Hogfather (33 page)

C
ORRECT
. H
OW MAY THIS BE PREVENTED
? A
NSWER
.

+++ Regular and Consistent Belief +++

G
OOD
. I
HAVE A TASK FOR YOU, THINKING ENGINE
.

+++ Yes. I Am Preparing An Area Of Write-Only Memory +++

W
HAT IS THAT
?

+++ You Would Say: To Know In Your Bones +++

G
OOD
. H
ERE IS YOUR INSTRUCTION
. B
ELIEVE IN THE
H
OGFATHER
.

+++ Yes +++

D
O YOU BELIEVE
? A
NSWER
.

+++
YES
+++

D
O…YOU…BELIEVE
? A
NSWER
.

+++ YES +++

There was a change in the ill-assembled heap of pipes and tubes that was Hex. The big wheel creaked into a new position. From the other side of the wall came the hum of busy bees.

G
OOD
.

Death turned to leave the room, but stopped when Hex began to write furiously. He went back and looked at the emerging paper.

+++ Dear Hogfather, For Hogswatch I Want—

O
H, NO
.
Y
OU
CAN’T WRITE LETT
—Death paused, and then said, Y
OU CAN, CAN’T YOU
.

+++ Yes. I Am Entitled +++

Death waited until the pen had stopped, and picked up the paper.

B
UT YOU ARE A MACHINE
. T
HINGS HAVE NO DESIRES
. A
DOORKNOB WANTS NOTHING, EVEN THOUGH IT IS A COMPLEX MACHINE
.

+++ All Things Strive +++

Y
OU HAVE A POINT
, said Death. He thought of tiny red petals in the black depths, and read to the end of the list.

I
DON’T KNOW WHAT MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE
. I
DON’T THINK THE SACK WILL, EITHER
.

+++ I Regret This +++

B
UT WE WILL DO THE BEST WE CAN
, Said Death. F
RANKLY
, I
SHALL BE GLAD WHEN TONIGHT’S OVER
. I
T’S MUCH HARDER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE
. He rummaged in his sack. L
ET ME SEE
…H
OW OLD ARE YOU
?

Susan crept up the stairs, one hand on the hilt of the sword.

Ponder Stibbons had been worried to find himself, as a wizard, awaiting the arrival of the Hogfather. It’s amazing how people define roles for themselves and put handcuffs on their experience and are constantly surprised by the things a roulette universe spins at them. Here am I, they say, a mere wholesale fish monger, at the controls of a giant airliner because as it turns out all the crew had the Coronation Chicken. Who’d have thought it? Here am I, a housewife who merely went out this morning to bank the proceeds of the Playgroup Association’s Car Boot Sale, on the run with one million in stolen cash and a rather handsome man from the Battery Chickens’ Liberation Organization. Amazing! Here am I, a perfectly ordinary hockey player, suddenly realizing I’m the Son of God with five hundred devoted followers in a nice little commune in Empowerment, Southern California. Who’d have thought it?

Here am I, thought Susan, a very practically minded governess who can add up faster upside down than most people can the right way up, climbing up a tooth-shaped tower belonging to the Tooth Fairy and armed with a sword belonging to Death…

Again! I wish one month, just one damn
month
, could go by without something like this happening to me.

She could hear voices above her. Someone said something about a lock.

She peered over the edge of the stairwell.

It looked as though people had been camping out up here. There were boxes and sleeping rolls strewn around. A couple of men were sitting on boxes watching a third man who was working on a door in one curved wall. One of the men was the biggest Susan had ever seen, one of those huge fat men who contrive to indicate that a lot of the fat under their shapeless clothes is muscle. The other—

“Hello,” said a cheerful voice by her ear. “What’s
your
name?”

She made herself turn her head slowly.

First she saw the gray, glinting eye. Then the yellow-white one with the tiny dot of a pupil came into view.

Around them was a friendly pink and white face topped by curly hair. It was actually quite pretty, in a boyish sort of way, except that those mismatched eyes staring out of it suggested that it had been stolen from someone else.

She started to move her hand but the boy was there first, dragging the sword scabbard out of her belt.

