Mort (23 page)

A
NTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION
.

‘Oh, yes. What
is
that, exactly?’

Death had had enough.

T
HIS
, he said.

For a moment, just for a moment, Mr Keeble saw him clearly. His face went nearly as pale as Death’s own. His hands jerked convulsively. His heart gave a stutter.

Death watched him with mild interest, then drew an hourglass from the depths of his robe and held it up to the light and examined it critically.

S
ETTLE DOWN
, he said,
YOU’VE GOT A GOOD FEW YEARS YET
.

‘Bbbbbbb—’

I
COULD TELL YOU HOW MANY IF YOU LIKE
.

Keeble, fighting to breathe, managed to shake his head.

D
O YOU WANT ME TO GET YOU A GLASS OF WATER, THEN
?

‘nnN – nnN.’

The shop bell jangled. Keeble’s eyes rolled. Death decided that he owed the man something. He shouldn’t be allowed to lose custom, which was clearly something humans valued dearly.

He pushed aside the bead curtain and stalked into the outer shop, where a small fat woman, looking rather like an angry cottage loaf, was hammering on the counter with a haddock.

‘It’s about that cook’s job up at the University,’ she said. ‘You told me it was a good position and it’s a disgrace up there, the tricks them students play, and I demand – I want you to – I’m not . . .’

Her voice trailed off.

‘’Ere,’ she said, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it, ‘you’re not Keeble, are you?’

Death stared at her. He’d never before experienced an unsatisfied customer. He was at a loss. Finally he gave up.

B
EGONE
,
YOU BLACK AND MIDNIGHT HAG
, he said.

The cook’s small eyes narrowed.

‘’Oo are you calling a midnight bag?’ she said accusingly, and hit the counter with the fish again. ‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘Last night it was my bedwarmer, in the morning it’s a fish. I ask you.’

M
AY ALL THE DEMONS OF HELL REND YOUR LIVING SPIRIT IF YOU DON’T GET OUT OF THE SHOP THIS MINUTE
, Death tried.

‘I don’t know about that, but what about my bedwarmer? It’s no place for a respectable woman up there, they tried to—’

I
F YOU WOULD CARE TO GO AWAY
, said Death desperately, I
WILL GIVE YOU SOME MONEY
.

‘How much?’ said the cook, with a speed that would have outdistanced a striking rattlesnake and given lightning a nasty shock.

Death pulled out his coin bag and tipped a heap of verdigrised and darkened coins on the counter. She regarded them with deep suspicion.

N
OW LEAVE UPON THE INSTANT
, said Death, and added,
BEFORE THE SEARING WINDS OF INFINITY SCORCH THY WORTHLESS CARCASS
.

‘My husband will be told about this,’ said the cook darkly, as she left the shop. It seemed to Death that no threat of his could possibly be as dire.

He stalked back through the curtains. Keeble, still slumped in his chair, gave a kind of strangled gurgle.

‘It was true!’ he said. ‘I thought you were a nightmare!’

I
COULD TAKE OFFENCE AT THAT
, said Death.

‘You really are Death?’ said Keeble.

Y
ES
.

‘Why didn’t you say?’

P
EOPLE USUALLY PREFER ME NOT TO
.

Keeble scrabbled among his papers, giggling hysterically.

‘You want to do something else?’ he said. ‘Tooth fairy? Water sprite? Sandman?’

D
O NOT BE FOOLISH
. I
SIMPLY – FEEL
I
WANT A CHANGE
.

Keeble’s frantic rustling at last turned up the paper he’d been searching for. He gave a maniacal laugh and thrust it into Death’s hands.

Death read it.

T
HIS IS A JOB
? P
EOPLE ARE PAID TO DO THIS
?

‘Yes, yes, go and see him, you’re just the right type. Only don’t tell him I sent you.’

Binky moved at a hard gallop across the night, the Disc unrolling far below his hooves. Now Mort found that the sword could reach out further than he had thought, it could reach the stars themselves, and he swung it across the deeps of space and into the heart of a yellow dwarf which went nova most satisfactorily. He stood in the saddle and whirled the blade around his head, laughing as the blue flame fanned across the sky leaving a trail of darkness and embers.

