Terry Pratchett - Reaper Man

The guard captain looked the Archchancellor up and down with the expression of one to whom the word ‘civilian' is pronounced in the same general tones as ‘cockroach'.

"You the head chap?" he said.

The Archchancellor smoothed his robe and tried to straighten his beard.

"I am the Archchancellor of this university, yes," he said.

The guard captain looked curiously around the hall.

The students were all cowering down the far end. Splashed food covered most of the walls to ceiling height. Bits of furniture lay around the wreckage of the chandelier like trees around ground zero of a meteor strike.

Then he spoke with all the distaste of someone whose own further education had stopped at age nine, but who'd heard stories...

"Indulging in a bit of youthful high spirits, were we?" he said. "Throwin' a few bread rolls around, that kind of thing?"

"May I ask the meaning of this intrusion?" said Ridcully, coldly.

The guard captain leaned on his spear.

"Well," he said, "it's like this. The Patrician is barricaded in his bedroom on account of the furniture in the palace is zooming around the place like you wouldn't believe, the cooks won't even go back in the kitchen on account of what's happening in there..."

The wizards tried not to look at the spear's head. It was starting to unscrew itself.

"Anyway," the captain went on, oblivious to the faint metallic noises, "the Patrician calls through the keyhole, see, and says to me, "Douglas, I wonder if you wouldn't mind nipping down to the University and asking the head man if he would be so good as to step up here, if he's not too busy?" But I can always go back and tell him you're engagin' in a bit of student humour, if you like."

The spearhead was almost off the shaft.

"You listening to me?" said the captain suspiciously.

"Hmm? What?" said the Archchancellor, tearing his eyes away from the spinning metal. "Oh. Yes. Well, I can assure you, my man, that we are not the cause of -"

"Aargh!"

"Pardon?"

"The spearhead fell on my foot!"

"Did it?" said Ridcully, innocently.

The guard captain hopped up and down.

"Listen, are you bloody hocus-pocus merchants coming or not?" he said, between bounces. "The boss is not very happy. Not very happy at all."

A great formless cloud of Life drifted across the Discworld, like water building up behind a dam when the sluice gates are shut. With no Death to take the life force away when it was finished with, it had nowhere else to go.

Here and there it earthed itself in random poltergeist activity, like flickers of summer lightning before a big storm. Everything that exists, yearns to Live. That's what the cycle of life is all about. That's the engine that drives the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the very top - which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all that effort.

Everything that exists, yearns to live. Even things that are not alive. Things that have a kind of sub-life, a metaphorical life, an almost life. And now, in the same way that a sudden hot spell brings forth unnatural and exotic blooms...

There was something about the little globes. You had to pick them up and give them a shake, watch the pretty snowflakes swirl and glitter. And then take them home and put them on the mantelpiece.

And then forget about them.

The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one.

The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city.

The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else.

The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man.

The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly.

The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn't put a tax on knowledge.

The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged.

The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority.

The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long.

The wizards said, what about easy terms?

The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn't want to know about the hard terms.

The wizards said that there was a ruler back in, oh, it would be the Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked.

The Patrician said that he would. He truly would.

In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes, they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let's say two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally-acceptable purposes.

It was this dynamic interplay of power blocs that made Ankh-Morpork such an interesting, stimulating and above all bloody dangerous place in which to live.

Senior wizards did not often get out and about on what Welkome to Ankh-Morporke probably called the thronged highways and intimate byways of the city, but it was instantly obvious that something was wrong. It wasn't that cobblestones didn't sometimes fly through the air, but usually someone had thrown them. They didn't normally float by themselves.

A door burst open and a suit of clothes came out, a pair of shoes dancing along behind it, a hat floating a few inches above the empty collar. Close behind them came a skinny man endeavouring to do with a hastily-snatched flannel what normally it took a whole pair of trousers to achieve.

"You come back here!" he screamed, as they rounded the corner. "I still owe seven dollars for you!"

A second pair of trousers scurried out into the street and hurried after them.

The wizards clustered together like a frightened animal with five pointed heads and ten legs, wondering who was going to be the first to comment.

"That's bloody amazing!" said the Archchancellor.

"Hmm?" said the Dean, trying to imply that he saw more amazing things than that all the time, and that in drawing attention to mere clothing running around by itself the Archchancellor was letting down the whole tone of wizardry.

"Oh, come on. I don't know many tailors round here who'd throw in a second pair of pants for a seven dollar suit," said Ridcully.

"Oh, " said the Dean.

"If it comes past again, try to trip it up so's I can have a look at the label."

A bedsheet squeezed through an upper window and flapped away across the rooftops.

"Y'know," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, trying to keep his voice calm and relaxed, "I don't think this is magic. It doesn't feel like magic."

The Senior Wrangler fished in one of the deep pockets of his robe. There was a muffled clanking and rustling and the occasional croak. Eventually he produced a dark blue glass cube. It had a dial on the front.

"You carry one of them around in your pocket?" said the Dean. "A valuable instrument like that?"

"What the hell is it?" said Ridcully.

"Amazingly sensitive magical measuring device," said the Dean. "Measures the density of a magical field. A thaumometer."

The Senior Wrangler proudly held the cube aloft and pressed a button on the side. A needle on the dial wobbled around a little bit and stopped.

"See?" said the Senior Wrangler. "‘Just natural background, representing no hazard to the public."