Unseen Academicals (33 page)

‘No, sir. There are too many variables. Possibly an enemy or japester might have assumed that I would take some action of the kind and made the ball out of concrete or similar material, in the hope I might do myself a serious or humorous injury. So, I would check first.’

‘And then, if all was in order, you would kick the ball?’

‘To what purpose or profit, sir?’

‘Interesting question. I suppose for the joy of seeing it fly.’

Drumknott seemed to consider this for a while, and then shook his head. ‘I am sorry, sir, but you have lost me at this point.’

‘Ah, you are a pillar of rock in a world of changes, Drumknott. Well done.’

‘I was wondering if I could just add something, sir,’ said the secretary solemnly.

‘The floor is yours, Drumknott.’

‘I would not like it thought that I do not buy my own paperclips, sir. I enjoy owning my own paperclips. It means that they are mine. I
thought it helpful I should tell you that in a measured and non-confrontational way.’

Vetinari looked at the ceiling for a few moments and then said: ‘Thank you for your frankness. I shall consider the record straightened and the matter closed.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Sator Square was where the city went when it was upset, baffled or fearful. People who had no real idea why they were doing so congregated to listen to other people who also did not know anything, on the basis that ignorance shared is ignorance doubled. There were clusters of people there this morning and several scratch teams, for it is written, or more probably scrawled on a wall somewhere, that wherever two or more are gathered together, at least one will have something to kick. Tin cans and tightly wound balls of rag were annoying adults on all sides, but as Glenda hurried nearer, the big doors of the university opened and Ponder Stibbons stepped out, somewhat inexpertly bouncing one of the wretched new leather balls.
Gloing!
Silence clanged, as rolling cans rattled on unheeded. All eyes were on the wizard and on the ball. He threw it down and there was a double
gloing!
as it bounced off the stones. And then he kicked it. It was a bit wussy as kicks went, that kick, but no one in the square had ever kicked anything even one tenth as far, and every male chased after it, propelled by ancient instinct.

They’ve won, Glenda thought glumly. A ball that goes
gloing!
when others go
clunk
…Well, where’s the contest?

She hurried on to the back entrance. In a world that was getting too complicated, where she could barge in on the black-hearted Tyrant and walk out unscathed, she needed a place to go that wasn’t spinning. The Night Kitchen was as familiar as her bedroom,
her
place, under
her
control. She could face anything there.

There was a figure lounging against the wall by the rubbish bins, and for some reason she identified it right away, despite the heavy cloak and the hat pulled down over the eyes; no one she had ever met could relax as perfectly as Pepe.

‘Wotcher, Glenda,’ said a voice from under the hat.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

‘Do you know how hard it is to find somebody in this city when you can’t tell anyone what they look like and aren’t really sure you can remember their name?’ said Pepe. ‘Where’s Jools?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen her since last night.’

‘It might be a good idea to find her before other people do,’ said Pepe.

‘What people?’ said Glenda.

Pepe shrugged.
‘Everybody,’
he said. ‘They’re mostly looking in the dwarf districts right now, but it can only be a matter of time. We can’t move down at the shop for them and it was all I could do to sneak out.’

‘What are they after her for?’ said Glenda, panic rising. ‘I saw in the paper that people were trying to find her, but she hasn’t done anything wrong!’

‘I don’t think you exactly grasp what’s going on,’ said the (possible) dwarf. ‘They want to find her to ask her a lot of questions.’

‘Has this got anything to do with Lord Vetinari?’ said Glenda suspiciously.

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Pepe.

‘What sort of questions, then?’

‘Oh, you know-What is your favourite colour? What do you like to eat? Are you an item with anybody? What advice do you have for young people today? Do you wax? Where do you get your hair done? What is your favourite spoon?’

‘I don’t think she’s got a favourite spoon,’ said Glenda, waiting for the world to make some sense.

Pepe patted her on the shoulder. ‘Look, she’s on the front page of the paper, isn’t she? And the
Times
keeps on at us about wanting to do a lifestyle profile of her. That might not actually be a bad thing, but it’s up to you.’

‘I don’t think she’s got a lifestyle,’ said Glenda, a little bewildered. ‘She’s never said. And she doesn’t wax. She hardly even dusts. Anyway, just tell them all that she doesn’t want to talk to anybody.’

Pepe’s expression went strange for a moment, then he said with care, like a man, or dwarf, struggling to be heard across a cultural divide, ‘Do you think I was talking about furniture?’

‘Well, what else? And I don’t think her housework is anyone else’s business.’

‘Don’t you understand? She’s popular, and the more we tell people they can’t talk to her, the more they want to, and the more you say no the more interested they become. People want to know all about her,’ said Pepe.

