Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Oh, it is the same with magic,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘If you flash spells around like there’s no tomorrow, there’s a good chance that there won’t be.’

  ‘In short,’ Vetinari continued, still talking to the air, ‘I am intending to give my blessing to the game of football, in the hope that its excesses can be more carefully controlled.’

  ‘Well, it worked with the Thieves’ Guild,’ Ridcully observed, amazed at his own calmness. ‘If there has to be crime, then it should be organized, I think that’s what you said.’

  ‘Exactly. I have to admit to the view that all exercise for any purpose other than bodily health, the defence of the realm and the proper action of the bowels is barbaric.’

  ‘Really? What about agriculture?’

  ‘Defence of the realm against starvation. But I see no point in people just . . . running about. Did you catch your Megapode, by the way?’

  How the hells does he do it? Ridcully wondered. I mean, how? Aloud, he said, ‘Indeed we did, but surely you are not suggesting that we were merely “running about”?’

  ‘Of course not. All three exceptions apply. Tradition is at least as important as bowels, if not quite so useful. And, indeed, the Poor Boys’ Fun has some remarkable traditions of its own, which some might find it worthwhile exploring. Let me be frank, Mustrum. I cannot enforce a mere personal dislike against public pressure. Well, I can, strictly speaking, but not without going to ridiculous and indeed tyrannical lengths. Over a game? I think not. So . . . as things stand, we find teams of burly men pushing and shoving and kicking and biting in the faint hope, it seems to me, of propelling some wretched object at some distant goal. I have no problem with them trying to kill one another, which has little in the way of a downside, but it has now become so popular once more that property is being damaged, and that cannot be tolerated. There have been comments in the Times. No, what the wise man cannot change he must channel.’

  ‘And how do you intend to do that?’

  ‘By giving the job to you. Unseen University has always had a fine sporting tradition.’

  ‘ “Had” is the right word,’ sighed Ridcully. ‘In my day we were all so . . . so relentlessly physical. But if I was to suggest so much as an egg and spoon race these days they’d use the spoon to eat the egg.’

  ‘Alas, I did not know your day was over, Mustrum,’ said Lord Vetinari, with a smile.

  The room, never normally noisy, sank into deeper silence.

  ‘Now look here—’ Ridcully began.

  ‘This afternoon I shall be speaking to the editor of the Times,’ said Vetinari, gently surfing his voice over that of the wizard with all the skill of a born committee manipulator, ‘who is, as we know, a very civicminded person. I’m sure he will welcome the fact that I am asking the university to tame the demon foot-the-ball, and that you have, after careful thought, agreed to the task.’

  I don’t have to do this, Ridcully thought carefully. On the other hand, since it is what I want, and thereby don’t have to ask for, this may be unwise. Damn! This is so like him!

  ‘You would not object if we raise our own team?’ he managed.

  ‘Indeed, I positively demand that you do so. But no magic, Mustrum. I must make that clear. Magic is not sporting, unless you are playing against other wizards, of course.’

  ‘Oh, I am a very sporting man, Havelock.’

  ‘Capital! How is the Dean settling in at Brazeneck, by the way?’

  If it had been anyone else asking, Ridcully thought, that would simply be a polite enquiry. But this is Vetinari, isn’t it...

  ‘I’ve been too busy to find out,’ he said loftily, ‘but I’m sure he will be fine when he finds his feet.’ Or manages to see them without a mirror, he added to himself.

  ‘I’m sure you must be pleased to see your old friend and colleague making his way in the world,’ said Vetinari, innocently. ‘And so is Pseudopolis itself, of course. I must say, I admire the sturdy burghers of that city for embarking on their noble experiment in this . . . this democracy,’ he went on. ‘It is always good to see it attempted again. And sometimes amusing, too.’

  ‘There is something to be said for it, you know,’ grunted Ridcully.

