A sort of a Zoo Tale
Returning to the Ankh-Morpork City Zoo, by a roundabout route
The strange fifth chapter. In which things may be resolved.
Johanna reviewed some routine paperwork. This included the observation report submitted by student wizard Marcus Porringer. It was a short report, in which words like "blue", "glooping" and "inert" featured largely. It concluded on the words:
Oystters remain Blue. Definitely not Occult.
She frowned. If any of her students turned in work like this, there would be a red-ink reply written at the bottom along the lines of "D-. See Me!" Ah well. She'd have a quiet word later with Bruce Berwin. At least it was Saturday morning. While it was a school half-day, she'd taken care to book leave after performing her monthly Watch duty as a Special. Another teacher was covering her class this morning. Just as well; the night with the Watch had left her feeling tired. Deciding there was nothing more to do about the oyster situation, it might be best to wait and see what happened next. And in the meantime, to snatch a little sleep. Dealing with eldritch occult manifestations would be best done with a clearer head after a few hours rest.
Only act when you hear the screams, as Vetinari once said.
She wrote a short note to be clacksed to the University, addressed to Professor Ponder Stibbons. (1) After detailing a duty keeper to send it off, she curled up in the most comfortable chair, tucked her legs underneath her, wrapped herself in her cloak, and allowed herself to drift off. The distant noises of the Zoo faded away with her consciousness.
The caretaker at the Koom Valley Memorial Halls was not surprised to see the Watch turn up in force. He opened up to Vimes and his search party and adopted a hangdog face, hunching himself deep in his brown coat.
"Official warrant to search." Vimes said. He brandished the paper. The old caretaker nodded, resignedly.
"It's those buggers from the Lancre School Of Morris-Dancing, isn't it?" he grumbled. "Allus knew they'd get into trouble, bloody maniacs."
"No, it's..."
"The Campaign For Real Custard, then. Meet here Wednesdays. They wuz talkin' about takin' direct action. Raidin' the factory that makes powdered custard, and doin' it over."
Vimes smiled. Over-helpful people when you did a bust could be a bonus.
"Still not it." he said. He observed Captain Carrot diligently making notes.
"Next Thursday night, they said. Would have been Wednesday, but young Nigel promised his mum he'd take her to his granny's. Not them, then? Bet it's the Ankh-Morpork Goat Fancy, then. Peculiar buggers for goats, they are..."
Vimes shook his head.
"Or is it them bloody monks, rent an upstairs room? I only let 'em in when they said they don't do animal sacrifice. Blood's a bugger to get off the lino, see. But between you and me, they're weird buggers!"
Vimes grinned.
"Show me." he said. Cheery, got the iconograph? Good."
"STI-BBBONNNS!"
The bellow echoed around the Library. The Librarian winced, and uncovered one ear to reprovingly point to the notice that said "SILENCE, PLEASE!" (2)
Mustrum Ridcully ignored him. His attention was elsewhere.
"And nobody thought to, you know, actually tell me about this?" he said, in a deceptively quiet, calm, voice. "Eldritch manifestation of possibly rogue magic in the University library? Not a big matter, not worth disturbin' the Arch-Chancellor's peace of mind over?"
A group of Wizards, Students and Librarian shuffled uncertainly and tried not to meet his gaze. Blue light flickered and aurora'd about them.
Ponder Stibbons raced to the call.
"You wanted me, sir?" he asked, breathless.
Ridcully scowled and pointed upwards. Ponder followed his finger. The source of the mysterious blue light was up there in the dome, flickering around the eight regularly spaced statues.
"Ideas, Stibbons?" Ridcully asked, with ominously exaggerated patience. "No hurry. Take yer time."
Ponder gulped. He looked upward for clues. He noted one of the statues, but only one, was wreathed in an electric-blue nimbus. Auroric sheets of blue were dancing and flickering from it to the other seven. Occasionally a lightning-flash of blue shot back to the blue halo, and periodically a blue bolt linked two or more of the others. It was as if they were talking to each other. The seven statues not wreathed in blue light appeared to have a certain expectancy about them, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
"Quite pretty, though." a wizard remarked. It sounded like the Dean of Pentacles.
"Could we bottle it?" asked the Senior Wrangler. "It'd save a lot of candles to light this place."
"The Seven-Ay Graces." Ridcully said. "Not too active in this city. It's the other (four times two) buggers who have this place nailed down."
"We don't have any statues of them, do we?" Recent Runes asked, nervously.
"I seem to recall we've got them somewhere." Ridcully remarked. "Caravati originals, too. Then again, nobody needs 'em on display as a constant reminder of what they represent. Not around here. One of me predecessors had 'em moved down to a cellar somewhere."
Ridcully paused and scowled.
"Stibbons? At some point, lad, look out the other nine-minus-one, will you? Should be an inventory of art assets in the Dean's office. I'm getting' a feelin' here. If one lot are suddenly getting' frisky, it's a fair bet the others are, too."
"Yes, sir." Ponder said, watching the statues. He remembered going up to the gallery with Johanna. Had they stirred something up? The dust on the walkway had been quite thick. He, Johanna and the Librarian had probably been the first people to go up there in years.
He looked again. The centre of the disturbance appeared to be the one with the vague, unfocused, expression and the parsnips. As far as he could tell, the attention of the other seven appeared to be focused on her. He tried to recall... one of the two forgotten ones. Not Tubso.
"Bissonomy." he said, out loud.
"What about her, lad?" Ridcully said.
"She's the focus, Arch-Chancellor. Whatever's going on is centred on Bissonomy."
