Reaper Man Read online

  “That’s him,” said the Dean.

  “No it isn’t,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s just a gray ro—there’s nothing in—”

  He stopped.

  It turned, slowly. It was filled out, suggesting a wearer, but at the same time had a feeling of hollowness, as if it was merely a shape for something with no shape of its own. The hood was empty.

  The emptiness watched the wizards for a few seconds and then focused on the Archchancellor.

  It said, Who are you?

  Ridcully swallowed. “Er. Mustrum Ridcully. Archchancellor.”

  The hood nodded. The Dean stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it around. The robe wasn’t talking. Nothing was being heard. It was just that, afterward, you had a sudden memory of what had just failed to be said and no knowledge of how it had got there.

  The hood said, You are a superior being on this world?

  Ridcully looked at the other wizards. The Dean glared.

  “Well…you know…yes…first among equals and all that sort of thing…yes…” Ridcully managed.

  He was told, We bring good news.

  “Good news? Good news?” Ridcully squirmed under the gazerless gaze. “Oh, good. That is good news.”

  He was told, Death has retired.

  “Pardon?”

  He was told, Death has retired.

  “Oh? That is…news…” said Ridcully uncertainly. “Uh. How? Exactly…how?”

  He was told, We apologize for the recent lapse in standards.

  “Lapse?” said the Archchancellor, now totally mystified. “Well, uh, I’m not sure there’s been a…I mean, of course the fella was always knockin’ around, but most of the time we hardly…”

  He was told, It has all been most irregular.

  “It has? Has it? Oh, well, can’t have irregularity,” said the Archchancellor.

  He was told, It must have been terrible.

  “Well, I…that is…I suppose we…I’m not sure…must it?”

  He was told, But now the burden is removed. Rejoice. That is all. There will be a short transitional period before a suitable candidate presents itself, and then normal service will be resumed. In the meantime, we apologize for any unavoidable inconvenience caused by superfluous life effects.

  The figure wavered and began to fade.

  The Archchancellor waved his hands desperately.

  “Wait!” he said. “You can’t just go like that! I command you to stay! What service? What does it all mean? Who are you?”

  The hood turned back toward him and said, We are nothing.

  “That’s no help! What is your name?”

  We are oblivion.

  The figure vanished.

  The wizards fell silent. The frost in the octogram began to sublime back into air.

  “Oh-oh,” said the Bursar.

  “Short transitional period? Is that what this is?” said the Dean.

  The floor shook.

  “Oh-oh,” said the Bursar again.

  “That doesn’t explain why everything is living a life of its own,” said the Senior Wrangler.

  “Hold on…hold on,” said Ridcully, “If people are coming to the end of their life and leaving their bodies and everything, but Death isn’t taking them away—”

  “Then that means they’re queueing up here,” said the Dean.

  “With nowhere to go.”

  “Not just people,” said the Senior Wrangler. “It must be everything. Every thing that dies.”

  “Filling up the world with life force,” said Ridcully. The wizards were speaking in a monotone, everyone’s mind running ahead of the conversation to the distant horror of the conclusion.

  “Hanging around with nothing to do,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  “Ghosts.”

  “Poltergeist activity.”

  “Good grief.” 60

  “Hang on, though,” said the Bursar, who had managed to catch up with events. “Why should that worry us? We don’t have anything to fear from the dead, do we? After all, they’re just people who are dead. They’re just ordinary people. People like us.”

  The wizards thought about this. They looked at one another. They started to shout, all at once.

  No one remembered the bit about suitable candidates.

  Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.

  People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.

  Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiraling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief résumé of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

  Belief creates other things.

  It created Death. Not death, which is merely a technical term for a state caused by prolonged absence of life, but Death, the personality. He evolved, as it were, along with life. As soon as a living thing was even dimly aware of the concept of suddenly becoming a non-living thing, there was Death. He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that was already millions of years old.

  And now he had gone. But belief doesn’t stop. Belief goes right on believing. And since the focal point of belief had been lost, new points sprang up. Small as yet, not very powerful. The private deaths of every species, no longer united but specific.

  In the stream, black-scaled, swam the new Death of Mayflies. In the forests, invisible, a creature of sound only, drifted the chop-chop-chop of the Death of Trees.

  Over the desert a dark and empty shell moved purposefully, half an inch above the ground…the Death of Tortoises.

  The Death of Humanity hadn’t been finished yet. Humans can believe some very complex things.

  It’s like the difference between off-the-peg and bespoke.

  The metallic sounds stopped coming from the alley.

  Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise.

  And, finally, there was a very faint jangling sound, disappearing into the distance.

  “Don’t stand in the doorway, friend. Don’t block up the hall. Come on in.”

  Windle Poons blinked in the gloom.

  When his eyes became accustomed to it, he realized that there was a semi-circle of chairs in an otherwise rather bare and dusty room. They were all occupied.

  In the center—at the focus, as it were, of the half circle—was a small table at which someone had been seated. They were now advancing toward him, with their hand out and a big smile on their face.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” they said. “You’re a zombie, right?”

