Glod went to the door and looked out. There was a pointy hat on the flagstones, trampled flat.
‘That was fun,’ he said. ‘If I’d just asked them where the Librarian was, they’d have said bugger off, you dwarf. You have to know how to deal with people in this game.’
He came back and sat down beside the Librarian. The ape put a smaller bend in the pipe.
‘What’re you making?’ said Glod.
‘Gook-oook-OOK!’
‘My cousin Modo is the gardener here,’ said Glod. ‘He says you’re a mean keyboard player.’ He stared at the hands, busy in the pipebending. They were big. And of course there were four of them. ‘He was certainly partly right,’ he added.
The ape picked up a length of driftwood and tasted it.
‘We thought you might like to play pianoforte with us at the Drum tonight,’ said Glod. ‘Me and Cliff and Buddy, that is.’
The Librarian rolled a brown eye towards him, then picked up a piece of wood, gripped one end and began to strum.
‘Ook?’
‘That’s right,’ said Glod. ‘The boy with the guitar.’
‘Eeek.’
The Librarian did a back somersault.
‘Oookoook-ooka-ooka-OOOka-OOK!’
‘I can see you’re in the swing of it already,’ said Glod.
Susan saddled the horse and mounted up.
Beyond Death’s garden were fields of corn, their golden sheen the only colour in the landscape. Death might not have been any good at grass (black) and apple trees (gloss black on black), but all the depth of colour he hadn’t put elsewhere he’d put in the fields. They rippled as if in the wind, except that there wasn’t any wind.
Susan couldn’t imagine why he’d done it.
There was a path, though. It led across the fields for half a mile or so, then disappeared abruptly. It looked as though somebody walked out here occasionally and just stood, looking around.
Binky followed the path and stopped at the end.
Then he turned, managing not to disturb a single ear.
‘I don’t know how you do this,’ Susan whispered, ‘but you must be able to do it, and you know where I want to go.’
The horse appeared to nod. Albert had said that Binky was a genuine flesh-and-blood horse, but maybe you couldn’t be ridden by Death for hundreds of years without learning something. He looked as though he’d been pretty bright to start with.
Binky began to trot, and then canter, and then gallop. And then the sky flickered, just once.
Susan had expected more than that. Flashing stars, some sort of explosion of rainbow colours . . . not just a flicker. It seemed a rather dismissive way of travelling nearly seventeen years.
The cornfields had gone, but the garden was pretty much the same. There was the strange topiary and the pond with the skeletal fish. There were, pushing jolly wheelbarrows and carrying tiny scythes, what might have been garden gnomes in a mortal garden but here were cheery little skeletons in black robes. Things tended not to change.
The stables were a little different, though. Binky was in them, for a start.
He whinnied quietly as Susan led him into an empty stall next to himself.
‘I’m sure you two know each other,’ she said. She’d never expected it to work, but it had to, didn’t it? Time was something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?
She slipped into the house.
NO. I CANNOT BE BIDDEN. I CANNOT BE FORCED. I WILL ONLY DO THAT WHICH I KNOW TO BE RIGHT . . .
Susan crept along behind the shelves of lifetimers.
No-one noticed her. When you are watching Death fight, you don’t notice shadows in the background.
They’d never told her about this. Parents never do. Your father could be Death’s apprentice and your mother Death’s adopted daughter, but that’s just fine detail when they become Parents. Parents were never young. They were merely waiting to become Parents.
Susan reached the end of the shelves.
Death was standing over her father . . . she corrected herself, the boy who would be her father.
Three red marks burned on his cheek where Death had struck him. Susan raised a hand to the pale marks on her own face.
But that’s not how heredity works.
At least . . . the normal kind . . .
Her mother . . . the girl who would become her mother . . . was pressed against a pillar. She had actually improved with age, Susan thought. Her dress sense certainly had. And she mentally shook herself. Fashion comments? Now?
Death stood over Mort, sword in one hand and Mort’s own lifetimer in the other.
YOU DON’T KNOW HOW SORRY THIS MAKES ME, he said.
‘I might,’ said Mort.
Death looked up, and looked straight at Susan. His eye sockets flared blue for a moment. Susan tried to press herself into the shadows.