Ridcully nodded to the Librarian. "You run the library. Find out, would you?"
The Librarian knuckled off with an "ook!"
Ponder explained to Ridcully about the strange business at the Zoo, Vetinari's gnomic comment to Johanna, and her guided tour of the Shouting Gallery. He did not add that they were still baffled.
"There's no obvious link, sir. But it all seems connected."
"And the Librarian gave her a copy of Chaffinch." Ridcully said. "He usually finds the right book when we need it. Better find out if she's read it, lad, don't you think? Put yer heads together. Reminds me of something I read as a student. I really hope it's magic. The other thing involves me brother, and you know what the bloody Priests are like for demarcation."
And then a Bledlow walked in, frowned uncertainly at the light display, and handed over Johanna's clacks message. As the Bledlow beat a hasty retreat, Ponder read it and passed it over to Ridcully.
"Keep things here monitored." he said. "Evacuate the library, just to be on the safe side. Round up a couple of Wizards we can afford to lose if things go wrong, and get 'em to keep watch."
The librarian knuckled back with a second copy of Chaffinch.
"Oook, ook, OOOK!" he said, urgently. A hairy simian finger was pointing to the chapter on the Six Plus Two Graces. Ridcully and Ponder read it quickly. Then the Arch-Chancellor slammed the book closed.
"It'll happen at the Zoo." Ridcully said, decisively. "This is just a light show. Sonn et lumy air, and all that. Runes, Wrangler, Pentacles. You're with us. Get a fast coach. Move!"
And in one of the lower, maximum-security, cellars of the Library, red light flickered and shifted in an oily, greasy, sort of way between eight dusty long-neglected statues. Every quality has its opposite. Every anthropomorphic personality has an opposite and equal pole. And another Eight were stirring, as if in response to activity higher up...
Vimes, Carrot and the designated search team were led to an upper floor of the Koom Valley Memorial Halls. The elderly caretaker fumbled with a bunch of keys. Vimes allowed this; he could have had a troll kick the door in, but he believed in policing by co-operation. Besides, the old man had said those loony monks were probably off out, paradin' the streets and drummin' up converts. Vimes believed this. In a city like Ankh-Morpork, any religion, however strange, would attract converts. Street patrols would be watching, anyway.
"Ye Gods!" Vimes said, shaking his head. The assembly room had been turned into a bizarre temple, with drapings, wall-hangings and an altar at one end. It also smelt of seafood. Old seafood.
"Them bloody buggers said there wouldn't be any animal sacrifice!" the old caretaker said, indignantly. "They said nothin' about fish! The place bloody well stinks.."
"We'll take it from here, Mr Scrottins." Carrot said, ushering him out. "Thank you for your co-operation."
Vimes moved down the room. The usual folding chairs had been laid out in orderly rows facing the altar. He shook his head again.
"I don't know. It's at times like this that we really need a priest on the strength. Somebody who knows what he's looking at. We've recruited at least two of every other bugger, including Assassins. And there are Clown specials!"
"We do have a Watch chaplain, sir. Two, in fact. Mr Bashfullson looks after the Dwarfs, as you know, and the Reverend Lamister volunteered his services to the Watch as a whole..."
"Not Lamister. He's an..."
"A well-meaning publicly-minded citizen who selflessly volunteered his professional services?" Carrot said, hurriedly.
Vimes nodded.
"That's what I said, Carrot. A complete berk with no idea. Shame our grag's out of town at the moment. I could use his insight."
Officers were searching the hall, in the usual methodical no-hurry way.
"Victor, what do you make of all this?" Vimes asked.
Detective-Sergeant Victor Tugelbend, one of those misfits who'd drifted through several false starts and finally returned to the City only to join the Watch (3), was studying the altar and the wall-hangings. So far the only Watch wizard, he had brought his professional skills to what was an attractive largely indoor job with no heavy lifting. As a detective, he was considered pretty good.
"We've got two symbols here." Tugelbend said. "They recur a lot, although they're not the only ones. For instance, this one over the altar, the tongue-in-the-triangle, that's a mystery. But the other two are clearly symbolic. If you recall, sir, the one we arrested, Fartmeister Carter, tried to paint his coat with mystic symbols. He didn't make a very good job of it, I have to say. But now I've seen what he was trying to copy... this one on the left is the normal ankh. You see it takes the form of a cross, but with the upright above the cross-bar replaced with a looped circle."
"Yes, and?" Vimes said.
"It's an ancient Djelibeybian symbol. It represents eternal life and perpetual rebirth. The loop symbolises the flow of the soul back into the cross, the soul eternally reborn back into the world."
Vimes nodded.
"A lot of religions use it. It's not exactly copyright."
"Public domain icon, sir. But the one over here.."
"The one that reminds me of a backwards question mark, like that punctuation mark the Toledans use at the start of a question?"
"Inversion, sir." said Tugelbend. He wondered whether to elaborate it by referring to Professor Cocklemann's lectures in Semiotics for Magic-users, but decided Vimes was not in the mood for anything intellectual.
"Magical symbols are shorthand for complex involved concepts. Inverting a symbol reverses its meaning. This also holds for symbols adopted by religions. Here, you see the ankh has been turned upside down and reversed. The loop has also been broken. If the ankh means eternal life and the circle of rebirth, then reversing it and breaking the loop means... death and destruction, sir. Entropy. Decay with the passage of time. Something stuck in a bad place. It's used in the rite of Ashe-Kent'e, that summons and binds Death."(4)
"So these buggers are invoking Death and destruction?" Vimes demanded.
