Reaper Man

by Terry Pratchett

  “Yes, yes, all right,” said Ridcully. “I’ve never been able to get interested in all that stuff, myself.”

  Behind them, the Dean was trying to prevent the Lecturer in Recent Runes from attempting to turn the priest of Offler the Crocodile God into a set of matching suitcases, and the Bursar had a bad nose-bleed from a lucky blow with a thurible.

  “What we’ve got to present here,” said Ridcully, “is a united front. Right?”

  “Agreed,” said the Chief Priest.

  “Right. For now.”

  A small rug sinewaved past at eye level. The Chief Priest handed back the brandy bottle.

  “Incidentally, mother says you haven’t written lately,” he said.

  “Yeah…” The other wizards would have been surprised at their Archchancellor’s look of contrite embarrassment. “I’ve been busy. You know how it is.”

  “She said to be sure to remind you she’s expecting both of us over for lunch on Hogswatchday.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Ridcully, glumly. “I’m looking forward to it.” He turned to the mêlée behind them.

  “Cut it out, you fellows,” he said.

  “Brethren! Desist!” bellowed the Chief Priest.

  The Senior Wrangler released his grip on the head of the high priest of the Cult of Hinki. A couple of cu-rates stopped kicking the Bursar. There was a general adjustment of clothing, a finding of hats and a bout of embarrassed coughing.

  “That’s better,” said Ridcully. “Now then, his Eminence the Chief Priest and myself have decided—”

  The Dean glowered at a very small bishop.

  “He kicked me! You kicked me!”

  “Ooo! I never did, my son.”

  “You bloody well did,” the Dean hissed. “Sideways, so they wouldn’t see!”

  “—have decided—” repeated Ridcully, glaring at the Dean, “to pursue a solution to the current disturbances in a spirit of brotherhood and goodwill and that includes you, Senior Wrangler.”

  “I couldn’t help it! He pushed me.”

  “Well! May you be forgiven!” said the Archdeacon of Thrume, stoutly.

  There was a crash from above. A chaise-longue cantered down the stairs and smashed through the hall door.

  “I think perhaps the guards are still trying to free the Patrician,” said the High Priest. “Apparently even his secret passages locked themselves.”

  “All of them? I thought the sly devil had ’em everywhere,” said Ridcully.

  “All locked,” said the High Priest. “All of them.”

  “Almost all of them,” said a voice behind him.

  Ridcully’s tones did not change as he turned around, except that a slight extra syrup was added.

  A figure had apparently stepped out of the wall. It was human, but only by default. Thin, pale, and clad all in dusty black, the Patrician always put Ridcully in mind of a predatory flamingo, if you could find a flamingo that was black and had the patience of a rock.

  “Ah, Lord Vetinari,” he said, “I am so glad you are unhurt.”

  “I will see you gentlemen in the Oblong Office,” said the Patrician. Behind him, a panel in the wall slid back noiselessly.

  “I, um, I believe there are a number of guards upstairs trying to free—” the Chief Priest began.

  The Patrician waved a thin hand at him. “I wouldn’t dream of stopping them,” he said. “It gives them something to do and makes them feel important. Otherwise they just have to stand around all day looking fierce and controlling their bladders. Come this way.”

  The leaders of the other Ankh-Morpork Guilds turned up in ones and twos, gradually filling the room.

  The Patrician sat gloomily staring at the paperwork on his desk as they argued.

  “Well, it’s not us,” said the head of the Alchemists.

  “Things are always flying through the air when you fellows are around,” said Ridcully.

  “Yes, but that’s only because of unforeseen exothermic reactions,” said the alchemist.

  “Things keep blowing up,” translated the deputy head alchemist, without looking up.

  “They may blow up, but they come down again. They don’t flutter around and, e.g., start unscrewing themselves,” said his chief, giving him a warning frown. “Anyway, why’d we do it to ourselves? I tell you, it’s hell in my workshop! There’s stuff whizzing everywhere! Just before I came out, a huge and very expensive piece of glassware broke into splinters!”

