Unseen Academicals (12 page)

‘Thank you for telling me, Mister Trev. I will decipher it later.’

Trev sighed. ‘But I ain’t like that any more, and Juliet…well, I’d crawl a mile over broken glass just to hold ’er ’and, no funny business.’

‘Writing a poem is often the way to the intended’s heart,’ said Nutt.

Trev brightened. ‘Ah, I’m good with words. If I wrote ’er a letter, you could give it to ’er, right? If I write it on posh paper, something like, let’s see…“I think you are really fit. How about a date? No hanky panky, promise. Luv, Trev.” How does that sound?’

‘The soul of it is pure and noble, Mister Trev. But, ah, if I could assist in some way…?’

‘It needs longer words, right? And more sort of curly language?’ said Trev.

But Nutt was not paying attention.

‘Sounds lovely to me,’ said a voice above Trev’s head. ‘Who do you know what can read, smart boy?’

There was this to be said about the Stollop brothers: they weren’t Andy. It was, in the great scheme of things, not a huge difference when you couldn’t see for blood but, in short, Stollops knew that force had always worked, and so had never bothered to try anything else, whereas Andy was a stone-cold psychopath who had a following only because it was safer than being in front of him. He could be quite charming when the frantically oscillating mood swing took him; that was the best time to run. As for the Stollops, it would not take long for a researcher to realize that Juliet was the brains of the family outfit. One advantage from Trev’s viewpoint was that they thought they were clever, because no one had ever told them otherwise.

‘Ha, Mister so-called Trev,’ said Billy Stollop, prodding Trev with a finger like a hippopotamus sausage. ‘You full o’ smarts, you tell us who broke the goal, right?’

‘I was in the Shove, Billy. Didn’t see a thing.’

‘He gonna play for the Dimmers?’ Billy persisted.

‘Billy, not even your dad at his best could throw the ball half as far as everyone is saying. You know it, right? You couldn’t do it. I’m hearing that the Angels’ post just fell apart and someone made up a story. Would I lie to you, Billy?’ Trev could make up lies that were very nearly truths.

‘Yeah, ’cos you’re a Dimmer.’

‘All right, you got me, I’ll come clean,’ said Trev, holding out his hands. ‘Respect and all that, Billy…It was Nutt here that threw that ball. That’s my last offer.’

‘I ought to smack your ’ead off for that,’ said Billy, sneering at Nutt. ‘That kid don’t look like he could even lift the ball.’

And then a voice behind Trev said, ‘Why, Billy, have they let you out without your collar on?’

Nutt heard Trev mutter, ‘Oh gods, and I was doing so well,’ under his breath, and then his friend turned and said, ‘It’s a free street, Andy. No ’arm in passin’ the time, eh?’

‘The Dollies killed your ol’ man, Trev. Ain’t you got no shame?’

The rest of the Massive Posse was standing behind Andy, their expressions a mix of defiance and the realization that, once again, they were going to be dragged into something. They were out in the main streets now. The Watch was not inclined to get involved in alley scuffles, but out in the open they had to do something in case the taxpayers complained, and since tired coppers didn’t like having to do something, they did it good and hard, so with any luck they wouldn’t have to do it again any time soon.

‘What do you know about all this they’re saying about a Dimmer man and a Dolly tart holding hands in the Shove?’ Andy demanded. He put a heavy hand on Trev’s shoulder. ‘Come on, you’re smart, you always know everything before anyone else.’

‘Tart?’ That was Billy; it was a long way from his ears to his brain. ‘There’s not a girl in Dolly Sisters who’d look at you poxy lot!’

‘Ah, so that’s where we got it from!’ said Carter the Farter. This struck Nutt as inflammatory in the circumstances. Perhaps, he thought, the ritual is that childish insults shall be exchanged until both sides feel
fully justified in attacking, just as Dr Vonmausberger noted in
Ritual Aggression in Pubescent Rats
.

But Andy had fished his short cutlass out of his shirt. It was a nasty little weapon, alien to the true spirit of foot-the-ball, which generally smiled indulgently on things that bruised, scared, fractured and, okay, worst case, heat of the moment and so on, blinded.
*
But then came Andy, who had issues. And once you had someone like Andy around you, you got other Andys around too, and every kid who might otherwise have gone to a match with a pair of brass knuckles for bravado noticeably clanked when he walked, and needed to be helped up if he fell over.

Now, weapons were being loosened here, too.

