Hogfather (Discworld #20)

Hogfather (Discworld #20) Page 41

The little shopkeeper stopped in midremonstrate and started up in mid-greed. There were other toys, he told himself quickly. And this customer, he thought with considerable prescience, looked like someone who did not take no for an answer and seldom even bothered to ask the question. Lord Selachii would be angry, but Lord Selachii wasn't here. The stranger, on the other hand, was here. Incredibly here. 'Er... well, in the circumstances... er... shall I wrap it up for you?' NO. I WILL TAKE IT AS IT IS. THANK YOU. I WILL LEAVE VIA THE BACK WAY, IF IT'S ALL THE SAME TO YOU. 'Er... how did you get in?' said the shopkeeper, pulling the horse out of the window. THROUGH THE WALL. SO MUCH MORE CONVENIENT THAN CHIMNEYS, DON'T YOU THINK? The apparition dropped a small clinking bag on the counter and lifted the horse easily. The shopkeeper wasn't in a position to hold on to anything. Even yesterday's dinner was threatening to leave him. The figure looked at the other shelves. YOU MAKE GOOD TOYS. 'Er... thank you.' INCIDENTALLY, said the customer, as he left, THERE IS A SMALL BOY OUT THERE WITH HIS NOSE FROZEN TO THE WINDOW. SOME WARM WATER SHOULD DO THE TRICK. Death walked out to where Binky was waiting in the snow and tied the toy horse behind the saddle. ALBERT WILL BE VERY PLEASED. I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE HIS FACE. HO. HO. HO. As the light of Hogswatch slid down the towers of Unseen University, the Librarian slipped into the Great Hall with some sheet music clenched firmly in his feet. As the light of Hogswatch lit the towers of Unseen University, the Archchancellor sat down with a sigh in his study and pulled off his boots. It had been a damn long night, no doubt about it. Lots of strange things. First time he'd ever seen the Senior Wrangler burst into tears, for one thing. Ridcully glanced at the door to the new bathroom. Well, he'd sorted out the teething troubles, and a nice warm shower would be very refreshing. And then he could go along to the organ recital all nice and clean. He removed his hat, and someone fell out of it with a tinkling sound. A small gnome rolled across the floor. 'Oh, another one. I thought we'd got rid of you fellows,' said Ridcully. 'And what are you?' The gnome looked at him nervously. 'Er... you know whenever there was another magical appearance you heard the sound of, er, bells?' it said. Its expression suggested it was owning up to something it just knew was going to get it a smack. .'Yes?' The gnome held up some rather small handbells and waved them nervously. They went glingleglingleglingle, in a very sad way. 'Good, eh? That was me. Im the Glingleglingleglingle Fairy.' `Get out.'

'I also do sparkly fairy dust effects that go twing too, if you like... `Go away!'

'How about “The Bells of St Ungulant's”?' said the gnome desperately. 'Very seasonal. Very nice. Why not join in? It goes: ''The bells [clong] of St [clang]... " '

