Unseen Academicals

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘No!’ said Glenda, much louder than she had intended.

  ‘Are you okay, dear?’ Verity enquired. ‘You look a bit ill.’

  ‘I’m fine. Fine. Just a touch of a sore throat, that’s all.’ Crab bucket, she thought. I thought Pepe was talking nonsense. ‘Erm, can you just truss it up for us? It’s going to be a long night.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Miss Pushpram, expertly wrapping the unresisting crab in twine. ‘You know what to do, that’s certain. Lovely crabs, these, real good eating. But thick as planks.’

  Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried towards the Night Kitchen. That’s how it works. People from the Sisters disapproving when a girl takes the trolley bus. That’s crab bucket. Practically everything my mum ever told me, that’s crab bucket. Practically everything I’ve ever told Juliet, that’s crab bucket, too. Maybe it’s just another word for the Shove. It’s so nice and warm on the inside that you forget that there’s an outside. The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you . . . The realization had her mind on fire.

  A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say ‘Do not do this’ in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.

  And custom and practice as embodied by Mrs Whitlow was that the Night Kitchen staff should not go above stairs, to where the light was comparatively clean and had not already been through a lot of other eyeballs. Well, Glenda had done that, and nothing bad had happened, had it? So now Glenda strode towards the Great Hall, her serviceable shoes hitting the floor enough to hurt. The Day girls said nothing as she marched in behind them. There was nothing for them to say. The real unwritten rule was that girls on the dumpy side didn’t serve at table when guests were present, and Glenda had decided tonight that she couldn’t read unwritten rules. Besides, there was a row already going on. The servants who were laying out the cutlery were trying to keep an eye on it, which subsequently meant that more than one guest had to eat with two spoons.

  Glenda was amazed to see the Candle Knave waving his hands at Trev and Nutt, and she headed for them. She did not like Smeems very much; a man could be dogmatic, and that was all right, or he could be stupid, and no harm done, but stupid and dogmatic at the same time was too much, especially fluxed with body odour.

  ‘What’s this all about?’

  It worked. The right tone from a woman with her arms folded always bounces an answer out of an unprepared man before he has time to think, and even before he has time to think up a lie.

  ‘They raised the chandelier! They raised it without lighting the candles! We won’t have enough time now to get it down and up again before the guests come in!’

  ‘But, Mister Smeems—’ Trev began.

  ‘And all I get is talking back and lies,’ Smeems complained bitterly. ‘But I can light them from here, Mister Smeems.’ Nutt spoke quietly, even his voice huddling.

  ‘Don’t give me that! Even wizards can’t do that without getting wax all over the place, you little—’

  ‘That’s enough, Mister Smeems,’ said a voice that to Glenda’s surprise turned out to be hers. ‘Can you light them, Mister Nutt?’

  ‘Yes, miss. At the right time.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Glenda. ‘I suggest you leave it to Mister Nutt.’ Smeems looked at her, and she could see there was, as it were, an invisible mallet in his thinking, a feeling that he might get into some trouble here.

  ‘I should run along now,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t stand around. I’m a man with responsibilities.’ Smeems looked wrong-footed and bewildered, but from his point of view absence was a good idea. Glenda almost saw his brain reach the conclusion. Not being there diluted the blame for whatever it was that was going to go wrong. ‘Can’t stand around,’ he repeated. ‘Ha! You’d all be in the dark if it wasn’t for me!’ With that, he grabbed his greasy bag and scuttled off.

  Glenda turned to Nutt. He can’t possibly make himself smaller, she told herself. His clothes would fit him even worse than they do already. I must be imagining it.

  ‘Can you really light the candles from here?’ she said aloud. Nutt carried on staring at the floor.

  Glenda turned to Trev. ‘Can he really—’ but Trev was not there, because Trev was leaning against the wall some distance away talking to Juliet.

  She could read it all at a glance, his possessive stance, her modestly downcast eyes: not hanky panky, as such, but certainly overture and beginners to hanky panky. Oh, the power of words . . .

