Unseen Academicals

‘Gentlemen, there is always trouble! But this time I will be making it for you.’

As the door slammed shut behind them, the King sat back in his chair.

‘Well done, sir,’ said his secretary.

‘They’ll keep on. I can’t imagine what being a dwarf would be like if we didn’t argue all the time.’ He squirmed a little in his chair. ‘You know, they’re right when they say it doesn’t chafe and it’s not as cold as you would imagine. Do ask our agent to express my thanks to Madame Sharn for her generous gift, will you?’

Even this early in the day, the Great Hall of the University was a general thoroughfare. Most of the tables were pushed back against the walls or, if someone felt like showing off, levitated to the ceiling, and the huge black-and-white slabs of the floor, worn smooth by the footfalls of millennia, were polished still further as today’s faculty and students took a short cut to various concerns, destinations and, very occasionally, when no viable excuse presented itself, to lectures.

The Great Chandelier had been swung down and off to one side for its daily replenishing of candles, but there was, fortunately for Mustrum Ridcully’s purposes, a large expanse of clear floor.

He saw the figure he was waiting for hurrying towards him. ‘How did it go, Mister Stibbons?’

‘Extremely well, I have to say, sir,’ said Ponder. He opened the sack he was carrying. ‘One of these is our original ball and one of them is the ball that Nutt and Trevor Likely had made last night.’

‘Ah, spot the ball,’ said Ridcully. He picked them both up in his enormous hands and dropped them on the flagstones.

Gloing! Gloing!

‘Perfectly identical,’ he said.

‘Trevor Likely said they had it made by a dwarf for twenty dollars,’ said Ponder.

‘Did he really?’

‘Yes, sir, and he gave me the change and the receipt.’

‘You seem puzzled, Mister Stibbons?’

‘Well, yes, sir. I feel I have been rather misjudging him.’

‘Possibly even small leopards can change their shorts,’ said Ridcully, slamming him on the back convivially. ‘Call it score one for human nature. Now, which of these balls is the one that’s going back to the Cabinet?’

‘Amazingly, sir, they did think to mark the new ball and there’s a tiny little dot of white paint on this one here… I mean this one here… I think it was here… Ah! Here it is. It’s ours. I’ll send one of the students to put the other one back shortly. We still have an hour and a half.’

‘No, I’d rather you did it yourself, Mister Stibbons, I’m sure it would only take a few minutes. Do hurry back, I’d like to try a little experiment.’

When Ponder returned, he found Ridcully loitering unobtrusively by one of the big doors. ‘You have your notebook ready, Mister Stibbons?’ he said quietly.

‘And a fresh pencil, Archchancellor.’

‘Very well, then. The experiment begins.’

Ridcully gently rolled the new football out on to the floor, straightened up and glanced at his stopwatch.

‘Ah, the ball has been kicked aside by the Professor of Illiberal Studies, quite possibly by accident… Now one of the bledlows, Mister Hipney I think his name is, has kicked it somewhat uncertainly. One of the students, Pondlife, I believe, has prodded it back… We have momentum, Mister Stibbons. Undirected, it is true, but promising. Ah, but we can’t have this…

‘No touching the ball with your hands, gentlemen!’ shouted the Archchancellor, deftly trapping the travelling ball with his boot. ‘That’s a rule! We really could do with that whistle, Stibbons.’

He bounced the ball on the stone floor.

Gloing!

‘Don’t just mess about like kids kicking a tin! Play football! I am the Archchancellor of this university, by Io, and I will rusticate, or otherwise expel, any man who skives off without a note from his mother, hah!’

Gloing!

‘You will arrange yourself into two teams, set up goals and strive to win! No man will leave the field of play unless injured! The hands are not to be used, is that clear? Any questions?’ A hand went up. Ridcully sought the attached face.

‘Ah, Rincewind,’ he said, and, because he was not a determinedly unpleasant man, amended this to, ‘Professor Rincewind, of course.’

‘I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir.’

Ridcully sighed. ‘Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting puzzlement, that you never knew your mother because she ran away before you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would you like another try?’

‘Permission to go and find my mother?’