As he handed the packet back, something small and colourful dropped out on to the floor. Henry, with an agility unexpected in a wizard so far up the main sequence as described in the well-known Owlspring/Tips Diagram[14], reached down quickly and snatched it up, muttering something about ‘not letting it get dirty’.

‘You could eat your dinner off these floors,’ said Ridcully sharply, and probably would, he added to himself.

‘Only the collectors get so annoyed if there is a speck of dust on them and I give mine to the butler’s little boy,’ Henry went on blithely. He turned the pasteboard over and frowned. ‘Notable Wizards of our Time, No. 9 of 50: Dr Able Baker, BC (Hons), Fdl, Kp, PdF (escrow), Director of Blit Studies, Brazeneck. I’m sure he’s already got this one.’ He dropped it into a waistcoat pocket. ‘Never mind, good for swapsies.’

Ridcully could assess things quite fast, especially when fuelled by banked fires of rage.

‘The Wizla tobacco, snuff and rolling paper company,’ he said, ‘of Pseudopolis. Hmm, clever idea. Who’s in this from UU?’

‘Ah. Well, I have to admit that the Assembly and people of Pseudopolis are rather… patriotic in their outlook—’

‘I think the word is “parochial”, don’t you?’

‘Harsh words, considering that Ankh-Morpork’s the smuggest, most self-satisfied city in the world.’ This was self-evidently true, so Ridcully decided he hadn’t heard it.

‘You on one of these cards, then?’ he grunted.

‘They insisted, I’m afraid,’ said Henry. ‘I was born there, you see. Local boy and all that.’

‘And no one from UU,’ said Ridcully flatly.

‘Technically no, but Professor Turnipseed is in there as the inventor of Pex.’ As Henry said it, guilt and defiance fought for space in the sentence.

‘Pex?’ said Ridcully slowly. ‘You mean like Hex?’

‘Oh, no, not at all like Hex. Certainly not. The principle is quite different.’ Henry cleared his throat. ‘It’s run by chickens. They trigger the morphic resonator, or whatever it’s called. Your Hex, as I recall, utilizes ants, which are far less efficient.’

‘How so?’

‘We get eggs we can eat.’

‘That doesn’t sound all that different, you know.’

‘Oh, come now. They are hundreds of times bigger! And Pex is in a purpose-built room, not strung haphazardly all over the place. Professor Turnipseed knows what he is doing, and even you, Mustrum, must acknowledge that the river of progress is fed by a thousand springs!’

‘And they didn’t all rise in bloody Brazeneck!’ said Ridcully.

They glared at one another. Professor Turnipseed poked his head around the corner and pulled it back very quickly.

‘If we were the men our fathers were, we’d be throwing fireballs by now,’ said Henry.

‘The point is taken,’ said Ridcully. ‘Although, I must point out, our fathers were not wizards.’

‘That’s right, of course,’ said the former Dean. ‘Your father was a butcher, as I recall.’

‘That’s right. And your father owned a lot of cabbage fields,’ said Ridcully.

There was a moment’s silence and then the former Dean said, ‘Remember the day we both turned up at UU?’

‘We fought like tigers as I recall,’ said Ridcully.

‘Good times, when you come to remember them,’ said the Dean.

‘Of course, we’ve all passed a lot of water over the bridge since then,’ said Ridcully. There was another pause and he added, ‘Fancy a drink?’

‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said the former Dean.

‘So you are trying to play football?’ said Henry as they progressed majestically towards the Archchancellor’s office. ‘I did see something about it in the paper, but I thought it was a joke.’

‘Why, pray?’ said Ridcully as they began to walk across the Great Hall. ‘We have a fine sporting tradition, as well you know!’

‘Ah yes, tradition is the scourge of endeavour. Be sensible, Mustrum. The leopard may change his shorts, but I think he’d have a job getting into the ones he wore forty years ago. Oh, I see that you still have Mister Stibbons here?’

‘Er… ’ began Ponder, looking from one to the other.

Ponder Stibbons had once got one hundred per cent in a prescience exam by getting there the previous day. He could see a little storm cloud when it was beginning to grow.

‘How’s the football going, lad?’

‘Oh, it seems to be going very well, Archchancellor. Good to see you again, Dean.’

‘Archchancellor,’ purred the former Dean. ‘I wonder how good you would be against my university.’

‘Well, we have a pretty nifty team built here,’ said Ridcully, ‘and, while it is our intention to play our first game against a local side, I would take great pleasure in showing Brazeneck a thing or two on the field.’ By now they were almost in the middle of the Great Hall and their presence, not unexpectedly, had stopped play.

‘Archchancellor, I really feel that it might be a good idea to—’ Ponder began, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of approval that rang out from all sides around the Great Hall.

‘And the prize would be?’ said Henry, smiling at the crowd.

‘What?’ spluttered the Archchancellor. ‘What prize?’

‘We picked up a few rowing trophies when we were lads, didn’t we?’

‘I believe the Patrician has got something planned for the league, yes.’

‘I think that refreshments will be laid out in the Blue refectory shortly,’ said Ponder with a kind of desperate, sweaty cheerfulness. ‘There will, of course, be cake, but also, I believe, an interesting assortment of curries.’

On many occasions this might have worked, but the two senior wizards had locked glares and would not so much as blink, even for a slice of Ploughman’s Pie.

‘But we men of craft are not interested in such paltry baubles as cups and medals, are we?’ said Henry. ‘For us it’s huge great big baubles or nothing, is that not right, Mustrum?’

‘You are after the Hat,’ said Ridcully flatly. The air between them was humming.

‘Yes, of course.’

There followed the menacing silence of a clash of wills, but Ponder Stibbons decided that as he was, technically, twelve important people at the university, he formed, all by himself, a committee, and since he was therefore, de facto, very wise, he should intervene.

‘And your stake, Dea—Sir, would be… ?’

Ridcully turned his head slightly and growled, ‘He doesn’t have to have one. I have rather walked into this… ’

There was a stirring from the more senior wizards, and Ponder heard a whispered phrase. ‘Dead man’s pointy shoes?’

‘No, I forbid it!’ said Ponder.

‘You forbid it?’ said Henry. ‘You are but a chick, young Stibbons.’

‘The accumulated votes of all the posts I hold on the University Council mean that I do, technically, control it,’ said Ponder, trying to stick out a skinny chest that was never built for sticking, but still buoyed up and awash with righteous rage and a certain amount of terror about what might happen when it ran out of steam.

The contenders relaxed a little more in the presence of this turning worm.

‘Didn’t anyone notice that you were getting all this power?’ said Ridcully.

‘Yes, sir, me. Only I thought it was responsibility and hard work. None of you ever bother with details, you see. Technically, I have to report to other people, but usually the other people are me. You have no idea, sirs. I’m even the Camerlengo, which means that if you drop dead, Archchancellor, from any cause other than legitimate succession under the Dead Man’s Pointy Shoes tradition, I run this place until a successor is elected which, given the nature of wizardry, will mean a job for life, in which case the Librarian, as an identifiable and competent member of the senior staff, will try to discharge his duties, and if he fails, the official procedure is for wizards everywhere to fight among themselves for the Hat, causing fire, destruction, doves, rabbits and billiard balls to appear from every orifice and much loss of life.’ After a short pause he continued. ‘Again. Which is why some of us get a little worried when we see powerful wizards squabbling like this. To conclude, gentlemen, I have spoken at some length in order to give you time to consider your intentions. Somebody has to.’