  “Marry, ’twas a sharp retort,” said a wretched voice.

  The press of bodies moved aside to reveal the General Secretary and Chief Butt of the Guild of Fools and Joculators. He flinched under the attention, but he generally flinched all the time anyway. He had the look of a man whose face has been Ground Zero for one custard pie too many, whose trousers have been too often awash with whitewash, whose nerves would disintegrate completely at the sound of just one more whoopee-cushion. The other Guild leaders tried to be nice to him, in the same way that people try to be kind to other people who are standing on the ledges of very high buildings.

  “What do you mean, Geoffrey?” said Ridcully, as kindly as he could.

  The Fool gulped. “Well, you see,” he mumbled, “we have sharp as in splinters, and retort as in large glass alchemical vessel, and thus we get a pun on ‘sharp retort’ which also means, well, a scathing answer. Sharp retort. You see? It’s a play on words. Um. It’s not very good, is it.”

  The Archchancellor looked into eyes like two runny eggs.

  “Oh, a pun,” he said. “Of course. Hohoho.” He waved a hand encouragingly at the others.

  “Hohoho,” said the Chief Priest.

  “Hohoho,” said the leader of the Assassins’ Guild.

  “Hohoho,” said the head Alchemist. “And, you know, what makes it even funnier is that it was actually an alembic.”

  “So what you’re telling me,” said the Patrician, as considerate hands led the Fool away, “is that none of you are responsible for these events?”

  He gave Ridcully a meaningful look as he spoke.

  The Archchancellor was about to answer when his eye was caught by a movement on the Patrician’s desk.

  There was a little model of the Palace in a glass globe. And next to it was a paper knife.

  The paperknife was slowly bending.

  “Well?” said the Patrician.

  “Not us,” said Ridcully, his voice hollow. The Patrician followed his gaze.

  The knife was already curved like a bow.

  The Patrician scanned the sheepish crowd until he found Captain Doxie of the City Guard Day Watch.

  “Can’t you do something?” he said.

  “Er. Like what, sir? The knife? Er. I suppose I could arrest it for being bent.”

  Lord Vetinari threw his hands up in the air.

  “So! It’s not magic! It’s not gods! It’s not people! What is it? And who’s going to stop it? Who am I going to call?”

  Half an hour later the little globe had vanished. No one noticed. They never do.

  Mrs. Cake knew who she was going to call.

  “You there, One-Man-Bucket?” she said.

  Then she ducked, just in case.

  A reedy and petulant voice oozed out of the air. where have you been? can’t move in here!

  Mrs. Cake bit her lip. Such a direct reply meant her spirit guide was worried. When he didn’t have anything on his mind he spent five minutes talking about buffaloes and great white spirits, although if One-Man-Bucket had ever been near white spirit he’d drunk it and it was anyone’s guess what he’d do to a buffalo. And he kept putting “ums” and “hows” into the conversation.

  “What d’you mean?” there been a catastrophe or something? some kind of ten-second plague?

  “No. Don’t think so.” there’s real pressure here, you know. what’s holding everything up?

  “What do you mean?”

  shutupshutupshutup I’m trying to talk to the lady! you lot over there, keep the noise
down! oh yeah? sez you—

  Mrs. Cake was aware of other voices trying to drown him out.

  “One-Man-Bucket!”

  heathen savage, am I? so you know what this heathen savage says to you? yeah? listen, I’ve been over here for a hundred years, me! I don’t have to take talk like that from someone who’s still warm! right—that does it, you…

  His voice faded.

  Mrs. Cake set her jaw.

  His voice came back.

  —oh yeah? oh yeah? well, maybe you was big when you was alive, friend, but here and now you’re just a bedsheet with holes in it! oh, so you don’t like that, eh—

  “He’s going to start fighting again, mum,” said Ludmilla, who was curled up by the kitchen stove. “He always calls people ‘friend’ just before he hits them.”

  Mrs. Cake sighed.

  “And it sounds as if he’s going to fight a lot of people,” said Ludmilla.