  As you watch, so are you watched. Glenda looked down into the penetrating eyes of Nutt. Was that a frown? What had he seen in her expression? More than she wanted, that was certain.

  The tempo in the Hall was increasing. The football captains would be assembling in one of the anterooms, and she could imagine them there, in clean shirts, or at least in shirts less grubby than usual, dragged here from the various versions of Botney Street all over the city, staring up at the wonderful vaulting and wondering if they were going to walk out of there dead. Huh, she tagged on to that thought, more likely it would be dead drunk. And, just as her brain began to pivot around that new thought, a severe voice behind her said, ‘Hwe do not usually expect to see you in the Great Hall, Glenda?’

  It had to be Mrs Whitlow. Only the housekeeper would pronounce ‘we’ with an H and finish a plain statement as if it were a question. Besides, without turning round, Glenda heard the clink of her silver chatelaine, reputed to hold the one key that could open any lock in the university, and the creaking of her fearsome corsetry.17

  Glenda turned. There is no mallet! ‘I thought you might need a few extra hands tonight, Mrs Whitlow,’ she said sweetly.

  ‘Nevertheless, custom and practice—’

  ‘Ah, dear Mrs Whitlow, I think we’re ready to let them through now. His lordship’s coach will shortly be leaving the palace,’ said the Archchancellor, behind them.

  Mrs Whitlow could loom. But mostly only horizontally. Mustrum Ridcully could out-loom her by more than two feet. She turned hurriedly and gave the little half-curtsy which, he’d never dared tell her, he always found mildly annoying.

  ‘Oh, and Miss Glenda, isn’t it?’ said the Archchancellor happily. Good to see you up here. Very useful young lady, Mrs Whitlow. Got initiative, fine grasp of things.’

  ‘How kind of you to say so. She is one of my best girls,’ said the housekeeper, spitting teeth and taking care not to meet Glenda’s suddenly cherubic gaze.

  ‘Big chandelier not lit, I see,’ said Ridcully.

  Glenda stepped forward. ‘Mister Nutt is planning a surprise for us, sir.’

  ‘Mister Nutt is full of surprises. We’ve had an amazing day here today, Miss Glenda,’ said Ridcully. ‘Our Mister Nutt has been teaching the lads to play football his way. Do you know what he did yesterday? You’ll never guess. Tell them, Mister Nutt.’

  ‘I took them along to the Royal Opera House to watch the dancers in training,’ said Nutt nervously. ‘You see, it is very important that they learn the skills of movement and poise.’

  ‘And then when they came back,’ said Ridcully, with the same, slightly threatening joviality, ‘he had them playin’ here in the Hall blindfolded.’

  Nutt coughed nervously. ‘It is vital for them to keep track of every other player,’ he said. ‘It is essential that they are a team.’

  ‘And then he took them to see Lord Rust’s hunting dogs.’

  Nutt coughed again, even more embarrassed. ‘When they hunt, every dog knows the position of every other dog. I wanted them to understand the duality of team and player. The strength of the player is the team and the strength of the team is the player.’

  ‘Did you hear that?
’ said Ridcully. ‘Great stuff! Oh, he’s had them running up and down here all day long. Balancing balls on their heads, doing big diagrams on a blackboard. You’d think it was some kind of battle being planned.’

  ‘It is a battle,’ said Nutt. ‘I mean, not with the opposing team, as such, but it is a battle between every man and himself.’

  ‘That sounds very Uberwaldian,’ said Ridcully. ‘Still, they all seem full of vim and vigour and ready for the evening. I think Mister Nutt is planning one of those sunny luminair things.’

  ‘Just a little something to capture people’s attention,’ said Nutt.

  ‘Anything going to go off bang?’ said Ridcully.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Promise? Personally I like the occasional bit of Sturm and Drang, but Lord Vetinari is a tad particular about that sort of thing.’

  ‘No thunder and lightning, sir. Possibly a brief haze, high up.’

  It seemed to Glenda that the Archchancellor was paying some thoughtful attention to Nutt.

  ‘How many languages do you speak, you . . . Nutt?’

  ‘Three dead and twelve living, sir,’ said Nutt.

