Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett [57]
“He’s been dead for ten years,” she said.
“Er,” said Windle, but the question was already there in his larynx, “I trust Mr. Cake is in good health?”
“It’s okay. Oi speaks to him occasional,” said Mrs. Cake.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Windle.
“All right, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Um, Mrs. Cake? I’m finding it a little confusing. Could you…switch off…your precognition…?”
She nodded.
“Sorry. Oi gets into the habit of leavin’ it on,” she said, “what with there only bein’ me an’ Ludmilla and One-Man-Bucket. He’s a ghost,” she added. “Oi knew you was goin’ to ask that.”
“Yes, I had heard that mediums have native spirit guides,” said Windle.
“’Im? ’E’s not a guide, ’e’s a sort of odd-job ghost,” said Mrs. Cake. “I don’t hold with all that stuff with cards and trumpets and Oo-jar boards, mind you. An’ I think ectoplasm’s disgustin’. Oi won’t have it in the ’ouse. Oi won’t. You can’t get it out of the carpets, you know. Not even with vinegar.”
“My word,” said Windle Poons.
“Or wailin’. I don’t hold with it. Or messin’ around with the supernatural. It’s unnatural, the supernatural. I won’t have it.”
“Um,” said Windle cautiously. “There are those who might think that being a medium is a bit…you know…supernatural?”
“What? What? Nothing supernatural about dead people. Load of nonsense. Everyone dies sooner or later.”
“I do hope so, Mrs. Cake.”
“So what is it you’d be wanting, Mr. Poons? I’m not precognitin’, so you have to tell me.”
“I want to know what’s happening, Mrs. Cake.”
There was a muted thump from under their feet and the faint, happy sound of Schleppel.
“Oh, wow! Rats, too!”
“I went up and tried to tell you wizards,” said Mrs. Cake, primly. “An’ no one listened. I knew they weren’t going to, but I ’ad to try, otherwise I wouldn’t ’ave known.”
“Who did you speak to?”
“The big one with the red dress and a mustache like he’s trying to swaller a cat.”
“Ah. The Archchancellor,” said Windle, positively.
“And there was a huge fat one. Walks like a duck.”
“He does, doesn’t he? That was the Dean,” said Windle.
“They called me their good woman,” said Mrs. Cake. “They told me to be about my business. Don’t see why I should go around helpin’ wizards who call me a good woman when I was only trying to help.”
“I’m afraid wizards don’t often listen,” said Windle. “I never listened for one hundred and thirty years.”
“Why not?”
“In case I heard what rubbish I was saying, I expect. What’s happening, Mrs. Cake? You can tell me. I may be a wizard, but I’m a dead one.”
“Well…”
“Schleppel told me it was all due to life force.”
“It’s buildin’ up, see?”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s more’f it than there should be. You get”—she waved her hands vaguely—“when things are like in a scales only not the same on both sides…”
“Imbalance?”
Mrs. Cake, who looked as though she was reading a distant script, nodded.
“One of them things, yeah…see, sometimes it just happens a little bit, and you get ghosts, because the life is not in the body anymore but it hasn’t gone…and you get less of it in the winter, because it sort of drains away, and it comes back in the spring…and some things concentrate it…”
Modo the University gardener hummed a little tune as he wheeled the strange trolley into his private little area between the Library and the High Energy Magic* building, with a load of weeds bound for composthood.
There seemed to be a lot of excitement around at the moment. It was certainly interesting, working with all these wizards.
Teamwork, that’s what it was. They looked after the cosmic balance, the universal harmonies and the dimensional equilibriums, and he saw to it that the aphids stayed off the roses.
There was a metallic tinkle. He peered over the top of the heap of weeds.
“Another one?”
A gleaming metal wire basket on little wheels sat on the path.
Maybe the wizards had bought it for him? The first one was quite