Reaper Man

"Get away, you b –" he began.

"Don't say it!" said the Senior Wrangler. "Shut up!"

People never told the Archchancellor to shut up. Shutting up was something that happened to other people. He shut up out of shock.

"I mean, every time you swear it comes alive," said the Senior Wrangler hurriedly. "Ghastly little winged things pop out of the air."

"Bloody hellfire!" said the Archchancellor.

Pop. Pop.

The Bursar crawled dazed out of the tangled wreckage of the wire trolley. He found his pointy hat, dusted it off, tried it on, frowned, and took a wheel out of it. His colleagues didn't seem to be paying him much attention.

He heard the Archchancellor say, "But I've always done it! Nothing wrong with a good swear, it keeps the blood flowing. Watch out, Dean, one of the bug -"

"Can't you say something else?" shouted the Senior Wrangler, above the buzz and whine of the swarm.

"Like what?"

"Like...oh...like...darn."

"Darn?"

"Yes, or maybe poot."

"What? You want me to say poot?"

The Bursar crept up to the group. Arguing over petty details at times of dimensional emergency was a familiar wizardly trait.

"Mrs. Whitlow the housekeeper always says "Sugar!" when she drops something," he volunteered.

The Archchancellor turned on him.

"She may say sugar," he growled, "but what she means, is shi-"

The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself.

"Oh, darn," he said miserably. The swearwords settled amiably on his hat.

"They like you," said the Dean.

"You're their daddy," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

Ridcully scowled. "You b- boys can stop being silly at your Archchancellor's expense and da-jolly well find out what's going on," he said.

The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared.

"You're doing fine," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "Keep it up."

"Darn darn darn," said the Archchancellor. "Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty pootity poot. " He shook his head.

"It's no good, it doesn't relieve my feelings one bit."

"It's cleared the air, at any rate," said the Bursar.

They noticed his presence for the first time.

They looked at the remains of the trolley.

"Things zooming around," said Ridcully. "Things coming alive."

They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child.

The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates.

The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along gamely at the back of the crowd.

"What happened?"

"I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and ran away on me!"

"What about the child?"

"Search me. This woman had one of the baskets and she bought some peaches off of me an' then -"

They all turned. A basket rattled out of the mouth of an alleyway, saw them, turned smartly and shot off across the square.

"But why?" said Ridcully.

"They're so handy to put things in, right?" said the man. "I got to get them peaches. You know how they bruise."

"And they're all going in the same direction," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "Anyone else notice that?"

"After them!" screamed the Dean. The other wizards, too bewildered to argue, lumbered after him.

"No -'"Ridcully began, and realised that it was hopeless. And he was losing the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the history of bowdlerism.

"Darn them to Heck!" he yelled, and ran after the Dean.

Bill Door worked through the long heavy afternoon at the head of a trail of binders and stackers.

Until there was a shout, and the men ran towards the hedge.

Peedbury's big field was right on the other side. His farmhands were wheeling the Combination Harvester through the gate.

Bill joined the others leaning over the hedge. The distant figure of Simnel could be seen, giving instructions. A frightened horse was backed into the shafts. The blacksmith climbed into the little metal seat in the middle of the machinery and took up the reins.

The horse walked forward. The sparge arms unfolded.

The canvas sheets started to revolve, and probably the riffling screw was turning, but that didn't matter because something somewhere went ‘clonk' and everything stopped.

From the crowd at the hedge there were shouts of ‘Get out and milk it!", "We had one but the end fell off!", "Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!" and other time-honoured witticisms.

Simnel got down, held a whispered conversation with Peedbury and his men, and then disappeared into the machinery for a moment.

"It'll never fly!"

"Veal will be cheap tomorrow!"

This time the Combination Harvester got several feet before one of the rotating sheets split and folded up.

By now some of the older men at the hedge were doubled up with laughter.

"Any old iron, sixpence a load!"

"Fetch the other one, this one's broke!"