Mort (33 page)

‘What?’

T
HE PRESSURE OF
THIS
REALITY KEEPS IT COMPRESSED
. T
HERE MAY COME A TIME WHEN THE UNIVERSE ENDS AND REALITY DIES, AND THEN THIS ONE WILL EXPLODE AND
 . . .
WHO KNOWS
? K
EEP IT SAFE
. I
T’S A FUTURE AS WELL AS A PRESENT
.

Death put his skull on one side. I
T’S A SMALL THING
, he added. Y
OU
COULD
HAVE HAD ETERNITY
.

‘I know,’ said Mort. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’

He put it carefully on the buffet table, between the quails’ eggs and sausage rolls.

T
HERE WAS ANOTHER THING
, said Death. He reached under his robe again and pulled out an oblong shape inexpertly wrapped and tied with string.

I
T’S FOR YOU
, he said,
PERSONALLY
. Y
OU NEVER SHOWED ANY INTEREST IN IT BEFORE
. D
ID YOU THINK IT DIDN’T EXIST
?

Mort unwrapped the packet and realized he was holding a small leather-bound book. On the spine was blocked, in shiny gold leaf, the one word:
Mort
.

He leafed backwards through the unfilled pages until he found the little trail of ink, winding patiently down the page, and read:
Mort shut the book with a little snap that sounded, in the silence, like the crack of creation, and smiled uneasily
.

‘There’s a lot of pages still to fill,’ he said. ‘How much sand have I got left? Only Ysabell said that since you turned the glass over that means I shall die when I’m—’

Y
OU HAVE SUFFICIENT
, said Death coldly. M
ATHEMATICS ISN’T ALL IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE
.

‘How do you feel about being invited to christenings?’

I
THINK NOT
. I
WASN’T CUT OUT TO BE A FATHER, AND CERTAINLY NOT A GRANDAD
. I
HAVEN’T GOT THE RIGHT KIND OF KNEES
.

He put down his wine glass and nodded at Mort.

M
Y REGARDS TO YOUR GOOD LADY
, he said. A
ND NOW I REALLY MUST BE OFF
.

‘Are you sure? You’re welcome to stay
.’

I
T’S NICE OF YOU TO SAY SO
,
BUT DUTY CALLS
. He extended a bony hand. Y
OU KNOW HOW IT IS
.

‘
Look,’ he said. ‘If ever you want a few days off, you know, if you’d like a holiday—’

M
ANY THANKS FOR THE OFFER
, said Death graciously. I
SHALL THINK ABOUT IT MOST SERIOUSLY.
A
ND NOW
—

‘Goodbye,’ Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in his throat. ‘It’s such an unpleasant word, isn’t it?’

Q
UITE SO
. Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn’t have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time.

I
PREFER AU REVOIR
, he said.

Footnotes

This is the bright candlelit room.....

^*1
Practically anything can go faster than Disc light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir
instantaneously
. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles – kingons, or possibly queons – that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.

^*2
The first pizza was created on the Disc by the Klatchian mystic Ronron ‘Revelation Joe’ Shuwadhi, who claimed to have been given the recipe in a dream by the Creator of the Discworld Himself, Who had apparently added that it was what He had intended all along. Those desert travellers who had seen the original, which is reputedly miraculously preserved in the Forbidden City of Ee, say that what the Creator had in mind then was a fairly small cheese and pepperoni affair with a few black olives
^**3
and things like mountains and seas got added out of last-minute enthusiasm, as so often happens.

^**3
After the Schism of the Turnwise Ones and the deaths of some 25,000 people in the ensuing jihad the faithful were allowed to add one small bayleaf to the recipe.

^*4
Although not the droopy moustache and round furry hat with the spike on it.

^*5
The speech has been passed on to later generations in an epic poem commissioned by his son, who wasn’t born in a saddle and could eat with a knife and fork. It began:

And went on for three hours. Reality, which can’t usually afford to pay poets, records that in fact the entire speech ran:

^*6
The Disc’s greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents. However, the gods took pity on them and turned him into an ironing board
^**7
and her into a small brass bollard.

^**7
When you’re a god, you don’t have to have reasons.

^*8
There had been half a jar of elderly mayonnaise, a piece of very old cheese, and a tomato with white mould growing on it. Since during the day the pantry of the palace of Sto Lat normally contained fifteen whole stags, one hundred brace of partridges, fifty hogsheads of butter, two hundred jugs of hares, seventy-five sides of beef, two miles of assorted sausages, various fowls, eighty dozen eggs, several Circle Sea sturgeon, a vat of caviar and an elephant’s leg stuffed with olives, Cutwell had learned once again that one universal manifestation of raw, natural magic throughout the universe is this: that any domestic food store, raided furtively in the middle of the night, always contains, no matter what its daytime inventory, half a jar of elderly mayonnaise, a piece of very old cheese, and a tomato with white mould growing on it.

^*9
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

^*10
The stone garden of Universal Peace and Simplicity, laid out to the orders of the old Emperor One Sun Mirror
^**11
, used economy of position and shadow to symbolize the basic unity of soul and matter and the harmony of all things. It was said the secrets at the very heart of reality lay hidden in the precise ordering of its stones.

^**11
Whose other claim to fame was his habit of cutting off his enemies’ lips and legs and then promising them their freedom if they could run through the city playing a trumpet.

^*12
This is not precisely true. It is generally agreed by philosophers that the shortest time in which everything can happen is one thousand billion years.