We R Igors. HE WILL BE USEFUL. ESTABLISHED

Perhaps it was odd that people never asked, “Established when, exactly? ” If they ever had, the answer would have had to be quite complicated.

Ronnie opened the gates to the yard and, milk crates rattling, set out into the timeless moment. It was terrible, he thought, the way things conspired against the small businessman.

Lobsang Ludd awoke to a little clicking, spinning sound.

He was in darkness, but it yielded reluctantly to his hand. It felt like velvet, and it was. He'd rolled under one of the display cabinets.

There was a vibration in the small of his back. He reached around gingerly, and realized that the portable Procrastinator was revolving in its cage.

So…

How did it go, now? He was living on borrowed time. He'd got maybe an hour, perhaps a lot less. But he could slice it, so…

No. Something told him that trying that would be a really terminal idea with time stored in a device made by Qu. The mere thought made him feel that his skin was inches from a universe full of razorblades.

So… one hour, perhaps a lot less. But you could rewind a spinner, right?

No. The handle was at the back. You could rewind someone else's spinner. Thank you, Qu, and your experimental models.

Could you take it off, then? No. The harness was part of it. Without it, different parts of your body would be travelling at different speeds. The effect would probably be rather like freezing a human body solid, and then pushing it down a flight of stone stairs.

Open the box with the crowbar that you will find inside…

There was a green-blue glow through the crack in the door. He took a step towards it, and heard the spinner suddenly pick up speed. That meant it was shedding more time, and that was bad when you had an hour, perhaps a lot less.

He took a step away from the door and the Procrastinator settled back into its routine clicking.

So…

Lu-Tze was out in the street and he had a spinner and that should have cut in automatically, too. In this timeless world, he was going to be the only person who could turn a handle.

The glass that he had broken in his leap through the window had opened around the hole like a great sparkling flower. He reached out to touch a piece. It moved as though alive, cut his finger, and then dropped towards the ground, stopping only when it fell out of the field around his body.

Don't touch people, Lu-Tze had said. Don't touch arrows. Don't touch things that were moving, that was the rule. But the glass—

–but the glass, in normal time, had been flying through the air. It'd still have that energy, wouldn't it?

He eased himself carefully around the glass, and opened the front door of the shop. The wood moved very slowly, fighting against the enormous speed.

Lu-Tze was not in the street. But there was something new, hovering in the air just a few inches above the ground right where the old man had been. It had not been there before.

Someone with their own portable time had been here, and dropped this, and had moved on before it reached the ground.

It was a small glass jar, coloured blue by temporal effects. Now… how much energy could it have? Lobsang cupped his hand and gingerly brought it underneath and up, and there was a tingle and a sudden feeling of weight as the spinners field claimed it.

Now its true colours came back. The jar was a milky pink or, rather, clear glass that looked pink because of the contents. The paper lid was covered with badly printed pictures of unbelievably flawless strawberries, surrounding some ornate lettering which read: R ONALD S OAK, H YGIENIC D AIRYMAN. S TRAWBERRY Y OGHURT “ F RESH A S T HE M ORNING D EW. ”

Soak? He knew the name! The man had delivered milk to the Guild! Good fresh milk, too, not the watery, green-tinted stuff the other dairies supplied. Very reliable, everyone said. But, reliable or not, he was just a milkman… all right, just a very good milkman… and if time had stopped, then why—

Lobsang looked around desperately. The people and carts that thronged the street were still there. No one had moved. No one could move.

But something was running along the gutter. It looked like a rat in a black robe, running along on its hind legs. It looked up at Lobsang, and he saw that it had a skull rather than a head. As skulls went, it was quite a cheerful one.

The word SQUEAK manifested itself inside his brain without bothering to go via his ears. Then the rat hopped onto the pavement and scampered down an alley.

Lobsang followed it.

A moment later someone behind him grabbed him by the neck. He went to break the lock, and realized how much he'd relied on slicing when he was fought. Besides, the person behind him had a very strong grip indeed.

“I just want to make sure you don't do anything silly, ” it said. It was a female voice. “What is this thing on your back? ”

“Who are—? ”

“The protocol in these matters, ” said the voice, “is that the person with the killer neckgrip asks the questions. ”

“Er, it's a Procrastinator. Er, it stores time. Who—”

“Oh dear, there you go again. What is your name? ”

“Lobsang. Lobsang Ludd. Look, could you wind me up, please? It's urgent. ”

“Certainly. Lobsang Ludd, you are thoughtless and impulsive and deserve to die a stupid and pointless death. ”

“What? ”

“And you are also rather slow on the uptake. You are referring to this handle? ”

“Yes. I'm running out of time. Now can I ask who you are? ”

“Miss Susan. Hold still. ”

He heard, behind him, the incredibly welcome sound of the Procrastinators clockwork being rewound.

“Miss Susan? ” he said.

“That's what most people I know call me. Now, I'm going to let you go. I will add that trying anything stupid will be counterproductive. Besides, I'm the only person in the world right now who might be inclined to twiddle your handle again. ”

The pressure was released. Lobsang turned slowly.

Miss Susan was a slightly built young woman, dressed severely all in black. Her hair stood out around her head like an aura, white-blond with one black streak. But the most striking thing about her was… was everything, Lobsang realized, everything from her expression to the way she stood. Some people fade into the background. Miss Susan faded into the foreground. She stood out. Everything she stood in front of became nothing more than background.

“Finished? ” she said. “Seen everything? ”

“Sorry. Have you seen an old man? Dressed a bit like me? With one of these on his back? ”

“No. Now it's my turn. Have you got rhythm? ”

“What? ”

Susan rolled her eyes. “All right. Do you have music? ”

“Not on me, no! ”

“And you certainly haven't got a girl, ” said Susan. “I saw Old Man Trouble go past a few minutes ago. It'd be a good idea if you don't bump into him, then. ”

“And is he likely to have taken my friend? ”

“I doubt it. And Old Man Trouble is more an ‘it’ than a ‘he’. Anyway, there's far worse than him around right now. Even the bogeymen have gone to ground. ”

“Look, time has stopped, right? ” said Lobsang.

“Yes. ”

“So how can you be here talking to me? ”

“I'm not what you might call a creature of time, ” said Susan. “I work in it, but I don't have to live there. There are a few of us about. ”

“Like this Old Man Trouble you mentioned? ”

“Right. And the Hogfather, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, people like that. ”

“I thought they were mythical? ”

“So? ” Susan glanced out of the mouth of the alley again.

“And you're not? ”

“I take it you didn't stop the clock, ” said Miss Susan, looking up and down the street.

“No. I was… too late. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone back to help Lu-Tze. ”

“I'm sorry? You were dashing to prevent the end of the world but you stopped to help some old man? You… hero! ”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that I was a—” And then Lobsang stopped. She hadn't said “You hero” in the tone of voice of “You star”; it had been the tone in which people say “You idiot. ”

“I see a lot of your sort, ” Susan went on. “Heroes have a very strange grasp of elementary maths, you know. If you'd smashed the clock before it struck, everything would have been fine. Now the world has stopped and we've been invaded and we're probably all going to die, just because you stopped to help someone. I mean, very worthy and all that, but very, very… human. ”

She used the word as if she meant it to mean “silly”.

“You mean you need cool calculating bastards to save the world, do you? ” said Lobsang.

“The cool calculation does help, I must admit, ” said Susan. “Now, shall we go and look at this clock? ”

“Why? The damage is done now. If we smash it, it'll only make things worse. Besides, uh, the spinner started to run wild and I, er, I felt—”

“Cautious, ” said Susan. “Good. Caution is sensible. But there's something I want to check. ”

Lobsang tried to pull himself together. This strange woman had the air of someone who knew exactly what she was doing—who knew exactly what everyone was doing—and, besides, what alternative did he have? Then he remembered the yoghurt pot.

“Does this mean anything? ” he said. “I'm certain it was dropped in the street after time stopped. ”

She took the pot and examined it. “Oh, ” she said casually. “Ronnie's been around, has he? ”

“Ronnie? ”

“Oh, we all know Ronnie. ”

“What's that supposed to mean? ”

“Let's just say if he found your friend then your friend is going to be okay. Probably okay. More okay than he would be if just about anything else found him, at least. Look, this is not a time when you should be worrying about one person. Cold calculation, right? ”

She stepped out into the street. Lobsang followed. Susan walked as if she owned the street. She scanned every alley and doorway, but not like a potential victim apprehensive of attackers. It seemed to Lobsang that she was disappointed to find nothing dangerous in the shadows.

She reached the shop, stepped inside, and paused for a moment to regard the floating flower of broken glass. Her expression suggested that she considered it to be a perfectly normal kind of thing to find, and had seen far more interesting things. Then she walked on and stopped at the inner door. There was still a glow from the crack, but it was dimmer now.

“Settling down, ” she said. “Shouldn't be too bad… but there's two people in here. ”

“Who? ”

“Wait, I'll open the door. And be careful. ”

The door moved very slowly. Lobsang stepped into the workshop after the girl. The spinner began to speed up.

The clock glowed in the middle of the floor, painful to look at.

But he stared nevertheless. “It's… it's just as I imagined it, ” he said. “It's the way to—”

“Don't go near it, ” said Susan. “It's uncertain death, believe me. Do pay attention. ”

Lobsang blinked. The last couple of thoughts didn't seem to have belonged to him.

“What did you say? ”

“I said it's uncertain death. ”

“Is that worse than certain death? ”

“Much. Watch. ” Susan picked up a hammer that was lying on the floor and poked it gently towards the clock. It vibrated in her hand when she brought it closer, and she swore under her breath as it was dragged from her fingers and vanished. Just before it did there was a brief, contracting ring around the clock that might have been something like a hammer would be if you rolled it very flat and bent it into a circle.

“Have you any idea why that happened? ” she said.

“No. ”

“Nor have I. Now imagine that you were the hammer. Uncertain death, see? ”

Lobsang looked at the two frozen people. One was medium-sized and had all the right number of appendages to qualify as a member of the human race, and so therefore probably had to be given the benefit of the doubt. It was staring at the clock. So was the other figure, which was that of a middle-aged, sheep-faced man still holding a cup of tea and, as far as Lobsang could make out, a biscuit.

“The one who wouldn't win a beauty contest even if he was the only entrant is an Igor, ” said Susan. “The other one is Dr Hopkins of the Clockmakers' Guild here. ”

“So we know who built the clock, at least, ” said Lobsang.

“I don't think so. Mr Hopkins's workshop is several streets away. And he makes novelty watches for a rather strange kind of discerning customer. It's his speciality. ”

“Then the… Igor must've built it? ”

“Good grief, no! Igors are professional servants. They never work for themselves. ”

“You seem to know a lot, ” said Lobsang, as Susan circled the clock like a wrestler trying to spy out a hold.

“Yes, ” she said, without turning her head. “I do. The first clock broke. This one's holding. Whoever designed it was a genius. ”

“An evil genius? ”

“It's hard to say. I can't see any signs. ”

“What kind of signs? ”

“Well, ‘Hahaha!!!!! ’ painted on the side would be a definite clue, don't you think? ” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I'm in your way, am I? ” said Lobsang.

“No, not at all, ” said Susan, turning her attention to the workbench. “Well, there's nothing here. I suppose he could have set a timer. A sort of alarm clock—”

She stopped. She picked up a length of rubber hosepipe that was coiled on a hook by the glass jars and looked hard at it. Then she tossed it into a corner and stared at it as if she had never seen anything like it before.

“Don't say a word, ” she said quietly. “They have some very acute senses. Just ease back among those big glass vats behind you and try to look inconspicuous. And do it NOW. ”

The last word had odd harmonics to it and Lobsang felt his legs begin to move almost without his conscious control.

The door moved a little and a man came in.

What was strange about the face, Lobsang thought afterwards, was how unmemorable it was. He'd never seen a face so lacking in anything to mention. It had a nose and mouth and eyes, and they were all quite flawless, but somehow they didn't make up a face. They were just parts that made no proper whole. If they became anything at all it was the face of a statue, good looking but without anything looking out of it.

Slowly, like someone who had to think about his muscles, the man turned to look at Lobsang.

Lobsang felt himself bunch up to slice time. The spinner groaned a warning on his back.

“That's about enough, I think, ” said Susan, stepping forward. The man was spun around. An elbow was jabbed into his stomach and then the palm of her hand caught him so hard under his chin that he was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall.

As he fell, Susan hit him on the head with a wrench.

“We might as well be going, ” she said, as if she'd just shuffled some paper that had been untidy. “Nothing more for us here. ”

“You killed him! ”

“Certainly. He's not a human being. I have… a sense about these things. It's sort of inherited. Besides, go and pick up the hose. Go on. ”

Since she was still holding the wrench, Lobsang did so. Or tried to do so. The coil she'd flung into the corner was knotted and tangled like rubber spaghetti.

“Malignancy, my grandfather calls it, ” said Susan. “The local hostility of things towards non-things always increases when there's an Auditor about. They can't help it. The hosepipe test is very reliable in the field, according to a rat I know. ”

Rat, thought Lobsang, but he said: “What's an Auditor? ”

“And they have no sense of colour. They don't understand it. Look how he's dressed. Grey suit, grey shirt, grey shoes, grey cravat, grey everything. ”

“Er… er… perhaps it was just someone trying to be very cool? ”

“You think so? No loss there, then, ” said Susan. “Anyway, you're wrong. Watch. ”

The body was disintegrating. It was a fast and quite ungory process, a sort of dry evaporation. It simply became floating dust, which expanded away and vanished. But the last few handfuls formed, just for a few seconds, a familiar shape. That, too, vanished, with the merest whisper of a scream.

“That was a dhlang! ” he said. “An evil spirit! The peasants down in the valleys hang up charms against them! But I thought they were just a superstition! ”

“No, they're a substition, ” said Susan. “I mean they're real, but hardly anyone really believes in them. Mostly everyone believes in things that aren't real. Something very strange is going on. These things are all over the place, and they've got bodies. That's not right. We've got to find the person who built the clock—”

“And, er, what are you, Miss Susan? ”

“Me? I'm… a schoolteacher. ”

She followed his gaze to the wrench that she still held in her hand, and shrugged.

“It can get pretty rough at break time, can it? ” said Lobsang.

There was an overpowering smell of milk.

Lu-Tze sat bolt upright.

It was a large room, and he had been placed on a slab in the middle of it. By the feel of the surface, it was sheeted with metal. There were churns stacked along the wall, and big metal bowls ranged beside a sink the size of a bath.

Under the milk smell were many others—disinfectant, well-scrubbed wood and a distant odour of horses.

Footsteps approached. Lu-Tze lay back hurriedly and shut his eyes.

He heard someone enter the room. They were whistling under their breath, and they had to be a man, because no woman in Lu-Tze's long experience had ever whistled in that warbling, hissing way. The whistling approached the slab, stayed still for a moment, then turned away and headed for the sink. It was replaced by the sound of a pump handle being operated.

Lu-Tze half opened one eye.

The man standing at the sink was quite short, so that the standard-issue blue-and-white striped apron he wore almost reached the floor. He appeared to be washing bottles.

Lu-Tze swung his legs off the slab, moving with a stealthiness that made the average ninja sound like a brass band, and let his sandals gently touch the floor.

“Feeling better? ” said the man, without turning his head.

“Oh, er, yes. Fine, ” said Lu-Tze.

“I thought, here's a little bald monk sort of a fellow, ” said the man, holding a bottle up to the light to inspect it. “With a wind-up thing on his back, and down on his luck. Fancy a cup of tea? Kettle's on. I've got yak butter. ”

“Yak? Am I still in Ankh-Morpork? ” Lu-Tze looked down at a rack of ladles beside him. The man still hadn't looked round.

“Hmm. Interestin' question, ” said the bottle-washer. “You could say you're sort of in Ankh-Morpork. No to yak milk? I can get cow's milk, or goat, sheep, camel, llama, horse, cat, dog, dolphin, whale or alligator if you prefer. ”

“What? Alligators don't give milk! ” said Lu-Tze, grasping the biggest ladle. It made no noise as it came off its hook.

“I didn't say it was easy. ”

The sweeper got a good grip. “What is this place, friend? ” he said.

“You are in… the dairy. ”

The man at the sink said the last word as if it was as portentous as “castle of dread”, placed another bottle on the draining board, and, still with his back to Lu-Tze, held up a hand. All the fingers were folded except for the middle digit, which was extended.

“You know what this is, monk? ” he said.

“It's not a friendly gesture, friend. ” The ladle felt good and heavy. Lu-Tze had used much worse weapons than this.

“Oh, a superficial interpretation. You are an old man, monk. I can see the centuries on you. Tell me what this is, and know what I am. ”

The coldness in the dairy got a little colder.

“It's your middle finger, ” said Lu-Tze.

“Pah! ” said the man.

“Pah? ”

“Yes, pah! You have a brain. Use it. ”

“Look, it was good of you to—”

“You know the secret wisdoms that everyone seeks, monk. ” The bottle-washer paused. “No, I even suspect that you know the explicit wisdoms, the ones hidden in plain view, which practically no one looks for. Who am I? ”

Lu-Tze stared at the solitary finger. The wall's of the dairy faded. The cold grew deeper.

His mind raced, and the librarian of memory took over.

This wasn't a normal place, that wasn't a normal man: A finger. One finger. One of the five digits on a—One of five. One of Five. Faint echoes of an ancient legend signalled his attention.

One from five is four.

And one left over.

Lu-Tze very carefully hung the ladle back on its hook.

“One from Five, ” he said. “The Fifth of Four. ”

“There we are. I could see you were educated. ”

“You were… you were the one who left before they became famous? ”

“Yes. ”

“But… this is a dairy, and you're washing bottles! ”

“Well? I had to do something with my time. ”

“But… you were the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse! ” said Lu-Tze.

“And I bet you can't remember my name. ”

Lu-Tze hesitated. “No, ” he said. “I don't think I ever heard it. ”

The Fifth Horseman turned round. His eyes were black. Completely black. Shiny, and black, and without any whites at all.

“My name, ” said the Fifth Horseman, “is…”

“Yes? ”

“My name is Ronnie. ”

Timelessness grew like ice. Waves froze on the sea. Birds were pinned to the air. The world went still.

But not quiet. There was a sound like a finger running around the rim of a very large glass.

“Come on, ” said Susan.

“Can't you hear it? ” said Lobsang, stopping.

“But it's no use to us—”

She pushed Lobsang back into the shadows. The robed grey shape of an Auditor appeared in the air halfway down the street, and began to spin. The air around it filled with dust, which became a whirling cylinder, which became, slightly unsteady on its feet, something that looked human.

It rocked backwards and forwards for a moment. It raised its hands slowly and looked at them, turning them this way and that. Then it marched away, purposefully. Further along the street it was joined by another one, emerging from an alley.

“This really isn't like them, ” said Susan, as the pair turned a corner. “They're up to something. Let's follow them. ”

“What about Lu-Tze? ”

“What about him? How old did you say he was? ”

“He says he's eight hundred years old. ”

“Hard to kill, then. Ronnie's safe enough if you're alert and don't argue. Come on. ”

She set off along the streets.

The Auditors were joined by others, weaving through the silent carts and motionless people and along the street towards, as it turned out, Sator Square, one of the biggest open spaces in the city. It was market day. Silent, motionless figures thronged the stalls. But, amongst them, there were scurrying grey shapes.

“There's hundreds of them, ” said Susan. “All human-shaped… and it looks like they're having a meeting. ”

Mr White was losing patience. Up until now, he had never been aware that he had any, because, if anything, he had been all patience. But now he could feel it evaporating. It was a strange, hot sensation in his head. And how could a thought be hot?

The mass of incarnated Auditors watched him nervously.

“I am Mr White! ” he said to the luckless new Auditor that had been brought before him, and shuddered with the astonishment of using that singular word and surviving. “You cannot be Mr White also. It would be a matter of confusion. ”

“But we are running out of colours, ” said Mr Violet, intervening.

“That cannot be the case, ” said Mr White. “There is an infinite number of colours. ”

“But there are not that many names, ” said Miss Taupe.

“That is not possible. A colour must have a name. ”

“We can find only one hundred and three names for green before the colour becomes noticeably either blue or yellow, ” said Miss Crimson.

“But the shades are endless! ”

“Nevertheless, the names are not. ”

“This is a problem that must be solved. Add it to the list, Miss Brown. We must name every possible shade. ”

One of the female Auditors looked startled. “I cannot remember all the things, ” she said. “Nor do I understand why you are giving orders. ”

“Apart from the renegade, I have the greatest seniority as an incarnate. ”

“Only by a matter of seconds, ” said Miss Brown.

“That is immaterial. Seniority is seniority. This is a fact. ”

It was a fact. Auditors respected facts. And it was also a fact, Mr White knew, that there were now more than seven hundred Auditors walking rather awkwardly around the city.

Mr White had put a stop to the relentless increase in incarnations as more and more of his fellows rushed into the trouble spot. It was too dangerous. The renegade had demonstrated, he pointed out, that the human shape forced the mind to think in a certain troublesome way. The utmost caution was necessary. This was a fact. Only those with a proven ability to survive the process should be allowed to incarnate and complete the work. This was a fact.

Auditors respected facts. At least until now. Miss Brown took a step back.

“Nevertheless, ” she said, “being here is dangerous. It is my view that we should discarnate. ”

Mr White found his body replying by itself. It let out a breath of air.

“And leave things unknown? ” he said. “Things that are unknown are dangerous. We are learning much. ”

“What we are learning makes no sense, ” said Miss Brown.

“The more we learn, the more sense it will make. There is nothing we cannot understand, ” said Mr White.

“I do not understand why it is that I now perceive a desire to bring my hand in sharp contact with your face, ” said Miss Brown.

“Exactly my point, ” said Mr White. “You do not understand it, and therefore it is dangerous. Perform the act, and we will know more. ”

She hit him.

He raised his hand to his cheek.

“Unbidden thoughts of avoidance of repetition are engendered, ” he said. “Also heat. Remarkably, the body does indeed appear to do some thinking on its own behalf. ”

“For my part, ” said Miss Brown, “the unbidden thoughts are of satisfaction coupled with apprehension. ”

“Already we learn more about humans, ” said Mr White.