  ‘Yes, I believe you practise it at the university,’ said the Patrician, with a little smile. ‘However, on the matter of football we are in accord. Capital. I will tell Mister de Worde what you are doing. I’m sure that the keen players of foot-the-ball will be interested, when someone explains the longer words to them. Well done. Do try the sherry. I am told it is highly palatable.’

  Vetinari stood up, a signal that, in theory at least, the business of the meeting was concluded, and strolled over to a polished stone slab, set into a square wooden table. ‘On a different note, Mustrum . . . How is your young visitor?’

  ‘My visit— Oh, you mean the . . . uh . . .’

  ‘That’s right.’ Vetinari smiled at the slab as if sharing a joke with it. ‘The, as you put it, Uh.’

  ‘I note the sarcasm. As a wizard, I must tell you that words have power.’

  ‘As a politician, I must tell you I already know. How is he getting along? Concerned minds would like to know.’

  Ridcully glanced at the little carved men on the playing slab as if they were listening to him. In a roundabout way, they probably were. Certainly it was well known now that the hands that guided half the pieces lived in a big castle in Uberwald, and were female and belonged to a lady who was mostly rumour.

  ‘Smeems says he keeps himself to himself. He says he thinks the boy is cunning.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Vetinari, still seeming to find something totally engrossing in the layout of playing pieces.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘We need cunning people in Ankh-Morpork. We have a Street of Cunning Artificers, do we not?’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘Ah, then it is context that has power,’ said Vetinari, turning around with a look of unmasked delight. ‘Did I say that I am a politician? Cunning: artful, sly, deceptive, shrewd, astute, cute, on the ball and, indeed, arch. A word for any praise and every prejudice. Cunning . . . is a cunning word.’

  ‘You don’t think that maybe this . . . experiment of yours might be a step too far?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘People said that about the vampires, did they not? It’s alleged that they have no proper language, but I am told he speaks several languages fluently.’

  ‘Smeems did say he talked la-di-da,’ Ridcully admitted.

  ‘Mustrum, compared with Natchbull Smeems, trolls speak la-di-da.’

  ‘The . . . boy was brought up by a priest of some sort, I know that,’ said Ridcully. ‘But what will he become when he grows up?’

  ‘By the sound of him, a professor of linguistics.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Havelock.’

  ‘Possibly, although I wonder if you do. But he is, I suggest, unlikely to become a ravening horde all by himself.’

  Ridcully sighed. He glanced towards the game again, and Vetinari noticed.

  ‘Look at them. Ranks, files,’ he said, waving a hand over the little stone figures, ‘locked in everlasting conflict at the whim of the player. They fight, they fall, and they cannot turn back because the whips drive them on, and all they know is whips, kill or be killed. Darkness in front of them, darkness behind them, darkness and whips in their heads. But what if you could take one out of this game, get him before the whips do, take him to a place without whips – what might he become? One creature. One singular being. Would you deny them that chance?’

  ‘You had three men hanged last week,’ said Ridcully, without quite understanding why.

  ‘They had their chances. They used them to kill, and worse. All we get is a chance. We don’t get a benison. He was chained to an anvil for seven years. He should get his chance, don’t you think?’

  Suddenly Vetinari was smiling again.

  ‘Let us not get sombre, however. I look forward to your ushering in a new era of lively
, healthy activity in the best sporting tradition. Indeed, tradition will be your friend here, I am sure. Please don’t let me trespass any further on your time.’

  Ridcully drained the sherry. That at least was palatable.

  It’s a short walk from the palace to Unseen University; positions of power like to keep an eye on one another.

  Ridcully walked back through the crowds, occasionally nodding at people he knew, which, in this part of the city, was practically everyone.

  Trolls, he thought, we get along with trolls, now that they remember to look where they’re putting their feet. Got ’em in the Watch and everything. Jolly decent types, bar a few bad apples, and gods know we have enough of those of our own. Dwarfs? Been here for ages. Can be a bit tricky, can be as tight as a duck’s arse – here he paused to think and edited that thought to ‘drive a hard bargain’. You always know where you are with them, anyway, and of course they are short, which is always a comfort provided you know what they are doing down there. Vampires? Well, the Uberwald League of Temperance seemed to be working. Word on the street – or in the vault or whatever – was that they policed their own. Any unreformed bloodsucker who tried to make a killing in the city would be hunted down by people who knew exactly how they thought and where they hung out.

