The guard captain leaned on his spear.
“Well,” he said, “it’s like this. The Patrician is barricaded in his bedroom on account of the furniture in the palace is zooming around the place like you wouldn’t believe, the cooks won’t even go back in the kitchen on account of what’s happening in there…”
The wizards tried not to look at the spear’s head. It was starting to unscrew itself.
“Anyway,” the captain went on, oblivious to the faint metallic noises, “the Patrician calls through the keyhole, see, and says to me, ‘Douglas, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind nipping down to the University and asking the head man if he would be so good as to step up here, if he’s not too busy?’ But I can always go back and tell him you’re engagin’ in a bit of student humor, if you like.”
The spearhead was almost off the shaft.
“You listening to me?” said the captain suspiciously.
“Hmm? What?” said the Archchancellor, tearing his eyes away from the spinning metal. “Oh. Yes. Well, I can assure you, my man, that we are not the cause of—”
“Aargh!”
“Pardon?”
“The spearhead fell on my foot!”
“Did it?” said Ridcully, innocently.
The guard captain hopped up and down.
“Listen, are you bloody hocus-pocus merchants coming or not?” he said, between bounces. “The boss is not very happy. Not very happy at all.”
A great formless cloud of Life drifted across the Discworld, like water building up behind a dam when the sluice gates are shut. With no Death to take the life force away when it was finished with, it had nowhere else to go.
Here and there it earthed itself in random poltergeist activity, like flickers of summer lightning before a big storm.
Everything that exists, yearns to live. That’s what the cycle of life is all about. That’s the engine that drives the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the very top—which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all that effort.
Everything that exists, yearns to live. Even things that are not alive. Things that have a kind of sub-life, a metaphorical life, an almost life. And now, in the same way that a sudden hot spell brings forth unnatural and exotic blooms…
There was something about the little globes. You had to pick them up and give them a shake, watch the pretty snowflakes swirl and glitter. And then take them home and put them on the mantelpiece.
And then forget about them.
The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one.
The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city.
The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else.
The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man.
The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly.
The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn’t put a tax on knowledge.
The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, de-capita could be arranged.
The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority.
The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long.
The wizards said, what about easy terms?
The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn’t want to know about the hard terms.