“To what end? ” said Miss Brown, whose sensations of apprehension were increasing at the sight of the contorted expression on Mr White's face. “For our purposes, they are no longer a factor. Time has ended. They are fossils. The skin under one of your eyes is twitching. ”

“You are guilty of inappropriate thought, ” said Mr White. “They exist. Therefore we must study them in every detail. I wish to try a further experiment. My eye is functioning perfectly. ”

He took an axe from a market stall. Miss Brown took another step back.

“Unbidden thoughts of apprehension increase markedly, ” she said.

“Yet this is a mere lump of metal on a piece of wood, ” said Mr White, hefting the axe. “We, who have seen the hearts of stars. We, who have watched worlds burn. We, who have seen space tormented. What is there about this axe that could cause concern to us? ”

He swung. It was a clumsy blow and the human neck is a lot tougher than people believe, but Miss Brown's neck exploded into coloured motes and she collapsed.

Mr White looked around at the nearest Auditors, who all stepped back.

“Is there anyone else who wishes to try the experiment? ” he said.

There was a chorus of hasty refusals.

“Good, ” said Mr White. “Already we are learning a great deal! ”

“He chopped her head off! ”

“Don't shout! And keep your head down! ” Susan hissed.

“But he—”

“I think she knows! Anyway, it's an it. And so's it. ”

“What's going on? ”

Susan drew back into the shadows.

“I'm not… entirely sure, ” she said, “but I think they've tried to make themselves human bodies. Pretty good copies, too. And now… they're acting human. ”

“Do you call that acting human? ”

Susan gave Lobsang a sad look. “You don't get out much, do you? My grandfather says that if an intelligent creature takes a human shape, it starts to think human. Form defines function. ”

“That was the action of an intelligent creature? ” said Lobsang, still shocked.

“Not only doesn't get out much, also doesn't read history, ” said Susan glumly. “Do you know about the curse of the werewolves? ”

“Isn't being a werewolf curse enough? ”

“They don't think so. But if they stay wolf-shaped for too long, they stay a wolf, ” said Susan. “A wolf is a very strong… form, you see? Even though the mind is human, the wolf creeps in through the noses and the ears and the paws. Know about witches? ”

“We, er, stole the broomstick of one of them to get here, ” said Lobsang.

“Really? Bit of luck for you that the world's ended, then, ” said Susan. “Anyway, some of the best witches have this trick they call Borrowing. They can get into the mind of an animal. Very useful. But the trick is to know when to pullout. Be a duck for too long and a duck you'll stay. A bright duck, maybe, with some odd memories, but still a duck. ”

“The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he awoke and said, ‘Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man? ’” said Lobsang, trying to join in.

“Really? ” said Susan briskly. “And which was he? ”

“What? Well… who knows? ”

“How did he write his poems? ” said Susan.

“With a brush, of course. ”

“He didn't flap around making information-rich patterns in the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves? ”

“No one ever mentioned it. ”

“Then he was probably a man, ” said Susan. “Interesting, but it doesn't move us on a lot. Except you could say that the Auditors are dreaming that they're human, and the dream is real. And they've got no imagination. Just like my grandfather, really. They can create a perfect copy of anything, but they can't make anything that's new. So what I think is happening is that they're finding out what being human really means. ”

“Which is? ”

“That you're not as much in control as you think. ” She took another careful look at the crowd in the square. “Do you know anything about the person who built the clock? ”

“Me? No. Well, not really…”

“Then how did you find the place? ”

“Lu-Tze thought this was where the clock was being built. ”

“Really? Not a bad guess. You even got the right house. ”

“I, er, it was me that found the house. It, er, I knew that was where I should be. Does that sound silly? ”

“Oh, yes. With twinkly bells and bluebirds on it. But it might be true, too. I always know where I should be, too. And where should you be now? ”

“Just a minute, ” said Lobsang. “Who are you? Time has stopped, the world is given over to… fairy tales and monsters, and there's a schoolteacher walking around? ”

“Best kind of person to have, ” said Susan. “We don't like silliness. Anyway, I told you… I've inherited certain talents. ”

“Like living outside time? ”

“That's one of them. ”

“It's a weird talent for a schoolteacher! ”

“Good for marking, though, ” said Susan calmly.

“Are you actually human? ”

“Hah! As human as you are. I won't say I haven't got a few skeletons in the family closet, though. ”

There was something about the way she said it…

“That wasn't just a figure of speech, was it, ” said Lobsang flatly.

“No, not really, ” said Susan. “That thing on your back… What happens when it stops spinning? ”

“I'll run out of time, of course. ”

“Ah. So the fact that it slowed down and stopped back there when that Auditor practised its axmanship isn't a factor, then? ”

“It's not turning? ” Panicking, Lobsang tried to reach round to the small of his back, spinning himself in the effort.

“It looks as though you have a hidden talent, ” said Susan, leaning against the wall and grinning.

“Please! Wind me up again! ”

“All right. You are a—”

“That wasn't very funny the first time! ”

“That's all right, I don't have much of a sense of humour. ”

She grabbed his arms as he wrestled with the straps of the spinner.

“You don't need it, understand? ” she said. “It's just a dead weight! Trust me! Don't give in! You're making your own time. Don't wonder how. ”

He stared at her in terror. “What's happening? ”

“It's okay, it's okay, ” said Susan, as patiently as she could. “This sort of thing always comes as a shock. When it happened to me there wasn't anyone around, so consider yourself lucky. ”

“What happened to you? ”

“I found out who my grandfather was. And don't ask. Now, concentrate. Where ought you to be? ”

“Uh, uh…” Lobsang looked around. “Uh… over that way, I think. ”

“I wouldn't dream of asking you how you know, ” said Susan. “And it's away from that mob. ”

She smiled. “Look on the bright side, ” she added. “We're young, we've got all the time in the world…” She swung the wrench onto her shoulder. “Let's go clubbing. ”

If there had been such a thing as time, it would have been a few minutes after Susan and Lobsang left that a small robed figure, about six inches high, strutted into the workshop. It was followed by a raven, which perched on the door and regarded the glowing clock with considerable suspicion.

“Looks dangerous to me, ” it said.

SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats, advancing on the clock.

“No, don't you go trying to be a hero, ” said Quoth.

The rat walked up to the base of the clock, stared up at it with a the-bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall expression, and then whacked it with its scythe.

Or, at least, tried to. There was a flash as the blade made contact. For a moment the Death of Rats was a ring-shaped, black-and-white blur around the clock, and then it vanished.

“Told yer, ” said the raven, preening its feathers. “I bet you feel like Mister Silly now, right? ”

“…and then I thought, what's a job that really needs someone with my talents? ” said Ronnie. “To me, time is just another direction. And then I thought, everyone wants fresh milk, yes? And everyone wants it delivered early in the morning. ”

“Got to be better than the window-cleaning, ” said Lu-Tze.

“I only went into that after they invented windows, ” said Ronnie. “It was the jobbing gardening before that. More rancid yak butter in that? ”

“Please, ” said Lu-Tze, holding out his cup.

Lu-Tze was eight hundred years old, and that was why he was having a rest. A hero would have leapt up and rushed out into the silent city and then—

And there you had it. Then a hero would have had to wonder what to do next. Eight hundred years had taught Lu-Tze that what happens stays happened. It might stay happened in a different set of dimensions, if you wanted to get technical, but you couldn't make it un-happen. The clock had struck, and time had stopped. Later, a solution would present itself. In the meantime, a cup of tea and conversation with his serendipitous rescuer might speed that time. After all, Ronnie was not your average milkman..

Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.

“It's the real stuff you got there, Ronnie, ” he said, taking a sip. “The butter we're getting these days, you wouldn't grease a cart with it. ”

“It's the breed, ” said Ronnie. “I go and get this from the highland herds six hundred years ago. ”

“Cheers, ” said Lu-Tze, raising his cup. “Funny, though. I mean, if you said to people there were originally five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and then one of them left and became a milkman, well, they'd be a bit surprised. They'd wonder about why you…”

For a moment Ronnie's eyes blazed silver.

“Creative differences, ” he growled. “The whole ego thing. Some people might say… no, I don't like to talk about it. I wish them all the luck in the world, of course. ”

“Of course, ” said Lu-Tze, keeping his expression opaque.

“And I've watched their careers with great interest. ”

“I'm sure. ”

“Do you know I even got written out of the official history? ” said Ronnie.

He held up a hand and a book appeared in it. It looked brand new.

“This was before, ” he said sourly. “Book of Om. Prophecies of Tobrun. Ever meet him? Tall man, beard, tendency to giggle at nothing? ”

“Before even my time, Ronnie. ”

Ronnie handed the book over.

“First edition. Try Chapter 2, verse 7, ” he said.

And Lu-Tze read: “And the Angel clothed all in white opened the Iron Book, and a fifth rider appeared in a chariot of burning ice, and there was a snapping of laws and a breaking of bonds and the multitudes cried ‘Oh God, we're in trouble now! ’”

“That was me, ” said Ronnie proudly.

Lu-Tze's eyes strayed to verse 8: “And I saw, sort of like rabbits, in many colours but basically a plaid pattern, kind of spinning around, and there was a sound as of like big syrupy things. ”

“That verse got cut for the next edition, ” said Ronnie. “Very open to visions of all sorts, old Tobrun. The fathers of Omnianism could pick and mix what they wanted. Of course, in those days everything was new. Death was Death, of course, but the rest were really just Localized Crop Failure, Scuffles and Spots. ”

“And you—? ” Lu-Tze ventured.

“The public wasn't interested in me any more, ” said Ronnie. “Or so I was told. Back in those days we were only playing to very small crowds. One plague of locusts, some tribe's waterhole drying up, a volcano exploding… We were glad of any gig going. There wasn't room for five. ” He sniffed. “So I was told. ”

Lu-Tze put down his cup. “Well, Ronnie, it's been very nice talking to you, but time's… time's not rushing, you see. ”

“Yeah. Heard about that. The streets are full of the Law. ” Ronnie's eyes blazed again.

“Law? ”

“Dhlang. The Auditors. They've had the glass clock built again. ”

“You know that? ”

“Look, I might not be one of the Fearsome Four, but I do keep my eyes and ears open, ” said Ronnie.

“But that's the end of the world! ”

“No, it's not, ” said Ronnie calmly. “Everything's still here. ”

“But it's not going anywhere! ”

“Oh, well, that's not my problem, is it? ” said Ronnie. “I do milk and dairy products. ”

Lu-Tze looked around the sparkling dairy, at the glistening bottles, at the gleaming churns. What a job for a timeless person. The milk would always be fresh.

He looked back at the bottles, and an unbidden thought rose in his mind.

The Horsemen were people-shaped, and people are vain. Knowing how to use other people's vanity was a martial art all in itself, and Lu-Tze had been doing it for a long time.

“I bet I can work out who you were, ” he said. “I bet I can work out your real name. ”

“Hah. Not a chance, monk, ” said Ronnie.

“Not a monk, just a sweeper, ” said Lu-Tze calmly. “Just a sweeper. You called them the Law, Ronnie. There's got to be a law, right? They make the rules, Ronnie. And you've got to have rules, isn't that true? ”

“I do milk and milk products, ” said Ronnie, but a muscle twitched under his eye. “Also eggs by arrangement. It's a good steady business. I'm thinking of taking on more staff for the shop. ”

“Why? ” said Lu-Tze. “There won't be anything for them to do. ”

“And expand the cheese side, ” said Ronnie, not looking at the sweeper. “Big market for cheese. And I thought maybe I could get a c-mail address, people could send in orders, it could be a big market. ”

“All the rules have won, Ronnie. Nothing moves any more. Nothing is unexpected because nothing happens. ”

Ronnie sat staring at nothing.

“I can see you've found your niche, then, Ronnie, ” said Lu-Tze soothingly. “And you keep this place like a new pin, there's no doubt about it. I expect the rest of the lads'd be really pleased to know that you're, you know, getting on all right. Just one thing, uh… Why did you rescue me? ”

“What? Well, it was my charitable duty—”

“You're the Fifth Horseman, Mr Soak. Charitable duty? ” Except, Lu-Tze thought, you've been human-shaped a long time. You want me to find out… You want me to. Thousands of years of a life like this. It's curled you in on yourself. You'll fight me all the way, but you want me to drag your name out of you.

Ronnie's eyes glowed. “I look after my own, Sweeper. ”

“I'm one of yours, am I? ”

“You have… certain worthwhile points. ”

They stared at one another.

“I'll take you back to where I found you, ” said Ronnie Soak. “That's all. I don't do that other stuff any more. ”

The Auditor lay on its back, mouth open. Occasionally it made a weak little noise, like the whimper of a gnat.

“Try again, Mr—”

“Dark Avocado, Mr White. ”

“Is that a real colour? ”

“Yes, Mr White! ” said Mr Dark Avocado, who wasn't entirely sure that it was.

“Try again, then, Mr Dark Avocado. ”

Mr Dark Avocado, with great reluctance, reached down towards the supine figure's mouth. His fingers were a few inches away when, apparently of its own volition, the figure's left hand moved in a blur and gripped them. There was a crackle of bone.

“I feel extreme pain, Mr White. ”

“What is in its mouth, Mr Dark Avocado? ”

“It appears to be cooked fermented grain product, Mr White. The extreme pain is continuing. ”

“A foodstuff? ”

“Yes, Mr White. The sensations of pain are really quite noticeable at this point. ”

“Did I not give an order that there should be no eating or drinking or unnecessary experimentation with sensory apparatus? ”

“Indeed you did, Mr White. The sensation known as extreme pain, which I mentioned previously, is now really quite acute. What shall I do now? ”

The concept of “orders” was yet another new and intensely unfamiliar one for any Auditor. They were used to decisions by committee, reached only when the possibilities of doing nothing whatsoever about the matter in question had been exhausted. Decisions made by everyone were decisions made by no one, which therefore precluded any possibility of blame.

But the bodies understood orders. This was clearly something that made humans human, and so the Auditors went along with it in a spirit of investigation. There was no choice, in any case. All kinds of sensations arose when they were given instructions by a man holding an edged weapon. It was surprising how smoothly the impulse to consult and discuss metamorphosed into a pressing desire to do what the weapon said.

“Can you not persuade him to let go of your hand? ”

“He appears to be unconscious, Mr White. His eyes are bloodshot. He is making a little sighing noise. Yet the body seems determined that the bread should not be removed. Could I raise again the issue of the unbearable pain? ”

Mr White signalled to two other Auditors. With considerable effort, they pried Mr Dark Avocado's fingers loose.

“This is something we will have to learn more about, ” said Mr White. “The renegade spoke of it. Mr Dark Avocado? ”

“Yes, Mr White? ”

“Do the sensations of pain persist? ”

“My hand feels both hot and cold, Mr White. ”

“How strange, ” said Mr White. “I see that we will need to investigate pain in greater depth. ” Mr Dark Avocado found that a little voice in the back of his head screamed at the thought of this, while Mr White went on: “What other foodstuffs are there? ”

“We know the names of three thousand, seven hundred and nineteen foods, ” said Mr Indigo-Violet, stepping forward. He had become the expert on such matters, and this was another new thing for the Auditors. They had never had experts before. What one knew, all knew. Knowing something that others did not know marked one as, in a small way, an individual. Individuals could die. But it also gave you power and value, which meant that you might not die quite so easily. It was a lot to deal with, and like some of the other Auditors he was already assembling a number of facial tics and twitches as his mind tried to cope.

“Name one, ” said Mr White.

“Cheese, ” said Mr Indigo-Violet smartly. “It is rotted bovine lactation. ”

“We will find some cheese, ” said Mr White.

Three Auditors went past.

Susan peered out of a doorway. “Are you sure we're going the right way? ” she said. “We're leaving the city centre. ”

“This is the way I should be going, ” said Lobsang.

“All right, but I don't like these narrow streets. I don't like hiding. I'm not a hiding kind of person. ”

“Yes, I've noticed. ”

“What's that place ahead? ”

“That's the back of the Royal Art Museum. Broad Way's on the other side, ” said Lobsang. “And that's the way we need to go. ”

“You know your way around, for a man from the mountains. ”

“I grew up here. I know five different ways to break into the museum, too. I used to be a thief. ”

“I used to be able to walk through the walls, ” said Susan. “Can't seem to do it with time stopped. I think the power gets cancelled out somehow. ”

“You could really walk through a solid wall? ”

“Yes. It's a family tradition, ” Susan snapped. “Come on, let's go through the museum. At least no one moves about much in there at the best of times. ”

Ankh-Morpork had not had a king for many centuries, but palaces tend to survive. A city might not need a king, but it can always use big rooms and some handy large walls, long after the monarchy is but a memory and the building is renamed the Glorious Memorial to the People's Industry.

Besides, although the last king of the city was no oil painting himself—especially when he'd been beheaded, after which no one looks their best, not even a short king—it was generally agreed that he had amassed some pretty good works of art. Even the common people of the city had a keen eye for works like Caravati's Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze or Mauvaise's Man with Big Figleaf and, besides, a city with a history the length of Ankh-Morpork's accumulated all kinds of artistic debris, and in order to prevent congestion in the streets it needed some sort of civic attic in which to store it. And thus, at little more cost than a few miles of plush red rope and a few old men in uniform to give directions to Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze, the Royal Art Museum was born.

Lobsang and Susan hurried through the silent halls. As with Fidgett's, it was hard to know if time had stopped here. Its passage was barely perceptible in any case. The monks at Oi Dong considered it a valuable resource.

Susan stopped and turned to look up at a huge, gilt-framed picture that occupied one whole wall of a lengthy corridor, and said, quietly: “Oh…”

“What is it? ”

“The Battle of Ar-Gash, by Blitzt, ” said Susan.

Lobsang looked at the flaking, uncleaned paint and the yellow-brown varnish. The colours had faded to a dozen shades of mud, but something violent and evil shone through.

“Is that meant to be Hell? ” he said.

“No, it was an ancient city in Klatch, thousands of years ago, ” said Susan. “But Grandfather did say that men made it Hell. Blitzt went mad when he painted it. ”

“Er, he did good storm clouds, though, ” said Lobsang, swallowing. “Wonderful, er, light…”

“Look at what's coming out of the clouds, ” said Susan.

Lobsang squinted into the crusted cumulus and fossilized lightning.

“Oh, yes. The Four Horsemen. You often get them in—”

“Count again, ” said Susan.

Lobsang stared. “There's two—”

“Don't be silly, there's fi—” she began, and then followed his gaze. He hadn't been interested in the art.

A couple of Auditors were hurrying away from them, towards the Porcelain Room.

“They're running away from us! ” said Lobsang.

Susan grabbed his hand. “Not exactly, ” she said. “They always consult! There have to be three of them to do that! And they'll be back, so come on! ”

She grabbed his hand and towed him into the next gallery.

There were grey figures at the far end. The pair ran on, past dust-encrusted tapestries, and into another huge, ancient room.

“Ye gods, there's a picture of three huge pink women with only—” Lobsang began, as he was dragged past.

“Pay attention, will you? The way to the main door was back there! This place is full of Auditors! ”

“But it's just an old art gallery! There's nothing for them here, is there? ”

They slid to a stop on the marble slabs. A wide staircase led up to the next floor.

“We'll be trapped up there, ” said Lobsang.

“There're balconies all round, ” said Susan. “Come on! ” She dragged him up the stairs and through an archway. And stopped.

The galleries were several storeys high. On the first floor, visitors could look down on to the floor below. And, in the room below, the Auditors were very busy.

“What the hell are they doing now? ” whispered Lobsang.

“I think, ” said Susan grimly, “that they are appreciating Art. ”

Miss Tangerine was annoyed. Her body kept making strange demands of her, and the work with which she had been entrusted was going so very badly.

The frame of what once had been Sir Robert Cuspidors Waggon Stuck In River was leaning against a wall in front of her. It was empty. The bare canvas was neatly rolled beside it. In front of the frame, carefully heaped in order of size, were piles of pigment.

Several dozen Auditors were breaking these down into their component molecules.

“Still nothing? ” she said, striding along the line.

“No, Miss Tangerine. Only known molecules and atoms so far, ” said an Auditor, its voice shaking slightly.

“Well, is it something to do with the proportions? The balance of molecules? The basic geometry? ”

“We are continuing to—”

“Get on with it! ”

The other Auditors in the gallery, clustered industriously in front of what had once been a painting and in fact still was, insofar as every single molecule was still present in the room, glanced up and then bent again to their tasks.

Miss Tangerine was getting even angrier because she couldn't work out why she was angry. One reason was probably that, when he gave her this task, Mr White had looked at her in a funny way. Being looked at was an unfamiliar experience for an Auditor in any case—no Auditor bothered to look at another Auditor very often because all Auditors looked the same—and neither were they used to the idea that you could say things with your face. Or even have a face. Or have a body that reacted in strange ways to the expression on another face belonging to, in this case, Mr White. When he looked at her like that she felt a terrible urge to claw his face off.

Which made absolutely no sense at all. No Auditor should feel like that about another Auditor. No Auditor should feel like that about anything. No Auditor should feel.

She felt livid. They'd all lost so many powers. It was ridiculous to have to communicate by flapping bits of your skin, and as for the tongue… Yuerkkk …

As far as she knew, in the whole life of the universe, no Auditor had ever experienced the sensation of yuerkkk. This wretched body was full of opportunities for yuerkkk. She could leave it at any time and yet, and yet… part of her didn't want to. There was this horrible desire, second by second, to hang on.

And she felt hungry. And that also made no sense. The stomach was a bag for digesting food. It wasn't supposed to issue commands. The Auditors could survive quite well by exchanging molecules with their surroundings and making use of any local source of energy. That was a fact.

Try telling that to the stomach. She could feel it. It was sitting there, grumbling. She was being harassed by her internal organs. Why the… why the.. why had they copied internal organs? Yuerkkk.

It was all too much. She wanted to… she wanted to… express herself by shouting some, some, some terrible words…

“Discord! Confusion! ”

The other Auditors looked around in terror.

But the words didn't work for Miss Tangerine. They just didn't have the same force that they used to. There had to be something worse. Ah, yes…

“Organs! ” she shouted, pleased to have found it at last. “And what are all you… organs looking at? ” she added. “Get on with it! ”

“They're taking everything apart, ” whispered Lobsang.

