Reaper Man

dreaded housekeeper, to make him a sort of baggy trouser suit in garish blue and red; twice a day the wizards stood in bemusement and watched him jog purposefully around the University buildings, his pointy wizarding hat tied firmly on his head with string. He’d shout cheerfully up at them, because fundamental to the make-up of people like Mustrum Ridcully is an iron belief that everyone else would like it, too, if only they tried it.
    “Maybe he’ll die,” they told one another hopefully, as they watched him try to break the crust on the river Ankh for an early morning dip. “All this healthy exercise can’t be good for him.”
    Stories trickled back into the University. The Archchancellor had gone two rounds bare-fisted with Detritus, the huge odd-job troll at the Mended Drum. The Archancellor had arm-wrestled with the Librarian for a bet and, although of course he hadn’t won, still had his arm afterward. The Archchancellor wanted the University to form its own football team for the big city game on Hogswatchday.
    Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place.
    There seemed to be more Mustrum Ridcully than one body could reasonably contain.

    Plop. Plop
    In the dark cupboard in the cellar, a whole shelf was already full.

    There was exactly as much Windle Poons as one body could contain, and he steered it carefully along the corridors.
    I never expected this, he thought. I don’t deserve this. There’s been a mistake somewhere.
    He felt a cool breeze on his face and realized he’d tottered out into the open air. Ahead of him were the University’s gates, locked shut.
    Suddenly Windle Poons felt acutely claustrophobic. He’d waited years to die, and now he had, and here he was stuck in this—this mausoleum with a lot of daft old men, where he’d have to spend the rest of his life being dead. Well, the first thing to do was to get out and make a proper end to himself—
    “’Evening, Mr. Poons.”
    He turned around very slowly and saw the small figure of Modo, the University’s dwarf gardener, who was sitting in the twilight smoking his pipe.
    “Oh. Hallo, Modo.”
    “I ’eard you was took dead, Mr. Poons.”
    “Er. Yes. I was.”
    “See you got over it, then.”
    Poons nodded, and looked dismally around the walls. The University gates were always locked at sunset every evening, obliging students and staff to climb over the walls. He doubted very much that he’d be able to manage that.
    He clenched and unclenched his hands. Oh, well…
    “Is there any other gateway around here, Modo?” he said.
    “No, Mr. Poons.”
    “Well, where shall we have one?”
    “Sorry, Mr. Poons?”
    There was the sound of tortured masonry, followed by a vaguely Poons-shaped hole in the wall. Windle’s hand reached back in and picked up his hat.
    Modo relit his pipe. You see a lot of interesting things in this job, he thought.

    In an alley, temporarily out of sight of passers-by, someone called Reg Shoe, who was dead, looked both ways, took a brush and a paint tin out of his pocket, and painted on the wall the words:
    DEAD YES! GONE NO!
    …and ran away, or at least lurched off at high speed.

    The Archchancellor opened a window onto the night.
    “Listen,” he said.
    The wizards listened.
    A dog barked. Somewhere a thief whistled, and was answered from a neighboring rooftop. In the distance a couple were having the kind of quarrel that causes most of the surrounding streets to open their windows and listen in and make notes. But these were only major themes against the continuous hum and buzz of the city. Ankh-Morpork purred through the night, en route for the dawn, like a huge living creature although, of course, this was only a metaphor.
    “Well?” said the Senior Wrangler. “I can’t hear anything special.”
    “That’s what I mean. Dozens of people die in Ankh-Morpork every day. If they’d all started coming back like poor old Windle, don’t you think we’d know about it? The place’d be in uproar. More uproar than usual, I