He looked back down at Mort for a moment, and then at Ysabell, and then back at Susan, and then back down at Mort. And laughed.
And turned the hourglass over.
And snapped his fingers.
Mort vanished, with a small ‘pop’ of imploding air. So did Ysabell and the others.
It was, suddenly, very quiet.
Death put the hourglass down, very carefully, on the table and looked at the ceiling for a while. Then he said:
ALBERT?
Albert appeared from behind a pillar.
WOULD YOU BE SO GOOD AS TO MAKE ME A CUP OF TEA, PLEASE.
‘Yes, Master. Hehe, you sorted him out right enough-‘
THANK YOU.
Albert scurried off in the direction of the kitchen.
Once again there was the closest thing there could ever be to silence in the room of lifetimers.
YOU’D BETTER COME OUT.
Susan did so, and stood before the Ultimate Reality.
Death was seven feet tall. He looked taller. Susan had vague memories of a figure carrying her on its shoulders through the huge dark rooms, but in memory it had been a human figure – bony, but human in a way she was certain of but couldn’t quite define.
This wasn’t human. It was tall, and haughty, and terrible. He might unbend enough to bend the Rules, Susan thought, but that doesn’t make him human. This is the keeper of the gate of the world. Immortal, by definition. The end of everything.
He is my grandfather.
Will be, anyway. Is. Was.
But . . . there was the thing in the apple tree. Her mind kept swinging back to that. You looked up at the figure, and thought about the tree. It was almost impossible to keep both images in one mind.
WELL, WELL, WELL. YOU HAVE A LOT OF YOUR MOTHER ABOUT YOU, said Death. AND YOUR FATHER.
‘How did you know who I am?’ said Susan.
I HAVE A UNIQUE MEMORY.
‘How can you remember me? I haven’t even been conceived yet!’
I DID SAY UNIQUE. YOUR NAME IS-
‘Susan, but . . .’
SUSAN? said Death bitterly. THEY REALLY WANTED TO MAKE SURE, DIDN’T THEY?
He sat down in his chair, steepled his fingers and looked at Susan over the top of them.
She looked back, matching stare for stare.
TELL ME, said Death, after a while, WAS I . . . WILL I BE . . . AM I A GOOD GRANDFATHER?
Susan bit her lip thoughtfully.
‘If I tell you, won’t that be a paradox?’
NOT FOR US.
‘Well . . . you’ve got bony knees.’
Death stared at her.
BONY KNEES?
‘Sorry.’
YOU CAME HERE TO TELL ME THAT?
‘You’ve gone missing back . . . there. I’m having to do the Duty. Albert is very worried. I came here to . . . find things out. I didn’t know my father worked for you.’
HE WAS VERY BAD AT IT.
‘What have you done with him?’
THEY’RE SAFE FOR NOW. I’M GLAD IT’S OVER. HAVING PEOPLE AROUND WAS BEGINNING TO AFFECT MY JUDGEMENT. AH, ALBERT . . .
Albert had appeared on the edge of the carpet, bearing a tea-tray.
ANOTHER CUP, IF YOU WOULD BE SO GOOD.
Albert looked around, and totally failed to see Susan. If you could be invisible to Miss Butts, everyone else was easy.
‘If you say so, Master.’
SO, said Death, when Albert had shuffled away, I HAVE GONE MISSING. AND YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE INHERITED THE FAMILY BUSINESS. YOU?
‘I didn’t want to! The horse and the rat just turned up!’
RAT?
‘Er . . . I think that’s something that’s going to happen.’
OH, YES. I REMEMBER. HMM. A HUMAN DOING MY JOB? TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE, OF COURSE, BUT WHY?
‘I think Albert knows something, but he changes the subject.’
Albert reappeared, carrying another cup and saucer. He plonked it down pointedly on Death’s desk, with the air of one who is being put upon.
‘That’ll be all, will it, Master?’ he said.
THANK YOU, ALBERT. YES.
Albert left again, more slowly than normal. He kept looking over his shoulder.
‘He doesn’t change, does he?’ said Susan. ‘Of course, that’s the point about this place-‘