“That's the Auditors for you, ” said Susan. “They think that's how you find out about things. You know, I loathe them. I really do. ”

Lobsang glanced sideways at her. The monastry was not a single-sex institution. That is to say, it was, but corporately it had never thought of itself like that because the possibility of females working there had never crossed even minds capable of thinking of sixteen dimensions. But the Thieves' Guild had recognized that girls were at least as good as boys in all areas of thieving—he had, for example, fond memories of his classmate Steff, who could steal the small change out of your back pocket and climb better than an Assassin. He was at home around girls. But Susan scared the life out of him. It was as if some secret place inside her boiled with wrath, and with the Auditors she let it out.

He remembered her hitting that one with the wrench. There had been just a faint frown of concentration, as if she was making certain the job was done properly.

“Shall we go? ” he ventured.

“Look at them, ” continued Susan. “Only an Auditor would take a picture apart to see what made it a work of art. ”

“There's a big pile of white dust over there, ” said Lobsang.

“Man with Huge Figleaf ” said Susan absently, her eyes still intent on the grey figures. “They'd dismantle a clock to search for the tick. ”

“How do you know its Man with Huge Figleaf? ”

“I just happen to remember where it is, that's all. ”

“You, er, you appreciate art? ” Lobsang ventured.

“I know what I like, ” said Susan, still staring at the busy grey figures. “And right now I'd like quite a lot of weaponry. ”

“We'd better move—”

“The bastards get into your head if you let them, ” said Susan, not moving. “When you find yourself thinking ‘There ought to be a law’ or ‘I don't make the rules, after all’ or—”

“I really think we should leave, ” said Lobsang carefully. “And I think this because there are some of them coming up the stairs. ”

Her head jerked around. “What are you standing about for, then? ” she said.

They ran through the next arch and into a gallery of pottery, turning to look only when they reached the far end. Three Auditors were following them. They weren't running, but there was something about their synchronized step that had a horrible we'll-keep-on-coming quality.

“All right, let's go this way—”

“No, let's go this way, ” said Lobsang.

“That's not the way we need to go! ” Susan snapped.

“No, but the sign up there says ‘Arms and Armour’! ”

“So? Are you any good with weapons? ”

“No! ” said Lobsang proudly, and then realized she'd taken this the wrong way. “You see, I've been taught to fight without—”

“Maybe there's a sword I can use, ” Susan growled, and strode forward.

By the time the Auditors entered the gallery there were more than three of them. The grey crowd paused.

Susan had found a sword, part of a display of Agatean armour. It had been blunted by disuse, but anger flared along the blade.

“Should we keep running? ” said Lobsang.

“No. They always catch up. I don't know if we can kill them here, but we can make them wish we could. You still haven't got a weapon? ”

“No, because, you see, I've been trained to—”

“Just keep out of my way, then, okay? ”

The Auditors advanced cautiously, which struck Lobsang as odd.

“We can't kill them? ” said Lobsang.

“It depends on how alive they've let themselves become. ”

“But they look scared, ” he said.

“They're human-shaped, ” said Susan over her shoulder. “Human bodies. Perfect copies. Human bodies have had thousands and thousands of years of not wanting to be cut in half. That sort of leaks into the brain, don't you think? ”

And then the Auditors were circling and moving in. Of course they would all attack at once. No one would want to be first.

Three made a grab at Lobsang.

He'd enjoyed the fighting, back in the training dojos. Of course, everyone was padded, and no one was actually trying to kill you, and that helped. But Lobsang had done well because he was good at slicing. He could always find that extra edge. And if you had that edge, you didn't need quite so much skill.

There was no edge here. There was no time to slice.

He adopted a mixture of sna-fu and okidoki and anything that worked, because you were dead if you treated a real fight like the dojo. The grey men were no contest, in any case. They just attempted to grab and hug. A granny would have been able to fend them off.

He sent two reeling and turned to the third, which was trying to grab him around the neck. He broke the hold, spun around ready to chop, and hesitated.

“Oh, good grief! ” said a voice.

Susan's blade whirled past Lobsang's face.

The head in front of him was parted from its former body in a shower not of blood but of coloured, floating dust. The body evaporated, became very briefly a grey-robed shape in the air, and vanished.

Lobsang heard a couple of thumps behind him, and then Susan grabbed his shoulder.

“You're not supposed to hesitate, you know! ” she said.

“But it was a woman! ”

“It was not! But it was the last one. Now let's go, before the rest get here. ” She nodded at a second group of Auditors that were watching them very carefully from the end of the hall.

“They weren't much of a contest anyway, ” said Lobsang, getting his breath. “What are those doing? ”

“Learning. Can you fight better than that? ”

“Of course! ”

“Good, because next time they'll be as good as you just were. Where to now? ”

“Er, this way! ”

The next gallery was full of stuffed animals. There'd been a vogue for it a few centuries before. These weren't the sad old hunting-trophy bears or geriatric tigers whose claws had faced a man armed with nothing more than five crossbows, twenty loaders and a hundred beaters. Some of these animals were arranged in groups. Quite small groups, of quite small animals.

There were frogs, seated around a tiny dining table. There were dogs, dressed in hunting jackets, in pursuit of a fox wearing a cap with feathers in it. There was a monkey playing a banjo.

“Oh, no, it's an entire band, ” said Susan in tones of horrified astonishment. “And just look at the little kittens dancing…”

“Horrible! ”

“I wonder what happened when the man who did this met my grandfather. ”

“Would he have met your grandfather? ”

“Oh, yes, ” said Susan. “Oh, yes. And my grandfather is rather fond of cats. ”

Lobsang paused at the foot of a staircase, half hidden behind a luckless elephant. A red rope, now hard as a bar, suggested that this wasn't part of the public museum. There was an added hint in the shape of a notice saying: “Absolutely No Admittance”.

“I should be up there, ” he said.

“Let's not hang around, then, eh? ” said Susan, leaping over the rope.

The narrow stairs led up onto a large, bare landing. Boxes were stacked here and there.

“The attics, ” said Susan. “Hold on… What's that sign for? ”

“‘Keep left’, ” Lobsang read. “Well, if they have to move heavy items around—”

“Look at the sign, will you? ” said Susan. “Don't see what you expect to see, see what's in front of you! ”

Lobsang looked.

“What a stupid sign, ” he said.

“Hmm. Interesting, certainly, ” said Susan. “Which way do you think we should go? I don't think it'll take them too long to decide to follow us. ”

“We're so close! Any passage might do! ” said Lobsang.

“Any passage it is, then. ”

Susan headed for a narrow gap between packing cases. Lobsang followed.

“What do you mean, decide? ” he said, as they entered the gloom.

“The sign on the stairs said there was no admittance. ”

“You mean they'll disobey it? ” He stopped.

“Eventually. But they'll have a terrible feeling that they ought not to. They obey rules. They are the rules, in a way. ”

“But you can't obey the Keep Left/Right sign, no matter what you do… oh, I see…”

“Isn't learning fun? Oh, and here's another one. ”

DO NOT FEED THE ELEPHANT.

“Now that, ” said Susan, “is good. You can't obey it…”

“…because there's no elephant, ” said Lobsang. “I think I'm getting the hang of this…”

“It's an Auditor trap, ” said Susan, peering at a packing case.

“Here's another good one, ” said Lobsang.

IGNORE THIS SIGN.

By order

“Nice touch, ” Susan agreed, “but I'm wondering… who put up the signs? ”

There were voices, someone behind them. They were low, but then one was suddenly raised.

“ –says Left but points Right! It has no sense! ”

“The fault is yours! We disobeyed the first sign! Woe to them that stray onto the pathway of irregularity! ”

“Don't you give me that, you organic thing! I raise my voice at you, you— ”

There was a soft sound, a choking noise, and a scream that dopplered into nothing.

“Are they fighting one another? ” said Lobsang.

“We can only hope so. Let's move, ” said Susan. They crept on, weaving through the maze of spaces between the crates, and past a sign saying:

DUCK

“Ah… now we're getting metaphysical, ” said Susan.

“Why duck? ” said Lobsang.

“Why indeed? ”

Somewhere amongst the cases a voice reached the end of its tether.

“What organic damn elephant? Where is the elephant? ”

“There is no elephant! ”

“How can there be a sign, then? ”

“It is a— ”

…And once again the little choke, and the vanishing scream. And then… running footsteps.

Susan and Lobsang backed into the shadows, and then Susan said, “What have I put my foot in? ”

She reached down and picked up the soft, sticky mess. And as she rose, she saw the Auditor come round the corner.

It was wild-eyed and frantic. It focused on the pair of them with difficulty, as if trying to remember who and what they were. But it was holding a sword, and holding it correctly.

A figure rose up behind it. One hand grabbed it by the hair and jerked its head back. The other was thrust over its open mouth.

The Auditor struggled for a moment, and then went rigid.

And then disintegrated, tiny particles spinning away and disappearing into nothing.

For a moment the last few handfuls tried to form, in the air, the shape of a small cowled figure. Then it, too, was dragged apart, with a faint scream that was heard via the hairs on the back of the neck.

Susan glared at the figure in front of her.

“You're a… you can't be a… what are you? ” she demanded.

The figure was silent. This might have been because thick cloth covered its nose and mouth. Heavy gloves encased its hands, too. And this was odd, because most of the rest of it was wearing a sequinned evening gown. And a mink stole. And a knapsack. And a huge picture hat with enough feathers to make three rare species totally extinct.

The figure rummaged in the knapsack, and then thrust out a piece of dark brown paper, as if proffering holy writ. Lobsang took it with care.

“It says here ‘Higgs & Meakins Luxury Assortment’, ” he said. “Caramel Crunch, Hazelnut Surprise… They're chocolates? ”

Susan opened her hand and looked at the crushed Strawberry Whirl she had picked up. She gave the figure a careful look.

“How did you know that would work? ” she said.

“Please! You have nothing to fear from me, ” said the muffled voice through the bandages. “I'm down to the ones with the nuts in now, and they don't melt very quickly. ”

“Sorry? ” said Lobsang. “You just killed an Auditor with a chocolate? ”

“My last Orange Creme, yes. We are exposed here. Come with me. ”

“An Auditor…” Susan breathed. “You're an Auditor too. Aren't you? Why should I trust you? ”

“There isn't anyone else. ”

“But you are one of them, ” said Susan. “I can tell, even under all that.. that stuff! ”

“I was one of them, ” said Lady LeJean. “Now I rather think I'm one of me. ”

People were living in the attic. There was a whole family up there. Susan wondered if their presence was official or unofficial or one of those in-between states that were so common in Ankh-Morpork, where there was always a chronic housing shortage. So much of the city's life took place on the street because there was no room for it inside. Whole families were raised in shifts, so that the bed could be used for twenty-four hours a day. By the look of it, the caretakers and men who knew the way to Caravati's Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze had moved their families in to the rambling attics.

The rescuer had simply moved in on top of them. A family, or at least one shift of it, was seated on benches around a table. frozen in timelessness. Lady LeJean removed her hat, hung it on the mother and shook out her hair. Then she unwrapped the heavy bandages from her nose and mouth.

“We are relatively safe here, ” she said. “They are mostly in the main streets. Good… day. My name is Myria LeJean. I know who you are, Susan Sto Helit. I do not know the young man, which surprises me. I take it you are here to destroy the clock? ”

“To stop it, ” said Lobsang.

“Hold on, hold on, ” said Susan. “This makes no sense. Auditors hate everything about life. And you are an Auditor, aren't you? ”

“I have no idea what I am, ” sighed Lady LeJean. “But right now I know that I am everything an Auditor should not be. We… they… we have to be stopped! ”

“With chocolate? ” said Susan.

“The sense of taste is new to us. Alien. We have no defences. ”

“But… chocolate? ”

“A dry biscuit almost killed me, ” said her ladyship. “Susan, can you imagine what it is like to experience taste for the first time? We built our bodies well. Oh, yes. Lots of tastebuds. Water is like wine. But chocolate… even the mind stops. There is nothing but the taste. ” She sighed. “I imagine it is a wonderful way to die. ”

“It doesn't seem to affect you, ” said Susan suspiciously.

“The bandages and the gloves, ” said Lady LeJean. “Even then, it is all I can do not to give in. Oh, where are my manners? Do sit down. Pull up a small child. ”

Lobsang and Susan exchanged a glance. Lady LeJean noticed it.

“I said something wrong? ” she said.

“We don't use people as furniture, ” said Susan.

“But surely they will not be aware of it? ” said her ladyship.

“We will, ” said Lobsang. “That's the point, really. ”

“Ah. I have so much to learn. There is… there is so much context to being human, I am afraid. You, sir, can you stop the clock? ”

“I don't know how to, ” said Lobsang. “But I… I think I should know. I'll try. ”

“Would the clockmaker know? He is here. ”

“Where? ” said Susan.

“Just down the passage, ” said Lady LeJean.

“You carried him here? ”

“He was barely able to walk. He was hurt badly in the fight. ”

“What? ” said Lobsang. “How could he walk at all? We're outside time! ”

Susan took a deep breath.

“He carries his own time, just like you, ” she said. “He's your brother. ”

And it was a lie. But he wasn't ready for the truth. By the look on his face, he wasn't even ready for the lie.

“Twins, ” said Mrs Ogg. She picked up the brandy glass, looked at it, and put it down. “There wasn't one. There was twins. Two boys. But …”

She turned on Susan a glare like a thermic lance. “You'll be thinking, this is an old biddy of a midwife, ” she said. “You'll be thinking, what does she know? ”

Susan paid her the courtesy of not lying.

“Part of me was, ” she admitted.

“Good answer! Part of us thinks all kinds of things, ” said Mrs Ogg. “Part of me is thinking, who's this haughty little miss who talks to me as if I was a kiddie of five? But most of me is thinking: she's got a heap of troubles of her own and has seen plenty of things a human shouldn't have to see. Mind you, part of me says: so have I. Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human. Well, miss… if you've any sense, part of you is thinking, there's a witch in front of me who's seen my granddad many times, when she's sat by a sickbed that's suddenly become a deathbed, and if she's ready to spit in his eye when the time comes then she could probably bother me considerably right now if she puts her mind to it. Understand? Let's all keep our parts to ourselves, ” and suddenly she gave Susan a wink, “as the High Priest said to the actress. ”

“I absolutely agree, ” said Susan. “Completely. ”

“Right, ” said Mrs Ogg. “So… twins… well, it was her first time, and human wasn't exactly a familiar shape with her, I mean, you can't do what comes naturally when you ain't exactly natural and… twins ain't quite the right word …”

“A brother, ” said Lobsang. “The clockmaker? ”

“Yes, ” said Susan.

“But I was a foundling! ”

“So was he. ”

“I want to see him now! ”

“That might not be a good idea, ” said Susan.

“I am not interested in your opinion, thank you. ” Lobsang turned to Lady LeJean. “Down that passage? ”

“Yes. But he's asleep. I think the clock upset his mind, and also he was hit in the fight. He says things in his sleep. ”

“Says what? ”

“The last thing I heard him say before I came to find you was, ‘We're so close. Any passage might do, ’” said her ladyship. She looked from one to the other. “Have I said the wrong thing? ”

Susan put her hand over her eyes. Oh dear…

“I said that, ” said Lobsang. “Just after we came up the stairs. ” He glared at Susan. “Twins, right? I've heard about this sort of thing! What one thinks the other thinks too? ”

Susan sighed. Sometimes, she thought, I really am a coward. “Something like that, yes, ” she said.

“I'm going to see him, then, even if he can't see me! ”

Damn, thought Susan, and hurried after Lobsang as he headed along the passage. The Auditor trailed behind them, looking concerned.

Jeremy was lying on a bed, although it was no softer than anything else in the timeless world. Lobsang stopped, and stared.

“He looks… quite like me, ” he said.

“Oh, yes, ” said Susan.

“Thinner, perhaps. ”

“Could be, yes. ”

“Different… lines on his face. ”

“You've led different lives, ” said Susan.

“How did you know about him and me? ”

“My grandfather takes, er, an interest in this sort of thing. I found out some more by myself, too, ” she said.

“Why should we interest anyone? We're not special. ”

“This is going to be quite hard to explain. ” Susan looked round at Lady LeJean. “How safe are we here? ”

“The signs upset them, ” said her ladyship. “They tend to keep away. I… shall we say… took care of the ones who followed you. ”

“Then you'd better sit down, Mr Lobsang, ” said Susan. “It might help if I told you about me. ”

“Well? ”

“My grandfather is Death. ”

“That's a strange thing to say. Death is just the end of life. It's not a… a person—”

“PAY ATTENTION TO ME WHEN I AM TALKING TO YOU…”

A wind whipped around the room, and the light changed. Shadows formed on Susan's face. A faint blue light outlined her.

Lobsang swallowed.

The light faded. The shadows vanished.

“There is a process called death, and there is a person called Death, ” said Susan. “That is how it works. And I am Death's granddaughter. Am I going too fast for you? ”

“Er, no, although right up until just now you looked human, ” said Lobsang.

“My parents were human. There's more than one kind of genetics. ” Susan paused. “You look human, too. Human is a very popular look in these parts. You'd be amazed. ”

“Except that I am human. ”

Susan gave a little smile that, on anyone less obviously in full control of themself, might have seemed slightly nervous.

“Yes, ” she said. “And, then again, no. ”

“No? ”

“Take War, now, ” said Susan, backing away from the point. “Big man, hearty laugh, tends to fart after meals. As human as the next man, you say. But the next man is Death. He's human-shaped, too. And that's because humans invented the idea of… of… of ideas, and they think in human shapes—”

“Get back to the ‘and, then again, no’, will you? ”

“Your mother is Time. ”

“No one knows who my mother is! ”

“I could take you to the midwife, ” said Susan. “Your father found the best there's ever been. She delivered you. Your mother was Time. ”

Lobsang sat with his mouth open.

“It was easier for me, ” said Susan. “When I was very small my parents used to let me visit my grandfather. I thought every grandfather had a long black robe and rode a pale horse. And then they decided that maybe that wasn't the right environment for a child. They were worried about how I was going to grow up! ” She laughed mirthlessly. “I had a very strange education, you know? Maths, logic, that sort of thing. And then, when I was a bit younger than you, a rat turned up in my room and suddenly everything I thought I knew was wrong. ”

“I'm a human! I do human things! I'd know if—”

“You had to live in the world. Otherwise, how could you learn to be human? ” said Susan, as kindly as she could.

“And my brother? What about him? ”

Here it comes, Susan thought. “He's not your brother, ” she said. “I lied a bit. I'm sorry. ”

“But you said—”

“I had to lead up to it, ” said Susan. “It's one of those things you have to get hold of a bit at a time, I'm afraid. He's not your brother. He's you. ”

“Then who am I? ”

Susan sighed. “You. Both of you… are you. ”

“And there I was, and there she was, ” said Mrs Ogg, “and out the baby came, no problem there, but that's always a tryin' moment for the new mum, and there was…” she paused, her eyes peering through the windows of memory, “like… like a feelin' that the world had stuttered, and I was holdin' the baby and I looked down and there was me deliverin' a baby, and I looked at me, and I looked at me, and I remember saying, ‘This is a fine to-do, Mrs Ogg, ’ and she, who was me, said, ‘You never said a truer word, Mrs Ogg, ’ and then it all went strange and there I was, just one of me, holdin' two babies”.

“Twins, ” Susan said.

“You could call them twins, yes, I s'pose you could, ” said Mrs Ogg. “But I always thought that twins is two little souls born once, not one born twice. ”

Susan waited. Mrs Ogg looked in the mood to talk.

“So I said to the man, I said, ‘What now? ’ and he said, ‘Is that any business of yours? ’ and I said he could be damn sure it was my business and he could look me in the eye and I'd speak my mind to anyone. But I was thinking, you're in trouble now, my girl, 'cos it'd all gone myffic. ”

“Mythic? ” said schoolteacher Susan.

“Yep. With extra myff. And you can get into big trouble, with myffic. But the man just smiled and said that he must be brought up human until he's of age and I thought, yep, it's gone myffic all right. I could see he hadn't got a clue about what to do next and it was all going to be down to me. ”

Mrs Ogg took a suck at her pipe and her eyes twinkled at Susan through the smoke. “I don't know how much experience you have with this sort of thing, my girl, but sometimes when the high and mighty make big plans they don't always think about the fine detail, right? ”

Yes. I'm a fine detail, Susan thought. One day Death took it into his skull to adopt a motherless child, and I'm a fine detail. She nodded.

“I thought, how does this go, in a myffic kind of way? ” Mrs Ogg went on. “I mean, technic'ly I could see we're in that area where the prince gets brought up as a swineherd until he manifests his destiny, but there's not that many swineherding jobs around these days, and poking hogs with a stick is not all it's cracked up to be, believe you me. So I said, well, I'd heard the Guilds down in the big cities took in foundlings out of charity, and looked after them well enough, and there's many well set-up men and women who started life that way. There's no shame in it, plus, if the destiny doesn't manifest as per schedule, he'd have set his hands to a good trade, which would be a consolation. Whereas swineherding 's just swineherding. You're giving me a stern look, miss. ”

“Well, yes. It was rather a chilly decision, wasn't it? ”

“Someone has to make 'em, ” said Mrs Ogg sharply. “Besides, I've been around for some time and I've noticed that them as has it in them to shine will shine through six layers of muck, whereas those who ain't shiny won't shine however much you buff 'em. You may think otherwise, but it was me standing there. ”

She investigated the bowl of her pipe with a matchstick.

Eventually she went on: “And that was it. I would have stayed, of course, because there wasn't so much as a crib in the place, but the man took me aside and said thank you and that it was time to go. And why would I argue? There was love there. It was in the air. But I won't say that I don't sometimes wonder how it all turned out. I really do. ”

There were differences, Susan had to admit. Two different lives had indeed burned their unique tracks on the faces. And the selves had been born a second or so apart, and a lot of the universe can change in a second.

Think of identical twins, she told herself. But they are two different selves occupying bodies that, at least, start out identical. They don't start out as identical selves.

“He looks quite like me, ” said Lobsang, and Susan blinked. She leaned closer to the unconscious form of Jeremy.

“Say that again, ” she said.

“I said, he looks quite like me, ” said Lobsang.

Susan glanced at Lady LeJean, who said, “I saw it too, Susan. ”

“Who saw what? ” said Lobsang. “What are you hiding from me? ”

“His lips move when you speak, ” said Susan. “They try to form the same words. ”

“He can pick up my thoughts? ”

“It's more complicated than that, I think. ” Susan picked up a limp hand and gently pinched the web of skin between thumb and forefinger.