Tugelbend had once read a symbolic code completely backwards and reversed its meaning. (5) He shook his head.
"Only if you read the two symbols in the conventional way, from left to right. We can't assume that. It could be they're trying to resurrect something out of death, or a death-like state, to return it to the world. Put that tongue-in-the-triangle thing in between the two, and I'd guess that refers to a spoken ritual of some kind that transforms and changes. But it all depends on what order you read the sequence."
"What about these things on the altar? Who sacrifices bloody clams to a God? Or mussels? And..." he held up a bunch of withered elderly root vegetables. "Parsnips? Is there such a thing as a God of Parsnips? I mean, it's the wrong time of year for a Harvest Festival!"
"A Goddess, sir." Tugelbend corrected him. "In Chaffinch's Mythology, there's a strange reference to a Goddess of Parsnips, Bissonomy."
Tugelbend would have said more, but one of the other searching officers was calling for Vimes' attention.
"Sir? There's a lot of money in this chest. And valuables."
A bit of strictly unofficial lock-picking had opened a strongbox. Vimes and Carrot looked down at a large amount of bank-notes and some interesting looking jewellery.
"I'll get this checked against theft reports, sir." Carrot said. "Maybe follow through the serial numbers on the bank-notes and see if they're listed as hot."
"Do that, Carrot... oh my. Is this a membership list?"
Vimes and Tugelbend scanned down the scroll.
"One or two Thieves' Guild members." Tugelbend remarked. "And this name, Maurice Calliman. Unlicenced thief. Didn't we book him a year or two ago for working that doorstop evangelism scam?"
"You knock on a door proclaiming to be delivering the infallible word of Om." Vimes said. "If somebody answers, one of the missionaries keeps the attention of the householder. The other asks if the householder will display Omnian charity and allow him to use the privvy. Instead he tours the house and nicks things. Cash, jewellery. Who'd suspect a Gods-botherer? And if nobody answers, it's a great cover for casing joints at leisure so you can come back after dark and exploit that window with the dodgy catch. Is that what these buggers are up to?"
"Well, we can pull people in now. We've got evidence to book them." Carrot remarked.
"I don't think it's just theft." Tugelbend said. "There are people here who genuinely believe. In something. And I doubt Carter was using it as a cover for thieving. He's not that subtle. So something else is going on here. Sir, I can taste tin in the air. Something involving magic or the supernatural is going on here."
Maybe a couple of opportunist thieves saw a chance and signed on." Vimes mused. "But this weird religion. Can we get a handle on this?"
The search continued.
Members of the Cult of the Blue Oyster had been arriving at the Zoo in twos and threes. Being only human, and Ankh-Morpork citizens determined to get their fifty pence worth, they were making their unhurried and generally unremarked way around the exhibits. Their entrance tickets paid for by Brother Bouchard – otherwise many would not have been able to pay four dollars a week for daily attendance – they were making the most of it before they Convened around Her, the venerandum. Other Zoo visitors, sensing the possibility of unwelcome evangelism, were giving them a wide berth. Only Detective-Sergeant Gerbilac and Lance-Constable Speaker, of the Cable Street Particulars, were covertly paying attention. Posing as a married couple enjoying a day off, they went un-noticed in the crowd.
Several Zoo golems were also keeping watch. Keepers Shtetl and Bubkis were also noting the growing number of robed and cowled monks.
"Shall We Inform Miss Smith-Rhodes?" Bubkis asked.
"No. She Was Out All Night With The Watch. Allow Her To Rest, For Now. There Will Be A Moment, But Not Yet."
"Right. We're Back!" A voice said in a cellar underneath the Library. "If They're Eight again, then so are We!"
"Oh, what's the point?" said a gloomy and dejected voice. "It'll all be the same in another thousand years."
"Shut your face, or I'll smash it in, right?" said another voice. "And if she doesn't bloody well stop snoring..."
Vimes looked at the manuscript with distaste. He didn't like religious texts at the best of times. He wished Visit were here. But his most religious constable had been on the night shift last night, and anyway, his interpretation of any religion that was not Omnian was tinged with a lot of editorial content.
"So the Goddess Bissonomy was turned into a herd of oysters." he said, deciphering the portentious text with Tugelbend's help. "or a school. Or a shoal. Or whatever."
"Originally one of the Graces, or Virtues." Tugelbend said. "Elevated to Godhood by marriage to Blind Io. The other Gods resented this, so nobody on Dunmanifestin complained too much when she was returned to the world. Not alive, not dead. But with the sensory and intellectual abilities of a large shellfish."
Vimes recalled the previous evening. Johanna's information.
"And these people think that returning her to the world will somehow renew it and usher in a Golden Age." he said, as the pieces fitted together. "A Goddess. Who will undoubtedly be pissed off at a thousand or more years of inconvenience..."
"And looking to play catch-up." Tugelbend added.
Vimes was already running for the door.
Carrot, finish up here, would you? Seal the crime scene and leave a guard. We're going to the Zoo, people! Code Twenty-Three! (6)"
The monks were inexorably drifting down towards the Nocturnium. And the night-aquariums. Bubkis turned to Shtetl.
"I Believe That Now we Should Alert Miss Smith-Rhodes." the golem said. "I Sense Magic Will Be Involved."
