Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time (8 page)

 
 
  
If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had
doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to
inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked,
punched, bit and spat. His artwork had even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could
generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special
needs. In the view of the staff room, these began with an exorcism.
Madam Frout had stooped to listening at the keyhole. She had heard Jason's first tantrum of
the day, and then silence. She couldn't quite make out what Miss Susan said next.
When she found an excuse to venture into the classroom half an hour later, Jason was helping
two little girls to make a cardboard rabbit.
Later his parents said they were amazed at the change, although apparently now he would
only go to sleep with the light on.
Madam Frout tried to question her newest teacher. After all, glowing references were all very
well, but she was an employee, after all. The trouble was, Susan had a way of saying things to
her, Madam Frout had found, so that she went away feeling quite satisfied and only realized
that she hadn't really had a proper answer at all when she was back in her office, by which
time it was always too late.
And it continued to be too late because suddenly the school had a waiting list. Parents were
fighting to get their children enrolled in Miss Susan's class. As for some of the stories they
brought home... well, everyone knew children had such vivid imaginations, didn't they? Even
so, there was this essay by Richenda Higgs. Madam Frout fumbled for her glasses, which she
was too vain to wear all the time and kept on a string around her neck, and looked at it again.
In its entirety, it read:
A man with all bones came to talk to us he was not scarey at all, he had a big white hors. We
pared the hors. He had a sighyve. He told us interesting things and to be careful when
crosing the road.
Madam Frout handed the paper across the desk to Miss
Susan, who looked at it gravely. She pulled out a red pencil, made a few little alterations,
then handed it back.
'Well?' said Madam Frout.
'Yes, she's not very good at punctuation, I'm afraid. A good attempt at “scythe”, though.'
'Who... What's this about a big white horse in the classroom?' Madam Frout managed.
Miss Susan looked at her pityingly and said, 'Madam, who could possibly bring a horse into a
classroom? We're up two flights of stairs here.'
Madam Frout was not going to be deterred this time. She held up another short essay.

 
 
  
Today we were talked at by Mr Slumph who he is a bogeyman but he is nice now. He tole us
what to do abot the other kind. You can put the blanket ove your head but it is bettr if you put
it ove the bogeymans head then he think he do not exist and he is vanishs. He tole us lots of
stores abot people he jump out on and he said sins Miss is our teachr he think no bogeymen
will be in our houses bcos one thing a bogey dos not like is Miss finding him.
'Bogeymen, Susan?' said Madam Frout.
'What imaginations children have,' said Miss Susan, with a straight face.
'Are you introducing young children to the occult?' said Madam Frout suspiciously. This sort
of thing caused a lot of trouble with parents, she was well aware.
'Oh, yes.'
'What? Why?'
'So that it doesn't come as a shock,' said Miss Susan calmly.
'But Mrs Robertson told me that her Emma was going round the house looking for monsters
in the cupboards! And up until now she's always been afraid of them!'
'Did she have a stick?' said Susan.
'She had her father's sword!'
'Good for her.'
'Look, Susan... I think I see what you're trying to do,' said Madam Frout, who didn't really,
'but parents do not understand this sort of thing.'
'Yes,' said Miss Susan. 'Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam
before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.'
'Nevertheless, we must respect their views,' said Madam Frout, but rather weakly because
occasionally she'd thought the same thing. There had been the matter of Parents' Evening.
Madam had been too tense to pay much attention to what her newest teacher was doing. All
she'd been aware of was Miss Susan sitting and talking quietly to the couples, right up to the
point where Jason's mother had picked up her chair and chased Jason's father out of the room.
Next day a huge bunch of flowers had arrived for Susan from Jason's mother, and an even
bigger bunch from Jason's father.
Quite a few other couples had also come away from Miss Susan's desk looking worried or
harassed. Certainly Madam Frout, when the time came for next term's fees to be paid, had
never known people cough up so readily.
And there it was again. Madam Frout the headmistress, who had to worry about reputations
and costs and fees, just occasionally heard the distant voice of Miss Frout who had been quite
a good if rather shy teacher, and it was whistling and cheering Susan on.

 
 
  
Susan looked concerned. 'You are not satisfied with my work, madam?'
Madam Frout was stuck. No, she wasn't satisfied, but for all the wrong reasons. And it was
dawning on her as this interview progressed that she didn't dare sack Miss Susan or, worse,
let her leave of her own accord. If she set up a school and news got round, the Learning
Through Play School would simply haemorrhage pupils and, importantly, fees.
'Well, of course... no, not... in many ways...' she began, and became aware that Miss Susan
was staring past her.
There was... Madam Frout groped for her glasses, and found their string had got tangled with
the buttons of her blouse. She peered at the mantelpiece and tried to make sense of the blur.
'Why, it looks like a... a white rat, in a little black robe,' she said. 'And walking on its hind
legs, too! Can you see it?'
'I can't imagine how a rat could wear a robe,' said Miss Susan. Then she sighed, and snapped
her fingers. The finger-snapping wasn't essential, but time stopped.
At least, it stopped for everyone but Miss Susan.
And for the rat on the mantelpiece.
Which was in fact the skeleton of a rat, although this was not preventing it from trying to
steal Madam Frout's jar of boiled sweets for Good Children.
Susan strode over and grasped the collar of the tiny robe.
SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats.
'I thought it was you!' snapped Susan. 'How dare you come here again! I thought you'd got
the message the other day. And don't think I didn't see you when you turned up to collect
Henry the Hamster last month! Do you know how hard it is to teach geography when you can
see someone kicking the poo out of a treadmill?'
The rat sniggered: SNH. SNH. SNH.
'And you're eating a sweet! Put it in the bin right now!'
Susan dropped the rat onto the desk in front of the temporally frozen Madam Frout, and
paused.
She'd always tried to be good about this sort of thing, but sometimes you just had to
acknowledge who you were. So she pulled open the bottom drawer to check the level in the
bottle that was Madam's shield and comforter in the wonderful world that was education, and
was pleased to see that the old girl was going a bit easier on the stuff these days. Most people
have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those
circumstances there are far worse things than gin.

 
 
  
She also spent a little while going through Madam's private papers, and this has to be said
about Susan: it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong about this, although she'd
quite understand that it was probably wrong if you weren't Susan Sto Helit, of course. The
papers were in quite a good safe that would have occupied a competent thief for at least
twenty minutes. The fact that the door swung open at her touch suggested that special rules
applied here.
No door was closed to Miss Susan. It ran in the family. Some genetics are passed on via the
soul.
When she'd brought herself up to date on the school's affairs, mostly to indicate to the rat that
she wasn't just someone who could be summoned at a moments notice, she stood up.
'All right,' she said wearily. 'You're just going to pester me, aren't you? For ever and ever and
ever.'
The Death of Rats looked at her with its skull on one side.
SQUEAK, it said winsomely.
'Well, yes, I like him,' she said. 'In a way. But, I mean, you know, it's not right. Why does he
need me? He's Death! He's not exactly powerless! I'm just human!'
The rat squeaked again, jumped down onto the floor and ran through the closed door. It
reappeared for a moment and beckoned to her.
'Oh, all right,' said Susan to herself. 'Make that mostly human.'
Tick
And who is this Lu-Tze?
Sooner or later every novice had to ask this rather complex question. Sometimes it would be
years before they found out that the little man who swept their floors and uncomplainingly
carted away the contents of the dormitory cesspit and occasionally came out with outlandish
foreign sayings was the legendary hero they'd been told they would meet one day. And then,
when they'd confronted him, the brightest of them confronted themselves.
Mostly sweepers came from the villages in the valley. They were part of the staff of the
monastery but they had no status. They did all the tedious, unregarded jobs. They were...
figures in the background, pruning the cherry trees, washing the floors, cleaning out the carp
pools and, always, sweeping. They had no names. That is, a thoughtful novice would
understand that the sweepers must have names, some form by which they were known to
other sweepers, but within the temple grounds at least they had no names, only instructions.
No one knew where they went at night. They were just sweepers. But so was Lu-Tze.
One day a group of senior novices, for mischief, kicked over the little shrine that Lu-Tze kept
beside his sleeping mat.

 
 
  
Next morning, no sweepers turned up for work. They stayed in their huts, with the doors
barred. After making inquiries, the abbot, who at that time was fifty years old again,
summoned the three novices to his room. There were three brooms leaning against the wall.
He spoke as follows:
'You know that the dreadful Battle of Five Cities did not happen because the messenger got
there in time?'
They did. They learned this early in their studies. And they bowed nervously, because this
was the abbot, after all.
'And you know, then, that when the messenger's horse threw a shoe he espied a man trudging
beside the road carrying a small portable forge and pushing an anvil on a barrow?'
They knew.
'And you know that man was Lu-Tze?'
They did.
'You surely know that Janda Trapp, Grand Master of okidoki, toro-fu and chang-fu, has only
ever yielded to one man?'
They knew.
'And you know that man is Lu-Tze?'
They did.
'You know the little shrine you kicked over last night?'
They knew.
'You know it had an owner?'
There was silence. Then the brightest of the novices looked up at the abbot in horror,
swallowed, picked up one of the three brooms and walked out of the room.
The other two were slower of brain and had to follow the story all the way through to the end.
Then one of them said, 'But it was only a sweeper's shrine!'
'You will take up the brooms and sweep,' said the abbot, 'and you will sweep every day, and
you will sweep until the day you find Lu-Tze and dare to say “Sweeper, it was I who knocked
over and scattered your shrine and now I will in humility accompany you to the dojo of the
Tenth Djim, in order to learn the Right Way.” Only then, if you are still able, may you
resume your studies here. Understood?'[6]
Older monks sometimes complained, but someone would always say, 'Remember that Lu-
Tze's Way is not our Way. Remember he learned everything by sweeping unheeded while