Lobsang winced, and glanced at his own hand. A patch of white skin was reddening again.

“Not just thoughts, ” said Susan. “This close, you feel his pain. Your speech controls his lips. ”

Lobsang stared down at Jeremy.

“Then what will happen, ” he said slowly, “when he comes round? ”

“I'm wondering the same thing, ” said Susan. “Perhaps you shouldn't be here. ”

“But this is where I have to be! ”

“We at least should not stay here, ” said Lady LeJean. “I know my kind. They will have been discussing what to do. The signs will not hold them for ever. And I have run out of soft centres. ”

“What are you supposed to do when you are where you're supposed to be? ” said Susan.

Lobsang reached down and touched Jeremy's hand with his fingertip.

The world went white.

Susan wondered later if this was what it would be like at the heart of a star. It wouldn't be yellow, you wouldn't see fire, there would just be the searing whiteness of every overloaded sense screaming all at once.

It faded, gradually, into a mist. The walls of the room appeared, but she could see through them. There were other walls beyond, and other rooms, transparent as ice and visible only at the corners and where the light caught them. In each one another Susan was turning to look at her.

The rooms went on for ever.

Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw. It did not make you popular, or cheerful, and—this seemed to her to be the most unfair bit—it didn't even make you right. But it did make you definite, and she was definite that what was happening around her was not, in any accepted sense, real.

That was not in itself a problem. Most of the things humans busied themselves with weren't real, either. But sometimes the mind of the most sensible person encountered something so big, so complex, so alien to all understanding, that it told itself little stories about it instead. Then, when it felt it understood the story, it felt it understood the huge incomprehensible thing. And this, Susan knew, was her mind telling itself a story.

There was a sound like great heavy metal doors slamming, one after another, getting louder and faster…

The universe reached a decision.

The other glass rooms vanished. The walls clouded. Colour rose, pastel at first, then darkening as timeless reality flowed back.

The bed was empty. Lobsang had gone. But the air was full of slivers of blue light, turning and swirling like ribbons in a storm.

Susan remembered to breathe again. “Oh, ” she said aloud. “Destiny. ”

She turned. The bedraggled Lady LeJean was still staring at the empty bed.

“Is there another way out of here? ”

“There's an elevator at the end of the corridor, Susan, but what happened to—? ”

“Not Susan, ” said Susan sharply. “It's Miss Susan. I'm only Susan to my friends, and you are not one of them. I don't trust you at all. ”

“I don't trust me either, ” said Lady LeJean meekly. “Does that help? ”

“Show me this elevator, will you? ”

It turned out to be nothing more than a large box the size of a small room, which hung from a web of ropes and pulleys in the ceiling. It had been installed recently, by the look of it, to move the large works of art around. Sliding doors occupied most of one wall.

“There are capstans in the cellar for winching it up, ” said Lady LeJean. “Downward journeys are slowed safely because of a mechanism by which the weight of the descending elevator causes water to be pumped up into rainwater cisterns on the roof, which in turn can be released back into a hollow counterweight that assists in the elevation of heavier items of—”

“Thank you, ” said Susan quickly. “But what it really needs in order to descend is time. ” Under her breath she added, “Can you help? ”

The ribbons of blue light orbited her, like puppies anxious to play, and then drifted towards the elevator.

“However, ” she added, “I believe Time is on our side now. ”

Miss Tangerine was amazed at how fast a body learned.

Until now Auditors had learned by counting. Sooner or later, everything came down to numbers. If you knew all the numbers, you knew everything. Often the later was a lot later, but that did not matter because for an Auditor time was just another number. But a brain, a few soggy pounds of gristle, counted numbers so fast that they stopped being numbers at all. She'd been astonished at how easily it could direct a hand to catch a ball in the air, calculating future positions of hand and ball without her even being aware of it.

The senses seemed to operate and present her with conclusions before she had time to think.

At the moment she was trying to explain to other Auditors that not feeding an elephant when there was no elephant not to feed was not in fact impossible. Miss Tangerine was one of the faster-learning Auditors and had already formulated a group of things, events and situations that she categorized as “bloody stupid”. Things that were “bloody stupid” could be dismissed.

Some of the others were having difficulty understanding this, but now she stopped in mid-harangue when she heard the rumble of the elevator.

“Do we have anyone upstairs? ” she demanded.

The Auditors around her shook their heads. “IGNORE THIS NOTICE” had produced too much confusion.

“Then someone is coming down! ” said Miss Tangerine. “They are out of place! They must be stopped! ”

“We must discuss—” an Auditor began.

“Do what I say, you organic organ! ”

“It's a matter of personalities, ” said Lady LeJean, as Susan pushed open a door in the roof and stepped out onto the leads.

“Yes? ” said Susan, looking around at the silent city. “I thought you didn't have them. ”

“They will have them now, ” said Lady LeJean, climbing out behind her. “And personalities define themselves in terms of other personalities. ”

Susan, prowling along the parapet, considered this strange sentence.

“You mean there will be flaming rows? ” she said.

“Yes. We have never had egos before. ”

“Well, you seem to be managing. ”

“Only by becoming completely and utterly insane, ” said her ladyship.

Susan turned. Lady LeJean's hat and dress had become even more tattered, and she was shedding sequins. And then there was the matter of the face. An exquisite mask on a bone structure like fine china had been made up by a clown. Probably a blind clown. And one who was wearing boxing gloves. In a fog. Lady LeJean looked at the world through panda eyes and her lipstick touched her mouth only by accident.

“You don't look insane, ” lied Susan. “As such. ”

“Thank you. But sanity is defined by the majority, I am afraid. Do you know the saying ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts’? ”

“Of course. ” Susan scanned the rooftops for a way down. She did not need this. The… thing seemed to want to talk. Or, rather, to chatter aimlessly.

“It is an insane statement. It is a nonsense. But now I believe that it is true. ”

“Good. That elevator should be getting down about… now. ”

Slivers of blue light, like trout slipping through a stream, danced around the elevator door.

The Auditors gathered. They had been learning. Many of them had acquired weapons. And a number of them had taken care not to communicate to the others that gripping something offensive in the hand seemed a very natural thing to do. It spoke to something right down in the back of the brain.

It was therefore unfortunate that when a couple of them pulled open the elevator door it was to reveal, slightly melting in the middle of the floor, a cherry liqueur chocolate.

The scent wafted.

There was only one survivor and, when Miss Tangerine ate the chocolate, there wasn't even that.

“One of life's little certainties, ” said Susan, standing on the edge of the museum's parapet, “is that there is generally a last chocolate hidden in all those empty wrappers. ”

Then she reached down and grabbed the top of a drainpipe.

She wasn't certain how this would work. If she fell… but would she fall? There was no time to fall. She had her own personal time. In theory, if anything so definite as a theory existed in a case like this, that meant she could just drift down to the ground. But the time to test a theory like that was when you had no other choice. A theory was just an idea, but a drainpipe was a fact.

The blue light flickered around her hands.

“Lobsang? ” she said quietly. “It is you, isn't it? ”

That name is as good as any for us. The voice was as faint as a breath.

“This may seem a stupid question, but where are you? ”

We are just a memory. And I am weak.

“Oh. ” Susan slid a little further.

But I will grow strong. Get to the clock.

“What's the point? There was nothing we could do! ”

Times have changed.

Susan reached the ground. Lady LeJean followed, moving clumsily. Her evening dress had acquired several more tears.

“Can I offer a fashion tip? ” said Susan.

“It would be welcomed, ” said her ladyship politely.

“Long cerise bloomers with that dress? Not a good idea. ”

“No? They are very colourful, and quite warm. What should I have chosen instead? ”

“With that cut? Practically nothing. ”

“That would have been acceptable? ”

“Er…” Susan blanched at unfolding the complex laws of lingerie to someone who wasn't even, she felt, anybody. “To anyone likely to find out, yes, ” she finished. “It would take too long to explain. ”

Lady LeJean sighed. “All of it does, ” she said. “Even clothing. Skin-substitutes to preserve body heat? So simple. So easy to say. But there are so many rules and exceptions, impossible to understand. ”

Susan looked along Broad Way. It was thick with silent traffic, but there was no sign of an Auditor.

“We'll run into more of them, ” she said aloud.

“Yes. There will be hundreds, at least, ” said Lady LeJean.

“Why? ”

“Because we have always wondered what life is like. ”

“Then let's get up into Zephire Street, ” said Susan.

“What is there for us? ”

“Wienrich and Boettcher. ”

“Who are they? ”

“I think the original Herr Wienrich and Frau Boettcher died a long time ago. But the shop still does very good business, ” said Susan, darting across the street. “We need ammunition. ”

Lady LeJean caught up. “Oh. They make chocolate? ” she said.

“Does a bear poo in the woods? ” said Susan, and realized her mistake straight away. [16]

Too late. Lady LeJean looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Yes, ” she said at last. “Yes, I believe that most varieties do indeed excrete as you suggest, at least in the temperate zones, but there are several that—”

“I meant to say that, yes, they make chocolate, ” said Susan.

Vanity, vanity, thought Lu-Tze, as the milk cart rattled through the silent city. Ronnie would have been like a god, and people of that stripe don't like hiding. Not really hiding. They like to leave a little clue, some emerald tablet somewhere, some code in some tomb under the desert, something to say to the keen researcher: I was here, and I was great.

What else had the first people been afraid of? Night, maybe. Cold. Bears. Winter. Stars. The endless sky. Spiders. Snakes. One another. People had been afraid of so many things.

He reached into his pack for the battered copy of the Way, and opened it at random.

Koan 97: “Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you. ” Hmm. No real help there. Besides, he'd occasionally been unsure that he'd written that one down properly, although it certainly had worked. He'd always left aquatic mammals well alone, and they had done the same to him.

He tried again.

Koan 124: “It's amazing what you see if you keep your eyes open. ”

“What's the book, monk? ” said Ronnie.

“Oh, just… a little book, ” said Lu-Tze. He looked around.

The cart was passing a funeral parlour. The owner had invested in a large plate-glass window, even though the professional undertaker does not, in truth, have that much to sell that looks good in a window and they usually make do with dark, sombre drapes and perhaps a tasteful urn.

And the name of the Fifth Horseman.

“Hah! ” said Lu-Tze quietly.

“Something funny, monk? ”

“Obvious, when you think about it, ” said Lu-Tze, as much to himself as to Ronnie. Then he turned in his seat and stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, ” he said. “Let me guess your name. ”

And said it.

Susan had been unusually inexact. To call Wienrich and Boettcher “chocolate makers” was like calling Leonard of Quirm “a decent painter who also tinkered with things”, or Death “not someone you'd want to meet every day”. It was accurate, but it didn't tell the whole story.

For one thing, they didn't make, they created. There's an important difference. [17] And, while their select little shop sold the results, it didn't do anything so crass as to fill the window with them. That would suggest… well, over-eagerness. Generally, W& B had a display of silk and velvet drapes with, on a small stand, perhaps one of their special pralines or no more than three of their renowned frosted caramels. There was no price tag. If you had to ask the price of W& B's chocolates, you couldn't afford them. And if you'd tasted one, and still couldn't afford them, you'd save and scrimp and rob and sell elderly members of your family for just one more of those mouthfuls that fell in love with your tongue and turned your soul to whipped cream.

There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the window drooled too much.

Wienrich and Boettcher were, naturally, foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork's Guild of Confectioners they did not understand the peculiarities of the city's tastebuds.

Ankh-Morpork people, said the Guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor, and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that according to the food standards of the great chocolate centres in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as “cheese” and only escaped, through being the wrong colour, being defined as “tile grout”.

Susan allowed herself one of their cheaper boxes per month. And she could easily stop at the first layer if she wanted to.

“You needn't come in, ” she said, as she opened the shop door. Rigid customers lined the counter.

“Please call me Myria. ”

“I don't think I—”

“Please? ” said Lady LeJean meekly. “A name is important. ”

Suddenly, in spite of everything, Susan felt a brief pang of sympathy for the creature.

“Oh, very well. Myria, you needn't come in. ”

“I can stand it. ”

“But I thought chocolate was a raging temptation? ” said Susan, being firm with herself.

“It is. ”

They stared up at the shelves behind the counter.

“Myria… Myria, ” said Susan, speaking only some of her thoughts aloud. “From the Ephebian word myrios, meaning ‘innumerable’. And LeJean as a crude pun of ‘legion’… Oh dear. ”

“We thought a name should say what a thing is, ” said her ladyship. “And there is safety in numbers. I am sorry. ”

“Well, these are their basic assortments, ” said Susan, dismissing the shop display with a wave of her hand. “Let's try the back room—Are you all right? ”

“I am fine, I am fine…” murmured Lady LeJean, swaying.

“You're not going to pig out on me, are you? ”

“We… I… know about will-power. The body craves the chocolate but the mind does not. At least, so I tell myself. And it must be true! The mind can overrule the body! Otherwise, what is it for? ”

“I've often wondered, ” said Susan, pushing open another door. “Ah. The magician's cave…”

“Magic? They use magic here? ”

“Nearly right. ”

Lady LeJean leaned on the door frame for support when she saw the tables.

“Oh, ” she said. “Uh… I can detect… sugar, milk, butter, cream, vanilla, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, raisins, orange peel, various liqueurs, citrus pectin, strawberries, raspberries, essence of violets, cherries, pineapples, pistachios, oranges, limes, lemons, coffee, cocoa—”

“Nothing there to be frightened of, right? ” said Susan, surveying the workshop for useful weaponry. “Cocoa is just a rather bitter bean, after all. ”

“Yes, but…” Lady LeJean clenched her fists, shut her eyes and bared her teeth, “put them all together and they make—”

“Steady, steady…”

“The will can overrule the emotions, the will can overrule the instincts—” the Auditor chanted.

“Good, good, now just work your way up to the bit where it says chocolate, okay? ”

“That's the hard one! ”

In fact, it seemed to Susan, as she walked past the vats and counters, that chocolate lost some of its attraction when you saw it like this. It was the difference between seeing the little heaps of pigment and seeing the whole picture. She selected a syringe that seemed designed to do something intensely personal to female elephants, athough she decided that here it was probably used for doing the wiggly bits of decoration.

And over here was a small vat of cocoa liquor.

She stared around at the trays and trays of fondant cremes, marzipans and caramels. Oh, and here was an entire table of Soul Cake eggs. But these weren't the hollow-shelled, cardboard-tasting presents for children, oh, no—these were the confectionery equivalent of fine, intricate jewellery.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. One of the statue-like workers bent over her tray of Praline Dreams was shifting almost imperceptibly.

Time was flowing into the room. Pale blue light glinted in the air.

She turned and saw a vaguely human figure hovering beside her. It was featureless and as transparent as mist, but in her head it said, I'm stronger. You are my anchor, my link to this world. Can you guess how hard it is to find it again in so many? Get me to the clock …

Susan turned and thrust the icing syringe into the arms of the groaning Myria. “Grab that. And make some kind of… of sling or something. I want you to be carrying as many of those chocolate eggs as possible. And the cremes. And the liqueurs. Understand? You can do it! ”

Oh, gods, there was no alternative. The poor thing needed some kind of morale boost. “Please, Myria? And that's a stupid name! You're not many, you're one. Okay? Just be… yourself. Unity… that'd be a good name. ”

The new Unity raised a mascara-streaked face. “Yes, it is, it's a good name…”

Susan snatched as much merchandise as she could carry, aware of some rustling behind her, and turned to find Unity standing to attention holding, by the look of it, a benchworth of assorted confectionery in…

…a sort of big cerise sack.

“Oh. Good. Intelligent use of the materials to hand, ” said Susan weakly. Then the teacher within her cut in and added, “I hope you brought enough for everybody. ”

“You were the first, ” said Lu-Tze. “You basically created the whole business. Innovative, you were. ”

“That was then, ” said Ronnie Soak. “It's all changed now. ”

“Not like it used to be, ” agreed Lu-Tze.

“Take Death, ” said Ronnie Soak. “Impressive, I'll grant you, and who doesn't look good in black? But, after all, Death… What's death? ”

“Just a big sleep, ” said Lu-Tze.

“Just a big sleep, ” said Ronnie Soak. “As for the others… War? If war's so bad, why do people keep doing it? ”

“Practically a hobby, ” said Lu-Tze. He began to roll himself a cigarette.

“Practically a hobby, ” said Ronnie Soak. “As for Famine and Pestilence, well…”

“Enough said, ” said Lu-Tze sympathetically.

“Exactly. I mean, Famine's a fearful thing, obviously—”

“—in an agricultural community, but you've got to move with the times, ” said Lu-Tze, putting the roll-up in his mouth.

“That's it, ” said Ronnie. “You've got to move with the times. I mean, does your average city person fear famine? ”

“No, he thinks food grows in shops, ” said Lu-Tze. He was beginning to enjoy this. He had eight hundred years' worth of experience in steering the thoughts of his superiors, and most of them had been intelligent. He decided to strike out a little.

“Fire, now: city folk really fear fire, ” he said. “That's new. Your primitive villager, he reckoned fire was a good thing, didn't he? Kept the wolves away. If it burned down his hut, well, logs and turf are cheap enough. But now he lives in a street of crowded wooden houses and everyone's cooking in their rooms, well—”

Ronnie glared.

“Fire? Fire? Just a demi-god! Some little tea-leaf pinches the flame from the gods and suddenly he's immortal? You call that training and experience? ” A spark leapt from Ronnie's fingers and ignited the end of Lu-Tze's cigarette. “And as for gods—”

“Johnny-come-latelys, the pack of 'em, ” said Lu-Tze quickly.

“Right! People started worshipping them because they were afraid of me, ” said Ronnie. “Did you know that? ”

“No, really? ” said Lu-Tze innocently.

But now Ronnie sagged. “That was then, of course, ” he said. “It's different now. I'm not what I used to be. ”

“No, no, obviously not, no, ” said Lu-Tze soothingly. “But it's all a matter of how you look at it, am I correct? Now, supposing a man—that is to say a—”

“Anthropomorphic personification, ” said Ronnie Soak. “But I've always preferred the term ‘avatar’. ”

Lu-Tze's brow wrinkled. “You fly around a lot? ” he said.

“That would be aviator. ”

“Sorry. Well, supposing an avatar, thank you, who was perhaps a bit ahead of his time thousands of years ago, well, supposing he took a good look around now, he might just find the world is ready for him again. ”

Lu-Tze waited. “My abbot, now, he reckons you are the bees' knees, ” he said, for a little reinforcement.

“Does he? ” said Ronnie Soak suspiciously.

“Bee's knees, cat's pyjamas and dog's… elbows, ” Lu-Tze finished. “He's written scrolls and scrolls about you. Says you are hugely important in understanding how the universe works. ”

“Yeah, but… he's just one man, ” said Ronnie Soak, with all the sullen reluctance of someone cuddling a lifetime's huge snit like a favourite soft toy.

“Technically, yes, ” said Lu-Tze. “But he's an abbot. And brainy? He thinks such big thoughts he needs a second lifetime just to finish them off! Let a lot of peasants fear famine, I say, but someone like you should aim for quality. And you look at the cities, now. Back in the old days there were just heaps of mud bricks with names like Ur and Uh and Ugg. These days there's millions of people living in cities. Very, very complicated cities. Just you think about what they really, really fear. And fear… well, fear is belief. Hmm? ”

There was another long pause.

“Well, all right, but…” Ronnie began.

“Of course, they won't be living in 'em very long, because by the time the grey people have finished taking them to pieces to see how they work there won't be any belief left. ”

“My customers do depend on me…” Ronnie Soak mumbled.

“What customers? That's Soak speaking, ” said Lu-Tze. “That's not the voice of Kaos. ”

“Hah! ” said Kaos bitterly. “You haven't told me yet how you worked that one out. ”

Because I've got more than three brain cells and you're vain and you painted your actual name back to front on your cart whether you knew it or not, and a dark window is a mirror, and K and S are still recognizable in a reflection even when they're back to front, thought Lu-Tze. But that wasn't a good way forward.

“It was just obvious, ” he said. “You sort of shine through. It's like putting a sheet over an elephant. You might not be able to see it, but you're sure the elephants still there. ”

Kaos looked wretched.

“I don't know, ” he said, “it's been a long time—”

“Oh? And I thought you said you were Number One? ” said Lu-Tze, deciding on a new approach. “Sorry! Still, I suppose it's not your fault you've lost a few skills over the centuries, what with one thing and—”

“Lost skills? ” snapped Kaos, waving a finger under the sweeper's nose. “I could certainly take you to the cleaners, you little maggot! ”

“What with? A dangerous yoghurt? ” said Lu-Tze, climbing off the cart.

Kaos leapt down after him. “Where do you get off, talking to me like that? ” he demanded.

Lu-Tze glanced up. “Corner of Merchant and Broad Way, ” he said. “So what? ”

Kaos roared. He tore off his striped apron and his white cap. He seemed to grow in size. Darkness evaporated off him like smoke.

Lu-Tze folded his hands and grinned. “Remember Rule One, ” he said.

“Rules? Rules? I'm Kaos! ”

“Who was the first? ” said Lu-Tze.

“Yes! ”

“Creator and Destroyer? ”

“Damn right! ”

“Apparently complicated, apparently patternless behaviour that nevertheless has a simple, deterministic explanation and is a key to new levels of understanding of the multidimensional universe? ”

“You'd better believe it—What? ”

“Got to move with the times, mister, got to keep up! ” shouted Lu-Tze excitedly, hopping from foot to foot. “You're what people think you are! And they've changed you! I hope you're good at sums! ”

“You can't tell me what to be! ” Kaos roared. “I'm Kaos! ”

“You don't think so? Well, your big comeback ain't gonna happen now that the Auditors have taken over! The rules, mister! That's what they are! Theyre the cold dead rules! ”

Silver lightning flickered in the walking cloud that had once been Ronnie. Then cloud, cart and horse vanished.

“Well, could have been worse, I suppose, ” said Lu-Tze to himself. “Not a very bright lad, really. Possibly a bit too old-fashioned. ”

He turned round and found a crowd of Auditors watching him. There were dozens of them.

He sighed and grinned his sheepish little grin. He'd had just about enough for one day.

“Well I expect you have heard of Rule One, right? ” he said.

That seemed to give them pause. One said, “We know millions of rules, human. ”

“Billions. Trillions, ” said another.

