Hogfather

I suppose we might as well make a start.”
    And he hit Banjo very hard in the mouth.

    Death in person did not turn up upon the cessation of every life. It was not necessary. Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people’s homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.
    But from time to time Death checked up to see that things were functioning properly or, to put it another and more accurate way, properly ceasing to function in the less significant areas of his jurisdiction.
    And now he walked through dark seas.
    Silt rose in clouds around his feet as he strode along the trench bottom. His robes floated out around him.
    There was silence, pressure and utter, utter darkness. But there was life down here, even this far below the waves. There were giant squid, and lobsters with teeth on their eyelids. There were spidery things with their stomachs on their feet, and fish that made their own light. It was a quiet, black nightmare world, but life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can’t, this takes a little longer.
    Death’s destination was a slight rise in the trench floor. Already the water around him was getting warmer and more populated, by creatures that looked as though they had been put together from the bits left over from everything else.
    Unseen but felt, a vast column of scalding hot water was welling up from a fissure. Somewhere below were rocks heated to near incandescence by the Disc’s magical field.
    Spires of minerals had been deposited around this vent. And, in this tiny oasis, a type of life had grown up. It did not need air or light. It did not even need food in the way that most other species would understand the term.
    It just grew at the edge of the streaming column of water, looking like a cross between a worm and a flower.
    Death kneeled down and peered at it, because it was so small. But for some reason, in this world without eyes or light, it was also a brilliant red. The profligacy of life in these matters never ceased to amaze him.
    He reached inside his robe and pulled out a small roll of black material, like a jeweler’s tool kit. With great care he took from one of its pouches a scythe about an inch long, and held it expectantly between thumb and forefinger.
    Somewhere overhead a shard of rock was dislodged by a stray current and tumbled down, raising little puffs of silt as it bounced off the tubes.
    It landed just beside the living flower and then rolled, wrenching it from the rock.
    Death flicked the tiny scythe just as the bloom faded…
    The omnipotent eyesight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said they can see the fall of every sparrow.
    And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground.
    The soul of the tube worm was very small and uncomplicated. It wasn’t bothered about sin. It had never coveted its neighbor’s polyps. It had never gambled or drunk strong liquor. It had never bothered itself with questions like “Why am I here?” because it had no concept at all of “here” or, for that matter, of “I.”
    Nevertheless, something was cut free under the surgical edge of the scythe and vanished in the roiling waters.
    Death carefully put the instrument away and stood up. All was well, things were functioning satisfactorily, and—
    —but they weren’t.
    In the same way that the best of engineers can hear the tiny change that signals a bearing going bad long before the finest of instruments would detect anything wrong, Death picked up a discord in the symphony of the world. It was one wrong note among billions but all the more noticeable for that, like a tiny pebble in a very large shoe.
    He waved a finger in the waters. For a moment a blue, door-shaped outline appeared. He stepped through it and was gone.
    The tube creatures didn’t notice him go. They hadn’t noticed him arrive. They never ever noticed anything. A cart trundled through the freezing foggy streets, the driver hunched in his seat. He seemed to be all big thick brown overcoat.
    A figure darted out of the swirls and was suddenly on the box next to him.
    “Hi!” it said. “My name’s Teatime. What’s yours?”
    “’ere, you get down, I ain’t allowed to give li—”
    The driver stopped. It was amazing how Teatime had been able to thrust a knife through four layers of thick clothing and stop it just at the