Miss Flitworth left him to it and went back to the farm-house. She stood at
the kitchen window and watched the distant dark figure for a while, as it
moved over the hillside.
I wonder what he did? she thought. He's got a Past. He's one of them Men
of Mystery, I expect. Perhaps he did a robbery and is Lying Low.
He's cut a whole row already. One at a time, but somehow faster than a
man cutting swathe by swathe . . .
Miss Flitworth's only reading matter was the Farmer's Almanac and Seed
Catalogue, which could last a whole year in the privy if no-one was ill. In
addition to sober information about phases of the moon and seed sowings it
took a certain grisly relish in recounting the various mass murders, vicious
robberies and natural disasters that befell mankind, on the lines of 'June 15,
Year of the Impromptu Stoat: On this Day 150 yrs. since, a Man killed by
Freak shower of ?Goul~.h? in Quirm' or '14 die at hands of Chume, the
Notorious Herring Thrower.'
The important thing about all these was that they happened a long way
away, possibly by some kind of divine intervention. The only things that
usually happened locally were the occasional theft of a chicken, and the
occasional wandering troll. Of course, there were also robbers and bandits in
the hills but they got on well with the actual residents and were essential to
the local economy. Even so, she felt she'd certainly feel safer with someone
else about the place.
The dark figure on the hillside was well into the second row. Behind it, the
cut grass withered in the sun.
I HAVE FINISHED, MISS FLITWORTH.
'Go and feed the pig, then. She's called Nancy.'
NANCY, said Bill, turning the word around in his mouth as though he was
trying to see it from all sides.
'After my mother.'
I WILL GO AND FEED THE PIG NANCY, MISS FLITWORTH.
It seemed to Miss Flitworth that mere seconds went by.
I HAVE FINISHED, MISS FLITWORTH.
She squinted at him. Then, slowly and deliberately, she wiped her hands
on a cloth, stepped out into the yard and headed for the pigsty.
Nancy was eyeball-deep in the swill trough.
Miss Flitworth wondered exactly what comment she should make. Finally
she said, 'Very good. Very good. You, you, you certainly work . . . fast.'
MISS FLITWORTH, WHY DOES NOT THE COCKEREL CROW PROPERLY?
'Oh, that's just Cyril. He hasn't got a very good memory. Ridiculous, isn't
it? I wish he'd get it right.'
Bill Door found a piece of chalk in the farm's old smithy, located a piece
of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he
wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril towards it.
THIS YOU WILL READ he said.
Cyril peered myopically at the 'Cock-A-Doodle-Doo' in heavy gothic script.
Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly
understanding formed that he'd better learn to read very, very quickly.
Bill Door sat back among the hay and thought about the day. It seemed to
have been quite a full one. He'd cut hay and fed animals and mended a
window. He'd found some old overalls hanging in the barn. They seemed far
more appropriate for a Bill Door than a robe woven of absolute darkness, so
he'd put them on. And Miss Flitworth had given him a broad-brimmed straw
hat.
And he'd ventured the half-mile walk into the town. It wasn't even a one
horse town. If anyone had a horse, they'd have eaten it. The residents
appeared to make a living by stealing one another's washing.
There was a town square, which was ridiculous. It was really only an
enlarged crossroads, with a clock tower.
And there was a tavern. He'd gone inside.
After the initial pause while everyone's mind had refocused to allow him
room, they'd been cautiously hospitable; news travels even faster on a vine
with few grapes.
'You'd be the new man up at Miss Flitworth's,' said the barman.'A Mr
Door, I did hear.'
CALL ME BILL.
'Ah? Used to be a tidy old farm, once upon a time. We never thought the
old girl'd stay on.'
'Ah,' agreed a couple of old men by the fireplace.
AH.
'New to these parts, then?' said the barman.
The sudden silence of the other men in the bar was like a black hole.
NOT PRECISELY.
'Been here before, have you?'
JUST PASSING THROUGH.
'They say old Miss Flitworth's a loony,' said one of the figures on the
?t~inches? around the smoke-blackened walls.
'But sharp as a knife, mind,' said another hunched drinker.
'Oh, yes. She's sharp all right. But still a loony.'
'And they say she's got boxes full of treasure in that old parlour of hers.'
'She's tight with money, I know that.'
'That proves it. Rich folk are always tight with money.'
'All right. Sharp and rich. But still a loony.'
'You can't be loony and rich. You've got to be eccentric if you're rich.'
The silence returned and hovered. Bill Door sought desperately for
something to say. He had never been very good at small talk. He'd never had
much occasion to use it.
What did people say at times like this? Ah. Yes.
I WILL BUY EVERYONE A DRINK, he announced.
Later on they taught him a game that consisted of a table with holes and
nets around the edge, and balls carved expertly out of wood, and apparently
balls had to bounce
off one another and into the holes. It was called Pond. He played it well. In
fact, he played it perfectly. At the start, he
didn't know how not to. But after he heard them gasp a few times he
corrected himself and started making mistakes with painstaking precision;
by the time they taught him darts he was getting really good at them. The
more mistakes he made, the more people liked him. So he propelled the little
feathery darts with cold skill, never letting one drop within a foot of the
targets they urged on him. He even sent one ricocheting off a nail head and a
lamp so that it landed in someone's beer, which made one of the older men
laugh so much he had to be taken outside into the fresh air.
They'd called him Good Old Bill.
No-one had ever called him that before.
What a strange evening.
There had been one bad moment, though. He'd heard a small voice say:
'That man is a skelington,' and had turned to see a small child in a
nightdress watching him over the top of the bar, without terror but with a sort
of fascinated horror.
The landlord, who by now Bill Door knew to be called Lifton, had laughed
nervously and apologised.
'That's just her fancy,' he said.'The things children say, eh? Get on with
you back to bed, Sal. And say you're sorry to Mr Door.'
'He's a skelington with clothes on,' said the child.'Why doesn't all the
drink fall through?'
He'd almost panicked. His intrinsic powers were fading, then. People
could not normally see him - he occupied a blind spot in their senses, which
they filled in some- where inside their heads with something they preferred
to encounter. But the adults' inability to see him clearly wasn't proof against
this sort of insistent declaration, and he could feel the puzzlement around
him. Then, just in time, its mother had come in from the back room and had
taken the child away. There'd been muffled complaints on the lines of ' - a
skelington, with all bones on -' disappearing around the bend in the stairs.
And all the time the ancient clock over the fireplace had been ticking,
ticking, chopping seconds off his life. There'd seemed so many of them, not
long ago . . .
There was a faint knocking at the barn door, below the hayloft. He heard it
pushed open.
'Are you decent, Bill Door?' said Miss Flitworth's voice in the darkness.
Bill Door analysed the sentence for meaning within context.
YES? he ventured.
'I've brought you a hot milk drink.'
YES?
'Come on, quick now. Otherwise it'll go cold.'
Bill Door cautiously climbed down the wooden ladder.
Miss Flitworth was holding a lantern, and had a shawl around her
shoulders.
'It's got cinnamon on it. My Ralph always liked cinnamon.' She sighed.
Bill Door was aware of undertones and overtones in the same way that an
astronaut is aware of weather patterns below him; they're all visible, all
there, all laid out for study and all totally divorced from actual experience.
THANK YOU, he said.
Miss Flitworth looked around.
'You've really made yourself at home here,' she said brightly.
YES.
She pulled the shawl around her shoulders.
'I'll be getting back to the house, then,' she said.'You can bring the mug
back in the morning.'
She sped away into the night.
Bill Door took the drink up to the loft. He put it on a low beam and sat and
watched it long after it grew cold and the candle had gone out.
After a while he was aware of an insistent hissing. He took out the golden
timer and put it right at the other end of the loft, under a pile of hay.
It made no difference at all.

Windle Poons peered at the house numbers - a hundred Counting Pines
had died for this street alone -
and then realised he didn't have to. He was being short-sighted out of
habit. He improved his eyesight.
Number 668 took some while to find because it was in fact on the first
floor above a tailor's shop. Entrance was via an alleyway. There was a
wooden door at the end of the alley. On its peeling paintwork someone had
pinned a notice which read, in optimistic lettering:
'Come in! Come in! ! The Fresh Start Club.
Being Dead is only the Beginning! ! !'

The door opened on to a flight of stairs that smelled of old paint and dead
flies. They creaked even more than Windle's knees.
Someone had been drawing on the walls. The phraseology was exotic but
the general tone was familiar enough: Spooks of the World Arise, You have
Nothing to lose but your Chains and The Silent Majority want DeadRights
and End vitalism now!?!
At the top was ?dolanding?, with one door opening off it.
Once upon a time someone had hung an oil lamp from the ceiling, but it
looked as though it had never been lit for thousands of years. An ancient
spider, possibly living on the remains of the oil, watched him warily from its
eyrie.
Windle looked at the card again, took a deep breath out of habit, and
knocked.

The Archchancellor strode back into College in a fury, with the others
trailing desperately behind him.
'Who is he going to call! We're the wizards around here!'
'Yes, but we don't actually know what's happening, do we?' said the
Dean.
'So we're going to find out!' Ridcully growled. 'I don't know who he's
going to call, but I'm damn sure who I'm going to call.'
He halted abruptly. The rest of the wizards piled into him.
'Oh, no,' said the Senior Wrangler.'Please, not that!'
'Nothing to it,' said Ridcully.'Nothing to worry about. Read up on it last
night, 's'matterofact. You can do it with three bits of wood and -'
'Four cc of mouse blood,' said the Senior Wrangler mournfully.'You don't
even need that. You can use two bits of wood and an egg. It has to be a fresh
egg, though.'
'Why?'
'I suppose the mouse feels happier about it.'
'No, I mean the egg.'
'Oh, who knows how an egg feels?'
'Anyway,' said the Dean, 'it's dangerous. I've always felt that he only stays
in the octogram for the look of the thing. I hate it when he peers at you and
seems to be counting.'
'Yes,' said the Senior Wrangler.'We don't need to do that. We get over
most things. Dragons, monsters. Rats. Remember the rats last year? Seemed
to be everywhere. Lord Vetinari wouldn't listen to us, oh no. He paid that glib
bugger in the red and yellow tights a thousand gold pieces to get rid of 'em.'
'It worked, though,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Of course it bloody worked,' said the Dean.'It worked in Quirm and Sto
Lat as well. He'd have got away with it in Pseudopolis as well if someone
hadn't recognised him. Mr so-called Amazing Maurice and His Educated
Rodents!'
'It's no good trying to change the subject,' said Ridcully.'We're going to
do the Rite of AshKente. Right?'
'And summon Death, ' said the Dean.'Oh, dear.'
'Nothing wrong with Death,' said Ridcully.'Professional fellow. Job to do.
Fair and square. Play a straight bat, no problem. He'll know what's
happening.'
'Oh, dear, ' said the Dean again.
They reached the gateway. Mrs Cake stepped forward, blocking the
Archchancellor's path.
Ridcully raised his eyebrows.
The Archchancellor was not the kind of man who takes a special pleasure
in being brusque and rude to women. Or, to put it another way, he was
brusque and rude to absolutely everyone, regardless of sex, which was
equality of a sort. And if the following conversation had not been taking
place between someone who listened to what people said several seconds
before they said it, and someone who didn't listen to what people said at all,
everything might have been a lot different. Or perhaps it wouldn't.
Mrs Cake led with an answer.
'I'm not your good woman!' she snapped.
'And who are you, my good woman?' said the Archchancellor.
'Well, that's no way to talk to a respectable person,' said Mrs Cake.
'There's no need to be offended, ' said Ridcully.
'Oh blow, is that what I'm doin'?' said Mrs Cake.
'Madam, why are you answering me before I've even said something?'
'What?'
'What d'you mean?'
'What do you mean?'
'What?'
They stared at one another, fixed in an unbreakable conversational
deadlock. Then Mrs Cake realised.
'O I'm prematurely premoniting again,' she said.
She stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it around with a squelching
noise.'It's all alright now. Now, the reason -'
But Ridcully had had enough.
'Bursar,' he said, 'give this woman a penny and send her about her
business, will you?'
'What?' said Mrs Cake, suddenly enraged beyond belief.
'There's too much of this sort of thing these days,' said Ridcully to the
Dean, as they strolled away.
'It's the pressures and stresses of living in a big city,' said the Senior
Wrangler.'I read that somewhere. It takes people in a funny way.'
They stepped through the wicket gate in one of the big doors and the
Dean shut it in Mrs Cake's face.
'He might not come,' said the Senior Wrangler, as they crossed the
quadrangle. 'He didn't come for poor old Windle's farewell party.'
'He'll come for the Rite,' said Ridcully.'It doesn't just send him an
invitation, it puts a bloody RSVP on

'Oh, good. I like sherry,' said the Bursar.
'Shut up, Bursar.'

There was an alley, somewhere in the Shades, which was the most alley-
ridden part of an alley-ridden city.
Something small and shiny rolled into it, and vanished in the darkness.
After a while, there were faint metallic noises.

The atmosphere in the Archchancellor's study was very cold.
Eventually the Bursar quavered: 'Maybe he's busy?'
'Shut up,' said the wizards, in unison.
Something was happening. The floor inside the chalked magic octogram
was going white with frost.
'It's never done that before,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'This is all wrong, you know,' said the Dean. 'We should have some
candles and some cauldrons and some stuff bubbling in crucibles and some
glitter dust and some coloured smoke -'

'The Rite doesn't need any of that stuff,' said Ridcully sharply.
'It might not need them, but I do,' muttered the Dean.'Doing it without the
right paraphernalia is like taking all your clothes off to have a bath.'
'That's what I do,' said Ridcully.
'Humph. Well, each to his own, of course, but some of us like to think that
we're maintaining standards.'
'Perhaps he's on holiday?' said the Bursar.
'Oh, yes,' sneered the Dean.'On a beach somewhere? A few iced drinks
and a Kiss Me Quick hat?'
'Hold on. Hold on. Someone's coming,' hissed the Senior Wrangler.
The faint outlines of a hooded figure appeared above the octogram. It
wavered constantly, as if it was being seen through superheated air.
'That's him, ' said the Dean.
'No it isn't, ' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.'It's just a grey ?ro? -
there's nothing in -'
He stopped.
It turned, slowly. It was filled out, suggesting a wearer, but at the same
time had a feeling of hollowness, as if it was merely a shape for something
with no shape of its own. The hood was empty.
The emptiness watched the wizards for a few seconds and then focused
on the Archchancellor.
It said, Who are you?
Ridcully swallowed. 'Er. Mustrum Ridcully. Archchancellor.'
The hood nodded. The Dean stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it
around. The robe wasn't talking.
Nothing was being heard. It was just that, afterwards, you had a sudden
memory of what had just failed to be said and no knowledge of how it had
got there.
The hood said, You are a superior being on this world?
Ridcully looked at the other wizards. The Dean glared.

'Well . . . you know . . . yes . . . first among equals and all that sort of thing
. . . yes . . .' Ridcully managed.
He was told, We bring good news.
'Good news? Good news?' Ridcully squirmed under the gazerless
gaze.'Oh, good. That is good news.'
He was told, Death has retired.
'Pardon?'
He was told, Death has retired.
'Oh? That is . . . news . . .' said Ridcully uncertainly.
'Uh. How? Exactly . . . how?'
He was told, We apologise for the recent lapse in standards.
'Lapse?' said the Archchancellor, now totally mystified.'Well, uh. I'm not
sure there's been a . . . I mean, of course the fella was always knockin'
around, but most of the time we hardly . . .'
He was told, It has all been most irregular.
'It has? Has it? Oh, well, can't have irregularity,'said the Archchancellor.
He was told, It must have been terrible.
'Well, I . . . that is . . . I suppose we . . . I'm not sure . . . must it?'
He was told, But now the burden is removed. Rejoice. That is all. There
will be a short transitional period before a suitable candidate presents itself,
and then normal service will be resumed. In the meantime, we apologise for
any unavoidable inconvenience caused by superfluous life effects.
The figure wavered and began to fade.
The Archchancellor waved his hands desperately.
'Wait!' he said.'You can't just go like that! I command you to stay! What
service? What does it all mean? Who are you?'
The hood turned back towards him and said, We are nothing.
'That's no help! What is your name?'
We are oblivion.
The figure vanished.

The wizards fell silent. The frost in the octogram began to sublime back
into air.
'Oh-oh, ' said the Bursar.
'Short transitional period? Is that what this is?' said the Dean.
The floor shook.
'Oh-oh, ' said the Bursar again.
'That doesn't explain why everything is Living a life of its own,' said the
Senior Wrangler.
'Hold on . . . hold on,' said Ridcully, 'If people are coming to the end of
their life and leaving their bodies and everything, but Death isn't taking them
away -'
'Then that means they're queuing up here,' said the Dean.
'With nowhere to go.'
'Not just people,' said the Senior Wrangler.'It must be everything. Every
thing that dies.'
'Filling up the wadd with life force,' said Ridcully.
The wizards were speaking in a monotone, everyone's mind running
ahead of the conversation to the distant horror of the conclusion.
'Hanging around with nothing to do,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Ghosts.'
'Poltergeist activity.'
'Good grief.'
'Hang on, though,' said the Bursar, who had managed to catch up with
events.'Why should that worry us? We don't have anything to fear from the
dead, do we? After all, they're just people who are dead.
They're just ordinary people. People like us.'
The wizards thought about this. They looked at one another. They started
to shout, all at once.
No-one remembered the bit about suitable candidates.

Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may
not be able to move mountains,exactly. But it can create someone who can.
People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back
to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works
the other way.
Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a
potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must
be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of
most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend
to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when
it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.
Belief creates other things.
It created Death. Not death, which is merely a technical term for a state
caused by prolonged absence of life, but Death ?as? the personality. He
evolved, as it were, along with life. As soon as a living thing was even dimly
aware of the concept of suddenly becoming a non-living thing, there was
Death. He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only
added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that
was already millions of years old.
And now he had gone. But belief doesn't stop. Belief goes right on
believing. And since the focal point of belief had been lost, new points
sprang up. Small as yet, not very powerful. The private deaths of every
species, no longer united but specific.
In the stream, black-scaled, swam the new Death of Mayflies. In the
forests, invisible, a creature of sound only, drifted the chop-chop-chop of the
Death of Trees.
Over the desert a dark and empty shell moved purposefully, half an inch
above the ground . . . the Death of Tortoises.
The Death of Humanity hadn't been finished yet.
Humans can believe some very complex things.

It's like the difference between off-the-peg and bespoke.

The metallic sounds stopped coming from the alley.
Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something
making no noise.
And, finally, there was a very faint jangling sound, disappearing into the
distance.

'Don't stand in the doorway, friend. Don't block up the hall. Come on in.'
Windle Poons blinked in the gloom.
When his eyes became accustomed to it, he realised that there was a
semicircle of chairs in an otherwise rather bare and dusty room. They were
all occupied.
In the centre - at the focus, as it were, of the half circle - was a small table
at which someone had been seated. They were now advancing towards him,
with their hand out and a big smile on their face.
'Don't tell me, let me guess,' they said.'You're a zombie, right?'
'Er.' Windle Poons had never seen anyone with such a pallid skin, such as
there was of it, before. Or wearing clothes that looked as if they'd been
washed in razor blades and smelled as though someone had not only died in
them but was still in them. Or sporting a Glad To Be Grey badge.
'I don't know,' he said. 'I suppose so. Only they buried me, you see, and
there was this card -' He held it out, Like a shield.
''Course there was.'Course there was,' said the figure.
He's going to want me to shake hands, Windle thought. If I do, I just know
I'm going to end up with more fingers than I started with. Oh, my goodness.
Will I end up like that?
'And I 'm dead, ' he said, lamely.
'And fed up with being pushed around, eh?' said the
greenish-skinned one. Windle shook his hand very carefully.
'Well, not exactly fed -'
'Shoe's the name. Reg Shoe.'
'Poons. Windle Poons,' said Windle.'Er -'
'Yeah, it's always the same, ' said Reg Shoe bitterly.
'Once you're dead, people just don't want to know, right? They act as if
you've got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?'
'Everyone, I should have thought,' said Windle.
'Yeah, I know what it's like. Tell someone you're dead and they look at
you as if they've seen a ghost,'
Mr Shoe went on.
Windle realised that talking to Mr Shoe was very much like talking to the
Archchancellor. It didn't actually matter what you said, because he wasn't
listening. Only, in Mustrum Ridcully's case it was because he just wasn't
bothering, while Reg Shoe was in fact supplying your side of the
conversation somewhere inside his own head.
'Yeah, right, ' said Windle, giving in.
'We were just finishing off, in fact,' said Mr Shoe.
'Let me introduce you. Everyone, this is -' He hesitated.
'Poons. Windle Poons.'
'Brother Windle,' said Mr Shoe.'Give him a big Fresh Start welcome!'
There was an embarrassed chorus of 'hallos'. A large and rather hairy
young man at the end of the row caught Windle's eye and rolled his own
yellow eyes in a theatrical gesture of fellow feeling.
'This is Brother Arthur Winkings -'
'Count Notfaroutoe, ' said a female voice sharply.
'And Sister Doreen - I mean Countess Notfaroutoe, of course -'
'Charmed, I'm sure,' said the female voice, as the small dumpy woman
sitting next to the small dumpy
shape of the Count extended a beringed hand. The Count himself gave
Windle a worried grin. He seemed to be wearing opera dress designed for a
man several sizes larger.
'And Brother Schleppel -'
The chair was empty. But a deep voice from the darkness underneath it
said, 'Evenin'.'
'And Brother Lupine.' The muscular, hairy young man with the long
canines and pointy ears gave
Windle's hand a hearty shake.
'And Sister Drull. And Brother Gorper. And Brother Ixolite.'
Windle shook a number of variations on the theme of hand.
Brother Ixolite handed him a small piece of yellow paper. On it was written
one word: OoooEeeeOoooEeeeOoooEEEee.
'I'm sorry there aren't more here tonight,' said Mr Shoe.'I do my best, but
I'm afraid some people just don't seem prepared to make the effort.'
'Er . . . dead people?' said Windle, still staring at the note.
'Apathy, I call it,' said Mr Shoe, bitterly.'How can the movement make
progress if people are just going to lie around the whole time?'
Lupine started making frantic 'don't get him started' signals behind Mr
Shoe's head, but Windle wasn't able to stop himself in time.
'What movement?' he said.
'Dead Rights, ' said Mr Shoe promptly. 'I'll give you one of my leaflets.'
'But, surely, er, dead people don't have rights?' said Windle. In the corner
of his vision he saw Lupine put his hand over his eyes.
'You're dead right there, ' said Lupine, his face absolutely straight. Mr
Shoe glared at him.
'Apathy,' he repeated.'It's always the same. You do your best for people,
and they just ignore you. Do
you know people can say what they like about you and take away your
property, just because you're dead? And they -'
'I thought that most people, when they died, just . . . you know . . . died, '
said Windle.
'It's just laziness,' said Mr Shoe.'They just don't want to make the effort.'
Windle had never seen anyone look so dejected. Reg Shoe seemed to
shrink several inches.
'How long have you been undead, Vindle?' said Doreen, with brittle
brightness.
'Hardly any time at all, ' said Windle, relieved at the change of tone.'I must
say it's turning out to be different than I imagined.'
'You get used to it,' said Arthur Winkings, alias Count Notfaroutoe,
gloomily.'That's the thing about being undead. It's as easy as falling off a
cliff. We're all undead here'
Lupine coughed.
'Except Lupine, ' said Arthur.
'I'm more what you might call honorary undead,' said Lupine.
'Him being a werewolf, ' explained Arthur.
'I thought he was a werewolf as soon as I saw him, 'said Windle, nodding.
'Every full moon,' said Lupine. 'Regular.'
'You start howling and growing hair, ' said Windle.
They all shook their heads.
'Er, no,' said Lupine.'I more sort of stop howling and some of my hair
temporarily falls out. It's bloody embarrassing.'
'But I thought at the full moon your basic werewolf always -'
'Lupine's problem,' said Doreen, 'is that he approaches it from ze ozzer
way, you see.'
'I'm technically a wolf,' said Lupine.'Ridiculous, really. Every full moon I
turn into a wolfman. The rest of the time I 'm just a . . . wolf.'
'Good grief,' said Windle.'That must be a terrible problem.'
'The trousers are the worst part, ' said Lupine.
'Er . . . they are?'
'Oh, yeah. See, it's all right for human werewolves. They just keep their
own clothes on. I mean, they might get a bit ripped, but at least they've got
them handy on, right? Whereas if I see the full moon, next minute I'm walking
and talking and I'm definitely in big trouble on account of being very
deficient in the trousery vicinity. So I have to keep a pair stashed
somewhere. Mr Shoe -'
'- call me Reg -'
'- lets me keep a pair where he works.'
'I work at the mortuary on Elm Street,' said Mr Shoe.'I'm not ashamed. It's
worth it to save a brother or sister.'
'Sorry?' said Windle.'Save?'
'It's me that pins the card on the bottom of the lid,' said Mr Shoe. 'You
never know. It has to be worth a try.'
'Does it often work?' said Windle. He looked around the room. His tone
must have suggested that it was a reasonably large room, and had only eight
people in it; nine if you included the voice from under the chair, which
presumably belonged to a person.
Doreen and Arthur exchanged glances.
'It vorked for Artore, ' said Doreen.
'Excuse me,' said Windle, 'I couldn't help wondering . . . are you two . . . er
. . . vampires, by any chance?'
''S'right,' said Arthur.'More's the pity.'
'Hah! You should not valk like zat,' said Doreen haughtily. 'You should be
prout of your noble lineage.'
'Prout?' said Arthur.
'Did you get bitten by a bat or something?' said Windle quickly, anxious
not to be the cause of any family friction.
'No, ' said Arthur, 'by a lawyer. I got this letter, see? With a posh blob of
wax on it and everything. Blahblah-blah . . . great-great-uncle . . .
blahblahblah . . . only surviving relative . . . blahblahblah . . . may we be the
first to offer our heartiest . . . blahblahblah. One minute I'm Arthur Winkings,
a coming man in the wholesale fruit and vegetable business, next minute I
find I'm Arthur, Count Notfaroutoe, owner of fifty acres of cliff face a goat'd
fall off of and a castle that even the cockroaches have abandoned and an
invitation from the burgomaster to drop in down at the village one day and
discuss three hundred years of back taxes.'
'I hate lawyers, ' said the voice from under the chair. It had a sad, hollow
sound. Windle tried to move his legs a little closer to his own chair.
'It voss quite a good castle, ' said Doreen.
'A bloody heap of mouldering stone is what it was,' said Arthur.
'It had nice views.'
'Yeah, through every wall, ' said Arthur, dropping a portcullis into that
avenue of conversation.'I should have known even before we went to look at
it. So I turned the carriage around, right? I thought, well, that's four days
wasted, right in the middle of our busy season. I don't think any more about
it. Next thing, I wake up in the dark, I'm in a box, I finally find these matches, I
light one, there's this card six inches from my nose. It said - '
' "You Don't Have to Take this Lying Down",' said Mr Shoe proudly.'That
was one of my first ones.'
'It vasn't my fault,' said Doreen, stiffly.'You had been Iyink rigid for tree
dace.'
'It gave the priest a shock, I can tell you,' said Arthur.
'Huh! Priests!' said Mr Shoe.'They're all the same. Always telling you that
you 're going to live again after you're dead, but you just try it and see the
look on their faces!'
'Don't like priests, either, ' said the voice from under
the chair. Windle wondered if anyone else was hearing it.
'I won't forget the look on the Reverend Welegare's face in a hurry, ' said
Arthur gloomily.'I've been going to that temple for thirty years. I was
respected in the community. Now if I even think of setting foot in a religious
establishment I get a pain all down my leg.'
'Yes, but there was no need for him to say what he said when you pushed
the lid off,' said Doreen. 'And him a priest, too. They shouldn't know those
kind of  words.'
'I enjoyed that temple,' said Arthur, wistfully. 'It was something to do on a
Wednesday.'
It dawned on Windle Poons that Doreen had miraculously acquired the
ability to use her double-yous.
'And you're a vampire too, Mrs Win . . . I do beg your pardon . . . Countess
Notfaroutoe?' he enquired politely.
The Countess smiled. 'My vord, yes, ' she said.
'By marriage,' said Arthur.
'Can you do that? I thought you had to be bitten,' said Windle.
The voice under the chair sniggered.
'I don't see why I should have to go around biting my wife after thirty
years of marriage, and that's flat,' said the Count.
'Every voman should share her husband's hobbies,' said Doreen.'It iss vot
keeps a marriage intervesting.'
'Who wants an interesting marriage? I never said I wanted an interesting
marriage. That's what's wrong with people today, expecting things like
marriage to be interesting. And it's not a hobby, anyway,' moaned Arthur.
'This vampiring's not all it's cracked up to be, you know. Can't go out in
daylight, can't eat garlic, can't have a decent shave -'
'Why can't you have a -' Windle began.
'Can't use a mirror,' said Arthur.'I thought the

turning-into-a-bat bit would be interesting, but the owls round here are
murder. And as for the . . . you know . . . with the blood . . . well . . .' His voice
trailed off.
'Artore's never been very good at meetink people,' said Doreen.
'And the worst part is having to wear evening dress the whole time,' said
Arthur. He gave Doreen a side-ways glance.'I 'm sure it's not really
compulsory.'
'It iss very important to maintain standerts,' said Doreen. Doreen, in
addition to her here-one-minute-and-gone-the-next vampire accent, had
decided to complement Arthur's evening dress with what she considered
appropriate for a female vampire: figure-hugging black dress, long dark hair
cut into a widow's peak, and very pallid makeup. Nature had designed her to
be small and plump with frizzy hair and a hearty complexion. There were
definite signs of conflict.
'I should have stayed in that coffin,' said Arthur.
'Oh, no, ' said Mr Shoe.'That's taking the easy way out. The movement
needs people like you, Arthur. We had to set an example. Remember our
motto.'
'Which motto is that, Reg?' said Lupine wearily. 'We have so many.'
'Undead yes - unperson no!' Reg said.
'You see, he means well,' said Lupine, after the meeting had broken up.
He and Windle were walking back through the grey dawn. The
Notfaroutoes had left earlier to be back home before daylight heaped even
more troubles on Arthur, and Mr Shoe had gone off, he said, to address a
meeting.
'He goes down to the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods and
shouts,' Lupine explained. 'He calls it consciousness raising but I don't
reckon he's on to much of a certainty.'
'Who was it under the chair?' said Windle.
'That was Schleppel,' said Lupine.'We think he's a bogeyman.'
'Are bogeymen undead?'
'He won 't say.'
'You've never seen him? I thought bogeymen hid under things and, er,
behind things and sort of leapt out at people.'
'He's all right on the hiding. I don't think he likes the leaping out, ' said
Lupine.
Windle thought about this. An agoraphobic bogey-man seemed to
complete the full set.
'Fancy that, ' he said, vaguely.
'We only go along to the club to keep Reg happy,' said Lupine.'Doreen
said it'd break his heart if we stopped. You know the worst bit?'
'Go on, ' said Windle.
'Sometimes he brings a guitar along and makes us sing songs like
"Streets of Ankh-Morpork" and "We Shall Overcome". * It's terrible.'
'Can't sing, eh?' said Windle.
'Sing? Never mind sing. Have you ever seen a zombie try to play a guitar?
It's helping him find his fingers afterwards that's so embarrassing.' Lupine
sighed. 'By the way, Sister Drull is a ghoul. If she offers you any of her meat
patties, don't accept.'
Windle remembered a vague, shy old lady in a shapeless grey dress.
'Oh, dear,' he said.'You mean she makes them out of human flesh?'
'What? Oh. No. She just can't cook very well.'
'Oh.'
'And Brother Ixolite is probably the only banshee in

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_
*  A song which, in various languages, is common on every known world
in the multiverse. It is always sung by the same people, viz., the people who,
when they grow up, will be the people who the next generation sing "We
Shall Overcome" at.


the world with a speech impediment, so instead of sitting on roofs and
screaming when people are about to die he just writes them a note and slips
it under the door-'
Windle recalled a long, sad face.' He gave me one, too.'
'We try to encourage him,' said Lupine.'He's very self-conscious.'
His arm shot out and flung Windle against a wall.
'Quiet!'
'What?'
Lupine's ears swivelled. His nostrils flared.
Motioning Windle to remain where he was, the wereman slunk silently
along the alley until he reached its junction with another, even smaller and
nastier one. He paused for a moment, and then thrust a hairy hand around
the corner.
There was a yelp. Lupine's hand came back holding a struggling mop.
Huge hairy muscles moved under Lupine's torn shirt as the man was hoisted
up to fang level.
'You were waiting to attack us, weren't you,' said Lupine.
'Who, me -?'
'I could smell you, ' said Lupine, evenly.
'I never -'
Lupine sighed. 'Wolves don't do this sort of thing, you know, ' he said.
The man dangled.
'Hey, is that a fact, ' he said.
'It's all head-on combat, fang against fang, claw against claw,' said
Lupine.'You don't find wolves lurking behind rocks ready to mug a passing
badger.'
'Get away?'
'Would you like me to tear your throat out?'
The man stared eye to yellow eye. He estimated his chances against a
seven-foot man with teeth like that.
'Do I get a choice?' he said.