“Well you can't attack me, ” said Lu-Tze, “'cos of Rule One. ”

The nearest Auditors went into a huddle.

“It must involve gravitation. ”

“No, quantum effects. Obviously. ”

“Logically there cannot be a Rule One because at that point there would be no concept of plurality. ”

“But if there is not a Rule One, can there be any other rules? If there is no Rule One, where is Rule Two? ”

“There are millions of rules! They cannot fail to be numbered! ”

Wonderful thought Lu-Tze. All I have to do is wait until their heads melt.

But an Auditor stepped forward. It looked more wild-eyed than the others, and was much more unkempt. It was also carrying an axe.

“We do not have to discuss this! ” it snapped. “We must think: This is nonsense, we will not discuss it! ”

“But what is Rule—” an Auditor began.

“You will call me Mr White! ”

“Mr White, what is Rule One? ”

“I am not glad you asked that question! ” screamed Mr White, and swung the axe. The body of the other Auditor crumbled in around the blade, dissolving into floating motes that dispersed in a fine cloud.

“Anyone else got any questions? ” said Mr White, raising the axe again.

One or two Auditors, not yet entirely in tune with current developments, opened their mouths to speak. And shut them again.

Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He prided himself on an incredibly well-honed ability to talk his way in or out of anything, but that rather depended on a passably sane entity being involved at the other end of the dialogue.

Mr White turned to Lu-Tze. “What are you doing out of your place, organic? ”

But Lu-Tze was overhearing another, whispered conversation. It was coming from the other side of a nearby wall, and it went like this:

“Who cares about the damn wording! ”

“Accuracy is important, Susan. There is a precise description on the little map inside the lid. Look. ”

“And you think that will impress anyone? ”

“Please. Things should be done properly. ”

“Oh, give it to me, then! ”

Mr White advanced on Lu-Tze, axe raised. “It is forbidden to—” he began.

“Eat … Oh, good grief … Eat … ‘a delicious fondant sugar creme infused with delightfully rich and creamy raspberry filling wrapped in mysterious dark chocolate ’… you grey bastards! ”

A shower of small objects pattered down on the street. Several of them broke open.

Lu-Tze heard a whine or, rather, the silence caused by the absence of a whine he'd grown used to.

“Oh, no, I'm winding dow…”

Trailing smoke, but looking more like a milkman again, albeit one that'd just delivered to a blazing house, Ronnie Soak stormed into his dairy.

“Who does he think he is? ” he muttered, gripping the spotless edge of a counter so hard that the metal bent. “Hah, oh yes, they just toss you aside, but when they want you to make a comeback—”

Under his fingers the metal went white hot and then dripped.

“I've got customers. I've got customers. People depend on me. It might not be a glamorous job, but people will always need milk—”

He clapped a hand to his forehead. Where the molten metal touched his skin the metal evaporated.

The headache was really bad.

He could remember the time when there was only him. It was hard to remember, because… there was nothing, no colour, no sound, no pressure, no time, no spin, no light, no life…

Just Kaos.

And the thought arose: Do I want that again? The perfect order that goes with changelessness?

More thoughts were following that one, like little silvery eels in his mind. He was, after all, a Horseman, and had been ever since the time the people in mud cities on baking plains put together some hazy idea of Something that had existed before anyone else. And a Horseman picks up the noises of the world. The mud-city people and the skin-tent people, they'd known instinctively that the world swirled perilously through a complex and uncaring multiverse, that life was lived a mirrors thickness from the cold of space and the gulfs of night. They knew that everything they called reality, the web of rules that made life happen, was a bubble on the tide. They feared old Kaos. But now—

He opened his eyes and looked down at his dark, smoking hands. To the world in general, he said, “Who am I now? ”

Lu-Tze heard his voice speed up from nothing: “—wn…”

“No, you're wound up again, ” said a young woman in front of him. She stood back, giving him a critical look. Lu-Tze, for the first time in eight hundred years, felt that he'd been caught doing something wrong. It was that kind of expression—searching, rummaging around inside his head.

“You'll be Lu-Tze, then, ” said Susan. “I'm Susan Sto Helit. No time for explanations. You've been out for… well, not for long. We have to get Lobsang to the glass clock. Are you any good? Lobsang thinks you're a bit of a fraud. ”

“Only a bit? I'm surprised. ” Lu-Tze looked around. “What happened here? ”

The street was empty, except for the ever-present statues. But scraps of silver paper and coloured wrappers littered the ground, and across the wall behind him was a long splash of what looked very much like chocolate icing.

“Some of them got away, ” said Susan, picking up what Lu-Tze could only hope was a giant icing syringe. “Mostly they fought with one another. Would you try to tear someone apart just for a coffee creme? ”

Lu-Tze looked into those eyes. After eight hundred years you learn how to read people. And Susan was a story that went back a very long way. She probably even knew about Rule One, and didn't care. This was someone to treat with respect. But you couldn't let even someone like her have it all their own way.

“The kind with a coffee bean on the top, or the ordinary kind? ” he said.

“The kind without the coffee bean, I think, ” said Susan, holding his gaze.

“Nnn-o. No. No, I don't think I would, ” said Lu-Tze.

“But they are learning, ” said a woman's voice behind the sweeper. “Some resisted. We can learn. That's how humans became humans. ”

Lu-Tze regarded the speaker. She looked like a society lady who had just had a really bad day in a threshing machine.

“Can I just be clear here? ” he said, staring from one woman to the other. “You've been fighting the grey people with chocolate? ”

“Yes, ” said Susan, peering round the corner. “It's the sensory explosion. They lose control of their morphic field. Can you throw at all? Good. Unity, give him as many chocolate eggs as he can carry. The secret is to get them to land hard so that there's lots of shrapnel—”

“And where is Lobsang? ” said Lu-Tze.

“Him? You could say he's with us in spirit. ”

There were blue sparkles in the air.

“Growing pains, I think, ” Susan added.

Centuries of experience once again came to Lu-Tze's aid.

“He always looked like a lad who needed to find himself, ” he said.

“Yes, ” said Susan. “And it came as a bit of a shock. Let's go. ”

Death looked down at the world. Timelessness had reached the Rim now, and was expanding into the universe at the speed of light. The Discworld was a sculpture in crystal.

Not an apocalypse. There had always been plenty of those—small apocalypses, not the full shilling at all, fake apocalypses: apocryphal apocalypses. Most of them had been back in the old days, when the world as in “end of the world” was often objectively no wider than a few villages and a clearing in the forest.

And those little worlds had ended. But there had always been somewhere else. There had been the horizon, to start with. The fleeing refugees would find that the world was bigger than they'd thought. A few villages in a clearing? Hah, how could they have been so stupid! Now they knew it was a whole island! Of course, there was that horizon again…

The world had run out of horizons.

As Death watched, the sun stopped in its orbit and its light became duller, redder.

He sighed, and nudged Binky. The horse stepped forward, in a direction that could not be found on any map.

And the sky was full of grey shapes. There was a ripple in the ranks of Auditors as the Pale Horse trotted forward.

One drifted towards Death and hung in the air a few feet away. It said, Should you not be riding out?

DO YOU SPEAK FOR ALL?

You know the custom, said the voice in Death's mind. Among us, one speaks for all.

WHAT IS BEING DONE IS WRONG.

It is not your business.

NEVERTHELESS, WE ARE ALL ANSWERABLE.

The universe will last for ever, said the voice. Everything preserved, ordered, understood, lawful, filed … changeless. A perfect world. Finished.

NO.

It will all end one day in any case.

BUT THIS IS TOO SOON. THERE IS UNFINISHED BUSINESS.

And that is—?

EVERYTHING.

And, with a flash of light, a figure clothed all in white appeared, holding a book in one hand.

It looked from Death to the endlessly massing ranks of the Auditors, and said: “Sorry? Is this the right place? ”

Two Auditors were measuring the number of atoms in a paving slab.

They looked up at a movement.

“Good afternoon, ” said Lu-Tze. “May I draw your attention to the notice my assistant is holding up? ”

Susan held up the sign. It read: Mouths Must Be Open. By Order.

And Lu-Tze unfolded his hands. There was a caramel in each one, and he was a good shot.

The mouths shut. The faces went impassive. Then there was a sound somewhere between a purr and a wail, which disappeared into the ultrasonic. And then… the Auditors dissolved, gently, first going fuzzy around the edges and, as the process accelerated, swiftly becoming a spreading cloud.

“Hand-to-mouth fighting, ” said Lu-Tze. “Why doesn't it happen to humans? ”

“It nearly does, ” said Susan, and when they stared at her she blinked and said, “To stupid, indulgent humans, anyway. ”

“You don't have to concentrate to stay the same shape, ” said Unity. “And that was the last of the caramels, by the way. ”

“No, there's six in one of W& B's Gold Selections, ” said Susan. “Three have got white chocolate cream in dark chocolate and three have got whipped cream in milk chocolate. They're the ones in the silver wrapp—Look, I just happen to know things, all right? Let's keep going, okay? Without mentioning chocolate. ”

You have no power over us, said the Auditor. We are not alive .

BUT YOU ARE DEMONSTRATING ARROGANCE, PRIDE AND STUPIDITY. THESE ARE EMOTIONS. I WOULD SAY THEY ARE SIGNS OF LIFE.

“Excuse me? ” said the shining figure in white.

But you are all alone here!

“Excuse me? ”

YES? said Death. WHAT IS IT?

“This is the Apocalypse, yes? ” said the shining figure petulantly.

WE ARE TALKING.

“Yes, right, but is it the Apocalypse? The actual end of the actual whole world? ”

No, said the Auditor.

YES, said Death. IT IS.

“Great! ” said the figure.

What? said the Auditor.

WHAT? said Death.

The figure looked embarrassed.

“Well, not great, obviously. Obviously not great, as such. But it's what I'm here for. It's what I'm for, really. ” It held up the book. “Er… I've got the place marked ready. Wow! It's been, you know, so long…”

Death glanced at the book. The cover and all the pages were made of iron. Realization dawned.

YOU ARE THE ANGEL CLOTHED ALL IN WHITE OF THE IRON BOOK FROM THE PROPHECIES OF TOBRUN, AM I CORRECT?

“That's right! ” The pages clanged as the angel hurriedly thumbed through them. “And it's clothed, by the way, if you don't mind. Clo-theddd. Just a detail, I know, but I like to get it right. ”

What is happening here? the Auditor growled.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS, said Death, ignoring the interruption. BUT YOU ARE NOT OFFICIAL.

The pages stopped clanking.

“What do you mean? ” said the angel suspiciously.

THE BOOK OF TOBRUN HAS NOT BEEN CONSIDERED OFFICIAL CHURCH DOGMA FOR A HUNDRED YEARS. THE PROPHET BRUTHA REVEALED THAT THE WHOLE CHAPTER WAS A METAPHOR FOR A POWER STRUGGLE WITHIN THE EARLY CHURCH. IT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE REVISED VERSION OF THE BOOK OF OM, AS DETERMINED BY THE CONVOCATION OF EE.

“Not at all? ”

I'M SORRY.

“I've been thrown out? Just like the damn rabbits and the big syrupy things? ”

YES.

“Even the bit where I blow the trumpet? ”

OH, YES.

“You sure? ”

ALWAYS.

“But you are Death and this is the Apocalypse, right? ” said the angel, looking wretched. “So therefore—”

UNFORTUNATELY, HOWEVER, YOU ARE NO LONGER A FORMAL PART OF THE PROCEEDINGS.

Out of the corner of his mind, Death was observing the Auditor. Auditors always listened when people spoke. The more people spoke, the closer to consensus every decision came, and the less responsibility anyone had. But the Auditor was showing signs of impatience and annoyance…

Emotions. And emotions made you alive. Death knew how to deal with the living.

The angel looked around at the universe. “Then what am I supposed to do? ” he wailed. “This is what I've been waiting for! For thousands of years! ” He stared at the iron book. “Thousands of dull, boring, wasted years…” he mumbled.

Have you quite finished? said the Auditor.

“One big scene. That's all I had. That was my purpose. You wait, you practise—and then you're just edited out because brimstone is no longer a fashionable colour? ” Anger was infusing the bitterness in the angel's voice. “No one told me, of course…”

He glared at the rusted pages. “It ought to be Pestilence next, ” he muttered.

“Am I late, then? ” said a voice in the night.

A horse walked forward. It gleamed unhealthily, like a gangrenous wound just before the barber-surgeon would be called in with his hacksaw for a quick trim.

I THOUGHT YOU WEREN'T COMING, said Death.

“I didn't want to, ” Pestilence oozed, “but humans do get such interesting diseases. I'd rather like to see how weasles turn out, too. ” One crusted eye winked at Death.

“You mean measles? ” said the angel.

“Weasles, I'm afraid, ” said Pestilence. “People are getting really careless with this bio-artificing. We're talking boil's that really bite. ”

Two of you will not suffice! snarled the Auditor in their heads.

A horse walked out of the darkness. Some toast racks had more flesh.

“I've been thinking, ” said a voice. “Maybe there are things worth putting up a fight for. ”

“And they are—? ” said Pestilence, looking round.

“Salad-cream sandwiches. You just can't beat them. That tang of permitted emulsifiers? Marvellous. ”

“Hah! You're Famine, then? ” said the Angel of the Iron Book. It fumbled with the heavy pages again.

What, what, what is this nonsense of “salad cream ”? [18] shouted the Auditor.

Anger, thought Death. A powerful emotion.

“Do I like salad cream? ” said a voice in the dark.

A second, female voice replied: “No, dear, it gives you hives. ”

The horse of War was huge and red and the heads of dead warriors hung from the saddle horn. And Mrs War was hanging on to War, grimly.

“All four. Bingo! ” said the Angel of the Iron Book. “So much for the Convocation of Ee! ”

War had a woolly scarf round his neck. He looked sheepishly at the other Horsemen.

“He's not to strain himself, ” said Mrs War sharply. “And you're not to let him do anything dangerous. He's not as strong as he thinks. And he gets confused. ”

So, the gang is all here, said the Auditor.

Smugness, Death noticed. And self-satisfaction.

There was a clanging as of metal pages. The Angel of the Iron Book was looking puzzled.

“Actually, I don't think that's entirely correct, ” it said.

No one paid it any attention.

Off you go on your little pantomime, said the Auditor.

And now irony and sarcasm, thought Death. They must be picking it up from the ones down in the world. All the little things that go to make up a… personality.

He looked along the row of Horsemen. They caught his eye, and there were almost imperceptible nods from Famine and Pestilence.

War turned in the saddle and spoke to his wife. “Right now, dear, I'm not confused at all. Could you get down, please? ”

“Remember what happened when—” Mrs War began.

“Right now, please, my dear, ” said War, and this time his voice, which was still calm and polite, had echoes of steel and bronze.

“Er… oh. ” Mrs War was suddenly flustered. “That was just how you used to talk when—” She stopped, blushed happily for a moment, and slid off the horse.

War nodded at Death.

And now you must all go and bring terror and destruction and so on and so forth, said the Auditor. Correct?

Death nodded. Floating in the air above him, the Angel of the Iron Book slammed the pages back and forth in an effort to find his place.

EXACTLY. ONLY, WHILE IT IS TRUE WE HAVE TO RIDE OUT, Death added, drawing his sword, IT DOESN'T SAY ANYWHERE AGAINST WHOM.

Your meaning? hissed the Auditor, but now there was a flicker of fear. Things were happening that it didn't understand.

Death grinned. In order to fear, you had to be a me. Don't let anything happen to me. That was the song of fear.

“He means, ” said War, “That he asked us all to think about whose side we're really on. ”

Four swords were drawn, blazing along their edges like flame. Four horses charged.

The Angel of the Iron Book looked down at Mrs War.

“Excuse me, ” he said, “but do you have a pencil? ”

Susan peered round the corner into Artificers Street, and groaned. “It's full of them… and I think they've gone mad. ”

Unity took a look. “No. They have not gone mad. They are being Auditors. They are taking measurements, assessing and standardizing where necessary. ”

“They're taking up the paving slabs now! ”

“Yes. I suspect it is because they are the wrong size. We do not like irregularities. ”

“What the hell is the wrong size for a slab of rock? ”

“Any size that is not the average size. I'm sorry. ”

The air around Susan flashed blue. She was very briefly aware of a human shape, transparent, spinning gently, which vanished again.

But a voice in her ear, in her ear said: Nearly strong enough. Can you get to the end of the street?

“Yes. Are you sure? You couldn't do anything to the clock before! ”

Before, I was not me.

A movement in the air made Susan look up. The lightning bolt that had stood rigid over the dead city had gone. The clouds were rolling like ink poured into water. There were flashes within them, sulphurous yellows and reds.

The Four Horsemen are fighting the other Auditors, Lobsang supplied.

“Are they winning? ”

Lobsang did not answer.

“I said—”

It's hard for me to say. I can see… everything. Everything that could be …

Kaos listened to history.

There were new words. Wizards and philosophers had found Chaos, which is Kaos with his hair combed and a tie on, and had found in the epitome of disorder a new order undreamed of. There are different kinds of rules. From the simple comes the complex, and from the complex comes a different kind of simplicity. Chaos is order in a mask…

Chaos. Not dark, ancient Kaos, left behind by the evolving universe, but new, shiny Chaos, dancing in the heart of everything. The idea was strangely attractive. And it was a reason to go on living.

Ronnie Soak adjusted his cap. Oh, yes… there was one last thing.

The milk was always lovely and fresh. Everyone remarked on that. Of course, being everywhere at seven in the morning was no trouble to him. If even the Hogfather could climb down every chimney in the world in one night, doing a milk round for most of a city in one second was hardly a major achievement.

Keeping things cool was, however. But there he had been lucky. Mr Soak walked into the ice room, where his breath turned to fog in the frigid air. Churns were stacked across the floor, sparkling on the outside. Vats of butter and cream were piled on shelves that glistened with ice. Rack after rack of eggs were just visible through the frost. He'd been planning to add the ice-cream business in the summer. It was such an obvious step. Besides, he needed to use up the cold.

A stove was burning in the middle of the floor. Mr Soak always bought good coal from the dwarfs, and the iron plates were glowing red. The room, one felt, ought to be an oven, but there was a gentle sizzling on the stove as frost battled with the heat. With the stove roaring, the room was merely an ice-box. Without the stove…

Ronnie opened the door of a white-rimed cupboard and smashed at the ice within with his fist. Then he reached inside.

What emerged, crackling with blue flame, was a sword.

It was a work of art, the sword. It had imaginary velocity, negative energy and positive cold, cold so cold that it met heat coming the other way and took on something of its nature. Burning cold. There had never been anything as cold as this since before the universe began. In fact, it seemed to Chaos, everything since then had been merely lukewarm.

“Well, I'm back, ” he said.

The Fifth Horseman rode out, and a faint smell of cheese followed him.

Unity looked at the other two, and at the blue glow that still hovered around the group. They had taken cover behind a fruit barrow.

“If I may make a suggestion, ” she said, “it is that w—that Auditors are not good with surprises. The impulse is always to consult. And the assumption is always that there will be a plan. ”

“So? ” said Susan.

“I suggest total madness. I suggest you and… and the… young man run for the shop, and I will attract the attention of the Auditors. I believe this old man should assist me because he will die soon in any case. ”

There was silence.

“Accurate yet unnecessary, ” said Lu-Tze.

“That was not good etiquette? ” she said.

“It could have been better. However, is it not written, ‘When you have got to go, you have got to go’? ” said Lu-Tze. “And also that, ‘You should always wear clean underwear because you never know if you will be knocked down by a cart’? ”

“Will it help? ” said Unity, looking very puzzled.

“That is one of the great mysteries of the Way, ” said Lu-Tze, nodding sagely. “What chocolate do we have left? ”

“We're down to the nougat now, ” said Unity. “And I believe nougat is a terrible thing to cover with chocolate, where it can ambush the unsuspecting. Susan? ”

Susan was peering up the street. “Mmm? ”

“Do you have any chocolate left? ”

Susan shook her head. “Mmm-mmm. ”

“I believe you were carrying the cherry cremes? ”

“Mmm? ”

Susan swallowed, and then gave a cough that expressed, in a remarkably concise way, embarrassment and annoyance.

“I just had one! ” she snapped. “I need the sugar. ”

“I'm sure no one said you did have more than one, ” said Unity meekly.

“We haven't been counting at all, ” said Lu-Tze.

“If you have a handkerchief, ” said Unity, still diplomatically, “I could wipe away the chocolate around your mouth which must have inadvertently got there during the last engagement. ”

Susan glared and used the back of her hand.

“It's just the sugar, ” she said. “That's all. It's fuel. And do stop going on about it! Look, we can't just let you die to get—”

Yes, we can, said Lobsang.

“Why? ” said Susan, shocked.

Because I have seen everything.

“Would you like to tell everyone? ” said Susan, reverting to Classroom Sarcasm. “We'd all like to know how this ends! ”

You misunderstand the meaning of “everything”.

Lu-Tze rummaged in his sack of ammunition and produced two chocolate eggs and a paper bag. Unity went white at the sight of the bag.

“I didn't know we had any of those! ” she said.

“Good, are they? ”

“Coffee beans coated in chocolate, ” breathed Susan. “They should be outlawed! ”

The two women watched in horror as Lu-Tze put one in his mouth. He gave them a surprised look.

“Quite nice, but I prefer liquorice, ” he said.

“You mean you don't want another one? ” said Susan.

“No, thank you. ”

“Are you sure? ”

“Yes. I'd quite like liquorice, though, if you have any…”

“Have you had some special monk training? ”

“Well, not in chocolate combat, no, ” said Lu-Tze. “But is it not written, ‘If you have another one you won't have an appetite for your dinner’? ”

“You really mean you will not eat a second chocolate coffee bean? ”

“No, thank you. ”

Susan looked across at Unity, who was trembling. “You do have tastebuds, don't you? ” she said, but she felt a pressure on her arm pulling her away.

“You two get behind that cart over there and run when you get the signal, ” said Lu-Tze. “Go now! ”

“What signal? ”

We'll know, said the voice of Lobsang.

Lu-Tze watched them hurry away. Then he picked up his broom in one hand and stepped out into the view of a street full of grey people.

“Excuse me? ” he said. “Could I have your attention, please? ”

“What is he doing? ” said Susan, crouching behind the cart.

They're all going towards him, said Lobsang. Some of them have weapons.

