Unseen Academicals

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Ridcully began, and then with a gleam in his eye added, ‘or should I say, fellow workers by hand and brain, this afternoon we— Yes, Senior Wrangler?’

  ‘Are we, in point of fact, workers? This is a university, after all,’ said the Senior Wrangler.

  ‘I agree with the Senior Wrangler,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Under university statute we are specifically forbidden to engage, other than within college precincts, in any magic above level four, unless specifically asked to do so by the civil power or, under clause three, we really want to. We are acting as place holders, and as such, forbidden from working.’

  ‘Would you accept “slackers by hand and brain”?’ said Ridcully, always happy to see how far he could go.

  ‘Slackers by hand and brain by statute,’ said the Senior Wrangler primly.

  Ridcully gave up. He could do this all day, but life couldn’t be all fun.

  ‘That being settled, then, I must tell you that I have asked the stalwart Mister Frankly Ottomy and Mister Alf Nobbs to join us in this little escapade. Mister Nobbs says that since we are not wearing football favours we should not attract unwanted attention.’

  The wizards nodded nervously at the bledlows. They were, of course, merely employees of the university, while the wizards were, well, were the university, weren’t they? After all, a university was not just about bricks and mortar, it was about people, specifically wizards. But to a man, the bledlows scared them. They were all hefty men with a look of having been carved out of bacon. And they were all descendants of, and practically identical to, those men who had chased those wizards – younger and more limber, and it was amazing how fast you could run with a couple of bledlows behind you – through the foggy night-time streets. If caught, said bledlows, who took enormous pleasure in the prosecution of the university’s private laws and idiosyncratic rules, would then drag you before the Archchancellor on a charge of Attempting to Become Rascally Drunk. That was preferable to fighting back, when the bledlows were widely believed to take the opportunity for a little class warfare. That was years ago, but even now the unexpected sight of a bledlow caused sullen, shameful terror to flow down the spines of men who had acquired more letters after their names than a game of Scrabble.

  Mr Ottomy, recognizing this, leered and touched the brim of his uniform cap. ‘Afternoon, gents,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing. Me and Alf here will see you right. We’d better get movin’, though, they bully off in half an hour.’

  The Senior Wrangler would not have been the Senior Wrangler if he did not hate the sound of silence. As they shuffled out of the back door, wincing at the unfamiliar chafing of trouser upon knee, he turned to Mr Nobbs and said, ‘Nobbs . . . that’s not a common name. Tell me, Alf, are you by any chance related to the famous Corporal Nobby Nobbs of the Watch?’

  Mr Nobbs took it well, Ridcully thought, given the clumsy lack of protocol.

  ‘Nosir!’

  ‘Ah, a distant branch of the name, then . . .’

  ‘Nosir! Different tree!’

  In the greyness of her front room, Glenda looked at the suitcase, and despaired. She’d done her best with brown boot polish, week after week, but it had been bought from a shonky shop and the cardboard under the leather-ish exterior was beginning to show through. Her customers never seemed to notice, but she did, even when it was out of sight.

  It was a secret part of a secret life that she lived for an hour or two on her half-day off once a week, and maybe a little longer if today’s cold calls worked out.

  She looked at her face in the mirror, and said in a voice that was full of jaunt: ‘We all know the problem of underarm defoliation. It is so hard, isn’t it, to keep the lichens healthy . . . But,’ she flourished a green and blue container with a golden stopper, ‘one spray with Verdant Spring will keep those crevices moist and forest fresh all day long . . .’

  She faltered, because it really wasn’t her. She couldn’t do jaunty. The stuff was a dollar a bottle! Who could afford that? Well, a lot of troll ladies, that’s who, but Mr Stronginthearm said it was okay because they had the money, and anyway it did let the moss grow. She’d said all right, but a dollar for a fancy bottle of water with some plant food in it was a bit steep. And he’d said you are Selling the Dream.

