Mort (Discworld 4)

'Rincewind!' bawled Albert.

'Sir!'

'Take this thing away and dispose of it.'

The toad crawled into Rincewind's hand and gave him an apologetic look.

That's the last time that bloody landlord gives any lip to a wizard,' said Albert with smug satisfaction. 'It seems I turn my back for a few hundred years and suddenly people in this town are encouraged to think they can talk back to wizards, eh?'

One of the senior wizards mumbled something.

'What was that? Speak up, that man!'

'As the bursar of this university I must say that we've always encouraged a good neighbour policy with respect to the community,' mumbled the wizard, trying to avoid Albert's gimlet stare. He had an upturned chamber pot on his conscience, with three cases of obscene graffiti to be taken into consideration.

Albert let his mouth drop open. 'Why?' he said.

'Well, er, a sense of civic duty, we feel it's vitally important that we show an examp— arrgh!'

The wizard tried desperately to beat out the flames in his beard. Albert lowered his staff and looked slowly along the row of mages. They swayed away from his stare like grass in a gale.

'Anyone else want to show a sense of civic duty?' he said. 'Good neighbours, anybody?' He drew himself up to his full height. 'You spineless maggots! I didn't found this University so you could lend people the bloody lawnmower! What's the use of having the power if you don't wield it? Man doesn't show you respect, you don't leave enough of his damn inn to roast chestnuts on, understand?'

Something like a soft sigh went up from the assembled wizards. They stared sadly at the toad in Rincewind's hand. Most of them, in the days of their youth, had mastered the art of getting rascally drunk at the Drum. Of course, all that was behind them now, but the Guild of Merchants' annual knife-and-fork supper would have been held in the Drum's upstairs room the following evening, and all the Eighth Level wizards had been sent complimentary tickets; there would have been roast swan and two kinds of trifle and lots of fraternal toasts to 'Our esteemed, nay, distinguished guests' until it was time for the college porters to turn up with the wheelbarrows.

ink there's some people here to see you,' said Mort, and hurried away. As he reached the passageway the Vizier's soul started to scream. . . .

Ysabell was standing patiently by Binky, who was making a late lunch of a five-hundred-year-old bonsai tree.

'One down,' said Mort, climbing into the saddle. 'Come on. I've got a bad feeling about the next one, and we haven't much time.'

Albert materialised in the centre of Unseen University, in the same place, in fact, from which he had departed the world some two thousand years before.

He grunted with satisfaction and brushed a few specks of dust off his robe.

He became aware that he was being watched; on looking up, he discovered that he had flashed into existence under the stern marble gaze of himself.

He adjusted his spectacles and peered disapprovingly at the bronze plaque screwed to his pedestal. It said:

'Alberto Malich, Founder of This University. AM 1,222-1,289. “We Will Not See His Like Again”.'

So much for prediction, he thought. And if they thought so much of him they could at least have hired a decent sculptor. It was disgraceful. The nose was all wrong. Call that a leg? People had been carving their names on it, too. He wouldn't be seen dead in a hat like that, either. Of course, if he could help it, he wouldn't be seen dead at all.

Albert aimed an octarine thunderbolt at the ghastly thing and grinned evilly as it exploded into dust.

'Right,' he said to the Disc at large, 'I'm back.' The tingle from the magic coursed all the way up his arm and started a warm glow in his mind. How he'd missed it, all these years.

Wizards came hurrying through the big double doors at the sound of the explosion and cleared the wrong conclusion from a standing start.

There was the pedestal, empty. There was a cloud of marble dust over everything. And striding out of it, muttering to himself, was Albert.

The wizards at the back of the crowd started to have it away as quickly and quietly as possible. There wasn't one of them that hadn't, at some time in his jolly youth, put a common bedroom utensil on old Albert's head or carved his name somewhere on the statue's chilly anatomy, or spilled beer on the pedestal. Worse than that, too, during Rag Week when the drink flowed quickly and the privy seemed too far to stagger. These had all seemed hilarious ideas at the time. They suddenly didn't, now.

Only two figures remained to face the statue's wrath, one because he had got his robe caught in the door and the other because he was, in fact, an ape and could therefore take a relaxed attitude to human affairs.

Albert grabbed the wizard, who was trying desperately to walk into the wall. The man squealed.

'All right, all right, I admit it! I was drunk at the time, believe me, didn't mean it, gosh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry —'