Night Watch

They said afterwards that the bolt of lightning hit a clock-maker's shop in the Street of Cunning Artificers, stopping all the clocks at that instant. But that was nothing. In Baker Street a couple who had never met before became electrically attracted to one another and were forced to get married after two days for the sake of public decency. In the Assassins' Guild, the chief armourer became hugely, and since he was in the armoury at the time, tragically attractive to metal. Eggs fried in their baskets, apples roasted on the greengrocers' shelves. Candles lit themselves. Cartwheels exploded. And the ornate tin bath of the Archchancellor of Unseen University was lifted neatly off the floor, sizzled across his study and then flew off the balcony and on to the lawn in the octangle several storeys below, without spilling more than a cupful of suds.

Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully paused with his long-handled scrubbing brush hovering halfway down his back, and stared around.

Tiles smashed to the ground. Water boiled in the ornamental fountain near by.

Ridcully ducked as a stuffed badger, the origin of which was never ascertained, flew across the lawn and smashed through a window.

He winced as he was hit by a brief and inexplicable shower of small cogwheels, which pattered down all around him.

He stared as half a dozen watchmen dashed into the octangle and headed up the steps to the Library.

Then, gripping the sides of the bath, the Archchancellor stood up. Foaming water cascaded off him, as it would off some ancient leviathan erupting from the abyssal sea.

“Mister _ Stibbons!” he bellowed, his voice bouncing off the imposing walls, “Where the _ is my _ hat?”

He sat down again and waited.

There were a few minutes of silence, and then Ponder Stibbons, Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and Praelector of Unseen University, came running out of the main door carrying Ridcully's pointy hat.

The Archchancellor snatched at it and rammed it on his head.

“Very well,” he said, standing up again. “Now, will care to _ tell m _ at the _ is going on? And why _ Old Tom _ ing repeatedly?”

“_ been a _ of magic, sir! I _ someone up _ the mechanism!” Ponder shouted, above the sound-destroying silences.3

There was a dying metallic noise from the big clock tower. Ponder and Ridcully waited a few moments, but the city stayed full of normal noise, like the collapse of masonry and distant screams.

“Right,” said Ridcully, as if grudgingly awarding the world a mark for trying. “What was that all about, Stibbons? And why are there policemen in the Library?”

“Big magical storm, sir. Several thousand gigathaums. I believe the Watch is chasing a criminal.”

“Well, they can't just run in here without askin',” said Ridcully, stepping out of the bath and striding forward. “What do we pay our taxes for, after all?”

“Er, we don't actually pay taxes, sir,” said Ponder, running after him. “The system is that we promise to pay taxes if the city ever asks us to, provided the city promises never to ask us, sir. We make a voluntary—”

“Well, at least we have an arrangement, Stibbons.”

“Yes, sir. May I point out that you—”

“And that means they have to ask permission. The essential decencies must be maintained,” said Ridcully firmly. “And I am the Master of this college!”

“On the subject of, er, decencies, sir, you are not in fact wearing—”

Ridcully strode through the open doors of the Library.

“What is going on here?” he demanded.

The watchmen turned, and stared. A large blob of foam, which up until that point had been performing sterling service in the cause of the essential decencies, slipped slowly to the floor.

“Well?” he snapped. “Haven't you lot seen a wizard before?”

A watchman snapped to attention and saluted. “Captain Carrot, sir. We've, er, never seen so much of a wizard, sir.”

Ridcully gave him the slow blank stare used by those with acute uptake-grasping deficiency.

“What's he talkin' about, Stibbons?” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“You're, er, insufficiently dressed, sir.”

“What? I've got my hat on, haven't I?”

“Yes, sir—”

“Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery. Anyway, I'm sure we're all men of the world,” Ridcully added, looking around. For the first time he took in other details about the watchmen. “And dwarfs of the world…ah…trolls of the world too, I see…and…women of the world too, I note…er…” The Archchancellor lapsed into a moment's silence, and then said, “Mr Stibbons?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Would you be so kind as to run up to my rooms and fetch my robe?”

“Of course, sir.”

“And, in the meantime, please be so good as to lend me your hat…”

“But you do actually have your hat on, sir,” said Ponder.

“Quite so, quite so,” said Ridcully, slowly and carefully through his fixed grin. “And now, Mister Stibbons, in addition, right now, I wish you, in fact, to lend, to me, your hat, please.”

“Oh,” said Ponder. “Er…yes…”