Hogfather (32 page)

Bilious didn’t dare move his head. But out of the corner of his eye he was sure he could see shadows moving very fast across the walls.

“Dear me, out of thunderbolts, are we?” Chickenwire sneered. “Well, y’know, I’ve never—”

There was a creak.

Chickenwire’s face was a few inches from Bilious. The oh god saw his expression change.

The man’s eyes rolled. His lips said “…nur…”

Bilious risked stepping back. Chickenwire’s sword didn’t move. He stood there, trembling slightly, like a man who wants to turn round to see what’s behind him but doesn’t dare to in case he does.

As far as Bilious was concerned, it had just been a creak.

He looked up at the thing on the landing above.

“Who put that there?” said Violet.

It was just a wardrobe. Dark oak, a bit of fancy woodwork glued on in an effort to disguise the undisguisable fact that it was just an upright box. It was a wardrobe.

“You didn’t, you know, try to cast a thunderbolt and go on a few letters too many?” she went on.

“Huh?” said Bilious, looking from the stricken man to the wardrobe. It was so ordinary it was…odd.

“I mean, thunderbolts begin with T and wardrobes…”

Violet’s lips moved silently. Part of Bilious thought: I’m attracted to a girl who actually has to shut down all other brain functions in order to think about the order of the letters of the alphabet. On the other hand,
she’s
attracted to someone who’s wearing a toga that looks as though a family of weasels have had a party in it, so maybe I’ll stop this thought right here.

But the major part of his brain thought: why’s this man making little bubbling noises? It’s just a
wardrobe
, for my sake!

“No, no,” mumbled Chickenwire. “I don’t
wanna
!”

The sword clanged on the floor.

He took a step backward up the stairs, but very slowly, as if he was doing it despite every effort his muscles could muster.

“Don’t want to what?” said Violet.

Chickenwire spun round. Bilious had never seen that happen before. People turned round quickly, yes, but Chickenwire just revolved as if some giant hand had been placed on his head and twisted a hundred and eighty degrees.

“No. No. No,” Chickenwire whined. “No.”

He tottered up the steps.

“You got to help me,” he whispered.

“What’s the matter?” said Bilious. “It’s just a wardrobe, isn’t it? It’s for putting all your old clothes in so that there’s no room for your
new
clothes.”

The doors of the wardrobe swung open.

Chickenwire managed to thrust out his arms and grab the sides and, for a moment, he stood quite still.

Then he was pulled into the wardrobe in one sudden movement and the doors slammed shut.

The little brass key turned in the lock with a click.

“We ought to get him out,” said the oh god, running up the steps.

“Why?” Violet demanded. “They are
not
very nice people! I know that one. When he brought me food he made…suggestive comments.”

“Yes, but…” Bilious hadn’t ever seen a face like that, outside of a mirror. Chickenwire had looked very, very sick.

He turned the key and opened the doors.

“Oh dear…”

“I don’t want to see! I don’t want to see!” said Violet, looking over his shoulder.

Bilious reached down and picked up a pair of boots that stood neatly in the middle of the wardrobe’s floor.

Then he put them back carefully and walked around the wardrobe. It was plywood. The words “Dratley and Sons, Phedre Road, Ankh-Morpork” were stamped in one corner in faded ink.

“Is it magic?” said Violet nervously.

“I don’t know if something magic has the maker’s name on it,” said Bilious.

“There
are
magic wardrobes,” said Violet nervously. “If you go into them, you come out in a magic land.”

Bilious looked at the boots again.

“Um…yes,” he said.

I
THINK
I
MUST TELL YOU SOMETHING
, said Death.

“Yes, I think you should,” said Ridcully. “I’ve got little devils running round the place eating socks and pencils, earlier tonight we sobered up someone who thinks he’s a God of Hangovers and half my wizards are trying to cheer up the Cheerful Fairy.
We
thought something must’ve happened to the Hogfather. We were right, right?”

“
Hex
was right, Archchancellor,” Ponder corrected him.

H
EX
? W
HAT IS
H
EX
?

“Er…Hex thinks—that is,
calculates
—that there’s been a big change in the nature of belief today,” said Ponder. He felt, he did not know why, that Death was probably not in favor of unliving things that thought.

M
R
. H
EX WAS REMARKABLY ASTUTE
. T
HE
H
OGFATHER HAS BEEN
…Death paused. T
HERE IS NO SENSIBLE HUMAN WORD
. D
EAD, IN A WAY, BUT NOT EXACTLY
…A
GOD CANNOT BE KILLED
. N
EVER COMPLETELY KILLED
. H
E HAS BEEN, SHALL WE SAY, SEVERELY REDUCED
.

“Ye gods!” said Ridcully. “Who’d want to kill off the old boy?”

H
E HAS ENEMIES
.

“What did he do? Miss a chimney?”

E
VERY LIVING THING HAS ENEMIES
.

“What, everything?”

Y
ES
. E
VERYTHING
. P
OWERFUL ENEMIES
. B
UT THEY HAVE
GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME
. N
OW THEY ARE USING PEOPLE
.

“Who are?”

T
HOSE WHO THINK THE UNIVERSE SHOULD BE A LOT OF ROCKS MOVING IN CURVES
. H
AVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE
A
UDITORS
?

“I suppose the Bursar may have done—”

N
OT AUDITORS OF MONEY
. A
UDITORS OF REALITY
. T
HEY THINK OF LIFE AS A STAIN ON THE UNIVERSE
. A
PESTILENCE
. M
ESSY
. G
ETTING IN THE WAY
.

“In the way of what?”

T
HE EFFICIENT RUNNING OF THE UNIVERSE
.

“I thought it
was
run for us…Well, for the Professor of Applied Anthropics, actually, but we’re allowed to tag along,” said Ridcully. He scratched his chin. “And I could certainly run a marvelous university here if only we didn’t have to have these damn students underfoot all the time.”

Q
UITE SO
.

“They want to get
rid
of us?”

T
HEY WANT YOU TO BE…LESS…DAMN
, I’
VE FORGOTTEN THE WORD
. U
NTRUTHFUL
? T
HE
H
OGFATHER IS A SYMBOL OF THIS
…Death snapped his fingers, causing echoes to bounce off the walls, and added,
WISTFUL LYING
?

“Untruthful?” said Ridcully. “
Me
? I’m as honest as the day is long! Yes, what is it
this
time?”

Ponder had tugged at his robe and now he whispered something in his ear. Ridcully cleared his throat.

“I am reminded that this is in fact the shortest day of the year,” he said. “However, this does
not
undermine the point that I just made, although I thank my colleague for his invaluable support and constant readiness to correct minor if not downright trivial errors. I am a remarkably truthful man, sir. Things said at University council meetings don’t count.”

I
MEAN HUMANITY IN GENERAL
. E
R
…T
HE ACT OF TELLING THE UNIVERSE IT IS OTHER THAN IT IS
?

“You’ve got me there,” said Ridcully. “Anyway, why’re
you
doing the job?”

S
OMEONE MUST
. I
T IS VITALLY IMPORTANT
. T
HEY MUST BE SEEN, AND BELIEVED
. B
EFORE DAWN, THERE MUST BE ENOUGH BELIEF IN THE
H
OGFATHER
.

“Why?” said Ridcully.

S
O THAT THE SUN WILL COME UP
.

The two wizards gawped at him.

I
SELDOM JOKE
, said Death.

At which point there was a scream of horror.

“That sounded like the Bursar,” said Ridcully. “And he’s been doing so well up to now.”

The reason for the Bursar’s scream lay on the floor of his bedroom.

It was a man. He was dead. No one alive had that kind of expression.

Some of the other wizards had got there first. Ridcully pushed his way through the crowd.

“Ye gods,” he said. “What a face! He looks as though he died of fright! What happened?”

“Well,” said the Dean, “as far as I can tell, the Bursar opened his wardrobe and found the man inside.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have said the poor old Bursar was all that frightening.”

“
No
, Archchancellor. The corpse fell out on him.”

The Bursar was standing in the corner, wearing his old familiar expression of good-humored concussion.

“You all right, old fellow?” said Ridcully. “What’s eleven percent of 1,276?”

“One hundred and forty point three six,” said the Bursar promptly.

“Ah, right as rain,” said Ridcully cheerfully.

“I don’t see why,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Just because he can do things with numbers doesn’t mean everything else is fine.”

