Authors: Terry Pratchett
“That a joke?” he said, in the suspicious tones of someone who wouldn’t really understand the term “sense of humor” even if you sat down for an hour and explained it to him with diagrams.
“I was just making an observation, Master,” said the Bursar cautiously.
The Archchancellor shook his head. “Can’t stand jokes. Can’t stand chaps goin’ round tryin’ to be funny the whole time. Comes of spendin’ too much time sitting indoors. A few twenty-mile runs and the Dean’d be a different man.”
“Well, yes,” said the Bursar. “He’d be dead.”
“He’d be healthy.”
“Yes, but still dead.”
The Archchancellor irritably shuffled the papers on his desk.
“Slackness,” he muttered. “Far too much of it going on. Whole place gone to pot. People goin’ round sleepin’ all day and turnin’ into monkeys the whole time. We never even
thought
of turnin’ into a monkey when I was a student.” He looked up irritably.
“What was it you wanted?” he snapped.
“What?” said the Bursar, unnerved.
“You wanted me to do somethin’, didn’t you? You came in to ask me to do somethin’. Probably because I’m the only feller here not fast asleep or sittin’ in a tree whoopin’ every mornin’,” the Archchancellor added.
“Er. I think that’s gibbons, Archchancellor.”
“What? What? Do try and make some sense, man!”
The Bursar pulled himself together. He didn’t see why he had to be treated like this.
“In
fact
, I wanted to see you about one of the students, Master,” he said coldly.
“Students?” barked the Archchancellor.
“Yes, Master. You know? They’re the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we’re a
university
? They come with the whole thing, like rats—”
“I thought we paid people to deal with ’em.”
“The teaching staff. Yes. But sometimes…well, I wonder, Archchancellor, if you would care to look at these examination results…”
It was midnight—not the same midnight as before, but a very similar midnight. Old Tom, the tongueless bell in the University bell tower, had just tolled its twelve sonorous silences.
Rainclouds squeezed their last few drops over the city. Ankh-Morpork sprawled under a few damp stars, as real as a brick.
Ponder Stibbons, student wizard, put down his book and rubbed his face.
“All right,” he said. “Ask me anything. Go on. Anything at all.”
Victor Tugelbend, student wizard, picked up his battered copy of
Necrotelicomnicon Discussed for Students, with Practical Experiments
and turned the pages at random. He was lying on Ponder’s bed. At least, his shoulder blades were. His body extended up the wall. This is a perfectly normal position for a student taking his ease.
“OK,” he said. “Right. OK? What, right, what is the name of the outer-dimensional monster whose distinctive cry is ‘Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat’?”
“Yob Soddoth,” said Ponder promptly.
“Yeah. How does the monster Tshup Aklathep, Infernal Star Toad with A Million Young, torture its victims to death?”
“It…don’t tell me…it holds them down and shows them pictures of its children until their brains implode.”
“Yep. Always wondered how that happens, myself,” said Victor, flicking through the pages. “I suppose after you’ve said ‘Yes, he’s got your eyes’ for the thousandth time you’re about ready to commit suicide in any case.”
“You know an awful lot, Victor,” said Ponder admiringly.
“I’m amazed you’re still a student.”
“Er, yes,” said Victor. “Er. Just unlucky at exams, I guess.”
“Go on,” said Ponder, “Ask me one more.”
Victor opened the book again.
There was a moment’s silence.
Then he said, “Where’s Holy Wood?”
Ponder shut his eyes and pounded his forehead. “Hang on, hang on…don’t tell me…” He opened his eyes. “What do you mean, where’s Holy Wood?” he added sharply. “I don’t remember anything about any Holy Wood.”
Victor stared down at the page. There was nothing about any Holy Wood there.
“I could have sworn I heard…I think my mind must be wandering,” he finished lamely. “It must be all this revision.”
“Yes. It really gets to you, doesn’t it? But it’ll be worth it, to be a wizard.”
