Reaper Man, Page 2

  Where was that damn tinder box? Fingers…you used to get proper fingers in the old days…

  Someone pulled the covers off a lantern. Someone else pushed a drink into his groping hand.

  “Surprise!”

  In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present. (There was, of course, a present before the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.)

  The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe give it all up and start again as a stand-up comedian on the scampi-in-a-casket circuit. It swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity.

  Death stalked past the clock and into the somber gloom of his study. Albert, his servant, was waiting for him with the towel and dusters.

  “Good morning, master.”

  Death sat down silently in his big chair. Albert draped the towel over the angular shoulders.

  “Another nice day,” he said, conversationally.

  Death said nothing.

  Albert flapped the polishing cloth and pulled back Death’s cowl.

  ALBERT.

  “Sir?”

  Death pulled out the tiny golden timer.

  DO YOU SEE THIS?

  “Yes, sir. Very nice. Never seen one like that before. Whose is it?”

  MINE.

  Albert’s eyes swiveled sideways. On one corner of Death’s desk was a large timer in a black frame. It contained no sand.

  “I thought that one was yours, sir?” he said.

  IT WAS. NOW THIS IS. A RETIREMENT PRESENT. FROM AZRAEL HIMSELF.

  Albert peered at the thing in Death’s hand.

  “But…the sand, sir. It’s pouring.”

  QUITE SO.

  “But that means…I mean…?”

  IT MEANS THAT ONE DAY THE SAND WILL ALL BE POURED, ALBERT.

  “I know that, sir, but…you…I thought Time was something that happened to other people, sir. Doesn’t it? Not to you, sir.” By the end of the sentence Albert’s voice was beseeching.

  Death pulled off the towel and stood up.

  COME WITH ME.

  “But you’re Death, master,” said Albert, running crab-legged after the tall figure as it led the way out into the hall and down the passage to the stable. “This isn’t some sort of joke, is it?” he added hopefully.

  I AM NOT KNOWN FOR MY SENSE OF FUN.

  “Well, of course not, no offense meant. But listen, you can’t die, because you’re Death, you’d have to happen to yourself, it’d be like that snake that eats its own tail—”

  NEVERTHELESS, I AM GOING TO DIE. THERE IS NO APPEAL.

  “But what will happen to me?” Albert said. Terror glittered on his words like flakes of metal on the edge of a knife.

  THERE WILL BE A NEW DEATH.

  Albert drew himself up.

  “I really don’t think I could serve a new master,” he said.

  THEN GO BACK INTO THE WORLD. I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY. YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD SERVANT, ALBERT.

  “But if I go back—”

  YES, said Death. YOU WILL DIE.

  In the warm, horsey gloom of the stable, Death’s pale horse looked up from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse’s name was Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed.

  Death took the saddle down from its hook and glanced at Albert, who was suffering a crisis of conscience.

  Thousands of years before, Albert had opted to serve Death rather than die. He wasn’t exactly immortal. Real time was forbidden in Death’s realm. There was only the ever-changing now, but it went on for a very long time. He had less than two months of real time left; he hoarded his days like bars of gold.

  “I, er…” he began. “That is—”

  YOU FEAR TO DIE?

  “It’s not that I don’t want…I mean, I’ve always…it’s just that life is a habit that’s hard to break…”

  Death watched him curiously, as one might watch a beetle that had landed on its back and couldn’t turn over.

  Finally Albert lapsed into silence.

  I UNDERSTAND, said Death, unhooking Binky’s bridle.

  “But you don’t seem worried! You’re really going to die?”

  YES. IT WILL BE A GREAT ADVENTURE.

  “It will? You’re not afraid?”

  I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO BE AFRAID.

  “I could show you, if you like,” Albert ventured.

  NO. I SHOULD LIKE TO LEARN BY MYSELF. I SHALL HAVE EXPERIENCES. AT LAST.

  “Master…if you go, will there be—?”

  A NEW DEATH WILL ARISE FROM THE MINDS OF THE LIVING, ALBERT.

  “Oh.” Albert looked relieved. “You don’t happen to know what he’ll be like, do you?”

  NO.

  “Perhaps I’d better, you know, clean the place up a bit, get an inventory prepared, that sort of thing?”

  GOOD IDEA, said Death, as kindly as possible. WHEN I SEE THE NEW DEATH, I SHALL HEARTILY RECOMMEND YOU.

  “Oh. You’ll see him, then?”

  OH, YES. AND I MUST LEAVE NOW.

  “What, so soon?”

  CERTAINLY. MUSTN’T WASTE TIME! Death adjusted the saddle, and then turned and held the tiny hourglass proudly in front of Albert’s hooked nose.

  SEE! I HAVE TIME. AT LAST, I HAVE TIME!

  Albert backed away nervously.

  “And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?” he said.

  Death mounted his horse.

  I AM GOING TO SPEND IT.

  The party was in full swing. The banner with the legend “Goodebye Windle 130 Gloriouse Years” was drooping a bit in the heat. Things were getting to the point where there was nothing to drink but the punch and nothing to eat but the strange yellow dip with highly suspicious tortillas and nobody minded. The wizards chatted with the forced jolliness of people who see one another all day and are now seeing one another all evening.

