‘Er, there is one tradition here that regrettably we don’t appear to have honoured for some considerable time, Archchancellor,’ he said, managing to keep the concern out of his voice.

‘Well, does that matter?’ said Ridcully, stretching.

‘It is traditional, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder reproachfully. ‘Although I might go so far as to say that not observing it has now, alas, become the tradition.’

‘Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?’ said Ridcully. ‘If we can make a tradition of not observing another tradition, then that’s doubly traditional, eh? What’s the problem?’

‘It’s Archchancellor Preserved Bigger’s Bequest,’ said the Master of The Traditions. ‘The university does very well out of the Bigger estates. They were a very rich family.’

‘Hmm, yes. Name rings a faint bell. Decent of him. So?’

‘Er, I would have been happier had my predecessor paid a little more attention to some of the traditions,’ said Ponder, who believed in drip-feeding bad news.

‘Well, he was dead.’

‘Yes, of course. Perhaps, sir, we should, ahem, start a tradition of checking on the health of the Master of The Traditions?’

‘Oh, he was quite healthy,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Just dead. Quite healthy for a dead man.’

‘He was a pile of dust, Archchancellor!’

‘That’s not the same as being ill, exactly,’ said Ridcully, who believed in never giving in. ‘Broadly speaking, it’s stable.’

Ponder said, ‘There is a condition attached to the bequest. It’s in the small print, sir.’

‘Oh, I never bother with small print, Stibbons!’

‘I do, sir. It says: “… and thys shall follow as long as the University shall enter a team in the game of foot-the-ball or Poore Boys’ Funne”.’

‘Porree boy’s funny?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Ridcully.

‘Ridiculous or not, Archchancellor, that is the condition of the bequest.’

‘But we stopped taking part in that years ago,’ said Ridcully. ‘Mobs in the streets, kicking and punching and yelling… and they were the players! Mark you, the spectators were nearly as bad! There were hundreds of men in a team! A game could go on for days! That’s why it was stopped.’

‘Actually, it has never been stopped as such, Archchancellor,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘We stopped, yes, and so did the guilds. It was no longer a game for gentlemen.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said the Master of The Traditions, running a finger down the page, ‘such are the terms. There are all sorts of other conditions. Oh, dear. Oh, calamity. Oh, surely not… ’

His lips moved silently as he read on. The room craned as one neck.

‘Well, out with it, man!’ roared Ridcully.

‘I think I’d like to check a few things,’ said the Master of The Traditions. ‘I would not wish to worry you unduly.’ He glanced down. ‘Oh, hells’ bells!’

‘What are you talking about, man?’

‘Well, it looks as though—No, it would be unfair to spoil your evening, Archchancellor,’ Ponder protested. ‘I must be reading this wrongly. He surely can’t mean—Oh, good heavens… ’

‘In a nutshell, please, Stibbons,’ growled Ridcully. ‘I believe I am the Archchancellor of this university? I’m sure it says so on my door.’

‘Of course, Archchancellor, but it would be quite wrong of me to—’

‘I appreciate that you do not wish to spoil my evening, sir,’ said Ridcully. ‘But I would not hesitate to spoil your day tomorrow. With that in mind, what the hells are you talking about?’

‘Er, it would appear, Archchancellor, that, er… When was the last game we took part in, do you know?’

‘Anyone?’ said Ridcully to the room in general. A mumbled discussion produced a consensus on the theme of ‘Around twenty years, give or take.’

‘Give or take what, exactly?’ said Ponder, who hated this kind of thing.

‘Oh, you know. Something of that order. In the general vicinity of, so to speak. Round about then. You know.’

‘About?’ said Ponder. ‘Can we be more precise?’

‘Why?’

‘Because if the university hasn’t played in the Poor Boys’ Fun for a period of twenty years or more, the bequest reverts to any surviving relatives of Archchancellor Bigger.’

‘But it’s banned, man!’ the Archchancellor insisted.

‘Er, not as such. It’s common knowledge that Lord Vetinari doesn’t like it, but I understand that if the games are outside the city centre and confined to the back streets, the Watch turns a blind eye. Since I would imagine that the supporters and players easily outnumber the entire Watch payroll, I suppose it is better than having to turn a broken nose.’

‘That’s quite a neat turn of phrase there, Mister Stibbons,’ said Ridcully. ‘I’m quite surprised at you.’

‘Thank you, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. He had in fact got it from a leader in the Times, which the wizards did not like much because it either did not print what they said or printed what they said with embarrassing accuracy.

Emboldened, he added, ‘I should point out, though, that under UU law, Archchancellor, a ban doesn’t matter. Wizards are not supposed to take notice of such a ban. We are not subject to mundane law.’

‘Of course. But nevertheless it is generally convenient to acknowledge the civil power,’ said Ridcully, speaking like a man choosing his words with such care that he was metaphorically taking some of them outside to look at them more closely in daylight.

The wizards nodded. What they had heard was: ‘Vetinari may have his little foibles, but he’s the sanest man we’ve had on the throne in centuries, he leaves us alone, and you never know what he’s got up his sleeve.’ You couldn’t argue with that.

‘All right, Stibbons, what do you suggest?’ said Ridcully. ‘These days you only ever tell me about a problem when you’ve thought up a solution. I respect this, although I find it a bit creepy. Got a way to wriggle us out of this, have you?’

‘I suppose so, sir. I thought we might, well, put up a team. It doesn’t say anything about winning, sir. We just have to play, that’s all.’

It was always beautifully warm in the candle vats. Regrettably, it was also extremely humid and rather noisy in an erratic and unexpected way. This was because the giant pipes of Unseen University’s central heating and hot water system passed overhead, slung from the ceiling on a series of metal straps with a greater or lesser coefficient of linear expansion. That was only the start, however. There were also the huge pipes for balancing the slood differential across the university, the pipe for the anthropic particle flux suppressor, which did not work properly these days, the pipes for the air circulation, which had not worked either since the donkey had been ill, and the very ancient tubes that were all that remained of the ill-fated attempt by a previous archchancellor to operate a university communication system by means of trained marmosets. At certain times of the day all this piping broke into a subterranean symphony of gurgles, twangs, upsetting organic trickling sounds and, occasionally, an inexplicable boinging noise that would reverberate through the cellar levels.

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.