  And they bought it. That was the worrying part. They bought it and recommended it to their friends. The city had discovered the Heavy Dollar now. She’d read about it in the paper. There had always been trolls around, doing the heavy lifting and generally being there in the background if not being the actual background itself. But now they were raising families and running businesses, moving on and up and buying things, and that made them people at last. And so you got other people like Mr Stronginthearm, a dwarf, selling beauty products to Miss and Mrs Troll, via ladies like Glenda, a human, because although dwarfs and trolls were officially great chums these days, because of something called the Koom Valley Accord, that sort of thing only meant much to the sort of people who signed treaties. Even the most well-intentioned dwarf would not walk down some of the roads along which Glenda, every week, dragged her nasty, semi-cardboard case, Selling the Dream. It got her out of the house and paid for the little treats. There was money to put away for a rainy day. Mr Stronginthearm had the knack of coming up with new ideas, too. Who would have thought that lady trolls would go for fake-tan lotion? It sold. Everything sold. The Dream sold, and it was shallow and expensive and made her feel cheap. It—

  Her ever-straining ears caught the sound of next door’s front door opening very slowly. Ha! Juliet jumped as Glenda suddenly loomed beside her.

  ‘Off somewhere?’

  ‘Gonna watch the game, ain’t I?’

  Glenda glanced up the street. A figure was disappearing rapidly around the corner. She grinned a grim grin.

  ‘Oh yes. Good idea. I wasn’t doing anything. Just wait while I fetch my scarf, will you?’ To herself she added, You just keep walking, Johnny!

  With a thump that caused pigeons to explode away like a detonating daisy, the Librarian landed on his chosen rooftop.

  He liked football. Something about the shouting and the fighting appealed to his ancestral memories. And this was fascinating, because, strictly speaking, his ancestors had been blamelessly engaged for centuries as upstanding corn and feed merchants and, moreover, were allergic to heights.

  He sat down on the parapet with his feet over the edge, and his nostrils flared as he snuffed up the scents rising from below.

  It is said that the onlooker sees most of the game. But the Librarian could smell as well, and the game, seen from outside, was humanity. Not a day went past without his thanking the magical accident that had moved him a few little genes away from it. Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, ‘The mountain is, and is not.’ They would think, ‘The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.’

  He peeled one now, in a preoccupied way, while watching the evolving tableau below. Not only does said onlooker see most of the game, he might even see more than one game.

  This street was indeed a crescent, which would probably have an effect on tactics if the players had any truck with such high-flown concepts.

  People were pouring in from either end and also from a couple of alleyways. Mostly they were male – extremely so. The women fell into two categories: those who had been tugged there by the ties of blood or prospective matrimony (after which they could stop pretending that this bloody mess was in any way engrossing), and a number of elderly women of a ‘sweet old lady’ construction, who bawled indiscriminately, in a rising cloud of lavender and peppermint, screams of ‘Get ’im dahn an’ kick ’im inna nuts!’ and similar exhortations.

  And there was another smell now, one he’d learned to recognize but could not quite fathom. It was the smell of Nutt. Tangled with it were the smells of tallow, cheap soap and shonky-shop clothing that the ape part of him categorized as belonging to ‘Tin Flinging Man’.
He had been just another servant in the maze of the university, but now he was a friend of Nutt, and Nutt was important. He was also wrong. He had no place in the world, but he was in it, and the world was becoming aware of him soon enough.

  The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing. There had been no space in the fabric of reality marked ‘simian librarian’ until he’d been dropped into one, and the ripples had made his life a very strange one.

  Ah, another scent was riding the gentle updraught. It was easy: Screaming Banana Pie Woman. The Librarian liked her. Oh, she had screamed and run away the first time she’d seen him. They all did. But she had come back, and she’d smelled ashamed. She also respected the primacy of words, and, as a primate, so did he. And sometimes she baked him a banana pie, which was a kind act. The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you. She was a friend of Nutt, too. Nutt made friends easily for someone who had come from nowhere. Interesting . . .

  The Librarian, despite appearances, liked order. Books about cabbages went on the Brassica shelves, (blit) UUSSFY890-9046 (antiblit1.1), although obviously Mr Cauliflower’s Big Adventure would be better placed in UUSS J3.2 (>blit) 9, while The Tau of Cabbage would certainly be a candidate for UUSS (blit+) 60-sp55-09-hl (blit). To anyone familiar with a seven-dimensional library system in blit dimensional space it was as clear as daylight, if you remembered to keep your eye on the blit.

