Hogfather

on a new urgency.

‘What's happening?’ said Ridcully, in a loud whisper.

‘I think Hex is looking up the word “sloshing”,’ said Ponder. ‘It may be in long-term storage.’

A large hourglass came down on the spring.

‘What's that for?’ said Ridcully.

‘Er… it shows Hex is working things out.’

‘Oh. And that buzzing noise? Seems to be coming from the other side of the wall.’

Ponder coughed.

‘That is the long-term storage, Archchancellor.’

‘And how does that work?’

‘Er… well, if you think of memory as a series of little shelves or, or, or holes, Archchancellor, in which you can put things, well, we found a way of making a sort of memory which, er, interfaces neatly with the ants, in fact, but more importantly can expand its size depending on how much we give it to remember and, er, is possibly a bit slow but—’

‘It's a very loud buzzing,’ said the Dean. ‘Is it going wrong.’

‘No, that shows it's working,’ said Ponder. ‘It's, er, beehives.’

He coughed.

‘Different types of pollen, different thicknesses of honey, placement of the eggs… It's actually amazing how much information you can store on one honeycomb.’

He looked at their faces. ‘And it's very secure because anyone trying to tamper with it will get stung to death and Adrian believes that when we shut it down in the summer holidays we should get a nice lot of honey, too.’ He coughed again. ‘For our… sand… wiches,’ he said.

He felt himself getting smaller and hotter under their gazes.

Hex came to his rescue. The hourglass bounced away and the quill pen was jerked in and out of its inkwell.

+++ Yes. Sloshing Around. Accreting +++

‘That means forming around new centres, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder helpfully.

‘I know that,’ said Ridcully. ‘Blast. Remember when we had all that life force all over the place? A man couldn't call his trousers his own! So… there's spare belief sloshing around, thank you, and these little devils are taking advantage of it? Coming back? Household gods?’

+++ This Is Possible +++

‘All right, then, so what are people not believing in all of a sudden?’

+++ Out Of Cheese Error +++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Redo From Start +++

‘Thank you. A simple “I don't know” would have been sufficient,’ said Ridcully, sitting back.

‘One of the major gods?’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘Hah, we'd soon know about it if one of those vanished.’

‘It's Hogswatch,’ said the Dean. ‘I suppose the Hogfather is around, is he?’

‘You believe in him?’ said Ridcully.

‘Well, he's for kids, isn't he?’ said the Dean. ‘But I'm sure they all believe in him. I certainly did. It wouldn't be Hogswatch when I was a kid without a pillowcase hanging by the fire—’

‘A pillowcase?’ said the Senior Wrangler, sharply.

‘Well, you can't get much in a stocking,’ said the Dean.

‘Yes, but a whole pillowcase?’ the Senior Wrangler insisted.

‘Yes. What of it?’

‘Is it just me, or is that a rather greedy and selfish way to behave? In my family we just hung up very small socks,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘A sugar pig, a toy soldier, a couple of oranges and that was it. Hah, turns out people with whole pillowcases were cornering the market, eh?’

‘Shut up and stop squabbling, both of you,’ said Ridcully. ‘There must be a simple way to check up. How can you tell if the Hogfather exists?’

‘Someone's drunk the sherry, there's sooty footprints on the carpet, sleigh tracks on the roof and your pillowcase is full of presents,’ said the Dean.

‘Hah, pillowcase,’ said the Senior Wrangler darkly. ‘Hah. I expect your family were the stuck-up sort that didn't even open their presents until after Hogswatch dinner, eh? One of them with a big snooty Hogswatch tree in the hall?’

‘What if—’ Ridcully began, but he was too late.

‘Well?’ said the Dean. ‘Of course we waited until after lunch—’

‘You know, it really used to wind me right up, people with big snooty Hogswatch trees. And I just bet you had one of those swanky fancy nutcrackers like a big thumbscrew,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Some people had to make do with the coal hammer out of the outhouse, of course. And had dinner in the middle of the day instead of lah-di-dah posh dinner in the evening.’

‘I can't help it if my family had money,’ said the Dean, and that might have defused things a bit had he not added, ‘and standards.’

‘And big pillowcases!’ shouted the Senior Wrangler, bouncing up and down in rage. ‘And I bet you bought your holly, eh?’

The Dean raised his eyebrows. ‘Of course! We didn't go creeping around the country pinching it out of other people's hedges, like some people did,’ he snapped.

‘That's traditional! That's part of the fun!’

‘Celebrating Hogswatch with stolen greenery?’

Ridcully put his hand over his eyes.

The word for this, he had heard, was ‘cabin fever’. When people had been cooped up for too long in the dark days of the winter, they always tended to get on one another's nerves, although there was probably a school of thought that would hold that spending your time in a university with more than five thousand known rooms, a huge library, the best kitchens in the city, its own brewery, dairy, extensive wine cellar, laundry, barber shop, cloisters and skittle alley was testing the definition of ‘cooped up’ a little. Mind you, wizards could get on one another's nerves in opposite corners of a very large field.

‘Just shut up, will you?’ he said. ‘It's Hogswatch! That's not the time for silly arguments, all right?’

‘Oh, yes it is,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies glumly. ‘It's exactly the time for silly arguments. In our family we were lucky to get through dinner without a reprise of What A Shame Henry Didn't Go Into Business With Our Ron. Or Why Hasn't Anyone Taught Those Kids To Use A Knife? That was another favourite.’

‘And the sulks,’ said Ponder Stibbons.

‘Oh, the sulks,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Not a proper Hogswatch without everyone sitting staring at different walls.’

‘The games were worse,’ said Ponder.

‘Worse than the kids hitting one another with their toys, do you think? Not a proper Hogswatch afternoon without wheels and bits of broken dolly everywhere and everyone whining. Assault and battery included.’

‘We had a game called Hunt the Slipper,’ said Ponder. ‘Someone hid a slipper. And then we had to find it. And then we had a row.’

‘It's not really bad,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘I mean, not proper Hogswatch bad, unless everyone's wearing a paper hat. There's always that bit, isn't there, when someone's horrible great-aunt puts on a paper hat and smirks at everyone because she's being so bohemian.’

‘I'd forgotten about the paper hats,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Oh, dear.’

‘And then later on someone'll suggest a board game,’ said Ponder.

‘That's right. Where no one exactly remembers all the rules.’

‘Which doesn't stop someone suggesting that you play for pennies.’

‘And five minutes later there's two people not speaking to one another for the rest of their lives because of