Hogfather (40 page)
They positioned Foul Ole Ron in front of the back door and then knocked on it. When a waiter opened it Foul Ole Ron grinned at him, exposing what remained of his teeth and his famous halitosis, which was still all there.
“Millennium hand and shrimp!” he said, touching his forelock.
“Compliments of the season,” the Duck Man translated.
The man went to shut the door but Arnold Sideways was ready for him and had wedged his boot in the crack.
*
“We thought you might like us to come round at lunchtime and sing a merry Hogswatch glee for your customers,” said the Duck Man. Beside him, Coffin Henry began one of his volcanic bouts of coughing, which even
sounded
green. “No charge, of course.”
“It being Hogswatch,” said Arnold.
The beggars, despite being too disreputable even to belong to the Beggars’ Guild, lived quite well by their own low standards. This was generally by careful application of the Certainty Principle. People would give them all sorts of things if they were certain to go away.
A few minutes later they wandered off again, pushing a happy Arnold who was surrounded by hastily wrapped packages.
“People can be so kind,” said the Duck Man.
“Millennium hand and shrimp.”
Arnold started to investigate the charitable donations as they maneuvered his trolley through the slush and drifts.
“Tastes…sort of familiar,” he said.
“Familiar like what?”
“Like mud and old boots.”
“Garn! That’s
posh
grub, that is.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Arnold chewed for a while. “You don’t think we’ve become posh all of a sudden?”
“Dunno. You posh, Ron?”
“Buggrit.”
“Yep. Sounds posh to me.”
The snow began to settle gently on the River Ankh.
“Still…Happy New Year, Arnold.”
“Happy New Year, Duck Man. And your duck.”
“What duck?”
“Happy New Year, Henry.”
“Happy New Year, Ron.”
“Buggrem!”
“And god bless us, every one,” said Arnold Sideways.
The curtain of snow hid them from view.
“Which god?”
“Dunno. What’ve you got?”
“Duck Man?”
“Yes, Henry?”
“You know that stalled ox you mentioned?”
“Yes, Henry?”
“How come it’d stalled? Run out of grass, or something?”
“Ah…it was more a figure of speech, Henry.”
“Not an ox?”
“Not
exactly
. What I
meant
was—”
And then there was only the snow.
After a while, it began to melt in the sun.
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*
That is to say, those who deserve to shed blood. Or possibly not. You never quite know with some kids.
*
This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.
*
It’s a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labeled
backward
. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whiskey is topped up with eniru.
*
Peachy was not someone you generally asked questions of, except the sort that go like: “If-if-if-if I give you all my money could you possibly not break the other leg, thank you so much?”
*
Chickenwire had got his name from his own individual contribution to the science of this very specialized “concrete overshoe” form of waste disposal. An unfortunate drawback of the process was the tendency for bits of the client to eventually detach and float to the surface, causing much comment in the general population. Enough chicken wire, he’d pointed out, would solve that, while also allowing the ingress of crabs and fish going about their vital recycling activities.
†
Ankh-Morpork’s underworld, which was so big that the over-world floated around on top of it like a very small hen trying to mother a nest of ostrich chicks, already had Big Dave, Fat Dave, Mad Dave, Wee Davey, and Lanky Dai. Everyone had to find their niche.
*
This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, “Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?” When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, “We’re going to show you what we think of Mr. Clever Dick in these parts…”
*
He’d done his best. But black and purple and vomit yellow weren’t a good color combination for paper chains, and no Hogswatch fairy doll should be nailed up by its head.
*
Such as the Electric Drill Chuck Key Fairy.
*
Who was (according to Sideney’s mother) a bit of a catch since her father owned a half-share in an eel pie shop in Gleam Street, you must know her, got all her own teeth and a wooden leg you’d hardly notice, got a sister called Continence, lovely girl, why didn’t she invite her along for tea next time he was over, not that she hardly saw her son the big wizard at all these days, but you never knew and if the magic thing didn’t work out then a quarter-share in a thriving eel pie business was not to be sneezed at…
*
Not, that is, things that he wanted to do, or wanted done to him. Just things that he dreamed of, in the armpit of a bad night.
*
In fact, when she was eight she’d found a collection of animal skulls in an attic, relict of some former duke of an inquiring turn of mind. Her father had been a bit preoccupied with affairs of state and she’d made twenty-seven dollars before being found out. The hippopotamus molar had, with hindsight, been a mistake.
Skulls never frightened her, even then.
*
The CEH was always ready to fight for the rights of the differently tall, and was not put off by the fact that most pixies and gnomes weren’t the least interested in dressing up in little pointy hats with bells on when there were other far more interesting things to do. All that tinkly-wee stuff was for the old folks back home in the forest—when a tiny man hit Ankh-Morpork he preferred to get drunk, kick some serious ankle and search for tiny women. In fact the CEH now had to spend so much time explaining to people that they hadn’t got enough rights that they barely had any time left to fight for them.
*
Often they lived to a time scale to suit themselves. Many of the senior ones, of course, lived entirely in the past, but several were like the Professor of Anthropics, who had invented an entire temporal system based on the belief that all the other ones were a mere illusion. Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like “Cosmic” and “Chaos” in the titles.
†
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a “Fill in name here” nature, secretly believes to be true.
†
And they are correct. The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.
*
The ceremony still carries on, of course. If you left off traditions because you didn’t know why they started you’d be no better than a foreigner.
*
Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It’s a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago.
*†
Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity’s place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists.
*
It’s amazing how good governments are, given their track record in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters.
One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it.
It’s not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fact abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of other aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops.
The planet Earth is now banned to all alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one—who is big, hairy and has very large feet.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
*
“The red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day.” In fact the hen is not the bird traditionally associated with heralding a new sunrise, but Mrs. Huggs, while collecting many old folk songs for posterity, has taken care to rewrite them where necessary to avoid, as she put it, “offending those of a refined disposition with unwarranted coarseness.” Much to her surprise, people often couldn’t spot the unwarranted coarseness until it had been pointed out to them.
Sometimes a chicken is nothing but a bird.
*
He’d have to admit that the answer would be “five and a bit,” but at least he could come up with it.
*
It had been Ma Lilywhite’s dying wish, although she hadn’t known it at the time. Her last words to her son were “You try and get to the horses, I’ll try to hold ’em off on the stairs, and if anything happens to me, take care of the dummy!”
*
They generally know in time to have their best robe cleaned, do some serious damage to the wine cellar and have a really good last meal. It’s a nicer version of Death Row, with the bonus of no lawyers.
*
It was, in fact, a pleasant masculine scent. But only to female weasels.
*
Which had died in its sleep. Of natural causes. At a great age. After a long and happy life, insofar as a sheep can be happy. And would probably be quite pleased to know that it could help somebody as it passed away.
*
Arnold had no legs but, since there were many occasions when a boot was handy on the streets, Coffin Henry had affixed one to the end of a pole for him. He was deadly with it, and any muggers hard-pressed enough to try to rob the beggars often found themselves kicked on the top of the head by a man three feet high.