“They'll be the ones giving the orders, ” said Susan.

Are you sure?

“Yes. They've learned from humans. Auditors aren't used to taking orders. They need persuading. ”

He's telling them about Rule One, and that means he's got a plan. I think it's working. Yes!

“What's he done? What's he done? ”

Come on! He'll be fine!

Susan leapt up. “Good! ”

Yes, they've cut his head off …

Fear, anger, envy… Emotions bring you alive, which is a brief period just before you die. The grey shapes fled in front of the swords.

But there were billions of them. And they had their own ways of fighting. Passive, subtle ways.

“This is stupid! ” Pestilence shouted. “They can't even catch a common cold! ”

“No soul to damn, no arse to kick! ” said War, hacking at grey shreds that rolled away from his blade.

“They have a kind of hunger, ” said Famine. “I just can't find a way to get at it! ”

The horses were reined in. The wall of greyness hovered in the distance, and began to close in again.

THEY ARE FIGHTING BACK, said Death. CAN YOU NOT FEEL IT?

“I just feel we're too damn stupid, ” said War.

AND WHERE DOES THAT FEELING COME FROM?

“Are you saying they're affecting our minds? ” said Pestilence. “We're Horsemen! How can they do that to us? ”

WE HAVE BECOME TOO HUMAN.

“Us? Human? Don't make me lau—”

LOOK AT THE SWORD IN YOUR HAND, said Death. DON'T YOU NOTICE ANYTHING?

“It's a sword. Sword-shaped. Well? ”

LOOK AT THE HAND. FOUR FINGERS AND A THUMB. A HUMAN HAND. HUMANS GAVE YOU THAT SHAPE. AND THAT IS THE WAY IN. LISTEN! DO YOU NOT FEEL SMALL IN A BIG UNIVERSE? THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE SINGING. IT IS BIG AND YOU ARE SMALL AND AROUND YOU THERE IS NOTHING BUT THE COLD OF SPACE AND YOU ARE SO VERY ALONE.

The other three Horsemen looked unsettled, nervous.

“That's coming from them? ” said War.

YES. IT IS THE FEAR AND HATRED THAT MATTER HAS FOR LIFE AND THEY ARE THE BEARERS OF THAT HATRED.

“Then what can we do? ” said Pestilence. “There're too many of them! ”

DID YOU THINK THAT THOUGHT, OR DID THEY? Death snapped.

“They're coming closer again, ” said War.

THEN WE WILL DO WHAT WE CAN.

“Four swords against an army? That'll never work! ”

YOU THOUGHT IT MIGHT A FEW MOMENTS AGO. WHO IS TALKING FOR YOU NOW? HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS FACED US AND THEY HAVE NOT SURRENDERED.

“Well, yes, ” said Pestilence. “But with us they could always hope for a remission. ”

“Or a sudden truce, ” said War.

“Or—” Famine began, and hesitated, and said finally, “A shower of fish? ” He looked at their expressions. “That actually happened once, ” he added defiantly.

IN ORDER TO HAVE A CHANGE OF FORTUNE AT THE LAST MINUTE YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOUR FORTUNE TO THE LAST MINUTE, said Death. WE MUST DO WHAT WE CAN.

“And if that doesn't work? ” said Pestilence.

Death gathered up Binky's reins. The Auditors were much closer now. He could make out their individual, identical shapes. Remove one, and there were always a dozen more.

THEN WE DID WHAT WE COULD, he said, UNTIL WE COULD NOT.

On his cloud, the Angel Clothed all in White wrestled with the Iron Book.

“What are they talking about? ” said Mrs War.

“I don't know, I can't hear! And these two pages are stuck together! ” said the angel. It scrabbled ineffectively at them for a moment.

“This is all because he wouldn't wear his vest, ” said Mrs War firmly. “It's just the sort of thing I—”

She had to stop because the angel had wrenched the halo from its head and was dragging it down the fused edge of the pages, with sparks and a sound like a cat slipping down a blackboard.

The pages clanged apart.

“Right, let's see…” It scanned the newly revealed text. “Done that… done that… oh…” It stopped and turned a pale face to Mrs War.

“Oh, boy, ” it said, “we're in trouble now. ”

A comet sprang up from the world below, growing visibly larger as the angel spoke. It flamed across the sky, burning fragments detaching and dropping away and revealing, as it closed with the Horsemen, a chariot on fire.

It was a blue flame. Chaos burned with cold.

The figure standing in the chariot wore a full-face helmet dominated by two eye holes that looked slightly like the wings of a butterfly and rather more like the eyes of some strange, alien creature. The burning horse, barely sweating, trotted to a halt; the other horses, regardless of their riders, moved aside to make room.

“Oh, no, ” said Famine, waving a hand in disgust. “Not him, too? I said what'd happen if he came back, didn't I? Remember that time he threw the minstrel out of the hotel window in Zok? Didn't I say—”

SHUT UP, said Death. He nodded. HELLO, RONNIE. GOOD TO SEE YOU. I WONDERED IF YOU WOULD COME.

A hand trailing cold steam came up and removed the helmet.

“Hello, boys, ” said Chaos pleasantly.

“Uh… long time no see, ” said Pestilence.

War coughed. “Heard you were doing well, ” he said.

“Yes, indeed, ” said Ronnie, in a careful tone of voice. “There's a real future in the retail milk and milk derivatives business. ”

Death glanced at the Auditors. They'd stopped moving in but were circling, watchfully.

“Well, the world will always need cheese, ” said War desperately. “Haha. ”

“Looks like there's some trouble here, ” said Ronnie.

“We can handl—” Famine began.

WE CAN'T, said Death. YOU CAN SEE HOW IT IS, RONNIE. TIMES HAVE CHANGED. WOULD YOU CARE TO SIT IN FOR THIS ONE?

“Hey, we haven't discussed—” Famine began, but stopped when War glared at him.

Ronnie Soak put on his helmet, and Chaos drew his sword. It glinted and, like the glass clock, looked like the intrusion into the world of something a great deal more complex.

“Some old man told me you live and learn, ” he said. “Well. I have lived, and now I've learned that the edge of a sword is infinitely long. I've also learned how to make damn good yoghurt, although this is not a skill I intend to employ today. Shall we go get 'em, boys? ”

Far down, in the street, a few of the Auditors moved forward.

“What is Rule One? ” said one of them.

“It does not matter. I am Rule One! ” An Auditor with a big axe waved them back. “Obedience is necessary! ”

The Auditors wavered, watching the cleaver. They'd learned about pain. They'd never felt pain before, not in billions of years. Those who had felt it had no desire at all to feel it again.

“Very well, ” said Mr White. “Now get back to—”

A chocolate egg spun out of nowhere and smashed on the stones. The crowd of Auditors rippled forward, but Mr White slashed the axe through the air a few times.

“Stand back! Stand back! ” he screamed. “You three! Find out who threw that! It came from behind that stall! No one is to touch the brown material! ”

He stooped carefully and picked up a large fragment of chocolate, on which could just be made out the shape of a smiling duck in yellow icing. Hand shaking and sweat beading his forehead, he raised it aloft and flourished the cleaver triumphantly. There was a collective sigh from the crowd.

“You see? ” he shouted. “The body can be overcome! You see? We can find a way to live! If you are good, there may be brown material! If you disobey, there will be the sharp edge! Ah…” He lowered his arms as a struggling Unity was dragged towards him.

“The pathfinder, ” he said, “the renegade…”

He walked towards the captive. “What will it be? ” he said. “The cleaver or the brown material? ”

“It's called chocolate, ” snapped Unity. “I do not eat it. ”

“We shall see, ” Mr White said. “Your associate seemed to prefer the axe! ”

He pointed to the body of Lu-Tze.

To the empty patch of cobbles where Lu-Tze had been.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder.

“Why is it, ” said a voice by his ear, “that no one ever believes in Rule One? ”

Above him the sky began to burn blue.

Susan sped up the street to the clock shop.

She glanced sideways, and Lobsang was there, running beside her. He looked… human, except that not many humans had a blue glow around them.

“There will be grey men around the clock! ” he shouted.

“Trying to find what makes it tick? ”

“Hah! Yes! ”

“What are you going to do? ”

“Smash it! ”

“That'll destroy history! ”

“So? ”

He reached out and took her hand. She felt a shock run up her arm.

“You won't need to open the door! You won't need to stop! Head straight for the clock! ” he said.

“But—”

“Don't talk to me! I've got to remember! ”

“Remember what? ”

“Everything! ”

Mr White was already raising the axe as he turned round. But you just can't trust a body. It thinks for itself. When it is surprised, it does a number of things even before the brain has been informed. The mouth opens, for example.

“Ah, good, ” said Lu-Tze, raising his cupped hand. “Eat this! ”

The door was no more substantial than mist. There were Auditors in the workshop, but Susan moved through them like a ghost.

The clock glowed. And, as she ran towards it, it moved away. The floor unrolled in front of her, dragging her back. The clock accelerated towards some distant event horizon. At the same time it grew bigger but became more insubstantial, as if the same amount of clockness was trying to spread itself across more space.

Other things were happening. She blinked, but there was no flicker of darkness.

“Ah, ” she said to herself, “so I'm not seeing with my eyes. And what else? What's happening to me? My hand… looks normal, but does that mean it is? Am I getting smaller or bigger? Does—? ”

“Are you always like this? ” said the voice of Lobsang.

“Like what? I can feel your hand and I can hear your voice—at least, I think I can hear it, but maybe it's just in my head—but I can't feel myself running—”

“So… so analytical? ”

“Of course. What am I supposed to be thinking? ‘Oh, my paws and whiskers’? Anyway, it's quite straightforward. It's all metaphorical. My senses are telling me stories because they can't cope with what is really happening—”

“Don't let go of my hand. ”

“It's all right, I won't let you go. ”

“I meant, don't let go of my hand because otherwise every part of your body will be compressed into a space much, much smaller than an atom. ”

“Oh. ”

“And don't try to imagine what this really looks like from outside. Here comes the cloooccckkkkkkk—”

Mr White's mouth closed. His expression of surprise became one of horror, and then one of shock, and then one of terrible, wonderful bliss.

He began to unravel. He came apart like a big and complex jigsaw puzzle made of tiny pieces, crumbling gently at the extremities and then vanishing into the air. The last piece to evaporate was the lips, and then they too were gone.

A half-chewed chocolate-coated coffee bean dropped onto the street. Lu-Tze reached down quickly, picked up the axe and flourished it at the other Auditors. They leaned back out of the way, mesmerized by authority.

“Who does this belong to now? ” he demanded. “Come on, whose is it? ”

“It is mine! I am Miss Taupe! ” shouted a woman in grey.

“I am Mr Orange and it belongs to me! No one is even sure that taupe is a proper colour! ” screamed Mr Orange.

An Auditor in the crowd said, rather more thoughtfully, “Is it the case, then, that hierarchy is negotiable? ”

“Certainly not! ” Mr Orange was jumping up and down.

“You have to decide it amongst yourselves, ” said Lu-Tze. He tossed the axe into the air. A hundred pairs of eyes watched it fall.

Mr Orange got there first, but Miss Taupe trod on his fingers. After that, it became very busy and confusing and, to judge by the sounds from within the growing scrum, also very, very painful.

Lu-Tze took the arm of the astonished Unity.

“Shall we be going? ” he said. “Oh, don't worry about me. I was just desperate enough to try something I'd learned from a yeti. It did sting a bit…”

There was a scream from somewhere in the mob.

“Democracy at work, ” said Lu-Tze happily. He glanced up. The flames above the world were dying out, and he wondered who'd won.

There was bright blue light ahead and dark red light behind, and it amazed Susan how she could see both kinds without opening her eyes and turning her head. Eyes open or shut, she couldn't see herself. All that told her that she was something else besides mere point of view was a slight pressure on what she remembered as her fingers. And the sound of someone laughing, close to her.

A voice said, “The sweeper said everyone has to find a teacher and then find their Way. ”

“And? ” said Susan.

“This is my Way. It's the way home. ”

And then, with a noise that was unromantically very similar to the kind Jason would make by putting a wooden ruler on the edge of his desk and twanging it, the journey ended.

It might not even have begun. The glass clock was in front of her, full size, glittering. There was no blue glow inside. It was just a clock, entirely transparent, and ticking.

Susan looked down the length of her arm, and up his arm to Lobsang. He let go of her hand.

“We're here, ” he said.

“With the clock? ” said Susan. She could feel herself gasping to get her breath back.

“This is only a part of the clock, ” said Lobsang. “The other part. ”

“The bit outside the universe? ”

“Yes. The clock has many dimensions. Do not be afraid. ”

“I don't think I have ever been afraid of anything in my life, ” said Susan, still gulping air. “Not really afraid. I get angry. I'm getting angry now, in fact. Are you Lobsang or are you Jeremy? ”

“Yes. ”

“Yes, I walked into that. Are you Lobsang and are you Jeremy? ”

“Much closer. Yes. I will always remember both of them. But I would prefer you to call me Lobsang. Lobsang has the better memories. I never liked the name Jeremy even when I was Jeremy. ”

“You really are both of them? ”

“I am… everything about them that was worth being, I hope. They were very different and they were both me, born just an instant apart, and neither of them was very happy by himself. It makes you wonder if there is anything to astrology after all. ”

“Oh, there is, ” said Susan. “Delusion, wishful thinking and gullibility. ”

“Don't you ever let go? ”

“I haven't yet. ”

“Why? ”

“I suppose… because in this world, after everyone panics, there's always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoe. ”

The clock ticked. The pendulum swung. But the hands did not move.

“Interesting, ” said Lobsang. “You're not a follower of the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite, are you? ”

“I don't even know what it is, ” said Susan.

“Have you got your breath back now? ”

“Yes. ”

“Let's turn around, then. ”

Personal time moved on again, and a voice behind them said, “Is this yours? ”

Behind them there were glass steps. At the top of the steps was a man dressed like a History Monk, shaven-headed, besandalled. The eyes gave away a lot more. A young man who'd been alive for a very long time, Mrs Ogg had said, and she had been right.

He was holding a struggling Death of Rats by the scruff of his robe.

“Er, he's his own, ” said Susan, as Lobsang bowed.

“Then please take him away with you. We cannot have him running around here. Hello, my son. ”

Lobsang walked towards him and they embraced, briefly and formally.

“Father, ” said Lobsang, straightening up. “This is Susan. She has been… very helpful. ”

“Of course she has, ” said the monk, smiling at Susan. “She is helpfulness personified. ” He put the Death of Rats on the floor and prodded him forward.

“Yes, I'm very dependable, ” said Susan.

“And interestingly sarcastic, too, ” the monk added. “I am Wen. Thank you for joining us. And for helping our son find himself. ”

Susan looked from the father to the son. The words and the movements were stilted and chilly, but there was a communication going on that she wasn't party to, and it was happening a lot faster than speech.

“Aren't we supposed to be saving the world? ” she said. “I don't want to rush anybody, of course. ”

“There's something I must do first, ” said Lobsang. “I must meet my mother. ”

“Have we got ti—? ” Susan began, and then added, “We have, haven't we? All the time in the world. ”

“Oh, no. Far more time than that, ” said Wen. “Besides, there's always time to save the world. ”

Time appeared. Again there was the impression that a figure that was in the air, unfocused, was resolving itself into a million specks of matter that poured together and filled a shape in space, slowly at first and then… someone was there.

She was a tall woman, quite young, dark-haired, wearing a long red-and-black dress. By the look on her face, Susan thought, she had been weeping. But she was smiling now.

Wen took Susan by the arm, and gently pulled her aside.

“They'll want to talk, ” he said. “Shall we walk? ”

The room vanished. Now there was a garden, with peacocks and fountains, and a stone seat, upholstered with moss.

Lawns unrolled towards woodlands that had the manicured look of an estate that had been maintained for hundreds of years so that nothing grew here that was not wanted, or in the wrong place. Long-tailed birds, their plumage like living jewels, flashed from treetop to treetop. Deeper in the woods, other birds called.

As Susan watched, a kingfisher alighted on the edge of a fountain. It glanced at her and flew away, its wingbeats sounding like a snapping of tiny fans.

“Look, ” said Susan, “I don't… I'm not… Look, I understand this sort of thing. Really. I'm not stupid. My grandfather has a garden where everything is black. But Lobsang built the clock! Well, part of him did. So he's saving the world and destroying it, all at once? ”

“Family trait, ” said Wen. “It is what Time does at every instant. ”

He gave Susan the look of a teacher confronted with a keen but stupid pupil.

“Think like this, ” he said at last. “Think of everything. It's an everyday word. But ‘everything’ means… everything. It's a much bigger word than ‘universe’. And everything contains all possible things that can happen at all possible times in all possible worlds. Don't look for complete solutions in anyone of them. Sooner or later, everything causes everything else. ”

“Are you saying one little world is not important, then? ” said Susan.

Wen waved a hand, and two glasses of wine appeared on the stone.

“Everything is as important as everything else, ” he said.

Susan grimaced. “You know, that's why I've never liked philosophers, ” she said. “They make it all sound grand and simple, and then you step out into a world that's full of complications. I mean, look around. I bet this garden needs regular weeding, and the fountains have to be unblocked, and the peacocks shed feathers and dig up the lawn… and if they don't do that, then this is just a fake. ”

“No, everything is real” said Wen. “At least, it is as real as anything else. But this is a perfect moment. ” He smiled at Susan again. “Against one perfect moment, the centuries beat in vain. ”

“I'd prefer a more specific philosophy, ” said Susan. She tried the wine. It was perfect.

“Certainly. I expected that you would. I see you cling to logic as a limpet clings to a rock in a storm. Let me see… Defend the small spaces, don't run with scissors, and remember that there is often an unexpected chocolate, ” said Wen. He smiled. “And never resist a perfect moment. ”

A breeze made the fountains splash over the sides of their bowls, just for a second. Wen stood up.

“And now, I believe my wife and son have finished their meeting, ” he said.

The garden faded. The stone seat melted like mist as soon as Susan got up, although until then it had felt as solid as, well, rock. The wineglass vanished from her hand, leaving only a memory of its pressure on her fingers and the taste lingering in her mouth. Lobsang was standing in front of the clock. Time herself was not visible, but the song that wove through the rooms now had a different tone.

“She's happier, ” said Lobsang. “She's free now. ”

Susan looked around. Wen had vanished along with the garden. There was nothing but the endless glass rooms.

“Don't you want to talk to your father? ” she said.

“Later. There will be plenty of time, ” said Lobsang. “I shall see to it. ”

The way he said it, so carefully dropping the words into place, made her turn.

“You're going to take over? ” she said. “You are Time now? ”

“Yes. ”

“But you're mostly human! ”

“So? ” Lobsang's smile took after his father. It was the gentle and, to Susan, the infuriating smile of a god.

“What's in all these rooms? ” she demanded. “Do you know? ”

“One perfect moment. In each one. An oodleplex of oodleplexes. ”

“I'm not certain there's such a thing as a genuinely perfect moment, ” said Susan. “Can we go home now? ”

Lobsang wrapped the edge of his robe around his fist and smashed it against the glass front panel of the clock. It shattered, and dropped to the ground.

“When we get to the other side, ” he said, “don't stop and don't look back. There will be a lot of flying glass. ”

“I'll try to dive behind one of the benches, ” said Susan.

“They probably won't be there. ”

SQUEAK?

The Death of Rats had scurried up the side of the clock and was peering cheerfully over the top.

“What do we do about that? ” said Lobsang.

“That looks after itself, ” said Susan. “I never worry about it. ”

Lobsang nodded. “Take my hand, ” he said. She reached out.

With his free hand Lobsang grasped the pendulum and stopped the clock.

A blue-green hole opened in the world.

The return journey was a lot swifter but, when the world existed again, she was falling into water. It was brown, muddy and stank of dead plants. Susan surfaced, fighting against the drag of her skirts, and trod water while she tried to get her bearings.

The sun was nailed to the sky, the air was heavy and humid, and a pair of nostrils was watching her from a few feet away.

Susan had been brought up to be practical and that meant swimming lessons. The Quirm College for Young Ladies had been very advanced in that respect, and its teachers took the view that a girl who couldn't swim two lengths of the pool with her clothes on wasn't making an effort. To their credit, she'd left knowing four swimming strokes and several life-saving techniques, and was entirely at home in the water. She also knew what to do if you were sharing the same stretch of water with a hippopotamus, which was to find another stretch of water. Hippos only look big and cuddly from a distance. Close up, they just look big.

Susan summoned up all the inherited powers of the deathly voice plus the terrible authority of the schoolroom, and yelled, GO AWAY!

The creature floundered madly in its effort to turn round, and Susan struck out for the shore. It was an unsure shore, the water becoming land in a tangle of sandbanks, sucking black muck, rotted tree roots and swamp. Insects swirled around and—

–the cobbles were muddy underfoot, and there was the sound of horsemen in the mist

–and ice, piled up against dead trees—

–and Lobsang, taking her arm.

“Found you, ” he said.

“You just shattered history, ” said Susan. “You broke it! ”

The hippo had come as a shock. She'd never realized one mouth could hold so much bad breath, or be so big and deep.

“I know. I had to. There was no other way. Can you find Lu-Tze? I know Death can locate any living thing, and since you—”

“All right, all right, I know, ” said Susan darkly. She held out her hand and concentrated. An image of Lu-Tze's extremely heavy lifetimer appeared, and gathered weight.

“He's only a few hundred yards over there, ” she said, pointing to a frozen drift.

“And I know when he is, ” said Lobsang. “Only sixty thousand years away. So…”

Lu-Tze, when they found him, was looking calmly up at an enormous mammoth. Under its huge hairy brow its eyes were squinting with the effort both of seeing him and of getting all three of its brain cells lined up so that it could decide whether to trample on him or gouge him out of the frost-bound landscape. One brain cell was saying “gouge”, one was going for “trample” but the third had wandered off and was thinking about as much sex as possible.

At the far end of its trunk, Lu-Tze was saying, “So, you've never heard of Rule One, then? ”

Lobsang stepped out of the air beside him. “We must go, Sweeper! ”

The appearance of Lobsang did not seem to surprise Lu-Tze at all, although he did seem annoyed at the interruption.

“No rush, wonder boy, ” he said. “I've got this perfectly under control—”

“Where's the lady? ” said Susan.