Brother Bouchard gathered his flock around the Blessed Oyster Tank. He felt a sense of exultation. Now was the time! She would Arise! He put up a silent prayer for forgiveness for the way the Order had raised funds. Signing up several Thieves to do the fund-raising, no questions asked, squire, had been unethical. But all would be forgiven if it resulted in Her return. The ends justified the means, and a growing number of believers, visiting Her daily at fifty pence each, was not cheap. And those tightwads at the Zoo adamantly refused to give a group discount... a defrocked priest of the Church of Offler, Bouchard had been to seminary and trained assiduously for the priesthood. He knew how to hold a congregation. He knew the ropes. He also resented the Offlerians for excommunicating him for those little irregularities over money, and for the additions to the incense in the thurible that had made a whole church share a Rapture. He knew his associate, Brother Perlman, had never made it as far as priest; but the hopeless dreamer had unearthed all the clues as to the nature of Our Lady Bissonomy and the importance of oysters in the scheme of things. He'd written the liturgy, the hymnal, and codified the Gospel, after all.
And now it was about to happen...
"Are all here present?" he asked. He wasn't surprised the only absentee was the hopeless Brother Suck Bharma. He was also relieved. Carter had been a big amiable embarrassment, but nobody had the heart to throw him out: it would have been like kicking a puppy.
"Brothers, in true belief and faith in the goddess Bissonomy, let us begin the ritual. In the words of her prophet, Saint Desdinova, we stand at the place where the four winds meet, where the sum of the whole is greater than the parts..."
Johanna Smith-Rhodes was awoken by three things happening more or less simultaneously. However tired you are, it is hard to remain asleep when a Golem throws the door open.
And a commotion was beginning at the cash turnstile not far away from the Zoo Director's office. It had overtones of wizards objecting to having to pay fifty pence each to get in when the supernatural status quo of the Disc was at risk. She could clearly hear Ridcully remonstrating with Miss Hargreaves at the kiosk, who was quite rightly sticking to "no pay, no entry".
She sighed, stamped life back into her feet, and straightened her hat.
And then the Watch arrived. In force. She could hear Sam Vimes demanding entry on Watch business.
"Miss Smith-Rhodes. I Fear There Is A Disturbance. You Must Attend."
"I'll be right with you, Mr Bubkis."
She walked outside, feeling fragile from too little sleep and a sudden awakening, to wrangle Wizards and Watchmen, the Lore and the Law. She had a notion as to what the disturbance was.
The chanting and ceremony continued in the underground Hall. Some people had run away from it; others were crowded at a safe distance, watching the show. If anything, the blue radiance in the oyster tank had intensified by several orders of magnitude. Doctor Bruce Berwin elbowed his way to the front, half-dragging the reluctant student wizard, Marcus Porringer, who was dead on his feet and wishing fervently that he was tucked up in his bed in Weatherwax Terrace, his Hall of Residence.
"And your report said nothing significant was happening?" Berwin growled at him. He took stock. "Famous last flaming words, or what!"
Berwin wondered about intervening. Being a wizard, he wondered what spells would work. But he also tasted magic in the air, the tinny taste and smell. Any spell he cast might react unpredictably with whatever the flaming Ada was going on. Johanna would hunt him down if he wrecked her Zoo...
"Hear them chatter on the tide!" shouted Brother Bouchard, exultantly, above the chant.
Berwin craned forward. Was the water in the tank getting agitated...
"If I say "Duck!" or "Run!" then bloody well listen, OK?" he said to Porringer, who nodded miserably.
"Halt in the name of the Law!" echoed from somewhere behind them.
And:
"This is against the Lore! Bloody well desist!"
And, most frighteningly:
"Just whet the bleddy Hell are you people pleying et?"
Johanna had smoothed over the argument at the gate. She had requested Miss Hargreaves to view the five wizards as consultants brought in by the Watch to advise on a difficult disturbance that might be happening, and that in the circumstances they should not be charged. The Watchmen were of course on official business. We had a Maccalariat on the Zoo strength for a while, she reflected. Even the tigers hid. I put her on the kiosk and... well, nobody got in for free. She left after a while because she couldn't put up with the smells and she found the bonobo chimpanzees to be indecent...
On the way round to the oyster tank, she compared notes with Ponder. Vimes swiftly briefed her on events as he'd seen them.
"All comin' to a head, then." Ridcully remarked. "Hopefully between us we can lance the boil, Sam."
"And nobody gets splashed by what's inside." added Vimes as they made their way down into the dark. All eyes turned to him. "Look, I've stood near Nobby when he does that thing with his boils..."
Cheery Littlebottom led the way. Her eyes were best adjusted for underground movement. But as they went deeper, the blue radiance grew stronger.
"Just like in the Library." Ridcully noted. "Same light, Sam."
And then they heard. And they saw.
"Halt in the name of the Law!" shouted Vimes, running.
"This is against the Lore! Bloody well desist!" shouted Ridcully. His voice boomed and magnified in the tunnel.
Johanna said, in her classroom voice:
"Just whet the bleddy Hell are you people pleying et?"
The circle of cowled monks carried on, disregarding them. Although they closed in and linked arms, with the two senior members in the middle, continuing their chant.
Vimes suddenly realised there was a complete absence of trolls and golems. Damn.
"Try to break that circle. Nick people". He advised his watchmen.
Ridcully levelled his staff threateningly. He spotted Bruce Berwin, who waved his arms frantically.
"Sir? I wouldn't. Random magic in a confined space!"
Ridcully lowered his staff.
"No firing, men!" he called. "Doctor Berwin, what do you suggest?"
"Maybe we should pile in with those Watchmen. They don't seem to be having much luck breaking that circle." Berwin suggested.
It was true. The monks weren't resisting so much as passively obstructing. And shoulder to shoulder with linked arms, if a Watchman tried to grab one, he or she was pulling on all thirty. This was hard for Watchmen to comprehend. If the suspect was offering resistance, the solution was easy: return with fifteen inches of hardwood persuasion. But when they weren't actually fighting as such, just standing there with linked arms... And all the time the chanting went on...
"Something's happening!" Ponder Stibbons shouted.
There was a shimmering in the air. Ridcully forcibly prevented Runes and Pentacles from levelling their staffs and zapping. Even the Watchmen fell back. The watching crowd went "oooh!" in excitement.
The shimmering coalesced into the outlines of a group of women dressed in flowing white robes. Vimes grimaced. Bloody supernatural entities.
As the women took tangible form, there was a dead silence. It was broken by a low voice.
"I saw them last night..."
"Did you." Bruce Berwin said. "Did it not occur to you to put it in your flaming report?"
"Well, I thought I'd dreamt it..."
Berwin shook his head. "Strewth, mate. Have you not learnt by now that when a wizard has a dream, it's likely to be more than a dream? And you didn't report it?"
Johanna gave the student Wizard a long hard look.
"You are Marcus Porringer?" she asked. "Thet wes a bleddy awful report, Mr Porringer!"
"I'll talk to you later, lad." Ridcully said, curtly. He turned to the manifestation. The shortest, fattest and most disgruntled-looking of the women in white stepped forward, arms folded in front of her.
"Well?" she said. "What are you waiting for? You summoned us. Finish the bleeding ritual. Pronto!"
"You heard the lady!" Mustrum Ridcully said, jovially. "Better get on with it, don'cher'think?"
Her foot tapped impatiently on the concrete floor. Brother Bouchard gulped, then resumed the chant. The blue light intensified. There was a castanet-like clicking coming from somewhere, muffled slightly by water and glass. Johanna realised it was made by shells chattering together. The … six... white-robed women clustered forwards to watch. Johanna recognised them from their statues in the University Library. But there should be eight. Which one was missing?
She came from the dark, she came from a dream;
From prison and chains, she arises, Queen;
Born out of the night, called forth into Light..
And then the tank exploded, in slow motion.
Water and fragments of glass cascaded everywhere. The blue light flared to eye-watering proportions. Blinking back the after-images, and waiting while the torrent of water slowed to a steady drip, Johanna thought she could see another white-clad woman standing unsteadily outside the tank. But what was happening over there...
"Biss! Biss, love! You're back!" the little plump one shouted, racing forward. Meanwhile the cowled monks knelt and fervently prayed
"Bissonomy! Great Queen! Lead us!"
Still blinking away after-images, Johanna tried to focus on what was going on directly opposite. Was she the only one to see this? No, Ponder was there, cleaning his glasses and blinking owlishly. This glow was an unhealthy-looking red tinged with magenta. Ponder called "Sir?" in Ridcully's direction. The Arch-Chancellor turned and said
"Ah, yes, lad. I did anticipate this. Equal and opposite, you follow?"
The red glow was resolving itself into the images of another seven classically draped women. Only this seven were robed in red and black. Something about them both repelled and attracted at the same time.
"It's the other team, lad. If the ladies in white are the Virtues, these are the opposition. Red and black. It's their colour scheme. You follow?"
"Just how many damn bloody supernatural manifestations are we going to get round here?" a voice demanded. Johanna recognised Sam Vimes. It was a question she wanted to ask herself.
She watched, as the white-clad Virtues squared up against the red and the black of the Vices.
"Mr Ridcully," she asked, in a low voice. "Whet heppens if they touch? If Humility, for instence, were to make physical contact with Pride. Would they cencel each other out end cease to be?"
"Good question, m'dear." Ridcully said. "It wouldn't hurt to find out. And I don't know if you Assassins get to see, but the fellow with the scythe is here."
Ridcully tipped his hat in the direction of a seemingly empty space. To Johanna, it was like that eerie moment in the life of a pet-owner, where your cats stop what they're doing and all of them stare intently at the same empty spot on the wall. She'd seen lions do this. Six wizards and one student all turned and looked at the same empty spot, with Recent Runes, the oldest, looking distinctly worried.
THANK YOU FOR THE COURTESY, MR RIDCULLY.
Johanna could sense the harmonics of the words, like a bass string throbbing at the edge of hearing, or the first tremor of an earthquake. Even though Death was quite often in the vicinity of an Assassin, members of the Guild preferred, on the whole, not to see him. As seeing him usually meant you'd fouled up the contract.
"Why are you here?" demanded a Virtue who Johanna identified as Diligencia. She levelled her broom threateningly. A spokes-Vice stepped forward.
"We have learned the curse on Bissonomy was to be lifted through human intervention." she said, pausing to run her fingers through her hair. "How do I look, darlings? Am I sounding magisterial enough?"
"Get on with it, Vanity." another Vice said, peevishly.
"Anyway. Now you are Eight again, it restores the status quo. If you manifest to humans, we also have a right to manifest. So... we're here. You may applaud, humans."
The crowd applauded. Vanity took a little bow.
"Eight?" said another Vice. "I can only count seven of you. Even counting Bissonomy."
"Do you know." Diligence said, "I can only count seven of you?"
Then both teams broke into separate huddles.
"Where the Hell's Fortitude?"
"Up above, I think. Playing with her pussies... stop sniggering, Tubso!"
"OK, who's missing?"
