An apparition appeared above him holding a lamp over its head. It was a size five face in a size thirteen skin; it said ‘Oook?’ in a concerned way.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Ridcully. He tried to sit up quickly, just in case the Librarian tried the kiss of life.
Confused memories wobbled across his brain. He could remember a wall of clanking metal, and then pinkness, and then … music. Endless music, designed to turn the living brain to cream cheese.
He turned around. There was a building behind him, surrounded by crowds of people. It was squat and clung to the ground in a strangely animal way, as if it might be possible to lift up a wing of the building and hear the pop-pop-pop of suckers letting go. Light streamed out of it, and steam curled out of its doors.
‘Ridcully’s woken up!’
More faces appeared. Ridcully thought: it’s not Soul Cake Night, so they’re not wearing masks. Oh, blast.
Behind them he heard the Dean say, ‘I vote we work up Herpetty’s Seismic Reorganiser and lob it through the door. No more problem.’
‘No! We’re too close to the city walls! We just need to drop Quondum’s Attractive Point in the right place—’
‘Or Sumpjumper’s Incendiary Surprise, perhaps?’ This was the Bursar’s voice. ‘Burn it out, it’s the best way—’
‘Yeah? Yeah? And what do you know about military tactics? You can’t even say “yo” properly!’
Ridcully gripped the sides of the trolley.
‘Would anyone mind tellin’ me,’ he said, ‘what the — what the heck is goin’ on?’
Ludmilla pushed her way through the members of the Fresh Start Club.
‘You’ve got to stop them, Archchancellor!’ she said. ‘They’re talking about destroying the big shop!’
More nasty recollections settled on Ridcully’s mind.
‘Good idea,’ he said.
‘But Mr Poons is still in there!’
Ridcully tried to focus on the glowing building.
‘What, dead Windle Poons?’
‘Arthur flew back when we realised he wasn’t with us and he said Windle was fighting something that’d came out of the walls! We saw lots of trolleys but they weren’t bothered about us! He let us get out!’
‘What, dead Windle Poons?’
‘You can’t magic the place to bits with one of your wizards in there!’
‘What, dead Windle Poons?’
‘Yes!’
‘But he’s dead,’ said Ridcully. ‘Isn’t he? He said he was.’
‘Ha!’ said someone who had much less skin than Ridcully would have liked him to have. ‘That’s typical. That’s naked vitalism, that is. I bet they’d rescue someone in there if they happened to be alive.’
‘But he wanted … he wasn’t keen on … he …’ Ridcully hazarded. A lot of this was beyond him, but to people like Ridcully this didn’t matter for very long. Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn’t mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.
He concentrated on the single main fact. Someone who was technically a wizard was in trouble. He could relate to that. It struck a chord. The whole dead-or-alive business could wait.
There was another minor point that nagged at him, though.
‘… Arthur? … flew? …’
‘Hallo.’
Ridcully turned his head. He blinked slowly.
‘Nice teeth you got there,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Arthur Winkings.
‘All your own, are they?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Amazing. Of course, I expect you brush regularly.’
‘Yes?’
‘Hygienic. That’s the important thing.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ said Ludmilla.
‘Well, we’ll just go and fetch him out,’ said Ridcully.
What was it about the girl? He felt a strange urge to pat her on the head. ‘We’ll get some magic and get him out. Yes. Dean!’
‘Yo!’
‘We’re just going to go in there to get Windle out.’
‘Yo!’
‘What?’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You must be out of your mind!’
Ridcully tried to look as dignified as possible, given his situation.
‘Remember that I am your Archchancellor,’ he snapped.
‘Then you must be out of your mind, Archchancellor!’ said the Senior Wrangler. He lowered his voice. ‘Anyway, he’s an undead. I don’t see how you can save undeads. It’s a sort of contradiction in terms.’
‘A dichotomy,’ said the Bursar helpfully.
‘Oh, I don’t think surgery is involved.’
‘Anyway, didn’t we bury him?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
‘And now we dig him up again,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘It’s probably a miracle of existence.’
‘Like pickles,’ said the Bursar, happily.
Even the Fresh Starters went blank.
‘They do that in parts of Howondaland,’ said the Bursar. ‘They make these big, big jars of special pickles and then they bury them in the ground for months to ferment and they get this lovely piquant—’
‘Tell me,’ Ludmilla whispered to Ridcully, ‘is this how wizards usually behave?’
‘The Senior Wrangler is an amazingly fine example,’ said Ridcully. ‘Got the same urgent grasp of reality as a cardboard cut-out. Proud to have him on the team.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘OK, lads. Volunteers?’
‘Yo! Hut!’ said the Dean, who was in an entirely different world now.
‘I would be remiss in my duty if I failed to help a brother,’ said Reg Shoe.
‘Oook.’
‘You? We can’t take you,’ said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. ‘You don’t know a thing about guerrilla warfare.’
‘Oook!’ said the Librarian, and made a surprisingly comprehensive gesture to indicate that, on the other hand, what he didn’t know about orangutan warfare could be written on the very small pounded-up remains of, for example, the Dean.
‘Four of us should be enough,’ said the Archchancellor.
‘I’ve never even heard him say “Yo”,’ muttered the Dean.
He removed his hat, something a wizard doesn’t ordinarily do unless he’s about to pull something out of it, and handed it to the Bursar. Then he tore a thin strip off the bottom of his robe, held it dramatically in both hands, and tied it around his forehead.
‘It’s part of the ethos,’ he said, in answer to their penetratingly unspoken question. ‘That’s what the warriors on the Counter-weight Continent do before they go into battle. And you have to shout—’ He tried to remember some far-off reading. ‘—er, bonsai. Yes. Bonsai!’{44}
‘I thought that meant chopping bits off trees to make them small,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
The Dean hesitated. He wasn’t too sure himself, if it came to it. But a good wizard never let uncertainty stand in his way.
‘No, it’s definitely got to be bonsai,’ he said. He considered it some more and then brightened up. ‘On account of it all being part of bushido. Like … small trees. Bush-i-do.{45} Yeah. Makes sense, when you think about it.’
‘But you can’t shout “bonsai!” here,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘We’ve got a totally different cultural background. It’d be useless. No-one will know what you mean.’
‘I’ll work on it,’ said the Dean.
He noticed Ludmilla standing with her mouth open.
‘This is wizard talk,’ he said.
‘It is, isn’t it,’ said Ludmilla. ‘I never would have guessed.’
The Archchancellor had got out of the trolley and was wheeling it experimentally back and forth. It usually took quite a long time for a fresh idea to fully lodge in Ridcully’s mind, but he felt instinctively that there were all sorts of uses for a wire basket on four wheels.