More Tales from the Guilds Ch. 08

*****

At the Beggars Guild House, Queen Molly was going over the month's accounts with her treasurer, Twitching Ted Twitchum. All the usual receipts were there, the pennies tossed from citizens and the retainers paid by the wealthy to ensure that their social events wouldn't be invaded by undesirables. Most citizens would understand these and everyone knew about them. However, the largest source of income was rent—rent on high fashion homes in all the best neighborhoods that, through a collection of fronts and shell corporations, the Beggars owned! Now there was a new source of revenue, profits from the secondary financial market run by the Beggars and Bodyguards Surreptitious Bank. The partnership with the Guild of Bodyguards, Bouncers and Last Resort Lenders was proving to be a very good idea, indeed.

"I know this sounds drastic, Molly," Ted began, "but at the rate we're raking in the dough, we're going to run out of investments to put it in. We may, much as I hate to use the phrase, have to actually buy something. Maybe some better meals for the members?"

"We are aware, Ted," she replied, "and it is something we may have to look into. But for the present this is just between you and we. It goes against centuries of custom."

*****

"Librarian?" Missy began hesitantly, "I'm sure you can take me back to where Hastor found me but what if the string isn't there anymore? The boys have been telling me about all the strange things that live in the stacks. What if some kickstool crabs tangled it all up or a Thesaurus rex made a nest out of it. If I can't get back, what do I do?"

The Librarian patted her reassuringly on the hand and raised an admonishing finger.

"Ik."

"Really? You can take me back to Mr. Beindersnip's shop whether we find the string or not?"

"Eek!"

The relief in Missy's voice and on her face was palpable. "Oh, wonderful. The people here are nice but I really want to go home. When can we leave?"

The Librarian winked. "Ook," he said and lead her back to the main rotunda of the Library. Then, taking her hand, he took her to the stacks, stepped behind a shelf, turned a corner and they were at the very door where Missy had entered L-Space. He pulled on the handle and opened the way to the third floor room where the book entitled Døørs had been.

With a sigh of relief, Missy gave the ape a big hug and scampered through the door, reached up and pushed on the book to close the portal and headed downstairs and home.

*****

The next morning, Professor Pelc was pondering an arcane text when he heard someone cough. He looked up and saw a teenager who seemed familiar.

"Miss McGoldrick?"

"Yes, Professor Pelc. I've come back. I no longer have anywhere else to go. Might I have a pot of calming tea?"

Pelc looked at the haunted expression on her face and the bleak hollowness in her eyes. Obviously several years had passed on Roundworld since the day before and equally obviously they had not been pleasant ones for Melissa.

"Yes, I'll send for one at once. But come sit down. And—and you don't need to tell me anything unless you want to. But, why here?"

Missy sat down on the sofa, hugged her sweater around her and began to cry softly. After a very few minutes, Malia once again appeared with a pot of the strange tea and poured the girl a cup which she took with both hands and downed as quickly as the hot liquid would allow. Then she sighed and looked up at Professor Pelc.

"I got back to the right time and the right place and things went well for another couple of years. Then my grandparents died. They weren't all that old but it wasn't really a shock because they had all been in pretty ill health for a while. About six months later my parents were coming home from a party when a lorry came around the bend in front of them on the wrong side of the road. Their car was demolished and both they and the lorry driver were killed. I was fifteen and orphaned with no relatives. That's when the Department for Education stepped in and assigned me to a foster home. It was horrible! My foster parents were abusive but such good actors that when I complained to the DofE, they put the blame on me and the social workers believed them. I took it for about six months but memories of the University and the Library kept haunting me. So, one day I skipped out of school after lunch and went back to Beindersnip's books. By now even Mr. Beindersnip was gone but there were enough customers that the new owner didn't notice when I crept up the stairs to the top room. Døørs was still on the shelf, right where I'd left it. So, I pulled it back and the gate to L-Space opened again. I stood there in the doorway unable to make up my mind when I heard someone coming up the stairs. That's when I decided. Either I'd find my way back here or get eaten by something but I wasn't going back to my foster parents. I just focused on you and the Librarian as hard as I could and when I went down the stacks and turned a corner, here I was."

She poured herself another cup, took another sip and then another and sighed.

"And now that I believe that I'm calm and rational again, I wonder whether it was a good idea. What I am going to do here? Do you have an opening for another maid?"