‘Careful now, everyone,’ Trev cautioned, stepping back and waving his empty hands in a conciliatory way. ‘This is a busy street, okay? If the Old Sam catch you fightin’, they’ll be down on you with big, big truncheons and they’ll beat you until you ’onk your breakfast, ’cos for why? ’cos they hate you, ’cos you’re making paperwork for ’em and keepin’ ’em out of the doughnut shop.’

He stepped back a little further. ‘And then on account of you damagin’ their weapons with your ’eads they’ll run you down to the Tanty for a nice night in the Tank. Been there? Was it so much fun you want to go back again?’

He noted with satisfaction the looks of dismayed recollection on the faces of all except Nutt, who couldn’t have any idea, and Andy, who was brother to the Tank. But even Andy was not inclined to go up against the Sam. Kill just one of them, and Vetinari would give you one chance to see if you could stand on air.

They relaxed a little, but not too much. All it took in these sphincter-taut circumstances was one idiot…

As it happened, one very clever person was able to do the job, when Nutt turned to Algernon, the youngest Stollop, and said cheerfully,
‘Do you know, sir, that your situation here is very similar to that described by Vonmausberger in his treatise on his experiment with rats?’

At this point, Algernon, after one second of what passed for Algernon as thought, whacked him hard with his club. Algernon was a big boy.

Trev managed to grab his friend before he hit the cobbles. The club had hit Nutt square in the chest and torn the ancient sweater open. Blood was soaking through the stitches.

‘What did you ’ave to go and ’it him for, you bloody fool?’ Trev said to Algernon, agreed even by his brothers to be as thick as elephant soup. ‘He wasn’t doin’ a thing. What was that all about, eh?’ He sprang to his feet and before Algernon could move Trev had ripped his own shirt off and was ministering to Nutt, trying to staunch the wound. He came back up again after half a minute and flung the sodden shirt at Algernon. ‘There’s no heartbeat, you moron! What did he ever do to you?’

Even Andy was frozen. No one had ever seen Trev like it, not old Trev. Even the Dollies knew Trev was smart. Trev was slick. Trev wasn’t the sort to commit suicide by yelling at a bunch of men who were already tensed for a fight.

The luckless Algernon, with Trev’s rage baking his face, managed, ‘But, like…he’s a Dimmer…’

‘Who are yer? You’re a bloody fool, that’s what you are!’ screamed Trev.

He rounded on the others, finger shaking. ‘Who are yer? Who are yer? Nuffin! You’re rubbish! You’re all shite!’

He jabbed the finger at Nutt. ‘And him? He made stuff. He knew things. And he’d never seen a game before today! He was only wearing the strip to fit in!’

‘Don’t you worry, Trev, mate,’ Andy hissed and raised his cutlass menacingly. ‘There’s going to be a bloody war about this!’ But Trev was suddenly in his face like a wasp.

‘You what? You are mental! You just don’t get it, do you?’

‘I can see helmets, Andy,’ said Jumbo urgently.

‘Me? What did I do?’

‘As much as the stupid Stollops. Dimmers and Dollies? I hope the gods shit thin shit on both of you!’

‘They’re getting really close, Andy.’

The Stollop boys, who were not altogether dumb, were already leaving. People in football strip were criss-crossing the city. The Watch couldn’t chase everyone. But, well, belting some bloke who then bled a lot and stopped breathing, well, that was tantamount to murder, and the Old Sam could develop quite a turn of speed in those circumstances.

Andy shook a furious finger at Trev. ‘It’s a hard life in the Shove when you’re a dumb chuff with no mates.’

‘This ain’t the Shove!’

‘Better wake up, kid. It’s all Shove.’

The Posse left at speed, although Jumbo turned for a moment to mouth ‘sorry’. They weren’t the only ones hurrying off. The street people were all for a free cabaret, but this one might have associated difficulties: for example the asking of dangerous metaphysical questions such as ‘Did you see anything?’ and similar. It was all very well for the Watch to say ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’, but what was that all about? Who cared about the innocent and their problems when the Watch were on their way?

Trev knelt by the cooling body of the late Nutt.

And now for the first time in a minute, it seemed to Trev, he started to breathe again. He had stopped when he had raged at Andy ’cos if you talked like that to Andy you were dead anyway, so why waste your breath?

There were things you had to do, weren’t there? Weren’t you supposed to keep banging on the chest to, like, show the broken heart how to beat again? But he didn’t know how, and you didn’t need much smarts to know that it was not a good idea to try to learn with the Watch on the way. It would not give a good first impression.