  In the middle of it all Windle Poons sat with a huge glass of rum and a funny hat on his head. He was almost in tears.

  “A genuine Going-Away party!” he kept muttering. “Haven’t had one of them since old ‘Scratcher’ Hocksole Went Away,” the capital letters fell into place easily, “back in, mm, the Year of the Intimidating, mm, Porpoise. Thought everyone had forgotten about ’em.”

  “The Librarian looked up the details for us,” said the Bursar, indicating a large orangutan who was trying to blow into a party squeaker. “He also made the banana dip. I hope someone eats it soon.”

  He leaned down.

  “Can I help you to some more potato salad?” he said, in the loud deliberate voice used for talking to imbeciles and old people.

  Windle cupped a trembling hand to his ear.

  “What? What?”

  “More! salad! Windle?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Another sausage, then?”

  “What?”

  “Sausage!”

  “They give me terrible gas all night,” said Windle. He considered this for a moment, and then took five.

  “Er,” shouted the Bursar, “do you happen to know what time—?”

  “Eh?”

  “What! Time?”

  “Half past nine,” said Windle, promptly if indistinctly.

  “Well, that’s nice,” said the Bursar. “It gives you the rest of the evening, er, free.”

  Windle rummaged in the dreadful recesses of his wheelchair, a graveyard for old cushions, dog-eared books and ancient, half-sucked sweets. He flourished a small green-covered book and pushed it into the Bursar’s hands.

  The Bursar turned it over. Scrawled on the cover were the words: Windle Poons Hys Dyary. Apiece of bacon rind marked today’s date.

  Under Thin
gs to Do, a crabbed hand had written: Die.

  The Bursar couldn’t stop himself from turning the page.

  Yes. Under tomorrow’s date, Things to Do: Get Born.

  His gaze slid sideways to a small table at the side of the room. Despite the fact that the room was quite crowded, there was an area of clear floor around the table, as if it had some kind of personal space that no one was about to invade.

  There had been special instructions in the Going Away ceremony concerning the table. It had to have a black cloth, with a few magic sigils embroidered on it. It had a plate, containing a selection of the better canapés. It had a glass of wine. After considerable discussion among the wizards, a funny paper hat had been added as well.

  They all had an expectant look.

  The Bursar took out his watch and flicked open the lid.

  It was one of the new-fangled pocket watches, with hands. They pointed to a quarter past nine. He shook it. A small hatch opened under the 12 and a very small demon poked its head out and said, “Knock it off, guv’nor, I’m pedalling as fast as I can.”

  He closed the watch again and looked around desperately. No one else seemed anxious to come too near Windle Poons. The Bursar felt it was up to him to make polite conversation. He surveyed possible topics. They all presented problems.

  Windle Poons helped him out.

  “I’m thinking of coming back as a woman,” he said conversationally.

  The Bursar opened and shut his mouth a few times.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Poons went on. “I think it might, mm, be jolly good fun.”

  The Bursar riffled desperately through his limited repertoire of small talk relating to women. He leaned down to Windle’s gnarled ear.

  “Isn’t there rather a lot of,” he struck out aimlessly, “washing things? And making beds and cookery and all that sort of thing?”

  “Not in the kind of, mm, life I have in mind,” said Windle firmly.

  The Bursar shut his mouth. The Archchancellor banged on a table with a spoon.

  “Brothers—” he began, when there was something approaching silence. This prompted a loud and ragged chorus of cheering.

  “—As you all know we are here tonight to mark the, ah, retirement”—nervous laughter—“of our old friend and colleague Windle Poons. You know, seeing old Windle sitting here tonight puts me in mind, as luck would have it, of the story of the cow with three wooden legs. It appears that there was this cow, and—”

  The Bursar let his mind wander. He knew the story. The Archchancellor always mucked up the punch line, and in any case he had other things on his mind.

  He kept looking back at the little table.

  The Bursar was a kindly if nervous soul, and quite enjoyed his job. Apart from anything else, no other wizard wanted it. Lots of wizards wanted to be Archchancellor, for example, or the head of one of the eight orders of magic, but practically no wizards wanted to spend lots of time in an office shuffling bits of paper and doing sums. All the paperwork of the University tended to accumulate in the Bursar’s office, which meant that he went to bed tired at nights but at least slept soundly and didn’t have to check very hard for unexpected scorpions in his nightshirt.

  Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognized way of getting advancement in the orders. However, the only person likely to want to kill the Bursar was someone else who derived a quiet pleasure from columns of numbers, all neatly arranged, and people like that don’t often go in for murder.*

  He recalled his childhood, long ago, in the Ramtop Mountains. He and his sister used to leave a glass of wine and a cake out every Hogswatch-night for the Hogfather. Things had been different, then. He’d been a lot younger and hadn’t known much and had probably been a lot happier.

  For example, he hadn’t known that he might one day be a wizard and join other wizards in leaving a glass of wine and a cake and a rather suspect chicken vol-au-vent and a paper party hat for…

  …someone else.

