Mort (8 page)

And finally he plucked up his courage.

A
WHAT
? said Death in astonishment, sitting behind his ornate desk and turning his scythe-shaped paperknife over and over in his hands.

‘An afternoon off,’ repeated Mort. The room suddenly seemed to be oppressively big, with himself very exposed in the middle of a carpet about the size of a field.

B
UT WHY
? said Death. I
T CAN’T BE TO ATTEND YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL
, he added. I
WOULD KNOW
.

‘I just want to, you know, get out and meet people,’ said Mort, trying to outstare that unflinching blue gaze.

B
UT YOU MEET PEOPLE EVERY DAY
, protested Death.

‘Yes, I know, only, well, not for very long,’ said Mort. ‘I mean, it’d be nice to meet someone with a life expectancy of more than a few minutes. Sir,’ he added.

Death drummed his fingers on the desk, making a sound not unlike a mouse tapdancing, and gave Mort another few seconds of stare. He noticed that the boy seemed rather less elbows than he remembered, stood a little more upright and, bluntly, could use a word like ‘expectancy’. It was all that library.

A
LL RIGHT
, he said grudgingly. B
UT IT SEEMS TO ME YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED RIGHT HERE
. T
HE DUTY IS NOT ONEROUS, IS IT
?

‘No, sir.’

A
ND YOU HAVE GOOD FOOD AND A WARM BED AND RECREATION AND PEOPLE YOUR OWN AGE
.

‘Pardon, sir?’ said Mort.

M
Y DAUGHTER
, said Death. Y
OU HAVE MET HER
, I
BELIEVE
.

‘Oh. Yes, sir.’

S
HE HAS A VERY WARM PERSONALITY WHEN YOU GET TO KNOW HER
.

‘I am sure she has, sir.’

N
EVERTHELESS, YOU WISH
– Death launched the words with a spin of distaste –
AN AFTERNOON OFF
?

‘Yes, sir. If you please, sir.’

V
ERY WELL. SO BE IT
. Y
OU MAY HAVE UNTIL SUNSET
.

Death opened his great ledger, picked up a pen, and began to write. Occasionally he’d reach out and flick the beads of an abacus.

After a minute he looked up.

Y
OU’RE STILL HERE
, he said. A
ND IN YOUR OWN TIME, TOO
, he added sourly.

‘Um,’ said Mort, ‘will people be able to see me, sir?’

I
IMAGINE SO
, I’
M SURE
, said Death. I
S THERE ANYTHING ELSE I MIGHT BE ABLE TO ASSIST YOU WITH BEFORE YOU LEAVE FOR THIS DEBAUCH
?

‘Well, sir, there is one thing, sir, I don’t know how to get to the mortal world, sir,’ said Mort desperately.

Death sighed loudly, and pulled open a desk drawer.

J
UST WALK THERE
.

Mort nodded miserably, and took the long walk to the study door. As he pulled it open Death coughed.

B
OY
! he called, and tossed something across the room.

Mort caught it automatically as the door creaked open.

The doorway vanished. The deep carpet underfoot became muddy cobbles. Broad daylight poured over him like quicksilver.

‘Mort,’ said Mort, to the universe at large.

‘What?’ said a stallholder beside him. Mort stared around. He was in a crowded market place, packed with people and animals. Every kind of thing was being sold from needles to (via a few itinerant prophets) visions of salvation. It was impossible to hold any conversation quieter than a shout.

Mort tapped the stallholder in the small of the back.

‘Can you see me?’ he demanded.

The stallholder squinted critically at him.

‘I reckon so,’ he said, ‘or someone very much like you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mort, immensely relieved.

‘Don’t mention it. I see lots of people every day, no charge. Want to buy any bootlaces?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mort. ‘What place is this?’

‘You don’t know?’

A couple of people at the next stall were looking at Mort thoughtfully. His mind went into overdrive.

‘My master travels a lot,’ he said, truthfully. ‘We arrived last night, and I was asleep on the cart. Now I’ve got the afternoon off.’

