Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett [74]
“Yo!” shouted the Dean. Raw magic smacked into the grinding tangle of metal. It rained wheels.
“Eat hot thaumaturgy, you m—”, the Dean began.
“Don’t swear! Don’t swear!” shouted Ridcully above the noise. He tried to swat a Silly Bugger that was orbiting his hat. “There’s no telling what it might turn into!”
“Bother!” screamed the Dean.
“It’s no good. We might as well be trying to hold back the sea,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I vote we head back to the University and pick up some really tough spells.”
“Good idea,” said Ridcully. He looked up at the advancing wall of twisted wire. “Any idea how?” he said.
“Yo! Scallywags!” said the Dean. He aimed his staff again. It made a sad little noise that, if it was written down, could only be spelled pfffft. A feeble spark fell off the end and onto the cobbles.
Windle Poons slammed another book shut. The Librarian winced.
“Nothing! Volcanoes, tidal waves, wrath of gods, meddling wizards…I don’t want to know how other cities have been killed, I want to know how they ended…”
The Librarian stacked another pile of books on the reading desk. Another plus about being dead, Windle was finding, was an ability with languages. He could see the sense in the words without knowing the actual meaning. Being dead wasn’t like falling asleep after all. It was like waking up.
He glanced across the Library to where Lupine was having his paw bandaged.
“Librarian?” he said softly.
“Oook?”
“You’ve changed species in your time…what would you do if, for the sake of argument, you found a couple of people who…well, suppose there was a wolf that changed into a wolfman at the full moon, and a woman that changed into a wolfwoman at the full moon…you know, approaching the same shape but from opposite directions? And they’d met. What do you tell them? Do you let them sort it out for themselves?”
“Oook,” said the Librarian, instantly.
“It’s tempting.”
“Oook.”
“Mrs. Cake wouldn’t like it, though.”
“Eeek oook.”
“You’re right. You could have put it a little less coarsely, but you’re right. Everyone has to sort things out for themselves.”
He sighed, and turned the page. His eyes widened.
“The city of Kahn Li,” he said. “Ever heard of it? What’s this book? ‘Stripfettle’s Believe-It-Or-Not Grimoire.’ Says here…‘little carts…none knew from where they came…of such great use, men were employed to herd them and bring them into the city…of a sudden, like unto a rush of creatures…men followed them and behold, there was a new city outside the walls, a city as of merchants’ booths wherein the carts ran’…”
He turned the page.
“It seems to say…”
I still haven’t understood it properly, he told himself. One-Man-Bucket thinks we’re talking about the breeding of cities. But that doesn’t feel right.
A city is alive. Supposing you were a great slow giant, like a Counting Pine, and looked down at a city? You’d see buildings grow; you’d see attackers driven off; you’d see fires put out. You’d see the city was alive but you wouldn’t see people, because they’d move too fast. The life of a city, the thing that drives it, isn’t some sort of mysterious force. The life of a city is people.
He turned the pages absently, not really looking…
So we have the cities—big, sedentary creatures, growing from one spot and hardly moving at all for thousands of years. They breed by sending out people to colonize new land. They themselves just lie there. They’re alive, but only in the same way that a jellyfish is alive. Or a fairly