  “Oh, all right. Go and fetch me a vase. A cheap one, mind.”

  It is widely suspected, but not generally known, that everything has an associated spirit form which, upon its demise, exists briefly in the drafty gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. This is important.

  “No, not that one. That belonged to your granny.”

  This ghostly survival does not last for long without a consciousness to hold it together, but depending on what you have in mind it can last for just long enough.

  “That one’ll do. I never liked the pattern.”

  Mrs. Cake took an orange vase with pink peonies on it from her daughter’s paws.

  “Are you still there, One-Man-Bucket?” she said.

  —I’ll make you regret the day you ever died, you whining—

  “Catch.”

  She dropped the vase onto the stove. It smashed.

  A moment later, there was a sound from the Other Side. If a discorporate spirit had hit another discorporate spirit with the ghost of a vase, it would have sounded just like that.

  right, said the voice of One-Man-Bucket, and there’s more where that came from, okay?

  The Cakes, mother and hairy daughter, nodded at each other.

  When One-Man-Bucket spoke again, his voice dripped with smug satisfaction.

  just a bit of an altercation about seniority here, he said. just sorting out a bit of personal space. got a lot of problems here, Mrs. Cake. it’s like a waiting room—

  There was a shrill clamor of other disembodied voices.

  —could you get a message, please, to Mr.—

  —tell her there’s a bag of coins on the ledge up the chimney—

  —Agnes is not to have the silverware after what she said about our Molly—

  —I didn’t have time to feed the cat, could someone go—

  shutupshutup! That was One-Man-Bucket again. you’ve got no idea, have you? this is ghost talk, is it? feed the cat? whatever happened to “I am very happy here, and waiting for you to join me”?

  —listen, if anyone else joins us, we’ll be standing on one another’s heads—

  that’s not the point. that’s not the point, that’s all I’m saying. when you’re a spirit, there’s things you gotta say. Mrs. Cake?

  “Yes?” you got to tell someone about this.

  Mrs. Cake nodded.

  “Now you all go away,” she said. “I’m getting one of my headaches.”

  The crystal ball faded.

  “Well!” said Ludmilla.

  “I ain’t going to tell no priests,” said Mrs. Cake firmly.

  It wasn’t that Mrs. Cake wasn’t a religious woman. She was, as has already been hinted, a very religious woman indeed. There wasn’t a temple, church, mosque or small group of standing stones anywhere in the city that she hadn’t attended at one time or another, as a result of which she was more feared than an Age of Enlightenment; the mere sight of Mrs. Cake’s small fat body on the threshold was enough to stop most priests dead in the middle of their invocation.

  Dead. That was the point. All the religions had very strong views about talking to the dead. And so did Mrs. Cake. They held that it was sinful. Mrs. Cake held that it was only common courtesy.

  This usually led to a fierce ecclesiastical debate which resulted in Mrs. Cake giving the chief priest what she called “a piece of her mind.” There were so many pieces of Mrs. Cake’s mind left around the city now that it was quite surprising that there was enough left to power Mrs. Cake but, strangely enough, the more pieces of her mind she gave away the more there seemed to be left.

  There was also the question of Ludmilla. Ludmilla was a problem. The late Mr. Cake, gods-resthissoul, had never so much as even whistled at the full moon his whole life, and Mrs. Cake had dark suspicions that Ludmilla was a throwback to the family’s distant past in the mountains, or maybe had contracted genetics as a child. She was pretty certain her mother had once alluded circumspectly to the fact that Great-uncle Erasmus sometimes had to eat his meals under the table. Either way, Ludmilla was a decent upright young woman for three weeks in every four and a perfectly well-behaved hairy wolf thing for the rest of the time.

  Priests often failed to see it that way. Since by the time Mrs. Cake fell out with whatever priests* were currently moderating between her and the gods, she had usually already taken over the flower arrangements, altar dusting, temple cleaning, sacrificial stone scrubbing, honorary vestigial virgining, has-sock repairing and every other vital religious support role by sheer force of personality, her departure resulted in total chaos.

  Mrs. Cake buttoned up her coat.