  ‘Really. Really,’ said Ridcully, as though filing this away and trying not to think How many of them were alive before you murdered them? ‘Well done. Thank you, Mister Nutt, and you too, ladies. We will bring them in shortly.’

  Glenda took this opportunity to get out of Mrs Whitlow’s way. She was not pleased to see that Trev and Juliet had already taken a slightly earlier opportunity to get out of hers.

  ‘Do not worry about Juliet,’ said Nutt, who had followed her.

  ‘Who said I was worried?’ Glenda snapped.

  ‘You did. Your expression, your stance, the set of your body, your . . . reactions, your tone of voice. Everything.’

  ‘You have no business to be looking at my everything – I mean the set of my body!’

  ‘It is simply the way you stand, Miss Glenda.’

  ‘And you can read my mind?’

  ‘It may appear that way. I am so sorry.’

  ‘And Juliet. What was she thinking?’

  ‘I am not sure, but she likes Mister Trev, she thinks he is funny.’

  ‘So have you read Trev’s everything? Bet that was a dirty book!’

  ‘Er, no, miss. He is worried and confused. I would say he is trying to see what kind of man he is going to be.’

  ‘Really? He’s always been a scallywag.’

  ‘He is thinking of his future.’

  Across the Hall, the big doors opened just as the last scurrying servants reached their stations.

  This made no impression on Glenda, lost in thought as she wrestled with the prospect that a leopard might change his shorts. He has been a bit quiet lately, I must admit. And he did write her that lovely poem . . . That should mean a lot, a poem. Who’d have thought it? It’s not like him at all—

  With atomic speed Nutt was suddenly missing, and the doors stood wide, and here came the captains with their retinues, and all of them were nervous and some of them were wearing unaccustomed suits, and some of them were walking a little unsteadily even now, because the wizards’ idea of an aperitif had bite, and in the kitchen plates would be being filled and the chefs would be cursing and the ovens clanging as they . . . as they . . . What was the menu, anyway?

  Life as an unseen part of Unseen University was a matter of alliances, feuds, obligations and friendships, all stirred and twisted and woven together.

  Glenda was good at it. The Night Kitchen had always been generous to other toilers and right now the Great Hall owed her favours, even if all she had done was keep her mouth shut. Now she bore down on Shiny Robert, one of the head waiters, who gave her the cautious nod due to someone who knew things about you that you wouldn’t want your mother to know.

  ‘Got a menu?’ she asked. One was produced from under a napkin. She read it in horror.

  ‘That’s not the stuff they like!’

  ‘Oh dear, Glenda,’ Robert smirked. ‘Are you saying it’s too good for them?’

  ‘You’re giving them Avec. Nearly every dish has got Avec in it, but stuff with Avec in the name is an acquired taste. I mean, do these look to you like people who habitually eat in a foreign language? Oh dear, and you are giving them beer! Beer with Avec!’

  ‘A choice of wines is available. They are choosing beer,’ said Robert coldly.

  Glenda stared at the captains. They seemed to be enjoying themselves now. Here was free food and drink and if the food tasted strange there was plenty of it, and the beer tasted welcomely familiar and there was lots of that, too.

  She didn’t like this. Heavens knew that football had got pretty disgusting these days, but . . . well, she couldn’t quite work out what she was uneasy about, but—

  ‘’scuse me, miss?’

  She looked down. A young footballer had decided to confide in the only uniformed woman he could see who was not carrying at least two plates at once.

  ‘Can I help?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘This chutney tastes of fish, miss.’

  She looked at the other grinning faces around the table. ‘It’s called caviar, sir. It’ll put lead in your pencil.’

  The table, as one well-oiled drinker, guffawed, but the youth only looked puzzled. ‘I haven’t got a pencil, miss.’ More amusement.

  ‘There’s not a lot of them around,’ said Glenda, and left them laughing.

  ‘So kind of you to invite me, Mustrum,’ said Lord Vetinari, waving away the hors d’œuvres. He turned to the wizard on his right. ‘And the Archchancellor formerly known as Dean is back with you, I see. That is capital.’