“Over by that snowdrift, ” said Lu-Tze, indicating with his thumb while still trying to outstare a pair of eyes five feet apart. “When this turned up she screamed and twisted her ankle. Look, you can see I've made it nervous—”

Susan waded into the drift and hauled Unity upright. “Come on, we're leaving, ” she said brusquely.

“I saw his head cut off! ” Unity babbled. “And then suddenly we were here! ”

“Yes, that kind of thing happens, ” said Susan.

Unity stared at her, wild-eyed.

“Life is full of surprises, ” said Susan, but the sight of the creature's distress made her hesitate. All right, the thing was one of them, one that was merely wearing—Well, at least had started out merely wearing a body as a kind of coat, but now… After all, you could say that about everyone, couldn't you?

Susan had even wondered if the human soul without the anchor of a body would end up, eventually, as something like an Auditor. Which, to be fair, meant that Unity, who was getting more firmly wrapped in flesh by the minute, was something like a human. And that was a pretty good definition of Lobsang and, if it came to it, Susan as well. Who knew where humanity began and where it finished?

“Come along, ” she said. “We've got to stick together, right? ”

Like shards of glass, spinning through the air, fragments of history drifted and collided and intersected in the dark.

There was a lighthouse, though. The valley of Oi Dong held on to the ever-repeating day. In the hall almost all of the giant cylinders stood silent, all time run out. Some had split. Some had melted. Some had exploded. Some had simply vanished. But one still turned.

Big Thanda, the oldest and largest, ground slowly on its basalt bearing, winding time out at one end and back on the other, ensuring as Wen had decreed that the perfect day would never end.

Rambut Handisides was all alone in the hall, sitting beside the turning stone in the light of a butter lamp and occasionally throwing a handful of grease onto the base.

A clink of stone made him peer into the darkness. It was heavy with the smoke of fried rock.

There the sound was again and, then, the scratch and flare of a match.

“Lu-Tze? ” he said. “Is that you? ”

“I hope so, Rambut, but who knows, these days? ” Lu-Tze stepped into the light and sat down. “Keeping you busy, are they? ”

Handisides sprang to his feet. “It's been terrible, Sweeper! Everyone's up in the Mandala Hall! It's worse than the Great Crash! There's bits of history everywhere and we've lost half the spinners! We'll never be able to put it all—”

“Now, now, you look like a man who's had a busy day, ” said Lu-Tze kindly. “Not got a lot of sleep, eh? Tell you what, I'll take care of this. You go and get a bit of shut-eye, okay? ”

“We thought you were lost out in the world, and—” the monk burbled.

“And now I'm back, ” smiled Lu-Tze, patting him on the shoulder. “There's still that little alcove round the corner where you repair the smaller spinners? And there's still those unofficial bunks for when it's the night shift and you only need a couple of lads to keep their eye on things? ”

Handisides nodded, and looked guilty. Lu-Tze wasn't supposed to know about the bunks.

“You get along, then, ” said Lu-Tze. He watched the man's retreating back and added, quietly, “and if you wake up you might turn out to be the luckiest idiot that ever there was. Well, wonder boy? What next? ”

“We put everything back, ” said Lobsang, emerging from the shadows.

“You know how long that took us last time? ”

“Yes, ” said Lobsang, looking around the stricken hall and heading towards the podium, “I do. I don't think it will take me as long. ”

“I wish you sounded more certain, ” said Susan.

“I'm… pretty certain, ” said Lobsang, running his fingers over the bobbins on the board.

Lu-Tze waved a cautionary hand at Susan. Lobsang's mind was already on the way to somewhere else, and now she wondered how large a space it was occupying. His eyes were closed.

“The… spinners that axe left… Can you move the jumpers? ” he said.

“I can show the ladies how to, ” said Lu-Tze.

“Are there not monks who know how to do this? ” said Unity.

“It would take too long. I am an apprentice to a sweeper. They would run around asking questions, ” said Lobsang. “You will not. ”

“He's got a point right enough, ” said Lu-Tze. “People will start saying ‘What is the meaning of this? ’ and ‘Bikkit! ’, and we'll never get anything done. ”

Lobsang looked down at the bobbins and then across at Susan.

“Imagine… that there is a jigsaw, all in pieces. But… I am very good at spotting edges and shapes. Very good. And all the pieces are moving. But because they were once linked, they have by their very nature a memory of that link. Their shape is the memory. Once a few are in the right position, the rest will be easier. Oh, and imagine that all the bits are scattered across the whole of eventuality, and mixing randomly with pieces from other histories. Can you grasp all that? ”

“Yes. I think so. ”

“Good. Everything I have just said is nonsense. It bears no resemblance to the truth of the matter in any way at all. But it is a lie that you can… understand, I think. And then, afterwards—”

“You're going to go, aren't you, ” said Susan. It was not a question.

“I will not have enough power to stay, ” said Lobsang.

“You need power to stay human? ” said Susan. She hadn't been aware of the rise of her heart, but now it was sinking.

“Yes. Even trying to think in a mere four dimensions is a terrible effort. I'm sorry. Even to hold in my mind the concept of something called ‘now’ is hard. You thought I was mostly human. I'm mostly not. ” He sighed. “If only I could tell you what everything looks like to me… it's so beautiful. ”

Lobsang stared into the air above the little wooden bobbins. Things twinkled. There were complex curves and spirals, brilliant against the blackness.

It was like looking at a clock in pieces, with every wheel and spring carefully laid out in the dark in front of him. Dismantled, controllable, every part of it understood… but a number of small but important things had gone ping into the corners of a very large room. If you were really good, then you could work out where they'd landed.

“You've only got about a third of the spinners, ” came the voice of Lu-Tze. “The rest are smashed. ”

Lobsang couldn't see him. There was only the glittering show before his eyes.

“That… is true, but once they were whole, ” he said. He raised his hands and lowered them onto the bobbins.

Susan looked around at the sudden grinding noise and saw row after row of columns rising out of the dust and debris. They stood like lines of soldiers, rubble cascading from them.

“Good trick! ” Lu-Tze shouted to Susan's ear, above the thunder. “Feeding time into the spinners themselves! Theoretically possible, but we never managed to do it! ”

“Do you know what he's actually going to do? ” Susan shouted back.

“Yeah! Snatch the extra time out of bits of history that are too far ahead and shove it into the bits that have fallen behind! ”

“Sounds simple! ”

“Just one problem! ”

“What? ”

“Can't do it! Losses! ” Lu-Tze snapped his fingers, trying to explain time dynamics to a non-initiate. “Friction! Divergence! All sorts of stuff! You can't create time on the spinners, you can only move it around—”

There was a sudden bright blue glow around Lobsang. It flickered over the board, and then snapped across the air to form arcs of light leading to all the Procrastinators. It crawled between the carved symbols and clung to them in a thickening layer, like cotton winding on a reel.

Lu-Tze looked at the whirling light and the shadow within it, almost lost against the glow.

“—at least, ” he added, “until now. ”

The spinners wound up to their working speed and then went faster, under the lash of the light. It poured across the cavern in a solid, unending stream.

Flames licked around the bottom of the nearest cylinder. The base was glowing, and the noise from its stone bearing was joining a rising, cavern-filling scream of stone in distress.

Lu-Tze shook his head. “You, Susan, buckets of water from the wells! You, Miss Unity, you follow her with the grease pails! ”

“And what are you going to do? ” said Susan, grabbing two buckets.

“I'm going to worry like hell and that's not an easy job, believe me! ”

Steam built up then, and there was a smell of burning butter. There was no time for anything but to run from the wells to the nearest spitting bearing and back, and there was not enough time even for that.

The spinners turned back and forth. There was no need for the jumpers now. The crystal rods that had survived the crash hung uselessly from their hooks as time arced overhead from one Procrastinator to another, showing up as red or blue glows in the air. It was a sight to frighten the knoptas off any trained spinnerdriver, Lu-Tze knew. It looked like a cascade running wild, but there was some control in there, some huge pattern being woven.

Bearings squealed. Butter bubbled. The bases of some spinners were smoking. But things held. They're being held, Lu-Tze thought. He looked up at the registers. The boards slammed back and forth, sending lines of red or blue or bare wood across the wall of the cavern. There was a pall of white smoke around them as their own wooden bearings gently charred.

Past and future were streaming through the air. The sweeper could feel them.

On the podium, Lobsang was wrapped in the glow. The bobbins were not being moved any more. What was going on now was on some other level, which didn't need the intervention of crude mechanisms.

Lion tamer, Lu-Tze thought. He starts off needing chairs and whips but one day, if he's really good, he can go into the cage and do the show using nothing more than eye and voice. But only if he's really good, and you'll know if he's really good because he'll come out of the cage again—

He stopped his prowl along the thundering lines because there was a change in the sound.

One of the biggest spinners was slowing down. It stopped as Lu-Tze watched, and didn't start again.

Lu-Tze raced around the cavern until he found Susan and Unity. Three more spinners stopped before he reached them.

“He's doing it! He's doing it! Come away! ” he shouted. With a jolt that shook the floor, another spinner stopped.

The three ran towards the end of the cavern, where the smaller Procrastinators were still whirling, but the halt was already speeding down the rows. Spinner after spinner slammed to a standstill, the domino effect overtaking the humans until, when they reached the little chalk spinners, they were in time to see the last ones rattle gently to a halt.

There was silence, except for the sizzle of grease and the click of cooling rock.

“Is it all over? ” said Unity, wiping the sweat from her face with her dress and leaving a trail of sequins.

Lu-Tze and Susan looked at the glow at the other end of the hall, and then at one another.

“I… don't… think… so, ” said Susan.

Lu-Tze nodded. “I think it's just—” he began.

Bars of green light leapt from spinner to spinner and hung in the air as rigid as steel. They flickered on and off between the columns, filling the air with thunderclaps. Patterns of switching snapped back and forth across the cavern.

The tempo increased. The thunderclaps became one long roll of overpowering sound. The bars brightened, expanded and then the air was all one brilliant light

Which vanished. The sound ceased so abruptly that the silence clanged.

The trio got to their feet, slowly.

“What was that? ” said Unity.

“I think he made some changes, ” said Lu-Tze.

The spinners were silent. The air was hot. Smoke and steam filled the roof of the cavern.

Then, responding to the routine of humanity's eternal wrestle with time, the spinners began to pick up the load.

It came gently, like a breeze. And the spinners took the strain, from the smallest to the largest, settling once again into their gentle, ponderous pirouette.

“Perfect, ” said Lu-Tze. “Almost as good as it was, I'll bet. ”

“Only almost? ” said Susan, wiping the butter off her face.

“Well, he's partly human, ” said the sweeper. They turned to the podium, and it was empty. Susan was not surprised. He'd be weak now, of course. Of course, something like this would take it out of anyone. Of course, he'd need to rest. Of course.

“He's gone, ” she said flatly.

“Who knows? ” said Lu-Tze. “For is it not written, ‘You never know what's going to turn up’? ”

The reassuring rumble of the Procrastinators now filled the cave. Lu-Tze could feel the time flows in the air. It was invigorating, like the smell of the sea. I ought to spend more time down here, he thought.

“He broke history and repaired it, ” said Susan. “Cause and cure. That makes no sense! ”

“Not in four dimensions, ” said Unity. “In eighteen, it's all perfectly clear. ”

“And now, may I suggest you ladies leave by the back way? ” said Lu-Tze. “People are going to come running down here in a minute and it's all going to get very excitable. Probably best if you aren't around. ”

“What will you do? ” said Susan.

“Lie, ” said Lu-Tze happily. “It's amazing how often that works. ”

–ick

Susan and Unity stepped out of a door in the rock and took the path that led through rhododendron groves out of the valley. The sun was touching the horizon and the air was warm, although there were snowfields quite close by.

At the lip of the valley the water from the stream plunged over a cliff in a fall so long that it landed as a sort of rain. Susan pulled herself onto a rock, and settled down to wait.

“It is a long way to Ankh-Morpork, ” said Unity.

“We'll have a lift, ” said Susan. The first stars were already coming out.

“The stars are very pretty, ” said Unity.

“Do you really think so? ”

“I am learning to. Humans believe they are. ”

“The thing is… I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, ‘What about me? ’ and you can just hear the universe replying, ‘Well, what about you? ’”

Unity appeared to consider this.

“Well, what about you? ” she said.

Susan sighed. “Exactly. ” She sighed again. “You can't think about just one person while you're saving the world. You have to be a cold, calculating bastard. ”

“That sounded as if you were quoting somebody, ” said Unity. “Who said that? ”

“Some total idiot, ” said Susan. She tried to think of other things, and added, “We didn't get all of them. There's still Auditors down there somewhere. ”

“That will not matter, ” said Unity calmly. “Look at the sun. ”

“Well? ”

“It is setting. ”

“And…? ”

“That means time is flowing through the world. The body exacts its toll Susan. Soon my—my former colleagues, bewildered and fleeing, will become tired. They will have to sleep. ”

“I follow you, but—”

“I am insane. I know this. But the first time it happened to me I found such horror that I cannot express it. Can you imagine what it is like? For an intellect a billion years old, in a body which is an ape on the back of a rat that grew out of a lizard? Can you imagine what comes out of the dark places, uncontrolled? ”

“What are you telling me? ”

“They will die in their dreams. ”

Susan thought about this. Millions and millions of years of thinking precise, logical thoughts—and then humanity's murky past drops all its terrors on you in one go. She could almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

“But you didn't, ” she said.

“No. I think I must be… different. It is a terrible thing to be different, Susan. Did you have romantic hopes in connection with the boy? ”

The question came out of nowhere and there was no defence. Unity's face showed nothing but a kind of nervous concern.

“No, ” said Susan. Unfortunately, Unity did not seem to have mastered some of the subtleties of human conversation, such as when a tone of voice means “Stop this line of inquiry right now or may huge rats eat you by day and by night. ”

“I confess to strange feelings regarding his… self that was the clockmaker. Sometimes, when he smiled, he was normal. I wanted to help him, because he seemed so closed in and sad. ”

“You don't have to confess to things like that, ” Susan snapped. “How do you even know the word romantic, anyway? ” she added.

“I found some books of poetry. ” Unity actually looked embarrassed.

“Really? I've never trusted it, ” said Susan. Huge, giant, hungry rats.

“I found it most curious. How can words on a page have a power like that? There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime, ” said Unity sadly.

Susan felt a stab of guilt. It wasn't Unity's fault, after all. People learn things as they grow up, things that never get written down. And Unity had never grown up.

“What are you going to do now? ” she said.

“I do have a rather human ambition, ” said Unity.

“Well, if I can help in any way…”

It was, she realized later, one of those phrases like “How are you? ” People were supposed to understand that it wasn't a real question. But Unity hadn't learned that, either.

“Thank you. You can indeed help. ”

“Uh, fine, if—”

“I wish to die. ”

And, galloping out of the sunset, some riders were approaching.

Tick

Small fires burned in the rubble, brightening the night. Most of the houses had been completely destroyed, although, Soto considered, the word “shredded” was much more accurate.

He was sitting by the side of the street, watching carefully, with his begging bowl in front of him. There were of course far more interesting and complex ways for a History Monk to avoid being noticed, but he'd adopted the begging bowl method ever since Lu-Tze had shown him that people never see anyone who wants them to give him money.

He'd watched the rescuers drag the bodies out of the house. Initially they'd thought that one of them had been hideously mutilated in the explosion, until it had sat up and explained that it was an Igor and in very good shape for an Igor, at that. The other he'd recognized as Dr Hopkins of the Guild of Clockmakers, who was miraculously unharmed.

Soto did not believe in miracles, however. He was also suspicious about the fact that the ruined house was full of oranges, that Dr Hopkins was babbling about getting sunlight out of them, and that his sparkling little abacus was telling him that something enormous had happened.

He decided to make a report and see what the boys at Oi Dong said.

Soto picked up the bowl and set off through the network of alleys back to his base. He didn't bother much about concealment now; Lu-Tze's time in the city had been a process of accelerated education for many citizens of the lurking variety. The people of Ankh-Morpork knew all about Rule One.

At least, they had known until now. Three figures lurched out of the dark, and one of them swung a heavy cleaver which would have connected with Soto's head if he hadn't ducked.

He was used to this sort of thing, of course. There was always the occasional slow learner, but they presented no peril that a neat slice couldn't handle.

He straightened up, ready to ease his way out of there, and a thick lock of black hair fell onto his shoulder, slithered down his robe and flopped onto the ground. It made barely a sound, but the expression on his face as Soto looked down and then up at his attackers made them draw back.

He could see, through the blood-red rage, that they all wore stained grey clothes and looked even crazier than the usual alley people; they looked like accountants gone mad.

One of them reached out towards the begging bowl.

Everyone has a conditional clause in their life, some little unspoken addition to the rules like “except when I really need to” or “unless no one is looking” or, indeed, “unless the first one was nougat”. Soto had for centuries embraced a belief in the sanctity of all life and the ultimate uselessness of violence, but his personal conditional clause was “but not the hair. No one touches the hair, okay? ”

Even so, everyone ought to have a chance.

The attackers recoiled as he threw the bowl against the wall, where the hidden blades buried themselves in the woodwork.

Then it began to tick.

Solo ran back down the alley, skidded round the corner and then shouted, “Duck! ”

Unfortunately for the Auditors, alas, he was just a tiny, tiny fraction of a second too late—

Tick

Lu-Tze was in his Garden of Five Surprises when the air sparkled and fragmented and swirled into a shape in front of him.

He looked up from his ministrations to the yodelling stick insect, who'd been off its food.

Lobsang stood on the path. The boy was wearing a black robe dotted with stars, which blew and rattled its rags around him on this windless morning as if he was standing in the centre of a gale. Which, Lu-Tze supposed, he more or less was.

“Back again, wonder boy? ” said the sweeper.

“In a way, I never leave, ” said Lobsang. “Things have gone well with you? ”

“Don't you know? ”

“I could. But part of me has to do this the traditional way. ”

“Well, the abbot is mighty suspicious and there's some amazing rumours flying around the place. I didn't say much. What do I know about anything? I'm just a sweeper. ”

With that, Lu-Tze turned his attention to the sick insect. He'd counted to four under his breath before Lobsang said: “Please? I have to know. I believe that the fifth surprise is you. Am I right? ”

Lu-Tze cocked his head. A low noise, which he'd heard for so long he no longer consciously heard it, had changed its tone.

“The spinners are all winding out, ” he said. “They know you're here, lad. ”

“I shall not be here long, Sweeper. Please? ”

“You just want to know my little surprise? ”

“Yes. I know nearly everything else, ” said Lobsang.

“But you are Time. What I tell you in the future you'll know now, right? ”

“But I'm partly human. I want to stay partly human. That means doings things the right way round. Please? ”

Lu-Tze sighed and looked for a while down the avenue of cherry blossom.

“When the pupil can beat the master, there is nothing the master cannot tell him, ” he said. “Remember? ”

“Yes. ”

“Very well. The Iron Dojo should be free. ”

Lobsang looked surprised. “Uh, the Iron Dojo… Isn't that the one with all the sharp spikes in the walls? ”

“And the ceiling, yes. The one that's like being inside a giant porcupine turned inside out. ”

Lobsang looked horrified. “But that's not for practice! The rules say—”

“That's the one, ” said Lu-Tze. “And I say we use it. ”

“Oh. ”

“Good. No argument, ” said Lu-Tze. “This way, lad. ”

Blossom cascaded from the trees as they passed. They entered the monastery, and took the same route they'd taken once before. This brought them into the Hall of the Mandala, and the sand rose like a dog welcoming its master and spiralled in the air far below Lobsang's sandals. Lu-Tze heard the shouts of the attendants behind him.

News like this spread throughout the valley like ink in water. Hundreds of monks, apprentices and sweepers were trailing the pair as they crossed the inner courtyards, like the tail of a comet.

Above them, all the time, petals of cherry blossom fell like snow. At last Lu-Tze reached the high, round metal door of the Iron Dojo. The clasp of the door was fifteen feet up. No one who did not belong there was supposed to open the door of the dojo.

The sweeper nodded at his former apprentice.

“You do it, ” he said. “I can't. ”

Lobsang glanced at him, and then looked up at the high clasp. Then he pressed a hand against the iron.

Rust spread under his fingers. Red stains spread out across the ancient metal. The door began to creak, and then to crumble. Lu-Tze prodded it with an experimental finger, and a slab of biscuit-strong metal fell out and collapsed on the flagstones.

“Very impress—” he began. A squeaky rubber elephant bounced off his head.

“Bikkit! ”

The crowd parted. The chief acolyte ran forward, carrying the abbot.

“What is the wanna bikkit BIKKIT meaning of this? Who is wozza funny man this person, Sweeper? The spinners are dancing in their hall! ”

Lu-Tze bowed.

“He is Time, Reverend One, as you have suspected, ” he said. Still bent in the bow, he looked up and sideways at Lobsang.

“Bow! ” he hissed.

Lobsang looked puzzled. “I should bow even now? ” he said.

“Bow, you little stonga, or I shall teach you such discipline! Show deserved respect! You are still my apprentice until I give you leave! ”

Shocked, Lobsang bowed.

“And why do you visit us in our timeless valley? ” said the abbot.

“Tell the abbot! ” Lu-Tze snapped.

“I… I wish to learn the Fifth Surprise, ” said Lobsang.

“—Reverend One—” said Lu-Tze.

“—Reverend One, ” Lobsang finished.

“You visit us just to learn of our clever sweeper's fancies? ” said the abbot.

“Yes, er, Reverend One. ”

“Of all the things Time could be doing, you wish to see an old man's trick? Bikkit! ”

“Yes, Reverend One. ” The monks stared at Lobsang. His robe still fluttered this way and that in the teeth of the intangible gale, the stars glinting when they caught the light.

The abbot smiled a cherubic smile. “So should we all, ” he said. “None of us has ever seen it, I believe. None of us has ever been able to wheedle it out of him. But… this is the Iron Dojo. It has rules! Two may walk in, but only one can walk out! This is no practice dojo! Wanna 'lephant! Do you understand? ”

“But I don't want—” Lobsang began, and the sweeper jerked an elbow into his ribs.

“You say ‘Yes, Reverend One, ’” he growled.

“But I never intended—”

This time the back of his head was slapped.

