Unseen Academicals (Discworld 37)

'He's got a lovely smile,' said Juliet, with a wistfulness that rang all kinds of alarms for Glenda.

'He's a scallywag,' she said firmly. 'He'll try on anything. Can't keep his hands to himself, too.'

'How come you knows that?' said Juliet.

That was another worrying thing about Juliet. Nothing much seemed to be going on between those perfect ears for hours on end and then a question like that would come spinning towards you with edges on it.

'You know, you should try to speak better,' Glenda said, to change the subject. 'With your looks you could snag a man who thinks about more than beer and footie. Just speak with a little more class, eh? You don't have to sound like - '

'My fare, lady?'

They looked up at the guard, who was holding his axe in a way that was very nearly not threatening. And when it came to looking up, this was not a long way. The axe's owner was very short.

Glenda gently pushed the weapon out of the way. 'Don't wave it about, Roger,' she sighed. 'It doesn't impress.'

'Oh, sorry, Miss Glenda,' said the dwarf, what was visible of his face behind the beard colouring with embarrassment. 'It's been a long shift. That will be fourpence, ladies. Sorry about the axe, but we've been getting people jumping off without paying.'

'He ought to be sent back to where he came from,' muttered Juliet, as the guard moved on along the bus. Glenda chose not to rise to this. As far as she had been able to tell, up until today, at least, her friend had no opinions of her own, and simply echoed anything other people said to her. But then she couldn't resist. 'That would be Treacle Mine Road, then. He was born in the city.'

'He's a Miners fan, then? I suppose it could be worse.'

'I don't think dwarfs bother much about football,' said Glenda.

'I don't fink you can be a real Morporkian an' not shout for your team,' was the next piece of worn-out folk wisdom from Juliet. Glenda let this one pass. Sometimes, arguing with her friend was like punching mist. Besides, the plodding horses were laboriously passing their street. They got off without missing a step.

The door to Juliet's house was covered in the ancient remnants of multiple layers of paint, or, rather, multiple layers of paint that had bubbled up into tiny little mountains over the years. It was always the cheapest paint possible. After all, you could afford to buy beer or you could afford to buy paint and you couldn't drink paint unless you were Mr Johnson at number fourteen, who apparently drank it all the time.

'Now, I won't tell your dad that you were late,' said Glenda, opening the door for her. 'But I want you in early tomorrow, all right?'

'Yes, Glenda,' said Juliet meekly.

'And no thinking about that Trevor Likely.'

'Yes, Glenda.' It was a meek reply, but Glenda recognized the sparkle. She'd seen it in the mirror once.

But now she cooked an early breakfast for widow Crowdy, who occupied the house on the other side and couldn't get about much these days, made her comfortable, did the chores in the rising light, and finally went to bed.

Her last thought as she plummeted into sleep was: Don't goblins steal chickens? Funny, he doesn't look the type...

At half past eight, a neighbour woke her up by throwing gravel at her window. He wanted her to come and look at his father, described as 'poorly', and the day began. She had never needed to buy an alarm clock.

Why did other people need so much sleep? It was a permanent puzzle for Nutt. It got boring by himself.

Back in the castle in Uberwald there had always been someone around to talk to. Ladyship liked the night-time and wouldn't go out in bright sunshine at all, so a lot of visitors came then. He had to stay out of sight, of course, but he knew all the passages in the walls and all the secret spy-holes. He saw the fine gentlemen, always in black, and the dwarfs with iron armour that gleamed like gold (later, down in his cellar that smelled of salt and thunderstorms, Igor showed him how it was made). There were trolls, too, looking a bit more polished than the ones he'd learned to run away from in the forests. He especially remembered the troll that shone like a jewel (Igor said his skin was made of living diamond). That alone would have been enough to glue him into Nutt's memory, but there had been that moment, one day when the diamond troll was seated at the big table with other trolls and dwarfs, when the diamond eyes had looked up and had seen Nutt, looking through a tiny, hidden spy-hole at the other end of the room. Nutt was convinced of it. He'd jerked away from the hole so quickly that he'd banged his head on the wall opposite.

He'd grown to know his way around all the cellars and workshops in Ladyship's castle. Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.

Those had been good days. Everywhere he went, men stopped work to show him how to plane and carve and mould and fettle and smelt iron and make horseshoes¨Cbut not how to fit them, because any horse went mad when he entered the stables. One once kicked the boards out of the rear wall.

That particular afternoon he went up to the library, where Miss Healstether found him a book on scent. He read it so fast that his eyes should have left trails on the paper. He certainly left a trail in the library: the twenty-two volumes of Brakefast's Compendium of Odours were soon stacked on the long lectern, followed by Spout's Trumpet of Equestrianism, and then, via a detour through the history section, Nutt plunged into the folklore section, with Miss Healstether pedalling after him on the mobile library steps.

She watched him with a kind of gratified awe. He'd been barely able to read when he'd arrived, but the goblin boy had set out to improve his reading as a boxer trains for a fight. And he was fighting something, but she wasn't sure in her own mind what it was and, of course, Ladyship never explained. He would sit all night under the lamp, book of the moment in front of him, dictionary and thesaurus on either side, wringing the meaning out of every word, punching ceaselessly at his own ignorance. When she came in the next morning there was a dictionary of Dwarfish and a copy of Postalume's The Speech of Trolls on the lectern too.

Surely it's not right to learn like this, she told herself. It can't be settling properly. You can't just fork it into your head. Learning has to be digested. You don't just have to know, you have to comprehend.

She mentioned this to Fassel, the smith, who said, 'Look, miss, he came up to me the other day and said he'd watched a smith before, and could he have a go? Well, you know her ladyship's orders, so I gave him a bit of bar stock and showed him the hammer and tongs and next minute he was going at it like¨Cwell, hammer and tongs! Turned out a nice little knife, very nice indeed. He thinks about things. You can see his ugly little mush working it all out. Have you ever met a goblin before?'

'Strange you should ask,' she told him. 'Our catalogue says we've got one of the very few copies of J. P. Bunderbell's Five Hours and Sixteen Minutes Among the Goblins of Far Uberwald, but I can't find it anywhere. It's priceless.'