 
 
  
students were being educated. Remember, he has been everywhere and done many things.
Perhaps he is a little... strange, but remember that he walked into a citadel full of armed men
and traps and nevertheless saw to it that the Pash of Muntab choked innocently on a fish
bone. No monk is better than Lu-Tze at finding the Time and the Place.'
Some, who did not know, might say: 'What is this Way that gives him so much power?'
And they would be told: 'It is the Way of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite, 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-
Morpork, Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable. No, we don't understand it, either. Some
subsendential rubbish, apparently.'
Tick
Lu-Tze listened to the senior monks, while leaning on his broom. Listening was an art he had
developed over the years, having learned that if you listened hard and long enough people
would tell you more than they thought they knew.
'Soto is a good field operative,' he said at last. 'Weird but good.'
'The fall even showed up on the Mandala,' said Rinpo. 'The boy knew none of the appropriate
actions. Soto said he'd done it reflexively. He said he thought the boy was as close to null as
he has ever witnessed. He had him put on a cart for the mountains within the hour. He then
spent three whole days performing the Closing of the Flower at the Guild of Thieves, where
the boy had apparently been left as a baby.'
'The closure was successful?'
'We authorized the run time of two Procrastinators. Perhaps a few people will have faint
memories, but the Guild is a large and busy place.'
'No brothers, no sisters. No love of parents. Just the brotherhood of thieves,' said Lu-Tze
sadly.
'He was, however, a good thief.'
'I'll bet. How old is he?'
'Sixteen or seventeen, it appears.'
'Too old to teach, then.'
The senior monks exchanged glances.
'We cannot teach him anything,' said the Master of Novices. 'He-'
Lu-Tze held up a skinny hand. 'Let me guess. He knows it already?'
'It's as though he's being told something that had momentarily slipped his memory,' said
Rinpo. 'And then he gets bored and angry. He's not all there, in my opinion.'

 
 
  
Lu-Tze scratched in his stained beard. 'Mystery boy,' he said thoughtfully. 'Naturally
talented.'
'And we ask ourselves wanna potty wanna potty poo why now, why at this time?' said the
abbot, chewing the foot of a toy yak.
'Ah, but is it not said, “There is a Time and a Place for Everything”?' said Lu-Tze. 'Anyway,
reverend sirs, you have taught pupils for hundreds of years. I am but a sweeper.'
Absentmindedly, he stuck out his hand just as the yak left the fumbling fingers of the abbot,
and caught it in mid-air.
'Lu-Tze,' said the Master of Novices, 'to be brief, we were unable to teach you. Remember?'
'But then I found my Way,' said Lu-Tze.
'Will you teach him?' said the abbot. 'The boy needs to mmm brmmm find himself.'
'Is it not written, “I have only one pair of hands”?' said Lu-Tze.
Rinpo looked at the Master of Novices. 'I don't know,' he said. 'None of us ever sees this stuff
you quote.'
Still looking thoughtful, as if his mind were busy elsewhere, Lu-Tze said, 'It could only be
here and now. For it is written: “It never rains but it pours.”'
Rinpo looked puzzled, and then enlightenment dawned. 'A jug,' he said, looking pleased. 'A
jug never rains, but it pours!'
Lu-Tze shook his head sadly. 'And the sound of one hand clapping is a “cl”,' he said. 'Very
well, your reverence. I will help him to find a Way. Will there be anything else, reverend
sirs?'
Tick
Lobsang stood up when Lu-Tze returned to the anteroom, but he did it hesitantly,
embarrassed at appearing to show respect.
'Okay, here are the rules,' said Lu-Tze, walking straight past. 'Word one is, you don't call me
“master” and I don't name you after some damn insect. It's not my job to discipline you, it's
yours. For it is written, “I can't be having with that kind of thing.” Do what I tell you and
we'll get along fine. All right?'
'What? You want me as an apprentice?' said Lobsang, running to keep up.
'No, I don't want you as an apprentice, not at my age, but you're going to be so we'd both
better make the best of it, okay?'
'And you will teach me everything?'