Unseen Academicals

Juliet grabbed the driver’s face and there was, for what seemed slightly too long, by the internal clocks of both Glenda and Trev, the sound of a tennis ball being sucked through the strings of a tennis racket. Juliet stepped back. The driver was smiling, in a slightly stunned and cross-eyed way. ‘Well, that was pretty much of a lead pipe!’

‘Perhaps I’d better drive,’ said Trev.

The driver smiled at him. ‘I’ll drive, thank you very much, and don’t kid yourself, mister, I know a dicey one when I see one and you don’t come close. My old mum would be more likely to hit me with a lead pipe than you. Throw it away, why don’t you, or someone will give you a centre parting you won’t forget in a hurry.’

He winked at Juliet. ‘What with one thing or another it’s a good idea to give the horses a bit of a run every now and again. All aboard for Sto Lat.’

The horse buses did not usually travel very fast and the driver’s definition of a run was only marginally faster than what most people would call a walk, but he managed to get them up to something that at least meant they did not have the time to get bored by a passing tree.

The bus was for people, as the driver had pointed out, who couldn’t afford speed but could afford time. In its construction, therefore, no expense had been attempted. It was really no more than a cart with double seats all the way along it from the driver’s slightly elevated bench. Tarpaulins on either side kept out the worst of the weather but fortunately still let in enough of the wind to mitigate the smell of the upholstery, which had experienced humanity in all its manifold moods and urgencies.

Glenda got the impression that some of the travellers were regulars. An elderly woman was sitting quietly knitting. The boys were still engaged in the furtive giggling appropriate to their age, and a dwarf was staring out of the window without looking at anything in particular. No one really bothered about talking to anybody, except a man right at the back, who was having a continuous conversation with himself.

‘This isn’t fast enough!’ Glenda shouted after ten minutes of bouncing over the potholes. ‘I could run faster than this.’

‘I don’t think he’s gonna get that far,’ said Trev.

The sun was going down and the shadows were already drawing across the cabbage fields, but there was a figure on the road ahead, struggling. Trev jumped off.

‘Awk! Awk!’

‘It’s those wretched things,’ said Glenda, running up behind him. ‘Give me that lead pipe.’

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!’