Reaper Man Read online

  There was a distant, forlorn soughing, as of wind at the end of a tunnel.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” said Windle, his voice trembling with mad cheerfulness. “Don’t worry. I’m quite looking forward to it, to tell the truth.”

  He clapped his hands, spiritual hands, and rubbed them together with forced enthusiasm.

  “Get a move on. Some of us have got new lives to go to,” he said.

  The darkness remained inert. There was no shape, no sound. It was void, without form. The spirit of Windle Poons moved on the face of the darkness.

  It shook its head. “Blow this for a lark,” it muttered. “This isn’t right at all.”

  It hung around for a while and then, because there didn’t seem anything else for it, headed for the only home it had ever known.

  It was a home he’d occupied for one hundred and thirty years. It wasn’t expecting him back and put up a lot of resistance. You either had to be very determined or very powerful to overcome that sort of thing, but Windle Poons had been a wizard for more than a century. Besides, it was like breaking into your own house, the old familiar property that you’d lived in for years. You knew where the metaphorical window was that didn’t shut properly.

  In short, Windle Poons went back to Windle Poons.

  Wizards don’t believe in gods in the same way that most people don’t find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they’re there, they know they’re there for a purpose, they’d probably agree that they have a place in a well-organized universe, but they wouldn’t see the point of believing, of going around saying, “O great table, without whom we are as naught.” Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.

  Nevertheless, there is a small chapel off the University’s Great Hall, because while the wizards stand right behind the philosophy as outlined above, you don’t become a successful wizard by getting up gods’ noses even if those noses only exist in an ethereal or metaphorical sense. Because while wizards don’t believe in gods they know for a fact that gods believe in gods.

  And in this chapel lay the body of Windle Poons. The University had instituted twenty-four hours’ lying-in-state ever since the embarrassing affair thirty years previously with the late Prissal “Merry Prankster” Teatar.

  The body of Windle Poons opened its eyes. Two coins jingled onto the stone floor.

  The hands, crossed over the chest, unclenched.

  Windle raised his head. Some idiot had stuck a lily on his stomach.

  His eyes swiveled sideways. There was a candle on either side of his head.

  He raised his head some more.

  There were two more candles down there, too.

  Thank goodness for old Teatar, he thought. Otherwise I’d already be looking at the underside of a rather cheap pine lid.

  Funny thing, he thought. I’m thinking. Clearly.

  Wow.

  Windle lay back, feeling his spirit refilling his body like gleaming molten metal running through a mold. White-hot thoughts seared across the darkness of his brain, fired sluggish neurones into action.

  It was never like this when I was alive.

  But I’m not dead.

  Not alive and not dead.

  Sort of non-alive.

  Or un-dead.

  Oh dear…

  He swung himself upright. Muscles that hadn’t worked properly for seventy or eighty years jerked into overdrive. For the first time in his entire life, he corrected himself, better make that “period of existence,” Windle Poons’ body was entirely under Windle Poons’ control. And Windle Poons’ spirit wasn’t about to take any lip from a bunch of muscles.

  Now the body stood up. The knee joints resisted for a while, but they were no more able to withstand the onslaught of will-power than a sick mosquito can withstand a blowtorch.

  The door to the chapel was locked. However, Windle found that the merest pressure was enough to pull the lock out of the woodwork and leave fingerprints in the metal of the doorhandle.

  “Oh, goodness,” he said.

  He piloted himself out into the corridor. The distant clatter of cutlery and the buzz of voices suggested that one of the University’s four daily meals was in progress.

  He wondered whether you were allowed to eat when you were dead. Probably not, he thought.

  And could he eat, anyway? It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry. It was just that…well, he knew how to think, and walking and moving were just a matter of twitching some fairly obvious nerves, but how exactly did your stomach work?

  It began to dawn on Windle that the human body is not run by the brain, despite the brain’s opinion on the matter. In fact it’s run by dozens of complex automatic systems, all whirring and clicking away with the kind of precision that isn’t noticed until it breaks down.

  He surveyed himself from the control room of his skull. He looked at the silent chemical factory of his liver with the same sinking feeling as a canoe builder might survey the controls of a computerized supertanker. The mysteries of his kidneys awaited Windle’s mastery of renal control. What, when you got right down to it, was a spleen? And how did you make it go?

  His heart sank.

  Or, rather, it didn’t.

  “Oh, gods,” muttered Windle, and leaned against the wall. How did it work, now? He prodded a few likely-looking nerves. Was it systolic…diastolic…systolic…diastolic…? And then there were the lungs, too…

  Like a conjuror keeping eighteen plates spinning at the same time—like a man trying to program a video recorder from an instruction manual translated from Japanese into Dutch by a Korean rice-husker—like, in fact, a man finding out what total self-control really means, Windle Poons lurched onward.