“Ah, ah!” he chided, turning and fending her off as she tried to grab it. “Well, well, well. My word. White bone handle, rather tasteless skull and bone decoration…Death himself’s second favorite weapon, am I right? Oh, my! This must be Hogswatch! And this must mean that you are Susan Sto-Helit. Nobility. I’d bow,” he added, dancing back, “but I’m afraid you’d do something dreadful—”

There was a click, and a little gasp of excitement from the wizard working on the door.

“Yes! Yes! Left-handed using a wooden pick! That’s
simple
!”

He saw that even Susan was looking at him, and coughed nervously.

“Er, I’ve got the fifth lock open, Mister Teatime!
Not
a problem! They’re just based on Woddeley’s Occult Sequence! Any fool could do it if they knew that!”

“
I
know it,” said Teatime, without taking his eyes off Susan.

“Ah…”

It was not technically audible, but nevertheless Susan could almost hear the wizard’s mind back-pedaling. Up ahead was the conclusion that Teatime had no time for people he didn’t need.

“…with…inter…est…ing subtleties,” he said slowly. “Yes. Very tricky. I’ll, er, just have a look at number six…”

“How do you know who I am?” said Susan.

“Oh,
easy
,” said Teatime. “
Twurp’s Peerage
. Family motto
Non temetis messor
. We have to read it, you know, in class. Hah, old Mericet calls it the Guide to the Turf. No one laughs except him, of course. Oh, yes, I know about you. Quite a lot. Your father was well known. Went a long way very fast. As for your grandfather…honestly, that motto. Is that good taste? Of course,
you
don’t need to fear him, do you? Or do you?”

Susan tried to fade. It didn’t work. She could feel herself staying embarrassingly solid.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I beg your pardon. My name is Teatime, Jonathan Teatime. At your service.”

Susan lined up the syllables in her head.

“You mean…like around four o’clock in the afternoon?” she said.

“No. I did say Teh-ah-tim-eh,” said Teatime. “I spoke very clearly. Please don’t try to break my concentration by annoying me. I only get annoyed at important things. How are you getting on, Mr. Sideney? If it’s just according to Woddeley’s Sequence, number six should be copper and blue-green light. Unless, of course, there are any
subtleties
…”

“Er, doing it right now, Mister Teatime—”

“Do you think your grandfather will try to rescue you? Do you think he will? But now I have his sword, you see. I wonder—”

There was another click.

“Sixth lock, Mister Teatime!”

“Really.”

“Er…don’t you want me to start on the seventh?”

“Oh, well, if you like. Pure white light will be the key,” said Teatime, still not looking away from Susan. “But it may not be all important now. Thank you, anyway. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Er—”

“Yes, you may go.”

Susan noticed that Sideney didn’t even bother to pick up his books and tools, but hurried down the stairs as if he expected to be called back and was trying to run faster than the sound.

“Is that all you’re here for?” she said. “A robbery?” He was dressed like an Assassin, after all, and there was always one way to annoy an Assassin. “Like a thief?”

Teatime danced excitedly. “A thief? Me? I’m not a thief, madam. But if I were, I would be the kind that steals fire from the gods.”

“We’ve already got fire.”

“There must be an upgrade by now. No,
these
gentlemen are thieves. Common robbers. Decent types, although you wouldn’t necessarily want to watch them eat, for example. That’s Medium Dave and exhibit B is Banjo. He can talk.”

Medium Dave nodded at Susan. She saw the look in his eyes. Maybe there was something she could use…

She’d need something. Even her hair was a mess. She couldn’t step behind time, she couldn’t fade into the background, and now even her hair had let her down.

She was normal. Here, she was what she’d always wanted to be.

Bloody, bloody damn.

Sideney prayed as he ran down the stairs. He didn’t believe in any gods, since most wizards seldom like to encourage them, but he prayed anyway the fervent prayers of an atheist who hopes to be wrong.

But no one called him back. And no one ran after him.

So, being of a serious turn of mind under his normal state of sub-critical fear, he slowed down in case he lost his footing.

It was then that he noticed that the steps underfoot weren’t the smooth whiteness they had been everywhere else but were very large, pitted flagstones. And the light had changed, and then they weren’t stairs any more and he staggered as he encountered flat ground where steps should have been.

His outstretched hand brushed against a crumbling brick.