  ‘You may remember that Henry went to Pseudopolis – Brazeneck, you know. He is, er . . .’ Ridcully slowed.

  ‘The new Archchancellor,’ said Vetinari. He picked up a spoon and perused it carefully, as if it were a rare and curious object. ‘Dear me. I thought that there could be only one Archchancellor. Is this not so? One above all others and one Hat, of course? But these are wizardly matters, of which I know little. So do excuse me if I have misunderstood.’ In the gently turning bowl of the spoon his nose went from long to short. ‘However, it occurs to me, as an onlooker, that this could lead to a little friction, perhaps.’ The spoon stopped in mid twirl.

  ‘A soupçon, perhaps,’ said Ridcully, not looking in the direction of Henry.

  ‘That much, indeed? But I surmise from the absence of people being turned into frogs that you gentlemen have forgone the traditional option of magical mayhem. Well done. When it comes to the pinch, old friends, united by the bonds of mutual disrespect, cannot bring themselves to actually kill one another. We have hope. Ah, soup.’

  There was a brief interregnum as the ladle went from bowl to bowl, and then the Patrician said, ‘Could I assist you? I am without any bias in this matter.’

  ‘Excuse me, my lord, but I think it might be said that you would favour Ankh-Morpork,’ said the Archchancellor formerly known as Dean.

  ‘Really? It might also be said that it would be in my interest to weaken the perceived power of this university. You take my meaning? The delicate balance between town and gown, the unseen and the mundane? The twin foci of power. It might be said that I could take the opportunity to embarrass my learned friend.’ He smiled a little smile. ‘Do you still own the official Archchancellor’s Hat, Mustrum? I notice that you don’t wear it these days and tend to prefer the snazzy number with the rather attractive drawers and the small drinks cabinet in the point.’

  ‘I never liked wearing the official one. It grumbled all the time.’

  ‘It really can talk?’ said Vetinari.

  ‘I think the word “nag” would be far more accurate, since its only topic of conversation has been how much better things used to be. My only comfort here is that every Archchancellor over the last thousand years has complained about it in exactly the same way.’

  ‘So it can think and speak?’ said Vetinari innocently.

  ‘W
ell, I suppose you could put it like that.’

  ‘Then you can’t own it, Mustrum: a hat that thinks and speaks cannot be enslaved. No slaves in Ankh-Morpork, Mustrum.’ He waved a finger waggishly.

  ‘Yes, but it is the look of the thing. What would it look like if I gave up the uniqueness of Archchancellorship without a fight?’

  ‘I really could not say,’ said Lord Vetinari, ‘but since just about every genuine battle between wizards has hitherto resulted in wholesale destruction, I feel that you would at least look a little embarrassed. And, of course, I will remind you that you were quite happy that Archchancellor Bill Rincewind at Bugarup University cheerfully calls himself Archchancellor.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s a long way away,’ said Ridcully. ‘And Fourecks doesn’t really count as anywhere, whereas in Pseudopolis we are talking about a Johnny-come-lately of an organization and its—’

  ‘So are we then merely arguing over the question of distance?’ said Vetinari.

  ‘No, but—’ said Ridcully and stopped.

  ‘Is this worth the argument, I ask you?’ said Vetinari. ‘What we have here, gentlemen, is but a spat between the heads of a venerable and respected institution and an ambitious, relatively inexperienced, and importunate new school of learning.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what we’ve got all right,’ said Ridcully.

  Vetinari raised a finger. ‘I hadn’t finished, Archchancellor. Let me see now. I said that what we have here is a spat between an antique and somewhat fossilized, elderly and rather hidebound institution and a college of vibrant newcomers full of fresh and exciting ideas.’

  ‘Here, hang on, you didn’t say that the first time,’ said Ridcully.

  Vetinari leaned back. ‘Indeed I did, Archchancellor. Do you not remember our talk about the meaning of words a little while ago? Context is everything. I suggest, therefore, that you allow the head of Brazeneck University the opportunity to wear the official Archchancellor’s Hat for a short time.’