  The wizards of Unseen University set great store by big, solid meals. A man couldn’t be expected to get down to some serious wizarding, they held, without soup, fish, game, several huge plates of meat, a pie or two, something big and wobbly with cream on it, little savory things on toast, fruit, nuts and a brick-thick mint with coffee. It gave him a lining to his stomach. It was also important that the meals were served at regular times. It was what gave the day shape, they said.

  Except for the Bursar, of course. He didn’t eat much, but lived on his nerves. He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him.

  And it was the Bursar’s unfortunate fate to be sitting opposite the doors when Windle Poons smashed them in because it was easier than fiddling with the handles.

  He bit through his wooden spoon.

  The wizards revolved on their benches to stare.

  Windle Poons swayed for a moment, assembling control of vocal chords, lips and tongue, and then said: “I think I may be able to metabolize alcohol.”

  The Archchancellor was the first one to recover.

  “Windle!” he said. “We thought you were dead!”

  He had to admit that it wasn’t a very good line. You didn’t put people on a slab with candles and lilies all around them because you think they’ve got a bit of a headache and want a nice lie down for half an hour.

  Windle took a few steps forward. The nearest wizards fell over themselves in an effort to get away.

  “I am dead, you bloody young fool,” he muttered. “Think I go around looking like this all the time? Good grief.” He glared at the assembled wizardry. “Anyone here know what a spleen is supposed to do?”

  He reached the table, and managed to sit down.

  “Probably something to do with the digestion,” he said. “Funny thing, you can go through your whole life with the bloody thing ticking away or whatever it does, gurgling or whatever, and you never know what the hell it’s actually for. It’s like when you’re lying in bed of a night and you hear your stomach or something go pripple-ipple-goinnng. It’s jus
t a gurgle to you, but who knows what marvelously complex chemical exchange processes are really going—”

  “You’re an undead?” said the Bursar, managing to get the words out at last.

  “I didn’t ask to be,” said the late Windle Poons irritably, looking at the food and wondering how the blazes one went about turning it into Windle Poons. “I only came back because there was nowhere else to go. Think I want to be here?”

  “But surely,” said the Archchancellor, “didn’t…you know the fella, the one with the skull and the scythe—”

  “Never saw him,” said Windle, shortly, inspecting the nearest dishes. “Really takes it out of you, this un-dyin’.”

  The wizards made frantic signals to one another over his head. He looked up and glared at them.

  “And don’t think I can’t see all them frantic signals,” he said. And he was amazed to realize that this was true. Eyes that had viewed the past sixty years through a pale, fuzzy veil had been bullied into operating like the finest optical machinery.

  In fact two main bodies of thought were occupying the minds of the wizards of Unseen University.

  What was being thought by most of the wizards was: this is terrible, is it really old Windle in there, he was such a sweet old buffer, how can we get rid of it? How can we get rid of it?

  What was being thought by Windle Poons, in the humming, flashing cockpit of his brain, was: well, it’s true. There is life after death. And it’s the same one. Just my luck.

  “Well,” he said, “what’re you going to do about it?”

  It was five minutes later. Half a dozen of the most senior wizards scurried along the drafty corridor in the wake of the Archchancellor, whose robes billowed out behind him.

  The conversation went like this:

  “It’s got to be Windle! It even talks like him!”

  “It’s not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!”

  “Older? Older than dead?”

  “He’s said he wants his old bedroom back, and I don’t see why I should have to move out—”

  “Did you see his eyes? Like gimlets!”

  “Eh? What? What d’you mean? You mean like that dwarf who runs the delicatessen on Cable Street?”

  “I mean like they bore into you!”

  “—it’s got a lovely view of the gardens and I’ve had all my stuff moved in and it’s not fair—”

  “Has this ever happened before?”

  “Well, there was old Teatar—”

  “Yes, but he never actually died, he just used to put green paint on his face and push the lid off the coffin and shout, ‘Surprise, surprise—’”

  “We’ve never had a zombie here.”

  “He’s a zombie?”

  “I think so—”

  “Does that mean he’ll be playing kettle drums and doing that bimbo dancing all night, then?”

  “Is that what they do?”

  “Old Windle? Doesn’t sound like his cup of tea. He never liked dancing much when he was alive—”

  “Anyway, you can’t trust those voodoo gods. Never trust a god who grins all the time and wears a top hat, that’s my motto.”

  “—I’m damned if I’m going to give up my bedroom to a zombie after waiting years for it—”

  “Is it? That’s a funny motto.”

  Windle Poons strolled around the inside of his own head again.

  Strange thing, this. Now he was dead, or not living anymore, or whatever he was, his mind felt clearer than it had ever done.

  And control seemed to be getting easier, too. He hardly had to bother about the whole respiratory thing, the spleen seemed to be working after a fashion, the senses were operating at full speed. The digestive system was still a bit of a mystery, though.

  He looked at himself in a silver plate.

