the most senior fly
present, it now had the privilege of hovering closest to the surface.
'They say, ' said the mayfly at the top of the zigzagging crowd, 'that when
the Great Trout comes for you, you go to a land flowing with . . . flowing with
. . .'
Mayflies don't eat. It was at a loss.'Flowing with water, ' it finished lamely.
'I wonder, ' said the oldest mayfly.
'It must be really good there, ' said the youngest.
'Oh? Why?'
' 'Cos no-one ever wants to come back.'

Whereas the oldest things on the Discworld were the famous Counting
Pines, which grow right on the permanent snowline of the high Ramtop
Mountains.
The Counting Pine is one of the few known examples of borrowed
evolution.
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which
is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in
tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's
nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a
species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone.
This is probably fine from the species' point of view, but from the
perspective of the actual individuals involved it can be a real pig, or at least a
small pink root-eating reptile that might one day evolve into a real pig.
So the Counting Pines avoided all this by letting other vegetables do their
evolving for them. A pine seed, coming to rest anywhere on the Disc,
immediately picks up the most effective local genetic code via morphic
resonance and grows into whatever best suits the soil and climate, usually
doing much better at it than the native trees themselves, which it usually
usurps.
What makes the Counting Pines particularly noteworthy, however, is the
way they count.
Being dimly aware that human beings had learned to tell the age of a tree
by counting the rings, the original Counting Pines decided that this was why
humans cut trees down.
Overnight every Counting Pine readjusted its genetic code to produce, at
about eye-level on its trunk, in pale letters, its precise age. Within a year they
were felled almost into extinction by the ornamental house number plate
industry, and only a very few survive in hard-to-reach areas.
The six Counting Pines in this clump were listening to the oldest, whose
gnarled trunk declared it to be thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-
four years old. The conversation took seventeen years, but has been
speeded up.
'I remember when all this wasn't fields.'
The pines stared out over a thousand miles of landscape. The sky
flickered like a bad special effect from a time travel movie. Snow appeared,
stayed for an instant, and melted.
'What was it, then?' said the nearest pine.
'Ice. If you can call it ice. We had proper glaciers in those days. Not like
the ice you get now, here one season and gone the next. It hung around for
ages.'
'What happened to it, then?'
'It went.'
'Went where?'
'Where things go. Everything's always rushing off.'
'Wow. That was a sharp one.'
'What was?'
'That winter just then.'
'Call that a winter? When I was a sapling we had winters -'
Then the tree vanished.
After a shocked pause for a couple of years, one of the
clump said: 'He just went! Just like that! One day he was here, next he
was gone!'
If the other trees had been humans, they would have shuffled their feet.
'It happens, lad,' said one of them, carefully.'He's been taken to a Better
Place,' you can be sure of that. He was a good tree.'
The young tree, which was a mere five thousand, one hundred and eleven
years old, said: 'What sort of Better Place?'
'We're not sure, ' said one of the clump. It trembled uneasily in a week-
long gale.'But we think it involves . . . sawdust.'
Since the trees were unable even to sense any event that took place in
less than a day, they never heard the sound of axes.

Windle Poons, oldest wizard in the entire faculty of Unseen University -
home of magic, wizardry and big dinners - was also going to die.
He knew it, in a frail and shaky sort of way.
Of course, he mused, as he wheeled his wheel-chair over the flagstones
towards his ground-floor study, in a general sort of way everyone knew they
were going to die, even the common people. No-one knew where you were
before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn't long before you
found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched.
But wizards really knew. Not if death involved violence or murder, of
course, but if the cause of death was simply a case of running out of life then
. . . well, you knew. You generally got the premonition in time to return your
library books and make sure your best
'In this case, three better places. The front gates of Nos 31, 7, and 34 Elm
Street. Ankh-Morpork.
suit was clean and borrow quite large sums of money from your friends.
He was one hundred and thirty. It occurred to him that for most of his life
he'd been an old man. Didn't seem fair, really.
And no-one had said anything. He'd mentioned it in the Uncommon Room
last week, and no-one had taken the hint. And at lunch today they'd hardly
spoken to him. Even his old so-called friends seemed to be avoiding him,
and he wasn't even trying to borrow
money.
It was like not having your birthday remembered, only worse.
He was going to die all alone, and no-one cared.
He bumped the door open with the wheel of the chair and fumbled on the
table by the door for the tinder box.
That was another thing. Hardly anyone used tinder boxes these days.
They bought the big smelly yellow matches the alchemists made. Windle
disapproved. Fire was important. You shouldn't be able to switch it on just
like that, it didn't show any respect. That was people these days, always
rushing around and . . . fires. Yes, it had been a lot warmer in the old days,
too.
The kind of fires they had these days didn't warm you up unless you were
nearly on top of them. It was something in the wood . . . it was the wrong sort
of wood.
Everything was wrong these days. More thin. More fuzzy. No real life in
anything. And the days were shorter. Mmm. Something had gone wrong with
the days. They were shorter days. Mmm. Every day took an age to go by,
which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. There
weren't many things people wanted a 130-year-old wizard to do, and Windle
had got into the habit of arriving at the dining-table up to two hours before
each meal, simply to pass the time.
Endless days, going by fast. Didn't make sense.

Mmm. Mind you, you didn't get the sense now that  you used to get in the
old days.
And they let the University be run by mere boys now. In the old days it had
been run by proper wizards, great big men built like barges, the kind of
wizards you could look up to. Then suddenly they'd all gone off somewhere
and Windle was being patronised by these boys who still had some of their
own teeth. Like that Ridcully lad. Windle remembered him clearly. Thin lad,
sticking-out ears, never wiped his nose properly, cried for his mother in the
dorm on the first night. Always up to mischief. Someone had tried to tell
Windle that Ridcully was Archchancellor now.
Mmm. They must think he was daft.
Where was that damn tinder box? Fingers . . . you used to get proper
fingers in the old days . . .
Someone pulled the covers off a lantern. Someone else pushed a drink
into his groping hand.
'Surprise!'

In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade
but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the
present. (There was. of course. a present before the present now, but that
was also the present. It was just an older one.)
The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe give it all
up and start again as a stand-up comedian on the scampi-in-a-casket circuit.
It swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of
interval from the bacon of eternity.
Death stalked past the clock and into the sombre gloom of his study.
Albert, his servant, was waiting for him with the towel and dusters.
'Good morning, master.'
Death sat down silently in his big chair. Albert draped the towel over the
angular shoulders.
'Another nice day,' he said, conversationally.
Death said nothing.

Albert flapped the polishing cloth and pulled back Death's cowl.
ALBERT.

Death pulled out the tiny golden timer.
DO YOU SEE THIS?
'Yes, sir. Very nice. Never seen one like that before. Whose is it?'
MINE.
Albert's eyes swivelled sideways. On one corner of Death's desk was a
large timer in a black frame. It contained no sand.
'I thought that one was yours, sir?' he said.
IT WAS. NOW THIS IS. A RETIREMENT PRESENT. FROM AZRAEL
HIMSELF.
Albert peered at the thing in Death's hand.
'But . . . the sand, sir. It's pouring.'
QUITE SO.
'But that means . . . I mean . . . ?'
IT MEANS THAT ONE DAY THE SAND WILL ALL BE POURED, ALBERT.
'I know that, sir, but . . . you . . . I thought Time was something that
happened to other people, sir. Doesn't it? Not to you, sir.' By the end of the
sentence Albert's voice was beseeching.
Death pulled off the towel and stood up.
COME WITH ME.
'But you're Death, master,' said Albert, running crab-legged after the tall
figure as it led the way out into the hall and down the passage to the stable.
'This isn't some sort of joke, is it?' he added hopefully.
I AM NOT KNOWN FOR MY SENSE OF FUN.
'Well, of course not, no offense meant. But listen, you can't die. because
you're Death, you'd have to happen to yourself, it'd be like that snake that
eats its own tail -'
NEVERTHELESS, I AM GOING TO DIE. THERE IS NO APPEAL.
'But what will happen to me?' Albert said.

Terror glitteredon his words like flakes of metal on the edge of a knife.
THERE WILL BE A NEW DEATH.
Albert drew himself up.
'I really don't think I could serve a new master,' he said.
THEN GO BACK INTO THE WORLD. I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY. YOU HAVE
BEEN A GOOD SERVANT, ALBERT.
'But if I go back -'
YES, said Death. YOU WILL DIE.

In the warm, horsey gloom of the stable, Death's pale horse looked up
from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse's name was
Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses
in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which
tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking
embarrassed.

Death took the saddle down from its hook and glanced at Albert, who was
suffering a crisis of conscience.
Thousands of years before, Albert had opted to serve Death rather than
die. He wasn't exactly immortal. Real time was forbidden in Death's realm.
There was only the ever-changing now, but it went on for a very long time. He
had less than two months of real time left; he hoarded his days like bars of
gold.
'I, er . . .' he began.'That is -'
YOU FEAR TO DIE?
'It's not that I don't want . . . I mean, I've always . . . it's just that life is a
habit that's hard to break . . .'
Death watched him curiously, as one might watch a beetle that had landed
on its back and couldn't turn over.
Finally Albert lapsed into silence.
I UNDERSTAND, said Death, unhooking Binky's bridle.
'But you don't seem worried! You're really going to die?'
YES. IT WILL BE A GREAT ADVENTURE.
'It will? You're not afraid?'
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO BE AFRAID.
'I could show you, if you like,' Albert ventured.
NO. I SHOULD LIKE TO LEARN BY MYSELF. I SHALL HAVe
EXPERIENCES. AT LAST.
'Master . . . if you go, will there be -?'
A NEW DEATH WILL ARISE FROM THE MINDS OF THE LIVING, ALBERT.
'Oh.' Albert looked relieved.'You don't happen to know what he'll be like,
do you?'
NO.
'Perhaps I'd better, you know, clean the place up a bit, get an inventory
prepared, that sort of thing?'
GOOD IDEA, said Death, as kindly as possible. WHEN I SEE THE NEW
DEATH, I SHALL HEARTILY RECOMMEND YOU.
'Oh. You'll see him, then?'
OH. YES. AND I MUST LEAVE NOW.
'What. so soon?'
CERTAINLY. MUSTN'T WASTE TIME!
Death adjusted the saddle, and then turned and held the tiny hour-glass
proudly in front of Albert's hooked nose.
SEE! I HAVE TIME. AT LAST, I HAVE TIME
Albert backed away nervously.
'And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?' he said.
Death mounted his horse.
I AM GOING TO SPEND IT.

The party was in full swing. The banner with the legend 'Goodebye Windle
130 Gloriouse Years' was dripping a bit in the heat. Things were getting to
the point where there was nothing to drink but the punch and nothing to eat
but the strange yellow dip with the highly suspicious tortillas and nobody
minded. The wizards chatted with the forced jolliness of people who see one
another all day and are now seeing one another all evening.
In the middle of it all Windle Poons sat with a huge glass of rum and a
funny hat on his head. He was almost in tears.
'A genuine Going-Away party!' he kept muttering.'Haven't had one of them
since old "Scratcher"
He Went Away, ' the capital letters fell into place easily, 'back in, mm, the
Year of the Intimidating, mm, Porpoise. Thought everyone had forgotten
about 'em.'
'The Librarian looked up the details for us, ' said the Bursar, indicating a
large orangutan who was trying to blow into a party squeaker.'He also made
the banana dip. I hope someone eats it soon.'
He leaned down.
'Can I help you to some more potato salad?' he said, in the loud
deliberate voice used for talking to imbeciles and old people.
Windle cupped a trembling hand to his ear.
'What? What?'
'More! salad! Windle?'
'No, thank you.'
'Another sausage, then?'
'What?'
'Sausage!'
'They give me terrible gas all night,' said Windle.
He considered this for a moment, and then took five.
'Er,' shouted the Bursar, 'do you happen to know what time -?'
'Eh?'
'What! Time?'
'Half past nine,' said Windle, promptly if indistinctly.
'Well, that's nice, ' said the Bursar.'It gives you the rest of the evening, er,
free.'
Windle rummaged in the dreadful recesses of his wheelchair, a graveyard
for old cushions, dog-eared books and ancient, half-sucked sweets. He
flourished a small green-covered book and pushed it into the Bursar's
hands.
The Bursar turned it over. Scrawled on the cover were the words: Windle
Poons Hys Dyary. A piece of bacon rind marked today's date.
Under Things to Do, a crabbed hand had written: Die.
The Bursar couldn't stop himself from turning the page.
Yes. Under tomorrow's date, Things to Do: Get Born.
His gaze slid sideways to a small table at the side of the room. Despite the
fact that the room was quite crowded, there was an area of clear floor around
the table, as if it had some kind of personal space that no-one was about to
invade.
There had been special instructions in the Going Away ceremony
concerning the table. It had to have a black cloth, with a few magic sigils
embroidered on it.
It had a plate, containing a selection of the better ?canal's?. It had a glass
of wine. After considerable discussion among the wizards, a funny paper hat
had been added as well.
They all had an expectant look.
The Bursar took out his watch and flicked open the ???
It was one of the ?new-fanged? pocket watches, with hands. They pointed
to a quarter past nine. He shook it. A small hatch opened under the 12 and a
very small demon poked its head out and said, 'Knock it off, guv'nor, I 'm
pedalling as fast as I can.'
He closed the watch again and looked around desperately. No-one else
seemed anxious to come too near Windle Poons. The Bursar felt it was up to
him to make polite conversation. He surveyed possible topics. They all
presented problems.
Windle Poons helped him out.
'I'm thinking of coming back as a woman,' he said conversationally.
The Bursar opened and shut his mouth a few times.
'I'm looking forward to it,' Poons went on.'I think it might, mm, be jolly
good fun.'
The Bursar riffled desperately through his limited
repertoire of small talk relating to women. He leaned down to Windle's
gnarled ear.
'Isn't there rather a lot of, ' he struck out aimlessly, 'washing things? And
making beds and cookery and all that sort of thing?'
'Not in the kind of, mm, life I have in mind,' said Windle firmly.
The Bursar shut his mouth. The Archchancellor banged on a table with a
spoon.
'Brothers -' he began, when there was something approaching silence.
This prompted a loud and ragged chorus of cheering.
'- As you all know we are here tonight to mark the, ah, retirement' -
nervous laughter - 'of our old friend and colleague Windle Poons. You know,
seeing old Windle sitting here tonight puts me in mind, as luck would have it,
of the story of the cow with three wooden legs. It appears that there was this
cow, and -'
The Bursar let his mind wander. He knew the story.
The Archchancellor always mucked up the punch line, and in any case he
had other things on his mind.
He kept looking back at the little table.
The Bursar was a kindly if nervous soul, and quite enjoyed his job. Apart
from anything else, no other wizard wanted it. Lots of wizards wanted to be 
Archchancellor, for example, or the head of one of the eight orders of magic,
but practically no wizards wanted to spend lots of time in an office shuffling
bits of paper and doing sums. All the paperwork of the University tended to
accumulate in the Bursar's office, which meant that he went to bed tired at
nights but at least slept soundly and didn't have to check very hard for
unexpected scorpions in his night-shirt.
Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognised way of getting
advancement in the orders.
However, the only person likely to want to kill the Bursar was someone
else who derived a quiet pleasure from columns of numbers, all neatly
arranged, and
people like that don't often go in for murder. *
He recalled his childhood, long ago, in the Ramtop Mountains. He and his
sister used to leave a glass of wine and a cake out every Hogswatchnight for
the Hogfather. Things had been different, then. He'd been a lot younger and
hadn't known much and had probably been a lot happier.
For example, he hadn't known that he might one day be a wizard and join
other wizards in leaving a glass of wine and a cake and a rather suspect
chicken vol-au-vent and a paper party hat for . . .
. . . someone else.
There'd been Hogswatch parties, too, when he was a little boy. They'd
always follow a certain pattern.
Just when all the children were nearly sick with excitement, one of the
grown-ups would say, archly, 'I think we're going to have a special visitor!'
and, amazingly ?oq cue?, there'd be a suspicious ringing of hog bells
outside the window and in would come . . .
. . . in would come . . .
The Bursar shook his head. Someone's granddad in false whiskers, of
course. Some jolly old boy with a sack of toys, stamping the snow off his
boots. Someone who gave you something.
Whereas tonight . . .
Of course, old Windle probably felt different about it. After one hundred
and thirty years, death probably had a certain attraction. You probably
became quite interested in finding out what happened next.
The Archchancellor's convoluted anecdote wound jerkily to its close. The
assembled wizards laughed dutifully, and then tried to work out the joke.
The Bursar looked surreptitiously at his watch. It was now twenty minutes
past nine.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_
*  At least, until the day they suddenly pick up a paper-knife and carve
their way out through Cost Accounting and into forensic history.