"Sloth. Wouldn't you just coco? She said she'd catch us up."
"Anger? Go and fetch her, would you? Thanks."
There was a long embarrassed pause. Charity brought out a packet of cigarettes and handed them around.
"Don't mind if I do, thanks." said Greed, taking the packet.
"Errr..." Charity said, meaningfully. The packet was reluctantly handed back.
"I could covet one of those." Envy said.
There was a disturbance at the back of the watching crowd. It turned out to be the missing Virtue, Fortitude. The fact she was escorted by a mature male lion was not lost on the people watching.
"It's OK, he's an old sweetie, really." Fortitude said, cheerfully. "Gentle as a lamb. He'll do anything for me, won't you, sweetie?"
The lion rubbed against her legs as if it was a fond but over-large tabby.
At the same time, a feebly protesting Vice was being dragged in by a scowling Anger.
"Will you come on, you bone idle bitch!"
"Excuse me. Bone idle. Sloth. Says it on the label. And your point is?"
Johanna shook her head, and walked over to Fortitude.
"When you're finished with thet lion, I'd quite like to hev it beck." she said, in a voice that held hints of Teatime Prize.
"Beautiful, isn't he?" Fortitude said, scratching him behind the ear. Johanna sighed. Chaka Khan was the alpha male in the Zoo's pride, a big, bad-tempered male with an attitude problem. She noted a couple of Zoo golems had followed at a sensible distance. Good; they could catch and restrain if Fortitude lost interest or dematerialised, leaving a notoriously moody lion loose outside his enclosure. Just like she did last night. Ah well, for the moment he was happy. Wasn't Fortitude often depicted as taming a lion? She was on the Caroc card with one...(7)
Johanna remembered she was dealing with a Demigoddess. She forced herself to be diplomatic, although the words "Teatime Prize For Inhumation Of A Supernatural Entity" were forming at the back of her mind. And not in a theoretical sense.
Meanwhile, Ridcully and the wizards were in a watchful huddle.
"Anyone got any ideas, you men?" he asked.
"We're caught in a stand-off. Between two equally powerful blocs of supernatural entities. Who are squaring up for a fight. Er." said the Wrangler.
"Isn't this sort of thing your brother's job?" asked the Dean of Pentacles. "Looks like religion to me, Mustrum. You know what the Priests are like for demarcation. Futile to hang on here, nothing we can do to help, and all that."
"I don't know about you chaps, but I'm starting to feel distinctly peckish." said Recent Runes. "If we were to set off now, we could make it back to the university in time for Early Lunch. With a good long nap afterwards."
There was a consensus of agreement. Ponder Stibbons, who was also beginning to feel as if he could murder a five-course lunch with cheeseboard afterwards, forced himself to think objectively. He saw the hugely obese Vice was watching them and grinning. He realised that he never had much more than a hurried sandwich for lunch. That, if he remembered. And he wondered about getting Johanna into her office, just the two of them, and... it was a warming, seductive, thought...
Ridcully growled, with more than the usual degree of irritation. It broke the spell for Ponder.
"Don't you see?" he shouted. "These are the Vices! They're getting to us! Block them out! Think like wizards!"
Ridcully shook his head.
"You're right, lad." he said, anger fading. "They're getting in where we're weakest. Try not to think food, men."
"A real shame Henry isn't with you." Gluttony said. "I have such fun with Henry. He's so susceptible!"
An impossibly beautiful Vice smiled at Ponder in a way that made him very uncomfortable. He looked away, reddening. The other wizards looked at him.
"I won't ask, lad." Ridcully said, kindly. "Wrangler, stop thinkin' of Mrs Whitlow, and kindly get back to the matter in hand, if you'd be so kind!"
Meanwhile, Sam Vimes appeared unaffected by anything in the psychic atmosphere. Anger looked at him, then scowled and shook her head.
"I can't get anywhere near him." she complained to Greed. "He's got protection from somewhere. It absorbs anything I throw and turns it. Makes it work for him instead of against him. Gods, that makes me so angry..."
Greed patted her arm sympathetically.
"I know how you feel, Ira. I've tried to get him to consider taking bribes. You just can't get anywhere near. Bloody Dwarfish mystical entities."
And the monks of the Blue Oyster knelt and worshipped their Goddess. But something was wrong... as Bouchard and Perlman led the chant of
Guide us! Lead us! Save us!
the Virtue Tubso was getting more and more alarmed.
Bissonomy was indeed a tall, stately, handsome woman, fit to be the consort of the Great God. But something was wrong. She looked vacant, absent, not entirely there. Her mouth opened and closed rhythmically. Her eyes were unfocused. She swayed as if in a breeze.
"Biss? Biss, love? Say something!" Tubso urged her, with increasing alarm. The other Virtues crowded round, concerned.
"Quick, get her something to drink!" urged Patience.
"I'm sure it's only temporary and she'll get back to normal soon..." said Hope.
Diligence found a member of the public who'd thought to bring a Thaumos flask(9). "You don't mind? Thank you so much!" She effortlessly floated back through the makeshift Watch cordon that was holding back the crowd who'd stayed to watch, die-hard Ankh-Morporkians who had not been scared away by lion or supernatural entities.
"Shut those bloody monks up? Can't think for all this chanting..." said Chastity.
Diligence poured a cup of tea from the flask. She held it to Bissonomy's lips. Some flowed into her mouth, but did not go down. The restored virtue appeared to have forgotten how to swallow. It was as if her tongue would absorb the life-giving nutrients flowing over it from outsdie the Shell...