'My friend here,' said Lupine, indicating Windle, 'is a zombie -'
'Well, I don 't know about actual zombie, I think you have to eat some sort
of fish and root to be a zom -'
'- and you know what zombies do to people, don't you?'
The man tried to nod, even though Lupine's fist was right under his neck.
'Yeggg, ' he managed.
'Now, he's going to take a very good look at you, and if he ever sees you
again -'
'I say, hang on,' murmured Windle.
'- he'll come after you. Won't you, Windle?'
'Eh? Oh, yes. That's right. Like a shot, ' said Windle, unhappily. 'Now run
along, there's a good chap. OK?'
'OggAy,' said the prospective mugger. He was thinking: 'Is eyes! Ike
imlets!'
Lupine let go. The man hit the cobbles, gave Windle one last terrified
glance, and ran for it.
'Er, what do zombies do to people?' said Windle. 'I suppose I'd better
know.'
'They tear them apart like a sheet of dry paper, ' said Lupine.
'Oh? Right,' said Windle. They strolled on in silence.
Windle was thinking: why me? Hundreds of people must die in this city
every day. I bet they don't have this trouble. They just shut their eyes and
wake up being born as someone else, or in some sort of heaven or, I
suppose, possibly some sort of hell. Or they go and feast with the gods in
their hall, which has never seemed a particularly great idea - gods are all
right in their way, but not the kind of people a decent man would want to
have a meal with. The Yen buddhists think you just become very rich. Some
of the Klatchian religions say you go to a lovely garden full of young women,
which doesn't sound very religious to me . . .
Windle found himself wondering how you applied for Klatchian nationality
after death.
And at that moment the cobblestones came up to meet him.
This is usually a poetic way of saying that someone fell flat on their face.
In this case, the cobblestones really came up to meet him. They fountained
up, circled silently in the air above the alley for a moment, and then dropped
like stones.
Windle stared at them. So did Lupine.
'That's something you don't often see,' said the wereman, after a while.'I
don't think I've ever seen stones flying before.'
'Or dropping like stones,' said Windle. He nudged one with the toe of his
boot. It seemed perfectly happy with the role gravity had chosen for it.
'You're a wizard -'
'Were a wizard,' said Windle.
'You were a wizard. What caused all that?'
'I think it is probably an inexplicable phenomenon,' said Windle. 'There's a
lot of them about, for some reason. I wish I knew why.'
He prodded a stone again. It showed no inclination to move.
'I'd better be getting along,' said Lupine.
'What's it like, being a wereman?' said Windle.
Lupine shrugged. 'Lonely,' he said.
'Hmm?'
'You don't fit in, you see. When I'm a wolf I remember what it's like to be a
man, and vice versa. Like . . . I mean . . . sometimes . . . sometimes, right,
when I'm wolf-shaped, I run up into the hills . . . in the winter, you know, when
there's a crescent moon in the sky and a crust on the snow and the hills go
on for ever . . . and the other wolves, well, they feel what it's like, of course,
but they don't know like I do. To feel and know at the same time. No-one else
knows what that's like. No-one else in the whole world could know what
that's like. That's the bad part. Knowing there's no-one else . . .'
Windle became aware of teetering on the edge of a pit of sorrows. He
never knew what to say in moments like this.
Lupine brightened up. 'Come to that . . . what's it like, being a zombie?'
'It's OK. It's not too bad.'
Lupine nodded.
'See you around,' he said, and strode off.
The streets were beginning to fill up as the population of Ankh-Morpork
began its informal shift change between the night people and the day people.
All of them avoided Windle. People didn't bump into a zombie if they
could help it.
He reached the University gates. which were now open, and made his way
to his bedroom.
He'd need money, if he was moving out. He'd saved quite a lot over the
years. Had he made a will? He'd been fairly confused the past ten years or
so. He might have made one. Had he been confused enough to leave all his
money to himself? He hoped so. There'd been practically no known cases of
anyone successfully challenging their own will -
He levered up the floorboard by the end of his bed, and lifted out a bag of
coins. He remembered he'd been saving up for his old age.
There was his diary. It was a five-year diary, he recalled, so in a technical
sense Windle had wasted about - he did a quick calculation - yes, about
three-fifths of his money.
Or more, when you came to think about it. After all, there wasn't much on
the pages. Windle hadn't done anything worth writing down for years, or at
least anything he'd been able to remember by the evening.
There were just phases of the moon, lists of religious festivals, and the
occasional sweet stuck to a page.
There was something else down there under the floor, too. He fumbled
around in the dusty space and found a couple of smooth spheres. He pulled
them out and stared at them, mystified. He shook them, and watched the tiny
snowfalls. He read the writing, noting how it wasn't so much writing as a
drawing of writing. He reached down and picked up the third object; it was a
little bent metal wheel. Just one little metal wheel. And, beside it, a broken
sphere.
Windle stared at them.
Of course, he had been a bit non-compos mentis in his last thirty years or
so, and maybe he'd worn his underwear outside his clothes and dribbled a
bit, but . . . he'd collected souvenirs? And little wheels?
There was a cough behind him.
Windle dropped the mysterious objects back into the hole and looked
around. The room was empty, but there seemed to be a shadow behind the
open door.
'Hallo?' he said.
A deep, rumbling, but very diffident voice said,
'S'only me, Mr Poons.'
Windle wrinkled his forehead with the effort of recollection.
'Schleppel?' he said.
'That's right.'
'The bogeyman?'
'That's right?'
'Behind my door?'
'That's right.'
'Why?'
' It's a friendly door.'
Windle walked over to the door and gingerly shut it.
There was nothing behind it but old plaster, although he did fancy that he
felt an air movement.
'I'm under the bed now, Mr Poons,' said Schleppel's voice from, yes,
under the bed. 'You don't mind, do you?'
'Well, no. I suppose not. But shouldn't you be in a closet somewhere?
That's where bogeymen used to hide when I was a lad.'
'A good closet is hard to find, Mr Poons.'
Windle sighed.'All right. The underside of the bed's yours. Make yourself
at home, or whatever.'
'I'd prefer going back to lurking behind the door, Mr Poons, if it's all the
same to you.'
'Oh, all right.'
'Do you mind shutting your eyes a moment?'
Windle obediently shut his eyes.
There was another movement of air.
'You can look now, Mr Poons.'
Windle opened his eyes.
'Gosh,' said Schleppel's voice, 'you've even got a coat hook and
everything behind here.'
Windle watched the brass knobs on the end of his bedstead unscrew
themselves.
A tremor shook the floor.
'What's going on, Schleppel?' he said.
'Build up of life force, Mr Poons.'
'You mean you-now?'
'Oh, yes. Hey, wow, there's a lock and a handle and a brass finger plate
and everything behind here -'
'What do you mean, a build up of life force?'
'- and the hinges, there's a really good rising butts here, never had a door
with -'
'Schleppel!'
'Just life force, Mr Poons. You know. It's a kind of force what you get in
things that are alive? I thought you wizards knew about this sort of thing.'
Windle Poons opened his mouth to say something like 'Of course we do,'
before proceeding diplomatically to find out what the hell the bogeyman was
talking about, and then remembered that he didn't have to act like that now.
That's what he would have done if he was alive, but despite what Reg Shoe
proclaimed, it was quite hard to be proud when you were dead. A bit stiff,
perhaps, but not proud.
'Never heard of it,' he said.'What's it building up for?'
'Don't know. Very unseasonal. It ought to be dying down around now,'
said Schleppel.
The floor shook again. Then the loose floorboard that had concealed
Windle's little fortune creaked, and started to put out shoots.
'What do you mean, unseasonal?' he said.
'You get a lot of it in the spring,' said the voice from behind the door.
'Shoving the daffodils up out of the ground and that kind of stuff.'
'Never heard of it, ' said Windle, fascinated.
'I thought you wizards knew everything about everything.'
Windle looked at his wizarding hat. Burial and tunnelling had not been
kind to it, but after more than a century of wear it hadn't been the height of
haute couture to start with.
'There's always something new to learn, ' he said.

It was another day. Cyril the cockerel stirred on his perch.
The chalked words glowed in the half light.
He concentrated.
He took a deep breath.
'Dock-a-loodle-fod!'
Now that the memory problem was solved, there was only the dyslexia to
worry about.

Up in the high fields the wind was strong and the sun was close and
strong. Bill Door strode back and forth through the stricken grass of the
hillside like a shuttle across a green weave.
He wondered if he'd ever felt wind and sunlight before.
Yes, he'd felt them, he must have done. But he'd never experienced them
like this; the way wind pushed at you, the way the sun made you hot. The
way you could feel Time passing.
Carrying you with it.

There was a timid knocking at the barn door.

YES?
'Come on down here, Bill Door.'
He climbed down in the darkness and opened the door cautiously.
Miss FIitworth was shielding a candle with one hand.
'Um.' she said.
I AM SORRY?
'You can come into the house, if you like. For the evening. Not for the
night, of course. I mean, I don't like to think of you all alone out here of an
evening, when I've got a fire and everything.'
Bill Door was no good at reading faces. It was a skill he'd never needed.
He stared at Miss Flitworth's frozen, worried, pleading smile like a baboon
looking for meaning in the Rosetta Stone.
I THANK YOU, he said.
She scuttled off.
When he arrived at the house she wasn't in the kitchen.
He followed a rustling, scraping noise out into a narrow hallway and
through a low doorway. Miss Flitworth was down on her hands and knees in
the little room beyond, feverishly lighting the fire.
She looked up, flustered, when he rapped politely on the open door.
'Hardly worth putting a match to it for one,' she mumbled, by way of
embarrassed explanation.'Sit down. I'll make us some tea.'
Bill Door folded himself into one of the narrow chairs by the fire, and
looked around the room.
It was an unusual room. Whatever its functions were, being lived in wasn't
apparently one of them. Whereas the kitchen was a sort of roofed over
outside space and the hub of the farm's activities, this room resembled
nothing so much as a mausoleum.
Contrary to general belief, Bill Door wasn't very familiar with funereal
decor. Deaths didn't normally take place in tombs, except in rare and
unfortunate cases. The open air,
the bottoms of rivers, halfway down sharks, any amount of bedrooms, yes
- tombs, no.
His business was the separation of the wheatgerm of the soul from the
chaff of the mortal body, and that was usually concluded long before any of
the rites associated with, when you got right down to it, a reverential form of
garbage disposal.
But this room looked like the tombs of those kings who wanted to take it
all with them.
Bill Door sat with his hands on his knees, looking around.
First, there were the ornaments. More teapots than one might think
possible. China dogs with staring eyes. Strange cake stands. Miscellaneous
statues and painted plates with cheery little messages on them: A Present
from Quirm, Long Life and Happiness. They covered every flat surface in a
state of total democracy, so that a rather valuable antique silver candlestick
was next to a bright coloured china dog with a bone in its mouth and an
expression of culpable idiocy.
Pictures hid the walls. Most of them were painted in shades of mud and
showed depressed cattle standing on wet moorland in a fog.
In fact the ornaments almost concealed the furniture, but this was no loss.
Apart from two chairs groaning under the weight of accumulated
antimacassars, the rest of the furniture seemed to have no use whatsoever
apart from supporting ornaments. There were spindly tables everywhere. The
floor was layered in rag rugs. Someone had really liked making rag rugs.
And, above all, and around all, and permeating all, was the smell.
It smelled of long, dull afternoons.
On a cloth-draped sideboard were two small wooden chests flanking a
larger one. They must be the famous boxes full of treasure, he thought.
He became aware of ticking.
There was a clock on the wall. Someone had once had what they must
have thought was the jolly idea of making
a clock like an owl. When the pendulum swung, the owl's eyes went
backwards and forwards in what the seriously starved of entertainment
probably imagined was a humorous way. After a while. your own eyes started
to oscillate in sympathy.
Miss Flitworth bustled in with a loaded tray. There was a blur of activity as
she performed the alchemical ceremony of making tea, buttering scones,
arranging biscuits, hooking sugar tongs on the basin . . .
She sat back. Then, as if she had been in a state of repose for twenty
minutes, she trilled slightly breathlessly: 'Well . . . isn't this nice.'
YES, MISS FLITWORTH.
'Don't often have occasion to open up the parlour these days.'
NO.
'Not since I lost my dad.'
For a moment Bill Door wondered if she'd lost the late Mr Flitworth in the
parlour. Perhaps he'd taken a wrong turning among the ornaments. Then he
recalled the funny little ways humans put things.
AH.
'He used to sit in that very chair, reading the almanac.'
Bill Door searched his memory.
A TALL MAN, he ventured. WITH A MOUSTACHE? MISSING THE TIP OF
THE LITTLE FINGER ON HIS LEFT HAND?
Miss Flitworth stared at him over the top of her cup.
'You knew him?' she said.
I THINK I MET HIM ONCE.
'He never mentioned you,' said Miss FIitworth archly. 'Not by name. Not as
Bill Door.'
I DON'T THINK HE WOULD HAVE MENTIONED ME, said Bill Door slowly.
'It's all right,' said Miss Flitworth.'I know all about it. Dad used to do a bit
of smuggling, too. Well, this isn't a big farm. It's not what you'd call a living.
He always said a body has to do what it can. I expect you were in his line of
business. I've been watching you. That was your business, right enough.'
Bill Door thought deeply.
GENERAL TRANSPORTATION, he said.
'That sounds like it, yes. Have you got any family, Bill?'
A DAUGHTER.
'That's nice.'
I'M AFRAID WE'VE LOST TOUCH.
'That's a shame,' said Miss Flitworth, and sounded as though she meant
it. 'We used to have some good times here in the old days. That was when
my young man was alive, of course.'
YOU HAVE A SON? said Bill, who was losing track.
She gave him a sharp look.
'I invite you to think hard about the word "Miss",' she said.'We takes
things like that seriously in these parts.'
MY APOLOGIES.
'No, Rufus was his name. He was a smuggler, like dad. Not as good.
though. I got to admit that. He was more artistic. He used to give me all sorts
of things from foreign parts, you know. Bits of jewelry and suchlike. And we
used to go dancing. He had very good calves, I remember. I like to see good
legs on a man.'
She stared at the fire for a while.
'See . . . he never come back one day. Just before we were going to be
wed. Dad said he never should have tried to run the mountains that close to
winter, but I know he wanted to do it so's he could bring me a proper
present. And he wanted to make some money and impress dad, because dad
was against -'
She picked up the poker and gave the fire a more ferocious jab than it
deserved.
'Anyway, some folk said he ran away to Farferee or Ankh-Morpork or
somewhere, but I know he wouldn't have done something like that.'
The penetrating look she gave Bill Door nailed him to the chair.
'What do you think, Bill Door?' she said sharply.
He felt quite proud of himself for spotting the question within the
question.
MISS FLITWORTH, THE MOUNTAINS CAN BE VERY TREACHEROUS IN
THE WINTER.
She looked relieved. 'That's what I've always said,' she said.'And do you
know what, Bill Door? Do you know what I thought?'
NO, MISS FLITWORTH.
'It was the day before we were going to be wed, like I said. And then one
of his pack ponies came back by itself and then the men went and found the
avalanche . . . and you know what I thought? I thought, that's ridiculous.
That's stupid. Terrible, isn't it? Oh, I thought other things afterwards,
naturally, but the first thing was that the world shouldn't act as if it was some
kind of book. Isn't that a terrible thing to have thought?'
I MYSELF HAVE NEVER TRUSTED DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH.
She wasn't really listening.
'And I thought, what life expects me to do now is moon around the place
in the wedding dress for years and go completely doodly. That's what it
wants me to do. Hah! Oh, yes! So I put the dress in the ragtag and we still
invited everyone to the wedding breakfast, because it's a crime to let good
food go to waste.'
She attacked the fire again, and then gave him another megawatt stare.
'I think it's always very important to see what's really real and what isn't,
don't you?'
MISS FLITWORTH?
'Yes?'
DO YOU MIND IF I STOP THE CLOCK?
She glanced up at the boggle-eyed owl.
'What? Oh. Why?'
I AM AFRAID IT GETS ON MY NERVES.
'It's not very loud, is it?'
Bill Door wanted to say that every tick was like the hammering of iron
clubs on bronze pillars.
H'S JUST RATHER ANNOYING, MISS FLITWORTH.
'Well, stop it if you want to, I'm sure. I only keep it wound up for the
company.'
Bill Door got up thankfully, stepped gingerly through the forest of
ornaments, and grabbed the pinecone shaped pendulum. The wooden owl
glared at him and the ticking stopped. at least in the realm of common
sound. He was aware that, elsewhere, the pounding of Time continued none
the less. How could people endure it? They allowed Time in their houses, as
though it was a fiend.
He sat down again .
Miss Flitworth had started to knit, ferociously.
The fire rustled in the grate.
Bill Door leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.
'Your horse enjoying himself?'
PARDON?
'Your horse. He seems to be enjoying himself in the meadow,' prompted
Miss Flitworth.
OH. YES.
'Running around as if he's never seen grass before.'
HE LIKES GRASS.
'And you like animals. I can tell.'
Bill Door nodded. His reserves of small talk, never very liquid, had dried
up.
He sat silently for the next couple of hours, hands gripping the arms of
the chair, until Miss Flitworth announced that she was going to bed. Then he
went back to the barn, and slept.

Bill Door hadn't been aware of it coming. But there it was, a grey figure
floating in the darkness of the barn.
Somehow it had got hold of the golden timer.
It told him, Bill Door, there has been a mistake.
The glass shattered. Fine golden seconds glittered in the air, for a
moment, and then settled.
It told him, Return. You have work to do. There has been a mistake.
The figure faded.
Bill Door nodded. Of course there had been a mistake.
Anyone could see there had been a mistake. He'd known all along it had
been a mistake.
He tossed the overalls in a corner and took up the robe of absolute
blackness.
Well, it had been an experience. And, he had to admit, one that he didn't
want to relive. He felt as though a huge weight had been removed.
Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness
dragging you forward?
How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find
enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair.
Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs
of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?
Obviously it was something you had to be born to.
Death saddled his horse and rode out and up over the fields. The corn
rippled far below, like the sea. Miss Flitworth would have to find someone
else to help her gather in the harvest.
That was odd. There was a feeling there. Regret? Was that it? But it was
Bill Door's feeling, and Bill Door was . . . dead. Had never lived. He was his
old self again, safe where there were no feelings and no regrets.
Never any regrets.
And now he was in his study, and that was odd, because he couldn't quite
remember how he'd got there. One minute on horseback, the next in the
study, with its ledgers and timers and instruments.
And it was bigger than he remembered. The walls lurked on the edge of
sight.
That was Bill Door's doing. Of course it would seem big to Bill Door. and
there was probably just a bit of him still hanging on. The thing to do was
keep busy. Throw himself into his work.
There were already some lifetimers on his desk. He didn't remember
putting them there, but that didn't matter, the important thing was to ?get?
on with the job . . .
He picked up the nearest one, and read the name.
'Lod-a-foodle-wok!'

Miss Flitworth sat up in bed. On the edge of dreams she'd heard another
noise, which must have woken the cockerel.
She fiddled with a match until she got a candle alight, and then felt under
the bed and her fingers found the hilt of a cutlass that had been much
employed by the late Mr Flitworth during his business trips across the
mountains.
She hurried down the creaking stairs and out into the chill of the dawn.
She hesitated at the barn door, and then pulled it open just enough to slip
inside.
'Mr Door?'
There was a rustle in the hay, and then an alert silence.
MISS FLITWORTH?
'Did you call out? I'm sure I heard someone shout my name.'
There was another rustle, and Bill Door's head appeared over the edge of
the loft.
MISS FLITWORTH.
'Yes. Who did you expect? Are you all right?'
ER. YES. YES, I BELIEVE SO.
'You sure you're all right? You woke up Cyril.'
YES. YES. IT WAS JUST A - I THOUGHT THAT - YES.
She blew out the candle. There was already enough pre-dawn light to see
by.
'Well, if you're sure . . . Now I'm up I may as well put the porridge on.'
Bill Door lay back on the hay until he felt he could trust his legs to carry
him, and then climbed down and tottered across the yard to the farmhouse.
He said nothing while she ladled porridge into a bowl in front of him. and
drowned it with cream. Finally, he couldn't contain himself any longer. He
didn't know how to ask the
questions, but he really needed the answers.
MISS FLITWORTH?
'Yes?'
WHAT IS IT . . . IN THE NIGHT . . . WHEN YOU SEE THINGS,
BUT THEY ARE NOT THE REAL THINGS?
She stood, porridge pot in one hand and ladle in the other.
'You mean dreaming?' she said.
IS THAT WHAT DREAMING IS?
'Don't you dream? I thought everyone dreamed.'
ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE GOING TO HAPPEN?
'That's premonitions, that is. I've never believed in 'em myself. You're not
telling me you don't know what dreams are?'
NO. NO. OF COURSE NOT.
'What's worrying you, Bill?'
I SUDDENLY KNOW THAT WE ARE GOING TO DIE.   
She watched him thoughtfully.
'Well, so does everyone,' she said.'And that's what you've been dreaming
about, is it? Everyone feels like this sometimes. I wouldn't worry about it, if I
was you. The best thing to do is keep busy and act cheerful, I always say.'
BUT WE WILL COME TO AN END!
'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Miss Flitworth.'It all depends on what
kind of life you've led. I suppose.'
I'M SORRY?
'Are you a religious man?'
YOU MEAN THAT WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU DIE IS WHAT YOU
BELIEVE WILL HAPPEN?
'It would be nice if that was the case, wouldn't it?' she said brightly.
BUT, YOU SEE, I KNOW WHAT I BELIEVE. I BELIEVE . . . NOTHING.
'We are gloomy this morning, aren't we?' said Miss Flitworth.'Best thing
you could do right now is finish off that porridge. It's good for you. They say
it builds healthy bones.'
Bill Door looked down at the bowl.
CAN I HAVE SOME MORE?

Bill Door spent the morning chopping wood. It was pleasantly
monotonous. Get tired. That was important. He must have slept before last
night, but he must have been so tired that he didn't
dream. And he was determined not to dream again. The axe rose and fell
on the logs like clockwork.
No! Not like clockwork!
Miss Flitworth had several pots on the stove when he came in.
IT SMELLS GOOD, Bill volunteered. He reached for a wobbling pot lid.
Miss Flitworth spun around.
'Don't touch it! You don't want that stuff! It's for the rats.'
DO RATS NOT FEED THEMSELVES?
'You bet they do. That's why we're going to give them a little extra
something before the harvest. A few dollops of this around the holes and -
no more rats.'
It took a little while for Bill Door to put two and two together, but when
this took place it was like megaliths mating.
THAT IS POISON?
'Essence of spikkle, mixed with oatmeal. Never fails.'
AND THEY DIE?
'Instantly. Straight over and legs in the air. We're having bread and
cheese,' she added. 'I ain't doing big cooking twice in one day, and we're
having chicken tonight. Talking of chicken, in fact . . . come on . . .'
She took a cleaver off the rack and went out into the yard. Cyril the
cockerel eyed her suspiciously from the top of the midden. His harem of fat
and rather elderly hens, who had been scratching up the dust, bounded
unsteadily towards Miss Flitworth in the broken-knicker-elastic run of hens
everywhere. She reached down quickly and picked one up.
It regarded Bill Door with bright, stupid eyes.
'Do you know how to pluck a chicken?' said Miss Flitworth.
Bill looked from her to the hen.
BUT WE FEED THEM, he said helplessly.
'That's right. And then they feed us. This one's been off lay for months.
That's how it goes in the chicken world. Mr Flitworth used to wring their
necks but I never got the knack of that; the cleaver's messy and they run
around a
bit afterwards, but they're dead all right, and they know it.'
Bill Door considered his options. The chicken had focused one beady eye
on him. Chickens are a lot more stupid than humans, and don't have the
sophisticated mental filters that prevent them seeing what is truly there. It
knew where it was and who was looking at it.
He looked into its small and simple life and saw the last few seconds
pouring away.
He'd never killed. He'd taken life, but only when it was finished with. There
was a difference between theft and stealing by finding.
NOT THE CLEAVER, he said wearily. GIVE ME THE CHICKEN.
He turned his back for a moment, then handed the limp body to Miss
Flitworth.
'Well done.' she said, and went back to the kitchen.
Bill Door felt Cyril's accusing gaze on him.
He opened his hand. A tiny spot of light hovered over his palm. He blew
on it, gently, and it faded away.
After lunch they put down the rat poison. He felt like a murderer.

A lot of rats died.
Down in the runs under the barn - in the deepest one, one tunnelled long
ago by long-forgotten ancestral rodents - something appeared in the
darkness.
It seemed to have difficulty deciding what shape it was going to be.
It began as a lump of highly-suspicious cheese. This didn't seem to work.
Then it tried something that looked very much like a small, hungry terrier.
This was also rejected.
For a moment it was a steel-jawed trap. This was clearly unsuitable.
It cast around for fresh ideas and much to its surprise one arrived
smoothly, as if travelling from no distance at all. Not so much a shape as a
memory of a shape.

It tried it and found that, while totally wrong for the job, in some deeply
satisfying way it was the only shape it could possibly be.
It went to work.

That evening the men were practising archery on the green. Bill Door had
carefully ensured a local reputation as the worst bowman in the entire
history of toxophily; it had never occurred to anyone that putting arrows
through the hats of bystanders behind him must logically take a lot more
skill than merely sending them through a quite large target a mere fifty yards
away.
It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things.
provided you were bad enough to be funny.
So he was allowed to sit on a bench outside the inn, with the old men.
Next door, ?s~uks? poured from the chimney of the village smithy and
spiralled up into the dusk. There was a ferocious hammering from behind its
closed doors. Bill Door wondered why the smithy was always shut. Most
smiths worked with their doors open, so that their forge became an unofficial
village meeting room. This one was keen on his work -
'Hallo, skelington.'
He swivelled round.
The small child of the house was watching him with the most penetrating
gaze he had ever seen.
'You are a skelington, aren't you,' she said. 'l can tell, because of the
bones.'
YOU ARE MISTAKEN, SMALL CHILD.
'You are. People turn into skelingtons when they're dead. They're not
supposed to walk around afterwards.'
HA. HA. HA. WILL YOU HARK AT THE CHILD.
'Why are you walking around, then?'
Bill Door looked at the old men. They appeared engrossed in the sport.
I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, he said desperately, IF YOU WILL
GO AWAY, I WILL GIVE YOU A HALF-PENNY.
'I've got a skelington mask for when we go trickle-treating on Soul Cake
Night,' she said.'It's made of paper. You get given sweets.'
Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small
children in slightly similar circumstances.
He resorted to reason.
LOOK, he said, IF I WAS REALLY A SKELETON, LITTLE GIRL, I'M SURE
THESE OLD GENTLEMEN HERE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT
IT.
She regarded the old men at the other end of the bench.
'They're nearly skelingtons anyway,' she said. 'l shouldn't think they'd
want to see another one.'
He gave in.
I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE RIGHT ON THAT POINT.
'Why don't you fall to bits?'
I DON'T KNOW. I NEVER HAVE.
'I've seen skelingtons of birds and things and they all fall to bits.'
PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT SOMETHING WAS. WHEREAS
THIS ?IS? WHAT I AM.
'The apothecary who does medicine over in Chambly's got a skelington
on a hook with all wire to hold the bones together,' said the child, with the air
of one imparting information gained after diligent research.
I DON'T HAVE WIRES.
'There's a difference between alive skelingtons and dead ones?'
YES.
'It's a dead skelington he's got then, is it?'
YES.
'What was inside someone?'
YES.
'Ur. Yuk.'
The child stared distantly at the landscape for a while and then said, 'I've
got new socks.'
YES?
'You can look, if you like.'
A grubby foot was extended for inspection.
WELL, WELL. FANCY THAT. NEW SOCKS.
'My mum knitted them out of sheep.'
MY WORD.
The horizon was given another inspection.
'D'you know,' she said, 'd'you know . . . it's Friday.'
YES.
'I found a spoon.'
Bill Door found he was waiting expectantly. He was not familiar with
people who had an attention span of less than three seconds.
'You work along of Miss Flitworth's?'
YES.
'My dad says you've got your feet properly under the table there.'
Bill Door couldn't think of an answer to this because he didn't know what
it meant. It was one of those many flat statements humans made that were
really just a disguise for something more subtle. which was often conveyed
merely by the tone of voice or a look in the eyes, neither of which was being
done by the child.
'My dad says she said she's got boxes of treasure.'
HAS SHE?
'I've got tuppence.'
MY GOODNESS.
'Sal!'
They both looked up as Mrs Lifton appeared on the doorstep.
'Bedtime for you. Stop worrying Mr Door.'
OH, I ASSURE YOU SHE IS NOT -
'Say goodnight, now.'
'How do skelingtons go to sleep? They can't close their eyes because -'
He heard their voices, muffled. inside the inn.
'You mustn't call Mr Door that just because . . . he's . . . very . . . he's very
thin . . .'
'It's all right. He's not the dead sort.'
Mrs Lifton's voice had the familiar worried tones of
someone who can't bring themselves to believe the evidence of their own
eyes.'Perhaps he's just been very 'I should think he's just about been as ill
as he can be ever.'
Bill Door walked back home thoughtfully.
There was a light on in the farmhouse kitchen, but he went straight to the
barn, climbed the ladder to the hay-loft, and lay down.
He could put off dreaming, but he couldn't escape remembering.
He stared at the darkness.
After a while he was aware of the pattering of feet. He turned.
A stream of pale rat-shaped ghosts skipped along the roof beam above
his head, fading as they ran so that soon there was nothing but the sound of
the scampering.
They were followed by a . . . shape.
It was about six inches high. It wore a black robe. It held a small scythe in
one skeletal paw. A bone-white nose with brittle grey whiskers protruded
from the shadowy hood.
Bill Door reached out and picked it up. It didn't resist, but stood on the
palm of his hand and eyed him as one professional to another.
Bill Door said: AND YOU ARE -?
The Death of Rats nodded.
SQUEAK.
I REMEMBER, said Bill Door, WHEN YOU WERE A PART OF ME.
The Death of Rats squeaked again.
Bill Door fumbled in the pockets of his overall. He'd put some of his lunch
in there. Ah, yes.
I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE?
The Death of Rats took it graciously.
Bill Door remembered visiting an old man once - only once - who had
spent almost his entire life locked in a cell in a tower for some alleged crime
or other, and had tamed
little birds for company during his life sentence. They crapped on his
bedding and ate his food, but he tolerated them and smiled at their flight in
and out of the high barred
windows. Death had wondered, at the time, why anyone would do
something like that.
I WON'T DELAY YOU, he said. I EXPECT YOU'VE GOT THINGS TO DO.
RATS TO SEE. I KNOW HOW IT IS.
And now he understood.
He put the figure back on the beam, and lay down in the hay.
DROP IN ANY TIME YOU'RE PASSING.
Bill Door stared at the darkness again.
Sleep. He could feel her prowling around. Sleep, with a pocketful of
dreams.
He lay in the darkness and fought back.

Miss Flitworth's shouting jolted him upright and, to his momentary relief
still went on.
The barn door slammed open.
'Bill! Come down quick!'
He swung his legs on to the ladder.
WHAT IS HAPPENING. MISS FLITWORTH?
'Something's on fire!'
They ran across the yard and out on to the road. The sky over the village
was red.
'Come on!'
BUT IT IS NOT OUR FIRE.
'It's going to be everyone's! It spreads like crazy on thatch!'
They reached the apology for a town square. The inn was already well
alight, the thatch roaring starwards in a million twisting sparks.
'Look at everyone standing around,' snarled Miss Flitworth.'There's the
pump, buckets are everywhere, why don't people think?'
There was a scuffle a little way away as a couple of his customers tried to
stop Lifton from running into the building. He was screaming at them.
'The girl's still in there,' said Miss Flitworth. 'Is that what he said?'
YES.
Flames curtained every upper window.
'There's got to be some way,' said Miss Flitworth. 'Maybe we could find a
ladder -'
WE SHOULD NOT.
'What? We've got to try. We can't leave people in there!'
YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, said Bill Door. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE
OF ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD.
Miss FIitworth looked at him as if he had gone mad.
'What kind of garbage is that?'
I MEAN THAT THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYONE TO DIE.
She stared. Then she drew her hand back. and gave him a ringing slap
across the face.
He was harder than she'd expected. She yelped and sucked at her
knuckles.
'You leave my farm tonight, Mr Bill Door,' she growled. 'Understand?'
Then she turned on her heel and ran towards the pump.
Some of the men had brought long hooks to drag the burning thatch off
the roof. Miss Flitworth organised a team to get a ladder up to one of the
bedroom windows but, by the time a man was persuaded to climb it behind
the steaming protection of a damp blanket, the top of the ladder was already
smouldering.
Bill Door watched the flames.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the golden timer. The firelight
glowed redly on the glass. He put it away again.
Part of the roof fell in.
SQUEAK.
Bill Door looked down. A small robed figure marched between his legs
and strutted into the flaming doorway.
Someone was yelling something about barrels of brandy.
Bill Door reached back into his pocket and took out the
timer again. Its hissing drowned out the roar of the flames.
The future flowed into the past, and there was a lot more past than there
was future, but he was struck by the fact that what it flowed through all the
time was now.
He replaced it carefully.
Death knew that to tinker with the fate of one individual could destroy the
whole world. He knew this. The knowledge was built into him.
To Bill Door, he realised, it was so much horse elbows.
OH, DAMN, he said. And walked into the fire.

'Um. It's me, Librarian,' said Windle, trying to shout through the
keyhole.'Windle Poons.'
He tried hammering some more.
'Why won't he answer?'
'Don't know, ' said a voice behind him.
'Schleppel?'
'Yes, Mr Poons.'
'Why are you behind me?'
'I've got to be behind something, Mr Poons. That's what being a
bogeyman is all about.'
'Librarian?' said Windle, hammering some more.
'Oook.'
'Why won't you let me in?'
'Oook.'
'But I need to look something up.'
'Oook oook!'
'Well, yes. I am. What's that got to do with it?'
'Oook!'
'That's - that's unfair!'
'What's he saying, Mr Poons?'
'He won't let me in because I'm dead!'
'That's typical. That's the sort of thing Reg Shoe is always going on
about, you know.'
'Is there anyone else that knows about life force?'
'There's always Mrs Cake, I suppose. But she's a bit weird.'
'Who's Mrs Cake?' Then Windle realised what Schleppel had just said.
'Anyway, you're a bogeyman.'
'You never heard of Mrs Cake?'
'No.'
'I don't suppose she's interested in magic . . . Anyway, Mr Shoe says we
shouldn't talk to her. She exploits dead people, he says.'
'How?'
'She's a medium. Well, more a small.'
'Really? All right, let's go and see her. And . . . Schleppel?'
'Yes?'
'It's creepy, feeling you standing behind me the whole time.'
'I get very upset if I'm not behind something, Mr Poons.'
'Can't you lurk behind something else?'
'What do you suggest, Mr Poons?'
Windle thought about it.'Yes,  it might work,' he said quietly, 'if I can find a
screwdriver.'

