Hogfather

is not exactly…authorized. We don’t want questions asked.
    One said, We have a duty to rid the universe of sloppy thinking.
    One said, Everyone will be grateful when they find out.

    Binky touched down lightly on Death’s lawn.
    Susan didn’t bother with the front door but went around the back, which was never locked.
    There had been changes. One significant change, at least.
    There was a cat-flap in the door.
    She stared at it.
    After a second or two a ginger cat came through the flap, gave her an I’m-not-hungry-and-you’re-not-interesting look and padded off into the gardens.
    Susan pushed open the door into the kitchen.
    Cats of every size and color covered every surface. Hundreds of eyes swiveled to watch her.
    It was Mrs. Gammage all over again, she thought. The old woman was a regular in Biers for the company and was quite gaga, and one of the symptoms of those going completely yo-yo was that they broke out in chronic cats. Usually cats who’d mastered every detail of feline existence except the whereabouts of the dirt box.
    Several of them had their noses in a bowl of cream.
    Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.
    “Push off, the lot of you,” she said. “I’ve never known him to have pets.”
    The cats gave her a look to indicate that they were intending to go somewhere else in any case and strolled off, licking their chops.
    The bowl slowly filled up again.
    They were obviously living cats. Only life had color here. Everything else was created by Death. Color, along with plumbing and music, were arts that escaped the grasp of his genius.
    She left them in the kitchen and wandered along to the study.
    There were changes here, too. By the look of it, he’d been trying to learn to play the violin again. He’d never been able to understand why he couldn’t play music.
    The desk was a mess. Books lay open, piled on one another. They were the ones Susan had never learned to read. Some of the characters hovered above the pages or moved in complicated little patterns as they read you while you read them.
    Intricate devices had been scattered across the top. They looked vaguely navigational, but on what oceans and under which stars?
    Several pages of parchment had been filled up with Death’s own handwriting. It was immediately recognizable. No one else Susan had ever met had handwriting with serifs.
    It looked as though he’d been trying to work something out.
    NOT KLATCH. NOT HOWONDALAND. NOT THE EMPIRE.
    LET US SAY 20 MILLION CHILDREN AT 2 LB OF TOYS PER CHILD.
EQUALS 17,857 TONS. 1,785 TONS PER HOUR.
    MEMO: DON’T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE
    PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO.
    CUSHION.

She put the paper back carefully.
    Sooner or later it’d get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both. Death had picked up…humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely.
    The house even imitated human houses. Death had created a bedroom for himself, despite the fact that he never slept. If he really picked things up from humans, had he tried insanity? It was very popular, after all.
    Perhaps, after all these millennia, he wanted to be nice.
    She let herself into the Room of Lifetimers. She’d liked the sound of it, when she was a little girl. But now the hiss of sand from millions of hourglasses, and the little pings and pops as full ones vanished and new empty ones appeared, was not so enjoyable. Now she knew what was going on. Of course, everyone died sooner or later. It just wasn’t right to be listening to it happening.
    She was about to leave when she noticed the open door in a place where she had never seen a door before.
    It was disguised. A whole section of shelving, complete with its whispering glasses, had swung out.
    Susan pushed it back and forth with a finger. When it was shut, you’d have to look hard to see the crack.
    There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers.
    “Light,” she commanded. A