Windle Poons made a speech. It was long and rambling and disjointed
and went on about the good old days and he seemed to think that most of
the people around him were people who had been, in fact, dead for about
fifty years, but that didn't matter because you
got into the habit of not listening to old Windle.
The Bursar couldn't tear his eyes away from his watch. From inside came
the squeak of the treadle as the demon patiently pedalled his way towards
infinity.
Twenty-five minutes past the hour.
The Bursar wondered how it was supposed to happen. Did you hear - I
think we're going to have a very special visitor - hoofbeats outside?
Did the door actually open or did He come through it? Silly question. He
was renowned for His ability to get into sealed places - especially into sealed
places, if you thought about it logically. Seal yourself in anywhere and it was
only a matter of time.
The Bursar hoped He'd use the door properly. His nerves were twanging
as it was.
The conversational level was dropping. Quite a few other wizards, the
Bursar noticed, were glancing at the door.
Windle was at the centre of a very tactfully widening circle. No-one was
actually avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion
was gently moving everyone away.
Wizards can see Death. And when a wizard dies, Death arrives in person
to usher him into the Beyond. The Bursar wondered why this was considered
a plus -
'Don't know what you're all looking at,' said Windle, cheerfully.
The Bursar opened his watch.
The hatch under the 12 snapped up.
'Can you knock it off with all this shaking around?' squeaked the demon.'I
keeps on losing count.'
'Sorry, ' the Bursar hissed. It was nine twenty-nine.
The Archchancellor stepped forward.

"Bye, then, Windle,' he said, shaking the old man's parchment-like
hand.'The old place won't seem the same without you.'
'Don't know how we'll manage,' said the Bursar, thankfully.
'Good luck in the next life,' said the Dean.'Drop in if you're ever passing
and happen to, you know, remember who you've been.'
'Don't be a stranger, you hear?' said the Archchancellor.
Windle Poons nodded amiably. He hadn't heard what they were saying. He
nodded on general principles.
The wizards, as one man, faced the door.
The hatch under the 12 snapped up again.
'Bing bing bong bing,' said the demon.'Bingely-bingely bong bing bing.'
'What?' said the Bursar, jolted.
'Half past nine, ' said the demon.
The wizards turned to Windle Poons. They looked faintly accusing.
'What're you all looking at?' he said.
The seconds hand on the watch squeaked onwards.
'How are you feeling?' said the Dean loudly.
'Never felt better,' said Windle.'Is there any more of that, mm, rum left?'
The assembled wizards watched him pour a generous measure into his
beaker.
'You want to go easy on that stuff,' said the Dean nervously.
'Good health!' said Windle Poons.
The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the table.
'Mr Poons, ' he said, 'are you quite sure?'
Windle had gone off at a tangent.'Any more of these toturerillas? Not that
I call it proper food,' he said, 'dippin' bits of hard bikky in sludge, what's so
special about that? What I could do with right now ?is? one of Mr Dibbler's
famous meat pies -'
And then he died.
The Archchancellor glanced at his fellow wizards, and then tiptoed across
to the wheelchair and lifted a blueveined wrist to check the pulse. He shook
his head.
'That's the way I want to go, ' said the Dean.
'What, muttering about meat pies?' said the Bursar.
'No. Late.'
'Hold on. Hold on,' said the Archchancellor.'This isn't right, you know.
According to tradition, Death himself turns up for the death of a wiz - '
'Perhaps He was busy, ' said the Bursar hurriedly.
'That's right,' said the Dean.'Bit of a serious flu epidemic over Quirm way,
I'm told.'
'Quite a storm last night, too. Lots of shipwrecks, I daresay, ' said the
Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'And of course it's springtime, when you get a great many avalanches in
the mountains.'
'And plagues.'
The Archchancellor stroked his beard thoughtfully.
'Hmm, ' he said.

Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things
go through Time backwards. If the past is visible and the future is hidden,
they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way. Everything alive
is going through life back to front. And this is a very interesting idea.
considering it was invented by a race who spend most of their time hitting
one another on the head with rocks.
Whichever way around it is, Time is something that living creatures
possess.
Death galloped down through towering black clouds.
And now he had Time, too.
The time of his life.

Windle Poons peered into the darkness.

'Hallo?' he said.'Hallo. Anyone there? What ho?'
There was a distant, forlorn soughing, as of wind at the end of a tunnel.
'Come out. come out, wherever you are,' said Windle, his voice trembling
with mad cheerfulness.'Don't worry. I'm quite looking forward to it, to tell the
truth.'
He clapped his spiritual hands and rubbed them together with forced
enthusiasm.
'Get a move on. Some of us have got new lives to go to,' he said.
The darkness remained inert. There was no shape, no sound. It was void,
without form. The spirit of Windle Poons moved on the face of the darkness.
It shook its head.'Blow this for a lark,' it muttered.'This isn't right at all.'
It hung around for a while and then, because there didn't seem anything
else for it, headed for the only home it had ever known.
It was a home he'd occupied for one hundred and thirty years. It wasn't
expecting him back and put up a lot of resistance. You either had to be very
determined or very powerful to overcome that sort of thing, but Windle
Poons had been a wizard for more than a century. Besides, it was like
breaking into your own house, the old familiar property that you'd lived in for
years. You knew where the metaphorical window was that didn't shut
properly.
In short, Windle Poons went back to Windle Poons.

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find
it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know
they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a
well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of
going around saying, 'O great table, without whom we are as naught'.
Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as
a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the
whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.
Nevertheless, there is a small chapel off the University's Great Hall,
because while the wizards stand right behind the philosophy as outlined
above, you don't become a success~ wizard by getting up gods' noses even
if those noses only exist in an ethereal or metaphorical sense. Because while
wizards don't believe in gods they know for a fact that gods believe in gods.
And in this chapel lay the body of Windle Poons.
The University had instituted twenty-four hours ???'ting-in-state ever
since the embarrassing affair thirty years previously with the late Prissal
'Merry Rankster' Teatar.
The body of Windle Poons opened its eyes. Two coins jingled on to the
stone floor.
The hands, crossed over the chest, unclenched.
Windle raised his head. Some idiot had stuck a lily in his stomach.
His eyes swivelled sideways. There was a candle on either side of his
head.
He raised his head some more.
There were two more candles down there, too.
Thank goodness for old Teatar, he thought. Otherwise I'd already be
looking at the underside of a rather cheap pine lid.
Funny thing, he thought. I'm thinking. Clearly.
Wow.
Windle lay back, feeling his spirit refilling his body like gleaming molten
metal ?filling? through a mould.
White-hot thoughts seared across the darkness of his brain, fired
sluggish neurones into action.
It was never like this when I was alive.
But I'm not dead.
Not alive and not dead.
Sort of non-alive.
Or un-dead.
Oh dear . . .

He swung himself upright. Muscles that hadn't worked properly for
seventy or eighty years jerked into overdrive. For the first time in his entire
life, he corrected himself, better make that 'period of existence', Windle
Poons' body was entirely under Windle Poons' control. And Windle Poons '
spirit wasn't about to take any lip from a bunch of muscles.
Now the body stood up. The knee joints resisted for a while, but they were
no more able to withstand the onslaught of will-power than a sick mosquito
can withstand a blowtorch.
The door to the chapel was locked. However, Windle found that the
merest pressure was enough to pull the lock out of the woodwork and leave
fingerprints in the metal of the door handle.
'Oh, goodness, ' he said.
He piloted himself out into the corridor. The distant clatter of cu~~ery and
the buzz of voices suggested that one of the University's four daily meals
was in progress.
He wondered whether you were allowed to eat when you were dead.
Probably not, he thought.
And could he eat, anyway? It wasn't that he wasn't hungry. It was just that
. . . well, he knew how to think, and walking and moving were just a matter of
twitching some fairly obvious nerves, but how exactly did your stomach
work?
It began to dawn on Windle that the human body is not run by the brain,
despite the brain's opinion on the matter. In fact it's run by dozens of
complex automatic systems, all whirring and clicking away with the kind of
precision that isn't noticed until it breaks down.
He surveyed himself from the control room of his skull. He looked at the
silent chemical factory of his liver with the same sinking feeling as a canoe
builder might survey the controls of a computerised super-tanker. The
mysteries of his kidneys awaited Windle's mastery of renal control. What,
when you got right down to it, was a spleen? And how did you make it go?
His heart sank.
Or, rather, it didn't.
'Oh, gods,' muttered Windle, and leaned against the wall. How did it work,
now? He prodded a few, likely-looking nerves. Was it systolic . . . diastolic . .
. systolic . . . diastolic . . .? And then there were the lungs, too . . .
Like a conjurer keeping eighteen plates spinning at the same time - like a
man trying to programme a video recorder from an instruction manual
translated from Japanese into Dutch by a Korean rice-husker - like, in fact, a
man finding out what total self-control really means, Windle Poons lurched
onwards.

The wizards of Unseen University set great store by big, solid meals. A
man couldn't be expected to get down to some serious wizarding, they held,
without soup, fish, game, several huge plates of meat, a pie or two,
something big and wobbly with cream on it, little
savoury things on toast, fruit, nuts and a brick-thick mint with the coffee.
It gave him a lining to his stomach. It was also important that the meals were
served at regular times. It was what gave the day shape, they said.
Except for the Bursar, of course. He didn't eat much, but lived on his
nerves. He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a
mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and
shouting at him.
And it was the Bursar's unfortunate fate to be sitting opposite the doors
when Windle Poons smashed them in because it was easier than fiddling
with the handles.
He bit through his wooden spoon.
The wizards revolved on their benches to stare.
Windle Poons swayed for a moment, assembling control of vocal chords,
lips and tongue, and then said:
'I think I may be able to metabolise alcohol.'
The Archchancellor was the first one to recover.
'Windle!' he said.'We thought you were dead!'
He had to admit that it wasn't a very good line. You didn't put people on a
slab with candles and lilies all round them because you think they've got a
bit of a headache and want a nice lie down for half an hour.
Windle took a few steps forward. The nearest wizards fell over themselves
in an effort to get away.
'I am dead, you bloody young fool,' he muttered.'Think I go around
looking like this all the time? Good grief.' He glared at the assembled
wizardry.'Anyone here know what a spleen is supposed to do?'
He reached the table, and managed to sit down.
'Probably something to do with the digestion,' he said.'Funny thing, you
can go through your whole life with the bloody thing ticking away or
whatever it does, gurgling or whatever, and you never know what the hell it's
actually for. It's Like when you're lying in
bed of a night and you hear your stomach or something go pripple-ipple-
goinnng. It's just a gurgle to you, but who knows what marvellously complex
chemical exchange processes are really going -'
'You're an undead?' said the Bursar, managing to get the words out at
last.
'I didn't ask to be,' said the late Windle Poons irritably looking at the food
and wondering how the blazes one went about turning it into Windle Poons.'I
only came back because there was nowhere else to go. Think I want to be
here?'
'But surely,' said the Archchancellor, 'didn't . . . you know the fella, the
one with the skull and the scythe -'
'Never saw him,' said Windle, shortly, inspecting the nearest
dishes.'Really takes it out of you, this un-dyin'.'
The wizards made frantic signals to one another over his head. He looked
up and glared at them.
'And don't think I can't see all them frantic signals,' he said. And he was
amazed to realise that this was true.

Eyes that had viewed the past sixty years trough a pale, fuzzy
veil had been bullied into operating like the finest optical machinery.
In fact two main bodies of thought were occupying the minds of the
wizards of Unseen University.
What was being thought by most of the wizards was: this is terrible, is it
really old Windle in there, he was such a sweet old buffer, how can we get rid
of it?
How can we get n'd ofit?
What was being thought by Windle Poons, in the humming, flashing
cockpit of his brain, was: well, it's bye. There is life after death. And it's the
same one. Just my luck.
'Well, ' he said, ' what're you going to do about it?'

It was five minutes later. Half a dozen of the most senior wizards scurried
along the draughty corridor in the wake of the Archchancellor, whose robes
billowed ?out? behind him.
The conversation went like this:
'It's got to be Windle! It even talks like him!'
'It's not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!'
'Older? Older than dead?'
'He's said he wants his old bedroom back, and I don't see why I should
have to move out -'
'Did you see his eyes? Like gimlets !'
'Eh? What? What d'you mean? You mean like that dwarf who runs the
delicatessen on Cable Street?'
'I mean like they bore into you!'
'- it's got a lovely view of the gardens and I've had all my stuff moved in
and it's not fair -'
'Has this ever happened before?'
'Well, there was old Teatar -'
'Yes, but he never actually died, he just used to put green paint on his
face and push the lid off the coffin and shout "Surprise, surprise -" '
'We've never had a zombie here.'
'He's a zombie?'

'I think so -'
'Does that mean he'll be playing kettle drums and doing that bimbo
dancing all night, then?'
'Is that what they do?'
'Old Windle? Doesn't sound like his cup of tea. He never liked dancing
much when he was alive -'
'Anyway, you can't trust those voodoo gods. Never trust a god who grins
all the time and wears a top hat, that's my motto.'
'- I'm damned if I'm going to give up my bedroom to a zombie after waiting
years for it -'
'Is it? That's a funny motto.'

Windle Poons strolled around the inside of his own head again.
Strange thing, this. Now he was dead, or not living any more, or whatever
he was, his mind felt clearer than it had ever done.
And control seemed to be getting easier, too. He hardly had to bother
about the whole respiratory thing, the spleen seemed to be working after a
fashion, the senses were operating at full speed. The digestive system was
still a bit of a mystery, though.
He looked at himself in a silver plate.
He still looked dead. Pale face, red under the eyes. A dead body.
Operating but still, basically, dead. Was that fair? Was that justice? Was that
a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130
years? You come back as a corpse?
No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry.

Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen.
If you took the short or medium view, something horrible was about to
happen.
It's like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter
sky and actually being close to
the supernova. It's the difference between the beauty  of morning dew on
a cobweb and actually being a fly.
It was something that wouldn't normally have happened for thousands of
years.
It was about to happen now.
It was about to happen at the back of a disused cupboard in a tumble-
down cellar in the Shades, the oldest and most disreputable part of Ankh-
Morpork.
Plop.
It was a sound as soft as the first drop of rain on a century of dust.

'Maybe we could get a black cat to walk across his coffin.'
'He hasn't got a coffin!' wailed the Bursar, whose grip on sanity was
always slightly tentative.
'OK, so we buy him a nice new coffin and then we get a black cat to walk
across it?'
'No, that's stupid. We've got to make him pass water.'
'What?'
'Pass water. Undeads can't do it.'
The wizards, who had crowded into the Archchancellor's study, gave this
statement their full, fascinated attention.
'You sure?' said the Dean.
'Well-known fact,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes flatly.
'He used to pass water all the time when he was alive, ' said the Dean
doubtfully.
'Not when he's dead, though.'
'Yeah? Makes sense.'
'Running water, ' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes suddenly.'It's running
water. Sorry. They can't cross over it.'
'Well, I can't cross ?liling? water, either,' said the Dean.

'Undead! Undead!' The Bursar was becoming a little unglued.
'Oh, stop teasing him, ' said the Lecturer, patting the trembling man on
the back.
'Well, I can't, ' said the Dean.'I sink.'
'Undead can't cross running water even on a bridge.'
'And is he the only one, eh? Are we going to have a plague of them, eh?'
said the Lecturer.
The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on his desk.
'Dead people walking around is unhygienic, ' he said.
This silenced them. No-one had ever looked at it that way, but Mustrum
Ridcully was just the sort of man who would.
Mustrum Ridcully was, depending on your point of view, either the worst
or the best Archchancellor that Unseen University had had for a hundred
years.
There was too much of him, for one thing. It wasn't that he was
particularly big, it was just that he had the kind of huge personality that fits
any available space. He'd get roaring drunk at supper and that was fine and
acceptable wizardly behaviour. But then he'd go back to his room and play
darts all night and leave at five in the morning to go duck hunting. He
shouted at people. He tried to jolly them along. And he hardly ever wore
proper robes. He'd persuaded Mrs Whitlow, the University's dreaded
housekeeper, to make him a sort of baggy trouser suit in garish blue and
red; twice a day the wizards stood in bemusement and watched him jog
purposefully around the University buildings, his pointy wizarding hat tied
firmly on his head with string. He'd shout cheerfully up at them, because
fundamental to the make-up of people like ??? Mustrum Ridcully is an iron
belief that everyone else would like it, too, if only they tried it.
'Maybe he'll die, ' they told one another hopefully, as they watched him try
to break the crust on the river Ankh for an early morning dip.'All this healthy
exercise can't be good for him.'
Stories trickled back into the University. The Archchancellor had gone
two rounds bare-fisted with Detritus, the huge odd-job troll at the Mended
Drum. The Archchancellor had arm-wrestled with the Librarian for a bet and,
although of course he hadn't won, still had his arm afterwards.
The Archchancellor wanted the University to form its own football team
for the big city game on Hogswatchday.
Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was
that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it
took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is
a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to
explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they
give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they
shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place.
There seemed to be more Mustrum Ridcully than one body could
reasonably contain.

Plop. Plop.
In the dark cupboard in the cellar, a whole shelf was already full.

There was exactly as much Windle Poons as one body could contain, and
he steered it carefully along the corridors.
I never expected this, he thought. I don't deserve this. There's been a
mistake somewhere.
He felt a cool breeze on his face and realised he'd tottered out into the
open air. Ahead of him were the University's gates, locked shut.
Suddenly Windle Poons felt acutely claustrophobic.
He'd waited years to die, and now he had, and here he was stuck in this -
this mausoleum with a lot of daft old men, where he'd have to spend the rest
of his life being dead. Well, the first thing to do was get out and make a proper end
to himself -
' 'Evening, Mr Poons.'
He turned around very slowly and saw the small figure of Modo, the
University's dwarf gardener, who was sitting in the twilight smoking his pipe.
'Oh. Hallo, Modo.'
'I 'eard you was took dead, Mr Poons.'
'Er. Yes. I was.'
'See you got over it, then.'
Poons nodded, and looked dismally around the walls. The University
gates were always locked at sunset every evening, obliging students and
staff to climb over the walls. He doubted very much that he'd be able to
manage that.
He clenched and unclenched his hands. Oh, well . . .
'Is there any other gateway around here, Modo?' he said.
'No, Mr Poons.'
'Well, where shall we have one?'
'Sorry, Mr Poons?'
There was the sound of tortured masonry, followed by a vaguely Poons-
shaped hole in the wall. Windle's hand reached back in and picked up his
hat.
Modo relit his pipe. You see a lot of interesting things in this job, he
thought.

In an alley, temporarily out of sight of passers-by, someone called Reg
Shoe, who was dead, looked both ways, took a brush and a paint tin out of
his pocket, and painted on the wall the words:
DEAD YES! GONE NO!
. . . and ran away, or at least lurched off at high speed.

The Archchancellor opened a window on to the night.
'Listen, ' he said.
The wizards listened.
A dog barked. Somewhere a thief whistled, and was

???  from a neighbouring rooftop. In the dis-
???  people were having the kind of quarrel that
???  t of the surrounding streets to open their
???  d listen in and make notes. But these were by major themes against
the continuous hum and buzz of the city. Ankh-Morpork purred through the
night, en route for the dawn, like a huge living creature although, of course,
this was only a metaphor.
'Well?' said the Senior Wrangler.'I can't hear anything special.'
'That's what I mean. Dozens of people die in Ankh-Morpork every day. If
they'd all started coming back like poor old Windle, don't you think we'd
know about it? The place'd be in uproar. More uproar than usual, I mean.'
'There's always a few undead around,' said the Dean,
doubtfully.'Vampires and zombies and banshees and so on.'
'Yes, but they're more naturally undead,' said the Archchancellor.'They
know how to carry it off. They're born to it.'
'You can't be born to be undead,' the Senior Wrangler * pointed out.
'I mean it's traditional,' the Archchancellor snapped.'There were some
very respectable vampires where I grew up. They'd been in their family for
centuries.'
'Yes, but they drink blood,' said the Senior Wrangler.'That doesn't sound
very respectable to me.'
'I read where they don't actually need the actual blood,' said the Dean,
anxious to assist.'They just need something that's in blood. Hemogoblins, I think it's called.'
The other wizards looked at him.
The Dean shrugged.'Search me,' he said.'Hemo-goblins. That's what it
said. It's all to do with people having iron in their blood.'
'I'm damn sure I've got no iron goblins in my blood,' said the Senior-
Wrangler.
'At least they're better than zombies,' said the Dean.'A much better class
of people. Vampires don't go shuffling around the whole time.'
'People can be turned into zombies, you know,' said the Lecturer in
Recent Runes, in conversational tones.'You don't even need magic. Just the
liver of a certain rare fish and the extract of a particular kind of root. One
spoonful, and when you wake up, you 're a zombie.'
'What type of fish?' said the Senior Wrangler.
'How shauld I know?'
'How should anyone know, then?' said the Senior Wrangler nastily.'Did
someone wake up one morning and say, hey, here's an idea, I'll just turn
someone into a zombie, all I'll need is some rare fish liver and a piece of root,
it's just a matter of finding the right one? You can see the queue outside the
hut, can't you? No. 94, Red Stripefish liver and Maniac root . . . didn't work.
No. 95, Spikefish liver and Dum-dum root . . . didn't work. No. 96 -'
'What are you talking about?' the Archchancellor demanded.
'I was simply pointing out the intrinsic unlikelihood of -'
'Shut up,' said the Archchancellor, matter-of-factly.'Seems to me . . .
seems to me . . . look, death must be going on, right? Death has to happen.
That's what bein' alive is all about. You're alive, and then you're dead. It can't
just stop happening.'
'But he didn't turn up for Windle, ' the Dean pointed out.
???  on all the time, ' said Ridcully, ignoring him.
?Most? of things die all the time. Even vegetables.'
?You? won't think Death ever came for a potato,' ?said? Dean doubtfully.
'Death comes for everything,' said the Archchancellor, firmly.
The wizards nodded sagely.
After a while the Senior Wrangler said, 'Do you know, I read the other day
that every atom in your body is changed every seven years? New ones keep
getting attached and old ones keep on dropping off. It goes on all the time.
Marvellous, really.'
?e_? The Senior Wrangler could do to a conversation ?that? it takes quite
thick treacle to do to the pedals of a precision watch.
'Yes? What happens to the old ones?' said Ridcully, interested despite
himself.
'Dunno. They just float around in the air, I suppose, until they get attached
to someone else.'
The Archchancellor looked affronted.
'What, even wizards?'
'Oh, yes. Everyone. It's part of the miracle of existence.'
'Is it? Sounds like bad hygiene to me,' said the Archchancellor.'I suppose
there's no way of stopping ?it?
'I shouldn't think so,' said the Senior Wrangler, doubtfully.'I don't think
you're supposed to stop miracles of existence.'
'But that means everythin' is made up of everythin' else, ' said Ridcully.
'Yes. Isn't it amazing?'
'It's disgusting, is what it is, ' said Ridcully, shortly.
'Anyway, the point I'm making . . . the point I'm making . . .' He paused,
trying to remember.'You can't just abolish death, that's the point. Death can't
die. That's like asking a scorpion to sting itself.'
'As a matter of fact,' said the Senior Wrangler,
always ready with a handy fact.'you can get a scorpion to -'
'Shut up, ' said the Archchancellor.
'But we can't have an undead wizard wandering around,' said the
Dean.'There's no telling what he might take it into his head to do. We've got
to . . . put a stop to him. For his own good.'
'That's right,' said Ridcully.'For his own good. Shouldn't be too hard.
There must be dozens of ways to deal with an undead.'
'Garlic,' said the Senior Wrangler flatly.'Undead don't like garlic.'
'Don't blame them. Can't stand the stuff,' said the Dean.
'Undead! Undead!' said the Bursar, pointing an accusing finger. They
ignored him.
'Yes, and then there's sacred items,' said the Senior Wrangler.'?~your?
basic undead chunkles into dust as soon as look at 'em. And they don't like
daylight. And if the worst comes to the worst, you bury them at a crossroads.
That's surefire, that is. And you stick a stake in them to make sure they don't
get up again.'
'With garlic on it,' said the Bursar.
'Well, yes. I suppose you could put garlic on it,' the Senior Wrangler
conceded, reluctantly.
'I don't think you should put garlic on a good steak,' said the Dean. 'Just a
little oil and seasoning.'
'Red pepper is nice,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, happily.
'Shut up,' said the Archchancellor.

Plop.
The cupboard door's hinges finally gave way, spilling its contents into the
room.

Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was
guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From
theft.
???  came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon
???  ~fest to think big.
???  ras a school of thought that believed the
???  to get recognised as a keen guardian of the law in Ankh-Morpork
would be to patrol the streets and alleys, bribe informants, follow suspects
and so on.
Sergeant Colon played truant from this particular school. Not, he would,
hasten to say, because trying to keeping down crime in Ankh-Morpork was
like trying to keep down salt in the sea and the only recognition ?~ony? keen
guardian of the law was likely to get was the ?eort? that goes, 'Hey, that
body in the gutter, isn't that ?ald? Sergeant Colon?' but because the
modern, go-ahead, intelligent law officer ought to be ?at least? one jump
ahead of the contemporary criminal. One day someone was bound to try to
steal the Brass Bridge, and then they'd find Sergeant Colon right there
waiting for them.
In the meantime, it offered a quiet place out of the wind where he could
have a relaxing smoke and probably not see anything that would upset him.
He leaned with his elbows on the parapet, wondering vaguely about Life.
A figure stumbled out of the mist. Sergeant Colon recognised the familiar
pointy hat of a wizard.
'Good evening, officer, ' its wearer croaked.
'Morning, y'honour.'
'Would you be kind enough to help me up on to the parapet, officer?'
Sergeant Colon hesitated. But the chap was a wizard. A man could get
into serious trouble not helping wizards.
'Trying out some new magic, y'honour?' he said, brightly, helping the
skinny but surprisingly heavy body up on to the crumbling stonework.
'No.'

Windle Poons stepped off the bridge. There was a squelch. *
Sergeant Colon looked down as the waters of the Ankh closed again,
slowly.
Those wizards. Always up to something.
He watched for a while. After several minutes there was a disturbance in
the scum and debris near the base of one of the pillars of the bridge, where a
flight of greasy stairs led down to the water.
A pointy hat appeared.
Sergeant Colon heard the wizard slowly climb the stairs, swearing under
his breath.
Windle Poons reached the top of the bridge again. He was soaked.
'You want to go and get changed,' Sergeant Colon volunteered.'You could
catch your death, standing around like that.'
'Hah!'
'Get your feet in front of a roaring fire, that's what I'd do.'
'Hah!'
Sergeant Colon looked at Windle Poons in his own private puddle.
'You been trying some special kind of underwater magic, y'honour?' he
ventured.
'Not exactly, officer.'
'I've always wondered about what it's like under water,' said Sergeant
Colon, encouragingly.'The myst'ries of the deep, strange and wonderful
creatures . . . my mum told me a tale once, about this little boy what turned
into a mermaid, well, not a mermaid, and he had all these adventures under
the s -'
???  ~ained away under Windle Poons' dread-
???  g,' said Windle. He turned and started to
???  into the mist.'Very, very boring. Very
???  d.'
???  Colon was left alone. He lit a fresh ?cigarette with a ? trembling
hand, and started to walk hur- ~edly towards the Watch headquarters.
'That face, ' he told himself.'And those eyes . . . just whatsisname . . .
who's that bloody dwarf who runs the delicatessen on Cable Street . . .'
'Sargeant!'
Colon froze. Then he looked down. A face was starring up at him from
ground level. When he'd got a grip ?on? himself, he made out the sharp
features of his old ?Qd? Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the Discworld's
?Buling?, talking argument in favour of the theory that mankind had
descended from a species of rodent.
C.M.O.T. Dibbler ?liked? to describe himself as a merchant adventurer;
everyone else liked to describe him as an itinerant pedlar whose money-
making shemes were always let down by some small but vital ?w?, such as
trying to sell things he didn't own or which didn't work or, sometimes, didn't
even exist.
Fairy gold is well known to evaporate by morning, but it was a reinforced
concrete slab by comparison to some of Throat's merchandise.
He was standing at the bottom of some steps that led down to one of
Ankh-Morpork's countless cellars.

'Hallo, Throat.'
'Would you step down here a minute, Fred? I could use a bit of legal aid.'
'Got a problem, Throat?'
Dibbler scratched his nose.
'Well, Fred . . . Is it a crime to be given something? I mean, without you
knowing it?'
'Someone been giving you things, Throat?'
Throat nodded.'Dunno. You know I keep merchandise down here?' he
said.
'Yeah.'
'You see, I just come down to do a bit of stock-taking, and . . .' He waved a
hand helplessly.'Well . . . take a look . . .'
He opened the cellar door.
In the darkness something went plop.

Windle Poons lurched aimlessly along a dark alley in the Shades, arms
extended in front of him, hands hanging down at the wrists. He didn't know
why. It just seemed the right way to go about it.
Jumping off a building? No, that wouldn't work, either. It was hard enough
to walk as it was, and two broken legs wouldn't help. Poison? He imagined it
would be like having a very bad stomach ache. Noose? Hanging around
would probably be more boring than sitting on the bottom of the river.
He reached a noisome courtyard where several alleys met. Rats
scampered away from him. A cat screeched and scurried off over the
rooftops.
As he stood wondering where he was, why he was, and what ought to
happen next, he felt the point of a knife against his backbone.
'OK, grandad,' said a voice behind him, 'it's your money or your life.'
In the darkness Windle Poons' mouth formed a horrible grin.
'I 'm not playing about, old man, ' said the voice.
'Are you Thieves' Guild?' said Windle, without turning around.
'No, we're . . . freelances. Come on, let's see the colour of your money.'
'Haven't got any,' said Windle. He turned around. There were two more
muggers behind him.
'Ye gods, look at his eyes,' said one of them.
Windle raised his arms above his head.
'Ooooooooh,' he moaned.
The muggers backed away. Unfortunately, there was a wall behind them.
They flattened themselves against it.
'OoooOOOOoooobuggeroffoooOOOooo , ' said Windle, who hadn't
realised that the only way of escape lay through him. He rolled his eyes for
better effect.
Maddened by terror, the would-be attackers dived under his arms, but not
before one of them had sunk his knife up to the hilt in Windle's pigeon chest.
He looked down at it.
'Hey! That was my best robe!' he said.'I wanted to be buried in - will you
look at it? You know how difficult it is to darn silk? Come back here this -
Look at it, right where it shows -'
He listened. There was no sound but the distant and retreating scurry of
footsteps.
Windle Poons removed the knife.
'Could have killed me,' he muttered, tossing it away.

In the cellar, Sergeant Colon picked up one of the objects that lay in huge
drifts on the floor.
'There must be thousands of 'em,' said Throat, behind him.'What I want to
know is, who put them there?' *

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  Although not common on the Discworld there are, indeed, such things
as anti-crimes, in accordance with the fundamental law that everything in the
multiverse has an opposite. They are, obviously, rare. Merely giving someone
something is not the opposite of robbery; to be an antierime, it has to be
done in such a way as to cause outrage ?Pn~Uor? humiliation to the victim.
So there is breaking-and-decorating, proffering-with-embarrassment (as in
most retirement presentations) and whitemailing (as in threatening to reveal
to his enemies a mobster's secret donations, for example, to charity). Anti-
crimes have never really caught on.

Colon turned the object round and round in his hands.
'Never seen one of these before, ' he said. He gave a shake. His face lit
up.'Pretty, ain't they?'
'The door was locked and everything,' said Throat 'And I 'm paid up with
the Thieves' Guild.'
Colon shook the thing again.
' Nice,' he said.
'Fred?'
Colon, fascinated, watched the little snowflakes far inside the tiny glass
globe.'Hmm?'
'What am I supposed to do?'
'Dunno. I suppose they're yours, Throat. Can imagine why anyone'd want
to get rid of 'em, though.
He turned towards the door. Throat stepped into his path.
'Then that'll be twelve pence, ' he said smoothly.
'What for?
'For the one you just put in your pocket, Fred.'
Colon fished the globe out of his pocket.
'Come on!' he protested.'You just found them ?heh? They didn't cost you
a penny!'
'Yes, but there's storage . . . packing . . . handling . .
'Tuppence, ' said Colon desperately.
'Tenpence.'
'Threepence.'
'Sevenpence - and that's cutting my own throat ??? mark you.'
'Done,' said the sergeant, reluctantly. He gave the globe another shake.
'Nice, ain't they?' he said.
'Worth every penny,' said Dibbler. He rubbed his hands together
hopefully.'Should sell like hot cake' he said, picking up a handful and
shoving them into box.
He locked the door behind them when they left.
In the darkness something went plop.

Ankh-Morpork has always had a fine tradition of welcoming people of all
races, colours and shapes, if they have money to spend and a return ticket.
According to the Guild of Merchants ' famous publication, Welkome to
Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises, `you the visitor will be
asurred of a Warm Wellcome in the countless Ins and hostelries of this
Ancient Citie, where many specialise in catering for the taste of guest from
distant part. So if you a Manne, Trolle, Dwarfe, Goblin or Gnomm, Ankh-
Morpork will raise your Glass convivial and say: Cheer! Here looking, you
Kid! Up, You Bottom!'
Windle Poons didn't know where undead went for a good time. All he
knew, and he knew it for a certainty, was that if they could have a good time
anywhere then they could probably have it in Ankh-Morpork.
His laboured footsteps led him deeper into the Shades. Only they weren't
so laboured now.
For more than a century Windle Poons had lived inside the walls of
Unseen University. In terms of accumulated years, he may have lived a long
time. In terms of experience, he was about thirteen.
He was seeing, hearing and smelling things he'd never seen, heard or
smelled before.
The Shades was the oldest part of the city. If you could do a sort of relief
map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those
representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in
Ankh-Morpork the Shades would be represented by a shaft. In fact the
Shades was remarkably like the aforesaid well-known astronomical
phenomenon: it had a certain strong attraction, no light escaped from it, and
it could indeed become a gateway to another world. The next one.
The Shades was a city within a city.
The streets were thronged. Muffled figures slunk past on errands of their
own. Strange music wound up

from sunken stairwells. So did sharp and exciting smells.
Poons passed goblin delicatessens and dwarf bars from which came the
sounds of singing and fighting which dwarfs traditionally did at the same
time. And there were trolls, moving through the crowds like . . . like big
people moving among little people. They weren't shambling, either.
Windle had hitherto seen trolls only in the more select parts of the city,
where they moved with exaggerated caution in case they accidentally
clubbed someone to death and ate them. In the Shades they strode, unafraid,
heads held so high they very nearly rose above their shoulder-blades.
Windle Poons wandered through the crowds like random shot on a pinball
table. Here a blast of smoky sound from a bar spun him back into the street,
there a discreet doorway promising unusual and forbidden delights attracted
him like a magnet. Windle Poons' life hadn't included even very many usual
an approved delights. He wasn't even certain what they were. Some sketches
outside one pink-lit, inviting doorway left him even more mystified but
incredible anxious to learn.
He turned  around  and  around in pleased astonishment.
This place! Only ten minutes walk or fifteen minutes * lurch from the
University! And he'd never known it was there! All these people! All this
noise. All this life!
Several people of various shapes and species jostle him. One or two
started to say something, shut their mouths quickly, and hurried off.
They were thinking . . . his eyes! Like gimlets!
And then a voice from the shadows said: 'Hallo, bigboy. You want a nice
time?'

______________________________ ___
*  i.e., everywhere outside the Shades.

'Oh, yes!' said Windle Poons, lost in wonder.'Oh, yes! Yes!'
He turned around.
'Bloody hell!' There was the sound of someone hurrying away down an
alley.
Windle's face fell.
Life, obviously, was only for the living. Perhaps this back-to-your-body
business had been a mistake after all. He'd been a fool to think otherwise.
He turned and, hardly bothering to keep his own heart beating, went back
to the University.

Windle trudged across the quad to the Great Hall.
The Archchancellor would know what to do
'There he is!'
'It's him!'
'Get him!'
Windle's trained thought ran over a cliff. He looked around at five red,
worried, and above all familiar faces.
'Oh, hallo, Dean,' he said, unhappily.'And is that the Senior Wrangler? Oh,
and the Archchancellor, this is -'
'Grab his arm!'
'Don't look at his eyes!'
'Grab his other arm!'
'This is for your own good, Windle!'
'It's not Windle! It's a creature of the Night!'
'I assure you -'
'Have you got his legs?'
'Grab his leg!'
'Grab his other leg!'
'Have you grabbed everything?' roared the Archchancellor.
The wizards nodded.
Mustrum Ridcully reached into the massive recesses of his robe.
'Right, fiend in human shape,' he growled, what d'you think of this, then?
Ah-ha!'
Windle squinted at the small object that was thrust triumphantly under his
nose.
'Well, er . . .' he said diffidently, 'I'd say . . . yes . . . hmm . . . yes, the smell
is very distinctive, isn't it . . . yes, quite definitely. Allium sativum. The
common domestic garlic. Yes?'
The wizards stared at him. They stared at the little white clove. They
stared at Windle again.
'I am right, aren't I?' he said, and made an attempt at a smile.
'Er,' said the Archchancellor.'Yes. Yes, that's right.' Ridcully cast around
for something to add.
'Well done, ' he said.
'Thank you for trying,' said Windle.'I really appreciate it.' He stepped
forward. The wizards might as well have tried to hold back a glacier.
'And now I 'm going to have a lie down, ' he said.' It's been a long day.'
He lurched into the building and creaked along the corridors until he
reached his room. Someone else seemed to have moved some of their stuff
into it, but Windle dealt with that by simply picking it all up in one sweep of
his arms and throwing it out into the corridor.
Then he lay down on the bed.
Sleep. Well, he was tired. That was a start. But sleeping meant letting go
of control, and he wasn't too certain that all the systems were fully functional
yet.
Anyway, when you got right down to it, did he have to sleep at all? After
all, he was dead. That was supposed to be just like sleeping, only even more
so. They said that dying was just like going to sleep, although of course if
you weren't careful bits of you could rot and drop off.
What were you supposed to do when you slept, anyway? Dreaming . . .
wasn't that all to do with sorting out your memories, or something? How did
you go about it?
He stared at the ceiling.
'I never thought being dead would be so much trouble, ' he said aloud.
After a while a faint but insistent squeaking noise made him turn his head.
Over the fireplace was an ornamental candlestick, fixed to a bracket on
the wall. It was such a familiar piece of furniture that Windle hadn't really
seen it for fifty years.
It was coming unscrewed. It spun around slowly, squeaking once a turn.
After half a dozen turns it fell off and clattered to the floor.
Inexplicable phenomena were not in themselves unusual on the
Discworld. * It was just that they normally had more point, or at least were a
bit more interesting.
Nothing else seemed to be about to move. Windle relaxed, and went back
to organising his memories. There was stuff in there he'd completely
forgotten about.
There was a brief whispering outside, and then the door burst open -
'Get his legs! Get his legs!'
'Hold his arms!'
Windle tried to sit up.'Oh, hallo, everyone, ' he said. 'What's the matter?'
The Archchancellor, standing at the foot of the bed, fumbled in a sack and
produced a large, heavy object.
He held it aloft.
'Ah-ha!' he said.
Windle peered at it.
'Yes?' he said, helpfully.

'Ah-ha,' said the Archchancellor again, but with slightly less conviction.
'It's a symbolic double-handled axe from the cult of Blind Io,' said Windle.
The Archchancellor gave him a blank look.
'Er, yes,' he said, 'that's right.' He threw it over his shoulder, almost
removing the Dean's left ear, and fished in the sack again.
'Ah-ha!'
'That's a rather fine example of the Mystic Tooth of Offler the Crocodile
God, ' said Windle.
'Ah-ha!'
'And that's a . . . let me see now . . . yes, that's the matched set of sacred
Flying Ducks of Ordpor the Tasteless. I say, eh ?it? is fun!'
'Ah-ha.'
'That's . . . don't tell me, don't tell me . . . that's the holy linglongrrf the
notorious Sootee cult, isn't it?'
'Ah-ha?'
'I think that one's the three-headed fish of the Howanda three-headed fish
religion,' said Windle.
'This is ridiculous,' said the Archchancellor. dropping the fish.
The wizards sagged. Religious objects weren't such a surefire undead
cure after all.
'I'm really sorry to be such a nuisance, ' said Windle.
The Dean suddenly brightened up.
'Daylight!' he said excitedly.'That'll do the trick!'
'Get the curtain!'
'Get the other curtain!'
'One, two, three . . . now!'
Windle blinked in the invasive sunlight.
The wizards held their breath.
'I 'm sorry,' he said.'It doesn't seem to work.'
They sagged again.
'Don't you feel anything?' said Ridcully.
'No sensation of crumbling into dust and blowing away?' said the Senior
Wrangler hopefully.
'My nose tends to peel if I 'm out in the sun too long,' said Windle.'I don 't
know if that's any help.' He tried to smile.
The wizards looked at one another and shrugged.
'Get out,' said the Archchancellor. They trooped out.
Ridcully followed them. He paused at the door and waved a finger at
Windle.
'This uncooperative attitude, Windle, is not doing you any good,' he said,
and slammed the door behind him.
After a few seconds the four screws holding the door handle very slowly
unscrewed themselves. They rose up and orbited near the ceiling for a while,
and then fell.
Windle thought about this for a while.
Memories. He had lots of them. One hundred and thirty years of
memories. When he was alive he hadn't been able to remember one-
hundredth of the things he knew but now he was dead, his mind uncluttered
with everything except the single silver thread of his thoughts, he could feel
them all there. Everything he'd ever read, everything he'd ever seen,
everything he'd ever heard. All there, ranged in ranks. Nothing forgotten.
Everything in its place.
Three inexplicable phenomena in one day. Four, if you included the fact of
his continued existence. That was really inexplicable.
It needed explicating.
Well, that was someone else's problem. Everything was someone else's
problem now.

The wizards crouched outside the door of Windle's room.
'Got everything?' said Ridcully.
'Why can't we get some of the servants to do it?' muttered the Senior
Wrangler.'It's undignified.'
'Because I want it done properly and with dignity,' snapped she
Archchancellor. 'If anyone's going to
bury a wizard at a crossroads with a stake hammered through him, then
wizards ought to do it. After all, we're his friends.'
'What is this thing, anyway?' said the Dean, inspecting the implement in
his hands.
'It's called a shovel, ' said the Senior Wrangler.'I've seen the gardeners
use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical.'
Ridcully squinted through the keyhole.
'He's lying down again,' he said. He got up, brushing the dust off his
knees, and grasped the door handle.'Right,' he said.'Take your time from me.
One...two...'
Modo the gardener was trundling a barrow load of hedge trimmings to a
bonfire behind the new High Energy Magic research building when about half
a dozen wizards went past at, for wizards, high speed.
Windle Poons was being borne aloft between them.
Modo heard him to say, 'Really, Archchancellor, are you quite sure this
one will work -?'
'We've got your best interests at heart,' said Ridcully.
'I'm sure, but -'
'We'll soon have you feeling your old self again,' said the Bursar.
'No, we won't,' hissed the Dean.'That's the whole point!'
'We'll soon have you not feeling your old self again, that's the whole
point,' stuttered the Bursar, as they rounded the corner.
Modo picked up the handles of the barrow again and pushed it
thoughtfully towards the secluded area where he kept his bonfire, his
compost heaps, his leaf-mould pile, and the little shed he sat in when it
rained.
He used to be assistant gardener at the palace, but this job was a lot more
interesting. You really got to see life.

Ankh-Morpork society is street society. There is always something
interesting going on. At the moment, the driver of a two-horse fruit wagon
was holding the Dean six inches in the air by the scruff of the Dean's robe
and was threatening to push the Dean's face through the back of the Dean's
head.
'It's peaches, right?' he kept bellowing.'You know what happens to
peaches what lies around too long?
They get bruised. Lots of things round here are going to get bruised.'
'I am a wizard, you know, ' said the Dean, his pointy shoes dangling.'If it
wasn't for the fact that it would be against the rules for me to use magic in
anything except a purely defensive manner, you would definitely be in a lot
of trouble.'
'What you doing, anyway?' said the driver, lowering the Dean so he could
look suspiciously over his shoulder.
'Yeah,' said a man trying to control the team pulling a lumber wagon,
'what's going on? There's people here being paid by the hour, you know!'
'Move along at the front there!'
The lumber driver turned in his seat and addressed the queue of carts
behind him.'I'm trying to, ' he said.
'It's not my fault, is it? There's a load of wizards digging up the godsdamn
street!'
The Archchancellor's muddy face peered over the edge of the hole.
'Oh, for heaven's sake, Dean, ' he said, 'I told you to sort things out!'
'Yes, I was just asking this gentleman to back up and go another way,'
said the Dean, who was afraid he was beginning to choke.
The fruiterer turned him around 90 that he could see along the crowded
streets.'Ever tried to back up sixty carts all at once?' he demanded.'It's not
easy. Especially when everyone can't move because you guys have got it
so's the carts are backed up all round
the block and no-one can move because everyone's in someone else's
way, right?'
The Dean tried to nod. He had wondered himself about the wisdom of
digging the hole at the junction of the Street of Small Gods and Broad Way,
two of the busiest streets in Ankh-Morpork. It had seemed logical at the time.
Even the most persistent undead ought to stay decently buried under that
amount of traffic. The only problem was that no-one had thought seriously
about the difficulty of digging up a couple of main streets during the busy
time of day.
'All right, all right, what's going on here?'
The crowd of spectators opened to admit the bulky figure of Sergeant
Colon of the Watch. He moved through the people unstoppably, his stomach
leading the way. When he saw the wizards, waist deep in a hole in the middle
of the road, his huge red face brightened up.
'What's  this,  then?'  he said.  'A gang of international crossroads
thieves?'
He was overjoyed. His long-term policing strategy was paying off!
The Archchancellor tipped a shovelful of Ankh-Morpork loam over his
boots.
'Don't be stupid, man,' he snapped.'This is vitally important.'
'Oh, yes. That's what they all say,' said Sergeant Colon, not a man to be
easily steered from a particular course of thought once he'd got up to mental
speed. 'I bet there's hundreds of villages in heathen places like Klatch that'd
pay good money for a nice prestigious crossroads like this, eh?'
Ridcully looked up at him with his mouth open.
'What are you gabbling about, officer?' he said. He pointed irritably to his
pointy hat.'Didn't you hear me? We're wizards. This is wizard business. So if
you could just sort of direct the traffic around us, there's a good chance -'
'- these peaches bruise as soon as you even look at 'em -' said a voice
behind Sergeant Colon.
'The old idiots have been holding us up for half an hour,' said a cattle
drover who had long ago lost control of forty steers now wandering
aimlessly around the nearby streets.'I wants 'em arrested.'
It dawned on the sergeant that he had inadvertently placed himself centre
stage in a drama involving hundreds of people, some of them wizards and all
of them angry.
'What are you doing, then?' he said weakly.
'We're burying our colleague. What does it look like?' said Ridcully.
Colon's eyes swivelled to an open coffin by the side of the road. Windle
Poons gave him a little wave.
'But . . . he's not dead . . . is he?' he said, his forehead wrinkling as he
tried to get ahead of the situation.
'Appearances ,,Can  be  deceptive, '  said  the Archchancellor.
'But he just waved to me,' said the sergeant, desperately.
'So?'
'Well, it's not normal for -'
'It's all right, sergeant, ' said Windle.
Sergeant Colon sidled closer to the coffin.
'Didn't I see you throw yourself into the river last night?' he said, out of
the corner of his mouth.
'Yes. You were very helpful, ' said Windle.
'And then you threw yourself sort of out again,' said the sergeant.
'I'm afraid so.'
'But you were down there for ages.'
'Well, it was very dark, you see. I couldn't find the steps.'
Sergeant Colon had to concede the logic of this.
'Well, I suppose you must be dead, then,' he said. 'No-one could stay
down there who wasn't dead.'
'This is it,' Windle agreed.
'Only why are you waving and talking?' said Colon.
The Senior Wrangler poked his head out of the hole.
'It's not unknown for a dead body to move and make noises after death,
Sergeant,' he volunteered.'It's all down to involuntary muscular spasms.'
'Actually, Senior Wrangler is right,' said WindlePoons.'I read that
somewhere.'
'Oh.' Sergeant Colon looked around.'Right, ' he said, uncertainly.'Well . . .
fair enough, I suppose . . .'
'OK, we're done,' said the Archchancellor, scrambling out of the hole, 'it's
deep enough. Come on, Windle, down you go.'
'I really am very touched, you know,' said Windle, lying back in the coffin.
It was quite a good one, from the mortuary in Elm Street. The Archchancellor
had let him choose it himself.
Ridcully picked up a mallet.
Windle sat up again.
'Everyone's going to so much trouble -'
'Yes, right,' said Ridcully, looking around.
'Now - who's got the stake?'
Everyone looked at the Bursar.
The Bursar looked unhappy.
He fumbled in a bag.
'I couldn't get any, ' he said.
The Archchancellor put his hand over his eyes.
'All right,' he said quietly.'You know, I'm not surprised? Not surprised at
all. What did you get? Lamb chops? A nice piece of pork?'
'Celery, ' said the Bursar.
'It's his nerves, ' said the Dean, quickly.
'Celery,' said the Archchancellor, his self-control rigid enough to bend
horseshoes around.' Right.'
The Bursar handed him a soggy green bundle.
Ridcully took it.
'Now, Windle, ' he said, 'I 'd like you to imagine that what I have in my
hand -'

'It's quite all right, ' said Windle.
'I'm not actually sure I can hammer -'
'I don't mind, I assure you, ' said Windle.
'You don't?'
'The principle is sound,' said Windle.'If you just hand me the celery but
think hammering a stake, that's probably sufficient.'
'That's very decent of you,' said Ridcully.'That shows a very proper spirit.'
'Esprit de corpse,' said the Senior Wrangler.
Ridcully glared at him, and thrust the celery dramatically towards Windle.
'Take that!' he said.
'Thank you,' said Windle.
'And now let's put the lid on and go and have some lunch,' said
Ridcully.'Don't worry, Windle. It's bound to work. Today is the last day of the
rest of your life.'
Windle lay in the darkness, listening to the hammering. There was a
thump and a muffled imprecation against the Dean for not holding the end
properly.
And then the patter of soil on the lid, getting fainter and more distant.
After a while a distant rumbling suggested that the commerce of the city
was being resumed. He could even hear muffled voices.
He banged on the coffin lid.
'Can you beep it down?' he demanded.'There's people down here trying
to be dead!'
He heard the voices stop. There was the sound of feet hurrying away.
Windle lay there for some time. He didn't know how long. He tried
stopping all functions, but that just made things uncomfortable. Why was
dying so difficult? Other people seemed to manage it, even without practice.
Also, his leg itched.
He tried to reach down to scratch it, and his hand
touched something small and irregularly shaped. He managed to get his
fingers around it.
It felt like a bundle of matches.
In a coffin? Did anyone think he'd smoke a quiet cigar to pass the time?
After a certain amount of effort he managed to push one boot off with the
other boot and ease it up until he could just grasp it. This gave him a rough
surface to strike the match on.
Sulphurous light filled his tiny oblong world.
There was a tiny scrap of cardboard pinned to the inside of the lid.
He read it.
He read it again.
The match went out.
He lit another one, just to check that what he had read really did exist.
The message was still as strange, even third time round:

Dead? Depressed?
Feel like starting it all again?
Then why not come along to the
FRESH START CLUB
Thursdays, 12 pm. 668 Elm Street
EVERY BODY WELCOME

The second match went out, taking the last of the oxygen with it.
Windle lay in the dark for a while, considering his next move and finishing
off the celery.
Who'd have thought it?
And it suddenly dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such
thing as somebody else's problem, and that just when you thought the world
had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of
strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half
of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living.
The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was
too full of the boring and mundane. But it was strange. It had things in it like
screws that unscrewed themselves, and little written messages to the dead.
He resolved to find out what was going on. And then . . . if Death wasn't
going to come to him, he'd go to Death. He had his rights, after all. Yeah.
He'd lead the biggest missing-person hunt of all time.
Windle grinned in the darkness.
Missing - believed Death.
Today was the first day of the rest of his life.
And Ankh-Morpork lay at his feet. Well, metaphorically. The only way was
up.
He reached up, felt for the card in the dark, and pulled it free. He stuck it
between his teeth.
Windle Poons braced his feet against the end of the box, pushed his
hands past his head, and heaved.
The soggy loam of Ankh-Morpork moved slightly.
Windle paused out of habit to take a breath, and realised that there was
no point. He pushed again. The end of the coffin splintered.
Windle pulled it towards him and tore the solid pine like paper. He was left
with a piece of plank which would have been a totally useless spade for
anyone with un-zombie-like strength.
Turning on to his stomach, tucking the earth around him with his
impromptu spade and ramming it back with his feet, Windle Poons dug his
way towards a fresh start.

Picture a landscape, a plain with rolling curves.
It's late summer in the octarine grass country below the towering peaks of
the high Ramtops, and the predominant
colours are umber and gold. Heat sears the landscape. Grasshoppers
sizzle, as in a frying pan. Even the air is too hot to move. It's the hottest
summer in living memory and, - in these parts, that's a long, long time.
Picture a figure on horseback, moving slowly along a road that's an inch
deep in dust between fields of corn that already promise an unusually rich
harvest.
Picture a fence of baked, dead wood. There's a notice pinned to it. The
sun has faded the letters, but they are still readable.
Picture a shadow, falling across the notice. You can almost hear it reading
both the words.
There's a track leading off the road, towards a small group of bleached
buildings.
Picture dragging footsteps.
Picture a door, open.
Picture a cool, dark room, glimpsed through the open doorway. This isn't
a room that people live in a lot. It's a room for people who live outdoors but
have to come inside sometimes, when it gets dark. It's a room for harnesses
and dogs, a room where oilskins are hung up to dry. There's a beer barrel by
the door. There are flagstones on the floor
and, along the ceiling beams, hooks for bacon. There's a scrubbed table
that thirty hungry men could sit down at.
There are no men. There are no dogs. There is no beer.
There is no bacon.

