Unseen Academicals

‘Milking the cows when they come home?’ said Andy. This got another laugh, on cue. And that was the introductions sorted out, to Nutt’s surprise. He’d been expecting chicken theft to be mentioned. Instead, Carter pulled a couple of tin cans out of a pocket and tossed them to Nutt and Trev.

‘Did a few hours’ unloading down the docks, didn’t I?’ he said defensively, as though a bit of casual labour was some kind of offence. ‘This come off a boat from Fourecks.’

Jumbo fished in his pocket again and pulled out someone else’s watch.

‘Game on in five minutes,’ he declared. ‘Let’s shove… er, if that’s all right with you, Andy?’

Andy nodded. Jumbo looked relieved. It was always important that things were all right with Andy. And Andy was still watching Nutt as a cat watches an unexpectedly cheeky mouse, while massaging his hand.

Mr Ottomy cleared his throat, causing his red Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an indecisive sunset. Shouting in public, yes, he liked that, he was good at that. Speaking in public, now, that was a different kettle of humiliation.

‘Well, er, gents, what we will have here is your actual football, what is basically about the Shove, which is what you gentlemen will be doing soon—’

‘I thought we watched two groups of players vie with one another to get the ball in the opponents’ goal?’

‘Could be, sir, could very much be,’ the bledlow conceded, ‘but in the streets, see, your actual supporters on both sides try and endeavour to shorten the length of the field, as it were, depending on the flow of play, so to speak.’

‘Like living walls, d’y’mean?’ said Ridcully.

‘That style of thing, sir, yes, sir,’ said Ottomy loyally.

‘What about the goals?’

‘Oh, they’re allowed to move the goals, too.’

‘Sorry?’ said Ponder. ‘The spectators can move the goals?’

‘You have put your finger firmly on it, sir.’

‘But that’s sheer anarchy! It’s a mess!’

‘Some of the old boys do say the game has gone downhill, sir, that is true.’

‘Downhill, into and out through the bottom of the world, I’d say.’

‘Good one to play with magic, though,’ said Dr Hix. ‘Well worth a try.’

‘A word to the wise, sir,’ said Ottomy with unwitting accuracy, ‘but you’d be wearing your guts for garters if you tried it with some of the types who play these days. They take it seriously.’

‘Mister Ottomy, I’m sure none of my blokes wear garters—’ Ridcully stopped and listened to Ponder Stibbons’s whispered interjection and continued, ‘well, possibly one, two at most, and it would be a very dull world if we were all the same, that’s what I say.’ He looked around and shrugged. ‘So, this is football, is it? Rather a wizened shell of a game, yes? I, for one, don’t want to stand around all day in the rain while other people have all the fun. Let’s go and find the ball, gentlemen. We are wizards. That must count for something.’

‘I thought we were blokes now,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘Same thing,’ said Ridcully, straining to see over the heads of the crowd.

‘Surely not!’

‘Well,’ said Ridcully, ‘isn’t a bloke someone who likes drinking with his mates and without the company of women? Anyway, I’m fed up with this. Form up behind me, nevertheless. We’re going to see some football.’

The progress of the wizards astonished Ottomy and Nobbs, who had hitherto seen them as fluffy plump creatures quite divorced from real life. But to get to be a senior wizard and stay there called for deep reserves of determination, viciousness and the sugared arrogance that is the mark of every true gentleman, as in ‘Oh, was that your foot? I’m so terribly sorry.’

And, of course, there was Dr Hix, a good man to have in a tight spot because he was (by college statute) an officially bad person, in accordance with UU’s happy grasp of the inevitable[8].

A less mature organization than UU might have taken the view that the way forward would be to hunt such renegades down, at great risk and expense. UU, on the other hand, had given Hix and his team a department and a budget and a career structure, and also the chance to go out into dark caves occasionally and throw fireballs at unofficial evil wizards; it all worked rather well so long as nobody pointed out that the Department of Post-Mortem Communications was really, when you got right down to it, just a politer form of necromancy, wasn’t it?