Hogfather - Terry Pratchett [75]
Albert strained his ears and thought he heard, just on the edge of hearing, a voice whisper sadly.
HO. HO. HO.
There was a party going on. It seemed to occupy the entire building.
“Certainly very energetic young men,” said the oh god carefully, stepping over a wet towel. “Are women allowed in here?”
“No,” said Susan. She stepped through a wall into the superintendent’s office.
A group of young men went past, manhandling a barrel of beer.
“You’ll feel bad about it in the morning,” said Bilious. “Strong drink is a mocker, you know.”
They set it up on a table and knocked out the bung.
“Someone’s going to have to be sick after all that,” he said, raising his voice above the hubbub. “I hope you realize that. You think it’s clever, do you, reducing yourself to the level of the beasts of the field…er…or the level they’d sink to if they drank, I mean.”
They moved away, leaving one mug of beer by the barrel.
The oh god glanced at it, and picked it up and sniffed at it.
“Ugh.”
Susan stepped out of the wall.
“He hasn’t been back for—What’re you doing?”
“I thought I’d see what beer tastes like,” said the oh god guiltily.
“You don’t know what beer tastes like?”
“Not on the way down, no. It’s…quite different by the time it gets to me,” he said sourly. He took another sip, and then a longer one. “I can’t see what all the fuss is about,” he added.
He tipped up the empty pot.
“I suppose it comes out of this tap here,” he said. “You know, for once in my existence I’d like to get drunk.”
“Aren’t you always?” said Susan, who wasn’t really paying attention.
“No. I’ve always been drunk. I’m sure I explained.”
“He’s been gone a couple of days,” said Susan. “That’s odd. And he didn’t say where he was going. The last night he was here was the night he was on Violet’s list. But he paid for his room for the week, and I’ve got the number.”
“And the key?” said the oh god.
“What a strange idea.”
Mr. Lilywhite’s room was small. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was how neat it was, how carefully the little bed had been made, how well the floor had been swept. It was hard to imagine anyone living in it, but there were a few signs. On the simple table by the bed was a small, rather crude portrait of a bulldog in a wig, although on closer inspection it might have been a woman. This tentative hypothesis was borne out by the inscription “To a Good Boy, from his Mother” on the back.
A book lay next to it. Susan wondered what kind of reading someone with Mr. Banjo’s background would buy.
It turned out to be a book of six pages, one of those that were supposed to enthrall children with the magic of the printed word by pointing out that they could See Spot Run.
There were no more than ten words on each page and yet, carefully placed between pages four and five, was a bookmark.
She turned back to the cover. The book was called Happy Tales. There was a blue sky and trees and a couple of impossibly pink children playing with a jolly-looking dog.
It looked as though it had been read frequently, if slowly.
And that was it.
A dead end.
No. Perhaps not…
On the floor by the bed, as if it had been accidentally dropped, was a small, silvery half-dollar piece.
Susan picked it up and tossed it idly. She looked the oh god up and down. He was swilling a mouthful of beer from cheek to cheek and looking thoughtfully at the ceiling.
She wondered about his likelihood of survival incarnate in Ankh-Morpork at Hogswatch, especially if the cure wore off. After all, the only purpose of his existence was to have a headache and throw up. There were not a great many postgraduate jobs for which these were the main qualifications.
“Tell me,” she said. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”
“I don’t know. What’s a horse?”
In the depths of the library of Death, a squeaking noise.
It was not loud, but it appeared louder than mere decibels would suggest in the furtive, scribbling hush of the books.
Everyone, it is said, has a book inside them. In this library, everyone was inside a book.
The squeaking got louder. It had a rhythmical, circular