Modo the gardener was on his knees mulching the dahlias when he heard
a rhythmic scraping and thumping behind him, such as might be made by
someone trying to move a heavy object.
He turned his head.
' 'Evening, Mr Poons. Still dead, I see.'
"Evening, Modo. You've got the place looking very nice.'
'There's someone moving a door along behind you,' Mr Poons.'
'Yes, I know.'
The door edged cautiously along the path. As it passed Modo it pivoted
awkwardly, as if whoever was carrying it was trying to keep as much behind
it as possible.
'It's a kind of security door, ' said Windle.
He paused. There was something wrong. He
couldn't quite be certain what it was, but there was suddenly a lot of
wrongness about, like hearing one note out of tune in an orchestra. He
audited the view in front of him.
'What's that you're putting the weeds into?' he said.
Modo glanced at the thing beside him.
'Good, isn't it?' he said.'I found it by the compost heaps. My
wheelbarrow'd broke, and I looked up, and there -'
'I've never seen anything like it before,' said Windle.'Who'd want to make
a big basket out of wire? And those wheels don't look big enough.'
'But it pushes along well by the handle, ' said Modo. 'I'm amazed that
anyone would want to throw it away. Why would anyone want to throw away
something like this, Mr Poons?'
Windle stared at the trolley. He couldn't escape the feeling that it was
watching him.
He heard himself say, 'Maybe it got there by itself.'
'That's right, Mr Poons! It wanted a bit of peace, I expect!' said Modo.'You
are a one!'
'Yes,' said Windle, unhappily.'It rather looks that way.'
He stepped out into the city, aware of the scraping and thumping of the
door behind him.
If someone had told me a month ago, he thought, that a few days after I
died I'd be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman hiding
behind a door . . . why, I'd have laughed at them.
No, I wouldn't. I'd have said 'eh?' and 'what?' and 'speak up!' and
wouldn't have understood anyway.
Beside him, someone barked.
A dog was watching him. It was a very large dog. In fact, the only reason it
could be called a dog and not a wolf was that everyone knew you didn't get
wolves in cities.
It winked. Windle thought: no full moon last night.
'Lupine?' he ventured.
The dog nodded.
'Can you talk?'
The dog shook its head.
'So what do you do now?'
Lupine shrugged.
'Want to come with me?'
There was another shrug that almost vocalised the thought: why not?
What else have I got to do?
If someone had told me a month ago, Windle thought, that a few days
after I died I'd be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman
hiding
behind a door and accompanied by a kind of negative version of a
werewolf . . . why, I probably would have laughed at them. After they'd
repeated themselves a few times, of course. In a loud voice.

The Death of Rats ?rabhnded? up the last of his clients, many of whom
had been in the thatch, and led the way through the flames towards wherever
it was that good rats went.
He was surprised to pass a burning figure forcing its way  through the
incandescent mess of collapsed beams and crumbling floorboards. As it
mounted the blazing stairs it removed something from the disintegrating
remains of its clothing and held it carefully in its teeth.
The Death of Rats did not wait to see what happened next. While it was, in
some respects, as ancient as the first proto-rat, it was also less than a day
old and still feeling its way as a Death, and it was possibly aware that a deep,
thumping noise that was making the building shake was the sound of brandy
starting to boil in its barrels.
The thing about boiling brandy is that it doesn't boil for long.

The fireball dropped bits of the inn half a mile away. White-hot flames
erupted from the holes where the doors and windows had been. The walls
exploded. Burning rafters
whirred overhead. Some buried themselves in neighbouring roofs,
starting more fires.
What was left was just an eye-watering glow.
And then little pools of shadow. within the glow.
They moved and ran together and formed the shape of a tall figure
striding forward, carrying something in front of it.
It passed through the blistered crowd and trudged up the cool dark road
towards the farm. The people picked themselves up and followed it, moving
through the dusk like the tail of a dark comet.
Bill Door climbed the stairs to Miss Flitworth's bedroom and laid the child
on the bed.
SHE SAID THERE WAS AN APOTHECARY SOMEWHERE NEAR HERE.
Miss FIitworth pushed her way through the crowd at the top of the stairs.
'There's one in Chambly,' she said.'But there's a witch over Lancrew~.'
NO WITCHES. NO MAGIC. SEND FOR HIM. AND EVERYONE ELSE, GO
AWAY.
It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't even a command. It was simply an
irrefutable statement.
Miss Flitworth waved her skinny arms at the people.
'Come on, it's all over! Shoo! You're all in my bedroom! Go on, get out!'
'How'd he do it?' said someone at the back of the crowd. 'No-one could
have got out of there alive! We saw it all blow up!'
Bill Door turned around slowly.
WE HID. he said, IN THE CELLAR.
'There! See?' said Miss Flitworth. 'In the cellar. Makes sense.'
'But the inn hasn't got -' the doubter began, and stopped. Bill Door was
glaring at him.
'In the cellar,' he corrected himself. 'Yeah. Right. Clever.'
'Very clever,' said Miss Flitworth. 'Now get along with the lot of you.'
He heard her shoo them down the stairs and back into the night. The door
slammed. He didn't hear her come back up the stairs with a bowl of cold
water and a flannel.
Miss Flitworth could walk lightly, too, when she had a mind to.
She came in and shut the door behind her.
'Her parents'll want to see her,' she said.'Her mum's in a faint and Big
Henry from the mill knocked her dad out when he tried to run into the flames,
but they'll be here directly.'
She bent down and ran the flannel over the girl's forehead.
'Where was she?'
SHE WAS HIDING IN A CUPBOARD.
'From a fire?'
Bill Door shrugged.
'I'm amazed you could find anyone in all that heat and smoke,' she said.
I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD CALL IT A KNACK.
'And not a mark on her.'
Bill Door ignored the question in her voice.
DID YOU SEND SOMEONE FOR THE APOTHECARY?
'Yes.'
HE MUST NOT TAKE ANYTHING AWAY.
'What do you mean?'
STAY HERE WHEN HE COMES. YOU MUST NOT TAKE ANYTHING OUT OF
THIS ROOM.
'That's silly. Why should he take anything? What would he want to take?'
IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. AND NOW I MUST LEAVE YOU.
'Where are you going?'
TO THE BARN. THERE ARE THINGS I MUST DO. THERE MAY NOT BE
MUCH TIME NOW.
Miss Flitworth stared at the small figure on the bed. She felt far out of her
depth, and all she could do was tread water.
'She just looks as if she's sleeping,' she said helplessly. 'What's wrong
with her?'
Bill Door paused at the top of the stairs.
SHE IS LIVING ON BORROWED TIME, he said.

There was an old forge behind the barn. It hadn't been used for years. But
now red and yellow light spilled out into the yard, pulsing like a heart.
And like a heart, there was a regular thumping. With every crash the light
flared blue.
Miss Flitworth sidled through the open doorway. If she was the kind of
person who would swear, she would have sworn that she made no noise that
could possibly be heard above the crackle of the fire and the hammering, but
Bill Door spun around in a halfcrouch, holding a curved blade in front of him.
'It's me!'
He relaxed, or at least moved into a different level of tension.
'What the hell're you doing?'
He looked at the blade in his hands as if he was seeing it for the first time.
I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARPEN THIS SCYTHE, MISS FLITWORTH.
'At one o'clock in the morning?'
He looked at it blankly.
IT'S JUST AS BLUNT AT NIGHT, MISS FLITWORTH.
Then he slammed it down on the anvil.
AND I CAN'T SHARPEN IT ENOUGH!
'I think perhaps the heat has got to you,' she said, and reached out and
took his arm.
'Besides, it looks sharp enough to -' she began, and paused. Her fingers
moved on the bone of his arm. They pulled away for a moment, and then
closed again.
Bill Door shivered.
Miss Flitworth didn't hesitate for long. In seventy-five years she had dealt
with wars, famine, innumerable sick animals. a couple of epidemics and
thousands of tiny, everyday tragedies. A depressed skeleton wasn't even in
the top ten Worst Things she had seen.
'So it is you,' she said.
MISS FLITWORTH, I -
'I always knew you would come one day.'
I THINK PERHAPS THAT -
'You know, I spent most of my life waiting for a knight on a white charger.'
Miss Flitworth grinned.'The joke's on me, eh?'
Bill Door sat down on the anvil.
'The apothecary came.' she said.'He said he couldn't do anything. He said
she was fine. We just couldn't wake her up. And. you know, it took us ages to
get her hand open. She had it closed so tightly.'
I SAID NOTHING WAS TO BE TAKEN!
'It's all right. It's all right. We left her holding it.'
GOOD.
'What was it?'
MY TIME.
'Sorry?'
MY TIME. THE TIME OF MY LIFE.
'It looks like an eggtimer for very expensive eggs.'
Bill Door looked surprised. YES. IN A WAY. I HAVE GIVEN HER SOME OF
MY TIME.
'How come you need time?'
EVERY LIVING THING NEEDS TIME. AND WHEN IT RUNS OUT, THEY DIE.
WHEN IT RUNS OUT, SHE WILL DIE. AND I WILL DIE, TOO. IN A FEW HOURS.
'But you can't -'
I CAN. IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN.
'Move up.'
WHAT?
'I said move up. I want to sit down.'
Bill Door made space on the anvil. Miss Flitworth sat down.
'So you're going to die,' she said.
YES.
'And you don't want to.'
NO.
'Why not?'

He looked at her as if she was mad.
BECAUSE THEN THERE WILL BE NOTHING. BECAUSE I WON'T EXIST.
'Is that what happens for humans, too?'
I DON'T THINK SO. IT'S DIFFERENT FOR YOU. YOU HAVE IT ALL BETTER
ORGANISED.
They both sat watching the fading glow of the coals in the forge.
'So what were you working on the scythe blade for?' said Miss Flitworth.
I THOUGHT PERHAPS I COULD . . . FIGHT BACK . . .
'Has it ever worked? With you, I mean.'
NOT USUALLY. SOMETIMES PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME TO A GAME. FOR
THEIR LIVES, YOU KNOW.
'Do they ever win?'
NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE
UTILITIES.
'What? What sort of game is that?'
I DON'T RECALL.'EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION', I THINK. I WAS THE BOOT.
'Just a moment.' said Miss Flitworth. If you're you, who will be coming for
you?'
DEATH. LAST NIGHT THIS WAS PUSHED UNDER THE DOOR.
Death opened his hand to reveal a small grubby piece of paper, on which
Miss Flitworth could read. with some difficulty, the word:
OOoooEEEeeOOOoooEEeeeOOOoooEEe ee.
I HAVE RECEIVED THE BADLY-WRITTEN NOTE OF THE BANSHEE.
Miss Flitworth looked at him with her head on one side.
'But . . . correct me if I'm wrong, but . . .'
THE NEW DEATH.
Bill Door picked up the blade.
HE WILL BE TERRIBLE.
The blade twisted in his hands. Blue light flickered along its edge.
I WILL BE THE FIRST.
Miss Flitworth stared at the light as if fascinated.
'Exactly how terrible?'
HOW TERRIBLE CAN YOU IMAGINE?
'Oh.'
EXACTLY AS TERRIBLE AS THAT.
The blade tilted this way and that.
'And for the child, too,' said Miss Flitworth.
YES.
'I don't reckon I owe you any favours, Mr Door. I don't reckon anyone in
the whole world owes you any favours.'
YOU MAY BE RIGHT.
'Mind you, life's got one or two things to answer for too. Fair's fair.'
I CAN'T SAY.
Miss FIitworth gave him another long, appraising look.
'There's a pretty good grindstone in the corner,' she said.
I'VE USED IT.
'And there's an oilstone in the cupboard.'
I'VE USED THAT, TOO.
She thought she could hear a sound as the blade moved. A sort of faint
whine of tensed air.
'And it's still not sharp enough?'
Bill Door sighed. IT MAY NEVER BE SHARP ENOUGH.
'Come on, man. No sense in giving in,' said Miss Flitworth.'Where there's
life, eh?'
WHERE THERE'S LIFE EH WHAT?
'There's hope?'
IS THERE?
'Right enough.'
Bill Door ran a bony finger along the edge.
HOPE?
'Got anything else left to try?'
Bill shook his head. He'd tried a number of emotions. but this was a new
one.
COULD YOU FETCH ME A STEEL?

It was an hour later.

Miss Flitworth sorted through her rag-bag.
'What next?' she said.
WHAT HAVE WE HAD SO FAR?
'Let's see . . . hessian, calico, linen . . . how about satin? Here's a piece.'
Bill Door took the rag and wiped it gently along the blade.
Miss Flitworth reached the bottom of the bag, and pulled out a swatch of
white cloth.
YES?
'Silk,' she said softly. 'Finest white silk. The real stuff. Never worn.'
She sat back and stared at it.
After a while he took it tactfully from her fingers.
THANK YOU.
'Well now,' she said, waking up. 'That's it, isn't it?'
When he turned the blade, it made a noise like whommmm. The fires of
the forge were barely alive now, but the blade glowed with razor light.
'Sharpened on silk,' said Miss Flitworth. 'Who'd believe it?'
AND STILL BLUNT.
Bill Door looked around the dark forge, and then darted into a corner.
'What have you found?'
COBWEB.
There was a long thin whine, like the torturing of ants.
'Any good?'
STILL TOO BLUNT.
She watched Bill Door stride out of the forge, and scuttled after him. He
went and stood in the middle of the yard, holding the scythe blade edge-on
to the faint, dawn breeze.
It hummed.
'How sharp can a blade get, for goodness' sake?'
IT CAN GET SHARPER THAN THIS.
Down in his henhouse, Cyril the cockerel awoke and stared blearily at the
treacherous letters chalked on the board. He took a deep breath.

'Floo-acockle-dod!'
Bill Door glanced at the rimward horizon and then, speculatively, at the
little hill behind the house.
He jerked forward, legs clicking over the ground.

The new daylight sloshed on to the world. Discworld light is old, slow and
heavy; it roared across the landscape like a cavalry charge. The occasional
valley slowed it for a moment and. here and there, a mountain range banked
it up until it poured over the top and down the far slope.
It moved across a sea, surged up the beach and accelerated over the
plains, driven by the lash of the sun.
On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is
a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on
nothing but prawns. There, the light is still wild and fresh as it rolls in from
space, and the~~urf on the boiling interface between night and day.
If one of them had been carried thousands of miles inland on the dawn. he
might have seen, as the light thundered over the high plains, a stick figure
toiling up a low hill in the path of the morning.
It reached the top a moment before the light arrived, took a breath, and
then spun around in a crouch, grinning.

It held a long blade upright between extended arms.
Light struck . . . split . . . slid . . .
Not that the wizard would have paid much attention, because he'd be too
busy worrying about the five-thousand-mile walk back home.

Miss Flitworth panted up as the new day streamed past.
Bill Door was absolutely still, only the blade moving between his fingers
as he angled it against the light. Finally he seemed satisfied.
He turned around and swished it experimentally through the air.

Miss Flitworth stuck her hands on her hips.'Oh, come on,' she said,

'No-one can )     ) 9ny- )   )on day )
) sharpen )   ) thing)
She paused.
He waved the blade again.
'Go /   )ief.'
) od gr)

Down in the yard. Cyril stretched his bald neck for another 90~ Bill Door
grinned, and sivung the blade towards the sound.
'Sudl  )oodle-riod!'
)-a~n)

Then he lowered the blade.
THAT'S SHARP.
His grin faded, or at least faded as much as it was able to.
Miss Flitworth turned, following the line of his gaze until it intersected a
?kint? haze over the cornfields.
It looked like a pale grey robe, empty but still somehow maintaining the
shape of its wearer, as if a garment on a washing line was catching the
breeze.
It wavered for a moment, and then vanished.
'I saw it,' said Miss Flitworth.
THAT WASN'T IT. THAT WAS THEM.
'Them who?'
THEY'RE LIKE - Bill Door waved a hand vaguely - SERVANTS.
WATCHERS. AUDITORS. INSPECTORS.
Miss Flitworth's eyes narrowed.
'Inspectors? You mean like the Revenoo?' she said.
I SUPPOSE SO-
Miss Flitworth's face lit up.
'Why didn't you say?'
I'M SORRY?
'My father always made me promise never to help the Revenoo. Even just
thinking about the Revenoo, he said, made him want to go and have a lie
down. He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because
at least death didn't happen to you every year. We had to
go out of the room when he really got started about the Revenoo. Nasty
creatures. Always poking around asking what you've got hidden under the
woodpile and behind the secret panels in the cellar and other stuff which is
no concern whatsoever of anyone.'
She sniffed.
Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word
"revenue", which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness
of the word "scum".
'You should have said that they were after you right from the start.' said
Miss Flitworth.'The Revenoo aren't popular in these parts, you know. In my
father's day, any Revenooer came around here prying around by himself, we
used to tie weights to their feet and heave 'em into the pond.'
BUT THE POND IS ONLY A FEW INCHES DEEP, MISS FLITWORTH.
'Yeah, but it was fun watching 'em find out. You should have said.
Everyone thought you were to do with taxes.'
NO. NOT TAXES.
'Well, well. I didn't know there was a Revenoo Up There, too.'
YES. IN A WAY.
She sidled closer.
'When will he come?'
TONIGHT. I CANNOT BE EXACT. TWO PEOPLE ARE LIVING ON THE
SAME TIMER. IT MAKES THINGS UNCERTAIN.
'I didn't know people could give people some of their life.'
IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.
'Are you're sure about tonight?'
YES.
'And that blade will work, will it?'
I DON'T KNOW. IT'S A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE.
'Oh.' She seemed to be considering something.'So you've got the rest of
the day free, then?'
YES?
'Then you can start getting the harvest in.'

WHAT?
It'll keep you busy. Keep your mind off things. Besides, I'm paying you
sixpence a week. And sixpence is sixpence.'

Mrs Cake's house was also in Elm Street. Windle knocked on the door.
After a while a muffled voice called out, 'Is there anybody there?'
'Knock once for yes,' Schleppel volunteered.
Windle levered open the letter-box.
'Excuse me? Mrs Cake?'
The door opened.
Mrs Cake wasn't what Windle had expected. She was big, but not in the
sense of being fat. She was just built to a scale slightly larger than normal;
the sort of person who goes through life crouching slightly and looking
apologetic in case they inadvertently loom.
And she had magnificent hair. It crowned her head and flowed out behind
her like a cloak. She also had slightly pointed ears and teeth which, while
white and quite beautiful, caught the light in a disturbing way. Windle was
amazed at the speed at which his heightened zombie senses reached a
conclusion. He looked down.
Lupine was sitting bolt upright, too excited even to wag his tail.
'I don't think you could be Mrs Cake,' said Windle.
'You want mother,' said the tall girl. 'Mother! There's a gentleman!'
A distant muttering became a closer muttering, and then Mrs Cake
appeared around the side of her daughter like a small moon emerging from
planetary shadow.
'What d'yew want?' said Mrs Cake.
Windle took a step backwards. Unlike her daughter, Mrs Cake was quite
short, and almost perfectly circular. And still unlike her daughter, whose
whole
stance was dedicated to making herself look small, she loomed
tremendously. This was largely because of her hat, which he later learned
she wore at all times with the dedication of a wizard. It was huge and black
and had things on it, like bird wings and wax cherries and hatpins; Carmen
Miranda could have worn that hat to the funeral of a continent. Mrs Cake
travelled underneath it as the basket travels under a balloon.
People often found themselves talking to her hat.
'Mrs Cake?' said Windle, fascinated.
'Oim down 'ere,' said a reproachful voice.
Windle lowered his gaze.
'That's 'oo I am, ' said Mrs Cake.
'Am I addressing Mrs Cake?' said Windle.
'Yes, oi, know,' said Mrs Cake.
'My name's Windle Poons.'
'Oi knew that, too.'
'I'm a wizard, yoysee -'
'All right, but see you wipes your feet.'
'May I come in?'
Windle Poons paused. He replayed the last few lines of conversation in
the clicking control room of his brain. And then he smiled.
'That's right, ' said Mrs Cake.
'Are you by any chance a natural clairvoyant?'
'About ten seconds usually, Mr Poons.'
Windle hesitated.
'You gotta ask the question,' said Mrs Cake quickly.
'I gets a migraine if people goes and viciously not asks questions after
I've already foreseen 'em and answered 'em.'
'How far into the future can you see, Mrs Cake?'
She nodded.
'Roight, then,' she said, apparently mollified, and led the way through the
hall into a tiny sitting-room.
'And the bogey can come in, only he's got to leave 'is door outside and go
in the cellar. I don't hold with bogeys wanderin' around the house.'
'Gosh, it's ages since I've been in a proper cellar,' said Schleppel.
'It's got spiders in it,' said Mrs Cake.
'Wow!'
'And you'd like a cup of tea,' said Mrs Cake to Windle. Someone else
might have said 'I expect you'd like a cup of tea', or 'Do you want a cup of
tea?' But this was a statement.
'Yes, please, ' said Windle. 'I 'd love a cup of tea.'
'You shouldn't,' said Mrs Cake.'That stuff rots your teeth.'
Windle worked this one out.
'Two sugars, please,' he said.
' It's all right.'
'This is a nice place you have here, Mrs Cake,' said Windle, his mind
racing. Mrs Cake's habit of answering questions while they were still forming
in your mind taxed the most active brain.
'He's been dead for ten years,' she said.
'Er,' said Windle, but the question was already there in his larynx, 'I trust
Mr Cake is in good health?'
'It's OK. Oi speaks to him occasional,' said Mrs Cake.
'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Windle.
'All right, if it makes you feel any better.'
'Um, Mrs Cake? I'm finding it a little confusing. Could you . . . switch off . .
. your precognition . . . ?'
She nodded.
'Sorry. Oi gets into the habit of leavin' it on,' she said, 'what with there
only bein' me an' Ludmilla and One-Man-Bucket. He's a ghost,' she added.'Oi
knew you was goin' to ask that.'
'Yes, I had heard that mediums have native spirit guides,' said Windle.
' 'Im 'E 's not a guide, 'e's a sort of odd-job ghost,' said Mrs Cake.'I don't
hold with all that stuff with cards and trumpets and Oo-jar boards, mind you.
An' I think ectoplasm's disgustin'. Oi won't have it in the
'ouse. Oi won't. You can't get it out of the carpets, you know. Not even
with vinegar.'
'My word, ' said Windle Poons.
'Or wailin'. I don't hold with it. Or messin' around with the supernatural.
It's unnatural, the supernatural. I won't have it.'
'Um,' said Windle cautiously.'There are those who might think that being a
medium is a bit . . . you know . . . supernatural?'
'What? What? Nothing supernatural about dead people. Load of
nonsense. Everyone dies sooner or later.'
'I do hope so, Mrs Cake.'
'So what is it you'd be wanting, Mr Poons? I'm not precognitin', so you
have to tell me.'
'I want to know what's happening, Mrs Cake.'
There was a muted thump from under their feet and the faint, happy sound
of Schleppel.
'Oh, wow! Rats, too!'
'I went up and tried to tell you wizards,' said Mrs Cake, primly.'An' no-one
listened. I knew they weren't going to, but I 'ad to try, otherwise I wouldn't
'ave known.'
'Who did you speak to?'
'The big one with the red dress and a moustache like he's trying to
swallow a cat.'
'Ah. The Archchancellor, ' said Windle, positively.
'And there was a huge fat one. Walks like a duck.'
'He does, doesn't he? That was the Dean,' said Windle.
'They called me their good woman, ' said Mrs Cake.
'They told me to be about my business. Don't see why I should go around
helpin' wizards who call me a good woman when I was only trying to help.'
'I'm afraid wizards don't often listen,' said Windle. 'I never listened for one
hundred and thirty years.'
'Why not?'
'In case I heard what rubbish I was saying, I
expect. What's happening, Mrs Cake? You can tell me. I may be a wizard,
but I 'm a dead one.'
'Schleppel told me it was all due to life force.'
'It's buildin' up, see?'
'What does that mean?'
'There's more'f it than there should be. You get' - she waved her hands
vaguely - 'when things are like in a scales only not the same on both sides . .
.'
'Imbalance?'
Mrs Cake, who looked as though she was reading a distant script,
nodded.
'One of them things, yeah . . . see, sometimes it just happens a little bit,
and you get ghosts, because the life is not in the body any more but it hasn't
gone . . . and you get less of it in the winter, because it sort of drains away,
and it comes back in the spring . . . and some things concentrate it . . .'

Modo the University gardener hummed a little tune as he wheeled the
strange trolley into his private little area between the Library and the High
Energy Magic * building, with a load of weeds bound for composthood.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  The only building on the campus less than a thousand years old. The
senior wizards have never bothered much about what the younger, skinnier
and more bespectacled wizards get up to in there, treating their endless
requests for funding for thaumic particle accelerators and radiation shielding
as one treats pleas for more pocket money, and listening with amusement to
their breathless accounts of the search for the elementary particles of magic
itself. This may one day turn out to be a major error on the part of the senior
wizards, especially if they do let the younger wizards build whatever that
blasted thing is they keep wanting to build in the squash court. The senior
wizards know that the proper purpose of magic is to form a social pyramid
with the wizards on top of it,

There seemed to be a lot of excitement around at the moment. It was
certainly interesting, working with all these wizards.
Teamwork, that's what it was. They looked after the cosmic balance, the
universal harmonies and the dimensional equilibriums, and he saw to it that
the aphids stayed off the roses.
There was a metallic tinkle. He peered over the top of the heap of weeds.
'Another one?'
A gleaming metal wire basket on little wheels sat on the path.
Maybe the wizards had bought it for him? The first one was quite useful,
although it was a little bit hard to steer; the little wheels seemed to want to
go in different directions. There was probably a knack.
Well, this one would be handy for carrying seed trays in. He pushed the
second trolley aside and heard, behind him, a sound which, if it had to be
written down, and if he could write, he would probably have written down as:
glop.
He turned around, saw the biggest of the compost heaps pulsating in the
dark, and said, 'Look what I brought you for your tea!'
And then he saw that it was moving.

'Some places, too . . .' said Mrs Cake.
'But why should it build up?' said Windle.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
________
eating big dinners, but in fact the HEM building has helped provide one of
the rarest foods in the universe - antipasta. Ordinary pasta is prepared some
hours before being eaten. Antipasta is created some hours after the meal,
whereupon it then exists backwards in time, and if properly prepared should
arrive on the taste buds at exactly the same moment, thus creating a true
taste explosion. It costs five thousand dollars a forkful, or a little more if you
include the cost of cleaning the tomato sauce off the walls afterwards.

'It's like a thunderstorm, see? You know how you get that prickly feelin'
before a storm? That's what's happening now.'
'Yes, but why, Mrs Cake?'
'Well . . . One-Man-Bucket says nothing's dying.'
'What?'
'Daft, isn't it? He says lots of lives are ending, but not going away. They're
just staying here.'
'What, like ghosts?'
'Not just ghosts. Just - it's like puddles. When you get a lot of puddles,
it's like the sea. Anyway, you only get ghosts from things like people. You
don't get ghosts of cabbages.'
Windle Poons sat back in his chair. He had a vision of a vast pool of life, a
lake being fed by a million short-lived tributaries as living things came to the
end of their span. And life force was leaking out as the pressure built up.
Leaking out wherever it could.
'Do you think I could have a word with One -' he began, and then stopped.
He got up and lurched over to Mrs Cake's mantel-piece.
'How long have you had this, Mrs Cake?' he demanded, picking up a
familiar glassy object.
'That? Bought it yesterday. Pretty, ain't it?'
Windle shook the globe. It was almost identical to the ones under his
floorboards. Snowflakes whirled up and settled on an exquisite model of
Unseen University.
It reminded him strongly of something. Well, the building obviously
reminded him of the University, but the shape of the whole thing, there was a
hint of, it made him think of . . .
. . . breakfast?
'Why is it happening?' he said, half to himself.
'These damn things are turning up everywhere.'

The wizards ran down the corridor.
'How can you kill ghosts?'
'How should I know? The question doesn't usually arise!'
'You exorcise them, I think.'
'What? Jumpin' up and down, runnin' on the spot, that kind of thing?'
The Dean had been ready for this.'It's spelled with an "O", Archchancellor.
I don't think one is expected to subject them to, er, physical exertion.'
'Should think not, man. We don't want a lot of healthy ghosts buzzin'
around.'
There was a blood-curdling scream. It echoed around the dark pillars and
arches, and was suddenly cut off.
The Archchancellor stopped abruptly. The wizards cannoned into him.
'Sounded like a blood-curdlin' scream, ' he said.'Follow me!'
He ran around the corner.
There was a metallic crash, and a lot of swearing.
Something small and striped red and yellow, with tiny dripping fangs and
three pairs of wings, flew around the corner and shot over the Dean's head
making a noise like a miniature buzzsaw.
'Anyone know what that was?' said the Bursar, faintly. The thing orbited
the wizards and then disappeared into the darkness of the roof. 'And I wish
he wouldn't swear so.'
'Come on,' said the Dean. 'We'd better see what's happened to him.'
'Must we?' said the Senior Wrangler.
They peered around the corner. The Archchancellor was sitting up,
rubbing his ankle.
'What idiot left this here?' he said.
'Left what?' said the Dean.
'This blasted wire baskety wheely thing,' said the Archchancellor. Beside
him, a tiny purple spider-like creature materialised out of the air and scuttled
towards a crevice. The wizards didn't notice it.
'What wire baskety wheely thing?' said the wizards, in unison.
Ridcully looked around him.
'I could have sworn -' he began.
There was another scream.
Ridcully scrambled to his feet.
'Come on, you fellows!' he said, limping heroically onwards.
'Why does everyone run towards a blood-curdling scream?' mumbled the
Senior Wrangler.'It's contrary to all sense.'
They trotted out through the cloisters and into the quadrangle.
A rounded, dark shape was squatting in the middle of the ancient lawn.
Steam was coming out of it in little, noisome wisps.
'What is it?'
'It can't be a compost heap in the middle of the lawn, can it?'
'Modo will be very upset.'
The Dean peered closer.'Er . . . especially because, I do believe, that's his
feet poking out from under it . . .'
The heap swivelled towards the wizards and made a glop, glop noise.
Then it moved.
'Right, then,' said Ridcully, rubbing his hands together hopefully, 'which
of you fellows has got a spell about them at the moment?'
The wizards patted their pockets in an embarrassed fashion.
'Then I shall attract its attention while the Bursar and the Dean try to pull
Modo out,' said Ridcully.
'Oh, good, ' said the Dean faintly.
'How can you attract a compost heap's attention?' said the Senior
Wrangler.'I shouldn't think it's even got one.'

Ridcully removed his hat and stepped gingerly forward.
'Load of rubbish !' he roared.
The Senior Wrangler groaned and put his hand over his eyes.
Ridcully flapped his hat in front of the heap.
'Biodegradable garbage!'
'Poor green trash?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes helpfully.
'That's the ticket,' said the Archchancellor.'Try to infuriate the bugger.'
(Behind him, a slightly different variety of mad waspy creature popped out of
the air and buzzed away.)
The heap lunged at the hat.
'Midden!' said Ridcully.
'Oh, I say,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, shocked.
The Dean and the Bursar crept forward, grabbed a gardener's foot each,
and pulled. Modo slid out of the heap.
'It 's eaten through his clothes !' said the Dean.
'But is he all right?'
'He's still breathing,' said the Bursar.
'And if he's lucky, he's lost his sense of smell, ' said the Dean.
The heap snapped at Ridcully's hat. There was a glop. The point of the hat
had vanished.
'Hey, there was still almost half a bottle in there!' Ridcully roared. The
Senior Wrangler grabbed his arm.
' Come on, Archchancellor !'
The heap swivelled and lunged towards the Bursar.
The wizards backed away.
' It can't be intelligent, can it?' said the Bursar.
'All it's doing is moving around slowly and eating things, ' said the Dean.
'Put a pointy hat on it and it'd be a faculty member,' said the
Archchancellor.
The heap came after them.
'I wouldn't call that moving slowly,' said the Dean.
They looked expectantly at the Archchancellor.
'Run!'
Portly though most of the faculty were, they hit a fair turn of speed up the
cloisters, fought one another through the door, slammed it behind them and
leaned on it. Very soon afterwards, there was a damp, heavy thud on the far
side.
'We're well out of that,' said the Bursar.
The Dean looked down.
'I think it's coming through the door, Archchancellor,' he said, in a tiny
voice.
'Don't be daft, man, we're all leanin' on it.'
'I didn't mean through, I mean . . . through . . .'
The Archchancellor sniffed.
'What's burnin'?'
'Your boots, Archchancellor,' said the Dean.
Ridcully looked down. A greenish-yellow puddle was spreading under the
door. The wood was charring, the flagstones were hissing, and the leather
soles of his boots were definitely in trouble. He could feel himself getting
lower.
He fumbled with the laces, and then took a standing jump on to a dry
flagstone.
'Bursar!'
'Yes, Archchancellor?'
'Give me your boots!'
'What?'
'Dammit, man, I command you to give me your blasted boots!'
This time, a long creature with four pairs of wings, two at each end, and
three eyes, popped into existence over Ridcully's head and dropped on to
his hat.
'But -'
'I am your Archchancellor!'
'Yes, but -'
'I think the hinges are going,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

Ridcully looked around desperately.
'We'll regroup in the Great Hall,' he said.'We'll . . . strategically withdraw
to previously prepared positions.'
'Who prepared them?' said the Dean.
'We'll prepare them when we get there,' said the Archchancellor through
gritted teeth.'Bursar! Your boots! Now!'
They reached the double doors of the Great Hall just as the door behind
them half-collapsed, half-dissolved. The Great Hall's doors were much
sturdier.
Bolts and bars were dragged into place.
'Clear the tables and pile them up in front of the door,' snapped Ridcully
'But it eats through wood, ' said the Dean.
There was a moan from the small body of Modo, which had been propped
against a chair. He opened his eyes.
'Quick!' said Ridcully. 'How can we kill a compost heap?'
'Um. I don't think you can, Mr Ridcully, sir,' said the gardener.
'How about fire? I could probably manage a small fireball, ' said the Dean.
'It wouldn't work. Too soggy,' said Ridcully.
'It's right outside! It's eating away at the door! It's eating away at the
door,' sang the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
The wizards backed further away down the length of the hall.
'I hope it doesn't eat too much wood,' said the dazed Modo, radiating
genuine concern.'They're a devil, excuse my Klatchian, if you get too much
carbon in
them. It's far too heating.'
'You know, this is exactly the right time for a lecture on the dynamics of
compost making, Modo, ' said the Dean.
Dwarfs do not know the meaning of the word "irony".
'Well, all right. Ahem. The correct balance of materials, correctly layered
according to -'
'There goes the door,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, lumbering
towards the rest of them.
The mound of furniture started to move forward.
The Archchancellor stared desperately around the hall, at a loss. Then his
eyes were drawn to a familiar, heavy bottle on one of the sideboards.
'Carbon,' he said. 'That's like charcoal, isn't it?'
'How should I know? I'm not an alchemist,' sniffed the Dean.
The compost heap emerged from the debris. Steam poured off it.
The Archchancellor looked longingly at the bottle of Wow-Wow Sauce. He
uncorked it. He took a deep sniff.
'The cooks here just can't make it properly, you know,' he said. It'll be
weeks before I can get any more from home.'
He tossed the bottle towards the advancing heap.
It vanished into the seething mass.
'Stinging nettles are always useful,' said Modo, behind him. 'They add
iron. And comfrey, well, you can never get enough comfrey. For the minerals,
you know. Myself, I've always reckoned that a small quantity of wild yarrow -'
The wizards peered over the top of an overturned table.
The heap had stopped moving.
'Is it just me, or is it getting bigger?' said the Senior Wrangler.
'And looking happier,' said the Dean.
'It smells awful,' said the Bursar.
'Oh, well. And that was nearly a full bottle of sauce, too,' said the
Archchancellor sadly. 'I'd hardly opened ?it?.'
'Nature's a wonderful thing, when you come to think
about it,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You don't all have to glare at me like
that, you know. I was only passing a remark.'
'There are times when -' Ridcully began, and then the compost heap
exploded.
It wasn't a bang or a boom. It was the dampest, most corpulent eruption in
the history of terminal flatulence. Dark red flame, fringed with black, roared
up to the ceiling. Pieces of heap rocketed across the hall and slapped wetly
into the walls.
The wizards peered out from their barricade, which was now thick with
tea-leaves.
A cabbage stalk dropped softly on to the Dean's head.
He looked at a small, bubbling patch on the flagstones.
His face split slowly into a grin.
'Wow,' he said.
The other wizards unfolded themselves. Adrenaline backwash worked its
seductive spell. They grinned, too, and started playfully punching one
another on the shoulder.
'Eat hot sauce!' roared the Archchancellor. 'Up against the hedge,
fermented rubbish!'
'Can we kick ass, or can we kick ass?' burbled the Dean happily.
'You mean can't the second time, not can. And I'm not sure that a
compost heap can be said to have an -' the Senior Wrangler began, but the
tide of excitement was flowing against him.
'That's one heap that won't mess with wizards again,' said the Dean, who
was getting carried away.
'We're keen and mean and -'
'There's three more of them out there, Modo says,' said the Bursar.
They fell silent.
'We could go and pick up our staffs, couldn't we?' said the Dean.