  “Er.” Windle Poons had never seen anyone with such a pallid skin, such as there was of it, before. Or wearing clothes that looked as if they’d been washed in razor blades and smelled as though someone had not only died in them but was still in them. Or sporting a Glad To Be Gray badge.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose so. Only they buried me, you see, and there was this card—” He held it out, like a shield.

  “’Course there was. ’Course there was,” said the figure.

  He’s going to want me to shake hands, Windle thought. If I do, I just know I’m going to end up with more fingers than I started with. Oh, my goodness. Will I end up like that?

  “And I’m dead,” he said, lamely.

  “And fed up with being pushed around, eh?” said the greenish-skinned one. Windle shook his hand very carefully.

  “Well, not exactly fed—”

  “Shoe’s the name. Reg Shoe.”

  “
Poons. Windle Poons,” said Windle. “Er—”

  “Yeah, it’s always the same,” said Reg Shoe bitterly. “Once you’re dead, people just don’t want to know, right? They act as if you’ve got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?”

  “Everyone, I should have thought,” said Windle. “Er, I—”

  “Yeah, I know what it’s like. Tell someone you’re dead and they look at you as if they’ve seen a ghost,” Mr. Shoe went on.

  Windle realized that talking to Mr. Shoe was very much like talking to the Archchancellor. It didn’t actually matter what you said, because he wasn’t listening. Only in Mustrum Ridcully’s case it was because he just wasn’t bothering, while Reg Shoe was in fact supplying your side of the conversation somewhere inside his own head.

  “Yeah, right,” said Windle, giving in.

  “We were just finishing off, in fact,” said Mr. Shoe. “Let me introduce you. Everyone, this is—” He hesitated.

  “Poons. Windle Poons.”

  “Brother Windle,” said Mr. Shoe. “Give him a big Fresh Start welcome!”

  There was an embarrassed chorus of “hallos.” A large and rather hairy young man at the end of the row caught Windle’s eye and rolled his own yellow eyes in a theatrical gesture of fellow feeling.

  “This is Brother Arthur Winkings—”

  “Count Notfaroutoe,” said a female voice sharply.

  “And Sister Doreen—I mean Countess Notfaroutoe, of course—”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” said the female voice, as the small dumpy woman sitting next to the small dumpy shape of the Count extended a be-ringed hand. The Count himself gave Windle a worried grin. He seemed to be wearing opera dress designed for a man several sizes larger.

  “And Brother Schleppel—”

  The chair was empty. But a deep-voice from the darkness underneath it said, “Evenin’.”

  “And Brother Lupine.” The muscular, hairy young man with the long canines and pointy ears gave Windle’s hand a hearty shake.

  “And Sister Drull. And Brother Gorper. And Brother Ixolite.”

  Windle shook a number of variations on the theme of hand.

  Brother Ixolite handed him a small piece of yellow paper. On it was written one word: OoooEeeeOoooEeeeOoooEEEee.

  “I’m sorry there aren’t more here tonight,” said Mr. Shoe. “I do my best, but I’m afraid some people just don’t seem prepared to make the effort.”

  “Er…dead people?” said Windle, still staring at the note.

  “Apathy, I call it,” said Mr. Shoe, bitterly. “How can the movement make progress if people are just going to lie around the whole time?”

  Lupine started making frantic “don’t get him started” signals behind Mr. Shoe’s head, but Windle wasn’t able to stop himself in time.

  “What movement?” he said.

  “Dead Rights,” said Mr. Shoe promptly. “I’ll give you one of my leaflets.”

  “But, surely, er, dead people don’t have rights?” said Windle. In the corner of his vision he saw Lupine put his hand over his eyes.

  “You’re dead right there,” said Lupine, his face absolutely straight. Mr. Shoe glared at him.

  “Apathy,” he repeated. “It’s always the same. You do your best for people, and they just ignore you. Do you know people can say what they like about you and take away your property, just because you’re dead? And they—”

  “I thought that most people, when they died, just…you know…died,” said Windle.

  “It’s just laziness,” said Mr. Shoe. “They just don’t want to make the effort.”

  Windle had never seen anyone look so dejected. Reg Shoe seemed to shrink several inches.

  “How long have you been undead, Vindle?” said Doreen, with brittle brightness.

  “Hardly any time at all,” said Windle, relieved at the change of tone. “I must say it’s turning out to be different than I imagined.”

  “You get used to it,” said Arthur Winkings, alias Count Notfaroutoe, gloomily. “That’s the thing about being undead. It’s as easy as falling off a cliff. We’re all undead here.”

  Lupine coughed.

  “Except Lupine,” said Arthur.

  “I’m more what you might call honorary undead,” said Lupine.

  “Him being a werewolf,” explained Arthur.

  “I thought he was a werewolf as soon as I saw him,” said Windle, nodding.

  “Every full moon,” said Lupine. “Regular.”

  “You start howling and growing hair,” said Windle.

  They all shook their heads.

  “Er, no,” said Lupine. “I more sort of stop howling and some of my hair temporarily falls out. It’s bloody embarrassing.”