‘Ah,’ said the stallholder. He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Looking for a good time, are you? I could fix you up.’

‘I’d quite enjoy knowing where I am,’ Mort conceded.

The man was taken aback.

‘This is Ankh-Morpork,’ he said. ‘Anyone ought to be able to see that. Smell it, too.’

Mort sniffed. There was a certain something about the air in the city. You got the feeling that it was air that had seen life. You couldn’t help noting with every breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits.

The stallholder regarded Mort critically, noting the pale face, well-cut clothes and strange presence, a sort of coiled spring effect.

‘Look, I’ll be frank,’ he said. ‘I could point you in the direction of a great brothel.’

‘I’ve already had lunch,’ said Mort, vaguely. ‘But you can tell me if we’re anywhere near, I think it’s called Sto Lat?’

‘About twenty miles Hubwards, but there’s nothing there for a young man of your kidney,’ said the trader hurriedly. ‘I know, you’re out by yourself, you want new experiences, you want excitement, romance—’

Mort, meanwhile, had opened the bag Death had given him. It was full of small gold coins, about the size of sequins.

An image formed again in his mind, of a pale young face under a head of red hair who had somehow known he was there. The unfocused feelings that had haunted his mind for the last few days suddenly sharpened to a point.

‘I want,’ he said firmly, ‘a very fast horse.’

Five minutes later, Mort was lost.

This part of Ankh-Morpork was known as The Shades, an inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower. It couldn’t be called squalid because that would be stretching the word to breaking point. It was beyond squalor and out the other side, where by a sort of Einsteinian reversal it achieved a magnificent horribleness that it wore like an architectural award. It was noisy and sultry and smelled like a cowshed floor.

It didn’t so much have a neighbourhood as an ecology, like a great land-based coral reef. There were the humans, all right, humanoid equivalents of lobsters, squid, shrimps and so on. And sharks.

Mort wandered hopelessly along the winding streets. Anyone hovering at rooftop height would have noticed a certain pattern in the crowds behind him, suggesting a number of men converging nonchalantly on a target, and would rightly have concluded that Mort and his gold had about the same life expectancy as a three-legged hedgehog on a six-lane motorway.

It is probably already apparent that The Shades was not the sort of place to have inhabitants. It had denizens. Periodically Mort would try to engage one in conversation, to find the way to a good horse dealer. The denizen would usually mutter something and hurry away, since anyone wishing to live in The Shades for longer than maybe three hours developed very specialized senses indeed and would no more hang around near Mort than a peasant would stand near a tall tree in thundery weather.

And so Mort came at last to the river Ankh, greatest of rivers. Even before it entered the city it was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.

Mort looked at the surface doubtfully. It seemed to be moving. There were bubbles in it. It had to be water.

He sighed, and turned away.

Three men had appeared behind him, as though extruded from the stonework. They had the heavy, stolid look of those thugs whose appearance in any narrative means that it’s time for the hero to be menaced a bit, although not too much, because it’s also obvious that they’re going to be horribly surprised.

They were leering. They were good at it.

One of them had drawn a knife, which he waved in little circles in the air. He advanced slowly towards Mort, while the other two hung back to provide immoral support.

‘Give us the money,’ he rasped.

Mort’s hand went to the bag on his belt.

‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘What happens then?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, is it my money or my life?’ said Mort. ‘That’s the sort of thing robbers are supposed to demand. Your money or your life. I read that in a book once,’ he added.

‘Possibly, possibly,’ conceded the robber. He felt he was losing the initiative, but rallied magnificently. ‘On the other hand, it could be your money
and
your life. Pulling off the double, you might say.’ The man looked sideways at his colleagues, who sniggered on cue.

‘In that case—’ said Mort, and hefted the bag in one hand preparatory to chucking it as far out into the Ankh as he could, even though there was a reasonable chance it would bounce.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ said the robber. He started to run forward, but halted when Mort gave the bag a threatening jerk.

