He picked up his pen and started to write.
He was composing his memoirs. He’d got as far as the title: Along the Ankh with Bow, Rod and Staff with a Knob on the End.
‘Not many people realize,’ he wrote, ‘that the river Ankh has a large and varied pifcine population-‘[14]
He flung down the pen and stormed along the corridor into the Dean’s office.
‘What the hell’s that?’ he shouted.
The Dean jumped.
‘It’s, it’s, it’s a guitar, Archchancellor,’ said the Dean, walking hurriedly backwards as Ridcully approached. ‘I just bought it.’
‘I can see that, I can hear that, what was it you were tryin’ to do?’
‘I was practising, er, riffs,’ said the Dean. He waved a badly printed woodcut defensively in Ridcully’s face.
The Archchancellor grabbed it.
‘”Blert Wheedown’s Guitar Primer”,’ he read. ‘ “Play your Way to Succefs in Three Easy Lefsons and Eighteen Hard Lefsons”. Well? I’ve nothin’ against guitars, pleasant airs, a-spying young maidens one morning in May and so on, but that wasn’t playin’. That was just noise. I mean, what was it supposed to be?’
‘A lick based on an E pentatonic scale using the major seventh as a passing tone?’ said the Dean.
The Archchancellor peered at the open page.
‘But this says “Lesson One: Fairy Footsteps”,’ he said.
‘Um, um, um, I was getting a bit impatient,’ said the Dean.
‘You’ve never been musical, Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘It’s one of your good points. Why the sudden interest – what have you got on your feet?’
The Dean looked down.
‘I thought you were a bit taller,’ said Ridcully. ‘You standing on a couple of planks?’
‘They’re just thick soles,’ said the Dean. ‘Just . . . just something the dwarfs invented, I suppose . . . dunno . . . found them in my closet . . . Modo the gardener says he thinks they’re crepe.’
‘That’s strong language for Modo, but I’d say he’s right enough.’
‘No . . . it’s a kind of rubbery stuff . . .’ said the Dean, dismally.
‘Erm . . . excuse me, Archchancellor . . .’
It was the Bursar, standing in the doorway. A large red-faced man was behind him, craning over his shoulder.
‘What is it, Bursar?’
‘Erm, this gentleman has got a-‘
‘It’s about your monkey,’ said the man.
Ridcully brightened up.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Apparently, erm, he sto- removed some wheels from this gentleman’s carriage,’ said the Bursar, who was on the depressive side of his mental cycle.
‘You sure it was the Librarian?’ said the Archchancellor.
‘Fat, red hair, says “ook”, a lot?’
‘That’s him. Oh, dear. I wonder why he did that?’ said Ridcully. ‘Still, you know what they say . . . a five-hundred-pound gorilla can sleep where he likes.’
‘But a three-hundred-pound monkey can give me my bloody wheels back,’ said the man, unmoved. ‘If I don’t get my wheels back, there’s going to be trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ said Ridcully.
‘Yeah. And don’t think you can scare me. Wizards don’t scare me. Everyone knows there’s a rule that you mustn’t use magic against civilians.’ The man thrust his face close to Ridcully and raised a fist.
Ridcully snapped his fingers. There was an inrush of air, and a croak.
‘I’ve always thought of it more as a guideline,’ he said, mildly. ‘Bursar, go and put this frog in the flowerbed and when he becomes his old self give him ten dollars. Ten dollars would be all right, wouldn’t it?’
‘Croak,’ said the frog hastily.
‘Good. And now will someone tell me what’s going on?’
There was a series of crashes from downstairs.
‘Why do I think,’ said Ridcully to the world in general, ‘that this isn’t going to be the answer?’
The servants had been laying the tables for lunch. This generally took some time. Since wizards took their meals seriously, and left a lot of mess, the tables were in a permanent state of being laid, cleaned or occupied.
Place-settings alone took a lot of time. Each wizard required nine knives, thirteen forks, twelve spoons and one rammer, quite apart from all the wine-glasses.
Wizards often turned up in ample time for the next meal. In fact they were often there in good time to have second helpings of the last one.
A wizard was sitting there now.
‘That’s Recent Runes, ain’t it?’ said Ridcully.
He had a knife in each hand. He also had the salt, pepper and mustard pots in front of him. And the cake-stand. And a couple of tureen covers. All of which he was hitting vigorously with the knives.
‘What’s he doing that for?’ said Ridcully. ‘And, Dean, will you stop tapping your feet?’
‘Well, it’s catchy,’ said the Dean.
‘It’s catching,’ said Ridcully.
The Lecturer in Recent Runes was frowning in concentration. Forks jangled across the woodwork. A spoon caught a glancing blow, pinwheeled through the air and hit the Bursar on the ear.
‘What the hells does he think he’s doing?’
‘That really hurt!’
The wizards clustered around the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He paid them no attention whatsoever. Sweat poured down his beard.
‘He just broke the cruet,’ said Ridcully.
‘It’s going to smart for hours.’
‘Ah, yes, he’s as hot as mustard,’ said the Dean.
‘I’d take that with a pinch of salt,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
Ridcully straightened up. He raised a hand.
‘Now, someone’s about to say something like “I hope the Watch don’t ketchup with him”, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Or “That’s a bit of a sauce”, or I bet you’re all trying to think of somethin’ silly to say about pepper. I’d just like to know what’s the difference between this faculty and a bunch of pea-brained idiots.’
‘Hahaha,’ said the Bursar nervously, still rubbing his ear.
‘It wasn’t a rhetorical question.’ Ridcully snatched the knives out of the Lecturer’s hands. The man went on beating the air for a moment, and then appeared to wake up.
‘Oh, hello, Archchancellor. Is there a problem?’
‘What were you doing?’
The Lecturer looked down at the table.
‘He was syncopating,’ said the Dean.
‘I never was!’
Ridcully frowned. He was a thick-skinned, single-minded man with the tact of a sledgehammer and about the same sense of humour, but he was not stupid. And he knew that wizards were like weathervanes, or the canaries that miners used to detect pockets of gas. They were by their nature tuned to an occult frequency. If there was anything strange happening, it tended to happen to wizards. They turned, as it were, to face it. Or dropped off their perch.
‘Why’s everyone suddenly so musical?’ he said. ‘Using the term in its loosest sense, of course.’ He looked at the assembled wizardry. And then down towards the floor.
‘You’ve all got crepe on your shoes!’
The wizards looked at their feet with some surprise.
‘My word, I thought I was a bit taller,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘ I put it down to the celery diet.'[15]
‘Proper footwear for a wizard is pointy shoes or good stout boots,’ said Ridcully. ‘When one’s footwear turns creepy, something’s amiss.’
‘It’s crepe,’ said the Dean. ‘It’s got a little pointy thingy over the-‘
Ridcully breathed heavily. ‘When your boots change by themselves-‘ he growled.
‘There’s magic afoot?’
‘Haha, good one, Senior Wrangler,’ said the Dean.
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ said Ridcully, in a low and level voice, ‘and if you don’t all shut up there will be trouble.’
He reached into the pockets of his robe and, after a few false starts, produced a pocket thaumometer. He held it up. There was always a high level of background magic in the University, but the little needle was on the ‘Normal’ mark. On average, anyway. It was ticking backwards and forwards across it like a metronome.
Ridcully held it up so they could all see.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘Four-four time?’ said the Dean.
‘Music ain’t magic,’ said Ridcully. ‘Don’t be daft. Music’s just twanging and banging and-‘
He stopped.
‘Has anyone got anything they should be telling me?’
The wizards shuffled their blue-suede feet nervously.
‘Well,’ said the Senior Wrangler, ‘it is a fact that last night, er, I, that is to say, some of us, happened to be passing by the Mended Drum-‘
‘Bona-Fide Travellers,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘It’s allowable for Bona-Fide Travellers to get a Drink at Licensed Premises at any Hour of Day or Night. City statute, you know.’
‘Where were you travelling from, then?’ Ridcully demanded.
‘The Bunch of Grapes.’
‘That’s just around the corner.’
‘Yes, but we were . . . tired.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Ridcully, in the voice of a man who knows that pulling at a thread any more will cause the whole vest to unravel. ‘The Librarian was with you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, there was this music-‘
‘Sort of twangy,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘Melody led,’ said the Dean.
‘It was . . .’