And didn’t stop. Mort struggled as the sword cut through the horizon, grinding down the mountains, drying up the seas, turning green forests into punk and ashes. He heard voices behind him, and the brief screams of friends and relatives as he turned desperately. Dust storms whirled from the dead earth as he fought to release his own grip, but the sword burned icy cold in his hand, dragging him on in a dance that would not end until there was nothing left alive.

And that time came, and Mort stood alone except for Death, who said, ‘A fine job, boy.’

And Mort said, M
ORT
.

‘Mort! Mort! Wake up!’

Mort surfaced slowly, like a corpse in a pond. He fought against it, clinging to his pillow and the horrors of sleep, but someone was tugging urgently at his ear.

‘Mmmph?’ he said.

‘Mort!’

‘Wsst?’

‘Mort, it’s Father!’

He opened his eyes and stared blankly into Ysabell’s face. Then the events of the previous night hit him like a sock full of damp sand.

Mort swung his legs out of bed, still wreathed in the remains of his dream.

‘Yeah, okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and see him directly.’

‘He’s not here! Albert’s going crazy!’ Ysabell stood by the bed, tugging a handkerchief between her hands. ‘Mort, do you think something bad has happened to him?’

He gave her a blank look. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he said, ‘he’s Death.’ He scratched his skin. He felt hot and dry and itchy.

‘But he’s never been away this long! Not even when there was that big plague in Pseudopolis! I mean, he has to be here in the mornings to do the books and work out the nodes and—’

Mort grabbed her arms. ‘All right, all right,’ he said, as soothingly as he could manage. ‘I’m sure everything’s okay. Just settle down, I’ll go and check . . . Why have you got your eyes shut?’

‘Mort, please put some clothes on,’ said Ysabell in a tight little voice.

Mort looked down.

‘Sorry,’ he said meekly, ‘I didn’t realize . . . Who put me to bed?’

‘I did,’ she said. ‘But I looked the other way.’

Mort dragged on his breeches, shrugged into his shirt and hurried out towards Death’s study with Ysabell on his heels. Albert was in there, jumping from foot to foot like a duck on a griddle. When Mort came in the look on the old man’s face could almost have been gratitude.

Mort saw with amazement that there were tears in his eyes.

‘His chair hasn’t been sat in,’ Albert whined.

‘Sorry, but is that important?’ said Mort. ‘My grandad didn’t used to come home for days if he’d had a good sale at the market.’

‘But he’s always here,’ said Albert. ‘Every morning, as long as I’ve known him, sitting here at his desk a-working on the nodes. It’s his job. He wouldn’t miss it.’

‘I expect the nodes can look after themselves for a day or two,’ said Mort.

The drop in temperature told him he was wrong. He looked at their faces.

‘They can’t?’ he said.

Both heads shook.

‘If the nodes aren’t worked out properly all the Balance is destroyed,’ said Ysabell. ‘Anything could happen.’

‘Didn’t he explain?’ said Albert.

‘Not really. I’ve really only done the practical side. He said he’d tell me about the theoretical stuff later,’ said Mort. Ysabell burst into tears.

Albert took Mort’s arm and, with considerable dramatic waggling of his eyebrows, indicated that they should have a little talk in the corner. Mort trailed after him reluctantly.

The old man rummaged in his pockets and at last produced a battered paper bag.

‘Peppermint?’ he enquired.

Mort shook his head.

‘He never tell you about the nodes?’ said Albert.

Mort shook his head again. Albert gave his peppermint a suck; it sounded like the plughole in the bath of God.

‘How old are you, lad?’

‘Mort. I’m sixteen.’

‘There’s some things a lad ought to be tole before he’s sixteen,’ said Albert, looking over his shoulder at Ysabell, who was sobbing in Death’s chair.

‘Oh, I know about
that
. My father told me all about that when we used to take the
thargas
to be mated. When a man and a woman—’

‘About the universe is what I meant,’ said Albert hurriedly. ‘I mean, have you ever thought about it?’

