Reaper Man

That was another thing. Hardly anyone used tinder boxes these days. They bought the big smelly yellow matches the alchemists made. Windle disapproved. Fire was important. You shouldn’t be able to switch it on just like that, it didn’t show any respect. That was people these days, always rushing around and … fires. Yes, it had been a lot warmer in the old days, too. The kind of fires they had these days didn’t warm you up unless you were nearly on top of them. It was something in the wood … it was the wrong sort of wood. Everything was wrong these days. More thin. More fuzzy. No real life in anything. And the days were shorter. Mmm. Something had gone wrong with the days. They were shorter days. Mmm. Every day took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. There weren’t many things people wanted a 130-year-old wizard to do, and Windle had got into the habit of arriving at the dining-table up to two hours before each meal, simply to pass the time.

Endless days, going by fast. Didn’t make sense. Mmm. Mind you, you didn’t get the sense now that you used to get in the old days.

And they let the University be run by mere boys now. In the old days it had been run by proper wizards, great big men built like barges, the kind of wizards you could look up to. Then suddenly they’d all gone off somewhere and Windle was being patronised by these boys who still had some of their own teeth. Like that Ridcully lad. Windle remembered him clearly. Thin lad, sticking-out ears, never wiped his nose properly, cried for his mother in the dorm on the first night. Always up to mischief. Someone had tried to tell Windle that Ridcully was Archchancellor now. Mmm. They must think he was daft.

Where was that damn tinder box? Fingers … you used to get proper fingers in the old days …

Someone pulled the covers off a lantern. Someone else pushed a drink into his groping hand.

‘Surprise!’

In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present. (There was, of course, a present before the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.) The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe give it all up and start again as a stand-up comedian^{5} on the scampi-in-a-casket circuit. It swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity.

Death stalked past the clock and into the sombre gloom of his study. Albert, his servant, was waiting for him with the towel and dusters.

‘Good morning, master.’

Death sat down silently in his big chair. Albert draped the towel over the angular shoulders.

‘Another nice day,’ he said, conversationally.

Death said nothing.

Albert flapped the polishing cloth and pulled back Death’s cowl.

ALBERT.

‘Sir?’

Death pulled out the tiny golden timer.

DO YOU SEE THIS?

‘Yes, sir. Very nice. Never seen one like that before. Whose is it?’

MINE.

Albert’s eyes swivelled sideways. On one corner of Death’s desk was a large timer in a black frame. It contained no sand.

‘I thought that one was yours, sir?’ he said.

IT WAS. NOW THIS IS. A RETIREMENT PRESENT. FROM AZRAEL HIMSELF.

Albert peered at the thing in Death’s hand.

‘But … the sand, sir. It’s pouring.’

QUITE SO.

‘But that means … I mean …?’

IT MEANS THAT ONE DAY THE SAND WILL ALL BE POURED, ALBERT.

‘I know that, sir, but … you … I thought Time was something that happened to other people, sir. Doesn’t it? Not to you, sir.’ By the end of the sentence Albert’s voice was beseeching.

Death pulled off the towel and stood up.

COME WITH ME.

‘But you’re Death, master,’ said Albert, running crab-legged after the tall figure as it led the way out into the hall and down the passage to the stable. ‘This isn’t some sort of joke, is it?’ he added hopefully.

I AM NOT KNOWN FOR MY SENSE OF FUN.

‘Well, of course not, no offence meant. But listen, you can’t die, because you’re Death, you’d have to happen to yourself, it’d be like that snake that eats its own tail—’

NEVERTHELESS, I AM GOING TO DIE. THERE IS NO APPEAL.

‘But what will happen to me?’ Albert said. Terror glittered on his words like flakes of metal on the edge of a knife.

THERE WILL BE A NEW DEATH.

Albert drew himself up.

‘I really don’t think I could serve a new master,’ he said.

THEN GO BACK INTO THE WORLD. I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY. YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD SERVANT, ALBERT.

‘But if I go back—’

YES, said Death. YOU WILL DIE.

In the warm, horsey gloom of the stable, Death’s pale horse looked up from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse’s name was Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed.

Death took the saddle down from its hook and glanced at Albert, who was suffering a crisis of conscience.