That was why, when two watchmen turned up at speed, Trev was
walking unsteadily towards them with Nutt in his arms. He was relieved to see that in charge was Constable Haddock: at least he was one of the ones who asked questions first. Behind him, and eclipsing most of the scenery, was Troll officer Bluejohn, who could clear a whole street just by walking down the centre of it.

‘Can you help me get him to the Lady Sybil, Mister Haddock? He’s very heavy,’ said Trev.

Constable Haddock pulled the sodden shirt aside, and made a sad little clicking sound. With experience comes familiarity.

‘Morgue’s closer, lad.’

‘No!’

Haddock nodded. ‘You’re Dave Likely’s son, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t have to tell you!’

‘No, ’cos I’m right,’ said Constable Haddock evenly. ‘Okay, Trev. Bluejohn here will take this man, who I expect you have never seen before in your life, and we’ll both run to keep up. There was a decent thunderstorm the night before last. He might be lucky. And so might you.’

‘I never did it!’

‘ ’course not. And now…let’s see who’s fastest at running, shall we? The hospital first.’

‘I want to stay with him,’ said Trev, as Bluejohn’s huge hand gently cradled Nutt.

‘No, lad,’ said Haddock. ‘You stay with me.’

It didn’t stop with Constable Haddock. It never did. Everyone called him Kipper, and his calm unspoken message that since we’re all in this together, why make it hard for one another often worked, but sooner or later you’d be handed over to a senior copper who manufactured hard, in a little room with another copper at the door. And this one had been working double shifts, by the look of her.

‘I’m Sergeant Angua, sir, and I hope you are not in trouble.’ She opened a notebook and smoothed down the page.

‘Shall we go through the motions? You told Constable Haddock that
you saw a fight going on and when you got there all the big boys had run away and, amazingly, you found your workmate, Mister Nutts, bleeding to death. Well, I bet I can name all the big boys, every last one of them. I wonder why can’t you? And what, Trevor Likely, is
this
about?’ She flicked a black-and-white enamel token across the table, and by luck or judgement its pin stuck in the wood a few inches from Trev’s hand.

The unofficial motto of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital was ‘Not everybody dies’. It was true that, subsequent to the founding of the Lady Sybil, the chances of death from at least some causes in the city were quite amazingly reduced. Its surgeons were even known to wash their hands
before
operating as well as after. But moving through its white corridors now was a figure who knew, from personal experience, that the unofficial motto was, in reality, entirely mistaken.

Death stood by the well-scrubbed slab and looked down. M
ISTER
N
UTT
? W
ELL, THIS IS A SURPRISE
, said Death, reaching into his robe. L
ET ME SEE WHAT
I
HAVE HERE
.

Y
OU KNOW
, he said, I
USED TO WONDER WHY PEOPLE SCRABBLED SO
. A
FTER ALL, COMPARED WITH THE LENGTH OF INFINITY, PEOPLE DO NOT LIVE ANY TIME AT ALL
. E
VEN YOU
, M
ISTER
N
UTT
. A
LTHOUGH
I
CAN SEE THAT SCRABBLING WOULD WORK A LITTLE MAGIC IN YOUR CASE.

‘I can’t see you,’ said Nutt.

J
UST AS WELL
, said Death. Y
OU WILL NOT REMEMBER ME, IN ANY CASE, LATER ON
.

‘I’m dying, then,’ said Nutt.

‘Y
ES
. D
YING AND THEN AGAIN LIVING
. He fished out a life-timer from his robe and watched as the sand fell upwards. S
EE YOU
LATER
,
M
ISTER
N
UTT
. I
FEAR THAT YOU WILL HAVE AN INTERESTING LIFE
.

‘A Dolly favour on a good Dimmer boy? Gods bless my soul, I say, what can this be about? And you know what? I will find out. It’s all a matter of shoving.’

Trev said nothing. He was out of options. Besides, he had seen the
sergeant before, and she always seemed to be looking at his throat.

‘Constable Haddock tells me the Igor’s on duty down at the Lady Sybil. I hope he’s got a heart in his vats that’ll fit your friend, I really do,’ she said. ‘But it’ll still be a murder case, even if he comes walking in here tomorrow. Lord Vetinari’s rules: if it takes an Igor to bring you back, you were dead. Briefly dead, it’s true, which is why the murderer will be briefly hanged. A quarter of a second usually does it.’