‘I know the Disc is carried through space on the backs of four elephants that stand on the shell of Great A’Tuin,’ said Mort.

‘That’s just part of it. I meant the whole universe of time and space and life and death and day and night and everything.’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought,’ said Mort.

‘Ah. You ought. The point is, the nodes are part of it. They stop death from getting out of control, see. Not him, not Death. Just death itself. Like, uh—’ Albert struggled for words – ‘like, death should come exactly at the end of life, see, and not before or after, and the nodes have to be worked out so that the key figures . . . you’re not taking this in, are you?’

‘Sorry.’

‘They’ve got to be worked out,’ said Albert flatly, ‘and then the correct lives have got to be got. The hourglasses, you call them. The actual Duty is the easy job.’

‘Can you do it?’

‘No. Can you?’

‘No!’

Albert sucked reflectively at his peppermint. ‘That’s the whole world in the gyppo, then,’ he said.

‘Look, I can’t see why you’re so worried. I expect he’s just got held up somewhere,’ said Mort, but it sounded feeble even to him. It wasn’t as though people buttonholed Death to tell him another story, or clapped him on the back and said things like ‘You’ve got time for a quick half in there, my old mate, no need to rush off home’ or invited him to make up a skittles team and come out for a Klatchian take-away afterwards, or . . . It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what’s come over the master lately,’ mumbled Albert. ‘Out of the chair, my girl. Let’s have a look at these nodes.’

They opened the ledger.

They looked at it for a long time.

Then Mort said, ‘What do all those symbols mean?’

‘Sodomy non sapiens,’ said Albert under his breath.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Means I’m buggered if I know.’

‘That was wizard talk, wasn’t it?’ said Mort.

‘You shut up about wizard talk. I don’t know anything about wizard talk. You apply your brain to this here.’

Mort looked down again at the tracery of lines. It was as if a spider had spun a web on the page, stopping at every junction to make notes. Mort stared until his eyes hurt, waiting for some spark of inspiration. None volunteered.

‘Any luck?’

‘It’s all Klatchian to me,’ said Mort. ‘I don’t even know whether it should be read upside down or sideways.’

‘Spiralling from the centre outwards,’ sniffed Ysabell from her seat in the corner.

Their heads collided as they both peered at the centre of the page. They stared at her. She shrugged.

‘Father taught me how to read the node chart,’ she said, ‘when I used to do my sewing in here. He used to read bits out.’

‘You can help?’ said Mort.

‘No,’ said Ysabell. She blew her nose.

‘What do you mean, no?’ growled Albert. ‘This is too important for any flighty—’

‘I mean,’ said Ysabell, in razor tones, ‘that I can do them and you can help.’

The Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants has taken to hiring large gangs of men with ears like fists and fists like large bags of walnuts whose job it is to re-educate those misguided people who publicly fail to recognize the many attractive points of their fine city. For example, the philosopher Catroaster was found floating face downward in the river within hours of uttering the famous line, ‘When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry.’

Therefore it is prudent to dwell on one – of the very many, of course – on one of the things that makes Ankh-Morpork renowned among the great cities of the multiverse.

This is its food.

The trade routes of half the Disc pass through the city or down its rather sluggish river. More than half the tribes and races of the Disc have representatives dwelling within its sprawling acres. In Ankh-Morpork the cuisines of the world collide: on the menu are one thousand types of vegetable, fifteen hundred cheeses, two thousand spices, three hundred types of meat, two hundred fowl, five hundred different types of fish, one hundred variations on the theme of pasta, seventy eggs of one kind or another, fifty insects, thirty molluscs, twenty assorted snakes and other reptiles, and something pale brown and warty known as the Klatchian migratory bog truffle.

Its eating establishments range from the opulent, where the portions are tiny but the plates are silver, to the secretive, where some of the Disc’s more exotic inhabitants are rumoured to eat anything they can get down their throat best out of three.

Harga’s House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city’s leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn’t get it. They don’t go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patios, egg, soss and bacon and a fried slice.