one arm that was barely an arm any more reached down, picked him up bodily and dumped him into the basket. Four tiny wheels skidded on the floor, the trolley bounced off the wall, and then it righted itself and rattled away.
Windle was only vaguely aware of voices.
‘Off you go, Dean. I know you’ve been looking forward to it.’ That was the Archchancellor.
‘Yo!’
‘You’ll kill it totally? I don’t think we want it ending up at the Fresh Start Club. I don’t think it’s a joiner.’ That was Reg Shoe.
‘Oook!’ That was the Librarian.
‘Don’t you worry, Windle. The Dean is going to do something military, apparently, ‘ said Ridcully.
‘Yo! Hut!’
‘Oh, good grief.’
Windle saw the Dean’s hand float past with something glittering in it.
‘What are you going to use?’ said Ridcully, as the trolley rocketed through the steam.‘The Seismic Reorganiser, the Attractive Point or the Incendiary Surprise?’
‘Yo, ‘ said the Dean, with satisfaction.
‘What, all three at once?’
‘Yo!’
‘That’s going a bit far, isn’t it? And incidentally, if you say “yo” one more time, Dean, I will personally have you thrown out of the University, pursued to the rim of the world by the finest demons that thaumaturgy can conjure up, torn into extremely small pieces, minced, turned into a mixture reminiscent of steak tartare, and turned out into a dog bowl.’
‘Y -‘ The Dean caught Ridcully’s eye.‘Yes. Yes? Oh, go on, Archchancellor. What’s the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can’t blow something up? Please? I’ve got them all ready. You know how it upsets the
inventory if you don’t use them after you’ve got them ready -‘
The trolley whirred up a trembling slope and cornered on two wheels.
‘Oh, all right, ‘ said Ridcully. ‘If it means that much to you.’
‘Y – sorry.’
The Dean started to mutter urgently under his breath, and then screamed.
‘I’ve gone blind!’
‘Your bonsai bandage has slipped over your eyes, Dean.’ Windle groaned.
‘How are you feeling, brother Poons?’ Reg Shoe’s ravaged features occluded Windle’s view.
‘Oh, you know, ‘ said Windle. ‘Could be better, could be worse.’
The trolley ricocheted off a wall and jerked away in another direction.
‘How are those spells coming along, Dean?’ said Ridcully, through gritted teeth.‘I’m having real difficulties controlling this thing.’
The Dean muttered a few more words, and then waved his hands dramatically. Octarine flame spurted from his fingertips and earthed itself somewhere in the mists.
‘Yee-haw!’ he crowed.
‘Dean?’
‘Yes, Archchancellor?’
‘The comment I made recently about the Y-word …’
‘Yes? Yes?’
‘You can definitely include Yee-haw, too.’
The Dean hung his head.
‘Oh. Yes. Archchancellor.’
‘And why hasn’t everythin’ gone boom?’
‘I put a slight delay on it, Archchancellor. I thought perhaps we ought to get out before things happened.’
‘Good thinking, that man.’
‘Soon have you out, Windle,’ said Reg Shoe. ‘We don’t leave our people in there. Isn’t this -‘
And then the floor erupted ahead of them.
And then, behind them.
The thing that arose from the shattered tiles was either formless or many forms at once. It writhed angrily, snapping its tubing at them.
The trolley skewed to a halt.
‘Got any more magic, Dean?’
‘Er … no, Archchancellor.’
‘And the spells you just said will go off … ?’
‘Any second now, Archchancellor.’
‘So … whatever’s going to happen … is going to happen to us?’
‘Yes, Archchancellor.’
idcully patted Windle on the head.
‘Sorry about this,’ he said.
Windle turned awkwardly to look down the passageway.
There was something behind the Queen. It looked like a perfectly ordinary bedroom door, advancing in a series of small steps, as though someone was carefully pushing it along in front of them.
‘What is it?’ said Reg.
Windle raised himself as far as he could.
‘Schleppel!’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Reg.
‘It’s Schleppel!’ shouted Windle. ‘Schleppel! It’s us! Can you help us out?’
The door paused. Then it was flung aside.
Schleppel unfolded himself to his full height.
‘Hallo, Mr Poons. Hallo, Reg,’ he said.
They stared at the hairy shape that nearly filled the passageway.
‘Er, Schleppel … er … could you clear the way for us?’ Windle quavered.
‘No problem, Mr Poons. Anything for a friend.’
A hand the size of a wheelbarrow glided through the
steam and tore into the blockage, ripping it out with incredible ease.