  Ah, and here came his fellow wizards, walking awkwardly in the chafing trousers and trying so hard not to stand out in a crowd that they would have stood out even more if the rest of the crowd had been the least bit interested.

  Nobody noticed. It was enthralling and exciting at the same time, Ridcully concluded. Normally the pointy hat, robe and staff cleared the way faster than a troll with an axe.

  They were being pushed! And shoved! But it was not as unpleasant as the words suggested. There were moderate pressures on all sides as people poured in behind, as though the wizards were standing chest deep in the sea, and were swaying and shifting to the slow rhythm of the tide.

  ‘My goodness,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Is this football? It’s a bit dull, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pies were mentioned,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, craning his neck.

  ‘People are still coming in, guv,’ said Ottomy.

  ‘But however do we see things?’

  ‘Depends on the Shove, guv. Usually people near the action shout out.’

  ‘Ah, I see a pie seller,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. He took a couple of steps forward, there was a random shift and sway in the crowd, and he vanished.

  ‘How is it now, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt, as people surged around them. ‘Hurts like buggery, excuse my Klatchian,’ muttered Trev, clutching his injured arm to his coat. ‘Are you sure you weren’t holding a hammer?’

  ‘No hammer, Mister Trev. I’m sorry, but you did ask me—’

  ‘I know, I know. Where did you learn to punch like that?’

  ‘Never learned, Mister Trev. I must never raise my hand to another person! But you went on so, and—’

  ‘I mean, you’re so skinny!’

  ‘Long bones, Mister Trev, long muscles. I really am very sorry!’

  ‘My fault, Gobbo, I didn’t know your own strength—’ Suddenly Trev shot forward, cannoning into Nutt.

  ‘Where’ve you been, my man?’ said the person who had just slapped him hard on the back. ‘We said to meet at the eel-pie stall!’

  Now the speaker looked at Nutt and his eyes narrowed. ‘And who’s this stranger who thinks he’s one of us?’

  He did not exactly glare at Nutt, but there was a definite sense of a weighing in the balance, and on unfriendly scales.

  Trev brushed himself off, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed. ‘Hi, Andy. Er, this is Nutt. He works for me.’

  ‘What as? A bog brush?’ said Andy. There was laughter from the group behind him. Andy always got a laugh. It was the first thing you noticed, after the glint in his eye.

  ‘Andy’s dad is captain of Dimwell, Gobbo.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Nutt, extending a hand.

  ‘Ooo, pleased to meet you, sir,’ Andy mimicked, and Trev grimaced as a calloused hand the size of a plate grasped Nutt’s cheese-straw fingers.

  ‘He’s got hands like a girl,’ Andy observed, taking a grip.

  ‘Mister Trev has been telling me wonderful things about the Dimmers, sir,’ said Nutt. Andy grunted. Trev saw his knuckles whiten with effort while Nutt chattered. ‘The camaraderie of the sport must be a wonderful thing.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Andy grunted, finally managing to pull his hand away, his face full of angry puzzlement.

  ‘And this is my mate, Maxie,’ said Trev quickly, ‘and this is Carter the Farter—’

  ‘It’s Fartmeister now,’ said Carter.

  ‘Yeah, right. And this is Jumbo. You want to watch out for him. He’s a thief. Jumbo can pick a lock faster than you can pick your nose.’

  The said Jumbo held up a small bronze badge. ‘Guild, of course,’ he said. ‘They nail your ears to the door else.’

  ‘You mean you break the law for a living?’ said Nutt, horrified.

  ‘Ain’t you ever heard of the Thieves’ Guild?’ said Andy.

  ‘Gobbo’s new,’ said Trev protectively. ‘Hasn’t got out much. He’s a goblin, from the high country.’

  ‘Coming down here, taking our jobs, yeah?’ said Carter.

  ‘Like, how often do you do a hand’s turn?’ said Trev.

  ‘Well, I might want to one day.’