  Lady Margolotta was behind all that. She was the person who, by diplomacy, and probably more direct means, had got things moving again in Uberwald, and she had some sort of . . . relationship with Vetinari. Everyone knew it, and that was all everyone knew. A dot dot dot relationship. One of those. And nobody had been able to join up the dots.

  She had been to the city on diplomatic visits, and not even the well-practised dowagers of Ankh-Morpork had been able to detect a whisper of anything other than a businesslike amiability and international cooperation between the two of them.

  And he played endless and complex games with her, via the clacks system, and apart from that, that was, well, that . . . until now.

  And she’d sent him this Nutt to keep safe. Who knew why, apart from them? Politics, probably.

  Ridcully sighed. One of the monsters, all alone. It was hard to think of it. They came in thousands, like lice, killing everything and eating the dead, including theirs. The Evil Empire had bred them in huge cellars, grey demons without a hell.

  The gods alone knew what had happened to them when the Empire collapsed. But there was convincing evidence now that some still lived up in the far hills. What might they do? And one, right now, was making candles in Ridcully’s cellars. What might he become?

  ‘A bloody nuisance?’ said Ridcully aloud.

  ‘’ere, ’oo are you calling a nuisance, mister? It’s my road, same as yours!’

  The wizard looked down at a young man who appeared to have stolen his clothes only from the best washing lines, though the tattered black and red scarf around his neck was probably his own. There was an edginess to him, a continual shifting of weight, as though he might at any moment run off in a previously unguessable direction. And he was throwing a tin can up in the air and catching it again. For Ridcully it brought back memories so sharp that they stung, but he pulled himself together.

  ‘I am Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor and Master of Unseen University, young man, and I see you are sporting colours. For some game? A game of football, I suggest?’

  ‘As it happens, yes. So what?’ said the urchin, then realized that his hand was empty when it should now, under normal gravitational rules, be full again. The tin had not fallen back from its last ascent, and was in fact turning gently twenty feet up in the air.

  ‘Childish of me, I know,’ said Ridcully, ‘but I did want your full attention. I want to witness a game of football.’

  ‘Witness? Look, I never saw nuffin’—’

  Ridcully sighed. ‘I mean I want to watch a game, okay? Today, if possible.’

  ‘You? Are you sure? It’s your funeral, mister. Got a shilling?’

  There was a clink, high above.

  ‘The tin will come back down with a sixpence in it. Time and place, please.’

  ‘’ow do I know I can trust you?’ said the urchin.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ridcully. ‘The subtle workings of the brain are a mystery to me, too. But I’m glad that is your belief.’

  ‘What?’ With a shrug, the boy decided to gamble, what with having had no breakfast.

  ‘Loop Alley off the Scours, ’arp arsed one, an’ I’ve never seen you before in my life, got it?’

  ‘That is quite probable,’ said Ridcully, and snapped his fingers.

  The tin dropped into the urchin’s waiting hand. He shook out the silver coin and grinned. ‘Best o’ luck to you, guv.’

  ‘Is there anything to eat at these affairs?’ said Ridcully, for whom lunchtime was a sacrament.

  ‘There’s pies, guv, pease pudding, jellied eel pies, pie and mash, lobster . . . pies, but mostly they are just pies. Just pies, sir. Made of pie.’

  ‘What kind?’

  His informant looked shocked. ‘They’re pies, guv. You don’t ask.’

  Ridcully nodded. ‘And as a final transaction, I’ll pay you one penny for a kick of your can.’

  ‘Tuppence,’ said the boy promptly.

  ‘You little scamp, we have a deal.’

  Ridcully dropped the can on the toe of his boot, balanced it for a moment, then flicked it into the air and, as it came down, hit it with a roundhouse kick that sent it spinning over the crowd.

