Reaper Man Read Free Page B

indistinctly.
    “Well, that’s nice,” said the Bursar. “It gives you the rest of the evening, er, free.”
    Windle rummaged in the dreadful recesses of his wheelchair, a graveyard for old cushions, dog-eared books and ancient, half-sucked sweets. He flourished a small green-covered book and pushed it into the Bursar’s hands.
    The Bursar turned it over. Scrawled on the cover were the words: Windle Poons Hys Dyary. Apiece of bacon rind marked today’s date.
    Under Things to Do, a crabbed hand had written: Die.
    The Bursar couldn’t stop himself from turning the page.
    Yes. Under tomorrow’s date, Things to Do: Get Born.
    His gaze slid sideways to a small table at the side of the room. Despite the fact that the room was quite crowded, there was an area of clear floor around the table, as if it had some kind of personal space that no one was about to invade.
    There had been special instructions in the Going Away ceremony concerning the table. It had to have a black cloth, with a few magic sigils embroidered on it. It had a plate, containing a selection of the better canapés. It had a glass of wine. After considerable discussion among the wizards, a funny paper hat had been added as well.
    They all had an expectant look.
    The Bursar took out his watch and flicked open the lid.
    It was one of the new-fangled pocket watches, with hands. They pointed to a quarter past nine. He shook it. A small hatch opened under the 12 and a very small demon poked its head out and said, “Knock it off, guv’nor, I’m pedalling as fast as I can.”
    He closed the watch again and looked around desperately. No one else seemed anxious to come too near Windle Poons. The Bursar felt it was up to him to make polite conversation. He surveyed possible topics. They all presented problems.
    Windle Poons helped him out.
    “I’m thinking of coming back as a woman,” he said conversationally.
    The Bursar opened and shut his mouth a few times.
    “I’m looking forward to it,” Poons went on. “I think it might, mm, be jolly good fun.”
    The Bursar riffled desperately through his limited repertoire of small talk relating to women. He leaned down to Windle’s gnarled ear.
    “Isn’t there rather a lot of,” he struck out aimlessly, “washing things? And making beds and cookery and all that sort of thing?”
    “Not in the kind of, mm, life I have in mind,” said Windle firmly.
    The Bursar shut his mouth. The Archchancellor banged on a table with a spoon.
    “Brothers—” he began, when there was something approaching silence. This prompted a loud and ragged chorus of cheering.
    “—As you all know we are here tonight to mark the, ah, retirement ”—nervous laughter—“of our old friend and colleague Windle Poons. You know, seeing old Windle sitting here tonight puts me in mind, as luck would have it, of the story of the cow with three wooden legs. It appears that there was this cow, and—”
    The Bursar let his mind wander. He knew the story. The Archchancellor always mucked up the punch line, and in any case he had other things on his mind.
    He kept looking back at the little table.
    The Bursar was a kindly if nervous soul, and quite enjoyed his job. Apart from anything else, no other wizard wanted it. Lots of wizards wanted to be Archchancellor, for example, or the head of one of the eight orders of magic, but practically no wizards wanted to spend lots of time in an office shuffling bits of paper and doing sums. All the paperwork of the University tended to accumulate in the Bursar’s office, which meant that he went to bed tired at nights but at least slept soundly and didn’t have to check very hard for unexpected scorpions in his nightshirt.
    Killing off a wizard of a higher grade was a recognized way of getting advancement in the orders. However, the only person likely to want to kill the Bursar was someone else who derived a quiet pleasure from columns of numbers, all neatly arranged, and people like that don’t often go