“This is no time to step back! ” Lu-Tze said. “You're too late, wonder boy! ” He nodded to the abbot. “My apprentice understands, Reverend One. ”

“Your apprentice, Sweeper? ”

“Oh, yes, Reverend One, ” said Lu-Tze. “My apprentice. Until I say otherwise. ”

“Really? Bikkit! Then he may enter. You too, Lu-Tze. ”

“But I only meant to—” Lobsang protested.

“Inside! ” Lu-Tze roared. “Will you shame me? Shall people think I have taught you nothing? ”

The inside of the Iron Dojo was, indeed, a darkened dome full of spikes. They were needle thin and there were tens of thousands of them covering the nightmare walls.

“Who would build something like this? ” said Lobsang, looking up at the glistening points that covered even the ceiling.

“It teaches the virtues of stealth and discipline, ” said Lu-Tze, cracking his knuckles. “Impetuosity and speed can be as dangerous to the attacker as to the attacked, as perhaps you will learn. One condition: we are all human here? Agreed? ”

“Of course, Sweeper. We are all human here. ”

“And shall we agree: no tricks? ”

“No tricks, ” said Lobsang. “But—”

“Are we fighting, or are we talking? ”

“But, look, if only one can walk out, that means I'll have to kill you—” Lobsang began.

“Or vice versa, of course, ” said Lu-Tze. “That is the rule, yes. Shall we get on? ”

“But I didn't know that! ”

“In life, as in breakfast cereal, it is always best to read the instructions on the box, ” said Lu-Tze. “This is the Iron Dojo, wonder boy! ” He stepped back and bowed.

Lobsang shrugged, and bowed in return.

Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then went through a series of simple moves, limbering up. Lobsang winced to hear the crackle of joints.

Around Lobsang there was a series of snapping noises, and for a moment he thought of the old sweeper's bones. But tiny hatches all over the curved wall were swinging open. He could hear whispers as people jostled for position. And by the sound of it, there were a great many people.

He extended his hands, and let himself rise gently in the air.

“I thought we said no tricks? ” said Lu-Tze.

“Yes, Sweeper, ” said Lobsang, poised in mid-air. “And then I thought: never forget Rule One. ”

“Aha! Well done. You've learned something! ”

Lobsang drifted closer. “You cannot believe the things that I have seen since last I saw you, ” he said. “Words cannot describe them. I have seen worlds nesting within worlds, like those dolls they carve in Uberwald. I have heard the music of the years. I know more than I can ever understand. But I do not know the Fifth Surprise. It is a trick, a conundrum… a test. ”

“Everything is a test, ” said Lu-Tze.

“Then show me the Fifth Surprise and I promise not to harm you. ”

“You promise not to harm me? ”

“I promise not to harm you, ” Lobsang repeated solemnly.

“Fine. You only had to ask, ” said Lu-Tze, smiling broadly.

“What? I asked before and you refused! ”

“You only had to ask at the right time, wonder boy. ”

“And is it the right time now? ”

“It is written, ‘There's no time like the present, ’” said Lu-Tze. “Behold, the Fifth Surprise! ”

He reached into his robe.

Lobsang floated closer.

The sweeper produced a cheap carnival mask. It was one of those that consisted of a fake pair of spectacles, glued above a big pink nose, and finished with a heavy black moustache.

He put it on and waggled his ears once or twice.

“Boo, ” he said.

“What? ” said Lobsang, bewildered.

“Boo, ” Lu-Tze repeated. “I never said it was a particularly imaginative surprise, did I? ”

He waggled his ears again, and then waggled his eyebrows.

“Good, eh? ” he said, and grinned.

Lobsang laughed. Lu-Tze grinned wider. Lobsang laughed louder, and lowered himself to the mat.

The blows came out of nowhere. They caught him in the stomach, on the back of his neck, in the small of his back and swept his legs from under him. He landed on his stomach, with Lu-Tze pinning him down in the Straddle of the Fish. The only way to get out of that was to dislocate your own shoulders.

There was a sort of collective sigh from the hidden watchers.

“Deja-fu! ”

“What? ” said Lobsang, into the mat. “You said none of the monks knew deja-fu! ”

“I never taught it to 'em, that's why! ” said Lu-Tze. “Promise not to harm me, would you? Thank you so very much! Submit? ”

“You never told me you knew it! ” Lu-Tze's knees, rammed into the secret pressure points, were turning Lobsang's arms into powerless lumps of flesh.

“I may be old but I'm not daft! ” Lu-Tze shouted. “You don't think I'd give away a trick like that, do you? ”

“That's not fair—”

Lu-Tze leaned down until his mouth was an inch from Lobsang's ear.

“Didn't say ‘fair’ on the box, lad. But you can win, you know. You could turn me into dust, just like that. How could I stop Time? ”

“I can't do that! ”

“You mean you won't, and we both know it. Submit? ”

Lobsang could feel parts of his body trying to shut themselves down. His shoulders were on fire. I can discarnate, he thought. Yes, I can, I could turn him to dust with a thought. And lose. I'd walk out and he'd be dead and I'd have lost.

“Nothing to worry about, lad, ” said Lu-Tze, calmly now. “You just forgot Rule Nineteen. Submit? ”

“Rule Nineteen? ” said Lobsang, almost pushing himself off the mat until terrible pain forced him down again. “What the hell is Rule Nineteen? Yes, yes, submit, submit! ”

“‘Remember Never to Forget Rule One’, ” said Lu-Tze. He released his grip. “And always ask yourself: how come it was created in the first place, eh? ”

Lu-Tze got to his feet, and went on: “But you have performed well, all things considered, and therefore as your master I have no hesitation in recommending you for the yellow robe. Besides, ” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “everyone peeking in here has seen me beat Time and that's the sort of thing that'll look really good on my curriculum vitae, if you catch my meaning. Def'nitely give the o'l Rule One a fillip. Let me give you a hand up. ”

He reached down.

Lobsang was about to take the hand when he hesitated. Lu-Tze grinned again, and gently pulled him upright.

“But only one of us can leave, Sweeper, ” said Lobsang, rubbing his shoulders.

“Really? ” said Lu-Tze. “But playing the game changes the rules. I say the hell with it. ”

The remains of the door were pushed aside by the hands of many monks. There was the sound of someone being hit with a rubber yak. “Bikkit! ”

“…and the abbot, I believe, is ready to present you with the robe, ” said Lu-Tze. “Don't make any comment if he dribbles on it, please. ”

They left the dojo and, followed now by every soul in Oi Dong, headed for the long terrace.

It was, Lu-Tze reminisced later, an unusual ceremony. The abbot did not appear overawed, because babies generally aren't and will throw up over anyone. Besides, Lobsang might have been master of the gulfs of time, but the abbot was master of the valley, and therefore respect was a line that travelled in both directions.

But the handing over of the robe had caused a difficult moment.

Lobsang had refused it. It had been left to the chief acolyte to ask why, while the whispered current of surprise washed through the crowd.

“I am not worthy, sir. ”

“Lu-Tze has declared that you have completed your apprenticeship, my lo—Lobsang Ludd. ”

Lobsang bowed. “Then I will take the broom and the robe of a sweeper, sir. ”

This time the current was a tsunami. It crashed over the audience. Heads turned. There were gasps of shock, and one or two nervous laughs. And, from the lines of sweepers who had been allowed to pause in their tasks to watch the event, there was a watchful, intent silence.

The chief acolyte licked his suddenly dehydrated lips.

“But… but… you are the incarnation of Time…”

“In this valley, sir, ” said Lobsang firmly, “I am as worthy as a sweeper. ”

The chief acolyte looked around, but there was no help anywhere. The other senior members of the monastery had no wish to share in the huge pink cloud of embarrassment. The abbot merely blew bubbles, and grinned the inward knowing grin of all babies everywhere.

“Do we have any… uh… do we present sweepers with… do we by any chance…? ” the acolyte mumbled.

Lu-Tze stepped up behind him. “Can I be of any help, your acolytility? ” he said, with a sort of mad keen subservience that was quite alien to his normal attitude.

“Lu-Tze? Ah…er…yes…er…”

“I could fetch a nearly new robe, sir, and the lad can have my old broom if you'll sign a chitty for me to get a new one from stores, sir, ” said Lu-Tze, sweating helpfulness at every pore.

The chief acolyte, drowning well out of his depth, seized on this like a passing lifebelt.

“Oh, would you be so good, Lu-Tze? It is so kind of you…”

Lu-Tze vanished in a blur of helpful speed that, once again, quite surprised those who thought they knew him.

He reappeared with his broom and a robe made white and thin with frequent bashings on the stones by the river. He solemnly handed them over to the chief acolyte.

“Er, uh, thank you, er, is there a special ceremony for the, for the, er, for… er…” the man burbled.

“Very simple one, sir, ” said Lu-Tze, still radiating eagerness. “Wording is quite loose, sir, but generally we say, ‘This is your robe, look after it, it belongs to the monastery, ’ sir, and then with the broom we say something like ‘Here's your broom, treat it well, it is your friend, you will be fined if you lose it, remember they do not grow on trees, ’ sir. ”

“Er, um, uh, ” the chief acolyte murmured. “And does the abbot—? ”

“Oh no, the abbot would not make a presentation to a sweeper, ” said Lobsang quickly.

“Lu-Tze, who does the, er, does, uh, does the…”

“It's generally done by a senior sweeper, your acolytility. ”

“Oh? And, er, by some happy chance, er, do you happen to be—? ”

Lu-Tze bobbed a bow. “Oh, yes, sir. ”

To the chief acolyte, still floundering in the flood of the turning tide, this was as welcome as the imminent prospect of dry land. He beamed manically.

“I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, then, if you would be so kind, er, then, er, to—”

“Happy to, sir. ” Lu-Tze swung round. “Right now, sir? ”

“Oh, please, yes! ”

“Right you are. Step forward, Lobsang Ludd! ”

“Yes, Sweeper! ”

Lu-Tze held out the worn robe and the elderly broom. “Broom! Robe! Do not lose them, we are not made of money! ” he announced.

“I thank you for them, ” said Lobsang. “I am honoured. ”

Lobsang bowed. Lu-Tze bowed. With their heads close together and at the same height, Lu-Tze hissed, “Very surprising. ”

“Thank you. ”

“Nicely mythic, the whole thing, definitely one for the scrolls, but bordering on smug. Do not try it again. ”

“Right. ”

They both stood up. “And, er, what happens now? ” said the chief acolyte. He was a broken man, and he knew it. Nothing was going to be the same after this.

“Nothing, really, ” said Lu-Tze. “Sweepers get on with sweeping. You take that side, lad, and I'll take this. ”

“But he is Time! ” said the chief acolyte. “The son of Wen! There is so much we have to ask! ”

“There is so much I will not tell, ” said Lobsang, smiling. The abbot leaned forward and dribbled into the chief acolyte's ear.

He gave up. “Of course, it is not up to us to question you, ” he said, backing away.

“No, ” said Lobsang. “It is not. I suggest you all get on with your very important work, because this plaza is going to need all my attention. ”

There were frantic hand signals amongst the senior monks and, gradually, reluctantly, the monastery staff moved away.

“They'll be watching us from every place they can hide, ” mumbled Lu-Tze, when the sweepers were alone.

“Oh, yes, ” said Lobsang.

“So, how are you, then? ”

“Very well. And my mother is happy, and she will retire with my father. ”

“What? A cottage in the country, that sort of thing? ”

“Not quite. Similar, though. ”

There was no sound for a while but the brushing of two brooms. Then Lobsang said, “I'm aware, Lu-Tze, that it is usual for an apprentice to give a small gift or token to his master when he finishes his apprenticeship. ”

“Possibly, ” said Lu-Tze, straightening up. “But I don't need anything. I've got my mat, my bowl and my Way. ”

“Every man has something he desires, ” said Lobsang.

“Hah! Got you there, then, wonder boy. I'm eight hundred years old. I've run through all my desires long ago. ”

“Oh dear. That is a shame. I hoped I could find something. ” Now Lobsang straightened up and swung his broom onto his shoulder.

“In any case, I must leave, ” he said. “There is so much still to do. ”

“I'm sure there is, ” said Lu-Tze. “I'm sure there is. There's the whole stretch under the trees, for one thing. And while we're on the subject, wonder boy, did you let that witch have her broomstick back? ”

Lobsang nodded. “Let us just say… I put things back. It's a lot newer than it was, too. ”

“Hah! ” said Lu-Tze, sweeping up a few more petals. “Just like that. Just like that. So easily does a thief of time repay his debts! ”

Lobsang must have caught the rebuke in the tone. He stared down at his feet. “Well, perhaps not all of them, I admit, ” he said.

“Oh? ” said Lu-Tze, still apparently fascinated by the end of his own broom.

“But when you have to save a world you cannot think of one person, you see, because one person is a part of that world, ” Lobsang went on.

“Really? ” said the sweeper. “You think so? You've been talking to some very strange people, my lad. ”

“But now I have time, ” said Lobsang earnestly. “And I hope she'll understand. ”

“It's amazing what a lady will understand, if you find the right way of putting it, ” said Lu-Tze. “Best of luck, lad. You didn't do so bad, on the whole. And is it not written, ‘There's no time like the present’? ”

Lobsang smiled at him, and vanished.

Lu-Tze went back to his sweeping. After a while, he smiled at a memory. An apprentice gives a gift to the master, eh? As if Lu-Tze could want anything that Time could give him…

And he stopped, and looked up, and laughed out loud. Overhead, swelling as he watched, the cherries were ripening.

Tick

In some place that had not existed before, and only existed now for this very purpose, stood a large, gleaming vat.

“Ten thousand gallons of delicate fondant sugar cream infused with essence of violet and stirred into dark chocolate, ” said Chaos. “There are also strata of hazelnut praline in rich butter cream, and areas of soft caramel for that special touch of delight. ”

SO… YOU'RE SAYING THAT THIS VAT COULD EXIST SOMEWHERE IN A TRULY INFINITE EVERYWHERE AND THEREFORE IT CAN EXIST HERE? said Death.

“Indeed, ” said Chaos.

BUT IT NO LONGER EXISTS IN THE PLACE WHERE IT SHOULD EXIST.

“No. It should, now, exist here. The maths is easy, ” said Chaos.

AH? WELL, MATHS, said Death dismissively. GENERALLY I NEVER GET MUCH FURTHER THAN SUBTRACTION.

“In any case, chocolate is hardly a rare commodity, ” said Chaos. “There are planets covered in the stuff. ”

REALLY?

“Indeed. ”

IT MIGHT BE BEST, said Death, IF NEWS LIKE THAT DID NOT GET ABOUT. He walked back to where Unity was waiting in the darkness.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS, he said.

“What else is there? ” said Unity. “I have betrayed my own kind. And I am hideously insane. I can never be at home anywhere. And staying here would be an agony. ”

She stared into the chocolate abyss. A dusting of sugar sparkled on its surface.

Then she slipped out of her dress. To her amazement she felt embarrassed about doing so, but still drew herself up haughtily.

“Spoon, ” she commanded, and held out her right hand imperiously. Chaos gave a silver ladle a final, theatrical polish and passed it to her.

“Goodbye, ” said Unity. “Do pass on my best wishes to your granddaughter. ”

She walked a few steps back, turned, broke into a run, and took off into a perfect swallow dive.

The chocolate closed over her with barely a sound. Then the two watchers waited until the fat, lazy ripples had died away.

“Now there was a lady with style, ” said Chaos. “What a waste. ”

YES. I THOUGHT SO.

“Well, it's been fun… up to that point, anyway. And now I must be off, ” said Chaos.

YOU'RE CONTINUING WITH THE MILK ROUND?

“People rely on me. ”

Death looked impressed. IT'S GOING TO BE… INTERESTING TO HAVE YOU BACK, he said.

“Yeah. It is, ” said Chaos. “You're not coming? ”

I'M JUST GOING TO WAIT HERE FOR A WHILE.

“Why? ”

JUST IN CASE.

“Ah. ”

YES.

It was some minutes later that Death reached into his robe and pulled out a lifetimer that was small and light enough to have been designed for a doll. He turned round.

“But… I died, ” said the shade of Unity.

YES, said Death. THIS IS THE NEXT PART…

Tick

Emma Robertson sat in the classroom with wrinkled brow, chewing on her pencil. Then, rather slowly, but with the air of one imparting great secrets, she set to work.

She wrote:

“We went to Lanker where there are witches they are kind they grow erbs. We met this which she was very jole and sang us a snog abot a hedghog it had dificut words. Jason try to kick her cat it chase him up a tre. I know a lot about wiches now they do not have warts they do not eat you they are just like your grane except your grane does not know difult words. ”

At her high desk Susan relaxed. There was nothing like a classroom of bent heads. A good teacher used whatever materials there were to hand, and taking the class to visit Mrs Ogg was an education in herself. Two educations.

A classroom going well had its own smell: a hint of pencil shavings, poster paints, long-dead stick insect, glue, and, of course, the faint aroma of Billy.

There had been an uneasy meeting with her grandfather. She'd raged that he hadn't told her things. And he'd said, of course he hadn't. If you told humans what the future held, it wouldn't. That made sense. Of course it made sense. It was good logic. The trouble was that Susan was only mostly logical. And so, now, things were back in that uneasy, rather cool state where they spent most of their time, in the tiny little family that ran on dysfunctionality.

Maybe, she thought, that was a normal family state in any case. When push came to shove—thank you, Mrs Ogg, she'd always remember that phrase now—they'd rely on each other automatically, without a thought. Apart from that, they kept out of one another's way.

She hadn't seen the Death of Rats lately. It was too much to hope that he was dead. In any case, it hadn't slowed him down so far.

That thought made her think about the contents of her desk. Susan was very strict about eating in class and took the view that, if there were rules, then they applied to everyone, even her. Otherwise they were merely tyranny. But rules were there to make you think before you broke them.

There was still half a box of Higgs & Meakins' cheapest assortment tucked in there amongst the books and papers.

Opening the lid carefully and slipping her hand in was easy, and so was the maintenance of a suitably teachery face while she did so. Questing fingers found a chocolate in the nest of empty paper cups, and told her that it was a damn nougat. But she was resolute. Life was tough. Sometimes you got nougat.

Then she briskly picked up the keys and walked to the Stationery Cupboard with what she hoped was the purposeful step of someone about to check on the supply of pencils. After all, you never knew, with pencils. They needed watching.

The door clicked behind her, leaving only the dim light through the transom. She put the chocolate in her mouth and shut her eyes.

A faint, cardboardy sound made her open them. The lids were gently lifting on the boxes of stars.

They spilled out and whirled up into the shadows of the cupboard, brilliant against the darkness, a galaxy in miniature, gently spinning.

Susan watched them for a while, and then said, “All right, you have my full attention, whoever you are. ”

At least, that was what she meant to say. The peculiar stickiness of the nougat caused it to come out as: “Allite, you ot my fo' a'nen'on, oover ooah. ” Damn!

The stars spiralled around her head, and the cupboard's interior darkened into interstellar black.

“If iss is oo, Def o' Raffs—” she began.

“It's me, ” said Lobsang.

Tick

Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.

The End

[1] 1. Except in very small universes

[2] 2. Mostly involving big, big beachballs.

[3] 3. Quite an overrated activity.

[4] 4. An edge witch is one who makes her living on the edges, in that moment when boundary conditions apply—between life and death, light and dark, good and evil and, most dangerously of all, today and tomorrow.

[5] 5. But they still use forks, or, at least, the idea of forks. There may, as the philosopher says, be no spoon, although this begs the question of why there is the idea of soup.

[6] 6. And the story continues: The novice who had protested that it was only the shrine of a sweeper ran away from the temple, the student who said nothing remained a sweeper for the rest of his life; and the student who had seen the inevitable shape of the story went, after much agonizing and several months of meticulous sweeping, to Lu-Tze and knelt and asked to be shown the Right Way. Whereupon the Sweeper took him to the dojo of the Tenth Djim, with its terrible multi-bladed fighting machines and its fearsome serrated weapons such as the clong-clong and the uppsi. The story runs that the Sweeper then opened a cupboard at the back of the dojo and produced a broom and spake thusly: “One hand here and the other here, understand? People never get it right. Use good, even strokes and let the broom do most of the work. Never try to sweep up a big pile, you'll end up sweeping every bit of dust twice. Use your dustpan wisely, and remember: a small brush for the corners. ”

[7] 7. One reason for this was the club food. At his club, a gentleman could find the kind of food he'd got used to at school, like spotted dick, jam roly-poly and that perennial favourite, stodge and custard. Vitamins are eaten by wives.

[8] 8. Which is much harder than seeing things that aren't there. Everyone does that.

[9] 9. This is true. A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking contains no calories.

[10] 10. Not “Did” anything, just “Did”. Some things were Done, and some things were Not Done. And the things that were Done, Igors Did.

[11] 11. Igors were loyal, but they were not stupid. A job was a job. When an employer had no further use for your services, for example because he'd just been staked through the heart by a crowd of angry villagers, it was time to move on before they decided that you ought to be on the next stake. An Igor soon learned a secret way out of any castle and where to stash an overnight bag. In the words of one of the founding Igors: “We belong dead? Excuthe me? Where doeth it thay ‘we’? ”

[12] 12. And it has to be said that there was nothing intrinsically evil about Igors themselves. They just didn't pass judgement on other people. Admittedly, that was because if you worked for werewolves and vampires and people who looked on surgery as modern art rather than science, passing judgement would mean you'd never have time to get anything done.

[13] 13. Every society needs a cry like that, but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is “Remember-the-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-the-Atrocity-That-We're-About-to-Commit-Today! And So On! Hurrah! ”

[14] 14. The yeti of the Ramtops, where the Discworld's magical field is so intense that it is part of the very landscape, are one of the few creatures to utilize control of personal time for genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition—you find out what is going to happen next by allowing it to happen. Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due caution, yet in the comfortable knowledge that should everything go pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and this is the important part, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not now happen because it's not going to be such a damn fool next time. This is not quite the paradox it appears because, after it has taken place, it hasn't happened. All that actually remains is a memory in the yeti's head, which merely turns out to be a remarkably accurate premonition. The little eddies in time caused by all this are just lost in the noise of all the kinks, dips and knots put in time by every other living creature.

[15] 15. But not tasteful.

[16] 16. Teaching small children for any length of time can do this to a vocabulary.

[17] 17. Up to ten dollars a pound, usually.

[18] 18. If you live in a country where the tradition calls for mayonnaise, just don't ask. Just don't.