  ‘Milking the cows when they come home?’ said Andy. This got another laugh, on cue. And that was the introductions sorted out, to Nutt’s surprise. He’d been expecting chicken theft to be mentioned. Instead, Carter pulled a couple of tin cans out of a pocket and tossed them to Nutt and Trev.

  ‘Did a few hours’ unloading down the docks, didn’t I?’ he said defensively, as though a bit of casual labour was some kind of offence. ‘This come off a boat from Fourecks.’

  Jumbo fished in his pocket again and pulled out someone else’s watch.

  ‘Game on in five minutes,’ he declared. ‘Let’s shove . . . er, if that’s all right with you, Andy?’

  Andy nodded. Jumbo looked relieved. It was always important that things were all right with Andy. And Andy was still watching Nutt as a cat watches an unexpectedly cheeky mouse, while massaging his hand.

  Mr Ottomy cleared his throat, causing his red Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an indecisive sunset. Shouting in public, yes, he liked that, he was good at that. Speaking in public, now, that was a different kettle of humiliation.

  ‘Well, er, gents, what we will have here is your actual football, what is basically about the Shove, which is what you gentlemen will be doing soon—’

  ‘I thought we watched two groups of players vie with one another to get the ball in the opponents’ goal?’

  ‘Could be, sir, could very much be,’ the bledlow conceded, ‘but in the streets, see, your actual supporters on both sides try and endeavour to shorten the length of the field, as it were, depending on the flow of play, so to speak.’

  ‘Like living walls, d’y’mean?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘That style of thing, sir, yes, sir,’ said Ottomy loyally.

  ‘What about the goals?’

  ‘Oh, they’re allowed to move the goals, too.’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Ponder. ‘The spectators can move the goals?’

  ‘You have put your finger firmly on it, sir.’

  ‘But that’s sheer anarchy! It’s a mess!’

  ‘Some of the old boys do say the game has gone downhill, sir, that is true.’

  ‘Downhill, into and out through the bottom of the world, I’d say.’

  ‘Good one to play with magi
c, though,’ said Dr Hix. ‘Well worth a try.’

  ‘A word to the wise, sir,’ said Ottomy with unwitting accuracy, ‘but you’d be wearing your guts for garters if you tried it with some of the types who play these days. They take it seriously.’

  ‘Mister Ottomy, I’m sure none of my blokes wear garters—’ Ridcully stopped and listened to Ponder Stibbons’s whispered interjection and continued, ‘well, possibly one, two at most, and it would be a very dull world if we were all the same, that’s what I say.’ He looked around and shrugged. ‘So, this is football, is it? Rather a wizened shell of a game, yes? I, for one, don’t want to stand around all day in the rain while other people have all the fun. Let’s go and find the ball, gentlemen. We are wizards. That must count for something.’

  ‘I thought we were blokes now,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  ‘Same thing,’ said Ridcully, straining to see over the heads of the crowd.

  ‘Surely not!’

  ‘Well,’ said Ridcully, ‘isn’t a bloke someone who likes drinking with his mates and without the company of women? Anyway, I’m fed up with this. Form up behind me, nevertheless. We’re going to see some football.’

  The progress of the wizards astonished Ottomy and Nobbs, who had hitherto seen them as fluffy plump creatures quite divorced from real life. But to get to be a senior wizard and stay there called for deep reserves of determination, viciousness and the sugared arrogance that is the mark of every true gentleman, as in ‘Oh, was that your foot? I’m so terribly sorry.’

  And, of course, there was Dr Hix, a good man to have in a tight spot because he was (by college statute) an officially bad person, in accordance with UU’s happy grasp of the inevitable.9

  A less mature organization than UU might have taken the view that the way forward would be to hunt such renegades down, at great risk and expense. UU, on the other hand, had given Hix and his team a department and a budget and a career structure, and also the chance to go out into dark caves occasionally and throw fireballs at unofficial evil wizards; it all worked rather well so long as nobody pointed out that the Department of Post-Mortem Communications was really, when you got right down to it, just a politer form of n*e*c*r*o*m*a*n*c*y, wasn’t it?