  He still looked dead. Pale face, red under the eyes. A dead body. Operating but still, basically, dead. Was that fair? Was that justice? Was that a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130 years? You come back as a corpse?

  No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry.

  Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen.

  If you took the short or medium view, something horrible was about to happen.

  It’s like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter sky and actually being close to the supernova. It’s the difference between the beauty of morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly.

  It was something that wouldn’t normally have happened for thousands of years.

  It was about to happen now.

  It was about to happen at the back of a disused cupboard in a tumbledown cellar in the Shades, the oldest and most disreputable part of Ankh-Morpork.

  Plop.

  It was a sound as soft as the first drop of rain on a century of dust.

  “Maybe we could get a black cat to walk across his coffin.”

  “He hasn’t got a coffin!” wailed the Bursar, whose grip on sanity was always slightly tentative.

  “Okay, so we buy him a nice new coffin and then we get a black cat to walk across it?”

  “No, that’s stupid. We’ve got to make him pass water.”

  “What?”

  “Pass water. Undeads can’t do it.”

  The wizards, who had crowded into the Archchancellor’s study, gave this statement their full, fascinated attention.

  “You sure?” said the Dean.

  “Well-known fact,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes flatly.

  “He used to pass water all the time when he was alive,” said the Dean doubtfully.

  “Not when he’s dead, though.”

  “Yeah? Makes sense.”

  “Running water,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes suddenly. “It’s running water. Sorry. They can’t cross over it.”

  “Well, I can’t cross running water, either,” said the Dean.

  “Undead! Undead!” The Bursar was becoming a little unglued.

  “Oh, stop teasing him,” said the Lecturer, patting the trembling man on the back.

  “Well, I can’t,” said the Dean. “I sink.”

  “Undead can’t cross running water even on a bridge.”

  “And is he the only one, eh? Are we going to have a plague of them, eh?” said the Lecturer.

  The Archchancellor drummed his fingers on his desk.

  “Dead people walking around is unhygienic,” he said.

  This silenced them. No one had ever looked at it that way, but Mustrum Ridcully was just the sort of man who would.

  Mustrum Ridcully was, depending on your point of view, either the worst or the best Archchancellor that Unseen University had had for a hundred years.

  There was just too much of him, for one thing. It wasn’t that he was particularly big, it was just that he had the kind of huge personality that fits any available space. He’d get roaring drunk at supper and that was fine and acceptable wizardly behavior. But then he’d go back to his room and play darts all night long and leave at five in the morning to go duck hunting. He shouted at people. He tried to jolly them along. And he hardly ever wore proper robes. He’d persuaded Mrs. Whitlow, the University’s dreaded housekeeper, to make him a sort of baggy trouser suit in garish blue and red; twice a day the wizards stood in bemusement and watched him jog purposefully around the University buildings, his pointy wizarding hat tied firmly on his head with string. He’d shout cheerfully up at them, because fundamental to the make-up of people like Mustrum Ridcully is an iron belief that everyone else would like it, too, if only they tried it.

  “Maybe he’ll die,” they told one another hopefully, as they watched him try to break the crust on the river Ankh for an early morning dip. “All this healthy exercise can’t be good for him.”

  Stories trickled back into the University. The Archchancellor had gone two rounds bare-fisted with Detritus, the huge odd-job troll at the Mended Drum. The Archancellor had arm-wrestled with
the Librarian for a bet and, although of course he hadn’t won, still had his arm afterward. The Archchancellor wanted the University to form its own football team for the big city game on Hogswatchday.

  Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place.

  There seemed to be more Mustrum Ridcully than one body could reasonably contain.

  Plop. Plop

  In the dark cupboard in the cellar, a whole shelf was already full.

  There was exactly as much Windle Poons as one body could contain, and he steered it carefully along the corridors.

  I never expected this, he thought. I don’t deserve this. There’s been a mistake somewhere.

  He felt a cool breeze on his face and realized he’d tottered out into the open air. Ahead of him were the University’s gates, locked shut.

  Suddenly Windle Poons felt acutely claustrophobic. He’d waited years to die, and now he had, and here he was stuck in this—this mausoleum with a lot of daft old men, where he’d have to spend the rest of his life being dead. Well, the first thing to do was to get out and make a proper end to himself—

  “’Evening, Mr. Poons.”

  He turned around very slowly and saw the small figure of Modo, the University’s dwarf gardener, who was sitting in the twilight smoking his pipe.

  “Oh. Hallo, Modo.”

  “I ’eard you was took dead, Mr. Poons.”

  “Er. Yes. I was.”

  “See you got over it, then.”

  Poons nodded, and looked dismally around the walls. The University gates were always locked at sunset every evening, obliging students and staff to climb over the walls. He doubted very much that he’d be able to manage that.

  He clenched and unclenched his hands. Oh, well…