  “But I thought at the full moon your basic werewolf always—”

  “Lupine’s problem,” said Doreen, “is that he approaches it from ze ozzer way, you see.”

  “I’m technically a wolf,” said Lupine. “Ridiculous, really. Every full moon I turn into a wolf-man. The rest of the time I’m just a…wolf.”

  “Good grief,” said Windle. “That must be a terrible problem.”

  “The trousers are the worst part,” said Lupine.

  “Er…they are?”

  “Oh, yeah. See, it’s all right for human werewolves. They just keep their own clothes on. I mean, they might get a bit ripped, but at least they’ve got them handy on, right? Whereas if I see the full moon, next minute I’m walking and talking and I’m definitely in big trouble on account of being very deficient in the trousery vicinity. So I have to keep a pair stashed somewhere. Mr. Shoe—”

  “—call me Reg—”

  “—lets me keep a pair where he works.”

  “I work at the mortuary on Elm Street,” said Mr. Shoe. “I’m not ashamed. It’s worth it to save a brother or sister.”

  “Sorry?” said Windle. “Save?”

  “It’s me that pins the card on the bottom of the lid,” said Mr. Shoe. “You never know. It has to be worth a try.”

  “Does it often work?” said Windle. He looked around the room. His tone must have suggested that it was a reasonably large room, and had only eight people in it; nine if you included the voice from under the chair, which presumably belonged to a person.

  Doreen and Arthur exchanged glances.

  “It vorked for Artore,” said Doreen.

  “Excuse me,” said Windle, “I couldn’t help wondering…are you two…er…vampires, by any chance?”

  “’S’right,” said Arthur. “More’s the pity.”

  “Hah! You should not tvalk like zat,” said Doreen haughtily. “You should be prout of your noble lineage.”

  “Prout?” said Arthur.

  “Did you get bitten by a bat or something?” said Windle quickly, anxious not to be the cause of any family friction.

  “No,” said Arthur, “by a lawyer. I got this letter, see? With a posh blob of wax on it and everything. Blahblahblah…great-great-uncle…blahblahblah…only surviving relative…blahblahblah…may we be the first to offer our heartiest…blahblahblah. One minute I’m Arthur Winkings, a coming man in the wholesale fruit and vegetable business, next minute I find I’m Arthur, Count Notfaroutoe, owner of fifty acres of cliff face a goat’d fall off of and a castle that even the cockroaches have abandoned and an invitation from the burgomaster to drop in down at the village one day and discuss three hundred years of back taxes.”

  “I hate lawyers,” said the voice from under the chair. It had a sad, hollow sound. Windle tried to move his legs a little closer to his own chair.

  “It voss quite a good castle,” said Doreen.

  “A bloody heap of moldering stone is what it was,” said Arthur.

  “It had nice views.”

  “Yeah, through every wall,” said Arthur, dropping a portcullis into that avenue of conversation. “I should have known even before we went to look at it. So I turned the carriage around, right? I thought, well, that’s four days wasted, right in the mid
dle of our busy season. I don’t think anymore about it. Next thing, I wake up in the dark, I’m in a box, I finally find these matches, I light one, there’s this card six inches from my nose. It said—”

  “‘You Don’t Have to Take this Lying Down,’” said Mr. Shoe proudly. “That was one of my first ones.”

  “It vasn’t my fault,” said Doreen, stiffly. “You had been lyink rigid for tree dace.”

  “It gave the priest a shock, I can tell you,” said Arthur.

  “Huh! Priests!” said Mr. Shoe. “They’re all the same. Always telling you that you’re going to live again after you’re dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!”

  “Don’t like priests, either,” said the voice from under the chair. Windle wondered if anyone else was hearing it.

  “I won’t forget the look on the Reverend Welegare’s face in a hurry,” said Arthur gloomily. “I’ve been going to that temple for thirty years. I was respected in the community. Now if I even think of setting foot in a religious establishment I get a pain all down my leg.”

  “Yes, but there was no need for him to say what he said when you pushed the lid off,” said Doreen. “And him a priest, too. They shouldn’t know those kind of words.”

  “I enjoyed that temple,” said Arthur, wistfully. “It was something to do on a Wednesday.”

  It dawned on Windle Poons that Doreen had miraculously acquired the ability to use her double-yous.

  “And you’re a vampire too, Mrs. Win…I do beg your pardon…Countess Notfaroutoe?” he inquired politely.

  The Countess smiled. “My vord, yes,” she said.

  “By marriage,” said Arthur.

  “Can you do that? I thought you had to be bitten,” said Windle.

  The voice under the chair sniggered.

  “I don’t see why I should have to go around biting my wife after thirty years of marriage, and that’s flat,” said the Count.

  “Every voman should share her husband’s hobbies,” said Doreen. “It iss vot keeps a marriage inter-vesting.”

  “Who wants an interesting marriage? I never said I wanted an interesting marriage. That’s what’s wrong with people today, expecting things like marriage to be interesting. And it’s not a hobby, anyway,” moaned Arthur. “This vampiring’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Can’t go out in daylight, can’t eat garlic, can’t have a decent shave—”