  “It won’t work,” said Ludmilla.

  “I’ll try the wizards. They ought to be tole,” said Mrs. Cake. She was quivering with self-importance, like a small enraged football.

  “Yes, but you said they never listen,” said Ludmilla.

  “Got to try. Anyway, what are you doing out of your room?”

  “Oh, mother. You know I hate that room. There’s no need—”

  “You can’t be too careful. Supposin’ you was to take it into your head to go and chase people’s chickens? What would the neighbors say?”

  “I’ve never felt the least urge to chase a chicken, mother,” said Ludmilla wearily.

  “Or run after carts, barkin’.”

  “That’s dogs, mother.”

  “You just get back in your room and lock yourself in and get on with some sewing like a good girl.”

  “You know I can’t hold the needles properly, mother.”

  “Try for your mother.”

  “Yes, mother,” said Ludmilla.

  “And don’t go near the window. We don’t want people upset.”

  “Yes, mother. And you make sure you put your premonition on, mum. You know your eyesight isn’t what it was.”

  Mrs. Cake watched her daughter go upstairs. Then she locked the front door behind her and strode toward Unseen University where, she’d heard, there was too much nonsense of all sorts.

  Anyone watching Mrs. Cake’s progress along the street would have noticed one or two odd details. Despite her erratic gait, no one bumped into her. They weren’t avoiding her, she just wasn’t where they were. At one point she hesitated, and stepped into an alleyway. A moment later a barrel rolled off a cart that was unloading outside a tavern and smashed on the cobbles where she would have been. She stepped out of the alley and over the wreckage, grumbling to herself.

  Mrs. Cake spent a lot of the time grumbling. Her mouth was constantly moving, as if she was trying to dislodge a troublesome pip from somewhere in the back of her teeth.

  She reached the high black gates of the University and hesitated again, as if listening to some inner voice.

  Then she stepped aside and waited.

  Bill Door lay in the darkness of the hayloft and waited. Below, he could hear the occasional horsey sounds of Binky—a soft movement, the champ of a jaw.

  Bill Door. So now he had a name. Of course, he’d always had a name, but he’d been named for what he embodied, not for who he was.
Bill Door. It had a good solid ring to it. Mr. Bill Door. William Door, Esq. Billy D—no. Not Billy.

  Bill Door cased himself further into the hay. He reached into his robe and pulled out the golden timer. There was, quite perceptibly, less sand in the top bulb. He put it back.

  And then there was this “sleep.” He knew what it was. People did it for quite a lot of the time. They lay down and sleep happened. Presumably it served some purpose. He was watching out for it with interest. He would have to subject it to analysis.

  Night drifted across the world, coolly pursued by a new day.

  There was a stirring in the henhouse across the yard.

  “Cock-a-doo…er.”

  Bill Door stared at the roof of the barn.

  “Cock-a-doodle…er.”

  Gray light was filtering in between the cracks.

  Yet only moments ago there had been the red light of sunset!

  Six hours had vanished.

  Bill hauled out the timer. Yes. The level was definitely down. While he had been waiting to experience sleep, something had stolen part of his…of his life. He’d completely missed it, too—

  “Cock…cock-a…er…”

  He climbed down from the loft and stepped out into the thin mist of dawn.

  The elderly chickens watched him cautiously as he peered into their house. An ancient and rather embarrassed-looking cockerel glared at him and shrugged.

  There was a clanging noise from the direction of the house. An old iron barrel hoop was hanging by the door, and Miss Flitworth was hitting it vigorously with a ladle.

  He stalked over to investigate.

  WHAT FOR ARE YOU MAKING THE NOISE, MISS FLITWORTH?

  She spun around, ladle half-raised.

  “Good grief, you must walk like a cat!” she said.

  I MUST?

  “I meant I didn’t hear you.” She stood back and looked him up and down.

  “There’s still something about you I can’t put my finger on, Bill Door,” she said. “Wish I knew what it was.”

  The seven-foot skeleton regarded her stoically. He felt there was nothing he could say.