“Doesn’t need to be,” said Ridcully. “Numbers is what he has to do. The poor chap might be slightly yo-yo, but I’ve been reading about it. He’s one of these idiot servants.”

“Savants,” said the Dean patiently. “The word is savants, Ridcully.”

“Whatever. Those chaps who can tell you what day of the week the first of Grune was a hundred years ago—”

“—Tuesday—” said the Bursar.

“—but can’t tie their boot laces,” said Ridcully. “What was a corpse doing in his wardrobe? And no one is to say ‘Not a lot,’ or anythin’ tasteless like that. Haven’t had a corpse in a wardrobe since that business with Archchancellor Buckleby.”

“We all warned Buckleby that the lock was too stiff,” said the Dean.

“Just out of interest, why was the Bursar fiddling with his wardrobe at this time of night?” said Ridcully.

The wizards looked sheepish.

“We were…playing Sardines, Archchancellor,” said the Dean.

“What’s that?”

“It’s like Hide and Seek, but when you find someone you have to squeeze in with them,” said the Dean.

“I just want to be clear about this,” said Ridcully. “My senior wizards have spent the evening playing Hide and Seek?”

“Oh, not the whole evening,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “We played Grandmother’s Footsteps and I Spy for quite a while until the Senior Wrangler made a scene just because we wouldn’t let him spell chandelier with an S.”

“Party games?
You
fellows?”

The Dean sidled closer.

“It’s Miss Smith,” he mumbled. “When we don’t join in she bursts into tears.”

“Who’s Miss Smith?”

“The Cheerful Fairy,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes glumly. “If you don’t say yes to everything her lip wobbles like a plate of jelly. It’s unbearable.”

“We just joined in to stop her weeping,” said the Dean. “It’s amazing how one woman can be so soggy.”

“If we’re not cheerful she bursts into tears,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “The Senior Wrangler’s doing some juggling for her at the moment.”

“But he can’t juggle!”

“I think that’s cheering her up a bit.”

“What you’re tellin’ me, then, is that my wizards are prancing around playin’ children’s games just to cheer up some dejected fairy?”

“Er…yes.”

“I thought you had to clap your hands and say you believed in ’em,” said Ridcully. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“That’s just for the little shiny ones,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Not for the ones in saggy cardigans with half a dozen hankies stuffed up their sleeves.”

Ridcully looked at the corpse again.

“Anyone know who he is? Looks a bit of a ruffian to me. And where’s his boots, may I ask?”

The Dean took a small glass cube from his pocket and ran it over the corpse.

“Quite a large thaumic reading, gentlemen,” he said. “I think he got here by magic.”

He rummaged in the man’s pockets and pulled out a handful of small white things.

“Ugh,” he said.

“Teeth?” said Ridcully. “Who goes around with a pocket full of teeth?”

“A very bad fighter?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “I’ll go and get Modo to take the poor fellow away, shall I?”

“If we can get a reading off the thaumameter, perhaps Hex—” Ridcully began.

“Now, Ridcully,” said the Dean, “I really think there must be some problems that can be resolved without having to deal with that damn thinking mill.”

Death looked up at Hex.

A
MACHINE FOR THINKING
?

“Er…yes, sir,” said Ponder Stibbons. “You see, when you said…Well, you see, Hex believes everything…But, look, the sun really will come up, won’t it? That’s its
job
.”

L
EAVE US
.

Ponder backed away, and then scurried out of the room.

The ants flowed along their tubes. Cogwheels spun. The big wheel with the sheep skulls on it creaked around slowly. A mouse squeaked, somewhere in the works.

W
ELL
? said Death.

After a while, the pen began to write.

+++ Big Red Lever Time +++ Query +++

N
O
. T
HEY SAY YOU ARE A THINKER
. E
XTEND LOGICALLY THE RESULT OF THE HUMAN RACE CEASING TO BELIEVE IN THE
H
OGFATHER
. W
ILL THE SUN COME UP
? A
NSWER
.

It took several minutes. The wheels spun. The ants ran. The mouse squeaked. An egg timer came down on a spring. It bounced aimlessly for a while, and then jerked back up again.

Hex wrote: +++ The Sun Will Not Come Up +++