Pelc was not accustomed to comforting young ladies so he patted her awkwardly on the hand. "It's actually a good thing you came back," he began, "because some of us rather think you belong here. You see, when you first arrived there was great confusion. Your round world has no magic, none of the essential element narrativium. You don't even have any interactive gods. But from the moment he met you, the Librarian swore that you had magical talent. He said he could smell it. Unlikely as that sounds, for as many years as we've known him, wizard and ape, we've never found him to be wrong. So now that you are back, I suspect that we do indeed have a place for you. Welcome to the next graduating class, Miss McGoldrick. Finding a place for you to live will be easy. There are plenty of empty student rooms and Mrs. Whitlow has already done one set of girl's clothing so you will soon be properly dressed. Just one word of warning: this is a dangerous place, as Hastor told you. Whenever you are tasked with a magical action, be very careful. Use only the bare minimum of magic to do the job."

"Why is that?"

"Because magic is easy, far too easy. Unfortunately, it has a warped intelligence of its own and it isn't friendly. Get careless and try to do too much and it will come back and bite you, hard. We lose about one student out of five every year because they get over-confident. It takes years to master the control that allows people like the Archchancellor to warp reality. And even he doesn't do it often. Let caution be your byword."

"I have magical talent? How is that even possible?"

"That, Miss McGoldrick, is a very good question and one that I am sure will occupy years of research and thaumaturgical papers for years to come. But between your ability to navigate L-Space and the Librarian's insistence that you have it, I do not doubt that you will do well here. Now, it's nearly time for second breakfast. Afterwards, I will let Mrs. Whitlow know that you need a uniform and a place to live. Again, welcome to Unseen University, student McGoldrick."

*****

That evening in the Uncommon Room, Ridcully packed his enormous meerschaum pipe, lit it with a #1 fireball and puffed away in silence, pondering. At last, he took it out of his mouth and rested his arm on the chair's arm.

"Yer know, Stibbons, when we concocted Roundworld all we were tryin' t'do was bleed off enough thaumic energy t'avoid blowin' the Disc t'flinders. And once it existed we played around with tryin' t'see what would come of it. As I recall, we were 'xtremely bad at predictin'."

The Vice-chancellor nodded over the long stem of his church warden. "And quite possibly even worse at trying to steer it down any particular path. All that we knew for sure was that Roundworld did what it was going to do whether we wanted it to or not. It's almost as if the place has a mind of its own."

"Ook," the Librarian finished one banana and peeled another.

"Oh, that's just ridiculous," Lladislav Pelc exclaimed, "In order for it to be 'getting revenge', as you put it, there'd have to be purpose behind it. And we all know that there isn't the sign of an active god in the entire place."

"No one said anythin' about an active god, old fellow," Ridcully rumbled, "we're talkin' 'mind of its own'. And if that's the case, I can't help thinkin' that it must have a sense of humor—though prob'ly a strange and subtle one."

"Oh, come now. Do you really believe that Roundworld is aware of us, of the Disc?" Pelc rolled his eyes.

"Ik!"

"Really? Oh, dear . . ."

After that, the Uncommon Room was quiet for a very long time and the smoke grew very thick.

*****

Mrs. Whitlow sat in the parlor of her grace-and-favor apartment next to the exterior wall of the University. She was knitting a scarf because winter would soon arrive and she disliked the idea that one of the wizards might catch cold. The fact that most of the faculty had Doors that opened to warm tropical beaches did not deter her. When winter was in the offing, knitted scarves were required.

"Horace," she said quietly to the Senior Wrangler in the next rocker over, "if hy may be permitted han hopinion . . ."

The Senior Wrangler immediately put down his copy of the Ankh-Morpork Times. "Yes, dear?" Despite having been married to her for more than a year, now, the man was still so enamored of the Head Housekeeper that any excuse to pay close attention to her was a moment to be prized.

"This new student, Miss McGoldrick—there is something hunusual about that young lady. Hy can't put my finger on it precisely, but if, as Mr. Librarian says, she is magical then hy must feel that it isn't hexactly the same sort of magic that the rest of you gentlemen possess."

The Senior Wrangler folded up his Times and set it to one side. "That, beloved, is just about what the Archchancellor and the Librarian suspect. We're going to treat her as a student but more carefully than usual. How does someone from a place lacking in any magic acquire magical talent? It is quite a puzzle. And naturally, Rincewind is positive that something terrible will come of it.

What we find most singular is that she found her way here through L-Space. Even among us here at Unseen, that is quite an accomplishment. Why, the Archchancellor rather resents the fact that the Librarian can wonder around it at his leisure but Ridcully cannot even get in. And here comes this slip of a girl. First she enters L-Space, visits for a day, and then goes home. More importantly, she returns to L-Space after the passage of a few years of her time and not only comes right back when-and-where she left but, almost at once, finds her way to the Rotunda and to Pelc. On the Librarian's suggestion, we're going to have a full thaumaturgical examination of her after Second Breakfast tomorrow. We're telling her it's to best determine what course of study is best for her, which it is. However, more importantly it's an attempt to figure out just what we have to deal with."

Mrs. Whitlow lay down her yarn and needles. "Could Professor Rincewind be right? Might something 'orrid come of it?"

