Mort

The drop in temperature told him he was wrong. He looked at their faces.

They can't?' he said.

Both heads shook.

'If the nodes aren't worked out properly all the Balance is destroyed,' said Ysabell. 'Anything could happen.'

'Didn't he explain?' said Albert.

'Not really. I've really only done the practical side. He said he'd tell me about the theoretical stuff later,' said Mort. Ysabell burst into tears.

Albert took Mort's arm and, with considerable dramatic waggling of his eyebrows, indicated that they should have a little talk in the corner. Mort trailed after him reluctantly.

The old man rummaged in his pockets and at last produced a battered paper bag.

'Peppermint?' he enquired.

Mort shook his head.

'He never tell you about the nodes?' said Albert.

Mort shook' his head again. Albert gave his peppermint a suck; it sounded like the plughole in the bath of God.

'How old are you, lad?'

'Mort. I'm sixteen.'

'There's some things a lad ought to be told before he's sixteen,' said Albert, looking over his shoulder at Ysabell, who was sobbing in Death's chair.

'Oh, I know about that. My father told me all about that when we used to take the thargas to be mated. When a man and a woman —'

'About the universe is what I meant,' said Albert hurriedly. 'I mean, have you ever thought about it?'

'I know the Disc is carried through space on the backs of four elephants that stand on the shell of Great A'Tuin,' said Mort.

'That's just part of it. I meant the whole universe of time and space and life and death and day and night and everything.'

'Can't say I've ever given it much thought,' said Mort.

'Ah. You ought. The point is, the nodes are part of it. They stop death from getting out of control, see. Not him, not Death. Just death itself. Like, uh —' Albert struggled for words — 'like, death should come exactly at the end of life, see, and not before or after, and the nodes have to be worked out so that the key figures . . . you're not taking this in, are you?'

'Sorry.'

'They've got to be worked out,' said Albert flatly, 'and then the correct lives have got to be got. The hourglasses, you call them. The actual Duty is the easy job.'

'Can you do it?'

'No. Can you?'

'No!'

Albert sucked reflectively at his peppermint. That's the whole world in the gyppo, then,' he said.

'Look, I can't see why you're so worried. I expect he's just got held up somewhere,' said Mort, but it sounded feeble even to him. It wasn't as though people buttonholed Death to tell him another story, or