And the ghosts of the past poured in, and he knew where he was. He was in the yard of Gammer Wimblestone’s dame school. His mother wanted him to learn his letters and be a wizard, but she also thought that long curls on a five-year-old boy looked very smart.

This was the hunting ground of Ronnie Jenks.

Adult memory and understanding said that Ronnie was just an unintelligent bullet-headed seven-year-old bully with muscles where his brain should have been. The eye of childhood, rather more accurately, dreaded him as a force like a personalized earthquake with one nostril bunged up with bogies, both knees scabbed, both fists balled and all five brain cells concentrated in a kind of cerebral grunt.

Oh, gods. There was the tree Ronnie used to hide behind. It looked as big and menacing as he remembered it.

But…if somehow he’d ended up back there, gods knew how, well, he might be a bit on the skinny side but he was a damn sight bigger than Ronnie Jenks now. Gods,
yes
, he’d kick those evil little trousers all the—

And then, as a shadow blotted out the sun, he realized he was wearing curls.

Teatime looked thoughtfully at the door.

“I suppose I should open it,” he said, “after coming all this way…”

“You’re controlling children by their teeth,” said Susan.

“It does sound odd, doesn’t it, when you put it like that,” said Teatime. “But that’s sympathetic magic for you. Is your grandfather going to try to rescue you, do you think? But no…I don’t think he can. Not here, I think. I don’t think that he can come here. So he sent you, did he?”

“Certainly not! He—” Susan stopped. Oh, he
had
, she told herself, feeling even more of a fool. He certainly had. He was learning about humans, all right. For a walking skeleton, he could be quite clever…

But…how clever was Teatime? Just a bit too excited at his cleverness to realize that if Death—She tried to stamp on the thought, just in case Teatime could read it in her eyes.

“I don’t think he’ll try,” she said. “He’s not as clever as you, Mister Teatime.”

“Teh-ah-tim-eh,” said Teatime, automatically. “That’s a shame.”

“Do you think you’re going to get away with this?”

“Oh dear. Do people really say that?” And suddenly Teatime was much closer. “I’ve
got
away with it. No more Hogfather. And that’s only the start. We’ll keep the teeth coming in, of course. The possibilities—”

There was a rumble like an avalanche, a long way off. The dormant Banjo had awakened, causing tremors on his lower slopes. His enormous hands, which had been resting on his knees, started to bunch.

“What’s dis?” he said.

Teatime stopped and, for a moment, looked puzzled.

“What’s this what?”

“You said no more Hogfather,” said Banjo. He stood up, like a mountain range rising gently in the squeeze between colliding continents. His hands still stayed in the vicinity of his knees.

Teatime stared at him and then glanced at Medium Dave.

“He does
know
what we’ve been doing, does he?” he said. “You did
tell
him?”

Medium Dave shrugged.

“Dere’s got to be a Hogfather,” said Banjo. “Dere’s always a Hogfather.”

Susan looked down. Gray blotches were speeding across the white marble. She was standing in a pool of gray. So was Banjo. And around Teatime the dots bounced and recoiled like wasps around a pot of jam.

Looking for something, she thought.

“You don’t believe in the Hogfather, do you?” said Teatime. “A big boy like you?”

“Yeah,” said Banjo. “So what’s dis ‘no more Hogfather’?”

Teatime pointed at Susan.

“
She
did it,” he said. “She killed him.”

The sheer playground effrontery of it shocked Susan.

“No I didn’t,” she said. “He—”

“Did!”

“Didn’t!”

“Did!”

Banjo’s big bald head turned toward her.

“What’s dis about the Hogfather?” he said.

“I don’t think he’s dead,” said Susan. “But Teatime
has
made him very ill—”

“Who cares?” said Teatime, dancing away. “When this is over, Banjo, you’ll have as many presents as you want. Trust me!”

“Dere’s got to be a Hogfather,” Banjo rumbled. “Else dere’s no Hogswatch.”

“It’s just another solar festival,” said Teatime. “It—”

Medium Dave stood up. He had his hand on his sword.

“We’re going, Teatime,” he said. “Me and Banjo are going. I don’t like any of this. I don’t mind robbing, I don’t mind thieving, but
this
isn’t
honest
. Banjo? You come with me right now!”