The Senior Wrangler sighed. "Rincewind thinks something terrible is about to happen every waking moment of his day. That since he came back from 4X, nothing has doesn't stop him. I often wonder if we shouldn't start making up an extra batch of dried frog pills for him, just as we do for the Bursar. In any case, I don't think that has anything to do with Miss McGoldrick. I personally believe she is more of an oddity than a menace."

*****

As a monk in reasonably good standing (there was always that issue of his hair) of the fighting monks of the Order of Wen, Marco Soto was pledged to live a simple life, eating meagerly only what kindly passersby left in his begging bowl as he sat by the side of the road. Of course, when that road happened to pass by the kitchen door of All Jolson's, the contents tended to be rather a 'fer piece' from meager. He was just sitting down on a convenient doorstop when another member of the order walked up carrying a broom in one hand and an equally well-filled bowl in the other.

"Sweeper!" Marco exclaimed, "What brings you to Ankh-Morpork? I hope we don't have another temporal cataclysm due. Things have been quite peaceful of late and I've rather enjoyed it."

The older (somewhere between 800 and 6000 years) man shook his head and sat down beside Marco. "I've just been to the University," Lu-Tze nodded at the bowl, "and Ridcully thinks that there's something wrong but he can't put his finger on it."

" 'Wrong' as in?"

"According to the Archchancellor, a few days ago a girl showed up in the restricted shelves. She was unrolling a big ball of string. It turned out that she had somehow wandered into L-Space—from Roundworld."

Marco stopped chewing and then swallowed. "Roundworld. Isn't that the place the University created accidently when they had to dump a huge amount of thaumic energy? People live there?"

Lu-Tze nodded. "Billions of them, apparently. And they somehow manage to get by quite well without the slightest sniff of magic. Anyway, they helped her to go home and about an hour later another version of her, about three years older, showed up and essentially asked for asylum. And they gave it to her because the Librarian swears mighty oaths that he can smell magic on her."

Marco put down his chopsticks. "Now hang on here. Let's back up a bit. You just said that there isn't the slightest sniff of magic on Roundworld but I'm supposed to believe that this—young refugee—has magical talent. That's absurd."

"Welcome to the consensus. And it wouldn't be so bad if she was just one more magically inclined student. After all, two girls have gone through Unseen before and become wizards instead of witches—but she isn't. And therein lies the rub. No one is sure what she is or what she has. All we know is that first, she can get into L-Space. Even Ridcully can't do that. Secondly, after a single try, she returned to L-Space and went immediately to the exact spot and to the exact person she wanted. By instinct! Normally it takes years of study and the Master Librarian level to do that. She's fifteen."

Marco picked up his chopsticks and returned to eating, a distant look in his eyes. The pair ate in silence for a long time until Marco finally swallowed a mouthful and asked, "Sweeper, does that indicate that somehow she can move in time as well across dimensions?"

Lu-Tze shrugged. "I only know one person who might be able to answer that. Getting to him to ask will be the challenge."

*****

Lord Havelock Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, reached over to his inbox and took out the next report. Leaning back in his swivel chair he scanned the title, smiled, and began to read. The Guild of Tailors and Lady's Dressmakers had just received the report from their in-house accountant and were expressing delight. Selling old, delinquent accounts to the Beggars and Bodyguards Surreptitious Bank had been a lifesaver for many of the members. Admittedly, they hadn't really gotten all that they were owed but they had gotten considerably more than nothing. Now, the accountant advised, what they needed to do was develop a two tier price structure. For the customer who paid in cash, the usual rates should apply. However, if the customer airily said, "Just put it on my tab," then a surcharge should kick in which would cover the discount they would suffer in the secondary market. The guildmember would get paid in full, the bank would show a profit and the self-indulgent customer would get a lesson (possibly a painful one) in fair trade. Best of all, in the Patrician's opinion, currency which at present was moldering in the clutches of the rich and (in his opinion) useless would return to circulation. More money in circulation meant more purchases being made and greater prosperity for all. Best of all, it meant more tax revenue received by the city.

"Drumknott," he said quietly, "Send a letter to three guilds. I want to congratulate the Tailors, the Beggars and the Bodyguards on their new relationship. A new day dawns in the commercial life of our city and they are in the forefront. And don't forget a gentle reminder that their new prosperity carries with it the added responsibility of contributing to the overall benefit."

He turned to the map on the wall that showed the planned/completed/under construction routes of the Undertaking. As yet only the cargo tracks were operational but this was a major step. Already getting around the streets of the teeming city was less difficult. In time there would be passenger routes as well, connecting downtown A-M with the Ankh and Morpork terminals. From there surface rail lines would lead to major points of the Disc. It was merely a matter of time—and tax revenue.