The Archchancellor prodded a piece of exploded heap with the toe of his
boot.
'Dead things coming alive,' he murmured.'I don't like that. What's next?
Walking statues?'
The wizards looked up at the statues of dead Archchancellors that lined
the Great Hall and, indeed, most of the corridors of the University. The
University had been in existence for thousands of years and the average
Archchancellor remained in office for about eleven months, so there were
plenty of statues.
'You know, I really wish you hadn't said that, ' said the Lecturer in Recent
Runes.
'It was just a thought,' said Ridcully.'Come on, let's have a look at the rest
of those heaps.'
'Yeah!' said the Dean, now in the grip of a wild, unwizardly
machismo.'We're mean! Yeah! Are we mean?'
The Archchancellor raised his eyebrows, and then turned to the rest of the
wizards.
'Are we mean?' he said.
'Er. I'm feeling reasonably mean,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'I'm definitely very mean, I think,' said the Bursar.
'It's having no boots that does it,' he added.
'I'll be mean if everyone else is,' said the Senior Wrangler.
The Archchancellor turned back to the Dean.
'Yes,' he said, 'it appears that we are all mean.'
'Yo!' said the Dean.
'Yo what?' said Ridcully.
'It's not a yo what, it's just a yo,' said the Senior Wrangler, behind him.'It's
a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and
masculine bonding-ritual overtones.'
'What? What? Like "jolly good"?' said Ridcully.
'I suppose so,' said the Senior Wrangler, reluctantly.
Ridcully was pleased. Ankh-Morpork had never offered very good
prospects for hunting. He'd never
thought it was possible to have so much fun in his own university.
'Right, ' he said. 'Let's get those heaps !'
'Yo!'
'Yo!'
'Yo!'
'Yo-yo.'
Ridcully sighed. 'Bursar?'
'Yes, Archchancellor?'
'Just try to understand, all right?'

Clouds piled up over the mountains. Bill Door strode up and down the
first field, using one of the ordinary farm scythes; the sharpest one had been
temporarily stored at the back of the barn, in case it was blunted by air
convection. Some of Miss Flitworth's tenants followed behind him, binding
the sheaves and stacking them. Miss Flitworth had never employed more
than one man full time, Bill Door learned; she bought in other help as she
needed it, to save pennies.
'Never seen a man cut corn with a scythe before,' said one of them.'It's a
sickle job.'
They stopped for lunch. and ate it under the hedge.
Bill Door had never paid a great deal of attention to the names and faces
of people, beyond that necessary for business. Corn stretched over the
hillside; it was made up of individual stalks. and to the eye of one stalk
another stalk might be quite an impressive stalk, with a dozen amusing and
distinctive little mannerisms that set it apart from all other stalks. But to the
reaper man, all stalks start off as . . . just stalks.
Now he was beginning to recognise the little differences.
There was William Spigot and Gabby Wheels and Duke Bottomley. All old
men, as far as Bill Door could judge, with skins like leather. There were
young men and women in the village, but at a certain age they seemed to flip
straight over to being old, without passing through any intermediate stage.
And then they stayed old for a long time. Miss Flitworth had said that before
they could start a graveyard in
these parts they'd had to hit someone over the head with the shovel.
William Spigot was the one that sang when he worked, breaking into that
long nasal whine which meant that folk song was about to be perpetrated.
Gabby Wheels never said anything; this, Spigot had said. was why he had
been called Gabby. Bill Door had failed to understand the logic of this,
although it seemed transparent to the others.
And Duke Bottomley had been named by parents with upwardly-mobile if
rather simplistic ideas about class structure; his brothers were Squire, Earl
and King.
Now they sat in a row under the hedge, putting off the moment when
they'd need to start work again. A glugging noise came from the end of the
row.
'It's not been a bad old summer, then,' said Spigot. 'And good harvest
weather for a change.'
'Ah . . . many a slip 'twixt dress and drawers,' said Duke.'Last night I saw
a spider spinnin' its web backwards. That's a sure sign there's going to be a
dretful storm.'
'Don't see how spiders know things like that.'
Gabby Wheels passed a big earthenware jug to Bill Door. Something
sloshed.
WHAT IS THIS?
'Apple juice,' said Spigot. The others laughed.
AH, said Bill Door. STRONG DISTILLED SPIRITS, GIVEN HUMOROUSLY
TO THE UNSUSPECTING NEWCOMER, THUS TO AFFORD SIMPLE
AMUSEMENT WHEN HE BECOMES INADVERTENTLY INEBRIATED.
'Cor,' said Spigot. Bill Door took a long swig.
'And I saw swallows flying low,' said Duke.'And partridges are heading for
the woods. And there's a lot of big snails about. And -'
'I don't reckon any of them buggers knows the first thing about
meteorology,' said Spigot. 'l reckon you goes around telling 'em. Eh, lads?
Big storm comin', Mr Spider, so get on and do somethin' folklorish.'
Bill Door took another drink.
WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE BLACKSMITH IN THE VILLAGE?
Spigot nodded. 'That's Ned Simnel, down by the green. O'course, he's
real busy about now, what with the harvest and all.'
I HAVE SOME WORK FOR HIM.
Bill Door got up and strode away towards the gate.

He stopped. YES?
'You can leave the brandy behind, then.'

The village forge was dark and stifling in the heat. But Bill Door had very
good eyesight.
Something moved among a complicated heap of metal. It turned out to be
the lower half of a man. His upper body was somewhere in the machinery,
from which came the occasional grunt.
A hand shot out as Bill Door approached.
'Right. Give me three-eighths Gripley.'
Bill looked around. A variety of tools were strewn around the forge.'Come
on, come on,' said a voice from somewhere in the machine.
Bill Door selected a piece of shaped metal at random, and placed it in the
hand. It was drawn inside. There was metallic noise, and a grunt.
'I said a Gripley. This isn't a' - there was the scringeing noise of a piece of
metal giving way - 'my thumb, my thumb, you made me' - there was a clang -
'aargh. That was my head. Now look what you've made me do. And the
ratchet spring's snapped off the trunnion armature again, do you realise?'
NO. I AM SORRY.
There was a pause.
'Is that you, young Egbert?'
NO. IT IS ME, OLD BILL DOOR.
There was a series of thumps and twanging noises as the top half of the
human extricated itself from the machinery, and turned out to belong to a
young man with black curly hair, a black face, black shirt, and black apron.
He wiped a cloth across his face, leaving a pink smear, and blinked the sweat out of
his eyes.
'Who're you?'
GOOD OLD BILL DOOR? WORKING FOR MISS FLITWORTH?
'Oh, yes. The man in the fire? Hero of the hour, I heard. Put it there.'
He extended a black hand. Bill Door looked at it blankly.
I AM SORRY. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT A THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY
IS.
'I mean your hand, Mr Door.'
Bill Door hesitated, and then put his hand in the young man's palm. The
oil-rimmed eyes glazed for a moment. as the brain overruled the sense of
touch, and then the smith smiled.
'The name's Simnel. What do you think, eh?'
IT'S A GOOD NAME.
'No, I mean the machine. Pretty ingenious, eh?'
Bill Door ?regiy~,ded? it with polite incomprehension. It looked, at first
sight, like a portable windmill that had been attacked by an enormous insect,
and at second sight like a touring torture chamber for an Inquisition that
wanted to get out and about a bit and enjoy the fresh air. Mysterious jointed
arms stuck out at various angles. There were belts, and long springs. The
whole thing was mounted on spiked metal wheels.
'Of course, you're not seeing it at its best when it's standing still,' said
Simnel.'It needs a horse to pull it. At the moment, anyway. I've got one or two
rather radical ideas in that direction.' he added dreamily.
IT'S A DEVICE OF SOME SORT?
Simnel looked mildly affronted.
'I prefer the term machine,' he said.'It will revolutionise farming methods,
and drag them kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. My
folk have had this forge for three hundred years, but Ned Simnel doesn't
intend to spend the rest of his life nailing bits of bent metal on to horses, I
call tell you.'
Bill looked at him blankly. Then he bent down and
glanced under the machine. A dozen sickles were bolted to a big
horizontal wheel. Ingenious linkages took power from the wheels, via a
selection of pulleys, to a whirligig arrangement of metal arms.
He began to experience a horrible feeling about the thing in front of him,
but he asked anyway.
'Well, the heart of it all is this cam shaft,' said Simnel, gratified at the
interest. 'The power comes up via the pulley here, and the cams move the
swaging arms - that's these things - and the combing gate, which is operated
by the reciprocating mechanism, comes down just as the gripping shutter
drops in this slot here, and of course at the same time the two brass balls go
round and round and the flatting sheets carry off the straw while the grain
drops with the aid of gravity down the riffling screw and into the hopper.
Simple.'
AND THE THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY?
'Good job you reminded me.' Simnel fished around among the debris on
the floor, picked up a small knurled object, and screwed it on to a protruding
piece of the mechanism.'Very important job. It stops the elliptical cam
gradually sliding up the beam shaft and catching on the flange rebate, with
disastrous results as you can no doubt imagine.'
Simnel stood back and wiped his hands on a cloth, making them slightly
more oily.
'I'm calling it the Combination Harvester,' he said.
Bill Door felt very old. In fact he was very old. But he'd never felt it as
much as this. Somewhere in the shadow of his soul he felt he knew, without
the blacksmith explaining, what it was that the Combination Harvester was
supposed to do.
OH.
'We're going to give it a trial run this afternoon up in old Peedbury's big
field. It looks very promising, I must say. What you're looking at now, Mr
Door, is the future.'
YES.
Bill Door ran his hand over the framework.
AND THE HARVEST ITSELF?
'Hmm? What about it?'
WHAT WILL IT THINK OF IT? WILL IT KNOW?
Simnel wrinkled his nose.'Know? Know? It won't know anything. Corn's
corn.'
AND SIXPENCE IS SIXPENCE.
'Exactly.' Simnel hesitated.'What was it you were wanting?'
The tall figure ran a disconsolate finger over the oily mechanism.
'Mr Door?'
PARDON? OH. YES. I HAD SOMETHING FOR YOU TO DO -
He strode out of the forge and returned almost immediately with
something wrapped in silk. He unwrapped it carefully.
He'd made a new handle for the blade - not a straight one, such as
?these? used in the mountains, but the heavy doublecurved handle of the
plains.
'You want it beaten out? A new grass nail? Metalwork replacing?'
Bill Door shook his head.
I WANT IT KILLED.
'Killed?'
YES. TOTALLY. EVERY BIT DESTROYED. SO THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY
DEAD.
'Nice scythe,' said Simnel. 'Seems a shame. You've kept a good edge on it
-'
DON'T TOUCH IT!
Simnel sucked his finger.
'Funny,' he said, 'I could have sworn I didn't touch it. My hand was inches
away. Well, it's sharp, anyway.'
He swished it through the air.
'Yes. Pretty sharp
He paused, stuck his little finger in his ear and swivelled it around a bit.
'You sure you know what you want?' he said.
Bill Door solemnly repeated his request. down ???
Simnel shrugged.'Well, I suppose I could melt it and burn the handle,' he
said.
YES.
'Well, OK. It's your scythe. And you're basically right, of course. This is
old technology now. Redundant.'
I FEAR YOU MAY BE RIGHT.
Simnel jerked a grimy thumb towards the Combination Harvester. Bill
Door knew it was made only of metal and canvas, and therefore couldn't
possibly lurk. But it was lurking. Moreover, it was doing so with a chilling,
metallic smugness.
'You could get Miss Flitworth to buy you one of these, Mr Door. It'd be just
the job for a one-man farm like that. I can see you now, up there, up in the
breeze, with the belts clacking away and the sparge arms oscillating -'
NO.
'Go on. She could afford it. They say she's got boxes full of treasure from
the old days.'
NO!
'Er -' Simnel hesitated. The last 'No' contained a threat more certain than
the creak of thin ice on a deep river. It said that going any further could be
the most foolhardy thing Simnel would ever do.
'I'm sure you know your own mind best,' he mumbled.
YES.
'Then it'll just be, oh, call it a farthing for the scythe,' Simnel gabbled.
'Sorry about that. but it'll use a lot of coals, you see, and those dwarfs keep
winding up the price of -'
HERE. IT MUST BE DONE BY TONIGHT.
Simnel didn't argue. Arguing would mean that Bill Door remained in the
forge, and he was getting quite anxious that this should not be so.
'Fine, fine.'
YOU UNDERSTAND?
'Right. Right.'
FAREWELL, said Bill Door solemnly, and left.
Simnel shut the doors after him, and leaned against them. Whew. Nice
man. of course, everyone was talking about him, it was just that after a
couple of minutes in his presence you got a pins-and-needles sensation that
someone was walking over your grave and it hadn't even been dug yet.
He wandered across the oily floor, filled the tea kettle and wedged it on a
corner of the forge. He picked up a spanner to do some final adjustments to
the Combination Harvester, and spotted the scythe leaning against the wall.
He tiptoed towards it, and realised that tiptoeing was an amazingly stupid
thing to do. It wasn't alive. It couldn't hear. It just looked sharp.
He raised the spanner, and felt guilty about it. By Mr Door had said - well,
Mr Door had said something very odd, using the wrong sort of words to use
in talking about a mere implement. But he could hardly object to this.
Simnel brought the spanner down hard.
There was no resistance. He would have sworn, again, that the spanner
sheared in two, as though it was made of bread, several inches from the
edge of the blade.
He wondered if something could be so sharp that it began to possess, not
just a sharp edge, but the very essence of sharpness itself, a field of
absolute sharpness that actually extended beyond the last atoms of metal.
'Bloody hell '
And then he remembered that this was sloppy and superstitious thinking
for a man who knew how to bevel a three eighths Gripley. You knew where
you were with a reciprocating linkage. It either worked or it didn't. It certainly
didn't present you with mysteries.
He looked proudly at the Combination Harvester. Of course, you needed a
horse to pull it. That spoiled things a bit. Horses belonged to Yesterday;
Tomorrow belonged to the Combination Harvester and its descendants,
which would make the world a cleaner and better place. It was
just a matter of taking the horse out of the equation. He'd tried clockwork.
and that wasn't powerful enough. Maybe if he tried winding a -
Behind him, the kettle boiled over and put the fire out.
Simnel fought his way through the steam. That was the bloody trouble,
every time. Whenever someone was trying to do a bit of sensible thinking,
there was always some pointless distraction.

Mrs Cake drew the curtains.
'Who exactly is One-Man-Bucket?' said Windle.
She lit a couple of candles and sat down.
' 'e belonged to one of them heathen Howondaland tribes,' she said
shortly.
'Very strange name, One-Man-Bucket,' said Windle.
'It's not 'is full name.' said Mrs Cake darkly. 'Now, we've got to 'old 'ands.'
She looked at him speculatively.'We need someone else.'
'I could call Schleppel,' said Windle.
'I ain't 'aving no bogey under my table trying to look up me drawers,' said
Mrs Cake. 'Ludmilla!' she shouted. After a moment or two the bead curtain
leading into the kitchen was swept aside and the young woman who had
originally opened the door to Windle came in.
'Yes mother?'
'Sit down, girl. We need another one for the seancing.'
'Yes, mother.'
The girl smiled at Windle.
'This is Ludmilla,' said Mrs Cake shortly.
'Charmed, I'm sure,' said Windle. Ludmilla gave him the bright, crystalline
smile perfected by people who had long ago learned not to let their feelings
show.
'We have already met,' said Windle. It must be at least a day since full
moon, he thought. All the signs are nearly gone. Nearly. Well, well, well . . .
'She's my shame,' said Mrs Cake.
'Mother, you do go on,' said Ludmilla, without rancour.
'Join hands, ' said Mrs Cake.
They sat in the semi-darkness. Then Windle felt Mrs Cake's hand being
pulled away.
'Oi forgot about the glass,' she said.
'I thought, Mrs Cake, that you didn't hold with ouija boards and that sort
of -' Windle began.
There was a glugging noise from the sideboard. Mrs Cake put a full glass
on the tablecloth and sat down again.
'Oi don't,' she said.
Silence descended again. Windle cleared his throat nervously.
Eventually Mrs Cake said, 'All right, One-Man-Bucket, oi knows you're
there.'
The glass moved. The amber liquid inside sloshed gently.
A bodiless voice quavered, greetings, pale face, from the happy hunting
ground -
'You stop that,' said Mrs Cake. 'Everyone knows you got run over by a
cart in Treacle Street because you was drunk, One-Man-Bucket.'
s'not my fault. not my fault. is it my fault my great-grandad moved here?
by rights I should have been mauled to death by a mountain lion or a giant
mammoth or something. I bin denied my deathright.
'Mr Poons here wants to ask you a question, One-Man-Bucket,' said Mrs
Cake.
she is happy here and waiting for you to join her, said One-Man-Bucket.
'Who is?' said Windle.
This seemed to fox One-Man-Bucket. It was a line, that generally satisfied
without further explanation.
who would you like? he asked cautiously. can I have that ?cerink? now?
'Not yet, One-Man-Bucket,' said Mrs Cake.
well, I need it. it's bloody crowded in here.
'What?' said Windle quickly. 'With ghosts, you mean?'
there's hundreds of 'em, said the voice of One-Man-Bucket.
Windle was disappointed.
'Only hundreds?' he said.'That doesn't sound a lot.'
'Not many people become ghosts,' said Mrs Cake. 'To be a ghost, you got
to have, like, serious unfinished business, or a terrible revenge to take, or a
cosmic purpose in which you are just a pawn.'
or a cruel thirst, said One-Man-Bucket.
'Will you hark at him,' said Mrs Cake.
I wanted to stay in the spirit world. or even wire and beer. hngh. hngh.
hngh.
'So what happens to the life force if things stop living?' said Windle. 'Is
that what's causing all this trouble?'
'You tell the man,' said Mrs Cake, when One-Man-Bucket seemed reluctant
to answer.
what trouble you talking about?
'Things unscrewing. Clothes running around by themselves. Everyone
feeling more alive. That sort of thing.'
that? that's nothilng. see, the life force leaks back where it can. you don't
need to worry about that.
Windle put his hand over the glass.
'But there's something I should be worrying about, isn't there,' he said
flatly. 'It's to do with the little glass souvenirs.'
don't like to say.
'Do tell him.'
It was Ludmilla's voice - deep but, somehow, attractive. Lupine was
watching her intently.
Windle smiled. That was one of the advantages about being dead. You
spotted things the living ignored.
One-Man-Bucket sounded shrill and petulant.
what's he going to do if I tell him, then? I could get into heap big trouble
for that sort of thing.
'Well, can you tell me if I guess right?' said Windle.
ye-ess. maybe.
'You don't have to say anythin',' said Mrs Cake. 'Just knock twice for yes
and once for no, like in the old days.'
oh, all right.
'Go on, Mr Poons,' said Ludmilla. She had the kind of voice Windle
wanted to stroke.
He cleared his throat.
'I think,' he began, 'that is, I think they're some sort of eggs. I thought . . .
why breakfast? and then I thought ...eggs...'
Knock.
'Oh. Well, perhaps it was a rather silly idea . . .'
sorry, was it once for yes or twice for yes ?
' 'voice !' snapped the medium.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
'Ah,' breathed Windle. 'And they hatch into something with wheels on?'
twice for yes, was it?
'Roight!'
KNOCK. KNOCK.
'I thought so. I thought so ! I found one under my floor that tried to hatch
where there wasn't enough room!' crowed Windle. Then he frowned.
'But hatch into what?'

Mustrum Ridcully trotted into his study and took his wizard's staff from its
rack over the fireplace. He licked his finger and gingerly touched the top of
the staff.
There was a small octarine spark and a smell of greasy tin.
He headed back for the door.
Then he turned around slowly, because his brain had just had time to
analyse the study's cluttered contents and spot the oddity.
'What the hell's that doin' there?' he said.
He prodded it with the tip of the staff. It gave a jingling noise and rolled a
little way.
It looked vaguely, but not very much, like the sort of thing the maids
trundled around loaded with mops and fresh linen and whatever it was maids
pushed around. Ridcully made a mental note to take it up with the
housekeeper. Then he forgot about it.
'Damn wire wheely things are gettin' everywhere,' he muttered.
Upon the word "damn", something like a large blue-bottle with cat-sized
dentures flopped out of the air, fluttered madly as it took stock of its
surroundings, and then flew after the unheeding Archchancellor.
The words of wizards have power. And swearwords have power. And with
life force practically crystallising out of the air, it had to find outlets wherever
it could.

cities. said One-Man-Bucket. I think they're city eggs.

The senior wizards gathered again in the Great Hall.
Even the Senior Wrangler was feeling a certain excitement. It was
considered bad form to use magic against fellow wizards, and using it
against civilians was unsporting. It did you good to have a really righteous
zap occasionally.
The Archchancellor looked them over.
'Dean, why have you got stripes all over your face?' he enquired.
'Camouflage, Archchancellor.'
'Camouflage, eh?'
'Yo, Archchancellor.'
'Oh, well. So long as you feel happy in yourself, that's what matters.'
They crept out towards the patch of ground that had been Modo's little
territory. At least, most of
them crept. The Dean advanced in a series of spinning leaps, occasionally
flattening himself against the wall, and saying 'Hut! Hut! Hut!' under his
breath.
He was absolutely crestfallen when the other heaps turned out to be still
where Modo had built them. The gardener, who had tagged along behind and
had twice nearly been flattened by the Dean, fussed around them for a while.
'They're just lying low,' said the Dean. 'I say we blow up the godsdamn -'
'They're not even warm yet,' said Modo.'That one must have been the
oldest.'
'You mean we haven't got anything to fight?' said the Archchancellor.
The ground shook underfoot. And then there was a faint jangling noise,
from the direction of the cloisters.
Ridcully frowned.
'Someone 's pushing those damn wire baskety things around again,' he
said. 'There was one in my study tonight.'
'Huh,' said the Senior Wrangler.'There was one in my bedroom. I opened
the wardrobe and there it was.'
'In your wardrobe? What'd you put it in there for?' said Ridcully.
'I didn't. I told you. It was probably the students. It's their kind of humour.
One of them put a hairbrush in my bed once.'
'I fell over one earlier,' said the Archchancellor, 'and then when I looked
round for it, someone had taken it away.'
The jingling noise got closer.
'Right, Mr So-called Clever Dick Young-fella-me-lad,' said Ridcully,
tapping his staff once or twice on his palm in a meaningful way.
The wizards backed up against the wall.
The phantom trolley pusher was almost on them.
Ridcully snarled, and leapt out of hiding.
'Aha, my fine young - bloody hellfire!'

'Don't be pullin' moi leg,' said Mrs Cake.'Cities ain't alive. I know people
says they are, but they don't mean really.'
Windle Poons turned one of the snowballs around in his hand.
'It must be laying thousands of them,' he said.'But they wouldn't all
survive, of course. Otherwise we'd be up to here in cities, yes?'
'You telling us that these little balls hatch out into huge places?' said
Ludmilla.
not straight away. there's the mobile stage first.
'Something with wheels on,' said Windle.
that's right. i can see you know already.
'I think I knew,' said Windle Poons, 'but I didn't understand. And what
happens after the mobile stage?'
'Don't know.'
Windle stood up.
'Then it's time to find out, ' he said.
He glanced at Ludmilla and Lupine. Ah. Yes. And why not? If you can help
somebody as you pass this way, Windle thought, then your living, or
whatever, shall not be in vain.
He let himself fall into a stoop and let a little crackle enter his voice.
'But I 'm rather unsteady on my legs these days,' he quavered. 'It would
really be a great favour if someone could help me along. Could you see me
as far as the University, young lady?'
'Ludmilla doesn't go out much these days because her health -' Mrs Cake
began briskly.
'Is absolutely fine,' said Ludmilla. 'Mother, you know it's been a whole day
since full moo -'
'Ludmilla!'
'Well, it has.'

'It's not safe for a young woman to walk the streets these days,' said Mrs
Cake.
'But Mr Poons' wonderful dog would frighten away the most dangerous
criminal,' said Ludmilla.
On cue, Lupine barked helpfully and begged. Mrs Cake regarded him
critically.
'He's certainly a very obedient animal,' she said, reluctantly.
'That's settled, then,' said Ludmilla. 'I'll fetch my shawl.'
Lupine rolled over. Windle nudged him with a foot.
'Be good, ' he said.
There was a meaningful cough from One-Man-Bucket.
'All right, all right,' said Mrs Cake. She took a bundle of matches from the
dresser, lit one absent-mindedly with her fingernail, and dropped it into the
whisky glass. It burned with a blue flame, and somewhere in the spirit world
the spectre of a stiff double lasted just long enough.
As Windle Poons left the house, he thought he could hear a ghostly voice
raised in song.

The trolley stopped. It swivelled from side to side, as if observing the
wizards. Then it did a fast three-point turn and trundled off at high speed.
'Get it!' bellowed the Archchancellor.
He aimed his staff and got off a fireball which turned a small area of
cobblestones into something yellow and bubbly. The speeding trolley rocked
wildly but kept going, with one wheel rattling and squeaking.
'It's from the Dungeon Dimensions!' said the Dean.
'Cream the basket!'
The Archchancellor laid a steadying hand on his shoulder.'Don't be daft.
Dungeon Things have a lot more tentacles and things. They don't look
made.'
They turned at the sound of another trolley. It rattled unconcernedly down
a side passage, stopped when
it saw or otherwise perceived the wizards, and did a creditable impression
of a trolley that had just been left there by someone.
The Bursar crept up to it.
'It's no use you looking like that,' he said. 'We know you can move.'
'We all seed you,' said the Dean.
The trolley maintained a low profile.
'It can't be thinking,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.'There's no room
for a brain.'
'Who says it's thinking?' said the Archchancellor. 'All it does is move.
Who needs brains for that?  Prawns move.'
He ran his fingers over the metalwork.
'Actually, prawns are quite intell -' the Senior Wrangler began.
'Shut up,' said Ridcully. 'Hmm. Is this made, though?'
'It's wire,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Wire's something that you have to
make. And there's wheels. Hardly anything natural's got wheels.'
'It's just that up close, it looks -'
'- all one thing, ' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had knelt down
painfully to inspect it the better.
'Like one unit. Made all in one lump. Like a machine that's been grown.
But that's ridiculous.'
'Maybe. Isn't there a sort of cuckoo in the Ramtops that builds clocks to
nest in?' said the Bursar.
'Yes, but that's just courtship ritual,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes
airily. 'Besides, they keep lousy time.'
The trolley leapt for a gap in the wizards and would have made it except
that the gap was occupied by the Bursar, who gave a scream and pitched
forward into the basket. The trolley didn't stop but rattled onwards, towards
the gates.
The Dean raised his staff. The Archchancellor grabbed it.
'You might hit the Bursar,' he said.
'Just one small fireball?'
'It's tempting, but no. Come on. After it.'
'Yo!'
'If you like.'
The wizards lumbered in pursuit. Behind them, as yet unnoticed, a whole
flock of the Archchancellor's swearwords fluttered and buzzed. And Windle
Poons was leading a small deputation to the Library.

The Librarian of Unseen University knuckled his way hurriedly across the
floor as the door shook to a thunderous knocking.
'I know you're in there,' came the voice of Windle Poons.'You must let us
in. It's vitally important.'
'Oook.'
'You won't open the doors?'
'Oook!'
'Then you leave me no choice . . .'
Ancient blocks of masonry moved aside slowly.
Mortar crumbled. Then part of the wall fell in, leaving Windle Poons
standing in a Windle Poons-shaped hole. He coughed on the dust.
'I hate having to do that,' he said. 'I can't help feeling it's pandering to
popular prejudice.'
The Librarian landed on his shoulders. To the orangutan's surprise, this
made very little difference.
A 300-pound orangutan usually had a noticeable effect on a person's rate
of progress, but Windle wore him like a collar.
'I think we need Ancient History,' he said. 'I wonder, could you stop trying
to twist my head off?'
The Librarian looked around wildly. It was a technique that normally never
failed.
Then his nostrils flared.
The Librarian hadn't always been an ape. A magical library is a dangerous
place to work, and he'd been turned into an orangutan as a result of a
magical explosion. He'd been a quite inoffensive human, although by now so
many people had come to terms with his new shape that few people
remembered it.
But with the change had come the key to a whole bundle of senses and
racial memories. And one of the deepest, most fundamental, most borne-in-
the-bone of all of them was to do with shapes. It went back to the dawn of
sapience. Shapes with muzzles, teeth and four legs were, in the evolving
simian mind, definitely filed under Bad News.
A very large wolf had padded through the hole in the wall, followed by an
attractive young woman. The Librarian's signal input was temporarily fused.
'Also,' said Windle, 'it is just possible that I could knot your arms behind
you.'
'Eeek!'
'He's not an ordinary wolf. You'd better believe it.'
'Oook?'
Windle lowered his voice. 'And she might not technically be a woman,' he
added.
The Librarian looked at Ludmilla. His nostrils flared again. His brow
wrinkled.
'Oook ?'
'All right, I may have put that rather clumsily. Do let go, there's a good
fellow.'
The Librarian released his grip very cautiously and sank to the floor,
keeping Windle between himself and Lupine.
Windle brushed mortar fragments off the remains of his robe.
'We need to find out,' he said, 'about the lives of cities. Specifically, I need
to know -'
There was a faint j angling noise.
A wire basket rolled nonchalantly around the massive stack of the nearest
bookcase. It was full of books. It stopped as soon as it realised that it had
been seen and contrived to look as though it had never moved at all.
The mobile stage,' breathed Windle Poons.
The wire basket tried to inch backwards without appearing to move.
Lupine growled.
'Is that what One-Man-Bucket was talking about?' said Ludmilla. The
trolley vanished. The Librarian grunted, and went after it.
'Oh, yes. Something that would make itself useful,' said Windle, suddenly
almost maniacally cheerful. 'That's how it'd work. First, something that you'd
want to keep, and put away somewhere. Thousands wouldn't get the right
conditions, but that wouldn't matter, because there would be thousands. And
then the next stage would be something that would be handy, and get
everywhere, and no-one would ever think it had got there by itself. But it's all
happening at the wrong time!'
'But how can a city be alive? It's only made up of dead parts !' said
Ludmilla.
'So're people. Take it from me. I know. But you are right, I think. This
shouldn't be happening. It's all this extra life force. It's . . . it's tipping the
balance. It's turning something that isn't really real into a reality. And it's
happening too early, and it's happening too
'Oh, the poor thing! Look at him!'
Ludmilla rushed across the floor and knelt down by the stricken wolf.
'It went right over his paws, look!'
'And he's probably lost a couple of teeth,' said Windle. He helped the
Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his
books.
This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the
trolleys were brainless.
He reached down and wrenched the wheels off the trolley.
'Ole,' said Windle.
'Oook?'
'No, Not "with milk",' said Windle.
Lupine was having his head cradled in Ludmilla's lap. He had lost a tooth,
and his fur was a mess. He opened one eye and fixed Windle with a
conspiratorial yellow stare while ?ubis? ears were stroked. There's a lucky
dog, thought Windle, who's going to push his luck and hold up a paw and
whine.
'Right,' said Windle. 'Now, Librarian . . . you were about to help us, I think.'
'Poor brave dog,' said Ludmilla.
Lupine raised a paw pathetically, and whined.

Burdened by the screaming form of the Bursar, the other wire basket
couldn't get up to the speed of its departed comrade. One wheel also trailed
uselessly. It canted recklessly from side to side and nearly fell over as it shot
through the gates, moving sideways.
'I can see it clear! I can see it clear!' screamed the Dean.
'Don't! You might hit the Bursar!' bellowed Ridcully. 'You might damage
University property!'
But the Dean couldn't hear for the roar of unaccustomed testosterone. A
searing green fireball struck the skewing trolley. The air was filled with flying
wheels.
Ridcully took a deep breath.
'You stupid !' he screamed.
The word he uttered was unfamiliar to those wizards who had not had his
robust country upbringing and knew nothing of the finer points of animal
husbandry. But it plopped into existence a few inches from his face; it was
fat, round, black and glossy, with horrible eyebrows. It blew him an insectile
raspberry and flew up to join the little swarm of curses.
'What the hell was that?'
A smaller thing flashed into existence by his ear.
Ridcully snatched at his hat.
'Damn!' - the swarm increased by one - 'Something just bit me!'
A squadron of newly-hatched Blasteds made a valiant bid for freedom. He
swatted at them ineffectually.
'Get away, you b -' he began.
'Don't say it!' said the Senior Wrangler.'Shut up!'
People never told the Archchancellor to shut up. Shutting up was
something that happened to other people. He shut up out of shock.
'I mean, every time you swear it comes alive,' said the Senior Wrangler
hurriedly. 'Ghastly little winged things pop out of the air.'
'Bloody hellfire!' said the Archchancellor.
Pop. Pop.
The Bursar crawled dazed out of the tangled wreckage of the wire trolley.
He found his pointy hat, dusted it off, tried it on, frowned, and took a wheel
out of it. His colleagues didn't seem to be paying him much attention.
He heard the Archchancellor say, 'But I've always done it! Nothing wrong
with a good swear, it keeps the blood flowing. Watch out, Dean, one of the
bug -'
'Can't you say something else?' shouted the Senior Wrangler, above the
buzz and whine of the swarm.
'Like what?'
'Like...oh...like...darn.'

