It was a slightly put-upon voice, a voice made for complaining in, but at least there was no hint of menace. Rincewind let himself float around.

A little rat-faced man was sitting cross-legged, watching him with vague suspicion. He had a pencil behind one ear.

"Ah. Hallo," said Rincewind. "And where is here, exactly?"

"Nowhere. S'whole point, innit?"

"Nowhere at all?"

"Not yet."

"All right," said Eric. "When is it going to be somewhere?"

"Hard to say," said the little man. "Looking at the pair of you, and taking one thing with another, metabolic rates and that, I'd say that this place is due to become somewhere in, well, give or take a bit, in about five hundred seconds. "He began to unwrap the pack in his lap. "Fancy a sandwich while we're waiting?"

"What? Would I - " At this point Rincewind's stomach, aware that if his brain was allowed to make the running it was in danger of losing the initiative, cut in and prompted him to say, "What sort?"

"Search me. What sort would you like it to be?"

"Sorry?"

"Don't mess about. Just say what sort you'd like it to be."

"Oh?" Rincewind stared at him. "Well, if you've got egg and cress -"

"Let there be egg and cress, sort of thing," said the little man. He reached into the package, and proffered a white triangle to Rincewind.

"Gosh," said Rincewind. "What a coincidence."

"It should be starting any minute now," said the little man. "Over - not that they've got any proper directions sorted out yet, of course, not them - there."

"All I can see is darkness," said Eric.

"No you can't," said the little man, triumphantly. "You're just seeing what there is before the darkness has been installed, sort of thing." He gave the not-yet-darkness a dirty look. "Come on," he said. "Why are we waiting, why-eye are we waiting?"

"Waiting for what?" said Rincewind.

"Everything."

"Everything what?" said Rincewind.

"Everything. Not everything what. Everything, sort of thing."

Astfgl peered through the swirling gas clouds. At least he was in the right place. The whole point about the end of the universe was that you couldn't go past it accidentally.

The last few embers winked out. Time and space collided silently, and collapsed.

Astfgl coughed. It can get so very lonely, when you're twenty million light years from home.

"Anyone there?" he said.

YES.

The voice was right by his ear. Even demon kings can shiver.

"Apart from you, I mean," he said. "Have you seen anybody?"

YES.

"Who?"

EVERYONE.

Astfgl sighed. "I mean anyone recently."

IT'S BEEN VERY QUIET, said Death.

"Damn."

WERE YOU EXPECTING SOMEONE ELSE?

"I thought there might be someone called Rincewind, but -" Astfgl began.

Death's eyesockets flared red. THE WIZARD? he said.

"No, he's a dem -" Astfgl stopped. For what would have been several seconds, had time still existed, he floated in a state of horrible suspicion.

"A human?" he growled.

IT IS STRETCHING THE TERM A LITTLE, BUT YOU ARE BROADLY CORRECT.

"Well I'll be damned!" Astfgl said.

I BELIEVE YOU ALREADY ARE.

The Demon King extended a shaking hand. His mounting fury was over-ridding his sense of style; his red silk gloves ripped as the talons unfolded.

And then, because it's never a good idea to get on the wrong side of anyone with a scythe, Astfgl said, "Sorry you've been troubled," and vanished. Only when he judged himself out of Death's extremely acute hearing did he scream his rage.

Nothingness uncoiled its interminable length through the draughty spaces at the end of time.

Death waited. After a while his skeletal fingers began to drum on the handle of his scythe.

Darkness lapped around him. There wasn't even any infinity any more.

He attempted to whistle a few snatches of unpopular songs between his teeth, but the sound was simply sucked into nothingness.

Forever was over. All the sands had fallen. The great race between entropy and energy had been run, and the favourite had been the winner after all.

Perhaps he ought to sharpen the blade again?

No.

Not much point, really.

Great roils of absolutely nothing stretched into what would have been called the distance, if there had been a space-time reference frame to give words like "distance" any sensible meaning any more.

There didn't seem to be much to do.

PERHAPS IT'S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY. He thought.

Death turned to go but, just as he did so, he heard the faintest of noises. It was to sound what one photon is to light, so weak and feeble that it would have passed entirely unheard in the din of an operating universe.

It was a tiny piece of matter, popping into existence.

Death stalked over to the point of arrival and watched carefully.

It was a paperclip.

Well, it was a start.

There was another pop, which left a small white shirt-button spinning gently in the vacuum.

Death relaxed a little. Of course, it was going to take some time. There was going to be an interlude before all this got complicated enough to produce gas clouds, galaxies, planets and continents, let alone tiny corkscrew-shaped things wiggling around in slimy pools and wondering whether evolution was worth all the bother of growing fins and legs and things. But it indicated the start of an unstoppable trend.

All he had to do was be patient, and he was good at that. Pretty soon there'd be living creatures, developing like mad, running and laughing in the new sunlight. Growing tired. Growing old.

Death sat back. He could wait.

Whenever they needed him, he'd be there.

The Universe came into being.

Any created-again cosmogonist will tell you that all the interesting stuff happened in the firs couple of minutes, when nothingness bunched together to form space and time and lots of really tiny black holes appeared and so on. After that, they say, it became just a matter of, well, matter. It was basically all over bar the microwave radiation.

Seen from close by, though, it had a certain gaudy attraction.

The little man sniffed.

"Too showy," he said. "You don't need all that noise. It could just as easily have been a Big Hiss, or a bit of music."

"Could it?" said Rincewind.

"Yeah, and it looked pretty iffy around the two picosecond mark. Definitely a bit of ropey filling-in. but that's how it goes these days. No craftsmanship. When I was a lad it took days to make a universe. You could take pride in it. Now they just throw it together and it's back on the lorry and away. And, you know what?"

"No?" said Rincewind weakly.

"They pinches stuff off the site. They finds someone nearby who wants to expand their universe a bit, next thing you know they've had it away with a bunch of firmament and flogged it for an extension somewhere."

Rincewind stared at him.

"Who are you?"

The man took the pencil from behind his ear and looked reflectively at the space around Rincewind. "I makes things," he said.

"What sort of things?"

"What sort of things would you like?"

"You're the Creator?"

The little man looked very embarrassed. "Not the. Not the. Just a. I don't contract for the big stuff, the stars, the gas giants, the pulsars and so on. I just specialise in what you might call the bespoke trade." He gave them a look of defiant pride. "I do all my own trees, you know," he confided. "Craftsmanship. Takes years to learn how to make a tree. Even the conifers."

"Oh," said Rincewind.

"I don't get someone in to finish them off. No sub-contracting, that's my motto. The buggers always keep you hanging about while they're installing stars or something for someone else. "The little man sighed. "You know, people think it must all be very easy, creating. They think you just have to move on the face of the waters and wave your hands a bit. It's not like that at all."