Hogfather

you wouldn’t see it unless you looked closely. But I’ve never seen how you do it…”
    “’ere, I can’t take you lot through,” said Ernie. “Lifts is one thing, but not taking people through—”
    Teatime sighed. “And we were getting on so well. Listen, Ernie…Ern…you will take us through or, and I say this with very considerable regret, I will have to kill you. You seem a nice man. Conscientious. A very serious overcoat and sensible boots.”
    “But if’n I take you through—”
    “What’s the worst that can happen?” said Teatime. “You’ll lose your job. Whereas if you don’t, you’ll die. So if you look at it like that, we’re actually doing you a favor. Oh, do say yes.”
    “Er…” Ernie’s brain felt all twisted. The lad was definitely what Ernie thought of as a toff, and he seemed nice and friendly, but it didn’t all add up. The tone and the content didn’t match.
    “Besides,” said Teatime, “if you’ve been coerced, it’s not your fault, is it? No one can blame you. No one could blame anyone who’d been coerced at knife point.”
    “Oh, well, I s’pose, if we’re talking coerced …” Ernie muttered. Going along with things seemed to be the only way.
    The horse stopped and stood waiting with the patient look of an animal that probably knows the route better than the driver.
    Ernie fumbled in his overcoat pocket and took out a small tin, rather like a snuffbox. He opened it. There was glowing dust inside.
    “What do you do with that?” said Teatime, all interest.
    “Oh, you just takes a pinch and throws it in the air and it goes twing and it opens the soft place,” said Ernie.
    “So…you don’t need any special training or anything?”
    “Er…you just chucks it at the wall there and it goes twing ,” said Ernie.
    “Really? May I try?”
    Teatime took the tin from his unresisting hand and threw a pinch of dust into the air in front of the horse. It hovered for a moment and then produced a narrow, glittering arch in the air. It sparkled and went…
    … twing .
    “Aw,” said a voice behind them. “Innat nice, eh, our Davey?”
    “Yeah.”
    “All pretty sparkles…”
    “And then you just drive forward?” said Teatime.
    “That’s right,” said Ernie. “Quick, mind. It only stays open for a little while.”
    Teatime pocketed the little tin. “Thank you very much, Ernie. Very much indeed.”
    His other hand lashed out. There was a glint of metal. The carter blinked, and then fell sideways off his seat.
    There was silence from behind, tinted with horror and possibly just a little terrible admiration.
    “Wasn’t he dull ?” said Teatime, picking up the reins.

    Snow began to fall. It fell on the recumbent shape of Ernie, and it also fell through several hooded gray robes that hung in the air.
    There appeared to be nothing inside them. You could believe they were there merely to mark a certain point in space.
    Well, said one, we are frankly impressed.
    Indeed, said another. We would never have thought of doing it this way.
    He is certainly a resourceful human, said a third.
    The beauty of it all, said the first—or it may have been the second, because absolutely nothing distinguished the robes—is that there is so much else we will control.
    Quite, said another. It is really amazing how they think. A sort of…illogical logic.
    Children, said another. Who would have thought it? But today the children, tomorrow the world.
    Give me a child until he is seven and he’s mine for life, said another.
    There was a dreadful pause.
    The consensus beings that called themselves the Auditors did not believe in anything, except possibly immortality. And the way to be immortal, they knew, was to avoid living. Most of all they did not believe in personality. To be a personality was to be a creature with a beginning and an end. And since they reasoned that in an infinite universe any life was by comparison unimaginably short, they died instantly. There was a flaw in their logic, of course, but by the time they found this out it was always too late. In the meantime, they scrupulously avoided any comment, action or experience that set them apart…
    You said “me,” said one.
    Ah. Yes. But, you see, we were quoting, said the other one hurriedly. Some religious person said that. About educating children. And so would logically say “me.” But I wouldn’t use that term of myself, of— damn !
    The robe vanished in a little puff of smoke.
    Let that be a lesson