Unseen Academicals

‘You may be interested to know, gentlemen,’ said the new Master of The Traditions, ‘that tonight’s was the longest chase ever recorded in the history of the tradition. I suggest we owe a vote of thanks to tonight’s Megapode… ’

He realized the statement had plummeted on to deaf ears. ‘Er, gentlemen?’ he said.

He looked up. The wizards were staring, in a soulful sort of way, at whatever was going on inside their heads.

‘Gentlemen?’ he said again, and this time there was a collective sigh as they woke up from their sudden attack of daydreaming.

‘What say?’ said the Archchancellor.

‘I was just remarking that tonight’s Megapode was undoubtedly the finest on record, Archchancellor. It was Rincewind. The official Megapode headdress suited him very well, all things considered. I think he’s gone for a lie down.’

‘What? Oh, that. Well, yes. Indeed. Well done, that man,’ said Ridcully, and the wizards commenced that slow handclapping and table-thumping which is the mark of appreciation amongst men of a certain age, class and girth, accompanied by cries of ‘Ver’, ver’ well done, that man!’ and ‘Jolly good!’ But eyes stayed firmly fixed on the doorway, and ears strained for the rattle of the trolley, which would herald the arrival of the new girl and, of course, one hundred and seven types of cheese, and more than seventy different varieties of pickles, chutneys and other tracklements. The new girl might be the very paradigm of beauty, but UU was not the place for a man who could forget his cheeses.

Well, she was a distraction at least, Ponder thought as he snapped the book shut, and the university needed a few of them right now. It had been tricky since the Dean had left, very tricky indeed. Whoever heard of a man resigning from UU? It was something that simply did not happen! Sometimes people left in disgrace, in a box or, in a few cases, in bits, but there was no tradition of resigning at all. Tenure at Unseen University was for life, and often a long way beyond.

The office of Master of The Traditions had fallen inevitably on Ponder Stibbons, who tended to get all the jobs that required someone who thought that things should happen on time and that numbers should add up.

Regrettably, when he’d gone to check on things with the previous Master of The Traditions, who, everyone agreed, had not been seen around and about lately, he’d found that the man had been dead for two hundred years. This wasn’t a wholly unusual circumstance. Ponder, after years at Unseen, still didn’t know the full size of the faculty. How could you keep track of them in a place like this these days, where hundreds of studies all shared one window, but only on the outside, or rooms drifted away from their doorways during the night, travelled intangibly through the slumbering halls and ended up docking quite elsewhere?

A wizard could do what he liked in his own study, and in the old days that had largely meant smoking anything he fancied and farting hugely without apologizing. These days it meant building out into a congruent set of dimensions. Even the Archchancellor was doing it, which made it hard for Ponder to protest: he had half a mile of trout stream in his bathroom, and claimed that messin’ about in his study was what kept a wizard out of mischief. And, as everyone knew, it did. It generally got him into trouble instead.

Ponder had let that go, because he now saw it as his mission in life to stoke the fires that kept Mustrum Ridcully bubbling and made the university a happy place. As a dog reflects the mood of its owner, so a university reflects its Archchancellor. All he could do now, as the university’s sole self-confessed entirely sensible person, was to steer things as best he could, keep away from squalls involving the person previously known as the Dean, and find ways of keeping the Archchancellor too occupied to get under Ponder’s feet.

Ponder was about to put the Book of Traditions away when the heavy pages flopped over.

‘That’s odd.’

‘Oh, those old book bindings get very stiff,’ said Ridcully. ‘They have a life of their own, sometimes.’

‘Has anyone heard of Professor H. F. Pullunder, or Doctor Erratamus?’

The faculty stopped watching the door and looked at one another.

‘Ring a bell, anyone?’ said Ridcully.

‘Not a tinkle,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, cheerfully.

The Archchancellor turned to his left. ‘What about you, Dean? You know all the old—’

Ponder groaned. The rest of the wizards shut their eyes and braced themselves. This might be bad.

Ridcully stared down at two empty chairs, with the imprint of a buttock in each one. One or two of the faculty pulled their hats down over their faces. It had been two weeks now, and it had not got any better.

He took a deep breath and roared: ‘Traitor!’–which was a terrible thing to say to two dimples in leather.

The Chair of Indefinite Studies gave Ponder Stibbons a nudge, indicating that he was the chosen sacrifice for today, again.

Again.