‘Well,’ said Mort, ‘I look at it like this. If you’re going to kill me anyway, I might as well get rid of the money. It’s entirely up to you.’ To illustrate his point he took one coin out of the bag and flicked it out across the water, which accepted it with an unfortunate sucking noise. The thieves shuddered.

The leading thief looked at the bag. He looked at his knife. He looked at Mort’s face. He looked at his colleagues.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, and they went into a huddle.

Mort measured the distance to the end of the alley. He wouldn’t make it. Anyway, these three looked as though chasing people was another thing they were good at. It was only logic that left them feeling a little stretched.

Their leader turned back to Mort. He gave a final glance at the other two. They both nodded decisively.

‘I think we will kill you and take a chance on the money,’ he said. ‘We don’t want this sort of thing to spread.’

The other two drew their knives.

Mort swallowed. ‘This could be unwise,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Well,
I
won’t like it, for one.’

‘You’re not supposed to like it, you’re supposed to – die,’ said the thief, advancing.

‘I don’t think I’m due to die,’ said Mort, backing away. ‘I’m sure I would have been told.’

‘Yeah,’ said the thief, who was getting fed up with this. ‘Yeah, well, you have been, haven’t you? Great steaming elephant turds!’

Mort had just stepped backwards again. Through a wall.

The leading thief glared at the solid stone that had swallowed Mort, and then threw down his knife.

‘Well, – – – – me,’ he said. ‘A – – – – ing wizard. I
hate
– – – – ing wizards!’

‘You shouldn’t – – – – them, then,’ muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes.

The third member of the trio, who was a little slow of thinking, said, ‘Here, he walked through the wall!’

‘And we bin following him for ages, too,’ muttered the second one. ‘Fine one you are, Pilgarlic. I said I thought he was a wizard, only wizards’d walk round here by themselves. Din’t I say he looked like a wizard? I said—’

‘You’re saying a good deal too much,’ growled the leader.

‘I saw him, he walked right through the wall there—’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Right through it, din’t you see?’

‘Think you’re sharp, do you?’

‘Sharp enough, come to that!’

The leader scooped his knife out of the dirt in one snaky movement.

‘Sharp as this?’

The third thief lurched over to the wall and kicked it hard a few times, while behind him there were the sounds of scuffle and some damp bubbling noises.

‘Yep, it’s a wall okay,’ he said. ‘That’s a wall if ever I saw one. How d’you think they do it, lads?’

‘Lads?’

He tripped over the prone bodies.

‘Oh,’ he said. Slow as his mind was, it was quick enough to realize something very important. He was in a back alley in The Shades, and he was alone. He ran for it, and got quite a long way.

Death walked slowly across tiles in the lifetimer room, inspecting the serried rows of busy hourglasses. Albert followed dutifully behind with the great ledger open in his arms.

The sound roared around them, a vast grey waterfall of noise.

It came from the shelves where, stretching away into the infinite distance, row upon row of hourglasses poured away the sands of mortal time. It was a heavy sound, a dull sound, a sound that poured like sullen custard over the bright roly-poly pudding of the soul.

V
ERY WELL
, said Death at last. I
MAKE IT THREE
. A
QUIET NIGHT
.

‘That’d be Goodie Hamstring, the Abbot Lobsang again, and this Princess Keli,’ said Albert.

Death looked at the three hourglasses in his hand.

I
WAS THINKING OF SENDING THE LAD OUT
, he said.

Albert consulted his ledger.

‘Well, Goodie wouldn’t be any trouble and the abbot is what you might call experienced,’ he said. ‘Shame about the princess. Only fifteen. Could be tricky.’

Y
ES
. I
T IS A PITY
.

‘Master?’

Death stood with the third glass in his hand, staring thoughtfully at the play of light across its surface. He sighed.

O
NE SO YOUNG
 . . .

‘Are you feeling all right, master?’ said Albert, his voice full of concern.

T
IME LIKE AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM BEARS ALL ITS
 . . .