Unseen Academicals

Nutt was half crouched in the dust on the road. The Sisters of Perpetual Velocity were half flying and half flapping around him while he tried to protect his face with his hands. The passengers of the bus were quite unnoticed until the lead pipe arrived, followed very shortly by Glenda. It didn’t have the effect she’d hoped. The Sisters were indeed like birds. She couldn’t so much hit them as bat them through the air.

‘Awk! Awk!’

‘You stop trying to hurt him!’ she screamed. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong!’

Nutt raised an arm and grabbed her wrist. There wasn’t much pressure, but somehow she couldn’t move it at all. It was as if it had suddenly been embalmed in stone. ‘They’re not here to hurt me,’ he said. ‘They’re here to protect you.’

‘Who from?’

‘Me. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go.’

‘But I don’t need any protection from you. That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘They think you might,’ said Nutt. ‘But that is not the worst of it.’

The creatures were circling and the other passengers, sharing the endemic Ankh-Morpork taste for impromptu street theatre, had piled out and had become an appreciative audience, which clearly discomforted the Sisters.

‘What is the worst of it, then?’ said Glenda, waving the pipe at the nearest Sister, which jumped back out of the way.

‘They may be right.’

‘All right, so you’re an orc,’ said Trev. ‘So they used to eat people. Have you eaten anyone lately?’

‘No, Mister Trev.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’

‘You can’t arrest someone for something he hasn’t done,’ said one of the bus passengers, nodding sagely. ‘A fundamental law, that.’

‘What’s an orc?’ said the lady next to him.

‘Oh, back in the olden days up in Uberwald or somewhere they used to tear people to bits and eat them.’

‘That’s foreigners for you,’ said the woman.

‘But they’re all dead now,’ said the man.

‘That’s nice,’ said the woman. ‘Would anyone like some tea? I’ve got a flask.’

‘All dead, except me. But I am afraid that I am an orc,’ said Nutt. He looked up at Glenda. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You have been very kind, but I can see that being an orc will follow me around. There will be trouble. I would hate you to be involved.’

‘Awk! Awk!’

The woman unscrewed the top of her flask. ‘But you’re not about to eat anyone, are you, dear? If you feel really hungry I’ve got some macaroons.’ She looked at the nearest Sister and said, ‘What about you, love? I know none of us can help how we’re made, but how come you’ve been made to look like a chicken?’

‘Awk! Awk!’

‘Danger! Danger!’

‘Dunno about that,’ said another passenger. ‘I don’t reckon he’s going to do anything.’

‘Please, please,’ said Nutt. There was a box lying on the road beside him. He tore it open frantically and started to pull things out of it.

They were candles. Knocking them over in his haste, picking them up in shaking fingers only to knock them over again, he finally had them upright on the flints of the road. He pulled matches out of another pocket, knelt down and once again got his shaking fingers tangled in themselves as he struggled to strike a match. Tears streamed down his face as the light of the candles rose.

Rose … and changed.

Blues, yellows, greens. They would go out for a few smoky seconds and then light again a different colour, to the oohs and aahs of the crowd.

‘See! See!’ said Nutt. ‘You like them? You like them?’

‘I think you could make yourself a lot of money out of that,’ said one of the passengers.

‘They’re lovely,’ said the old lady. ‘Honestly, the things you young people can do today.’

Nutt turned to the nearest Sister and spat, ‘I am not worthless, I have worth.’

‘My brother-in-law runs a novelty shop down in the smoke,’ said the erstwhile expert in orcs. ‘I’ll write his address down for you if you like? But I reckon that thing would go down very well on the kiddies’ birthday circuit.’

Glenda had watched all of this open-mouthed, as the kind of democracy practised by reasonable and amiable but not very clever people, the people whose education had never involved a book but had involved lots of other people, surrounded Nutt in its invisible, beneficent arms.

It was heartwarming, but Glenda’s heart was a little bit calloused on this score. It was the crab bucket at its best. Sentimental and forgiving; but get it wrong — one wrong word, one wrong liaison, one wrong thought — and those nurturing arms could so easily end in fists. Nutt was right: at best, being an orc was to live under a threat.

‘You lot have got no right treating the poor little devil like that,’ said the old lady, waving a finger at the nearest Sister. ‘If you want to live here, you have to do things our way, all right? And that means no pecking at people. That’s not how we do things in Ankh-Morpork.’

Even Glenda smiled at that one. Pecking was a picnic compared with what Ankh-Morpork could offer.

‘Vetinari’s letting all sorts in these days,’ said another passenger. ‘I won’t hear a word said against the dwarfs—’

‘Good,’ said a voice at his back. He moved aside and Glenda saw the dwarf standing behind him.