“Yes,” said Victor. “Can’t wait.”
Ponder shut the book.
“Rain’s stopped. Let’s go over the wall,” he said. “We deserve a drink.”
Victor waggled a finger. “Just one drink, then. Got to keep sober,” he said. “It’s Finals tomorrow. Got to keep a clear head!”
“Huh!” said Ponder.
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
But Victor had a special reason for keeping alert.
He might make a mistake, and pass.
His dead uncle had left him a small fortune not to be a wizard. He hadn’t realized it when he’d drawn up the will, but that’s what the old man had done. He
thought
he was helping his nephew through college, but Victor Tugelbend was a very bright young lad in an oblique sort of way and had reasoned thusly:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a wizard? Well, you got a certain amount of prestige, but you were often in dangerous situations and certainly always at risk of being killed by a fellow mage. He saw no future in being a well-respected corpse.
On the other hand…
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a
student
wizard? You got quite a lot of free time, a certain amount of license in matters like drinking a lot of ale and singing bawdy songs, no one tried to kill you much except in the ordinary, everyday Ankh-Morpork way of things and, thanks to the legacy, you also got a modest but comfortable style of living. Of course, you didn’t get much in the way of prestige but at least you were alive to know this.
So Victor had devoted a considerable amount of energy in studying firstly the terms of the will, the byzantine examination regulations of Unseen University, and every examination paper of the last fifty years.
The pass mark in Finals was 88.
Failing would be easy. Any idiot can
fail
.
Victor’s uncle had been no fool. One of the conditions of the legacy was that, should Victor ever achieve a mark of less than 80, the money supply would dry up like thin spit on a hot stove.
He’d won, in a way. Few students had ever studied as hard as Victor. It was said that his knowledge of magic rivaled that of some of the top wizards. He spent hours in a comfy chair in the Library, reading grimoires. He researched answer formats and exam techniques. He listened to lectures until he could quote them by heart. He was generally considered by the staff to be the brightest and certainly the busiest student for decades and, at every Finals, he carefully and competently got a mark of 84.
It was uncanny.
The Archchancellor reached the last page.
Eventually he said: “Ah. I see. Feel sorry for the lad, do you?”
“I don’t think you quite see what I mean,” said the Bursar.
“Fairly obvious to me,” said the Archchancellor. “Lad keeps coming within an ace of passin’.” He pulled out one of the papers. “Anyway, it says here he passed three years ago. Got 91.”
“Yes, Archchancellor. But he appealed.”
“
Appealed
? Against
passin’
?”
“He said he didn’t think the examiners had noticed that he got the allotropes of octiron wrong in question six. He said he couldn’t live with his conscience. He said it would haunt him for the rest of his days if he succeeded unfairly over better and more worthy students. You’ll notice he got only 82 and 83 in the next two exams.”
“Why’s that?”
“We think he was playing safe, Master.”
The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on the desk.
“Can’t have this,” he said. “Can’t have someone goin’ around
almost
bein’ a wizard and laughin’ at us up his, his—what’s it that people laugh up?”
“My feelings exactly,” purred the Bursar.
“We should send him up,” said the Archchancellor firmly.
“
Down
, Master,” said the Bursar. “Sending him up would mean making spiteful and satirical comments about him.”
“Yes. Good thinkin’. Let’s do that,” said the Archchancellor.
“No, Master,” said the Bursar patiently. “
He’s
sending
us
up, so
we
send
him
down.”
“Right. Balance things up,” said the Archchancellor. The Bursar rolled his eyes. “Or down,” the Archchancellor added. “So you want me to give him his marchin’ orders, eh? Just send him along in the morning and—”
“No, Archchancellor. We can’t do it just like that.”
“We can’t? I thought we were in charge here!”
“Yes, but you have to be extremely careful when dealing with Master Tugelbend. He’s an expert on procedures. So what I thought we could do is give him
this
paper in the finals tomorrow.”