Sam Vimes laughed. He clapped Brother Bouchard on the back.
"Some New Age!" he said. "You know, I suspect your Goddess has been an oyster for so long she's forgotten how to be human!"
"Shape dictates form." agreed Mustrum Ridcully. "Like witches and Borrowing. You follow? A witch Borrows another form, she stays in it for too long, she forgets she's human and the borrowed form takes over. It's had more practice, d'y'see? I bet what you have there is an oyster with a bloody odd dream about bein' human! Or a humanoid entity that's dreamin' of bein' an oyster!"
Brother Bouchard stood, eyes staring wildly, body rigid. A red flush suffused him. Anger flowed through him, pure and elemental.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!"
The crowd of Monks parted as a hitherto un-noticed Vice, with a haggard face and sunken eyes in large black circles, sidled up to him. Her robes were a washed-out charcoal grey. She patted Bouchard on the back with a clammy unpleasant hand.
"It all comes to nothing in the end. You'll see." said Despair. "You might as well not try. It's all so... futile!"
Bouchard slumped. His body jerked. And then he fell.
BROTHER ALBERT BOUCHARD?
"Yes."
DO NOT BE AFRAID.
"I... have no fear."
YOU HAVE CEASED TO BE AS THEY ARE. TAKE MY HAND.
"Just let me say goodbye." Bouchard said, looking back for an instant. Death whistled. The white horse Binky trotted forward. After a while it flew away. The tigers in their enclosure looked curiously on as a large white horse burst through the ground and soared into the sky. Then they got on with their business, wondering why the humans hadn't noticed.
"We'd better get her out of here." Diligence said, with some sadness. "Hopefully she'll come into her right mind at some point."
"And then it's up to Dunmanifestin, and it's clobberin' time!" Tubso said, with some venom.
"You get to go to Dunmanifestin?" Envy said. "You lucky cows! What's it like?"
"We've got a time-share apartment." Charity said. "We all get to use it one week out of eight. What are your arrangements?"
Envy looked smug.
"We each get our own luxury suite in Hell." she replied. "Fully en suite, no waiting, no sharing."
"I'm on the wrong bloody team." Charity said, enviously.
"We could try a job-swap, I suppose." Envy said, charitably.
And Sam Vimes and the Watch rounded up thirty dispirited monks for processing. Vetinari, supported by Hughnon Ridcully, would later rule the Cult of the Blue Oyster to be illegal and a danger to the City.
"What happens now, sir?" Ponder Stibbons asked, as the Watch led a column of arrestees away.
"It's all windin' down, lad. Bit of a damp squib, really. We'll probably never know what Virtue Bissonomy represented. Shame, that. They'll take her away somewhere, look after her, arrange round-the-clock nursin'. Maybe she'll carry on thinkin' she's an oyster in human shape. Maybe she'll snap out of it and remember, and then she'll give Blind Io a good thumpin'. Love to see that!" Ridcully chuckled. Who knows? oh... and Johanna's got a bit of business to sort out... can't see Anger anywhere. Wonder where she went?"
Envy had in fact whispered something in the ear of her sister Anger. Who had scowled and rematerialised elsewhere in the Zoo to pick up her totem animal, so as not to be disadvantaged in the presence of her opposite quality Fortitude.
"Right." she said. "now I've got your full attention. You're coming with me, my lad." There was a splashing noise and then...
There was a brief octarine flash in the air.
"Flamin' Ada!" shouted Doctor Bruce Berwin, as a thirty-foot Djelibeybian river crocodile appeared from nowhere. It looked disorientated for a moment, then realised it had an unparelleled opportunity to play catch-up. It bellowed a greeting, and ran for Bruce.
Anger grinned. Vengeance. A slight avenged with disproportionate force. What was there not to like? This was fun.
As Bruce Berwin somehow leapt, twisted, then landed on the croc's back, seeking to clamp its jaws closed, two Zoo golems raced to assist.
Fortitude shook her head.
"Was that really necessary, Ira?" she inquired.
Anger grinned.
"You get lions." she said. "That bloody Überwaldean engraver couldn't get a dragon right. He drew me with a pet alligator as the next best thing.(8) Besides, all they've got here are swamp dragons. Not good for the image."
Anger drew closer to Fortitude. Johanna, recognising that Berwin and two Golems would deal with the crocodile, focused her attention on Chaka Khan. With alarm, she noticed that the nearer Anger got, the more the lion's natural bloody-mindedness was reasserting itself. And both the available golems were occupied with the crocodile problem.
She stepped forward.
"Thet's close enough, I think." she said, decisively.
Fortitude stepped close to her right, the lion hanging back, but beginning to groom itself at an unspoken command from the Virtue. Anger moved into her right.
"Johanna Famke Smith-Rhodes." Anger said, in a friendly voice. "Red-haired and green-eyed. Like me. An Assassin, trained to kill. Who has indeed inhumed on several occasions for the Guild. A veteran of a war in her own country. Who has killed in battle. Her country's foes called her the Red Death. A woman with anger management problems and a temper she finds hard to control. You are mine, I think."
Johanna felt impatience and irritation welling up inside her. She looked at Ponder Stibbons and wondered why he was such a wimp and a weakling. She could do better, find another more suitable male... and give up that teaching job with damn fool stupid clumsy children...