There was silence after the knocking, and then the flap flap of slippers on
flagstones. Eventually a skinny old woman with a face the colour and texture
of a walnut peered around the door.
'Yes?' she said.
THE NOTICE SAID 'MAN WANTED'.
'Did it? Did it? That's been up there since before last winter!'
I AM SORRY? YOU NEED NO HELP?
The wrinkled face looked at him thoughtfully.
'I can't pay more'n sixpence a week, mind,' it said.

The tall figure looming against the sunlight appeared to consider this.
YES. it said, eventually.
'I wouldn't even know where to start you workin', either. We haven't had
any proper help here for three years. I just hire the lazy goodfornothin's from
the village when I want 'em.'
YES?
'You don't mind, then?'
I HAVE A HORSE.
The old woman peered around the stranger. In the yard was the most
impressive horse she'd ever seen. Her eyes narrowed.
'And that's your horse. is it?'
YES.
'With all that silver on the harness and everything?'
YES.
'And you want to work for sixpence a week?'
YES.
The old woman pursed her lips. She looked from the stranger to the horse
to the dilapidation around the farm.
She appeared to reach a decision, possibly on the lines that someone
who owned no horses probably didn't have much to fear from a horse thief.
'You're to sleep in the barn, understand?' she said.
SLEEP? YES. OF COURSE. YES, I WILL HAVE TO SLEEP.
'Couldn't have you in the house anyway. It wouldn't be right.'
THE BARN WILL BE QUITE ADEQUATE, I ASSURE YOU.
'But you can come into the house for your meals.'
THANK YOU.
'My name's Miss Flitworth.'
YES.
She waited.
'I expect you have a name, too,' she prompted.
YES. THAT'S RIGHT.
She waited again.
I'M SORRY?
'What is your name?'
The stranger stared at her for a moment, and then looked around wildly.
'Come on,' said Miss Flitworth.'l ain't employing no-one without no name.
Mr . . . ?'
The figure stared upwards.
MR SKY?
'No-one's called Mr Sky.'
MR . . . DOOR?
She nodded.
'Could be. Could be Mr Door. There was a chap called Doors I knew once.
Yeah. Mr Door. And your first name? Don't tell me you haven't got one of
those, too. You've got to be a Bill or a Tom or a Bruce or one of those
names.'
YES.
'What?'
ONE OF THOSE.
'Which one?'
ER. THE FIRST ONE?
'You're a Bill?'
YES?
Miss Flitworth rolled her eyes.
'All right, Bill Sky . . .' she said.
DOOR.
'Yeah. Sorry. All right, Bill Door . . .'
CALL ME BILL.
'And you can call me Miss Flitworth. I expect you want some dinner?'
I WOULD? AH. YES. THE MEAL OF THE EVENING. YES.
'You look half starved, to tell the truth. More than half, really.' She
squinted at the figure. Somehow it was very hard to be certain what Bill Door
looked like, or even remember the exact sound of his voice. Clearly he was
there, and clearly he had spoken - otherwise why did you remember anything
at all?
'There's a lot of people in these parts as don't use the name they were
born with,' she said. 'l always say there's
nothing to be gained by going around asking pers'nal questions. I
suppose you can work, Mr Bill Door? I'm still getting the hay in off the high
meadows and there'll be a lot of work come harvest. Can you use a scythe?'
Bill Door seemed to meditate on the question for some time. Then he said,
I THINK THE ANSWER TO THAT IS A DEFINITE 'YES', MISS FLITWORTH.

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler also never saw the sense in asking personal
questions, at least insofar as they applied to him and were on the lines of
'Are these things yours to sell?' But no-one appeared to be coming forward
to berate him for selling off their property, and that was good enough for
him. He'd sold more than a thousand of the little globes this morning, and
he'd had to employ a troll to keep up a flow from the mysterious source of
supply in the cellar.
People loved them.
The principle of operation was laughably simple and easily graspable by
the average Ankh-Morpork citizen after a few false starts.
If you gave the globe a shake, a cloud of little white snowflakes swirled up
in the liquid inside and settled, delicately, on a tiny model of a famous Ankh-
Morpork landmark. In some globes it was the University, or the Tower of Art,
or the Brass Bridge, or the Patrician's Palace. The detail was amazing.
And then there were no more left. Well, thought Throat, that's a shame.
Since they hadn't technically belonged to him - although morally, of course,
morally they were his - he couldn't actually complain.
Well, he could complain, of course, but only under his breath and not to
anybody specific. Maybe it was all for the best, come to think of it. Stack 'em
high, sell 'em cheap. Get 'em off your hands - it made it much  easier to
spread them in a gesture of injured innocence when you said 'Who, me?'
They were really pretty, though. Except, strangely
enough, for the writing. It was on the bottom of each globe, in shaky,
amateurish letters, as if done by someone who had never seen writing before
and was trying to copy some down. On the bottom of every globe, below the
intricate little snowflake-covered building, were the words:

~fo r~3
4h~ MorPor'
2

Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, was a shameless
autocondimentor. * He had his own special cruet put in front of him at every
meal. It consisted of salt, three types of pepper, four types of mustard, four
types of vinegar, fifteen different kinds of chutney and his special favourite:
Wow-Wow Sauce, a mixture of mature scumble, pickled cucumbers, capers,
mustard, mangoes, figs, grated wahooni, anchovy essence, asafetida and,
significantly, sulphur and saltpetre for added potency.
Ridcully inherited the formula from his uncle who, after half a pint of
sauce on a big meal one evening, had a charcoal biscuit to settle his
stomach, lit his pipe and disappeared in mysterious circumstances, although
his shoes were found on the roof the following summer.
There was cold mutton for lunch. Mutton went well with Wow-Wow Sauce;
on the night of Ridcully

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_
*  Someone who will put certainly salt and probably pepper on any meal
you put in front of them whatever it is and regardless of how much it's got on
it already and regardless of how it tastes. Behavioural psychiatrists working
for fast-food outlets around the universe have saved billions of whatever the
local currency is by noting the autocondimenting phenomenon and advising
their employers to leave seasoning out in the first place. This is really true.


senior's death, for example, it had gone at least three miles.
Mustrum tied his napkin behind his neck, rubbed his hands together, and
reached out.
The cruet moved.
He reached out again. It slid away.
Ridcully sighed.
'All right, you fellows,' he said.'No magic at Table, you know the rules.
Who's playing silly buggers?'
The other senior wizards stared at him.
'I, I, I don't think we can play it any more, ' said the Bursar, who at the
moment was only occasionally bouncing off the sides of sanity, 'I, I, I think
we lost some of the pieces . . .'
He looked around, giggled, and went back to trying to cut his mutton with
a spoon. The other wizards were keeping knives out of his way at present.
The entire cruet floated up into the air and started to spin slowly. Then it
exploded.
The wizards, dripping vinegar and expensive spices, watched it owlishly.
'It was probably the sauce,' the Dean ventured.'It was definitely going a bit
critical last night.'
Something dropped on his head and landed in his lunch. It was a black
iron screw, several inches long.
Another one mildly contused the Bursar.
After a second or two, a third landed point down on the table by the
Archchancellor's hand and stuck there.
The wizards turned their eyes upwards.
The Great Hall was lit in the evenings by one massive chandelier,
although the word so often associated with glittering prismatic glassware
seemed inappropriate for the huge, heavy, black, tallow-encrusted thing that
hung from the ceiling like a threatening overdraft. It could hold a thousand
candles. It was directly over the senior wizards' table.
Another screw tinkled on to the floor by the fireplace.
The Archchancellor cleared his throat.
'Run?' he suggested.
The chandelier dropped.
Bits of table and crockery smashed into the walls.
Lumps of lethal tallow the size of a man's head whirred through the
windows. A whole candle, propelled out of the wreckage at a freak velocity,
was driven several inches into a door.
The Archchancellor disentangled himself from the remains of his chair.
'Bursar!' he yelled.
The Bursar was exhumed from the fireplace.
'Um, yes, Archchancellor?' he quavered.
'What was the meanin' of that?'
Ridcully's hat rose from his head.
It was a basic floppy-brimmed, pointy wizarding hat, but adapted to the
Archchancellor's outgoing lifestyle. Fishing flies were stuck in it. A very
small pistol crossbow was shoved in the hatband in case he saw something
to shoot while out jogging, and Mustrum Ridcully had found that the pointy
bit was just the right size for a small bottle of Bentinck's Very Old Peculiar
Brandy. He was quite attached to his hat.
But it was no longer attached to him.
It drifted gently across the room. There was a faint but distinct gurgling
noise.
The Archchancellor leapt to his feet.'Bugger that,' he roared.'That stuff's
nine dollars a fifth!' He made a leap for the hat, missed, and kept on going
until he drifted to a halt several feet above the ground.
The Bursar raised a hand, nervously.
'Possibly woodworm?' he said.
'If there is any more of this,' growled Ridcully, 'anymore at all, d'you hear,
I shall get very angry!'
He was dropped to the floor at the same time as the big doors opened.
One of the college porters bustled in, followed by a squad of the Patrician's
palace guard.
The guard captain looked the Archchancellor up and down with the
expression of one to whom the
word 'civilian' is pronounced in the same general tones as 'cockroach'.
'You the head chap?' he said.
The Archchancellor smoothed his robe and tried to straighten his beard.
'I am the Archchancellor of this university, yes,' he said.
The guard captain looked curiously around the hall.
The students were all cowering down the far end. Splashed food covered
most of the walls to ceiling height. Bits of furniture lay around the wreckage
of the chandelier like trees around ground zero of a meteor strike.
Then he spoke with all the distaste of someone whose own further
education had stopped at age nine, but who'd heard stories . . .
'Indulging in a bit of youthful high spirits, were we?' he said.'Throwin' a
few bread rolls around, that kind of thing?'
'May I ask the meaning of this intrusion?' said Ridcully, coldly.
The guard captain leaned on his spear.
'Well,' he said, 'it's like this. The Patrician is barricaded in his bedroom on
account of the furniture in the palace is zooming around the place like you
wouldn't believe, the cooks won't even go back in the kitchen on account of
what's happening in there . . .'
The wizards tried not to look at the spear's head. It was starting to
unscrew itself.
'Anyway,' the captain went on, oblivious to the faint metallic noises, 'the
Patrician calls through the keyhole, see, and says to me, "Douglas, I wonder
if you wouldn't mind nipping down to the University and asking the head man
if he would be so good as to step up here, if he's not too busy?" But I can
always go back and tell him you're engagin' in a bit of student humour, if you
like.'
The spearhead was almost off the shaft.
'You listening to me?' said the captain suspiciously.
'Hmm? What?' said the Archchancellor, tearing his eyes away from the
spinning metal.'Oh. Yes. Well, I can assure you, my man, that we are not the
cause of -'
'Aargh!'
'Pardon?'
'The spearhead fell on my foot!'
'Did it?' said Ridcully, innocently.
The guard captain hopped up and down.
'Listen, are you bloody hocus-pocus merchants coming or not?' he said,
between bounces.'The boss is not very happy. Not very happy at all.'

A great formless cloud of Life drifted across the Discworld, like water
building up behind a dam when the sluice gates are shut. With no Death to
take the life force away when it was finished with, it had nowhere else to go.
Here and there it earthed itself in random poltergeist activity, like flickers
of summer lightning before a big storm. Everything that exists, yearns to
Live. That's what the cycle of life is all about. That's the engine that drives
the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up
the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it
gets to the very top - which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth
all that effort.
Everything that exists, yearns to live. Even things that are not alive.
Things that have a kind of sub-life, a metaphorical life, an almost life. And
now, in the same way that a sudden hot spell brings forth unnatural and
exotic blooms . . .
There was something about the little globes. You had to pick them up and
give them a shake, watch the pretty snowflakes swirl and glitter. And then
take them home and put them on the mantelpiece.
And then forget about them.
The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler
and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle
one.
The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject
to the mundane laws of the city.
The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody
well pay their taxes like everyone else.
The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed
allegiance to no mortal man.
The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax
of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly.
The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was
therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn't put a tax on
knowledge.
The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per
capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged.
The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil
authority.
The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long.
The wizards said, what about easy terms?
The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn't want to
know about the hard terms.
The wizards said that there was a ruler back in, oh, it would be the
Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The
Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked.
The Patrician said that he would. He truly would.
In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes,
they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let's say
two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no
strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally-
acceptable purposes.