  There’d been Hogswatch parties, too, when he was a little boy. They’d always follow a certain pattern. Just when all the children were nearly sick with excitement, one of the grown-ups would say, archly, “I think we’re going to have a special visitor!” and, amazingly on cue, there’d be a suspicious ringing of hog bells outside the window and in would come…

  …in would come…

  The Bursar shook his head. Someone’s grandad in false whiskers, of course. Some jolly old boy with a sack of toys, stamping the snow off his boots. Someone who gave you something.

  Whereas tonight…

  Of course, old Windle probably felt different about it. After one hundred and thirty years, death probably had a certain attraction. You probably became quite interested in finding out what happened next.

  The Archchancellor’s convoluted anecdote wound jerkily to its close. The assembled wizards laughed dutifully, and then tried to work out the joke.

  The Bursar looked surreptitiously at his watch. It was now twenty minutes past nine.

  Windle Poons made a speech. It was long and rambling and disjointed and went on about the good old days and he seemed to think that most of the people around him were people who had been, in fact, dead for about fifty years, but that didn’t matter because you got into the habit of not listening to old Windle.

  The Bursar couldn’t tear his eyes away from his watch. From inside came the squeak of the treadle as the demon patiently pedalled his way toward infinity.

  Twenty-five minutes past the hour.

  The Bursar wondered how it was supposed to happen. Did you hear—I think we’re going to have a very special visitor—hoofbeats outside?

  Did the door actually open or did He come through it? Silly question. He was renowned for His ability to get into sealed places—especially into sealed places, if you thought about it logically. Seal yourself in anywhere and it was only a matter of time.

  The Bursar hoped He’d use the door properly. His nerves were twanging as it was.

  The conversational level was dropping. Quite a few other wizards, the Bursar noticed, were glancing at the door.

  Windle was at the center of a very tactfully widening circle. No one was actually avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away.

  Wizards can see Death. And when a wizard dies, Death arrives in person to usher him into the Beyond. The Bursar wondered why this was considered a plus—

  “Don’t know what you’re all looking at,” said Windle, cheerfully.

  The Bursar opened his watch.

  The hatch under the 12 snapped up.

  “Can you knock it off with all this shaking around?” squeaked the demon. “I keeps on losing count.”

  “Sorry,” the Bursar hissed. It was nine twenty-nine.

  The Archchancellor stepped forward.

  “’Bye, then, Windle,” he said, shaking the old man’s parchment-like hand. “The old place won’t seem the same without you.”

  “Don’t know how we’ll manage,” said the Bursar, thankfully.

  “Good luck in the next life,” said the Dean. “Drop in if you’re ever passing and happen to, you know, remember who you’ve been.”

  “Don’t be a stranger, you hear?” said the Archchancellor.

  Windle Poons nodded amiably. He hadn’t heard what they were saying. He nodded on general principles.

  The wizards, as one man, faced the door.

  The hatch under the 12 snapped up again.

  “Bing bing bong bing,” said the demon. “Bingely-bingely bong bing bing.”

  “What?” said the Bursar, jolted.

  “Half past nine,” said the demon.

  The wizards turned to Windle Poons. They looked faintly accusing.

  “What’re you all looking at?” he said.

  The seconds hand on the watch squeaked onward.

  “How are you feeling?” said the Dean loudly.

  “Never felt better,” said Windle. “Is th
ere anymore of that, mm, rum left?”

  The assembled wizards watched him pour a generous measure into his beaker.

  “You want to go easy on that stuff,” said the Dean nervously.

  “Good health!” said Windle Poons.

  The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the table.

  “Mr. Poons,” he said, “are you quite sure?”

  Windle had gone off at a tangent. “Any more of these toturerillas? Not that I call it proper food,” he said, “dippin’ bits of hard bikky in sludge, what’s so special about that? What I could do with right now is one of Mr. Dibbler’s famous meat pies—”

  And then he died.

  The Archchancellor glanced at his fellow wizards, and then tiptoed across to the wheelchair and lifted a blue-veined wrist to check the pulse. He shook his head.

  “That’s the way I want to go,” said the Dean.

  “What, muttering about meat pies?” said the Bursar.

  “No. Late.”

  “Hold on. Hold on,” said the Archchancellor. “This isn’t right, you know. According to tradition, Death himself turns up for the death of a wiz—”

  “Perhaps He was busy,” said the Bursar hurriedly.

  “That’s right,” said the Dean. “Bit of a serious flu epidemic over Quirm way, I’m told.”

  “Quite a storm last night, too. Lots of shipwrecks, I daresay,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  “And of course it’s springtime, when you get a great many avalanches in the mountains.”

  “And plagues.”

  The Archchancellor stroked his beard thoughtfully.

  “Hmmm,” he said.

  Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through Time backward. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way. Everything alive is going through life back to front. And this is a very interesting idea, considering it was invented by a race who spend most of their time hitting one another on the head with rocks.

  Whichever way around it is, Time is something that living creatures possess.

  Death galloped down through towering black clouds.

  And now he had Time, too.

  The time of his life.

  Windle Poons peered into the darkness.

  “Hallo?” he said. “Hallo. Anyone there? What ho?”