"Johanna Famke Smith-Rhodes." Fortitude said. "I am also red haired and green eyed. This is not a sign of ungovernable rage. You made a compact with others to become an ethical Assassin. To only take contracts where the client could be regarded as a dead man walking, one who has committed crimes or injustices or things so evil that only a death sentence would fit them. You have learned to control your rage. You fought well and nobly in service of your country. You raised a lion from a helpless cub and made him yours. You show the appropriate loving firmness to other animals. You have changed your inner self and no longer judge others on the basis of skin colour. You love a good man for his qualities of gentleness, intellect and human decency. You are therefore mine."
Johanna felt a warm compassionate sense of love welling up. She thought of Klarenz, her pet lion. She adored Ponder for his gentleness and lack of macho. Strength in the service of love, anger tamed and used productively.
An angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other.
She reached out her hands and simultaneously took the hands of Anger and Fortitude. For an instant, the elemental energies of both surged and flowed through her. She breathed hard and rode the force, mastering it.
Ponder and the wizards saw Johanna wreathed in both red and blue light, playing around her, streaming over her, making her hair stand and wave in the radiance, her body jerking as if shot.
"People created you." she said. "Therefore both of you are part of me. I eccept you both. But I remain human end free to choose!"
Johanna took the two hands and dragged them together with all her force. She clasped together the hands of Fortitude and Anger.
There was a double scream. And both disappeared.
"Oh, bravo, that girl!" Ridcully applauded. The other Virtues and Vices looked at her, dumbstruck.
"Bloody Hell!" said Tubso.
"Assassin..." said Lust.
"Teatime Prize." said Charity.
"I'm out of here." said Greed.
Silence nodded her fervent agreement. There was a shift in reality...
And then only humans were in the exhibition hall.
The residual crowd applauded, uncertainly. Johanna staggered forward. Ponder caught her. She righted herself.
"Mr Shtetl". she said, after a long pause. "When you've dealt with returning thet crocodile to its enclosure. Please clean up the mess here."
She indicated the shattered tank. Which had no trace of oysters in it.
"All these people. Please leave. Now. This space is temporarily closed. Wetch members, please escort them out. Thenk you."
Johanna stepped forward to a puzzled lion. No golems available. She'd have to do this herself. But it shouldn't be a problem... She stroked its mane, something in normal circumstance she would not dream of doing to Chaka Khan. But if she'd guessed right, the effect should last for just long enough...
"Come with me." she said. The lion fell into obedient step, sensing the beautiful red-haired woman it loved and adored.
There will be other golems outside to assist, she thought.
"Ponder, I need to walk Chaka back to the lion enclosure. I won't be long." she said.
Ridcully patted the younger wizard's shoulder.
"I daresay she'll be safe enough. She's absorbed enough Virtue. For now."
"Did she kill them, sir?"
Ridcully shook his head.
"The human race is still going to get angry, lad. And people are still going to be able to bite it back, and refrain from goin' postal. They'll be back, alright. It's too engrained. But I tell you what, when I see Donald Downey next, I'll be tellin' him who to award the Teatime Prize to! Now, you fellows, we're late for lunch."
He paused.
"What did you learn today, young Porringer?"
The student, in a place beyond fear and dismay, shrugged.
"When I'm writing observational notes, sir, leave nothing out."
"Good enough. You'll make a wizard yet. Comin'?"
And the wizards followed the woman and the lion, but at a safe distance.
(1) p_stibbons© uu. ac. am.
(2) The Librarian would have made the point a lot more emphatically to anyone else making noise in his Library. But the Arch-Chancellor counted as Dominant Alpha Male in the simian mind and thus required deference and diplomacy.
(3) Victor Tugelbend's life after the end of "Moving Pictures" is not documented. I have had him return to Ankh-Morpork and join all of life's other misfits in the Watch, in his case as a detective constable in the Cable Street Particulars. Approached to rule on his wizard status, Mustrum Ridcully invoked the "great service to wizardry" clause that saved Rincewind, and awarded him a degree. After all, Tugelbend's knowledge of wizardry does rival that of Eighth Level adepts and he did save the world. Some finessing by Carrot got him into the Watch - "after all, sir, he wasn't officially a wizard when I signed him up. He was a former student who failed all his exams, just an ordinary citizen". Vimes gave up and the Watch got its first Wizard.
(4) Tugelbend is describing the hooked cross symbol, used in Roundworld mysticism to symbolise the god/planet Saturn and the negative entropy brought about by Time (Chronos). It also symbolises lead – a heavy metal – and is possibly best known as the band logo for heavy rock group the Blue Öyster Cult...
(5) Refer to Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. Victor would never make that error again.
(6) Watchmen dread this. A Code Twenty-Three is police shorthand for "serious paranormal disturbance involving Gods, Demons, Random Magic applied With Malice Aforethought, Intrusions from the Dungeon Dimensions, or Other Things With Too Many Tentacles"
(7) The relevant Tarot card depicts Fortitude (Strength) with her attendant lion: the theme is Beast Tamed By Beauty.
(8) German artist Albrecht Dürer did an engraving of Anger with a totem crocodile, intending it to be a counterbalancing opposite to Fortitude's lion: an ignoble river lizard famed for its anger and rapaciousness. Some people wonder if he was gunning for a small dragon.
(9) like a Thermos Flask, only the liquid is kept at the desired temperature by a thermosensitive imp. Another technomantic breakthrough from the boys at the Thaumatalogical park.
References:
LP's: Fire of Unknown Origin (the Blue Öyster Cult) (album cover)
Secret Treaties, Imaginos – for song SubHuman / Blue Öyster Cult
And of course that other obscure Blue Öyster Cult Song...
That's it! finished! And now for the other uncompleted tales... i count six...