Eric

"The coffee machine, now, the coffee machine's a good one, I'll grant you. We only used to drown people in lakes of cat's pee, wee didn't make them buy it by the cup."

"We're not dead!" Eric shouted.

Urglefloggah came to a quivering halt.

"Of course you're dead," it said. "Else you wouldn't be here. They wouldn't last five minutes." It opened several of its mouths, showing a choice of fangs. "Hur hur," it added. "If I was to catch any live people down here -"

Not for nothing had Rincewind survived for years in the paranoid complexities of Unseen University. He felt almost at home. His reflexes operated with incredible precision.

"You mean you weren't told?" he said.

It was hard to see if Urglefloggah's expression changed, if only because it was hard to know what part of it was expression, but it definitely projected a familiar air of sudden and resentful uncertainty.

"Told what?" it said.

Rincewind looked at Eric. "You'd think they'd tell people, wouldn't you?"

"Tell them wh - argarg," said Eric, clutching his ankle.

"That's modern management for you," said Rincewind, his face radiating angry concern. "They go ahead and make all these changes, all these new arrangements, and do they consult the very people who form the backbone -"

"- exoskeleton -" corrected the demon.

"- or other calcareous or chitinous structure, of the organisation?" Rincewind finished smoothly. He waited for what he knew would have to come.

"Not them," said Urglefloggah. "Too busy sticking up notices, they are."

"I think that's pretty disgusting," said Rincewind.

"D'you know, said Urglefloggah, "they wouldn't let me on the Club 18,000 - 30,000 holiday? Said I was too old. Said I would spoil the fun."

"What's the netherworld coming to?" said Rincewind sympathetically.

"They never come down here, you know," said the demon, sagging a bit. "They never tell me anything. Oh yes, very important, only keeping the bloody gate, most important I don't think!"

"Look," said Rincewind. "You wouldn't like me to have a word, would you?"

"Down here all hours, seeing ‘em in -"

"Perhaps if we spoke to someone?" said Rincewind.

The demon sniffed, from several noses at once.

"Would you?" it said.

"Be happy to," said Rincewind.

Urglefloggah brightened a little, but not too much, just in case. "Can't do any harm, can it?" it said.

Rincewind steeled himself and patted the thing on what he hoped fervently was its back.

"Don't you worry about it," he said.

"That's very kind of you."

Rincewind looked across the shuddering heap at Eric.

"We'd better go," he said. "So we're not late for our appointment." He made frantic signals over the demon's head.

Eric grinned. "Yeah, right, appointment," he said. They walked up the wide passage.

Eric started to giggle hysterically.

"This is where we run, right?" he said.

"This is where we walk," said Rincewind. "Just walk. The important ting is to act nonchalant. The important thing is to get the timing right."

He looked at Eric.

Eric looked at him.

Behind them, Urglefloggah made a kind of I've-just-worked-it-out noise.

"About now?" said Eric.

"About now I think would do it, yes."

They ran.

Hell wasn't what Rincewind had been led to expect, although there were signs of what it might once have been - a few clinkers in a corner, a bad scorch mark on the ceiling. It was hot, though, with the kind of heat that you get by boiling air inside an oven for years -

Hell, it has been suggested, is other people.

This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on.

This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul.

The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realise that since they didn't have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn't. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no-one was suffering they didn't enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness.

Astfgl had adopted, without realising what he was doing, a radically new approach.

Demons can move interdimensionally, and so he'd found the basic ingredients for a very worthwhile lake of blood equivalent, as it were, for the soul. Learn from humans, he'd told the demon lords. Learn from humans. It's amazing what you can learn from humans.