'Darn?'
'Yes, or maybe poot.'
'What? You want me to say poot?'
The Bursar crept up to the group. Arguing over petty details at times of
dimensional emergency was a familiar wizardly trait.
'Mrs Whitlow the housekeeper always says "Sugar !" ' when she drops
something,' he volunteered.
The Archchancellor turned on him.
'She may say sugar,' he growled, 'but what she means, is shi-'
The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself.
'Oh, darn,' he said miserably. The swearwords settled amiably on his hat.
'They like you,' said the Dean.
'You're their daddy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Ridcully scowled.'You b- boys can stop being silly at your
Archchancellor's expense and da-jolly well find out what's going on,' he
said.
The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared.
'You're doing fine,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.'Keep it up.'
'Darn darn darn,' said the Archchancellor.'Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty
pootity poot.' He shook his head.
'It's no good, it doesn't relieve my feelings one bit.'
'It's cleared the air, at any rate,' said the Bursar.
They noticed his presence for the first time.
They looked at the remains of the trolley.
'Things zooming around,' said Ridcully.'Things coming alive.'
They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more
wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of
fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child.

The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping
after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a
desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates.
The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along
gamely at the back of the crowd.
'What happened?'
'I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and
ran away on me!'
'What about the child?'
'Search me. This woman had one of the baskets and she bought some
peaches off of me an' then -'
They all turned. A basket rattled out of the mouth of an alleyway, saw
them, turned smartly and shot off across the square.
'But why?' said Ridcully.
'They're so handy to put things in, right?' said the man.'I got to get them
peaches. You know how they bruise.'
'And they're all going in the same direction,' said the Lecturer in Recent
Runes.'Anyone else notice that?'
'After them!' screamed the Dean. The other wizards, too bewildered to
argue, lumbered after him.
'No -' Ridcully began, and realised that it was hopeless. And he was
losing the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the
history of bowdlerism.
'Darn them to Heck!' he yelled, and ran after the Dean.

Bill Door worked through the long heavy afternoon. at the head of a trail
of binders and stackers.
Until there was a shout, and the men ran towards the hedge.
?lago? Peedbury's big field was right on the other side. His
farmhands were wheeling the Combination Harvester through the gate.
Bill joined the others leaning over the hedge. The distant figure of Simnel
could be seen, giving instructions. A frightened horse was backed into the
shafts. The blacksmith climbed into the little metal seat in the middle of the
machinery and took up the reins.
The horse walked forward. The sparge arms unfolded.
The canvas sheets started to revolve, and probably the riffling screw was
turning, but that didn't matter because something somewhere went 'clonk'
and everything stopped.
From the crowd at the hedge there were shouts of 'Get out and milk it!',
'We had one but the end fell off!', 'Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!'
and other time-honoured witticisms.
Simnel got down, held a whispered conversation with Peedbury and his
men, and then disappeared into the machinery for a moment.
'It'll never fly!'
'Veal will be cheap tomorrow!'
This time the Combination Harvester got several feet before one of the
rotating sheets split and folded up.
By now some of the older men at the hedge were doubled up with
laughter.
'Any old iron, sixpence a load!'
'Fetch the other one, this one's broke!'
Simnel got down again. Distant catcalls drifted towards him as he untied
the sheet and replaced it with a new one; he ignored them.
Without moving his gaze from the scene in the opposite field, Bill Door
pulled a sharpening stone out of his pocket  and began to hone his scythe,
slowly and deliberately.
Apart from the distant clink of the blacksmith's tools, the schip-schip of
stone on metal was the only sound in the heavy air.
Simnel climbed back into the Harvester and nodded to the man leading
the horse.
'Here we go again!'
'Any more for the Skylark?'
'Put a sock in it . . .'
The cries trailed off.
Half a dozen pairs of eyes followed the Combination Harvester up the
field, stared while it was turned around on the headland, watched it come
back again.
It clicked past, reciprocating and oscillating.
At the bottom of the field it turned around neatly.
It whirred by again.
After a while one of the watchers said, gloomily, 'It'll never catch on, you
mark my words.'
'Right enough. Who's going to want a gadget like that?' said another.
'Sure and it's only like a big clock. Can't do anything more than go up and
down a field -'
'- very fast -'
'- cutting the corn like that and stripping the grain off -'
'lt's done three rows already.'
'Bugger me!'
'You can't hardly see the bits move! What do you think of that, Bill? Bill?'
They looked around.
He was halfway up his second row, but accelerating.

Miss Flitworth opened the door a fraction.
'Yes?' she said, suspiciously.
'It's Bill Door, Miss FIitworth. We've brought him home.'
She opened the door wider.
'What happened to him?'
The two men shuffled in awkwardly, trying to support a figure a foot taller
than they were. It raised its head and squinted muzzily at Miss Flitworth.
??? Duke Bottomley.
'He's a devil for working,' said Willi~ ???
'Don't know what come over him,' said'm Spigot. 'You're getting your
money's worth out of him all right, Miss Flitworth.'
'It'll be the first time, then, in these parts,' she said sourly.

'Up and down the field like a madman, trying to better ?that? contraption
of Ned Simnel's. Took four of us to do the ~inding. He nearly beat it, too.'
'Put him down on the sofa.'
'We tole him he was doing too much in all that sun -'
Duke craned his neck to see around the kitchen, just in case jewels and
treasure were hanging out of the dresser drawers.
Miss FIitworth eclipsed his view.
'I'm sure you did. Thank you. Now I expect you'll be wanting to be off
home.'
'lf there's anything we can do -'
'I know where you live. And you ain't paid no rent there for five years, too.
Goodbye. Mr Spigot.'
She ushered them to the door and shut it in their faces, then she turned
around.
'What the hell have you been doing, Mr So-Called Bill ?
I AM TIRED AND IT WON'T STOP.
Bill Door clutched at his skull.
ALSO SPIGOT GAVE ME A HUMOROUS APPLE JUICE FERMENTED
DRINK BECAUSE OF THE HEAT AND NOW I FEEL ILL.
'I ain't surprised. He makes it up in the woods. Apples isn't the half of it.'
I HAVE NEVER FELT ILL BEFORE. OR TIRED.
'lt's all part of being alive.'
AND HOW DO HUMANS STAND IT?
'Well, fermented apple juice can help.'
Bill Door sat staring gloomily at the floor.
BUT WE FINISHED THE FIELD, he said, with a hint of triumph. ALL
STACKED IN STOOKS, OR POSSIBLY THE OTHER-WAY AROUND.
He clutched at his skull again.
AARCH.
Miss Flitworth disappeared into the scullery. There was the creaking of a
pump. She returned with a damp flannel and a glass of water.
THERE'S A NEWT IN IT!
'Shows it's fresh,' said Miss Flitworth,* fishing the amphibian out and
releasing it on the flagstones, where it scuttled away into a crack.
Bill Door tried to stand up.
NOW I ALMOST KNOW WHY SOME PEOPLE WISH TO DIE. he said. I HAD
HEARD OF PAIN AND MISERY BUT I HAD NOT HITHERTO FULLY
UNDERSTOOD WHAT THEY MEANT.
Miss Flitworth peered through the dusty window. The clouds that had
been piling up all afternoon towered over the hills, grey with a menacing hint
of yellow. The heat pressed down like a vice.
'There's a big storm coming.'
WILL IT SPOIL MY HARVEST?
'No. It'll dry out after.'
HOW IS THE CHILD?
 Bill Door unfolded his palm. Miss Flitworth raised her eyebrows. The
golden glass was there, the top bulb almost empty. But it simmered in and
out of vision.
'How come you've got it? It's upstairs! She was holding it like,' - she
floundered - 'like someone holds something very tightly.'
SHE STILL IS. BUT IT IS ALSO HERE. OR ANYWHERE. IT IS ONLY A
METAPHOR. AFTER ALL.
'What she's holding looks real enough.'
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS A METAPHOR DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T
BE REAL.
Miss Flitworth was aware of a faint echo in the voice, as though the words
were being spoken by two people almost, but not quite, in sync.
'How long have you got?'
A MATTER OF HOURS.
'And the scythe?'
I GAVE THE BLACKSMITH STRICT INSTRUCTIONS.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_
*  People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean
that the water's fresh and drinkable, and in all that time never asked
themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.


She frowned. 'I'm not saying young Simnel's a bad lad, but are you sure
he'll do it? It's asking a lot of a man like him to destroy something like that.'
I HAD NO CHOICE. THE LITTLE FURNACE HERE ISN'T GOOD ?TOUGH?.
'It's a wicked sharp scythe.'
I FEAR IT MAY NOT BE SHARP ENOUGH.
'And no-one ever tried this on you?'
THERE IS A SAYING: YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU?
'Yes.'
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE SERIOUSLY BELIEVED IT?
'I remember reading once,' said Miss Flitworth.'about these heathen kings
in the desert somewhere who build huge pyramids and put all sorts of stuff
in them. Even boats. ?~en? gels in transparent trousers and a couple of
saucepan lids. You can't tell me that's right.'
I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I
AM NOT SURE ?WHERE? IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST
PLACES TO STAND.
'No, right's right and wrong's wrong,' said Miss FIitworth. 'I was brought
up to tell the difference.'
BY A CONTRABANDISTOR.
'A what?'
A MOVER OF CONTRABAND.
'There's nothing wrong with smuggling!'
I MERELY POINT OUT THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK OTHERWISE.
'They don't count!'
BUT -
Lightning struck, somewhere on the hill. The thunder-clap rocked the
house; a few bricks from the chimney rattled into the grate. Then the
windows shook to a fierce ?~unding?.
Bill Door strode across the room and threw open the door.
Hailstones the size of hens' eggs bounced off the doorstep and into the
kitchen.
OH. DRAMA.
'Oh. hell!'
Miss Flitworth ducked under his arm.
'And where's the wind come from?'
THE SKY? said Bill Door, surprised at the sudden excitement.
'Come on!' She whirled back into the kitchen and scrabbled on the
dresser for a candle lantern and some matches.
BUT YOU SAID IT WOULD DRY.
'In a normal storm, yes. In this lot? It's going to be ruined! We'll find it
spread all over the hill in the morning!'
She fumbled the candle alight and ran back again.
Bill Door looked out into the storm. Straws whirred past, tumbling on the
gale.
RUINED? MY HARVEST? He straightened up. BUGGER THAT.

The hail rumbled on the roof of the smithy.
Ned Simnel pumped the furnace bellows until the heart of the coals was
white with the merest hint of yellow.
It had been a good day. The Combination Harvester had worked better
than he'd dared to hope; old Peedbury had insisted on keeping it to do
another field tomorrow, so it had been left out with a tarpaulin over it,
securely tied down. Tomorrow he could teach one of the men to use it, and
start work on a new improved model. Success was assured. The future
definitely lay ahead.
Then there was the matter of the scythe. He went to the wall where it had
been hung. A bit of a mystery, that. Here was the most superb instrument of
its kind he'd ever seen. You couldn't even blunt it. Its sharpness extended
well beyond its actual edge. And yet he was supposed to destroy it. Where
was the sense in that? Ned Simnel was a great believer in sense, of a certain
specialised kind.
Maybe Bill Door just wanted to be rid of it. and that was understandable,
because even now when it hung innocuously enough from the wall it seemed
to radiate sharpness. There was a faint violet corona around the blade,
caused by the draughts in the room driving luckless air molecules to their
severed death.
Ned Simnel picked it up with great care.
Weird fellow, Bill Door. He'd said he wanted to be sure it was absolutely
dead. As if you could kill a thing.
Anyway, how could anyone destroy it? Oh, the handle would burn and the
metal would calcine and, if he worked hard enough, eventually there'd be
nothing more than a little heap of dust and ashes. That was what the
customer wanted.
On the other hand, presumably you could destroy it just by taking the
blade off the handle . . . After all, it wouldn't be a scythe if you did that. It'd
just be, well . . . bits. Certainly, you could make a scythe out of them, but you
could probably do that with the dust and ashes if you knew how to do it.
Ned Simnel was quite pleased with this line of argument.
And, after all. Bill Door hadn't even asked for proof that the thing had
been. er, killed.
He took sight carefully and then used the scythe to chop the end off the
anvil. Uncanny. Total sharpness.
He gave in. It was unfair. You couldn't ask someone like him to destroy
something like this. It was a work of art.
It was better than that. It was a work of craft.
He walked across the room to a stack of timber and thrust the scythe well
out of the way behind the heap. There was a brief, punctured squeak.
Anyway, it would be all right. He'd give Bill his farthing back in the
morning.

The Death of Rats materialised behind the heap in the forge, and trudged
to the sad little heap of fur that had been a rat that got in the way of the
scythe.
Its ghost was standing beside it, looking apprehensive. It didn't seem very
pleased to see him.
'Squeak? Squeak?'
SQUEAK. the Death of Rats explained.
'Squeak?'
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats confirmed.
'[Preen whiskers] [twitch nose]?'
The Death of Rats shook its head.
SQUEAK.
The rat was crestfallen. The Death of Rats laid a bony but not entirely
unkind paw on its shoulder.
Squeak.
Tile rat nodded sadly. It had been a good life in the forge. Ned's
housekeeping was almost non-existent, and he was probably the world
champion absent-minded-leaver of unfinished sandwiches. It shrugged, and
trooped after the small robed figure. It wasn't as if it had any choice.
People were streaming through the streets. Most of them were chasing
trolleys. Most of the trolleys were full of whatever people had found a trolley
useful to carry - firewood, children, shopping.
And they were no longer dodging, but moving blindly, all in the same
direction.
You could stop a trolley by turning it over, when its wheels spun madly
and uselessly. The wizards saw a number of enthusiastic individuals trying
to smash them, but the trolleys were practically indestructible - they bent but
didn't break, and if they had even one wheel left they'd make a valiant
attempt to keep going.
'Look at that one!' said the Archchancellor. 'It's got my laundry in it! My
actual laundry! Darn that for a lark!'
He pushed his way through the crowds and rammed his staff into the
trolley's wheels, toppling it over.
'We can't get a clear shot at anything with all these civilians around,'
complained the Dean.
'There's hundreds of trolleys!' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'It's just
like vermine! * Get away from me, you - you basket!'

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_
*  Vermine are small black-and-white rodents found in the Ramtop
Mountains. They are ancestors of the lemming, which as is well known
throws itself over cliffs and drowns in lakes on a regular basis. Vermine used
to do that, too. The point is, though, that dead animals don't breed, and over
the

He flailed at an importunate trolley with his staff.
The tide of wheeled baskets was flowing out of the city. The struggling
humans gradually dropped out or fell under the wobbling wheels. Only the
wizards stayed in the flowing tide, shouting at one another and attacking the
silvery swarm with their staves. It wasn't that magic didn't work. It worked
quite well.
A good zap could turn a trolley into a thousand intricate little wire puzzles.
But what good did that do? A moment later two others would trundle over
their stricken sibling.
Around the Dean trolleys were being splashed into metal droplets.
'He's really getting the hang of it, isn't he?' said the Senior Wrangler, as
he and the Bursar levered yet another basket on to its back.
'He's certainly saying Yo a lot, ' said the Bursar.
The Dean himself didn't know when he'd been happier. For sixty years
he'd been obeying all the self-regulating rules of wizardry, and suddenly he
was having the time of his life. He'd never realised that, deep down inside,
what he really wanted to do was make things go splat.
Fire leapt from the tip of his staff. Handles and bits of wire and
pathetically spinning wheels tinkled down around him. And what made it
even better was that there was no end to the targets. A second wave of
trolleys, crammed into a tighter space, was trying to advance over the tops
of those still in actual contact with the ground. It wasn't working, but they
were trying anyway. And trying desperately, because a

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
_________
millennia more and more vermine were descendants of those vermine
who, when faced with a cliff edge, squeaked the rodent equivalent of Blow
that for a Game of Soldiers. Vermine now abseil down cliffs, and build small
boats to cross lakes. When their rush leads them to the seashore they sit
around avoiding one another's gaze for a while, and then leave early to get
home before the rush.
third wave was already crunching and smashing its way over the top of
them. Except that you couldn't use the word "trying". It suggested some sort
of conscious effort, some sort of possibility that there might also be a state
of 'not trying'. Something about the relentless movement, the way they
crushed one another in their surge, suggested that the wire baskets had as
much choice in the matter as water has about flowing downhill.
'Yo!' shouted the Dean. Raw magic smacked into the grinding tangle of
metal. It rained wheels.
'Eat hot thaumaturgy, you m-,' the Dean began.
'Don't swear! Don't swear!' shouted Ridcully above the noise. He tried to
swat a Silly Bugger that was orbiting his hat.'There's no telling what it might
turn into!'
'Bother!' screamed the Dean.
'It's no good. We might as well be trying to hold back the sea,' said the
Senior Wrangler. 'I vote we head back to the University and pick up some
really tough spells.'
'Good idea,' said Ridcully. He looked up at the advancing wall of twisted
wire. 'Any idea how?' he said.
'Yo! Scallywags!' said the Dean. He aimed his staff again. It made a sad
little noise that, if it was written down, could only be spelled pfffft. A feeble
spark fell off the end and on to the cobbles.

Windle Poons slammed another book shut. The Librarian winced.
'Nothing! Volcanoes, tidal waves, wrath of gods, meddling wizards . . . I
don't want to know how other cities have been killed, I want to know how
they ended . . .'
The Librarian stacked another pile of books on the reading desk. Another
plus about being dead, Windle was finding, was an ability with languages. He
could see the sense in the words without knowing the actual meaning. Being
dead wasn't like falling asleep after all. It was like waking up.
He glanced across the Library to where Lupine was having his paw
bandaged.
'Librarian?' he said softly.
'Oook?'
'You've changed species in your time . . . what would you do if, for the
sake of argument, you found a couple of people who . . . well, suppose there
was a wolf that changed into a wolfman at the full moon, and a woman that
changed into a wolfwoman at the full moon . . . you know, approaching the
same shape but from opposite directions? And they'd met. What do you tell
them? Do you let them sort it out for themselves?'
'Oook, ' said the Librarian, instantly.
'It's tempting.'
'Oook.'
'Mrs Cake wouldn't like it, though.'
'Eeek oook.'
'You're right. You could have put it a little less coarsely, but you're right.
Everyone has to sort things out for themselves.'
He sighed, and turned the page. His eyes widened.
'The city of Kahn Li,' he said. 'Ever heard of it? What's this book?
"Stripfettle's Believe-It-Or-Not Grimoire." Says here . . . "little carts . . . none
knew from where they came . . . of such great use, men were employed to
herd them and bring them into the city . . . of a sudden, like unto a rush of
creatures . . . men followed them and behold, there was a new city outside
the walls, a city as of merchants' booths wherein the carts ran" . . .'
He turned the page.
'It seems to say . . .'
I still haven't understood it properly, he told himself. One-Man-Bucket
thinks we're talking

about the breeding of cities. But that doesn't feel right.
A city is alive. Supposing you were a great slow giant, like a Counting
Pine, and looked down at a city?
You'd see buildings grow; you'd see attackers driven off; you'd see fires
put out. You'd see the city was alive but you wouldn't see people, because
they'd move too fast. The life of a city, the thing that drives it, isn't some sort
of mysterious force. The life of a city is people.
He turned the pages absently, not really looking . . .
So we have the cities - big, sedentary creatures, growing from one spot
and hardly moving at all for thousands of years. They breed by sending out
people to colonise new land. They themselves just lie there. They're alive,
but only in the same way that a jelly fish is alive. Or a fairly bright vegetable.
After all, we call Ankh-Morpork the Big Wahooni . . .
And where you get big slow living things, you get small fast things that
eat them . . .
Windle Poons felt the brain cells firing. Connections were made. Thought
gushed along new channels. Had he ever really thought properly when he
was alive? He doubted it. He'd just been a lot of complicated reactions
attached to a lot of nerve endings, with everything from idle rumination about
the next meal to random, distracting memories getting between him and real
thought.
It'd grow inside the city, where it's warm and protected. And then it'd
break out, outside the city, and build . . . something, not a real city, a false
city . . . that pulls the people, the life, out of the host . . .
The word we're looking for here is predator.

The Dean stared at his staff in disbelief. He gave it a shake, and aimed it
again.
This time the sound would be spelled pfwt.
He looked up. A curling wave of trolleys, rooftop high, was poised to fall
on him.
'Oh . . . shucks,' he said, and folded his arms over his head.
Someone grabbed the back of his robe and pulled him away as the
trolleys crashed down.
'Come on,' said Ridcully. 'If we run we can keep ahead of 'em.'
'I'm out of magic! I'm out of magic!' moaned the Dean.
'You'll be out of a lot more if you don't hurry, ' said the Archchancellor.
Trying to keep together, bumping into one another, the wizards staggered
ahead of the trolleys. Streams of them were surging out of the city and
across the fields.
'Know what this reminds me of?' said Ridcully, as they fought their way
through.
'Do tell, ' muttered the Senior Wrangler.
'Salmon run, ' said the Archchancellor.
'What?'
'Not in the Ankh, of course,' said Ridcully.'I don't reckon a salmon could
get upstream in our river - '
'Unless it walked,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'- but I've seen 'em thick as milk in some rivers,' said Ridcully. 'Fightin ' to
get ahead. The whole river just a mass of silver.'
'Fine, fine,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'What'd they do that for?'
'Well . . . it's all to do with breeding.'
'Disgusting. And to think we have to drink water,' said the Senior
Wrangler.
'Right, we're in the open now, this is where we out-flank 'em,' said
Ridcully. 'We'll just aim for a clear space and - '
'I don't think so,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Every direction was filled with an advancing, grinding, fighting wall of
trolleys.
'They're coming to get us ! They're coming to get us !' wailed the Bursar.
The Dean snatched his staff.
'Hey, that's mine!'
The Dean pushed him away and blew off the wheels of a leading trolley.
'That's my staff!'
The wizards stood back to back in a narrowing ring of metal.
'They're not right for this city, ' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'I know what you mean, ' said Ridcully. 'Alien.'
'I suppose no-one's got a flying spell on them today?' the Senior Wrangler
enquired.
The Dean took aim again and melted a basket.
'That's my staff you're using, you know.'
'Shut up, Bursar,' said the Archchancellor. 'And, Dean, you're getting
nowhere picking them off one by one like that. OK, lads? We want to do them
all as much damage as possible. Remember - wild, uncontrolled bursts . . .'
The trolleys advanced.

Ow. Ow.
Miss Flitworth staggered through the wet, rattling gloom. Hailstones
crunched underfoot. Thunder cannonaded around the sky.
'They sting, don't they,' she said.
THEY ECHO.
Bill Door fielded a stook as it was blown past, and stacked it with the
others. Miss Flitworth scuttled past him, bent double under a load of corn.*
The two of them worked steadily, crisscrossing the field in the teeth of the
storm to snatch up the harvest before the wind and hail stole it away.
Lightning flickered around the sky. It wasn't a normal storm. It was war.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  The ability of skinny old ladies to carry huge loads is phenomenal.
Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight,
but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-
year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.

'It's going to pour with rain in a minute.' screamed Miss Flitworth, above
the noise. 'We'll never get it down to the barn! Go and fetch a tarpaulin or
something! That'll do for tonight!'
Bill Door nodded, and ran through the squelching darkness towards the
farm buildings. Lightning was striking so many times around the fields that
the air itself was sizzling, and a corona danced along the top of the hedge.
And there was Death.
He saw it looming ahead of him, a crouched skeletal shape poised to
spring, its robe flapping and rattling behind it in the wind.
Tightness gripped him, trying to force him to run while at the same time
rooting him to the spot. It invaded his mind and froze there, blocking all
thought save for the innermost, tiny voice which said, quite calmly: SO THlS
IS TERROR.
Then Death vanished as the lightning glow faded, reappeared as a
?fres~~~rc? was struck on the next hill.
Then the quiet, internal voice added: BUT WHY DOESN'T IT MOVE?
Bill Door let himself inch forward slightly. There was no response from
the hunched thing.
Then it dawned on him that the thing on the other side of the hedge was
only a robed assemblage of ribs and femurs and vertebrae if viewed from
one point of view but, if looked at slightly differently, was equally just a
complexity of sparging arms and reciprocating levers that had been covered
by a tarpaulin which was now blowing off.
The Combination Harvester was in front of him.
Bill Door grinned horribly. Un-Bill Door thoughts rose up in his mind. He
stepped forward.

The wall of trolleys surrounded the wizards.
The last flare from a staff melted a hole, which was instantly filled up by
more trolleys.
Ridcully turned to his fellow wizards. They were red in the face, their
robes were torn, and several over-
enthusiastic shots had resulted in singed beards and burnt hats.
'Hasn't anyone got any more spells on them?' he said.
They thought feverishly.
'I think I can remember one,' said the Bursar hesitantly.
'Go on, man. Anything's worth trying at a time like this.'
The Bursar stretched out a hand. He shut his eyes. He muttered a few
syllables under his breath.
There was a brief flicker of octarine light and -
'Oh, ' said the Archchancellor. 'And that's all of it?'
' "Eringyas' Surprising Bouquet",' said the Bursar, bright eyed and
twitching. 'I don't know why, but it's one I've always been able to do. Just a
knack, I suppose.'
Ridcully eyed the huge bunch of flowers now gripped in the Bursar's fist.
'But not, I venture to point out, entirely useful at this time,' he added.
The Bursar looked at the approaching walls and his smile faded.
'I suppose not,' he said.
'Anyone else got any ideas?' said Ridcully.
There was no reply.
'Nice roses, though,' said the Dean.

'That was quick,' said Miss Flitworth, when Bill Door arrived at the pile of
stooks dragging a tarpaulin behind him.
YES, WASN'T IT, he mumbled noncommittally, as she helped him drag it
over the stack and weigh it down with stones. The wind caught at it and tried
to drag it out of his hands; it might as well have tried to blow a mountain
over.
Rain swept over the fields, among shreds of mist that shimmered with
blue electric energies.
'Never known a night like it,' Miss Flitworth said.
There was another crack of thunder. Sheet lightning fluttered around the
horizon.
Miss Flitworth clutched Bill Door's arm.
'Isn't that . . . a figure on the hill?' she said. 'Thought I saw a...shape.'
NO, IT'S MERELY A MECHANICAL CONTRIVANCE.
There was another flash.
'On a horse?' said Miss Flitworth.
A third sheet seared across the sky. And this time there was no doubt
about it. There was a mounted figure on the nearest hilltop. Hooded. Holding
a scythe as proudly as a lance.
POSING. Bill Door turned towards Miss Flitworth. POSING. I NEVER DID
ANYTHING LIKE THAT. WHY DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT? WHAT PURPOSE
DOES IT SERVE?
He opened his palm. The gold timer appeared.
'How much longer have you got?'
PERHAPS AN HOUR. PERHAPS MINUTES.
'Come on, then!'
Bill Door remained where he was, looking at the timer.
'I said, come on!'
IT WON'T WORK. I WAS WRONG TO THINK THAT IT WOULD. BUT IT
WON'T. THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. YOU
CANNOT LIVE FOR EVER.
'Why not?'
Bill Door looked shocked. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
'Why can't you live for ever?'
I DON'T KNOW. COSMIC WISDOM?
'What does cosmic wisdom know about it? Now, will you come on?'
The figure on the hill hadn't moved.
The rain had turned the dust into a fine mud. They slithered down the
slope and hurried across the yard and into the house.
I SHOULD HAVE PREPARED MORE. I HAD PLANS -
'But there was the harvest.'
YES.

'Is there any way we can barricade the doors or something?'
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING?
'Well, think of something! Didn't anything ever work against you?'
NO, said Bill Door. with a tiny touch of pride.
Miss Flitworth peered out of the window, and then flung herself
dramatically against the wall on one side of it.
'He's gone!'
IT, said Bill Door. IT WON'T BE A HE YET.
'It's gone. It could be anywhere.'
IT CAN COME THROUGH THE WALL.
She darted forward, and then glared at him.
VERY WELL. FETCH THE CHILD. I THINK WE SHOULD LEAVE HERE. A
thought struck him. He brightened up a little bit.
WE DO HAVE SOME TIME. WHAT IS THE HOUR?
'I don't know. You go around stopping the clocks the whole time.'
BUT IT IS NOT YET MIDNIGHT?
'I shouldn't think it's more than a quarter past eleven.'
THEN WE HAVE THREE-QUARTERS OF AN HOUR.
'How can you be sure?'
BECAUSE OF DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH. THE KIND OF DEATH WHO
POSES AGAINST THE SKYLINE AND GETS LIT UP BY LIGHTNING FLASHES,
said Bill Door, disapprovingly, DOESN'T TURN UP AT FIVE. AND-TWENTY
PAST ELEVEN IF HE CAN POSSIBLY TURN UP AT MIDNIGHT.
She nodded, white-faced, and disappeared upstairs. After a minute or two
she returned, with Sal wrapped up in a blanket.
'Still fast asleep,' she said.
THAT'S NOT SLEEP.
The rain had stopped, but the storm still marched around the hills. The air
sizzled, still seemed oven-hot.
Bill Door led the way past the henhouse, where Cyril and his elderly harem
were crouched back in the darkness, all trying to occupy the same few
inches of perch.

There was a pale green glow hovering around the farmhouse chimney.
'We call that Mother Carey's Fire,' said Miss Flitworth. 'It's an omen.'
AN OMEN OF WHAT?
'What? Oh, don't ask me. Just an omen, I suppose. Just basic omenery.
Where are we going?'
INTO THE TOWN.
'To be near the scythe?'
YES.
He disappeared into the barn. After a while he came out leading Binky,
saddled and harnessed. He mounted up, then leaned down and pulled both
her and the sleeping child on to the horse in front of him.
IF I'M WRONG, he added, THIS HORSE WILL TAKE YOU WHEREVER YOU
WANT TO GO.
'I shan't want to go anywhere except back home!'
WHEREVER.
Binky broke into a trot as they turned on to the road to the town. Wind
blew the leaves off the trees, which tumbled past them and on up the road.
The occasional flash of lightning still hissed across the sky.
Miss Flitworth looked at the hill beyond the farm.
I KNOW.
'- it's there again -'
I KNOW.
'Why isn't it chasing us?'
WE'RE SAFE UNTIL THE SAND RUNS OUT.
'And you die when the sand runs out?'
NO. WHEN THE SAND RUNS OUT IS WHEN I SHOULD DIE. I WILL BE IN
THE SPACE BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTERLIFE.
'Bill, it looked as though the thing it was riding . . . I thought it was a
proper horse, just very skinny, but . . .'
IT'S A SKELETAL STEED. IMPRESSIVE BUT IMPRACTICAL. I HAD ONE
ONCE BUT THE HEAD FELL OFF.
'A bit like flogging a dead horse, I should think.'
HA. HA. MOST AMUSING, MISS FLITWORTH.
'I think that at a time like this you can stop calling me Miss Flitworth,' said
Miss Flitworth.
RENATA?
She looked startled. 'How did you know my name? Oh. You've probably
seen it written down, right?'
ENGRAVED.
'On one of them hourglasses?'
YES.
'With all them sands of time pouring through?'
YES.
'Everyone's got one?'
YES.
'So you know how long I've -'
YES.
'It must be very odd, knowing . . . the kind of things you know . . .'
DO NOT ASK ME.
'That's not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people
would live better lives.'
IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY
PROBABLY WOULDN'T LIVE AT ALL.
'Oh, very gnomic. And what do you know about it, Bill Door?'
EVERYTHING.
Binky trotted up one of the town's meagre handful of streets and over the
cobbles of the square. There was no-one else around. In cities like Ankh-
Morpork midnight was just late evening, because there was no civic night at
all, just evenings fading into dawns. But here people regulated their lives by
things like sunsets and mispronounced cockcrows. Midnight meant what it
said.
Even with the storm stalking the hills, the square itself was hushed. The
ticking of the clock in its tower, unnoticeable at midday, now seemed to echo
off the buildings.
As they approached, something whirred deep in its cogwheeled innards.
The minute hand moved with a clonk, and shuddered to a halt on the 9. A
trapdoor opened in the clock face and two little mechanical figures whirred
out self-importantly and tapped a small bell with great apparent effort.
Ting-ting-ling.
The figures lined up and wobbled back into the clock.

'They've been there ever since I was a girl. Mr Simnel's great-great-
grandad made them,' said Miss Flitworth. 'l always wondered what they did
between chimes, you know. I thought they had a little house in there, or
something.'
I DON'T THINK SO. THEY'RE JUST A THING. THEY'RE NOT ALIVE.
'Hmm. Well, they've been there for hundreds of years. Maybe life is
something you sort of acquire?'
YES.
They waited in silence, except for the occasional thud as the minute hand
climbed the night.
'It's been quite nice having you around the place, Bill Door.'
He didn't reply.
'Helping me with the harvest and everything.'
IT WAS . . . INTERESTING.
'It was wrong of me to delay you, just for a lot of corn.'
NO. THE HARVEST IS IMPORTANT.
Bill Door unfolded his palm. The timer appeared.
'I still can't work out how you do that.'
IT IS NOT DIFFICULT.
The hiss of the sand grew until it filled the square.
'Have you got any last words?'
YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO.
'Well. Succinct, anyway.'
Bill Door was amazed to find she was trying to hold his hand.
Above him. the hands of midnight came together. There was a whirring
from the clock. The door opened. The automata marched out. They clicked to
a halt on either side of the hour bell, bowed to one another, and raised their
hammers.
Dong.
And then there was the sound of a horse trotting.
Miss Flitworth found the edge of her vision filling with purple and blue
blotches, like the flashes of after-image with no image to come after.
If she jerked her head quickly and peered out of the tail of her eye, she
could see small greyclad shapes hovering around the walls.
The Revenooers, she thought. They've come to make sure it all happens.
'Bill?' she said.
He closed his palm over the gold timer.
NOW IT STARTS.
The hoofbeats grew louder, and echoed off the buildings behind them.
REMEMBER: YOU ARE IN NO DANGER.
Bill Door stepped back into the gloom.
Then he reappeared momentarily.
PROBABLY, he added, and retreated into the darkness.
Miss Flitworth sat down on the steps of the clock, cradling the body of the
girl across her knees.
'Bill?' she ventured.
A mounted figure rode into the square.
It was, indeed. on a skeletal horse. Blue flame crackled over the creature's
bones as it trotted forward; Miss Flitworth found herself wondering whether
it was a real skeleton, animated in some way, something that had once been
the inside of a horse, or a skeletal creature in its own right. It was a
ridiculous chain of thought to follow, but it was better than dwelling on the
ghastly reality that was approaching.
Did it get rubbed down, or just given a good polish?
Its rider dismounted. It was much taller than Bill Door had been, but the
darkness of its robe hid any details; It held something that wasn't exactly a
scythe but which might have had a scythe in its ancestry. in the same way
that even the most cunningly-fashioned surgical implement has a stick
somewhere in its past. It was a long way from any implement that ever
touched a straw.
The figure stalked towards Miss Flitworth, scythe
over its shoulder, and stopped.
Where is He?
'Don't know who you're talking about,' said Miss Flitworth. 'And if I was
you, young man, I'd feed my horse.'
The figure appeared to have trouble digesting this information, but finally
it seemed to reach a conclusion. It unshipped the scythe and looked down at
the child.
I will find Him, it said. But first -
It stiffened.
A voice behind it said:
DROP THE SCYTHE. AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.

