Reaper Man

and hold up a paw and whine.
    “Right,” said Windle. “Now, Librarian…you were about to help us, I think.”
    “Poor brave dog,” said Ludmilla.
    Lupine raised a paw pathetically, and whined.

    Burdened by the screaming form of the Bursar, the other wire basket couldn’t get up to the speed of its departed comrade. One wheel also trailed uselessly. It canted recklessly from side to side and nearly fell over as it shot through the gates, moving sideways.
    “I can see it clear! I can see it clear!” screamed the Dean.
    “Don’t! You might hit the Bursar!” bellowed Ridcully. “You might damage University property!”
    But the Dean couldn’t hear for the roar of unaccustomed testosterone. A searing green fireball struck the skewing trolley. The air was filled with flying wheels.
    Ridcully took a deep breath.
    “You stupid—!” he screamed.
    The word he uttered was unfamiliar to those wizards who had not had his robust country up-bringing and knew nothing of the finer points of animal husbandry. But it plopped into existence a few inches from his face; it was fat, round, black and glossy, with horrible eyebrows. It blew him an insectile raspberry and flew up to join the little swarm of curses.
    “What the hell was that?”
    A smaller thing flashed into existence by his ear.
    Ridcully snatched at his hat.
    “Damn!”—the swarm increased by one—“Something just bit me!”
    A squadron of newly-hatched Blasteds made a valiant bid for freedom. He swatted at them ineffectually.
    “Get away, you b—” he began.
    “Don’t say it!” said the Senior Wrangler. “Shut up!”
    People never told the Archchancellor to shut up. Shutting up was something that happened to other people. He shut up out of shock.
    “I mean, every time you swear it comes alive,” said the Senior Wrangler hurriedly. “Ghastly little winged things pop out of the air.”
    “Bloody hellfire!” said the Archchancellor.
    Pop. Pop.
    The Bursar crawled dazed out of the tangled wreckage of the wire trolley. He found his pointy hat, dusted it off, tried it on, frowned, and took a wheel out of it. His colleagues didn’t seem to be paying him much attention.
    He heard the Archchancellor say, “But I’ve always done it! Nothing wrong with a good swear, it keeps the blood flowing. Watch out, Dean, one of the bug—”
    “Can’t you say something else?” shouted the Senior Wrangler, above the buzz and whine of the swarm.
    “Like what?”
    “Like…oh…like…darn.”
    “Darn?” .
    “Yes, or maybe poot.”
    “ Poot? You want me to say poot? ”
    The Bursar crept up to the group. Arguing over petty details at times of dimensional emergency was a familiar wizardly trait.
    “Mrs. Whitlow the housekeeper always says ‘Sugar!’ when she drops something,” he volunteered.
    The Archchancellor turned on him.
    “She may say sugar,” he growled, “but what she means is shi—”
    The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself.
    “Oh, darn,” he said miserably. The swear-words settled amiably on his hat.
    “They like you,” said the Dean.
    “You’re their daddy,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    Ridcully scowled. “You b—boys can stop being silly at your Archchancellor’s expense and da—jolly well find out what’s going on,” he said.
    The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared.
    “You’re doing fine,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Keep it up.”
    “Darn darn darn,” said the Archchancellor. “Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty pootity poot.” He shook his head. “It’s no good, it doesn’t relieve my feelings one bit.”
    “It’s cleared the air, at any rate,” said the Bursar.
    They noticed his presence for the first time.
    They looked at the remains of the trolley.
    “Things zooming around,” said Ridcully. “Things coming alive.”
    They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child.
    The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates.
    The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along gamely at the back of the crowd.
    “What happened?”
    “I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and ran away on