It was this dynamic interplay of power blocs that made Ankh-Morpork
such an interesting, stimulating and above all bloody dangerous place in
which to live. *

Senior wizards did not often get out and about on what Welkome to Ankh-
Morporke probably called the thronged highways and intimate byways of the
city, but it was instantly obvious that something was wrong. It wasn't that
cobblestones didn't sometimes fly through the air. but usually someone had
thrown them. They didn't normally float by themselves.
A door burst open and a suit of clothes came out, a pair of shoes dancing
along behind it, a hat floating a few inches above the empty collar. Close
behind them came a skinny man endeavouring to do with a hastily-snatched
flannel what normally it took a whole pair of trousers to achieve.
'You come back here!' he screamed, as they rounded the corner.'I still
owe seven dollars for you!'
A second pair of trousers scurried out into the street and hurried after
them.
The wizards clustered together like a frightened animal with five pointed
heads and ten legs, wondering who was going to be the first to comment.
'That's bloody amazing!' said the Archchancellor.
'Hmm?' said the Dean, trying to imply that he saw more amazing things
than that all the time, and that in drawing attention to mere clothing running
around by itself the Archchancellor was letting down the whole tone of
wizardry.
'Oh, come on. I don't know many tailors round here

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  Many songs have been written about the bustling metropolis, the most
famous of course being: 'Ankh-Morpork! Ankh-Morpork! So good they named
it Ankh-Morpork!', but others have included 'Carry Me Away From Old Ankh-
Morpork', 'I Fear I'm Going Back to Ankh-Morpork' and the old favourite,
'Ankh-Morpork Malady'.
who'd throw in a second pair of pants for a seven dollar suit,' said
Ridcully.
'Oh, ' said the Dean.
'If it comes past again, try to trip it up so's I can have a look at the label.'
A bedsheet squeezed through an upper window and flapped away across
the rooftops.
'Y'know,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, trying to keep his voice calm
and relaxed, 'I don't think this is magic. It doesn't feel like magic.'
The Senior Wrangler fished in one of the deep pockets of his robe. There
was a muffled clanking and rustling and the occasional croak. Eventually he
produced a dark blue glass cube. It had a dial on the front.
'You carry one of them around in your pocket?' said the Dean.'A valuable
instrument like that?'
'What the hell is it?' said Ridcully.
'Amazingly sensitive magical measuring device,' said the Dean.'Measures
the density of a magical field. A thaumometer.'
The Senior Wrangler proudly held the cube aloft and pressed a button on
the side. A needle on the dial wobbled around a little bit and stopped.
'See?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Just natural background, representing
no hazard to the public.'
'Speak up,' said the Archchancellor.'I can't hear you above the noise.'
Crashes and screams rose from the houses on either side of the street.

Mrs Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small.
It wasn't a demanding job. Not many people who died in Ankh-Morpork
showed much inclination to chat to their surviving relatives. Put as many
mystic dimensions between you and them as possible, that was their motto.
She filled in between engagements with dressmaking and church work - any
church.
Mrs Cake was very keen on religion, at least on Mrs Cake's terms.
Evadne Cake was not one of those bead-curtain-and-incense mediums,
partly because she didn't hold with incense but mainly because she was
actually very good at her profession. A good conjurer can astound you with a
simple box of matches and a perfectly ordinary deck of cards, if you would
care to examine them, sir, you will see they are a perfectly ordinary deck of
cards - he doesn't need the finger-nipping folding tables and complicated
collapsible top hats of lesser prestidigitators. And, in the same way, Mrs
Cake didn't need much in the way of props. Even the industrial-grade crystal
ball was only there as a sop to her customers. Mrs Cake could actually read
the future in a bowl of porridge. * She could have a revelation in a panful of
frying bacon. She had spent a lifetime dabbling in the spirit world, except
that in Evadne's case dabbling wasn't really apposite. She wasn't the
dabbling kind. It was more a case of stamping into the spirit world and
demanding to see the manager.
And, while making her breakfast and cutting up dogfood for Ludmilla, she
started to hear voices. They were very faint. It wasn't that they were on the
verge of hearing, because they were the kind of voices that ordinary ears
can't hear. They were inside her head.
. . . watch what you're doing . . . where am I. . . quit shoving, there. . .
And then they faded again.
They were replaced by a squeaking noise from the next room. She pushed
aside her boiled egg and waddled through the bead curtain.
The sound was coming from under the severe, no-

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_
*  It would say, for example, that you would shortly undergo a painful
bowel movement.


nonsense hessian cover of her crystal ball.
Evadne went back into the kitchen and selected a heavy frying pan. She
waved it through the air once or twice, getting the heft of it, and then crept
towards the crystal under its hood.
Raising the pan ready to swat anything unpleasant, she twitched aside the
cover.
The ball was turning slowly round and round on its stand.
Evadne watched it for a while. Then she drew the curtains, eased her
weight down on the chair, took a deep breath and said, ' Is there anybody
there?'
Most of the ceiling fell in.
After several minutes and a certain amount of struggle Mrs Cake managed
to get her head free.
'Ludmilla!'
There were soft footsteps in the passageway and then something come in
from the back yard. It was clearly, even attractively female, in general shape,
and wore a perfectly ordinary dress. It was also apparently suffering from a
case of superfluous hair that not all the delicate pink razors in the world
could erase. Also, teeth and fingernails were being worn long this season.
You expected the whole thing to growl, but it spoke in a pleasant and
definitely human voice.
'Mother?'
'Oi'm under 'ere.'
The fearsome Ludmilla lifted up a huge joist and tossed it lightly
aside.'What happened? Didn't you have your premonition switched on?'
'Oi turned it off to speak to the baker. Cor, that gave me a turn.'
'I'll make you a cup of tea, shall I?'
'Now then, you know you always crushes teacups when it's your Time.'
'I'm getting better at it, ' said Ludmilla.
'There's a good girl, but I'll do it myself, thanks all the same.'
Mrs Cake stood up, brushed the plaster dust off her apron, and said:
'They shouted! They shouted! All at once!'

Modo the University gardener was weeding a rose bed when the ancient,
velvet lawn beside him heaved and sprouted a hardy perennial Windle
Poons, who blinked in the light.
'Is that you, Modo?'
'That's right, Mr Poons,' said the dwarf. 'Shall I give you a hand up?'
'I think I can manage, thank you.'
'I've got a shovel in the shed, if you like.'
'No, it's perfectly all right.' Windle pulled himself out of the grass and
brushed the soil off the remains of his robe.'Sorry about your lawn,' he
added, looking down at the hole.
'Don't mention it, Mr Poons.'
'Did it take long to get it looking like that?'
'About five hundred years, I think.'
'Gosh, I am sorry. I was aiming for the cellars, but I seem to have lost my
bearings.'
'Don't you worry about that, Mr Poons,' said the dwarf
cheerfully.'Everything's growing like crazy anyway. I'll fill it in this afternoon
and put some more seed down and five hundred years will just zoom past,
you wait and see.'
'The way things are going, I probably will,' said Windle moodily. He
looked around. 'Is the Archchancellor here?' he said.
'I saw them all going up to the palace,' said the gardener.
'Then I think I'll just go and have a quick bath and a change of clothes. I
wouldn't want to disturb anyone.'
'I heard you wasn't just dead but buried too, ' said the gardener, as Windle
lurched off.
'That's right.'
'Can't keep a good man down, eh?'
indle turned back.
'By the way . . . where's Elm Street?'
Modo scratched an ear.'Isn't it that one off Treacle Mine Road?'
'Oh, yes. I remember.'
Modo went back to his weeding.
The circular nature of Windle Poons' death didn't bother him much. After
all, trees looked dead in the winter, burst forth again every spring. Dried up
old seeds went in the ground, fresh young plants sprang up. Practically
nothing ever died for long. Take compost, for example.
Modo believed in compost with the same passion that other people
believed in gods. His compost heaps heaved and fermented and glowed
faintly in the dark, perhaps because of the mysterious and possibly illegal
ingredients Modo fed them, although nothing had ever been pried and,
anyway, no-one was about to dig into one to see what was in it.
All dead stuff, but somehow alive. And it certainly grew roses. The Senior
Wrangler had explained to Modo that his roses grew so big because it was a
miracle of existence, but Modo privately thought that they just wanted to get
as far away from the compost as possible.
The heaps were in for a treat tonight. The weeds were really doing well.
He'd never known plants to grow so fast and luxuriantly. It must be all the
compost, Modo thought.

By the time the wizards reached the palace it was in uproar. Pieces of
furniture were gliding across the ceiling. A shoal of cutlery, like silvery
minnows in mid-air, flashed past the Archchancellor and dived away down a
corridor. The place seemed to be in the grip of a selective and tidy-minded
hurricane.
Other people had already arrived. They included a group dressed very like
the wizards in many ways,
although there were important differences to the trained eye.
'Priests?' said the Dean.'Here? Before us?'
The two groups began very surreptitiously to adopt positions that left
their hands free.
'What good are they?' said the Senior Wrangler.
There was a noticeable drop in metaphorical temperature.
A carpet undulated past.
The Archchancellor met the gaze of the enormous Chief Priest of Blind Io
who, as senior priest of the senior god in the Discworld's rambling pantheon,
was the nearest thing Ankh-Morpork had to a spokesman on religious affairs.
'Credulous fools,' muttered the Senior Wrangler.
'Godless tinkerers,' said a small acolyte, peering out from behind the
Chief Priest's bully.
'Gullible idiots !'
'Atheistic scum!'
'Servile morons !'
'Childish conjurors!'
'Bloodthirsty priests!'
'Interfering wizards!'
Ridcully raised an eyebrow. The Chief Priest nodded very slightly.
They left the two groups hurling imprecations at each other from a safe
distance and strolled nonchalantly towards a comparatively quiet part of the
room where, beside a statue of one of the Patrician's predecessors, they
turned and faced one another again.
'So . . . how are things in the godbothering business?' said Ridcully.
'We do our humble best. How is the dangerous meddling with things man
was not meant to understand?'
'Pretty fair. Pretty fair.' Ridcully removed his hat and fished inside the
pointy bit.'Can I offer you a drop of something?'

'Alcohol is a snare for the spirit. Would you care for a cigarette? I believe
you people indulge.'
'Not me. If I was to tell you what that stuff does to your lungs -'
Ridcully unscrewed the very tip of his hat and poured a generous
measure of brandy into it.
'So, ' he said, 'what's happening?'
'We had an altar float up into the air and drop on us.'
'A chandelier unscrewed itself. Everything's unscrewing itself. You know,
I saw a suit of clothes run past on the way here? Two pairs of pants for
seven dollars!'
'Hmm. Did you see the label?'
'Everything's throbbing, too. Notice the way everything's throbbing?'
'We thought it was you people.'
'It's not magic. Suppose the gods aren't more than usually unhappy?'
'Apparently not.'
Behind them, the priests and the wizards were screaming chin to chin.
The Chief Priest moved a little closer.
'I think I could be strong enough to master and defeat just a little snare,'
he said. 'I haven't felt like this since Mrs Cake was one of my flock.'
'Mrs Cake? What's a Mrs Cake?'
'You have . . . ghastly Things from the Dungeon. Dimensions and things,
yes? Terrible hazards of your ungodly profession?' said the Chief Priest.
'Yes.'
'We have someone called Mrs Cake.'
Ridcully gave him an enquiring look.
'Don't ask,' said the priest, shuddering.'Just be grateful you'll never have
to find out.'
Ridcully silently passed him the brandy.
'Just between the two of us,' said the priest, 'have you got any ideas
about all this? The guards are
trying to dig his lordship out. You know he'll want answers. I 'm not even
certain I know the questions.'
'Not magic and not gods,' said Ridcully.'Can I have the snare back? Thank
you. Not magic and not gods. That doesn't leave us much, does it?'
'I suppose there's not some kind of magic you don't know about?'
'If there is, we don't know about it.'
'Fair enough, ' the priest conceded.
'I suppose it's not the gods up to a bit of ungodliness on the side?' said
Ridcully, clutching at one last straw. 'A couple of 'em had a bit of a tiff or
something? Messing around with golden apples or something?'
'It's very quiet on the god front right now, ' said the Chief Priest. His eyes
glazed as he spoke, apparently reading from a script inside his
head.'Hyperopia, goddess of shoes, thinks that Sandelfon, god of corridors,
is the long-lost twin brother of Grune, god of unseasonal fruit. Who put the
goat in the bed of Offler, the Crocodile God? Is Offler forging an alliance with
Seven-handed Sek? Meanwhile, Hoki the Jokester is up to his old tricks -'
'Yes, yes, all right,' said Ridcully.'I've never been able to get interested in
all that stuff, myself.'
Behind them, the Dean was trying to prevent the Lecturer in Recent Runes
from attempting to turn the priest of Offler the Crocodile God into a set of
matching suitcases, and the Bursar had a bad nosebleed from a lucky blow
with a thurible.
'What we've got to present here, ' said Ridcully, 'is a united front. Right?'
'Agreed, ' said the Chief Priest.
'Right. For now.'
A small rug sinewaved past at eye level. The Chief Priest handed back the
brandy bottle.
'Incidentally, mother says you haven't written lately, ' he said.
'Yeah . . .' The other wizards would have been
surprised at their Archchancellor's look of contrite embarrassment.'I've
been busy. You know how it is.'
'She said to be sure to remind you she's expecting both of us over for
lunch on Hogswatchday.'
'I haven't forgotten,' said Ridcully, glumly. 'I'm looking forward to it.' He
turned to the melee behind them.
'Cut it out, you fellows,' he said.
'Brethren! Desist!' bellowed the Chief Priest.
The Senior Wrangler released his grip on the head of the high priest of the
Cult of Hinki. A couple of curates stopped kicking the Bursar. There was a
general adjustment of clothing, a finding of hats and a bout of embarrassed
coughing.
'That's better,' said Ridcully.'Now then, his Eminence the Chief Priest and
myself have decided -'
The Dean glowered at a very small bishop.
'He kicked me! He kicked me!'
'Ooo! I never did, my son.'
'You bloody well did,' the Dean hissed. 'Sideways, so they wouldn't see!'
'- have decided -' repeated Ridcully, glaring at the Dean, 'to pursue a
solution to the current disturbances in a spirit of brotherhood and goodwill
and that includes you, Senior Wrangler.'
'I couldn't help it! He pushed me.'
'Well! May you be forgiven!' said the Archdeacon of Thrume, stoutly.
There was a crash from above. A chaise-longue cantered down the stairs
and smashed through the hall door.
'I think perhaps the guards are still trying to free the Patrician,' said the
High Priest. 'Apparently even his secret passages locked themselves.'
'All of them? I thought the sly devil had 'em everywhere,' said Ridcully.
'All locked,' said the High Priest. 'All of them.'
'Almost all of them,' said a voice behind him.
Ridcully's tones did not change as he turned around, except that a slight
extra syrup was added.
A figure had apparently stepped out of the wall. It was human, but only by
default. Thin, pale, and clad all in dusty black, the Patrician always put
Ridcully in mind of a predatory flamingo, if you could find a flamingo that
was black and had the patience of a rock.
'Ah, Lord Vetinari,' he said, 'I am so glad you are unhurt.'
'I will see you gentlemen in the Oblong Office, ' said the Patrician. Behind
him, a panel in the wall slid back noiselessly.
'I, um, I believe there are a number of guards upstairs trying to free -' the
Chief Priest began.
The Patrician waved a thin hand at him.'I wouldn't dream of stopping
them,' he said. 'It gives them something to do and makes them feel
important. Otherwise they just have to stand around all day looking fierce
and controlling their bladders. Come this way.'

The leaders of the other Ankh-Morpork Guilds turned up in ones and
twos, gradually filling the room.
The Patrician sat gloomily staring at the paper-work on his desk as they
argued.
'Well, it's not us,' said the head of the Alchemists.
'Things are always flying through the air when you fellows are around,'
said Ridcully.
'Yes, but that's only because of unforeseen exothermic reactions, ' said
the alchemist.
'Things keep blowing up,' translated the deputy-head alchemist, without
looking up.
'They may blow up, but they come down again.They don't flutter around
and, e.g., start unscrewing themselves,' said his chief, giving him a warning
frown. 'Anyway, why'd we do it to ourselves? I tell you, it's hell in my
workshop! There's stuff whizzing everywhere! Just before I came out, a huge
and very expensive piece of glassware broke into splinters !'
'Marry, 'twas a sharp retort, ' said a wretched voice.
The press of bodies moved aside to reveal the General Secretary and
Chief Butt of the Guild of Fools and Joculators. He flinched under the
attention, but he generally flinched all the time anyway. He had the look of a
man whose face has been Ground Zero for one custard pie too many, whose
trousers have been too often awash with whitewash, whose nerves would
disintegrate completely at the sound of just one more whoopee-cushion. The
other Guild leaders tried to be nice to him, in the same way that people try to
be kind to other people who are standing on the ledges of very high
buildings.
'What do you mean, Geoffrey?' said Ridcully, as kindly as he could.
The Fool gulped. 'Well, you see,' he mumbled, 'we have sharp as in
splinters, and retort as in large glass alchemical vessel, ~~d thus we get a
pun on "sharp retort" which also means, well, a scathing answer. Sharp
retort. You see? It's a play on words. Um. It's not very good, is it.'
The Archchancellor looked into eyes like two runny eggs.
'Oh, apun,' he said.'Of course. Hohoho.' He waved a hand encouragingly
at the others.
'Hohoho, ' said the Chief Priest.
'Hohoho, ' said the leader of the Assassins' Guild.
'Hohoho,' said the head Alchemist. 'And, you know, what makes it even
funnier is that it was actually an alembic.'
'So what you're telling me,' said the Patrician, as considerate hands led
the Fool away, 'is that none of you are responsible for these events?'
He gave Ridcully a meaningful look as he spoke.
The Archchancellor was about to answer when his eye was caught by a
movement on the Patrician's desk.
There was a little model of the Palace in a glass globe. And next to it was
a paperknife.
The paperknife was slowly bending.
'Well?' said the Patrician.
'Not us,' said Ridcully, his voice hollow. The Patrician followed his gaze.
The knife was already curved like a bow.
The Patrician scanned the sheepish crowd until he found Captain Doxie of
the City Guard Day Watch.
'Can't you do something?' he said.
'Er. Like what, sir? The knife? Er. I suppose I could arrest it for being
bent.'
Lord Vetinari threw his hands up in the air.
'So! It's not magic! It's not gods! It's not people! What is it? And who's
going to stop it? Who am I going to call?'
Half an hour later the little globe had vanished.
No-one noticed. They never do.

Mrs Cake knew who she was going to call.
'You there, One-Man-Bucket?' she said.
Then she ducked, just in case.
A reedy and petulant voice oozed out of the air.
where have you been I can't move in here!
Mrs Cake bit her lip. Such a direct reply meant her spirit guide was
worried. When he didn't have anything on his mind he spent five minutes
talking about buffaloes and great white spirits, although if One-Man-Bucket
had ever been near white spirit he'd drunk it and it was anyone's guess what
he'd do to a buffalo. And he kept putting 'ums' and 'hows ' into the
conversation.
'What d'you mean?'
- there been a catastrophe or something, some kind of ten-second
plague?
'No. Don't think so.'
- there's real pressure here, you know. what's hokeing everything up?
'What do you mean?'
- shutupshutupshutup I'm trying to talk to the lady!
- you lot over there, keep the noise down! oh yeaha sez you -
Mrs Cake was aware of other voices trying to drown him out.
'One-Man-Bucket!'
- heathen savage, am I? so you know what this heathen savage says to
youa yeah? listen, I've been over here for a hundred years, me! I don't have
to take talk like that from someone who's still warm! Tight - that does it, you .
. .
His voice faded.
Mrs Cake set her jaw.
His voice came back.
- oh yeah? oh yeaha well, maybe you was big when you was alive, friend,
but here and now you're just a bedsheet with holes in it! Oh, so you don't like
that, eh -
'He's going to start fighting again, mum,' said Ludmilla, who was curled
up by the kitchen stove.'He always calls people "friend" just before he hits
them.'
Mrs Cake sighed.
'And it sounds as if he's going to fight a lot of people,' said Ludmilla.
'Oh, all right. Go and fetch me a vase. A cheap one, mind.'
It is widely suspected, but not generally known, that everything has an
associated spirit form which, upon its demise, exists briefly in the draughty
gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. This is important.
'No, not that one. That belonged to your granny.'
This ghostly survival does not last for long without a consciousness to
hold it together, but depending on what you have in mind it can last for just
long enough.
'That one'll do. I never liked the pattern.'
Mrs Cake took an orange vase with pink peonies on it from her daughter's
paws.
'Are you still there, One-Man-Bucket?' she said.
- I'll make you regret the day you ever died, you whining -
'Catch.'
She dropped the vase on to the stove. It smashed.
A moment later, there was a sound from the Other Side. If a discorporate
spirit had hit another discorporate spirit with the ghost of a vase, it would
have sounded just like that.
- right, said the voice of One-Man-Bucket, and there's more where that
came from, OK?
The Cakes, mother and hairy daughter, nodded at each other.
When One-Man-Bucket spoke again, his voice dripped with smug
satisfaction.
- just a bit of an altercation about seniority here, he said. just sorting out a
bit of personal space. got a lot of problems here, Mrs Cake. it's like a waiting
room -
There was a shrill clamour of other disembodied voices.
- could you get a message, please, to Mr -
- tell her there's a bag of coins on the ledge up the chimney -
- Agnes is not to have the silverware after what she said about our Molly -
- I didn't have time to feed the cat, could someone go - shutupshutup!
That was One-Man-Bucket again. you've got no idea have you? this is ghost
talk, is it? feed the cat? whatever happened to 'I am very happy here, and
waiting for you to join me'?
- listen, if anyone else joins us, we'll be standing on one another's heads -
- that's not the point. that's not the point, that's all I'm saying. when you're
a spirit, there's things you gotta say. Mrs Cake?
'Yes?'
- you got to tell someone about this.
Mrs Cake nodded.
'Now you all go away,' she said. 'I'm getting one of my headaches.'
The crystal ball faded.
'Well!' said Ludmilla.
'I ain't going to tell no priests,' said Mrs Cake firmly.
It wasn't that Mrs Cake wasn't a religious woman.
She was, as has already been hinted, a very religious woman indeed.
There wasn't a temple, church, mosque or small group of standing stones
anywhere in the city that she hadn't attended at one time or another, as a
result of which she was more feared than an Age of Enlightenment; the mere
sight of Mrs Cake's small fat body on the threshold was enough to stop most
priests dead in the middle of their invocation.
Dead. That was the point. All the religions had very strong views about
talking to the dead. And so did Mrs Cake. They held that it was sinful. Mrs
Cake held that it was only common courtesy.
This usually led to a fierce ecclesiastical debate which resulted in Mrs
Cake giving the chief priest what she called 'a piece of her mind'. There were
so many pieces of Mrs Cake's mind left around the city now that it was quite
surprising that there was enough left to power Mrs Cake but, strangely
enough, the more pieces of her mind she gave away the more there seemed
to be left.
There was also the question of Ludmilla. Ludmilla was a problem. The late
Mr Cake, gods rest his soul, had never so much as even whistled at the full
moon his whole life, and Mrs Cake had dark suspicions that Ludmilla was a
throwback to the family's distant past in the mountains, or maybe had
contracted genetics as a child. She was pretty certain her mother had once
alluded circumspectly to the fact that Great-uncle Erasmus sometimes had
to eat his meals under the table. Either way, Ludmilla was a decent upright
young woman for three weeks in every four and a
perfectly well-behaved hairy wolf thing for the rest of the time.
Priests often failed to see it that way. Since by the time Mrs Cake fell out
with whatever priests * were currently moderating between her and the gods,
she had usually already taken over the flower arrangements, altar dusting,
temple cleaning, sacrificial stone scrubbing, honorary vestigial virgining,
hassock repairing and every other vital religious support role by sheer force
of personality, her departure resulted in total chaos.
Mrs Cake buttoned up her coat.
'It won't work,' said Ludmilla.
'I'll try the wizards. They ought to be tole,' said Mrs Cake. She was
quivering with self-importance, like a small enraged football.
'Yes, but you said they never Listen,' said Ludmilla.
'Got to try. Byway, what are you doing out of your room?'
'Oh, mother. You know I hate that room. There's no need -'
'You can't be too careful. Supposin' you was to take it into your head to
go and chase people's chickens? What would the neighbours say?'
'I've never felt the least urge to chase a chicken, mother,' said Ludmilla
wearily.
'Or run after carts, barkin'.'
'That's dogs, mother.'
'You just get back in your room and lock yourself in and get on with some
sewing like a good girl.'

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  Mrs Cake was aware that some religions had priestesses. What Mrs
Cake thought about the ordination of women was unprintable. The religions
with priestesses in Ankh-Morpork tended to attract a large crowd of plain-
clothes priests from other denominations who were looking for a few hours'
respite somewhere where they wouldn't encounter Mrs Cake.


'You know I can't hold the needles properly, mother.'
'Try for your mother.'
' Yes, mother,' said Ludmilla.
'And don't go near the window. We don't want people upset.'
'Yes, mother. And you make sure you put your premonition on, mum. You
know your eyesight isn't what it was.'
Mrs Cake watched her daughter go upstairs. Then she locked the front
door behind her and strode towards Unseen University where, she'd heard,
there was too much nonsense of all sorts.
Anyone watching Mrs Cake's progress along the street would have
noticed one or two odd details.
Despite her erratic gait, no-one bumped into her. They weren't avoiding
her, she just wasn't where they were.
At one point she hesitated, and stepped into an alleyway. A moment later
a barrel rolled off a cart that was unloading outside a tavern and smashed on
the cobbles where she would have been. She stepped out of the alley and
over the wreckage, grumbling to herself.
Mrs Cake spent a lot of the time grumbling. Her mouth was constantly
moving, as if she was trying to dislodge a troublesome pip from somewhere
in the back of her teeth.
She reached the high black gates of the University and hesitated again, as
if listening to some inner voice.
Then she stepped aside and waited.

Bill Door lay in the darkness of the hayloft and waited.
Below, he could hear the occasional horsey sounds of Binky - a soft
movement, the champ of a jaw.
Bill Door. So now he had a name. Of course, he'd always had a name, but
he'd been named for what he embodied, not for who he was. Bill Door. It had
a good solid ring to it.
Mr Bill Door. William Door, Esq. Billy D - no. Not Billy.

Bill Door eased himself further into the hay. He reached into his robe and
pulled out the golden timer. There was, quite perceptibly, less sand in the
top bulb. He put it back.
And then there was this "sleep". He knew what it was. People did it for
quite a lot of the time. They lay down and sleep happened. Presumably it
served some purpose. He was watching out for it with interest. He would
have to subject it to analysis.

Night drifted across the world, coolly pursued by a new day.
There was a stirring in the henhouse across the yard.
'Cock-a-doo . . . er.'
Bill Door stared at the roof of the barn.
'Cock-a-doodle . . . er.'
Grey light was filtering in between the cracks.
Yet only moments ago there had been the red light of sunset!
Six hours had vanished.
Bill hauled out the timer. Yes. The level was definitely down. While he had
been waiting to experience sleep, something had stolen part of his . . . of his
life. He'd completely missed it, too -
'Cock...cock-a...er...'
He climbed down from the loft and stepped out into the thin mist of dawn.
The elderly chickens watched him cautiously as he peered into their
house. An ancient and rather embarrassed-looking cockerel glared at him
and shrugged.
There was a clanging noise from the direction of the house. An old iron
barrel hoop was hanging by the door, and Miss Flitworth was hitting it
vigorously with a ladle.
He stalked over to investigate.
WHAT FOR ARE YOU MAKING THE NOISE, MISS FLITWORTH?
She spun around, ladle half-raised.
'Good grief, you must walk like a cat!' she said.
I MUST?

'I meant I didn't hear you.' She stood back and looked him up and down.
'There's still something about you I can't put my finger on, Bill Door,' she
said. 'Wish I knew what it was.'
The seven-foot skeleton regarded her stoically. He felt there was nothing
he could say.
'What do you want for breakfast?' said the old woman.
'Not that it'll make any difference, 'cos it's porridge.'
Later she thought: he must have eaten it, because the bowl is empty. Why
can't I remember?
And then there was the matter of the scythe. He looked at it as if he'd
never seen one before. She pointed out the grass nail and the handles. He
looked at them politely.
HOW DO YOU SHARPEN IT, MISS FLITWORTH?
'It's sharp enough, for goodness sake.'
HOW DO YOU SHARPEN IT MORE?
'You can't. Sharp's sharp. You can't get sharper than that.'
He'd swished it aimlessly, and made a disappointed hissing noise.
And there was the grass, too.
The hay meadow was high on the hill behind the farm, overlooking the
cornfield. She watched him for a while.
It was the most interesting technique she had ever witnessed. She
wouldn't even have thought that it was technically possible.
Eventually she said: 'It's good. You've got the swing and everything.'
THANK YOU, MISS FLITWORTH.
'But why one blade of grass at a time?'
Bill Door regarded the neat row of stalks for some while.
THERE IS ANOTHER WAY?
'You can do lots in one go, you know.'
NO. NO. ONE BLADE AT A TIME. ONE TIME, ONE BLADE.
'You won't cut many that way,' said Miss Flitworth.
EVERY LAST ONE, MISS FLITWORTH.
'Yes?'
TRUST ME ON THIS.