Ridcully scored a direct hit with the rubber duck, and the gnome escaped through the bath overflow. Cursing and spontaneous handbell ringing echoed away down the pipes. In perfect peace at last, the Archchancellor pulled off his robe. The organ's storage tanks were wheezing at the rivets by the time the Librarian had finished pumping. Satisfied, he knuckled his way up to the seat and paused to survey, with great satisfaction, the keyboards in front of him. Bloody Stupid Johnson's approach to music was similar to his approach in every field that was caressed by his genius in the same way that a potato field is touched by a late frost. Make it loud, he said. Make it wide. Make it allembracing. And thus the Great Organ of Unseen University was the only one in the world where you could play an entire symphony scored for thunderstorm and squashed toad noises. Warm water cascaded off Mustrum Ridcully's pointy bathing cap. Mr Johnson had, surely not on purpose, designed a perfect bathroom - at least, perfect for singing in. Echoes and resonating pipeways smoothed out all those little imperfections and gave even the weediest singer a rolling, dark brown voice. And so Ridcully sang. ' -as I walked out one dadadadada for to something or other and to take the dadada, I did espy a fair pretty may-ay-den I think it was, and I---' The organ pipes hummed with pent-up energy. The Librarian cracked his knuckles. This took some time. Then he pulled the pressure release valve. The hum became an urgent thrumming. Very carefully, he let in the clutch. Ridcully stopped singing as the tones of the organ came through the wall. Bathtime music, eh? he thought. Just the job. It was a shame it was muffled by all the bathroom fixtures, though. It was at this point he espied a small lever marked `Musical pipes. Ridcully, never being a man to wonder what any kind of switch did when it was so much easier and quicker to find out by pulling it, did so. But instead of the music he was expecting he was rewarded simply with several large panels sliding silently aside, revealing row upon row of brass nozzles. The Librarian was lost now, dreaming on the wings of music. His hands and feet danced over the keyboards, picking their way towards the crescendo which ended the first movement of Bubble's Catastrophe Suite. One foot kicked the 'Afterburner' lever and the other spun the valve of the nitrous oxide cylinder. Ridcully tapped the nozzles. Nothing happened. He looked at the controls again, and realized that he'd never pulled the little brass lever marked 'Organ Interlock`. He did so. This did not cause a torrent of pleasant bathtime accompaniment, however. There was merely a thud and a distant gurgling which grew in volume. He gave up, and went back to soaping his chest. '----running of the deer, the playing of... huh? What--' Later that day he had the bathroom nailed up again and a notice placed on the door, on which was written: 'Not to be used in any circumstances. This is IMPORTANT.' However, when Modo nailed the door up he didn't hammer the nails in all the way but left just a bit sticking up so that his pliers would grip later on, when he was told to remove them. He never presumed and he never complained, he just had a good working knowledge of the wizardly mind. They never did find the soap. Ponder and his fellow students watched Hex carefully. 'It can't just, you know, stop,' said Adrian 'Mad Drongo' Tumipseed.

'The ants are just standing still,' said Ponder. He sighed. 'All right, put the wretched thing back.' Adrian carefully replaced the small fluffy teddy bear above Hex's keyboard. Things immediately began to whirr. The ants started to trot again. The mouse squeaked. They'd tried this three times. Ponder looked again at the single sentence Hex had written. +++ Mine! Waaaah +++ 'I don't actually think,' he said, gloomily, 'that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don't think I want to live in that kind of world.'

'Er,' said Mad Drongo, 'you could always, you know, sort of say it needs to work with the FTB enabled... 'You think that's better?' said Ponder, reluctantly. It wasn't as if it was even a very realistic interpretation of a bear. 'You mean, better than “fluffy teddy bear”?' Ponder nodded. 'It's better,' he said. Of all the presents he got from the Hogfather, Gawain told Susan, the best of all was the marble. And she'd said, what marble? And he'd said, the glass marble I found in the fireplace. It wins all the games. It seems to move in a different way. The beggars walked their erratic and occasionally backward walk along the city streets, while fresh morning snow began to fall. Occasionally one of them belched happily. They all wore paper hats, except for Foul Ole Ron, who'd eaten his. A tin can was passed from hand to hand. It contained a mixture of fine wines and spirits and something in a can that Arnold Sideways ha stolen from behind a paint factory in Phedre Road. 'The goose was good,' said the Duck Man, picking his teeth. 'I'm surprised you et it, what with that duck on your head,' said Coffin Henry, picking his nose. 'What duck?' said the Duck Man. 'What were that greasy stuff?' said Arnold Sideways. 'That, my dear fellow, was pâté de foie gras. All the way from Genua, I'll wager. And very good, too.'

'Dun' arf make you fart, don't it?'

'Ah, the world of haute cuisine,' said the Duck Man happily. They reached, by fits and starts, the back door of their favourite restaurant. The Duck Man looked at it dreamily, eyes filmy with recollection. 'I used to dine here almost every night,' he said. 'Why'd you stop?' said Coffin Henry. 'I... I don't really know,' said the Duck Man. 'It's... rather a blur, I'm afraid. Back in the days when I... think I was someone else. But still,' he said, patting Arnold's head, 'as they say, “Better a meal of old boots where friendship is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” Forward, please, Ron.' 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. 25 '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 manoeuvred his trolley through the slush and drifts. 'Tastes... sort of familiar,' he said. 'Familiar like what?'

'Like mud and old boots.'

'Cam! 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.

THE END