Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Trev felt the micromail sing as the thousands of links moved and just as quickly settled down again. It was as if a little breeze had blown up his pants. Apart from that, he hadn’t felt a thing.

Andy, on the other hand, had. He was lying on the ground, bent double, making a sort of whistling noise through his teeth.

Someone slapped Trev on the back. It was Pepe.

‘You did put my pants on, didn’t you? Well, obviously not my pants. You’d have to be suicidal to want to put my pants on. Anyway, I’ve come up with a name for the stuff: I’m going to call it Retribushium. Can’t ever say it will be an end to war, ’cos I can’t imagine anything putting an end to war, but it sends the force back the way it came. Didn’t chafe either, did it?’

‘No,’ said Trev, amazed.

‘Well, it did for him! My word, though, he’s a game one. That reminds me, I’ll need a picture of you in them.’

Andy was rising slowly, elevating himself to the vertical almost by willpower alone. Pepe grinned, and somehow it seemed obvious to Trev that anyone who was going to get up and try any threats with Pepe grinning at him was more than suicidal.

‘Got a knife, have you, you little squirt?’ said Andy.

‘No, Andy,’ said Nutt behind him. ‘No more. The game is over. Fortune has favoured Unseen Academicals and I believe the traditional ending is to exchange shirts in an atmosphere of good fellowship.’

‘But not pants,’ said Pepe under his breath.

‘What do you know about that sort of thing?’ growled Andy. ‘You’re a bloody orc. I know all about you people. You can tear arms and legs off. You’re black magic. I’m not scared of you.’ He came at Nutt with commendable speed for a man in such pain.

Nutt dodged. ‘I believe there is a peaceful solution to the obvious enmity between us.’

‘You what?!’

Pepe and some of the footballers were closing in. Andy had not been making friends. Nutt waved them away.

‘I’m sure I could help you, Andy. Yes, you are right, I am an orc, but doesn’t an orc have eyes? Doesn’t an orc have ears? Doesn’t an orc have arms and legs?’

‘Yeah, at the moment,’ said Andy, and leaped.

What happened next happened so fast that Trev didn’t see the middle of it. It started with Andy jumping and finished with him sitting on the ground with Nutt’s hands clamped around his head, claws out. ‘Let me see now,’ Nutt mused as the man struggled in vain. ‘Twisting the skull with enough force to snap the spine and spinal column should not present much difficulty since it is a non-rotating joint. And, of course, the ear holes and eye sockets allow for extra grip in the manner of a bowling ball,’ he added happily.

There was a horrified hush as he continued. ‘Using the unit of measurement of force invented by Sir Rosewood Bunn, I should think that a mere 250 Bunns should do the trick. But, of course, and possibly surprisingly, it is the tearing of the skin, tendons and muscles that would present me with some difficulty. You are a young man and the tensile strength would be quite high. I imagine the skin alone would require a force of about a thousand Bunns.’

Andy yelped as his head was gently twisted.

‘Oh, I say! Look here now!’ said Ridcully. ‘A joke is a joke and all that, but… ’

‘From then on it gets rather messy,’ said Nutt. ‘Muscle would tear off the bones comparatively easily.’

Andy gave another strangled yelp.

‘But taking it all in all, I would think a force of between three to five Kilobunns should do the trick.’ He paused. ‘Just my little joke, Andy. I know you like a laugh. I would also, I believe, be quite capable of putting one hand down your throat and pulling out your stomach.’

‘Go ahead,’ croaked Andy.

And around the arena of the Hippo, the beast smelled blood. After all, it wasn’t just horse racing that had taken place in the Hippo over the centuries. The comparatively small amount of blood that had been shed today was nothing compared with the oceans of the centuries gone by, but the beast knew blood when it smelled it. The cheering and the chanting now picked up, and the words grew louder and louder as people rose to their feet: Orc! Orc! Orc!

Nutt stood impassively and then turned to the former Dean. ‘Could I please ask everyone else to leave? This may become messy.’

‘Oh, come on!’ said Trev. ‘No way.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Nutt, ‘maybe just the ladies?’

‘Not likely,’ said Glenda.

‘In that case, would you please be so kind as to lend me your megaphone, referee, and I would be grateful if you would instruct some of the stronger players on the field to restrain Mister Shank who is, I believe, sadly not in his right mind.’

Wordlessly it was handed over. Nutt took it as the storm of Orc! Orc! grew louder, walked a little way from the rest of the group and stood there impassively with his arms folded until the taunting stopped out of sheer lack of momentum. With every eye watching him, he raised the megaphone to his lips and said, ‘Gentlemen. Yes, indeed, I am an orc and will always be one. And may I say that it’s been a privilege to play here today and to see you all. But I do gather now that being an orc in this city may be seen as something of a problem to some of you.’ He paused. ‘So I would ask you to excuse me if I request that this matter be sorted out between us now.’

There was laughter and some jeers from various parts of the ground, but also, it seemed to Glenda, the beast was calling upon itself for silence. In that pin-drop silence the thud of the megaphone hitting the ground could be heard in every corner. Then Nutt rolled up his sleeves and lowered his voice so that people had to strain to listen.

He said, ‘Come on if you think you’re hard enough.’

First there was shock and then the silence of disbelief and the whisper of every head turning to every other head and saying, ‘Did he really say that?’ and then someone high in the stands started to clap, at first slowly and then at an accelerating tempo, as it reached the crowd’s tipping point, when not clapping would be unthinkable. Ceasing to clap was also unthinkable and within a minute the applause was a storm.

Nutt turned back to the rest of the team with tears streaming down his face. ‘Do I have worth?’ he said to Glenda.

She ran towards him and hugged him. ‘You always did.’

‘Then when the match is over there are things we have to do.’

‘But it’s been over for ages,’ said Glenda.

‘No, it’s not over until the referee blows his whistle. Everyone knows that.’

‘By Io he’s right,’ said Ridcully. ‘Go on, Dean. Give it the works!’

The Archchancellor of Brazeneck University felt gracious enough to let that one pass. He put the gigantic whistle to his lips, filled his lungs with air and sent the pea rattling. Despite everything, the shade of Evans the Striped had the last word: ‘NO BOY IS TO FIDDLE ABOUT IN THE SHOWERS!’

As the crowd streamed down from the stands, trampling the now sacred turf, Ridcully tapped a gloomy Mr Hoggett on the shoulder and said, ‘It would be my privilege to change shirts with you, sir.’ He dropped his hat on the ground, pulled off his shirt and revealed a chest so hairy that it looked like two sleeping lions. The United shirt he received in return was somewhat of a tight fit, but that was unimportant because, as Andy had predicted, the Unseen Academicals were indeed picked up by the yelling crowd (except for Mrs Whitlow who fought back) and carried in glory through the city. It was a triumph. Whether you won or lost, it was still a triumph [25] It is traditional on these occasions for the conquering heroes to spray bottles of champagne on the crowd. This did not happen. If a wizard succeeds in getting the cork out of a champagne bottle, he certainly does not intend to pour it away. .