Something within the city, Windle thought. Cities grow up full of people,
but they're also full of commerce and shops and religions and . . .
This is stupid, he told himself. They're just things. They're not alive.
Maybe life is something you acquire.
Parasites and predators, but not like the sort affecting animals and
vegetables. They were some kind of big, slower, metaphorical lifeform, living
off cities.
But they incubate in the cities, like those, what are they? those icky
newman wasp things. He could remember now, just as he could remember
everything, reading as a student about creatures that laid their eggs inside
other creatures. For months after he'd refused omelettes and caviar, just in
case.
And the eggs would . . . look like the city, in a way, so that citizens would
carry them home. Like cuckoo eggs.
I wonder how many cities died in the past? Ringed by parasites, like a
coral reef surrounded by starfish.
They'd just become empty, they'd lose whatever spirit they had.
He stood up.
'Where's everyone gone, Librarian?'
'Oook oook.'
'Just like them. I'd have done that. Rush off without thinking. May the
gods bless them and help them, if
they can find the time from their eternal family squabbles.'
And then he thought: well, what now? I've thought, and what am I going to
do? Rush off, of course. But slowly.

The centre of the heap of trolleys was no longer visible. Something was
going on. A pale blue glow hung over the huge pyramid of twisted metal, and
there were occasional flashes of lightning deep within the pile. Trolleys
slammed into it like asteroids accreting around the core of a new planet, but
a few arrivals did something else. They headed for tunnels that had opened
within the structure, and disappeared into the glittering core.
Then there was a movement at the tip of the mountain and something
thrust its way up through the broken metal. Et, was a glistening spike,
supporting a globe about two metres across. It did nothing very much for a
minute or two and then, as the breeze dried it out, it split and crumbled.
White objects cascaded out, were caught by the wind, and fountained
over Ankh-Morpork and the watching crowds.
One of them zig-zagged gently down across the rooftops and landed at
the feet of Windle Poons as he lurched outside the Library.
It was still damp, and there was writing on it. At least, an attempt at
writing. It looked like the strange organic inscription of the snowflake balls -
words created by something that was not at all at home with words:

So\le   S~l~ I I  solre !~~
d        b,
S~Q~--%S to/70rro~*-,
Windle reached the University gateway. People were streaming past.
Windle knew his fellow citizens. They'd go to look at anything. They were
suckers for anything written down with more than one exclamation mark
after it.
He felt someone looking at him, and turned. A trolley was watching from
an alleyway; it backed up and whizzed away.
'What's happening, Mr Poons?' said Ludmilla.
There was something unreal about the expression of the passers-by. They
wore an expression of unbudgeable anticipation.
You didn't have to be a wizard to know that something was wrong. And
Windle's senses were whining like a dynamo.
Lupine leapt at a drifting sheet of paper and brought it to him.

~\M,..i\09  recloctio~s ir)~l
J             ~ooo,

Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an
insane mind.
And then he heard the music.
Lupine sat back on his haunches and howled.

In the cellar under Mrs Cake's house, Schleppel the bogeyman paused
halfway through his third rat and listened.
Then he finished his meal and reached for his door.

Count Arthur Winkings Notfaroutoe was working on the crypt.
Personally, he could have lived, or re-lived, or un-lived, or whatever it was
he was supposed to be doing, without a crypt. But you had to have a crypt.
Doreen
had been very definite about the crypt. It gave the place ton, she said. You
had to have a crypt anal a vault, otherwise the rest of vampire society would
look down their teeth at you.
They never told you about that sort of thing when you started vampiring.
They never told you to build your own crypt out of some cheap two-by-four
from Challry the Troll's Wholesale Building Supplies. It wasn't something
that happened to most vampires, Arthur reflected. Not your proper vampires.
Your actual Count Jugular, for example. No, a toff like him'd have someone
for it. When the villagers came to burn the place down, you wouldn't catch
the Count his own self whipping down to the gate to drop the draw-bridge.
Oh, no. He'd just say, 'Igor' - as it might be - 'Igor, just svort it out, chop
chop'.
Huh. Well, they'd had an advert in Mr Keeble's job shop for months now.
Bed, three meals a day, and hump provided if necessary. Not so much as an
enquiry. And people said there was all this unemployment around. It made
you livid.
He picked up another piece of wood and measured it, grimacing as he
unfolded the ruler.
Arthur's back ached from digging the moat. And that was another thing
your posh vampire didn't have to worry about. The moat came with the job,
style of thing. And it went all the way round, because other vampires didn't
have the street out in front of them and old Mrs Pivey complaining on one
side and a family of trolls Doreen wasn't speaking to on the other and
therefore they didn't end up with a moat that just went across the back yard.
Arthur kept falling in it.
And then there was the biting the necks of young women. Or rather, there
wasn't. Arthur was always prepared to see the other person's point of view,
but he felt certain that young women came into the vampiring somewhere,
whatever Doreen said. In
diaphanous pegnoyers. Arthur wasn't quite certain what a diaphanous
pegnoyer was, but he'd read about them and he definitely felt that he'd like to
see one before he died . . . or whatever . . .
And other vampires didn't suddenly find their wives talking with Vs
instead of Ws. The reason being, your natural vampire talked like that
anyway.
Arthur sighed.
It was no life, or half-life or after-life or whatever it was, being a lower-
middle-class wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant with an upper-class
condition.
And then the music filtered in through the hole in the wall that he'd
knocked out to put in the barred window.
'Ow,' he said, and clutched at his jaw. 'Doreen?'

Reg Shoe thumped his portable podium.
'- and, let me see, we shall not lie back and let the grass grow over our
heads,' he bellowed.'So what is your seven-point plan for Equal
Opportunities with the living, I hear you cry?'
The wind blew the dried grasses in the cemetery.
The only creature apparently paying any attention to Reg was a solitary
raven.
Reg Shoe shrugged and lowered his voice. 'You might at least make some
effort,' he said, to the next world at large.'Here's me wearing my fingers to
the bone' - he flexed his hands to demonstrate - 'and do I hear a word of
thanks?'
He paused, just in case.
The raven, which was one of the extra large, fat ones that infested the
rooftops of the University, put its head on one side and gave Reg Shoe a
thoughtful look.
'You know,' said Reg, 'sometimes I just feel like giving up -'
The raven cleared its throat.
Reg Shoe spun around.
'You say one word, ' he said, 'just one bloody word . . .'
And then he heard the music.

Ludmilla risked removing her hands from her ears.
'It's horrible! What is it, Mr Poons?'
Windle tried to pull the remains of his hat over his ears.
'Don't know,' he said. 'It could be music. If you'd never heard music
before.'
There weren't notes. There were strung-together noises that might have
been intended to be notes, put together as one might draw a map of a
country that one had never seen.
Hnyip. Ynyip. Hulyomp.
'It's coming from outside the city,' said Ludmilla. 'Where all the people . . .
are . . . going . . . They can't like it, can they?'
'I can't imagine why they should,' said Windle.
'It's just that, . . you remember the trouble with the rats last year? That
man who said he had a pipe that played music only rats could hear?'
'Yes, but that wasn't really true, it was all a fraud, it was just the Amazing
Maurice and his Educated Rodents -'
'But supposing it could have been true?'
Windle shook his head.
'Music to attract humans? Is that what you're getting at? But that can't be
true. It's not attracting us. Quite the reverse, I assure you.'
'Yes, but you're not human . . . exactly,' said Ludmilla.'And -' She stopped,
and went red in the face.
Windle patted her on the shoulder.
'Good point. Good point,' was all he could think of to say.
'You know, don't you,' she said, without looking up.
'Yes. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of, if that's any help.'

Mother said it would be dreadful if anyone ever found out!'
'That probably depends on who it is,' said Windle, glancing at Lupine.
'Why is your dog staring at me like that?' said Ludmilla.
'He's very intelligent,' said Windle.
Windle felt in his pocket, tipped out a couple of handfuls of soil, and
unearthed his diary. Twenty days to next full moon. Still, it'd be something to
look forward to.

The metal debris of the heap started to collapse. Trolleys whirred around
it, and a large crowd of Ankh-Morpork's citizens were standing in a big circle,
trying to peer inside. The unmusical music filled the ???
'There's Mr Dibbler,' said Ludmilla, as they pushed their way through the
unresisting people.
'What's he selling this time?'
'I don't think he's trying to sell anything, Mr Poons.'
'It's that bad? Then we're probably in lots of trouble.'
Blue light shone out from one of the holes in the heap. Bits of broken
trolley tinkled to the ground like metal leaves.
Windle bent down stiffly and picked up a pointy hat. It was battered and
had been run over by a lot of trolleys, but it was still recognisable as
something that by rights should be on someone's head.
'There's wizards in there,' he said.
Silver light glittered off the metal. It moved like oil.
Windle reached out and a fat spark jumped across and grounded itself on
his fingers.
'Hmm,' he said. 'Lot of potential, too -'
Then he heard the cry of the vampires.
'Coo-ee, Mr Poons!'
He turned. The Notfaroutoes were bearing down on him.
'We - I mean, Ve vould have been here sooner, only -'
'- I couldn't find the blasted collar stud,' muttered Arthur, looking hot and
flustered. He was wearing a collapsible opera hat, which was fine on the
collapsible part but regrettably lacking in hatness, so that Arthur appeared to
be looking at the world from under a concertina.
'Oh, hallo,' said Windle. There was something dreadfully fascinating
about the Winkings' dedication to accurate vampirism.
'Unt who iss the yunk laty?' said Doreen, beaming at Ludmilla.
'Pardon?' said Windle.
'Vot?'
'Doreen - I mean, the Countess asked who she is,' Arthur supplied,
wearily.
'I understood what I said,' snapped Doreen, in the more normal tones of
one bon and brought up in Ankh-Morpork rather than some tran-sylvanian
fastness.'Honestly, if I left it to you, we'd have no standards at all -'
'My name's Ludmilla, ' said Ludmilla.
'Charmed,' said the Countess  Notfaroutoe graciously, extending a hand
that would have been thin and pale if it had not been pink and stubby.
'Alvays nice to meet fresh blood. If you ever fancy a dog biscuit when you're
out and about, our door iss alwace open.'
Ludmilla turned to Windle Poons.
'It's not written on my forehead, is it?' she said.
'These are a special kind of people.' said Windle gently.
'I should think so,' said Ludmilla, levelly. 'I hardly know anyone who wears
an opera cloak the whole time.'
'You've got to have the cloak,' said Count Arthur. 'For the wings, you see.
Like -'
He spread the cloak dramatically. There was a brief, implosive noise, and
a small fat bat hung in the air. It looked down, gave an angry squeak, and
nosedived on to the soil. Doreen picked it up by its feet and dusted it off.
'It's having to sleep with the window open all night that I object to,' she
said vaguely. 'I wish they'd stop that music! I 'm getting a headache.'
There was another whoomph. Arthur reappeared upside down and landed
on his head.
'It's the drop, you see,' said Doreen. 'It's like a run-up, sort of thing. If he
doesn't get at least a onestorey start he can't get up a proper airspeed.'
'I can't get a proper airspeed,' said Arthur, struggling to his feet.
'Excuse me, ' said Windle, 'The music doesn't affect you?'
'It puts my teeth on edge is what it does,' said Arthur.'Which is not a good
thing for a vampire, I prob'ly don't have to tell you.'
'Mr Poons thinks it does something to people, ' said Ludmilla.
'Sets everyone's teeth on edge?' said Arthur.
Windle looked at the crowd. No-one was taking any notice of the Fresh
Starters.
'They look as though they're waiting for something,' said Doreen. 'Vaiting,
I mean.'
'It's scary, ' said Ludmilla.
'Nothing wrong with scary,' said Doreen.'We're scary.'
'Mr Poons wants to go inside the heap,' said Ludmilla.
'Good idea. Get them to turn that damn music off,' said Arthur.
'But you could get killed!' said Ludmilla.

Windle clapped his hands together, and rubbed them thoughtfully.
'Ah,' he said, 'that's where we're ahead of the game.'
He walked into the glow.
He'd never seen such bright light. It seemed to emanate from everywhere,
hunting down every last shadow and eradicating it ruthlessly. It was much
brighter than daylight without being anything like it - there was a blue edge
to it that cut vision like a knife.
'You all right, Count?' he said.
'Fine, fine,' said Arthur.
Lupine growled.
Ludmilla pulled at a tangle of metal.
'There's something under this, you know. It looks like . . . marble. Orange-
coloured marble.' She ran her hand over it. 'But warm. Marble shouldn't be
warm, should it?'
'It can't be marble. There can't be this much marble in the whole world . . .
vorld, ' said Doreen. 'We tried to get marble for the vault,' she tasted the
sound of the word and nodded to herself, 'the vault, yes. Those dwarfs
should be shot, the prices they charge. It's a disgrace.'
'I don't think dwarfs built this,' said Windle. He knelt down awkwardly to
examine the floor.
'I shouldn't think so, the lazy little buggers. They wanted nearly seventy
dollars to do our vault. Didn't they, Arthur?'
'Nearly seventy dollars,' said Arthur.
'I don't think anyone built it,' said Windle quietly.
Cracks. There should be cracks, he thought. Edges and things, where one
slab joins another. It shouldn't be all one piece. And slightly sticky.
'So Arthur did it himself.'
'I did it myself.'
Ah. Here was an edge. Well, not exactly an edge.
The marble became clear, like a window, looking into another brightly lit
space. There were things in there, indistinct and melted-looking, but no way
in to them.
The chatter of the Winkings flowed over him as he crepe forward.
'- more of a vaultette, really. But he got a dungeon in, even if you have to
go out into the hall to shut the door properly -'
Gentility meant all sorts of things, Windle thought.
To some people it was not being a vampire. To others it was a matched
set of flying plaster bats on the wall.
He ran his fingers over the clear substance. The world here was all
rectangles. There were corners, and the corridor was lined on both sides
with the clear panels. And the non-music played all the time.
It couldn't be alive, could it? Life was . . . more rounded.
'What do you think, Lupine?' he said.
Lupine barked.
'Hmm. Not a lot of help.'
Ludmilla knelt down and put her hand on Windle's shoulder.
'What did you mean, no-one built it?' she said.
Windle scratched his head.
'I'm not sure . . . but I think maybe it was . . . secreted.'
'Secreted? From what? By what?'
They looked up. A trolley whirred out of the mouth of a side corridor and
skidded away down another on the opposite side of the passage.
'Them?' said Ludmilla.
'I shouldn't think so. I think they're more like servants. Like ants. Bees in a
hive, maybe.'
'What's the honey?'
'Not sure. But it's not ripe yet. I don't think things are quite finished. No-
one touch anything.'
They walked onward. The passage opened up into a wide, bright, domed
area. Stairways led up and down
to different floors, and there was a fountain and a grove of potted plants
that looked too healthy to be real.
'Isn't it nice?' said Doreen.
'You keep thinking there should be people,' said Ludmilla. 'Lots of
people.'
'There should at least be wizards,' muttered Windle Poons. 'Half a dozen
wizards don't just disappear.'
The five of them moved closer. Passages the size of the one they'd just
walked down could have accommodated a couple of elephants walking
abreast.
'Do you think it might be a good idea to go back outside?' said Doreen.
'What good would that do?' said Windle.
'Well, it'd get us out of here.'
Windle turned, counting. Five of the passages radiated equidistantly-out
of the domed area.
'And presumably it's the same above and below, ' he said aloud.
'It's very clean here, ' Doreen said nervously. 'Isn't it clean, Arthur?'
'It's very clean.'
'What's that noise?' said Ludmilla.
'What noise?'
'That noise. Like someone sucking something.'
Arthur looked around with a certain amount of interest.
'It's not me.'
'It's the stairs,' said Windle.
'Don't be silly, Mr Poons. Stairs don't suck.'
Windle looked down.
'These do.'
They were black, like a sloping river. As the dark substance flowed out
from under the floor it humped itself into something resembling steps, which
travelled up the slope until they disappeared under the floor again,
somewhere above. When the steps emerged they made a slow, rhythmic
shlup-shlup noise, like someone investigating a particularly annoying dental
cavity.
'Do you know,' said Ludmilla, 'that's quite possibly  the most unpleasant
thing I've ever seen?'
'I've seen worse,' said Windle. 'But it's pretty bad.
Shall we go up or down?'
'You want to stand on them?'
'No. But the wizards aren't on this floor and it's that or slide down the
handrail. Have you looked closely at the handrail?'
They looked at the handrail.
'I think,' said Doreen nervously, 'that down is more us.'
They went down in silence. Arthur fell over at the point where the
travelling stairs were sucked into the floor again.
'I had this horrible feeling it was going to drag me under,' he said
apologetically, and then looked around him.
'It's big,' he concluded.'Roomy. I could do wonders down here with some
stone-effect wallpaper.'
Ludmilla wandered over to the nearest wall.
'You know,' she said, 'there's more glass than I've seen before, but these
clear bits look a bit like shops. Does that make sense? A great big shop full
of shops?'
'And not ripe yet,' said Windle.
'Sorry?'
'Just thinking aloud. Can you see what the merchandise is?'
Ludmilla shaded her eyes.
'It just looks like a lot of colour and glitter.'
'Let me know if you see a wizard.'
Someone screamed.
'Or hear one, for example,' Windle added. Lupine bounded off down a
passageway. Windle lurched swiftly after him.
Someone was on their back, trying desperately to fight off a couple of the
trolleys. They were bigger than the ones Windle had seen before, with a
golden sheen to them.

'Hey!' he yelled.
They stopped trying to gore the prone figure and three-point-turned
towards him.
'Oh, ' he said, as they got up speed.
The first one dodged Lupine's jaws and butted Windle full in the knees,
knocking him over. As the second passed over him he reached up wildly,
grabbed randomly at the metal, and pulled hard. A wheel spun off and the
trolley cartwheeled into the wall.
He scrambled up in time to see Arthur hanging grimly on to the handle of
the other trolley as the two of them whirred around in a mad centrifugal
waltz.
'Let go! Let go!' Doreen screamed.
'I can't! I can't!'
'Well, do something!'
There was a pop of inrushing air. The trolley was suddenly not straining
against the weight of a middle-aged wholesale, fruit and vegetable
entrepreneur but only against a small terrified bat. It rocketed into a marble
pillar, bounced off, hit a wall and landed on its back, wheels spinning.
'The wheels!' shouted Ludmilla.'Pull the wheels off!'
'I'll do that,' said Windle.'You help Reg.'
'Is that Reg down there?' said Doreen.
Windle jerked his thumb towards the distant wall. The words "Better late
than nev" ended in a desperate streak of paint.
'Show him a wall and a paint pot and he doesn't know what world he's in,'
said Doreen.
'He's only got a choice of two,' said Windle, throwing the trolley wheels
across the floor. 'Lupine, keep a look-out in case there's any more.'
The wheels had been sharp, like ice skates. He was definitely feeling
tattered around the legs. Now, how did healing go?
Reg Shoe was helped into a sitting position.
'What's happening?' he said.'No-one else was
coming in, and I came down here to see where the music was coming
from, and the next thing, there's these wheels -'
Count Arthur returned to his approximately human form, looked around
proudly, realised that no-one was paying him any attention, and sagged.
'They looked a lot tougher than the others,' said Ludmilla.'Bigger and
nastier and covered in sharp edges.'
'Soldiers,' said Windle. 'We've seen the workers. And now there's
soldiers. Just like ants.'
'I had an ant farm when I was a lad,' said Arthur, who had hit the floor
rather heavily and was having temporary trouble with the nature of reality.
'Hang on,' said Ludmilla. 'I know about ants. We have ants in the back
yard. If you have workers and soldiers, then you must also have a -'
'I know. I know,' said Windle.
'- mind you, they called it a farm, I never saw them doing any farming -'
Ludmilla leaned against the wall.
'It'll be somewhere close,' she said.
'I think so, ' said Windle.
'What does it look like, do you think?'
'- what you do is, you get two bits of glass and some ants -'
'I don't know. How should I know? But the wizards will be somewhere
near it.'
'I don't see vy you're bothering about them,' said Doreen. 'They buried
you alive just because you vere dead.'
Windle looked up at the sound of wheels. A dozen warrior baskets turned
the corner and pulled up in formation.
'They thought they were doing it for the best,' said Windle.'People often
do. It's amazing, the things that seem a good idea at the time.'
The new Death straightened up.
Or?
AH.
ER.
Bill Door stepped back, turned round, and ran for it.
It was, as he was wonderfully well placed to know, merely putting off the
inevitable. But wasn't that what living was all about?
No-one had ever run away from him after they were dead. Many had tried it
before they were dead, often with great ingenuity. But the normal reaction of
a spirit, suddenly pitched from one world into the next, was to hang around
hopefully. Why run, after all? It wasn't as if you knew where you were running
to.
The ghost Bill Door knew where he was running to.
Ned Simnel's smithy was locked up for the night, although this did not
present a problem. Not alive and not dead, the spirit Bill Door dived through
the wall.
The fire was a barely-visible glow, settling in the forge.
The smithy was full of warm darkness.
What it didn't contain was the ghost of a scythe.
Bill Door looked around desperately.
SQUEAK?
There was a small. dark-robed figure sitting on a beam above him. It
gestured frantically towards the corner.
He saw a dark handle sticking out from the load of timber. He tried to pull
at it with fingers now as substantial as a shadow.
HE SAID HE WOULD DESTROY IT FOR ME!
The Death of Rats shrugged sympathetically.
The new Death stepped through the wall, scythe held in both hands.
It advanced on Bill Door.
There was a rustling. The grey robes were pouring into the smithy.
Bill Door grinned in terror.
The new Death stopped, posing dramatically in the glow from the forge.
It swung.
It almost lost its balance.
You 're not supposed to duck!
Bill Door dived through the wall again and pounded across the square.
skull down, spectral feet making no noise on the cobbles. He reached the
little group by the clock.
ON THE HORSE! GO!
'What's happening? What's happening!'
IT HASN'T WORKED!
Miss Flitworth gave him a panicky look but put the unconscious child on
Binky's back and climbed up after her. Then Bill Door brought his hand down
hard on the horse's flank. There at least there was contact - Binky existed in
all worlds.
Go!
He didn't look around but darted on up the road towards the farm.
A weapon!
Something he could hold!
The only weapon in the undead world was in the hands of the new Death.
As Bill Door ran he was aware of a faint, higher-pitched clicking noise. He
looked down. The Death of Rats was keeping pace with him.
It gave him an encouraging squeak.
He skidded through the farm gate and flung himself against the wall.
There was the distant rumble of the storm. Apart from that, silence.
He relaxed slightly, and crept cautiously along the wall towards the back
of the farmhouse.
He caught a glimpse of something metallic. Leaning against the wall
there. where the men from the village had left it when they brought him back,
was his scythe; not the one he'd carefully prepared. but the one he'd used
for the harvest. What edge it had had been achieved only by the whetstone
and the caress of the stalks, but it was a familiar
shape and he made a tentative grab at it. His hand passed right through.
The further you run, the closer you get.
The new Death stepped unhurriedly out of the shadows.
You should know that, it added.
Bill Door straightened up.
We will enjoy this.
ENJOY?
The new Death advanced. Bill Door backed away.
Yes. The lacking of one Death is the same as achieving the end of a billion
lesser lives.
LESSER LIVES? THIS IS NOT A GAME!
The new Death hesitated. What is a game?
Bill Door felt the tiny flicker of hope.
I COULD SHOW YOU -
The end of the scythe handle caught him under the chin and knocked him
against the wall, where he slid to the ground.
We ?deed? a Crick. We do not listen. The reaper does not listen to the
harvest.
Bill Door tried to get up.
The scythe handle struck him again.
We will not make the same mistakes.
Bill Door looked up. The new Death was holding the golden timer; the top
bulb was empty. Around both of them the landscape shifted, reddened,
began to take on the unreal appearance of reality seen from the other side . .
.
You 're out of Time, Mr Bill Door.
The new Death raised his cowl.
There was no face there. There was not even a skull.
Smoke curled formlessly between the robe and a golden crown.
Bill Door raised himself on his elbows.
A CROWN? His voice shook with rage. I NEVER WORE A CROWN!
You never wanted to rule.
The Death swung the scythe back.
And then it dawned on the old Death and the new Death that the hissing of
passing time had not, in fact, stopped.
The new Death hesitated, and took out the golden glass.
It shook it.
Bill Door looked into the empty face under the crown. There was an
expression of puzzlement there, even with no features actually to wear it; the
expression hung in the air all by itself.
He saw the crown turn.
Miss Flitworth stood with her hands held a foot apart and her eyes closed.
Between her hands, in the air in front of her hovered the faint outline of a
lifetimer, its sand pouring away in a torrent.
The Deaths could just make out, on the glass. the spidery name: Renata
Flitworth.
The new Death's featureless expression became one of terminal
puzzlement. It turned to Bill Door.
For YOU?
But Bill Door was already rising and unfolding like the wrath of kings. He
reached behind him, growling, living on loaned time, and his hands closed
around the harvest scythe.
The crowned Death saw it coming and raised its own weapon but there
was very possibly nothing in the world that would stop the worn blade as it
snarled through the air, rage arid vengeance giving it an edge beyond any
definition of sharpness. It passed through the metal without slowing.
NO CROWN, said Bill Door, looking directly into the smoke. NO CROWN.
ONLY THE HARVEST.
The robe folded up around his blade. There was a thin wail, rising beyond
the peak of hearing. A black column, like the negative of lightning, flashed up
from the ground and disappeared into the clouds.
Death waited for a moment, and then gingerly gave the robe a prod with
his foot. The crown, bent slightly out of shape, rolled out of it a little way
before evaporating.
OH, he said, dismissively. DRAMA.
He walked over to Miss Flitworth and gently pressed her hands together.
The image of the lifetimer disappeared.
The blue-and-violet fog on the edge of sight faded as solid reality flowed
back.
Down in the town, the clock finished striking midnight.
The old woman was shivering. Death snapped his fingers in front of her
eyes.
MISS FLITWORTH? RENATA?
'I - I didn't know what to do and you said it wasn't difficult and -'
Death walked into the barn. When he came out, he was wearing his black
robe.
She was still standing there.
'I didn't know what to do,' she repeated, possibly not to him.'What
happened? Is it all over?'
Death looked around. The grey shapes were pouring into the yard.
POSSIBLY NOT, he said.

More trolleys appeared behind the row of soldiers. They looked like the
small silvery workers with the occasional pale golden gleam of a warrior.
'We should retreat back to the stairs,' said Doreen.
'I think that's where they want us to go,' said Windle.
'Then that's fine by me. Anyway, I vouldn't think those wheels could
manage steps, could they?'
'And you can't exactly fight to the death,' said Ludmilla. Lupine was
keeping close to her, yellow eyes fixed on the slowly advancing wheels.
'Chance would be a fine thing,' said Windle. They reached the moving
stairs. He looked up. Trolleys clustered around the top of the upward stair,
but the way to the floor below looked clear.
'Perhaps we could find another way up?' said Ludmilla hopefully.
They shuffled on to the moving stair. Behind them, the trolleys moved in
to block their return.
The wizards were on the floor below. They were
standing so still among the potted plants and fountains that Windle
passed them at first, assuming that they were some sort of statue or piece of
esoteric furniture.
The Archchancellor had a false red nose and was holding some balloons.
Beside him, the Bursar was juggling coloured balls, but like a machine, his
eyes staring blankly at nothing.
The Senior Wrangler was standing a little way off, wearing a pair of
sandwich boards. The writing on them hadn't fully ripened yet, but Windle
would have bet his afterlife that it would eventually say something like SALE
! ! ! !
The other wizards were clustered together like dolls whose clockwork
hadn't been wound up. Each one had a large oblong badge on his robe. The
familiar organic-looking writing was growing into a word that looked like:

I K Y

although why it was doing so was a complete mystery. The wizards
certainly didn't look very secure.
Windle snapped his fingers in front of the Dean's pale eyes. There was no
response.
'He's not dead,' said Reg.
'Just resting,' said Windle. 'Switched off.'
Reg gave the Dean a push. The wizard tottered forward, and then
staggered to a precarious, swaying halt.
'Well, we'll never get them out,' said Arthur. 'Not like that. Can't you wake
them up?'
'Light a feather under their nose,' Doreen volunteered.
'I don't think that will work, ' said Windle. He based the statement on the
fact that Reg Shoe was very
nearly under their noses, and anyone whose nasal equipment failed to
register Mr Shoe would certainly not react to a mere burning feather. Or a
heavy weight dropped from a great height, if it came to that.
'Mr Poons,' said Ludmilla.
'I used to know a golem looked like him,' said Reg Shoe. 'Just like him.
Great big chap, made out of clay. That's what your typical golem basically is.
You just have to write a special holy word on 'em to start 'em up.'
'What, like "security"?'
'Could be.'
Windle peered at the Dean. 'No,' he said at last, 'no-one's got that much
clay.' He looked around them. 'We ought to find out where that blasted
music's coming from.'
'Where the musicians are hidden, you mean?'
'I don't think there are musicians.'
'You've got to have musicians, brother,' said Reg. 'That's why it's called
music.'
'Firstly, this isn't like any music I've ever heard, and secondly I always
thought you've got to have oil lamps or candles to make light and there
aren't any and there's still light shining everywhere,' said Windle.
'Mr Poons?' said Ludmilla again, prodding him.
'Yes?'
'Here come some trolleys again.'
They were blocking all five passages leading off the central space.
'There's no stairs down,' said Windle.
'Maybe it's - she's - in one of the glassy bits,' said Ludmilla. 'The shops?'
'I don't think so. They don't look finished. Anyway, that feels wrong - '
Lupine growled. Spikes glistened on the leading trolleys, but they weren't
rushing to attack.
'They must have seen what we did to the others,' said Arthur.
'Yes. But how could they? That was upstairs,' said Windle.
'Well, maybe they talk to each other.'
'How can they talk? How can they think? There can't be any brains in a lot
of wire, ' said Ludmilla.
'Ants and bees don't think, if it comes to that,' said Windle.'They're just
controlled -'
He looked upwards.
They looked upwards.
'It's coming from somewhere in the ceiling, ' he said. 'We've got to find it
right now!'
'There's just panels of light,' said Ludmilla.
'Something else! Look for something it could be coming from!'
'It's coming from everywhere!'
'Whatever you're thinking of doing,' said Doreen, picking up a potted
plant and holding it like a club, 'I hope you do it fast.'
'What's that round black thing up there?' said Arthur.
'Where?'
'There.' Arthur pointed.
'OK, Reg and me will help you up, come on -'
'Me? But I can't stand heights!'
'I thought you could turn into a bat?'
'Yeah, but a very nervous one!'
'Stop complaining. Right - one foot here, now your hand here, now put
your foot on Reg's shoulder -'
'And don't go through,' said Reg.
'I don't like this!' Arthur moaned, as they hoisted him up.
Doreen stopped glaring at the creeping trolleys.
'Artor! Nobblyesse obligay!'
'What? Is that some sort of vampire code?' Reg whispered.
'It means something like: a count's gotta do what a count's gotta do,' said
Windle.
'Count!' snarled Arthur, swaying dangerously. 'I
never should have listened to that lawyer! I should have known nothing
good ever comes in a long brown envelope! And I can't reach the bloody
thing anyway!'
'Can 't you jump?' said Windle.
'Can't you drop dead?'
'No.'
'And I'm not jumping!'
'Fly, then. Turn into a bat and fly.'
'I can't get the airspeed!'
'You could throw him up,' said Ludmilla. 'You know, like a paper dart.'
'Blow that! I'm a count!'
'You just said you didn't want to be,' said Windle mildly.
'On the ground I don't want to be, but when it comes to being chucked
around like a frisbee -'
'Arthur! Do what Mr Poons says!'
'I don't see way -'
'Arthur!'
Arthur as a bat was surprisingly heavy. Windle held him by the ears like a
misshapen bowling ball and tried to take aim.
'Remember - I'm an endangered species!' the Count squeaked, as Windle
brought his arm back.
It was an accurate throw. Arthur fluttered to the disc in the ceiling and
gripped it in his claws.
'Can you move it?'
'No!'
'Then hang on tight and change back.'
'No!'
'We'll catch you.'
'No!'
'Arthur!' screamed Doreen, prodding an advancing trolley with her
makeshift club.
'Oh, all right.'
There was a momentary vision of Arthur Winkings clinging desperately to
the ceiling, and then he dropped on Windle and Reg, the disc clasped to his
chest.
The music stopped abruptly. Pink tubing poured out of the ravaged hole
above them and coiled upon Arthur, making him look like a very cheap plate
of spaghetti and meatballs. The fountains seemed to operate in reverse for a
moment, and then dried  up.
The trolleys halted. The ones at the back ran into the ones at the front,
and there was a chorus of pathetic clanking noises.
Tubing still poured out of the hole. Windle picked up a bit. It was an
unpleasant pink, and sticky.
'What do you think it is?' said Ludmilla.
'I think,' said Windle, 'that we'd better get out of here now.'
The floor trembled. Steam gushed from the fountain.
'If not sooner,' Windle added.
There was a ?graah? from the Archchancellor. The Dean slumped
forward. The other wizards remained upright, but only just.
'They're coming out of it,' said Ludmilla. 'But I don't think they'll manage
the stairs.'
'I don't think anyone should even think about trying to manage the stairs,'
said Windle. 'Look at them.'
The moving stairs weren't. The black steps glistened in the shadowless
light.
'I see what you mean,' said Ludmilla. 'I 'd rather try and walk on
quicksand.'
'It'd probably be safer,' said Windle.
'Maybe there's a ramp? There must be some way for the trolleys to get
around.'
'Good idea.'
Ludmilla eyed the trolleys. They were milling around aimlessly.'I think I
might have an even better one . . .' she said, and grabbed a passing handle.
The trolley fought for a moment and then, lacking any contrary
instructions, settled down docilely.
'The ones that can walk'll walk, and the ones that can't walk'll get pushed.
Come on, grandad.' This was to the Bursar, who was persuaded to flop
across the trolley. He said 'yo', faintly, and shut his eyes again.
The Dean was manhandled on top of him.'
'And now where?' said Doreen.
A couple of floor tiles buckled upwards. A heavy grey vapour started to
pour out.
'It must be somewhere at the end of a passage,' said Ludmilla. 'Come on.'
Arthur looked down at the mists coiling around his feet.
'I wonder how you can do that?' he said. 'It's amazingly difficult to get
stuff that does that. We tried it, you know, to make our crypt more . . . more
cryptic, but it just smokes up the place and sets fire to the curtains -'
'Come on, Artor. We are going.'
'You don't think we've done too much damage, do you? Perhaps we
should leave a note -'
'Yeah, I could write something on the wall if you like,' said Reg.
He picked up a struggling worker trolley by its handle and, with some
satisfaction, smashed it against a pillar until its wheels dropped off.
Windle watched the Fresh Start Club head up the nearest passage,
pushing a bargain assortment of wizardry.
'Well, well, well,' he said.'As simple as that. That's all we had to do. Hardly
any drama at all.'
He went to move forward, and stopped.
Pink tubes were forcing their way through the floor and were already
coiled tightly around his legs. More floor tiles leapt into the air. The
stairways shattered, revealing the dark, serrated and above all
'It is traditional, when loading wire trolleys, to put the most fragile items at
the bottom.
living tissue that had powered them. The walls pulsed and caved inwards,
the marble cracking to reveal purple and pinkness underneath.
Of course, thought a tiny calm part of Windle's mind, none of this is really
real. Buildings aren't really alive. It's all just a metaphor, only at the moment
metaphors are like candles in a firework factory.
That being said, what sort of creature is the Queen? Like a queen bee,
except she's also the hive. Like a caddis fly, which builds, if I'm not
mistaken, a shell out of bits of stone and things, to camouflage itself. Or like
a nautilus, which adds on to its shell as it gets bigger. And very much, to
judge by the way the floors are ripping up, like a very angry starfish.
I wonder how cities would defend themselves against this sort of thing?
Creatures generally evolve some sort of defence against predators. Poisons
and stings and spikes and things.
Here and now, that's probably me. Spiky old Windle Poons.
At least I can try to see to it that the others get out all right. Let's make my
presence felt . . .
He reached down, grabbed a double handful of pulsating tubes, and
heaved.
The Queen's screech of rage was heard all the way to the University.

