Terry Pratchett: Unseen Academicals

Ponder was about to put the Book of Traditions away when the heavy pages flopped over.

‘That’s odd.’

‘Oh, those old book bindings get very stiff,’ said Ridcully. ‘They have a life of their own, sometimes.’

‘Has anyone heard of Professor H. F. Pullunder, or Doctor Erratamus?’

The faculty stopped watching the door and looked at one another.

‘Ring a bell, anyone?’ said Ridcully.

‘Not a tinkle,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, cheerfully.

The Archchancellor turned to his left. ‘What about you, Dean? You know all the old—’

Ponder groaned. The rest of the wizards shut their eyes and braced themselves. This might be bad.

Ridcully stared down at two empty chairs, with the imprint of a buttock in each one. One or two of the faculty pulled their hats down over their faces. It had been two weeks now, and it had not got any better.

He took a deep breath and roared: ‘Traitor!’–which was a terrible thing to say to two dimples in leather.

The Chair of Indefinite Studies gave Ponder Stibbons a nudge, indicating that he was the chosen sacrifice for today, again.

Again.

‘Just for a handful of silver he left us!’ said Ridcully, to the universe in general.

Ponder cleared his throat. He’d really hoped the Megapode hunt would take the Archchancellor’s mind off the subject, but Ridcully’s mind kept on swinging back to the absent Dean the way a tongue plunges back to the site of a missing tooth.

‘Er, in point of fact, I believe his remuneration is at least—’ he began, but in Ridcully’s current mood no answer would be the right one.

‘Remuneration? Since when did a wizard work for wages? We are pure academics, Mister Stibbons! We do not care for mere money!’

Unfortunately, Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mental confusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an angry Archchancellor, were, to use the proper academic term, unhelpful. And he neglected to think strategically, always a mistake when talking to fellow academics, and as a result made the mistake of employing, as at this point, common sense.

‘That’s because we never actually pay for anything very much,’ he said, ‘and if anyone needs any petty cash they just help themselves from the big jar—’

‘We are part of the very fabric of the university, Mister Stibbons! We take only what we require! We do not seek wealth! And most certainly we do not accept a “post of vital importance which includes an attractive package of remuneration”, whatever the hells that means, “and other benefits including a generous pension”! A pension, mark you! When ever has a wizard retired?’

‘Well. Doctor Earwig—’ Ponder began, unable to stop himself.

‘He left to get married!’ snapped Ridcully. ‘That’s not retirin’, that’s the same as dyin’.’

‘What about Doctor Housemartin?’ Ponder went on.

The Lecturer in Recent Runes kicked him on the ankle, but Ponder merely said, ‘Ouch!’ and continued. ‘He left with a bad case of work-related frogs, sir!’

‘If you can’t stand the heat, get off the pot,’ muttered Ridcully. Things were subsiding a bit now, and the pointy hats were tentatively raised. The Archchancellor’s little moments only lasted a few minutes. This would have been more comforting were it not for the fact that at approximately five-minute intervals something suddenly reminded him of what he considered to be the Dean’s totally treasonable activity, to wit, applying for and getting a job at another university via a common advertisement in a newspaper. That was not how a prince of magic behaved. He didn’t sit in front of a panel of drapers, greengrocers and bootmakers (wonderful people though they may be, salt of the earth, no doubt, but even so… ) to be judged and assessed like some champion terrier (had his teeth counted, no doubt!). He’d let down the entire brotherhood of wizardry, that’s what he’d done—

There was a squeaking of wheels out in the corridor, and every wizard stiffened in anticipation. The door swung open and the first overloaded trolley was pushed in.

There was a series of sighs as every eye focused on the maid who was pushing it, and then some rather louder sighs when they realized that she was not, as it were, the intended.

She wasn’t ugly. She might be called homely, perhaps, but it was quite a nice home, clean and decent and with roses round the door and a welcome on the mat and an apple pie in the oven. But the thoughts of the wizards were, astonishingly, not on food at this point, although some of them were still a bit hazy as to why not.

She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her [4] The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to ‘she was not she’, which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink. .

The faculty was crestfallen, but it brightened up considerably as the caravan of trolleys wound its way into the room. There was nothing like a 3 a.m. snack to raise the spirits, everyone knew that.

Well, Ponder thought, at least we’ve got through the evening without anything breaking. Better than Tuesday, at least.

It is a well-known fact in any organization that, if you want a job done, you should give it to someone who is already very busy. It has been the cause of a number of homicides, and in one case the death of a senior director from having his head shut repeatedly in quite a small filing cabinet.

In UU, Ponder Stibbons was that busy man. He had come to enjoy it. For one thing, most of the jobs he was asked to do did not need doing, and most of the senior wizards did not care if they were not done, provided they were not not done by themselves. Besides, Ponder was very good at thinking up efficient little systems to save time, and was, in particular, very proud of his system for writing the minutes of meetings, which he had devised with the help of Hex, the university’s increasingly useful thinking engine. A detailed analysis of past minutes, coupled with Hex’s enormous predictive abilities, meant that for a simple range of easily accessible givens, such as the agenda (which Ponder controlled in any case), the committee members, the time since breakfast, the time to dinner, and so on, in most cases the minutes could be written beforehand.

All in all, he considered that he was doing his bit in maintaining UU in its self-chosen course of amiable, dynamic stagnation. It was always a rewarding effort, knowing the alternative, to keep things that way.

But a page that turns itself was, to Ponder, an anomaly. Now, while the sound of the pre-breakfast supper grew around him, he smoothed out the page and read, carefully.

Glenda would have cheerfully broken a plate over Juliet’s sweet, empty head when the girl finally turned up in the Night Kitchen. At least, she would cheerfully have thought about it, in quite a deliberate way, but there was no point in losing her temper, because its target was not really much good at noticing what other people were thinking. There wasn’t a nasty bone in Juliet’s body, it’s just that she had a great deal of trouble homing in on the idea that someone was trying to be unpleasant to her.

So Glenda made do with ‘Where have you been? I told Mrs Whitlow you’d gone home ill. Your dad’ll be worried sick! And it looks bad to the other girls.’

Juliet slumped into a chair, with a movement so graceful that it seemed to sing.

‘Went to the football, didn’t I. You know, we were playing those buggers in Dimwell.’

‘Until three in the morning?’

‘That’s the rules, innit? Play until full time, first dead man or first score.’