Unseen Academicals (Discworld 37)

'Best if you stay down in the vats,' he said. 'It's nice and warm, you've got your own bedroll, and it's all snug and safe, eh?'

To his relief the boy was silent as they walked down the passages, but then Nutt said, in a thoughtful tone of voice, 'I was just wondering, sir... How often has the candle that never goes out... not gone out?'

Smeems bit back the stinging retort. For some reason he knew it could only build up trouble in the long run.

'The candle that never goes out has failed to go out three times since I've been Candle Knave, lad,' he said. 'It's a record!'

'An enviable achievement, sir.'

'Damn right! And that's even with all the strangeness there's been happening lately.'

'Really, sir?' said Nutt. 'Have stranger than usual things been happening?'

'Young... man, stranger than usual things happen all the time.'

'One of the scullery boys told me that all the toilets on the Tesseractical floor turned into sheep yesterday,' said Nutt. 'I should like to see that.'

'I shouldn't go further than the sculleries, if I was you,' said Smeems, quickly. 'And don't worry about what the gentlemen do. They are the finest minds in the world, let me tell you. If you was to ask 'em... ' He paused, trying to think of something really difficult, like, 'What is 864 times 316... ?'

'273,024,' said Nutt, not quite under his breath.

'What?' said Smeems, derailed.

'Just thinking aloud, master,' said Nutt.

'Oh. Right. Er... Well that's it, see? They'd have an answer for you in a brace of shakes. Finest minds in the world,' said Smeems, who believed in truth via repetition. 'Finest minds. Engaged in the business of the universe. Finest minds!'

'Well, that was fun,' said Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of the university, throwing himself into a huge armchair in the faculty's Uncommon Room with such force that it nearly threw him out again. 'We must do it again some time.'

'Yes, sir. We will. In one hundred years,' said the new Master of The Traditions smugly, turning over the pages in his huge book. He reached the crackling leaf headed Hunting the Megapode, wrote down the date and the amount of time it had taken to find the aforesaid Megapode, and signed his name with a flourish: Ponder Stibbons.

'What is a Megapode, anyway?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, helping himself to the port.

'A type of bird, I believe,' said the Archchancellor, waving a hand towards the drinks trolley. 'After me.'

'The original Megapode was found in the under-butler's pantry,' said the Master of The Traditions. 'It escaped in the middle of dinner and caused what my predecessor eleven hundred years ago called... ' he referred to the book, '"a veritable heyhoe-rumbelow as all the Fellows pursued it through the college buildings with much mirth and good spirits".'

'Why?' said the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications, deftly snatching the decanter full of good spirits as it went past.

'Oh, you can't have a Megapode running around loose, Doctor Hix,' said Ridcully. 'Anyone'll tell you that.'

'No, I meant why do we do it again every hundred years?' said the head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications.

The Senior Wrangler turned his face away and murmured, 'Oh, good gods... '

'It's a tradition,' the Chair of Indefinite Studies explained, rolling a cigarette. 'We have to have traditions.'

'They're traditional,' said Ridcully. He beckoned to one of the servants. 'And I don't mind saying that this one has made me somewhat peckish. Can you fetch the cheeseboards one to five, please? And, um, some of that cold roast beef, some ham, a few biscuits and, of course, the pickle carts.' He looked up. 'Anyone want to add anything?'

'I could toy fitfully with a little fruit,' said the Professor of Recondite Phenomena. 'How about you, Librarian?'

'Ook,' growled the figure hogging the fire.

'Yes, of course,' said the Archchancellor. He waved a hand at the hovering waiter. 'The fruit trolley as well. See to it, please, Downbody. And... perhaps that new girl could bring it up? She ought to get used to the Uncommon Room.'

It was as if he had just spoken a magic spell. The room, its ceiling hazy with blue smoke, was suddenly awash with a sort of heavy, curiously preoccupied silence mostly due to dreamy speculation, but in a few rare cases owing to distant memory.

The new girl... At the mere thought, elderly hearts beat dangerously.