The storm clouds sped towards the hill. They piled up in a towering mass,
very fast. Lightning flashed, somewhere in the core.
THERE'S TOO MUCH LIFE AROUND, said Death. NOT THAT I'M ONE TO
COMPLAIN. WHERE'S THE CHILD?
'I put her to bed. She's sleeping now. Just ordinary sleep.'
Lightning struck on the hill, like a thunderbolt. It was followed by a
clanking, grinding noise, somewhere in the middle distance.
Death sighed.
AH. MORE ?DIWMA?.
He walked around the barn, so that he could command a good view of the
dark fields. Miss Flitworth followed very closely on his heels, using him as a
shield against whatever terrors were out there.
A blue glow crackled behind a distant hedge. It was moving.
'What is it?'
IT WAS THE COMBINATION HARVESTER.
'Was? What is it now?'
Death glanced at the clustering watchers.
A POOR LOSER.
The Harvester tore across the soaking fields, cloth arms whirring, levers
moving inside an electric blue nimbus. The shafts for the horse waved
uselessly in the air.
'How can it go without a horse? It had a horse yesterday!'
IT DOESN'T NEED ONE.
He looked around at the grey watchers. There were ranks of them now.
'Binky's still in the yard. Come on!'
No.
The Combination Harvester accelerated towards them. The schip-schip of
its blades became a whine.
'Is it angry because you stole its tarpaulin?'
THAT'S NOT ALL I STOLE.
Death grinned at the watchers. He picked up his scythe, turned it over in
his hands and then, when he was sure their gaze was fixed upon it, let it fall
to the ground.
Then he folded his arms.
Miss Flitworth dragged at him.
'What do you think you're doing?'
DRAMA.
The Harvester reached the gate into the yard and came through in a cloud
of sawdust.
'Are you sure we'll be all right?'
Death nodded.
'Well. That's all right then.'
The Harvester's wheels were a blur.
PROBABLY.
And then . . .
. . . something in the machinery went clonk.
Then the Harvester was still travelling, but in pieces. Sparks fountained
up from its axles. A few spindles and arms managed to hold together, jerking
madly as they spun away from the whirling, slowing confusion. The circle of
blades tore free, smashed up through the machine, and skimmed away
across the fields.
There was a jangle, a clatter, and then the last isolated boing, which is the
audible equivalent of the famous pair of smoking boots.
And then there was silence.
Death reached down calmly and picked up a complicated-looking spindle
as it pinwheeled towards his feet. It had been bent into a right-angle.
Miss Flitworth peered around him.
'What happened?'
I THINK THE ELLIPTICAL CAM HAS GRADUALLY SLID UP THE BEAM
SHAFT AND CAUGHT ON THE FLANGE REBATE. WITH DISASTROUS
RESULTS.
Death stared defiantly at the grey watchers. One by one, they began to
disappear.
He picked up the scythe.
AND NOW I MUST GO, he said.
Miss FIitworth looked horrified.'What? Just like that?'
YES. EXACTLY LIKE THAT. I HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO.
'And I won't see you again? I mean -'
OH. YES. SOON. He sought for the right words, and gave up. THAT'S A
PROMISE.
Death pulled up his robe and reached into the pocket of his Bill Door
overall, which he was still wearing underneath.
WHEN MR SIMNEL COMES TO COLLECT THE BITS IN THE MORNING HE
WILL PROBABLY BE LOOKING FOR THIS, he said, and dropped something
small and bevelled into her hand.
'What is it?'
A THREE-EIGHTHS GRIPLEY.

Death walked over to his horse, and then remembered something.
AND HE OWES ME A FARTHING, TOO.

Ridcully opened one eye. People were milling around. There were lights
and excitement. Lots of people were talking at once.
He seemed to be sitting in a very uncomfortable pram, with some strange
insects buzzing around him.
He could hear the Dean complaining, and there were groans that could
only be coming from the Bursar, and the voice of a young woman. People
were being ministered to, but no-one was paying him any attention. Well, if
there was ministering going on, he was damn well going to get ministered to
as well.
He coughed loudly.
'You could try,' he said, to the cruel world in general, 'forcing some
brandy between m'lips.'
An apparition appeared above him holding a lamp over its head. It was a
size five face in a size thirteen skin; it said 'Oook?' in a concerned way.
'Oh, it's you,' said Ridcully. He tried to sit up quickly. just in case the
Librarian tried the kiss of life.
Confused memories wobbled across his brain. He could remember a wall
of clanking metal, and then pinkness, and then . . . music. Endless music,
designed to turn the living brain to cream cheese.
He turned around. There was a building behind him, surrounded by
crowds of people. It was squat and clung to the ground in a strangely animal
way, as if it might be possible to lift up a wing of the building and hear the
pop-pop-pop of suckers letting go.
Light streamed out of it, and steam curled out of its doors.
'Ridcully's woken up!'
More faces appeared. Ridcully thought: it's not Soul Cake Night, so
they're not wearing masks. Oh, blast.
Behind them he heard the Dean say, 'I vote we work ?lp? Herpetty's
Seismic Reorganiser and lob it through the door. No more problem.'
'No! We're too close to the city walls! We just need to drop Quondum's
Attractive Point in the right place -'
'Or Sumpjumper's Incendiary Surprise, perhaps?' this was the Bursar's
voice. 'Burn it out, it's the best way -'
'Yeah? Yeah? And what do you know about military tactics? You can't
even say "yo" properly!'
Ridcully gripped the sides of the trolley.
'Would anyone mind tellin' me,' he said, 'what the - what the heck is goin'
on?'
Ludmilla pushed her way through the members of the Fresh Start Club.
'You've got to stop them, Archchancellor!' she said. 'They're talking about
destroying the big shop!'
More nasty recollections settled on Ridcully's mind.
'Good idea,' he said.
'But Mr Poons is still in there!'
Ridcully tried to focus on the glowing building.
'What, dead Windle Poons?'
'Arthur flew back when we realised he wasn't with us and he said Windle
was fighting something that'd come out of the walls! We saw lots of trolleys
but they weren't bothered about us! He let us get out!'
'What, dead Windle Poons?'
'You can't magic the place to bits with one of your wizards in there!'
'What, dead Windle Poons?'
'Yes!'
'But he's dead,' said Ridcully. 'Isn't he? He said he was.'
'Ha!' said someone who had much less skin than Ridcully would have
liked him to have. 'That's typical.
That's naked vitalism, that is. I bet they'd rescue someone in there if they
happened to be alive.'
'But he wanted . . . he wasn't keen on . . . he . . .' Ridcully hazarded. A lot
of this was beyond him, but to people like Ridcully this didn't matter for very
long. Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn't mean stupid. It just meant
that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the
complicated bits around the edges.
He concentrated on the single main fact. Someone who was technically a
wizard was in trouble. He could relate to that. It struck a chord. The whole
dead-or-alive business could wait.
There was another minor point that nagged at him, though.
'. . . Arthur? . . . flew? . . .'
'Hallo.'
Ridcully turned his head. He blinked slowly.
'Nice teeth YOU got there,' he said.
'Thank you,' said Arthur Winkings.
'All your own, are they?'
'Oh, yes.'
'Amazing. Of course, I expect you brush regularly.'
'Yes?'
'Hygienic. That's the important thing.'
'So what are you going to do?' said Ludmilla.
'Well, we'll just go and fetch him out, ' said Ridcully.
What was it about the girl? He felt a strange urge to pat her on the
head.'We'll get some magic and get him out. Yes. Dean !'
'Yo!'
'We 're just going to go in there to get Windle out.'
'Yo!'
'What?' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You must be out of your mind!'
Ridcully tried to look as dignified as possible, given his situation.
'Remember that I am your Archchancellor,' he snapped.
Then you must be out of your mind, Archchancellor!' said the Senior
Wrangler. He lowered his  voice. 'Anyway, he's an undead. I don't see how
you can save undeads. It's a sort of contradiction in terms.'
'A dichotomy, ' said the Bursar helpfully.
'Oh, I don't think surgery is involved.'
'Anyway, didn't we bury him?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'And now we dig him up again,' said the Archchancellor. 'It's probably a
miracle of existence.'
'Like pickles,' said the Bursar, happily.
Even the Fresh Starters went blank.
'They do that in parts of Howondaland,' said the Bursar.'They make these
big, big jars of special pickles and then they bury them in the ground for
months to ferment and they get this lovely piquant -'
'Tell me,' Ludmilla whispered to Ridcully, 'is this how wizards usually
behave?'
'The Senior Wrangler is an amazingly fine example,' said Ridcully. 'Got
the same urgent grasp of reality as a cardboard cut-out. Proud to have him
on the team.' He rubbed his hands together.'OK, lads. Volunteers?'
'Yo! Hut!' said the Dean, who was in an entirely different world now.
'I would be remiss in my duty if I failed to help a brother,' said Reg Shoe.
'Oook.'
'You? We can't take you,' said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. 'You don
't know a thing about guerrilla warfare.'
'Oook!' said the Librarian, and made a surprisingly comprehensive
gesture to indicate that, on the other hand, what he didn't know about
orangutan warfare could be written on the very small pounded-up remains of,
for example, the Dean.
'Four of us should be enough,' said the Archchancellor.
'I've never even heard him say "Yo",' muttered the Dean.
He removed his hat, something a wizard doesn't ordinarily do unless he's
about to pull something out of it, and handed it to the Bursar. Then he tore a
thin strip off the bottom of his robe, held it dramatically in both hands, and
tied it around his forehead.
'It's part of the ethos,' he said, in answer to their penetratingly unspoken
question. 'That's what the warriors on the Counter-weight Continent do
before they go into battle. And you have to shout -' He tried to remember
some far-off reading.'- er, bonsai. Yes. Bonsai!'
'I thought that meant chopping bits off trees to make them small,' said the
Senior Wrangler.
The Dean hesitated. He wasn't too sure himself, if it came to it. But a good
wizard never let uncertainty stand in his way.
'No, it's definitely got to be bonsai,' he said. He considered it some more
and then brightened up. 'On account of it all being part of bushido. Like . . .
small trees. Bush-i-do. Yeah. Makes sense, when you think about it.'
'But you can't shout "bonsai!" here,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'We've got a totally different cultural background. It'd be useless. No-one will
know what you mean.'
'I'll work on it,' said the Dean.
He noticed Ludmilla standing with her mouth open.
'This is wizard talk,' he said.
'It is, isn't it,' said Ludmilla. 'I never would have guessed.'
The Archchancellor had got out of the trolley and was wheeling it
experimentally back and forth. It usually took quite a long time for a fresh
idea to fully lodge in Ridcully's mind, but he felt instinctively that
there were all sorts of uses for a wire basket on four wheels.
'Are we going or are we standin' around all night bandagin' our heads?'
he said.
'Yo!' snapped the Dean.
'Yo?' said Reg Shoe.
'Oook!'
'Was that a yo?' said the Dean, suspiciously.
'Oook.'
'Well . . . all right, then.'

Death sat on a mountaintop. It wasn't particularly high, or bare, or sinister.
No witches held naked sabbats on it; Discworld witches, on the whole, didn't
hold with taking off any more clothes than was absolutely necessary for the
business in hand. No spectres haunted it. No naked little men sat on the
summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly-wise man works
out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids
but frostbitten haemorrhoids.
Occasionally people would climb the mountain and add a stone or two to
the cairn at the top, if only to prove that there is nothing really damn stupid
that humans won't do.
Death sat on the cairn and ran a stone down the blade of his scythe in
long, deliberate strokes.
There was a movement of air. Three grey servants popped into existence.
One said, You think you have won?
One said, You think you have triumphed?
Death turned the stone in his hand, to get a fresh surface. and brought it
slowly down the length of the blade.
One said, We will inform Azrael.
One said, You are only, after all, a little Death.
Death held the blade up to the moonlight, twisting it this way and that,
noting the play of light on the tiny flecks of metal on its edge.
Then he stood up, in one quick movement. The servants backed away
hurriedly.
He reached out with the speed of a snake and grasped a robe, pulling its
empty hood level with his eye sockets.
DO YOU KNOW WHY THE PRISONER IN THE TOWER WATCHES THE
FLIGHT OF BIRDS? he said.
It said, Take your hands off me . . . oops . . .
Blue flame flared for a moment.
Death lowered his hand and looked around at the other two.
One said, You haven't heard the last of this.
They vanished.
Death brushed a speck of ash off his robe, and then planted his feet
squarely on the mountaintop. He raised the scythe over his head in both
hands, and summoned all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence.
After a while they streamed up the mountain in a faint black wave.
They flowed together like dark mercury.
It went on for a long time and then stopped.
Death lowered the scythe, and examined himself. Yes, all there. Once
again, he was the Death, containing all the deaths of the world. Except for -
For a moment he hesitated. There was one tiny area of emptiness
somewhere, some fragment of his soul, something unaccounted for . . .
He couldn't be quite certain what it was.
He shrugged. Doubtless he'd find out. In the meantime, there was a lot of
work to be done . . .
He rode away.
Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his
determined grip on a beam.

Windle Poons brought both feet down heavily on a tentacle snaking out
from under the tiles, and lurched off through the steam. A slab of marble
smashed down, showering him with fragments. Then he kicked the wall,
savagely.
There was very probably no way out now, he realised, and even if there
was he couldn't find it. Anyway, he was already inside the thing. It was
shaking its own walls down in an effort to get at him. At least he could give it
a really bad case of indigestion.
He headed towards an orifice that had once been the entrance to a wide
passage, and dived awkwardly through it just before it snapped shut. Silver
fire crackled over the walls. There was so much life here it couldn't be
contained.
There were a few trolleys still here, skittering madly across the shaking
floor, as lost as Windle.
He set off along another likely-looking corridor, although most corridors
he'd been down in the last one hundred and thirty years hadn't pulsated and
dripped so much.
Another tentacle thrust through the wall and tripped him up.
Of course, it couldn't kill him. But it could make him bodiless. Like old
One-Man-Bucket. A fate worse than death, probably.
He pulled himself up. The ceiling bounced down on him, flattening him
against the floor.
He counted under his breath and scampered forward. Steam washed over
him.
He slipped again, and thrust out his hands.
He could feel himself losing control. There were too many things to
operate. Never mind the spleen, just keeping heart and lungs going was
taking too much effort...
'Topiary !'
'What the heck do you mean?'
'Topiary! Get it? Yo!'
'Oook!'
Windle looked up through foggy eyes.
Ah. Obviously he was losing control of his brain, too.
A trolley came sideways out of the steam with shadowy figures clinging
on to its sides. One hairy arm and
one arm that was barely an arm any more reached down, picked him up
bodily and dumped him into the basket. Four tiny wheels skidded on the
floor, the trolley bounced off the wall, and then it righted itself and rattled
away.
Windle was only vaguely aware of voices.
'Off you go, Dean. I know you've been looking forward to it.' That was the
Archchancellor.
'Yo!'
'You'll kill it totally? I don't think we want it ending up at the Fresh Start
Club. I don't think it's a joiner.' That was Reg Shoe.
'Oook!' That was the Librarian.
'Don't you worry, Windle. The Dean is going to do something military,
apparently, ' said Ridcully.
'Yo! Hut!'
'Oh, good grief.'
Windle saw the Dean's hand float past with something glittering in it.
'What are you going to use?' said Ridcully, as the trolley rocketed through
the steam.'The Seismic Reorganiser, the Attractive Point or the Incendiary
Surprise?'
'Yo, ' said the Dean, with satisfaction.
'What, all three at once?'
'Yo!'
'That's going a bit far, isn't it? And incidentally, if you say "yo" one more
time, Dean, I will personally have you thrown out of the University, pursued
to the rim of the world by the finest demons that thaumaturgy can conjure
up, torn into extremely small pieces, minced, turned into a mixture
reminiscent of steak tartare, and turned out into a dog bowl.'
'Y -' The Dean caught Ridcully's eye.'Yes. Yes? Oh, go on,
Archchancellor. What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and
knowing the secrets of fate if you can't blow something up? Please? I've got
them all ready. You know how it upsets the
inventory if you don't use them after you've got them ready -'
The trolley whirred up a trembling slope and cornered on two wheels.
'Oh, all right, ' said Ridcully. 'If it means that much to you.'
'Y - sorry.'
The Dean started to mutter urgently under his breath, and then screamed.
'I've gone blind!'
'Your bonsai bandage has slipped over your eyes, Dean.' Windle groaned.
'How are you feeling, brother Poons?' Reg Shoe's ravaged features
occluded Windle's view.
'Oh, you know, ' said Windle. 'Could be better, could be worse.'
The trolley ricocheted off a wall and jerked away in another direction.
'How are those spells coming along, Dean?' said Ridcully, through gritted
teeth.'I'm having real difficulties controlling this thing.'
The Dean muttered a few more words, and then waved his hands
dramatically. Octarine flame spurted from his fingertips and earthed itself
somewhere in the mists.
'Yee-haw!' he crowed.
'Dean?'
'Yes, Archchancellor?'
'The comment I made recently about the Y-word . . .'
'Yes? Yes?'
'You can definitely include Yee-haw, too.'
The Dean hung his head.
'Oh. Yes. Archchancellor.'
'And why hasn't everythin' gone boom?'
'I put a slight delay on it, Archchancellor. I thought perhaps we ought to
get out before things happened.'
'Good thinking, that man.'
'Soon have you out, Windle,' said Reg Shoe. 'We don't leave our people in
there. Isn't this -'
And then the floor erupted ahead of them.
And then, behind them.
The thing that arose from the shattered tiles was either formless or many
forms at once. It writhed angrily, snapping its tubing at them.
The trolley skewed to a halt.
'Got any more magic, Dean?'
'Er . . . no, Archchancellor.'
'And the spells you just said will go off . . . ?'
'Any second now, Archchancellor.'
'So . . . whatever's going to happen . . . is going to happen to us?'
'Yes, Archchancellor.'
idcully patted Windle on the head.
'Sorry about this,' he said.
Windle turned awkwardly to look down the passageway.
There was something behind the Queen. It looked like a perfectly ordinary
bedroom door, advancing in a series of small steps, as though someone was
carefully pushing it along in front of them.
'What is it?' said Reg.
Windle raised himself as far as he could.
'Schleppel!'
'Oh, come on,' said Reg.
'It's Schleppel!' shouted Windle. 'Schleppel! It's us! Can you help us out?'
The door paused. Then it was flung aside.
Schleppel unfolded himself to his full height.
'Hallo, Mr Poons. Hallo, Reg,' he said.
They stared at the hairy shape that nearly filled the passageway.
'Er, Schleppel . . . er . . . could you clear the way for us?' Windle quavered.
'No problem, Mr Poons. Anything for a friend.'
A hand the size of a wheelbarrow glided through the
steam and tore into the blockage, ripping it out with incredible ease.
'Hey, look at me!' said Schleppel. 'You're right. A bogeyman needs a door
like a fish needs a bicycle! Say it now and say it loud, I'm -'
'And now could you get out of the way, please?'
'Sure. Sure. Wow!' Schleppel took another swipe at the Queen.
The trolley shot forward.
'And you'd better come with us!' Windle shouted, as Schleppel
disappeared in the mists.
'No he shouldn't,' said the Archchancellor, as they sped along. 'Believe
me. What was it?'
'He's a bogeyman,' said Windle.
'I thought you only get them in closets and things?' shouted Ridcully.
'He's come out of the closet,' said Reg Shoe proudly. 'And he's found
himself.'
'Just so long as we can lose him.'
'We can't just leave him -'
'We can! We can!' snapped Ridcully.
There was a sound behind them like an eruption of swamp gas. Green
light streamed past.
'The spells are starting to go off!' shouted the Dean. 'Move it!'
The trolley whirred out of the entrance and soared up into the cool of the
night, wheels screaming.
'Yo!' bellowed Ridcully, as the crowd scattered ahead of them.
'Does that mean I can say yo too?' said the Dean.
'All right. Just once. Everyone can say it just once.'
'Yo!'
'Yo!' echoed Reg Shoe.
'Oook!'
'Yo!' said Windle Poons.
'Yo!' said Schleppel.
(Somewhere in the darkness, where the crowd was
thinnest, the gaunt shape of Mr Ixolite, the world's last surviving banshee,
sidled up to the shaking building and bashfully shoved a note under the
door. It said: OOOOeeeOOOeeeOOOeee.)
The trolley ploughed to a very definitive stop. No-one turned around. Reg
said, slowly: 'You're behind us, right?'.
'That's right, Mr Shoe, ' said Schleppel happily.
'Should we worry when he's in front of us?' said Ridcully, 'Or is it worse
because we know he's behind us?'
'Hah! No more closets and cellars for this bogey,' said Schleppel.
'That's a shame, because we've got some really big cellars at the
University,' said Windle Poons quickly.
Schleppel was silent for a while. Then he said, in an exploratory tone of
voice, 'How big?'
'Huge.'
'Yeah? With rats?'
'Rats aren't the half of it. There's escaped demons and all sorts down
there. Infested, they are.'
'What are you doing?' hissed Ridcully. 'That's our cellars you're talking
about!'
'You'd prefer him under your bed, would you?' murmured Windle. 'Or
walking around behind you?'
Ridcully nodded briskly.
'Wow, yes, those rats are getting really out of hand down there,' he said
loudly. 'Some of them - oh, about two feet long, wouldn't you say, Dean?'
'Three feet, ' said the Dean. 'At least.'
'Fat as butter, too,' said Windle.
Schleppel gave this some thought. 'Well, all right,' he said reluctantly.
'Maybe I'll just wander in and have a look at them.'
The big store exploded and imploded at the same time, something it is
almost impossible to achieve without a huge special effects budget or three
spells all working against one another. There was the
impression of a vast cloud expanding but at the same time moving away
so rapidly that the overall effect was of a shrinking point. Walls buckled and
were sucked in. Soil ripped up from the ravaged fields and spiralled into the
vortex. There was a violent burst of non-music, which died almost instantly.
And then nothing, except a muddy field.
And, floating down from the early morning sky like snow, thousands of
white flakes. They slid silently through the air and landed lightly on the
crowd.
'It's not seeding, is it?' said Reg Shoe.
Windle grabbed one of the flakes. It was a crude rectangle, uneven and
blotchy. It was just about possible, with a certain amount of imagination, to
make out the words:

C)OS ~I'~ ~o~~o S\ae.
v
~3VQr~~hnia t7u~, O9 ,l
c/         J o

'No, ' said Windle. 'Probably not.'
He lay back and smiled. It was never too late to have a good life.
And when no-one was looking, the last surviving trolley on the Discworld
rattled off sadly into the oblivion of the night, lost and alone. *

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  It is generally thought, on those worlds where the mall lifeform has
seeded, that people take the wire baskets away and leave them in strange
and isolated places, so that squads of young men have to be employed to
gather them together and wheel them back. This is exactly the opposite of
the truth. In reality the men are hunters. stalking their rattling prey across the
landscape, trapping them, breaking their spirit, taming them and herding
them to a life of slavery. Possibly.
'Pog-a-grodle-fig!'
Miss Flitworth sat in her kitchen.
Outside, she could hear the despondent clanking as Ned Simnel and his
apprentice picked up the tangled remains of the Combination Harvester. A
handful of other people were theoretically helping, but were really taking the
opportunity to have a good look around. She'd made a tray of tea, and left
them to it.
Now she sat with her chin in her hands, staring at nothing.
There was a knock at the open door. Spigot poked his red face into the
room.
'Please, Miss Flitworth -'
'Hmm?'
'Please, Miss Flitworth, there's a skeleton of a horse walking around in the
barn! It's eating hay!'
'How?'
'And it's all falling through!'
'Really? We'll keep it, then. At least it'll be cheap to feed.'
Spigot hung around for a while, twisting his hat in his hands.
'You all right. Miss Flitworth?'

'You all right, Mr Poons?'
Windle stared at nothing.
'Windle?' said Reg Shoe.
'Hmm?'
'The Archchancellor just asked if you wanted a drink.'
'He'd like a glass of distilled water,' said Mrs Cake.
'What, just water?' said Ridcully.
'That's what he wants,' said Mrs Cake.
'I'd Like a glass of distilled water, please,' said Windle.
Mrs Cake looked smug. At least, as much of her as was visible looked
smug, which was that part between the Hat and her handbag, which was a
sort of
counterpart of the hat and so big that when she sat clasping it on her lap
she had to reach up to hold the handles. When she'd heard that her daughter
had been invited to the University she'd come too. Mrs Cake always assumed
that an invitation to Ludmilla was an invitation to Ludmilla's mother as well.
Mothers like her exist everywhere, and apparently nothing can be done
about them.
The Fresh Starters were being entertained by the wizards, and trying to
look as though they were enjoying it. It was one of those problematical
occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated
things like, 'Well, isn't this nice.'
'You looked a bit lost there, Windle, for a moment,' said Ridcully.
'I'm just a bit tired, Archchancellor.'
'I thought you zombies never slept.'
'I'm still tired,' said Windle.
'You 're sure you wouldn't like us to have another go with the burial and
everything? We could do it properly this time.'
'Thank you all the same, but no. I'm just not cut out for the undead life, I
think.' Windle looked at Reg Shoe. 'Sorry about that. I don't know how you
manage it.' He grinned apologetically.
'You've got every right to be alive or dead, just as you choose,' said Reg
severely.
'One-Man-Bucket says people are dying properly again,' said Mrs Cake.
'So you could probably get an appointment.'
Windle looked around.
'She's taken your dog for a walk,' said Mrs Cake.
'Where's Ludmilla?' he said.
Windle smiled awkwardly. Mrs Cake's premonitions could be very
wearing.
'It'd be nice to know that Lupine was being looked after if I . . . went,' he
said. 'I wonder, could you take him in?'
'Well . . .' said Mrs Cake uncertainly.
'But he's -' Reg Shoe began, and then saw Windle's expression.
'I must admit it'd be a relief to have a dog around the place,' said Mrs
Cake. 'I'm always worrying about Ludmilla. There's a lot of strange people
around.'
'But your dau -' Reg began again.
'Shut up, Reg,' said Doreen.
'That's all settled, then,' said Windle.'And have you got any trousers?'
'What?'
'Any trousers in the house?'
'Well, I suppose I've got some that belonged to the late Mr Cake, but why -
'
'Sorry,' said Windle. 'My mind was wandering. Don't know what I 'm
saying, half the time.'
'Ah,' said Reg, brightly, 'I see. What you're saying is that when he -'
Doreen nudged him viciously.
'Oh,' said Reg. 'Sorry. Don't mind me. I'd forget my own head if it wasn't
sewn on.'
Windle leaned back, and shut his eyes. He could hear the occasional
scrap of conversation. He could hear Arthur Winkings asking the
Archchancellor who did his decorating, and where the University got its
vegetables. He heard the Bursar moaning about the cost of exterminating all
the curse-words, which had somehow survived the recent changes and had
taken up residence in the darkness of the roof. He could even, if he strained
his perfect hearing, hear the whoops of Schleppel in the distant cellars.
They didn't need him. At last. The world didn't need Windle Poons.
He got up quietly and lurched to the door.
'I'm just going out,' he said. 'I may be some time.'
Ridcully gave him a half-hearted nod, and concentrated on what Arthur
had to say about how the Great
Hall could be entirely transformed with some pine-effect wallpaper.
Windle shut the door behind him and leaned against the thick, cool wall.
Oh, yes. There was one other thing.
'Are you there, One-Man-Bucket?' he said softly.
how did you know?
'You're generally around.'
heh heh, you've caused some real trouble there! you know what's going to
happen next full moon ?
'Yes, I do. And I think, somehow, that they do too.'
but he'll become a wolfman.
'Yes. And she'll become a wolfwoman.'
all Tight, but what kind of relationship can people have one week in four?
'Maybe at least as good a chance of happiness as most people get. Life
isn't perfect, One-Man-Bucket.'
you're telling me?
'Now, can I ask you a personal question?' said Windle. 'I mean I've just
got to know . . .'
huh.
'After all, you've got the astral plane to yourself again.'
oh, all right.
'Why are you called One -'
is that all? I thought you could work that one out, a clever man like you. in
my tribe we're traditionally named after the First thing the mother sees when
she looks out of the teepee after the birth. it's short for One-Man-Pouring-a-
Bucket-of- Water-over-Two-Dogs.
'That's pretty unfortunate, ' said Windle.
it's not too bad, said One-Man-Bucket. it was my twin brother you had to
feel sorry for. she looked out ten seconds before me to give him his name.
Windle Poons thought about it.
'Don't tell me, let me guess,' he said. 'Two-Dogs-Fighting?'
Two-Dogs-Fighting a Two-Dogs-Fighting? said One-Man-Bucket. Wow,
he'd have given his right arm to be called Two-Dogs-Fighting.

It was later that the story of Windle Poons really came to an end, if "story"
means all that he did and caused and set in motion. In the Ramtop village
where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-
one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until
the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its
ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life,
they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
As he walked through the foggy city to an appointment he had been
awaiting ever since he was born, Windle felt that he could predict that final
end.
It would be in a few weeks ' time, when the moon was full again. A sort of
codicil or addendum to the life of Windle Poons - born in the year of the
Significant Triangle in the Century of the Three Lice (he'd always preferred
the old calendar with its ancient names to all this new-fangled numbering
they did today) and died in the year of the Notional Serpent in the Century of
the Fruitbat, more or less.
There'd be two figures running across the high moorland under the moon.
Not entirely wolves, not entirely human. With any luck, they'd have best of
both worlds. Not just feeling . . . but knowing.
Always best to have both worlds.

Death sat in his chair in his dark study, his hands steepled in front of his
face.
Occasionally he'd swivel the chair backwards and forwards.
Albert brought him in a cup of tea and exited with diplomatic
soundlessness.
There was one lifetimer left on Death's desk. He stared at it.
Swivel, swivel. Swivel, swivel.
In the hall outside, the great clock ticked on, killing time.
Death drummed his skeletal fingers on the desk's scarred woodwork. In
front of him, stacked up with impromptu bookmarks in their pages, were the
lives of some of the Discworld's great lovers.* Their fairly repetitive
experiences hadn't been any help at all.
He got up and stalked to a window and stared out at his dark domain, his
hands clenching and unclenching behind his back.
Then he snatched up the lifetimer and strode out of the room.
Binky was waiting in the warm fug of the stables. Death saddled him
quickly and led him out into the courtyard, and then rode up into the night,
towards the distant glittering jewel of the Discworld.
He touched down silently in the farmyard, at sunset.
He drifted through a wall.
He reached the foot of the stairs.
He raised the hourglass and watched the draining of Time.
And then he paused. There was something he had to know. Bill Door had
been curious about things, and he could remember everything about being
Bill Door. He could look at emotions laid out like trapped butterflies, pinned
on cork, under glass.
Bill Door was dead, or at least had ceased his brief existence. But - what
was it? - someone's actual life was only the core of their real existence? Bill
Door had gone, but he had left echoes. The memory of Bill Door was owed
something.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___
*  The most enthusiastic of these was the small but persistent and
incredibly successful Casanunder the Dwarf, a name mentioned with respect
and awe wherever stepladder owners are gathered together.

Death had always wondered why people put flowers on graves. It made no
sense to him. The dead had gone beyond the scent of roses, after all. But
now . . . it wasn't that he felt he understood, but at least he felt that there was
something there capable of understanding.
In the curtained blackness of Miss Flitworth's parlour a darker shape
moved through the darkness, heading towards the three chests on the
dresser.
Death opened one of the smaller ones. It was full of gold coins. They had
an untouched look about them. He tried the other small chest. It was also full
of gold.
He'd expected something more from Miss Flitworth, although probably
not even Bill Door would have known what.
He tried the large chest.
There was a layer of tissue paper. Under the paper, some white silky
thing, some sort of a veil, now yellowed and brittle with age. He gave it an
uncomprehending stare
and laid it aside. There were some white shoes. Quite impractical for farm
wear, he felt. No wonder they'd been packed away.
There was more paper; a bundle of letters tied together.
He put them on top of the veil. There was never anything to be gained
from observing what humans said to one another - language was just there
to hide their thoughts.
And then there was, right at the bottom, a smaller box.
He pulled it out and turned it over and over in his hands.
Then he unclicked the little latch and lifted the lid.
Clockwork whirred.
The tune wasn't particularly good. Death had heard all the music that had
ever been written, and almost all of it had been better than this tune. It had a
plinkety plonkety quality. a tinny little one-two-three rhythm.
In the musical box, over the busily spinning gears, two wooden dancers
jerked around in a parody of a waltz.
Death watched them until the clockwork ran down.
Then he read the inscription.
It had been a present.

Beside him, the lifetimer poured its grains into the bottom bulb. He
ignored it.
When the clockwork ran down, he wound it up again.
Two figures, spinning through time. And when the music stopped, all you
needed was to turn the key.
When it ran down again, he sat in the silence and the dark, and reached a
decision.
There were only seconds left. Seconds had meant a lot to Bill Door,
because he'd had a limited supply. They meant nothing at all to Death, who'd
never had any.
He left the sleeping house, mounted up, and rode away.
The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three
hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no
meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No
matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first,
and is waiting for it.
There was company on the ride - galaxies, stars, ribbons of shining
matter, streaming and eventually spiralling towards the distant goal.
Death on his pale horse moved down the darkness like a bubble on a
river.
And every river flows somewhere.
And then, below, a plain. Distance was as meaningless here as time. but
there was a sense of hugeness. The plain could have been a mile away, or a
million miles; it was marked by long valleys or rills which flowed away to
either side as he got closer.
And landed.
He dismounted, and stood in the silence. Then he went down on one
knee.
Change the perspective. The furrowed landscape falls away into immense
distances, curves at the edges, becomes a fingertip.
Azrael raised his finger to a face that filled the sky, lit by the faint glow of
dying galaxies.
There are a billion Deaths, but they are all aspects of
the one Death: Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, the
beginning and end of time.
Most of the universe is made up of dark matter, and only Azrael knows
who it is.
Eyes so big that a supernova would be a mere suggestion of a gleam on
the iris turned slowly and focused on the tiny figure on the immense whorled
plains of his fingertips. Beside Azrael the big Clock hung in the centre of the
entire web of the dimensions, and ticked onward. Stars glittered in Azrael's
eyes.
The Death of the Discworld stood up.
LORD, I ASK FOR -
Three of the servants of oblivion slid into existence alongside him.
One said, Do not listen. He stands accused of meddling.
One said, And morticide.
One said, And pride. And living with intent to survive.
One said, And ?~ding? with chaos against good order.
Azrael raised an eyebrow.
The servants drifted away from Death, expectantly.
LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE
CREATE . . .
Azrael's expression did not change.
THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO
JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.
The dark, sad face filled the sky.
ALL THINGS THAT ARE. ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO
NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS
NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOME
DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER
BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF
PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.
Death took a step backwards.
It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features.
Death glanced sideways at the servants.
LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF
THE REAPER MAN?

He waited.
LORD? said Death.
In the time it took to answer, several galaxies unfolded, whirled around
Azrael like paper streamers, impacted, and were gone.
Then Azrael said:

And another finger reached out across the darkness towards the Clock.
There were faint screams of rage from the servants, and then screams of
realisation, and then three brief, blue flames.
All other clocks, even the handless clock of Death, were reflections of the
Clock. Exactly reflections of the Clock; they told the universe what the time
was, but the Clock told Time what time is. It was the mainspring from which
all time poured.
And the design d the Clock was this: that the biggest hand only went
around once.
The second hand whirred along a circular path that even light would take
days to travel, forever chased by the minutes, hours, days, months, years,
centuries and ages.
But the Universe hand went around once.
At least, until someone wound up the clockwork.
And Death returned home with a handful of Time.
A shop bell jangled.
Druto Pole, florist, looked over a spray of floribunda Mrs Shooer.
Someone was standing among the vases of flowers. They looked slightly
indistinct; in fact. even afterwards, Druto was never sure who had been in his
shop and how his words had actually sounded.
He oiled forward, rubbing his hands.
'How may I hel -'
FLOWERS.
Druto hesitated only for a moment.
'And the, er, destination for these -'
A LADY.
'And do you have any pref -'

'Ah? Are you sure that lilies are -?'
I LIKE LILIES.
'Um . . . it's just that lilies are a little bit sombre -'
I LIKE SOMB -
The figure hesitated.
WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?
Druto slipped smoothly into gear.'Roses are always very well received,'
he said. 'Or orchids. Many gentlemen these days tell me that ladies find a
single specimen orchid more acceptable than a bunch of roses -'
GIVE ME LOTS.
'Would that be orchids or roses?'
BOTH.
Druto's fingers twined sinuously, like eels in grease.
'And I wonder if I could interest you in these marvellous sprays of
Neroousa GIoriosa -'
LOTS OF THEM.
'And if Sir's budget would stretch, may I suggest a single specimen of the
extremely rare -'
YES.
'And possibly -'
YES. EVERYTHING. WITH A RIBBON.
When the shop bell had jangled the purchaser out, Druto looked at the
coins in his hand. Many of them were
corroded, all of them were strange, and one or two were golden.
'Um,' he said. 'That will do nicely . . .'
He became aware of a soft pattering sound.
Around him, all over the shop, petals were falling like rain.

AND THESE?
'That's our De Luxe assortment,' said the lady in the chocolate shop. It
was such a highclass establishment that it sold, not sweets. but
confectionery - often in the form of individual gold-wrapped swirly things
that made even larger holes in a bank balance than they did in a tooth.
The tall dark customer picked up a box that was about two feet square.
On a lid like a satin cushion it had a picture of a couple of hopelessly cross-
eyed kittens looking out of a boot.
WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT
IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED? he added, his tone taking on a definite menace, or
rather more menace than it had already.
'Um, no. That's our Supreme Assortment.'
The customer tossed it aside.
No.
The shopkeeper looked both ways and then pulled open a drawer under
the counter, at the same time lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
'Of course,' she said, 'for that very special occasion . . .'
It was quite a small box. It was also entirely black, except for the name of
the contents in small white letters; cats, even in pink ribbons, wouldn't be
allowed within a mile of a box like this. To deliver a box of chocolates like
this, dark strangers drop from chairlifts and abseil down buildings.
The dark stranger peered at the lettering.
'DARK ENCHANTMENTS,' he said. I ?WKEIT?.
'For those intimate moments,' said the lady.
The customer appeared to consider the relevance of this.
YES. THAT SEEMS APPROPRIATE.

The shopkeeper beamed.
'Shall I wrap them up, then?'
YES. WITH A RIBBON.
'And will there be anything else, sir?'
The customer seemed to panic.
ELSE? SHOULD THERE BE ANYTHING ELSE? IS THERE SOMETHING
ELSE? WHAT IS IT THAT SHOULD BE DONE?
'I'm sorry, sir?'
A PRESENT FOR A LADY.
The shopkeeper was left a little adrift by this sudden turning of the tide of
conversation. She swam towards a reliable cliche.
'Well, they do say, don't they, that diamonds are a girl's best friend?' she
said brightly.
DIAMONDS? OH. DIAMONDS. IS THAT SO?

They glittered like bits of starlight on a black velvet sky.
'This one.' said the merchant, 'is a particularly excellent stone, don't you
think? Note the fire, the exceptional -'
HOW FRIENDLY IS IT?
The merchant hesitated. He knew about carats, about adamantine lustre,
about "water" and "make" and "fire", but he'd never before been called upon
to judge gems in terms of general affability.
'Quite well-disposed?' he hazarded.
NO.
The merchant's fingers seized on another splinter of frozen light.
'Now this,' he said, confidence flowing back into his voice, 'is from the
famous Shortshanks mine. May I draw your attention to the exquisite -'
He felt the penetrating stare drill through the back of his head.
'But not, I must admit, noted for its friendliness,' he said lamely.
The dark customer looked disapprovingly around the shop. In the gloom,
behind troll-proof bars, gems glowed like the eyes of dragons in the back of
a cave.
ARE ANY OF THESE FRIENDLY? he said.
'Sir, I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that we have never
based our purchasing policy on the amiability of the stones in question,' said
the merchant. He was uncomfortably aware that things were wrong, and that
somewhere in the back of his mind he knew what was wrong with them, and
that somehow his mind was not letting him make that final link. And it was
getting on his nerves.
WHERE IS THE BIGGEST DIAMOND IN THE WORLD?
'The biggest? That's easy. It's the Tear of Offler, it's in the innermost
sanctuary of the Lost Jewelled Temple of Doom of Offler the Crocodile God
in darkest Howandaland, and it weighs eight hundred and fifty carats. And,
sir, to forestall your next question, I personally would go to bed with it.'

One of the nice things about being a priest in the Lost Jewelled Temple of
Doom of Offler the Crocodile God was that you got to go home early most
afternoons. This was because it was lost. Most worshippers never found
their way there. They were the lucky ones.
Traditionally, only two people ever went into the innermost sanctuary.
They were the High Priest and the other priest who wasn't High. They had
been there for years, and took turns at being the high one. It was an
undemanding job, given that most prospective worshippers were impaled,
squashed, poisoned or sliced by booby-traps even before making it as far as
the little box and the jolly drawing of a thermometer' outside the vestry.
They were playing Cripple Mr Onion on the high altar, beneath the very
shadow of the jewel-encrusted statue of Offler Himself, when they heard the
distant creak of the main door.
The High Priest didn't look up.
''Lost Jewelled Temple Roof Repair Fund! Only 6,000 gold pieces to go!!
Please Give Generously!! Thank you!!!'

'Heyup.' he said. 'Another one for the big rolling ball, then.'
There was a thump and a rumbling, grinding sound. And then a very final
bang.
'Now,' said the High Priest. 'What was the stake?'
'Two pebbles,' said the low priest.
'Right.' The High Priest peered at his cards.'OK, I'll see your two peb-'
There was the faint sound of footsteps.
'Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last week,' said the
low priest.
There was a sound like the flushing of a very old dry lavatory. The
footsteps stopped.
The High Priest smiled to himself.
'Right,' he said.'See your two pebbles and raise you two pebbles.'
The low priest threw down his cards.
'Double Onion' he said.
The High Priest looked down suspiciously.
The low priest consulted a scrap of paper.
'That's three hundred thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four pebbles you
owe me,' he said.
There was the sound of footsteps.
The priests exchanged glances.
'Haven't had one for poisoned dart alley for quite some time,' said the
High Priest.
'Five says he makes it,' said the low priest.
'You're on.'
There was a faint clatter of metal points on stone.
'It's a shame to take your pebbles.'
There were footsteps again.
'All right, but there's still the -' a creak, a splash ' - the crocodile tank.'
There were footsteps.
'No-one's ever got past the dreaded guardian of the portals -'
The priests looked into one another's horrified faces.

'Hey,' said the one who was not High. 'You don't think it could be -'
'Here? Oh, come on. We're in the middle of a godsdamn jungle.' The High
Priest tried to smile. 'There's no way it could be -'
The footsteps got nearer.
The priests clutched at one another in terror.
'Mrs Cake!'
The doors exploded inwards. A dark wind drove into the room, blowing
out the candles and scattering the cards like polka~~ of snow.
The priests heard the chink of a very large diamond being lifted out of its
socket.
THANK YOU.
After a while, when nothing else seemed to be happening. the priest who
wasn't High managed to find a tinder box and, after several false starts, got a
candle alight.
The two priests looked up through the dancing shadows at the statue,
where a hole now gaped that should have contained a very large diamond.
After a while, the High Priest sighed and said, 'Well, look at it like this:
apart from us, who's going to know?'
'Yeah. Never thought of it like that. Hey, can I be High Priest tomorrow?'
'It's not your turn until Thursday.'
'Oh. come on.'
The High Priest shrugged, and removed his High Priesting hat.
'It's very depressing, this kind of thing,' he said, glancing up at the
ravaged statue. 'Some people just don't know how to behave in a house of
religion.'

Death sped across the world, landing once again in the farmyard. The sun
was on the horizon when he knocked on the kitchen door.
Miss Flitworth opened it, wiping her hands on her apron. She grimaced
short-sightedly at the visitor, and then took a step back.
'Bill Door? You gave me quite a start -'
I HAVE BROUGHT YOU SOME FLOWERS.
She stared at the dry, dead stems.
ALSO SOME CHOCOLATE ASSORTMENT, THE SORT LADIES LIKE.
She stared at the black box.
ALSO HERE IS A DIAMOND TO BE FRIENDS WITH YOU.
It caught the last rays of the setting sun.
Miss Flitworth finally found her voice.
'Bill Door, what are you thinking of?'
I HAVE COME TO TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ALL THIS.
'You have? Where to?'
Death hadn't thought this far.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE?
'I ain't proposing to go anywhere tonight except to the dance,' said Miss
Flitworth firmly.
Death hadn't planned for this, either.
WHAT IS THIS DANCE?
'Harvest dance. You know? It's tradition. When the harvest is in. It's a sort
of celebration, and like a thanksgiving.'
THANKSGIVING TO WHO?
'Dunno. No-one in particular, I reckon. Just general thankfulness, I
suppose.'
I HAD PLANNED TO SHOW YOU MARVELS. FINE CITIES. ANYTHING YOU
WANTED.
'Anything?'
YES.
'Then we're going to the dance, Bill Door. I always go every year. They
rely on me. You know how it is.'
YES. MISS FLITWORTH.
He reached out and took her hand.
'What, you mean now?' she said, 'I'm not ready -'
LOOK.
She looked down at what she was suddenly wearing.
'That's not my dress. It's got all glitter on it.'
Death sighed. The great lovers of history had never encountered Miss
Flitworth. Casanunder would have handed in his stepladder.
THEY'RE DIAMONDS. A KING'S RANSOM IN DIAMONDS.

'Which king?'
ANY KING.
'Coo.'

Binky walked easily along the road to the town. After the length of infinity,
a mere dusty road was a bit of a relief.
Sitting side-saddle behind Death, Miss Flitworth explored the rustling
contents of the box of Dark Enchantments.
'Here,' she said, 'someone's had all the rum truffles.'
There was another crackle of paper. 'And from the bottom layer, too. I
hate that, people starting the bottom layer before the top one's been properly
finished. And I can tell you've been doing it because there's a little map in
the lid and by rights there should be rum truffles. Bill Door?'
I'M SORRY, MISS FLITWORTH.
'This big diamond's a bit heavy. Nice, though,' she added,
grudgingly.'Where'd you get it?'
FROM PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT IT WAS THE TEAR OF A GOD.
'And is it?'
NO. GODS NEVER WEEP. IT IS COMMON CARBON THAT HAS BEEN
SUBJECT TO GREAT HEAT AND PRESSURE. THAT IS ALL.
'Inside every lump of coal there's a diamond waiting to get out. right?'
YES, MISS FLITWORTH.
There was no sound for a while, except the clipclop of Binky's hoofs.
Then Miss Flitworth said, archly:
'I do know what's going on, you know. I saw how much sand there was.
And so you thought "She's not a bad old stick, I'll show her a good time for a
few hours, and then  when she's not expecting it, it'll be time for the old cut-
de-grass", am I right?'
Death said nothing.
'I am right, aren't I?'
I CAN'T HIDE ANYTHING FROM YOU, MISS FLITWORTH.
'Huh. I suppose I should be flattered. Yes? I expect you've got a lot of
calls on your time.'
MORE THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE, MISS FLITWORTH.

'In the circumstances, then, you might as well go back to calling me
Renata again.'
There was a bonfire in the meadow beyond the archery field. Death could
see figures moving in front of it. An occasional tortured squeak suggested
that someone was tuning up a fiddle.
'I always come along to the harvest dance,' said Miss Flitworth,
conversationally. 'Not to dance, of course. I generally look after the food and
so on.'
WHY?
'Well. someone's got to look after the food.'
I MEANT WHY DON'T YOU DANCE?
' 'Cos I'm old, that's why.'
YOU ARE AS OLD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE.
'Huh! Yeah? Really? That's the kind of stupid thing people always say.
They always say, My word, you're looking well. They say, There's life in the
old dog yet. Many a good ?tu~5e? played on an old fiddle. That kind of stuff.
It's all stupid. As if being old was some kind of thing you should be glad
about! As if being philosophical about it will earn you marks! My head knows
how to think young, but my knees aren't that good at it. Or my back. Or my
teeth. Try telling my knees they're as old as they think they are and see what
good it does you. Or them.'
IT MAY BE WORTH A TRY.
More figures moved in front of the firelight. Death could see striped poles
strung with bunting.
'The lads usually bring a couple of barn doors down here and nail 'em
together for a proper floor,' observed Miss Flitworth. 'Then everyone can join
in.'
FOLK DANCING? said Death, wearily.
'No. We have some pride, you know.'
SORRY.
'Hey, it's Bill Door, isn't it?' said a figure looming out of the dusk.
'It's good old Bill!'
'Hey, Bill!'
Death looked at a circle of guileless faces.
HALLO. MY FRIENDS.
'We heard you'd gone away,' said Duke Bottomley. He glanced at Miss
Flitworth, as Death helped her down from the horse. His voice faltered a bit
as he tried to analyse the situation.
'You're looking very . . . sparkly . . . tonight, Miss Flitworth,' he finished,
gallantly.
The air smelled of warm, damp grass. An amateur orchestra was still
setting up under an awning.
There were trestle tables covered with the kind of food that's normally
associated with the word "repast" - pork pies like varnished military
fortifications, vats of demonical pickled onions, jacket potatoes wallowing in
a cholesterol ocean of melted butter. Some of the local elders had already
established themselves on the benches provided, and were chewing
stoically if toothlessly through the food with the air of people determined to
sit there all night, if necessary.
'Nice to see the old people enjoying themselves,' said Miss Flitworth.
Death looked at the eaters. Most of them were younger than Miss Flitworth.
There was a giggle from somewhere in the scented darkness beyond the
firelight.
'And the young people,' Miss Flitworth added, evenly. 'We used to have a
saying about this time of year. Let's see . . . something like "Corn be ripe,
nuts be brown, petticoats up . . ." something.' She sighed. 'Don't time fly,
eh?'
YES.
'You know, Bill Door, maybe you were right about the power of positive
thinking. I feel a lot better tonight.'
YES?
Miss Flitworth looked speculatively at the dance floor. 'I used to be a
great dancer when I was a gel. I could dance anyone off their feet. I could
dance down the moon. I could dance the sun up.'
She reached up and removed the bands that held her hair in its tight bun,
and shook it out in a waterfall of white.
'I take it you do dance, Mr Bill Door?'
FAMED FOR IT, MISS FLITWORTH.

Under the band's awning, the lead fiddler nodded to his fellow musicians,
stuck his fiddle under his chin, and pounded on the boards with his foot -
'Hwun! Htwo! Hwun htwo three four . . .'

Picture a landscape. with the orange light of a crescent moon drifting
across it. And, down below, a circle of fire-light in the night.
There were the old favourites - the square dances, the reels, the whirling,
intricate measures which, if the dancers had carried lights, would have
traced out topological complexities beyond the reach of ordinary physics,
and the sort of dances that lead perfectly sane people to shout out things
like 'Do-si~~o!' and 'Och-aye!' without feeling massively ashamed for quite a
long time.
When the casualties were cleared away the survivors went on to polka,
mazurka, fox-trot, turkey-trot and trot a variety of other ?4Lds? and beasts,
and then to those dances where people form an arch and other people dance
down it, which are incidentally generally based on folk memories of
executions, and other dances where people form a circle, which are generally
based on folk memories of plagues.
Through it all two figures whirled as though there was no tomorrow.
The lead fiddler was dimly aware that, when he paused for breath, a
spinning figure tapdanced a storm out of the ?mtICe? and a voice by his ear
said:
YOU WILL CONTINUE, I PROMISE YOU.
When he flagged a second time a diamond as big as his fist landed on the
boards in front of him. A smaller figure sashayed out of the dancers and
said:
'If you boys don't go on playing, William Spigot. I will personally make
sure your life becomes absolutely foul.'
And it returned to the press of bodies.
The fiddler looked down at the diamond. It could have ransomed any five
kings the world would care to name. He kicked it hurriedly behind him.

'More power to your elbow, eh?' said the drummer, grinning.
'Shut up and play!'
He was aware that tunes were turning up at the ends of his fingers that his
brain had never known. The drummer and the piper felt it too. Music was
pouring in from somewhere. They weren't playing it. It was playing them.
IT IS TIME FOR A NEW DANCE TO BEGIN.
'Duurrrump-da-dum-dum,' hummed the fiddler, the sweat running off his
chin as he was caught up in a different tune.
The dancers milled around uncertainly, unsure about the steps. But one
pair moved purposefully through them at a predatory crouch, arms clasped
ahead of them like the bowsprit of a killer galleon. At the end of the floor they
turned in a flurry of limbs that appeared to defy normal anatomy and began
the angular advance back through the crowd.
'What's this one called?'
TANGO.
'Can you get put in prison for it?'
I DON'T BELIEVE SO.
'Amazing.'
The music changed.
'I know this one! It's the Quirmish bullfight dance! Oh-lay!'
'WITH MILK'?
A high-speed fusillade of hollow snapping noises suddenly kept time with
the music.
'Who's playing the maracas?'
Death grinned.
MARACAS? I DON'T NEED . . . MARACAS.
And then it was now.
The moon was a ghost of itself on one horizon. On the other there was
already the distant glow of the advancing day.
They left the dance floor.
Whatever had been propelling the band through the

hours of the night drained slowly away. They looked at one another.
Spigot the fiddler glanced down at the jewel.
It was still there.
The drummer tried to massage some life back into his wrists.
Spigot stared helplessly at the exhausted dancers.
'Well, then . . .' he said, and raised the fiddle one more time.

Miss Flitworth and her companion listened from the mists that were
threading around the field in the dawn light.
Death recognised the slow, insistent beat. It made him think of wooden
figures, whirling through Time until the spring unwound.
I DON'T KNOW THAT ONE.
'It's the last waltz.'
I SUSPECT THERE'S NO SUCH THING.
'You know,' said Miss Flitworth, 'I've been wondering all evening how it's
going to happen. How you're going to do it. I mean, people have to die of
something, don't they? I thought maybe it was going to be of exhaustion, but
I've never felt better. I've had the time of my life and I'm not even out of
breath. In fact it's been a real tonic, Bill Door. And I -'
She stopped.
'I'm not breathing, am I.' It wasn't a question. She held a hand in front of
her face and huffed on it.
NO.
'I see. I've never enjoyed myself so much in all my life . . . ha! So . . . when
-?'
YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SAID THAT SEEING ME GAVE YOU QUITE A
START?
'Yes?'
I GAVE YOU QUITE A STOP.
Miss Flitworth didn't appear to hear him. She kept turning her hand
backwards and forwards, as if she'd never seen it before.
'I see you made a few changes, Bill Door,' she said.

NO. IT IS LIFE THAT MAKES MANY CHANGES.
'I mean that I appear to be younger.'
THAT'S WHAT I MEANT ALSO.
He snapped his fingers. Binky stopped his grazing by the hedge and
trotted over.
'You know,' said Miss Flitworth, 'I've often thought . . . I often thought that
everyone has their, you know, natural age. You see children of ten who act as
though they're thirty-five. Some people are born middle-aged, even. It'd be
nice to think I've been . . .' she looked down at herself, 'oh, let's say eighteen
. . . all my life. Inside.'
Death said nothing. He helped her up on to the horse.
'When I see what life does to people, you know, you don't seem so bad.'
she said nervously.
Death made a clicking noise with his teeth. Binky walked forward.
'You've never met Life, have you?'
I CAN SAY IN ALL HONESTY THAT I HAVE NOT.
'Probably some great white crackling thing. Like an electric storm in
trousers,' said Miss Flitworth.
I THINK NOT.
Binky rose up into the morning sky.
'Anyway . . . death to all tyrants,' said Miss FIitworth.
YES.
'Where are we going?'
Binky was galloping, but the landscape did not move.
'That's a pretty good horse you've got there,' said Miss Flitworth. her
voice shaking.
YES.
'But what is he doing?'
GETTING UP SPEED.
'But we're not going anywhere -'
They vanished.

They reappeared.
The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These
weren't old mountains, worn down by
time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky,
adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One
yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goat herd, but
fifty tons of express-delivery snow.
The horse landed on a snowbank that should not, by rights, have been
able to support it.
Death dismounted and helped Miss Flitworth down.
They walked over the snow to a frozen muddy track that hugged the
mountain side.
'Why are we here?' said the spirit of Miss Flitworth.
I DO NOT SPECULATE ON COSMIC MATTERS.
'I mean here on this mountain. Here on this geography,' said Miss
Flitworth patiently.
THAT IS NOT GEOGRAPHY.
'What is it, then?'
HISTORY.
They rounded a bend in the track. There was a pony there, eating a bush,
with a pack on its back. The track ended in a wall of suspiciously clean
snow.
Death removed a lifetimer from the recesses of his robe.
Now, he said, and stepped into the snow.
She watched it for a moment, wondering if she could have done that too.
Solidity was an awfully hard habit to give up.
And then she didn't have to.
Someone came out.

Death adjusted Binky's bridle, and mounted up. He paused for a moment
to watch the two figures by the avalanche.
They had faded almost to invisibility, their voices no more than textured
air.
'All he said was "WHEREVER YOU GO, YOU GO TOGETHER." I said
where? He said he didn't know. What's happened?'
'Rufus - you're going to find this very hard to believe, my love -'
'And who was that masked man?' They both looked around.
There was no-one there.

In the village in the Ramtops where they understand what the Morris
dance is all about, they dance it just once, at dawn, on the first day of spring.
They don't dance it after that, all through the summer. After all, what would
be the point? What use would it be?
But on a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave
work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the black
one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley among the
leafless trees. They don't speak. There is no music. It's very hard to imagine
what kind there could be.
The bells don't ring. They're made of octiron, a magic metal. But they're
not, precisely, silent bells. Silence is merely the absence of noise. They make
the opposite of noise, a sort of heavily textured silence.
And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the
frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of
the balance of things.
You've got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can't dance either.

Windle Poons wandered across the Brass Bridge. It was the time in Ankh-
Morpork's day when the night people were going to bed and the day people
were waking up. For once, there weren't many of either around.
Windle had felt moved to be here, at this place, on this night, now. It
wasn't exactly the feeling he'd had when he knew he was going to die. It was
more the feeling that a cogwheel gets inside a clock - things turn, the spring
unwinds, and this is where you've got to be . . .
He stopped, and leaned over. The dark water, or at least very ?n~nny?
mud, sucked at the stone supports.
There was an old legend . . . what was it, now? If you threw a coin into the
Ankh from the Brass Bridge you'd be sure to return? Or was it if you just
threw ?11~D? into the Ankh? Probably the former. Most of the citizens, if
they dropped a coin into the river, would be sure to come back if only to look
for the coin.
A figure loomed out of the mist. He tensed.
'Morning, Mr Poons.'
Windle let himself relax.
'Oh. Sergeant Colon? I thought you were someone else.'
'Just me, your lordship,' said the watchman cheerfully. 'Turning up like a
bad copper.'
'I see the bridge has got through another night without being stolen,
sergeant. Well done.'
'You can't be too careful, I always say.'
'I'm sure we citizens can sleep safely in one another's beds knowing that
no-one can make off with a five-thousand-ton bridge overnight, ' said Windle.
Unlike Modo the dwarf, Sergeant Colon did know the meaning of the word
'irony'. He thought it meant "sort of like iron". He gave Windle a respectful
grin.
'You have to think quick to keep ahead of today's international criminal,
Mr Poons,' he said.
'Good man. Er. You haven't, er, seen anyone else around, have you?'
'Dead quiet tonight,' said the sergeant. He remembered himself and
added, 'No offence meant.'
'Oh.'
'I'll be moving along, then,' said the sergeant.
'Fine. Fine.'
'Are you all right, Mr Poons?'
'Fine. Fine.'
'Not going to throw yourself in the river again?'
'No.'
'Sure?'
'Yes.'


'Oh. Well. Good night, then.' He hesitated. 'Forget my own head next,' he
said. 'Chap over there asked me to give this to you.' He held out a grubby
envelope.
Windle peered into the mists.
'What chap?'
'That ch- oh, he's gone. Tall chap. Bit odd-looking.'
Windle unfolded the scrap of paper, on which was written:
OOoooEeeeOooEeeeOOOeee.
'Ah,' he said.
'Bad news?' said the sergeant.
'That depends,' said Windle, 'on your point of view.'
'Oh. Right. Fine. Well . . . good night, then.'
'Goodbye.'
Sergeant Colon hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged and strolled
on.
As he wandered away, the shadow behind him moved and grinned.
WINDLE POONS?
Windle didn't look around.
'Yes?'
Out of the corner of his eye Windle saw a pair of bony arms rest
themselves on the parapet. There was the faint sound of a figure trying to
make itself comfortable, and then a restful silence.
'Ah,' said Windle. 'I suppose you'll want to be getting along?'
NO RUSH.
'I thought you were always so punctual.'
IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES, A FEW MINUTES MORE WILL NOT MAKE A
LOT OF DIFFERENCE.
Windle nodded. They stood side by side in silence, while around them
was the muted roar of the city.
'You know,' said Windle, 'it's a wonderful afterlife. Where were you?'
I WAS BUSY.
Windle wasn't really listening. 'I've met people I never even knew existed.
I've done all sorts of things. I've really got to know who Windle Poons is.'
WHO IS HE. THEN?
'Windle Poons.'
I CAN SEE WHERE THAT MUST HAVE COME AS A SHOCK.
'Well, yes.'
ALL THESE YEARS AND YOU NEVER SUSPECTED.
Windle Poons did know exactly what irony meant, and he could spot
sarcasm too.
'It's all very well for you,' he mumbled.
PERHAPS.
Windle looked down at the river again.
'It's been great,' he said.'After all this time. Being needed is important.'
YES. BUT WHY?
Windle looked surprised.
'I don't know. How should I know? Because we're all in this together, I
suppose. Because we don't leave our people in ?there?. Because you're a
long time dead. Because anything is better than being alone. Because
humans are human.'
AND SIXPENCE IS SIXPENCE. BUT CORN IS NOT JUST CORN.
'It isn't?'
NO.
Windle leaned back. The stone of the bridge was still warm from the day's
heat.
To his surprise, Death leaned back as well.
BECAUSE YOU'RE ALL YOU'VE GOT, said Death.
'What? Oh. Yes. That as well. It's a great big cold universe out there.'
YOU'D BE AMAZED.
'One lifetime just isn't enough.'
OH, I DON'T KNOW.
'Hmm?'
WINDLE POONS?
'Yes?'
THAT WAS YOUR LIFE.
And, with great relief, and general optimism, and a
feeling that on the whole everything could have been much worse, Windle
Poons died.

Somewhere in the night, Reg Shoe looked both ways, took a furtive
paintbrush and small pot of paint from inside his jacket, and painted on a
handy wall: Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out...
And then it was all over. The end.

Death stood at the window of his dark study, looking out on to his garden.
Nothing moved in that still domain. Dark lilies bloomed by the trout pool,
where little plaster skeleton gnomes fished. There were distant mountains.
It was his own world. It appeared on no map.
But now, somehow, it lacked something.
Death selected a scythe from the rack in the huge hall. He strode past the
huge clock without hands and went outside. He stalked through the black
orchard, where Albert was busy about the beehives, and on until he climbed
a small mound on the edge of the garden.
Beyond, to the mountains, was unformed land - it would bear weight, it
had an existence of sorts, but there had never been any reason to define it
further.
Until now, anyway.
Albert came up behind him, a few dark bees still buzzing around his head.
'What are you doing, master?' he said.
REMEMBERING.
'Ah?'
I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WAS STARS.
What was it? Oh, yes . . .
He snapped his fingers. Fields appeared, following the gentle curves of
the land.
'Golden,' said Albert. 'That's nice. I've always thought we could do with a
bit more colour around here.'
Death shook his head. It wasn't quite right yet.
Then he realised what it was. The lifetimers, the great room filled with the
roar of disappearing lives, was efficient and necessary; you needed
something like that for good order. But . . .
He snapped his fingers again and a breeze sprang up. The cornfields
moved, billow after billow unfolding across the slopes.
ALBERT?
'Yes, master?'
HAVE YOU NOT GOT SOMETHING TO DO? SOME LITTLE JOB?
'I don't think so,' said Albert.
AWAY FROM HERE, IS WHAT I MEAN.
'Ah. What you mean is, you want to be alone,' said Albert.
I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY
MYSELF.
'Right. I'll just go and, uh, do some little jobs back at the house, then,'
said Albert.
YOU DO THAT.
Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it
was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny
crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to
edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same
length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of view of
eternity, anyway.
Somewhere, the tiny voice of Bill Door said: from the point of view of the
owner, longer ones are best.
SQUEAK.
Death looked down.
A small figure was standing by his feet.
He reached down and picked it up, held it up to an investigative eye
socket.
I KNEW I'D MISSED SOMEONE.
The Death of Rats nodded.
SQUEAK?
Death shook his head.
NO, I CAN'T LET YOU REMAIN, he said. IT'S NOT AS THOUGH I'M
RUNNING A FRANCHISE OR SOMETHING.
SQUEAK?
ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE LEFT?
The Death of Rats opened a tiny skeletal hand. The tiny Death of Fleas
stood up, looking embarrassed but hopeful.
NO. THIS SHALL NOT BE. I AM IMPLACABLE. I AM DEATH . . . ALONE.
He looked at the Death of Rats.
He remembered Azrael in his tower of loneliness.
ALONE . . .
The Death of Rats looked back at him.
SQUEAK?

Picture a tall, dark figure, surrounded by cornfields . . .
NO. YOU CAN'T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF
RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF
DOG.
Picture more fields, a great horizon-spanning network of fields, rolling in
gentle waves . . .
DON'T ASK ME I DON'T KNOW. SOME KIND OF TERRIER, MAYBE.
. . . fields of corn, alive, whispering in the breeze . . .
RIGHT, AND THE DEATH OF FLEAS CAN RIDE IT TOO. THAT WAY YOU
KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.
. . . awaiting the clockwork of the seasons.
METAPHORICALLY.

And at the end of all stories Azrael, who knew the secret, thought:
I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN.


THE END