‘Hey, look at me!’ said Schleppel. ‘You’re right. A bogeyman needs a door like a fish needs a bicycle! Say it now and say it loud, I’m -‘
‘And now could you get out of the way, please?’
‘Sure. Sure. Wow!’ Schleppel took another swipe at the Queen.
The trolley shot forward.
‘And you’d better come with us!’ Windle shouted, as Schleppel disappeared in the mists.
‘No he shouldn’t,’ said the Archchancellor, as they sped along. ‘Believe me. What was it?’
‘He’s a bogeyman,’ said Windle.
‘I thought you only get them in closets and things?’ shouted Ridcully.
‘He’s come out of the closet,’ said Reg Shoe proudly. ‘And he’s found himself.’
‘Just so long as we can lose him.’
‘We can’t just leave him -‘
‘We can! We can!’ snapped Ridcully.
There was a sound behind them like an eruption of swamp gas. Green light streamed past.
‘The spells are starting to go off!’ shouted the Dean. ‘Move it!’
The trolley whirred out of the entrance and soared up into the cool of the night, wheels screaming.
‘Yo!’ bellowed Ridcully, as the crowd scattered ahead of them.
‘Does that mean I can say yo too?’ said the Dean.
‘All right. Just once. Everyone can say it just once.’
‘Yo!’
‘Yo!’ echoed Reg Shoe.
‘Oook!’
‘Yo!’ said Windle Poons.
‘Yo!’ said Schleppel.
(Somewhere in the darkness, where the crowd was
thinnest, the gaunt shape of Mr Ixolite, the world’s last surviving banshee, sidled up to the shaking building and bashfully shoved a note under the door. It said: OOOOeeeOOOeeeOOOeee.)
The trolley ploughed to a very definitive stop. No-one turned around. Reg said, slowly: ‘You’re behind us, right?’.
‘That’s right, Mr Shoe, ‘ said Schleppel happily.
‘Should we worry when he’s in front of us?’ said Ridcully, ‘Or is it worse because we know he’s behind us?’
‘Hah! No more closets and cellars for this bogey,’ said Schleppel.
‘That’s a shame, because we’ve got some really big cellars at the University,’ said Windle Poons quickly.
Schleppel was silent for a while. Then he said, in an exploratory tone of voice, ‘How big?’
‘Huge.’
‘Yeah? With rats?’
‘Rats aren’t the half of it. There’s escaped demons and all sorts down there. Infested, they are.’
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Ridcully. ‘That’s our cellars you’re talking about!’
‘You’d prefer him under your bed, would you?’ murmured Windle. ‘Or walking around behind you?’
Ridcully nodded briskly.
‘Wow, yes, those rats are getting really out of hand down there,’ he said loudly. ‘Some of them – oh, about two feet long, wouldn’t you say, Dean?’
‘Three feet, ‘ said the Dean. ‘At least.’
‘Fat as butter, too,’ said Windle.
Schleppel gave this some thought. ‘Well, all right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Maybe I’ll just wander in and have a look at them.’
The big store exploded and imploded at the same time, something it is almost impossible to achieve without a huge special effects budget or three spells all working against one another. There was the
impression of a vast cloud expanding but at the same time moving away so rapidly that the overall effect was of a shrinking point. Walls buckled and were sucked in. Soil ripped up from the ravaged fields and spiralled into the vortex. There was a violent burst of non-music, which died almost instantly.
And then nothing, except a muddy field.
And, floating down from the early morning sky like snow, thousands of white flakes. They slid silently through the air and landed lightly on the crowd.
‘It’s not seeding, is it?’ said Reg Shoe.
Windle grabbed one of the flakes. It was a crude rectangle, uneven and blotchy. It was just about possible, with a certain amount of imagination, to make out the words:
C)OS ~I’ o~~o S\ae.
v
3VQr~hnia t7u~, O9 ,l
c/ J o
‘No, ‘ said Windle. ‘Probably not.’
He lay back and smiled. It was never too late to have a good life.
And when no-one was looking, the last surviving trolley on the Discworld rattled off sadly into the oblivion of the night, lost and alone. *
_______________________________________________________________
* It is generally thought, on those worlds where the mall lifeform has seeded, that people take the wire baskets away and leave them in strange and isolated places, so that squads of young men have to be employed to gather them together and wheel them back. This is exactly the opposite of the truth. In reality the men are hunters. stalking their rattling prey across the landscape, trapping them, breaking their spirit, taming them and herding them to a life of slavery. Possibly.