Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett [11]
The general ad hoc nature of the system’s construction was enhanced by the fact that, as an economy measure, the big iron hot water pipes were lagged with old clothing held on by string. Since some of these items had once been wizards’ apparel, and however hard you scrubbed you could never get all of the spells out, there were sporadic showers of multicoloured sparks and the occasional ping-pong ball.
Despite everything, Nutt felt at home down among the vats. It was worrying; in the high country, people in the street had jeered at him that he’d been made in a vat. Although Brother Oats had told him that this was silly, the gently bubbling tallow called to him. He felt at peace here.
He ran the vats now. Smeems didn’t know, because he hardly ever troubled to come down here. Trev knew, of course, but since Nutt doing his job for him meant that he could spend more time kicking a tin can around on some bit of wasteground he was happy. The opinion of the other dribblers and dippers didn’t really count; if you worked in the vats it meant that, as far as the job market was concerned, you had been still accelerating when you’d hit the bottom of the barrel and had been drilled into the bedrock. It meant that you no longer had enough charisma to be a beggar. It meant that you were on the run from something, possibly the gods themselves, or the demons inside you. It meant that if you dared to look up you would see, high above you, the dregs of society. Best, then, to stay down here in the warm gloom, with enough to eat and no inconvenient encounters and, Nutt added in his head, no beatings.
No, the dippers were no problem. He did his best for them when he could. Life itself had beaten them so hard that they had no strength left to beat up anyone else. That was helpful. When people found out that you were a goblin, all you could expect was trouble.
He remembered what the people in the villages had shouted at him when he was small and the word would be followed by a stone.
Goblin. It was a word with an ox-train-load of baggage. It didn’t matter what you said or did, or made, the train ran right over you. He’d shown them the things he’d built, and the stones had smashed them while the villagers screamed at him like hunting hawks and shouted more words.
That had stopped on the day Pastor Oats rode gently into town, if a bunch of hovels and one street of stamped mud could be called a town, and he had brought…forgiveness. But on that day, no one had wanted to be forgiven.
In the darkness, Concrete the troll, who was so gooned out on Slab, Slice, Sleek and Slump, and who would even snort iron filings if Nutt didn’t stop him, whimpered on his mattress.
Nutt lit a fresh candle and wound up his home-made dribbling aid. It whirred away happily, and made the flame go horizontal. He paid attention to his work. A good dribbler never turned the candle when he dribbled; candles in the wild, as it were, almost never dripped in more than one direction, which was away from the draught. No wonder the wizards liked the ones he made; there was something disconcerting about a candle that appeared to have dribbled in every direction at once. It could put a man off his stroke.*
He worked fast, and was putting