The Archchancellor took the proferred document. His lips moved silently as he read it.
“Just one question.”
“Yes. And he’ll either pass or fail. I’d like to see him manage 84 percent on
that
.”
In a sense which his tutors couldn’t quite define, much to their annoyance, Victor Tugelbend was also the laziest person in the history of the world.
Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence of effort. Victor had passed through there a long time ago, had gone straight through commonplace idleness and out on the far side. He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labor.
He had never wanted to be a wizard. He’d never wanted much, except perhaps to be left alone and not woken up until midday. When he’d been small, people had said things like, “And what do
you
want to be, little man?” and he’d said, “I don’t know. What have you got?”
They didn’t let you get away with that sort of thing for very long. It wasn’t enough to be what you were, you had to be working to be something else.
He’d tried. For quite a long while he’d tried wanting to be a blacksmith, because that looked interesting and romantic. But it also involved hard work and intractable bits of metal. Then he’d tried wanting to be an assassin, which looked dashing and romantic. But it also involved hard work and, when you got right down to it, occasionally having to kill someone. Then he’d tried wanting to be an actor, which looked dramatic and romantic, but it had involved dusty tights, cramped lodgings and, to his amazement, hard work.
He’d allowed himself to be sent to the University because it was easier than not going.
He tended to smile a lot, in a faintly puzzled way. This gave people the impression that he was slightly more intelligent than they were. In fact, he was usually trying to work out what they had just said.
And he had a thin mustache, which in a certain light made him look debonair and, in another, made him look as though he had been drinking a thick chocolate milk shake.
He was quite proud of it. When you became a wizard you were expected to stop shaving and grow a beard like a gorse bush. Very senior wizards looked capable of straining nourishment out of the air via their mustaches, like whales.
It was now half-past one. He was ambling back from the Mended Drum, the most determinedly disreputable of the city’s taverns. Victor Tugelbend always gave the impression of ambling, even when he was running.
He was also quite sober and a bit surprised, therefore, to find himself in the Plaza of Broken Moons. He’d been heading for the little alley behind the University and the piece of wall with the conveniently-spaced removable bricks where, for hundreds and hundreds of years, student wizards had quietly got around, or more precisely climbed over, Unseen University’s curfew restrictions.
The plaza wasn’t on the route.
He turned to amble back the way he had come, and then stopped. There was something unusual going on.
Usually there’d be a storyteller there, or some musicians, or an entrepreneur looking for prospective buyers of such surplus Ankh-Morpork landmarks as the Tower of Art or the Brass Bridge.
Now there were just some people putting up a big screen, like a bedsheet stretched between poles.
He sauntered over to them. “What’re you doing?” he said amiably.
“There’s going to be a performance.”
“Oh. Acting,” said Victor, without much interest.
He mooched back through the damp darkness, but stopped when he heard a voice coming from the gloom between two buildings.
The voice said “Help,” quite quietly.
Another voice said, “Just hand it over, right?”
Victor wandered closer, and squinted into the shadows.
“Hallo?” he said. “Is everything all right?”
There was a pause, and then a low voice said, “You don’t know what’s good for you, kid.”
He’s got a knife, Victor thought. He’s coming at me with a knife. That means I’m either going to get stabbed or I’m going to have to run away, which is a real waste of energy.
People who didn’t apply themselves to the facts in hand might have thought that Victor Tugelbend would be fat and unhealthy. In fact, he was undoubtedly the most athletically-inclined student in the University. Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab.
So he brought one hand around in a backhanded swipe. It didn’t just connect, it lifted the mugger off his feet.
Then he looked for the prospective victim, who was still cowering against the wall.
“I hope you’re not hurt,” he said.
“Don’t move!”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Victor.
The figure advanced from the shadows. It had a package under one arm, and its hands were held in front of its face in an odd gesture, each forefinger and thumb extended at right angles and then fitted together, so that the man’s little weaselly eyes appeared to be looking out through a frame.