  ‘Not bad, granddad,’ said the kid, grinning. In the distance there was a yell and the sound of someone bent on retribution.

  Ridcully plunged a hand into his pocket and looked down. ‘Two dollars to start running, kid. You won’t get a better deal today!’ The boy laughed, grabbed the coins and ran. Ridcully walked on sedately, while the years fell back on him like snow.

  He found Ponder Stibbons pinning up a notice on the board just outside the Great Hall. He did this quite a lot. Ridcully assumed it made him feel better in some way.

  He slapped Ponder on the back, causing him to spill drawing pins all over the flagstones.

  ‘It is a bulletin from the Ankh Committee on Safety, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder, scrabbling for the spinning, wayward pins.

  ‘This is a university of magic, Stibbons. We have no business with safety. Just being a wizard is unsafe, and so it should be.’

  ‘Yes, Archchancellor.’

  ‘But I should pick up all those pins if I were you, you can’t be too careful. Tell me – didn’t we use to have a sports master here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Evans the Striped. He vanished about forty years ago, I believe.’

  ‘Killed? It was dead men’s shoes in those days, you know.’

  ‘I can’t imagine who would want his job. Apparently he evaporated while doing press-ups in the Great Hall one day.’

  ‘Evaporated? What kind of death is that for a wizard? Any wizard would die of shame if he just evaporated. We always leave something behind, even if it’s only smoke. Oh, well. Cometh the hour, cometh the . . . whatever. General comethness, perhaps. What is that thinking engine of yours doing these days?’

  Ponder brightened. ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, Hex has just discovered a new particle. It travels faster than light in two directions at once!’

  ‘Can we make it do anything interesting?’

  ‘Well yes! It totally explodes Spolwhittle’s Trans-Congruency Theory!’

  ‘Good,’ said Ridcully cheerfully. ‘Just so long as something explodes. Since it’s finished exploding, set it to finding either Evans or a decent substitute. Sports masters are pretty elementary particles, it shouldn’t be difficult. And call a meeting of the Council in ten minutes. We are going to play football!’

  Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness; this, Ridcully reflected as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got its, correction, her boots on, since she would have to choose whi
ch pair – the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. Indeed, as a goddess she would have lots of shoes, and thus many choices: comfy shoes for home truths, hobnail boots for unpleasant truths, simple clogs for universal truths and possibly some kind of slipper for self-evident truth. More important right now was what kind of truth he was going to have to impart to his colleagues, and he decided not on the whole truth, but instead on nothing but the truth, which dispensed with the need for honesty.

  ‘Well, go on, then, what did he say?’

  ‘He responded to reasoned argument.’

  ‘He did? Where’s the catch?’

  ‘None. But he wants the rules to be more traditional.’

  ‘Surely not! Gather they are practically prehistoric as it is!’

  ‘And he wants the university to take the lead in all this, and quickly. Gentlemen, there is a game going to be played in about three hours’ time. I suggest we observe it. And to this end, I will require you to wear . . . trousers.’

  After a while Ridcully took out his watch, which was one of the old-fashioned imp-driven ones and was reliably inaccurate. He flipped up the gold lid and stared patiently as the little creature pedalled the hands around. When the expostulating had not stopped after a minute and a half, he snapped the lid shut. The click had an effect that no amount of extra shouting could have achieved.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said gravely. ‘We must partake of the game of the people – from whom, I might add, we derive. Has any of us, in the last few decades, even seen the game being played? I thought not. We should get outside more. Now, I’m not asking you to do this for me, or even for the hundreds of people who work to provide us with a life in which discomfort so seldom rears its head. Yes, many other ugly heads have reared, it is true, but dinner has always beckoned. We are, fellow wizards, the city’s last line of defence against all the horrors that can be thrown against it. However, none of them are as potentially dangerous as us. Yes, indeed. I don’t know what might happen if wizards were really hungry. So do this, I implore you on this one occasion, for the sake of the cheeseboard.’