‘Like what her favourite spoon is?’ said Glenda.

‘I might have been a bit ironic,’ said Pepe. ‘But there’s newspaper writers all over the city looking for her and
Bu-bubble
want to do a two-page spread on her.’ He paused. ‘That means they’ll write about her and it’ll take two pages,’ he volunteered helpfully. ‘The Low King of the dwarfs has said that she is an icon for our times, according to
Satblatt
.’

‘What’s
Satblatt?
’ said Glenda.

‘Oh, the dwarf newspaper,’ said Pepe. ‘You’ll probably never see it.’

‘But she was just in a fashion show!’ wailed Glenda. ‘She was just walking up and down! I’m sure she doesn’t want to get involved in all that sort of thing.’

Pepe gave her a sharp look. ‘Are you?’ he said.

And then she thought, really thought about Juliet, who would read
Bu-bubble
from cover to cover, wouldn’t generally go near the
Times
, but would absorb all kinds of rubbish about frivolous and silly people. People that glittered. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said. ‘I really haven’t seen her since yesterday.’

‘Ah, a mystery disappearance,’ said Pepe. ‘Look, we’re already learning about this sort of thing down at the shop. Can we go somewhere a bit more private? I hope none of them followed me up here.’

‘Well, I can smuggle you in through the back entrance, as long as there isn’t a bledlow around,’ said Glenda.

‘Fine by me. I’m used to that sort of thing.’

She led him through the doorway and into the maze of cellars and
yards that contrasted rather interestingly with the fine frontage of Unseen University.

‘Got anything to drink?’ said Pepe behind her.

‘Water!’ snapped Glenda.

‘I’ll drink water when fish climb out of it to take a piss, but thank you all the same,’ said Pepe.

And then Glenda caught the smell of baking coming from the Night Kitchen. She was the only one who
baked
in
her
kitchen! No one else was supposed to bake in
her
kitchen. Baking was her responsibility. Hers. She ran up the steps with Pepe behind her and noted that the mystery cook had yet to master the second most important rule of cooking, which was to tidy things up afterwards. The place was a mess. There were even lumps of dough on the floor. In fact, it looked as though it had been possessed by some kind of frenzy. And in the middle of it all, curled up on Glenda’s battered and slightly rancid old armchair, was Juliet.

‘Just like
Sleeping Beauty
, ain’t it?’ said Pepe behind her.

Glenda ignored him and hurried along the rows of ovens. ‘She’s been baking pies. What on earth did she want to come along and bake pies for? She’s never been any good at baking pies.’ That’s because I’ve never let her bake a pie, she told herself.
That’s because as soon as she found anything difficult you took it away and did it yourself
, her inner voice scolded.

Glenda opened oven door after oven door. They had arrived just in time. By the smell of it, a couple of dozen assorted pies were cooked to a turn.

‘How about a drink?’ said Pepe, in whom thirst sprang eternal. ‘I’m sure there’s brandy. Every kitchen has some brandy in it somewhere.’

He watched as Glenda pulled the pies out, using her apron to protect her hands. Pepe regarded the pies with the indifference of a man who likes to drink his meals and listened to Glenda’s sotto voce monologue as pie after pie was laid out on the table.

‘I never told her to do this. Why did she do this?’ Because I did tell her to do this, sort of, that’s why. ‘And these are not half bad pies,’ she said more loudly. In surprise.

Juliet opened her eyes, looked around blearily, and then her face contorted in panic.

‘It’s okay, I’ve taken them all out,’ said Glenda. ‘Well done.’

‘I didn’t know what else to do and Trev was busy with the footballing and I thought they would be wantin’ pies tomorrow and I thought I better do some,’ said Juliet. ‘Sorry.’

Glenda took a step backwards. How to begin? she wondered. How to unravel it and then ravel it all back up again in a better shape because she had been wrong? Juliet hadn’t just walked up and down with clothes on, she had become some kind of a dream. A dream of clothes. Sparkling and alive and tantalizingly possible. And in Glenda’s memory of the fashion show, she literally shone, as if being lit from the inside. It was a kind of magic and it shouldn’t be making pies. She cleared her throat.

‘I’ve taught you a lot of things, haven’t I, Juliet?’ said Glenda.

‘Yes, Glenda,’ said Juliet.

‘And they’ve always been useful, haven’t they?’

‘Yes, Glenda. I remember it was you that said I should always keep my hand on my ha’penny and I’m very glad that you did.’

There was a strange noise from Pepe, and Glenda, feeling her face go red, didn’t dare look at him.

‘Then I’ve got a bit more advice for you, Juliet.’

‘Yes, Glenda.’

‘First, never, ever apologize for anything that doesn’t need apologizing for,’ said Glenda. ‘And especially never apologize for just being yourself.’

‘Yes, Glenda.’

‘Got that?’

‘Yes, Glenda.’

‘No matter what happens, always remember that you now know how to make a good pie.’

‘Yes, Glenda.’

‘Pepe is here because
Bu-bubble
wants to write something about you,’ said Glenda. ‘Your picture was in the paper again this morning
and—’ Glenda stopped. ‘She is going to be all right, isn’t she?’ she said.

Pepe paused in the act of surreptitiously removing a bottle from a cupboard. ‘You can trust me and Madame on that,’ he said. ‘Only people who are very trustworthy would dare to look as untrustworthy as me and Madame.’

‘And all she will have to do is show off clothes—Don’t drink that, that’s cider vinegar!’

‘I’m only drinking the cider bit,’ said Pepe. ‘Yes, all she’ll have to do is show off clothes, but to judge from the mob back at the shop there’s going to be people who want her to show off shoes, hats, hairstyles…’

‘No hanky panky,’ said Glenda.

‘I don’t think you’ll find, anywhere in the world, a greater expert in both hanky and panky than Madame. In fact, I would be surprised if you, Glenda, knew one hundredth of the hanky and panky that she does, especially as she invented quite a lot of it herself. And since we’ll notice it when we see it, we’ll keep an eye on her.’

‘And she’s got to eat proper meals and get a good night’s sleep,’ said Glenda.

Pepe nodded, although she expected that both those concepts were quite alien to him.

‘And paid,’ she added.

‘We’ll cut her in on the profits if she works exclusively for us,’ said Pepe. ‘Madame wants to talk to you about that.’

‘Yes, someone might want to pay her more than you do,’ said Glenda.

‘My, my, my. How fast we learn. I’m sure Madame will have great fun talking to you.’

Juliet looked from one to the other, sleep still wreathing her face. ‘You want me to go back to the shop?’

‘I don’t want you to do anything,’ said Glenda. ‘It’s up to you, okay? It’s just up to you, but it seems to me that if you stay here then basically what you’ll be doing is pies.’

‘Well, not just pies,’ said Juliet.

‘Well, no, fair enough, there are also flans, bubble and squeak and
assorted late-night dainties,’ said Glenda. ‘But you know what I mean. On the other hand, you could go and show off all these fancy clothes and go to lots of fancy places a long, long way from here and see a lot of new people and you’d know that if it all goes pear-shaped you could always make it pie-shaped.’

‘Hah, nice one,’ said Pepe, who’d found another bottle.

‘I really would like to go,’ said Juliet.

‘Then go
now
. I mean right
now
, or at least as soon as he’s finished drinking the ketchup.’

‘But I’ll have to go back for my stuff!’

Glenda reached down inside her vest and pulled out a burgundy-coloured booklet with the seal of Ankh-Morpork on it.

‘What’s that?’ said Juliet.

‘Your bank book. Your money’s safe in the bank and you can take it out any time you want.’

Juliet turned the bank book over and over in her hands. ‘I don’t fink anyone in my family’s ever been in a bank except for Uncle Geoffrey and they caught up with ’im even before he got home.’

‘Keep quiet about it. Don’t go home. Buy yourself lots of new stuff. Get yourself sorted out and then go back and see your dad and everybody when you have. The point is, even if you don’t go right away, in your mind you should always be going. But the important thing is to go right now. Move out. Get on. Climb up. All the things I should have done.’

‘What about Trev?’ said Juliet.

Glenda had to think about that. ‘How are things with you and Trev, then? I saw you two talking last night.’

‘Talking is allowed,’ said Juliet defensively. ‘Anyhow, he was only telling me how he was going to get himself a better job.’

‘Doing what?’ said Glenda. ‘I’ve never seen him doing a straight day’s work in all the years I’ve known him.’

‘He says he’s going to find something,’ said Juliet. ‘He said Nutt told ’im to. He said Nutt said that when Trev finds out who Trev is, like, he will, like, know what he can do. So I told ’im he was Trevor Likely, and he said that was, you know, helpful.’

I’m stuck, aren’t I? Glenda told herself. I’m talking about changing and getting out, so I have to allow that maybe he’s going to, too. Aloud, she said, ‘It’s up to you. It’s all up to you, but just mind that he keeps his hands to himself.’

‘He always keeps his hands to himself,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s a bit worryin’. I’ve never had to think about kneeing him in the tonker, not once.’

There was a strangled laugh from Pepe, who had just discovered the wow-wow sauce. The bottle was almost empty and, in theory, he should have no stomach left.