Very seldom did beauty intrude into the daily life of UU, which was asmasculine as the smell of old socks and pipe smoke and, given the faculty’sgeneral laxness when it came to knocking out their pipes, the smell of smokingsocks as well. Mrs Whitlow, the housekeeper, she of the clanking chatelaine andhuge creaking corset that caused the Chair of Indefinite Studies to swoon whenhe heard it, generally took great care to select staff who, while being female,were not excessively so, and tended to be industrious, clean in their habits,rosy cheeked and, in short, the kind of ladies who are never too far fromgingham and an apple pie. This suited the wizards, who liked to be not far awayfrom an apple pie themselves, although they could take gingham or leave italone.

Why, then, had the housekeeper employed Juliet? What could she have beenthinking of? The girl had come into the place like a new world in a solarsystem, and the balance of the heavens was subtly wobbling. And, indeed, as sheadvanced, so was Juliet.

By custom and practice, wizards were celibate, in theory because women weredistracting and bad for the magical organs, but after a week of Juliet’spresence many of the faculty were subject to (mostly) unfamiliar longings andstrange dreams, and were finding things rather hard, but you couldn’t reallyput your finger on it: what she had went beyond beauty. It was a sort ofdistillation of beauty that travelled around with her, uncoiling itself intothe surrounding ether. When she walked past, the wizards felt the urge to writepoetry and buy flowers.

‘You may be interested to know, gentlemen,’ said the new Master of TheTraditions, ‘that tonight’s was the longest chase ever recorded in the historyof the tradition. I suggest we owe a vote of thanks to tonight’s Megapode… ’

He realized the statement had plummeted on to deaf ears. ‘Er, gentlemen?’ hesaid.

He looked up. The wizards were staring, in a soulful sort of way, at whateverwas going on inside their heads.

‘Gentlemen?’ he said again, and this time there was a collective sigh as theywoke up from their sudden attack of daydreaming.

‘What say?’ said the Archchancellor.

‘I was just remarking that tonight’s Megapode was undoubtedly the finest onrecord, Archchancellor. It was Rincewind. The official Megapode headdresssuited him very well, all things considered. I think he’s gone for a lie down.’

‘What? Oh, that. Well, yes. Indeed. Well done, that man,’ said Ridcully, andthe wizards commenced that slow handclapping and table-thumping which is themark of appreciation amongst men of a certain age, class and girth, accompaniedby cries of ‘Ver’, ver’ well done, that man!’ and ‘Jolly good!’ But eyes stayedfirmly fixed on the doorway, and ears strained for the rattle of the trolley,which would herald the arrival of the new girl and, of course, one hundred andseven types of cheese, and more than seventy different varieties of pickles,chutneys and other tracklements. The new girl might be the very paradigm ofbeauty, but UU was not the place for a man who could forget his cheeses.

Well, she was a distraction at least, Ponder thought as he snapped the bookshut, and the university needed a few of them right now. It had been trickysince the Dean had left, very tricky indeed. Whoever heard of a man resigningfrom UU? It was something that simply did not happen! Sometimes people left indisgrace, in a box or, in a few cases, in bits, but there was no tradition ofresigning at all. Tenure at Unseen University was for life, and often a longway beyond.

The office of Master of The Traditions had fallen inevitably on PonderStibbons, who tended to get all the jobs that required someone who thought thatthings should happen on time and that numbers should add up.

Regrettably, when he’d gone to check on things with the previous Master of TheTraditions, who, everyone agreed, had not been seen around and about lately,he’d found that the man had been dead for two hundred years. This wasn’t awholly unusual circumstance. Ponder, after years at Unseen, still didn’t knowthe full size of the faculty. How could you keep track of them in a place likethis these days, where hundreds of studies all shared one window, but only onthe outside, or rooms drifted away from their doorways during the night,travelled intangibly through the slumbering halls and ended up docking quiteelsewhere?

A wizard could do what he liked in his own study, and in the old days that hadlargely meant smoking anything he fancied and farting hugely withoutapologizing. These days it meant building out into a congruent set ofdimensions. Even the Archchancellor was doing it, which made it hard for Ponderto protest: he had half a mile of trout stream in his bathroom, and claimedthat messin’ about in his study was what kept a wizard out of mischief. And, aseveryone knew, it did. It generally got him into trouble instead.

Ponder had let that go, because he now saw it as his mission in life to stokethe fires that kept Mustrum Ridcully bubbling and made the university a happyplace. As a dog reflects the mood of its owner, so a university reflects itsArchchancellor. All he could do now, as the university’s sole self-confessedentirely sensible person, was to steer things as best he could, keep away fromsqualls involving the person previously known as the Dean, and find ways ofkeeping the Archchancellor too occupied to get under Ponder’s feet.

Ponder was about to put the Book of Traditions away when the heavy pagesflopped over.

‘That’s odd.’

‘Oh, those old book bindings get very stiff,’ said Ridcully. ‘They have a lifeof their own, sometimes.’

‘Has anyone heard of Professor H. F. Pullunder, or Doctor Erratamus?’

The faculty stopped watching the door and looked at one another.

‘Ring a bell, anyone?’ said Ridcully.

‘Not a tinkle,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, cheerfully.

The Archchancellor turned to his left. ‘What about you, Dean? You know all theold—’

Ponder groaned. The rest of the wizards shut their eyes and braced themselves.This might be bad.

Ridcully stared down at two empty chairs, with the imprint of a buttock in eachone. One or two of the faculty pulled their hats down over their faces. It hadbeen two weeks now, and it had not got any better.

He took a deep breath and roared: ‘Traitor!’–which was a terrible thing to sayto two dimples in leather.

The Chair of Indefinite Studies gave Ponder Stibbons a nudge, indicating thathe was the chosen sacrifice for today, again.

Again.

‘Just for a handful of silver he left us!’ said Ridcully, to the universe ingeneral.

Ponder cleared his throat. He’d really hoped the Megapode hunt would take theArchchancellor’s mind off the subject, but Ridcully’s mind kept on swingingback to the absent Dean the way a tongue plunges back to the site of a missingtooth.

‘Er, in point of fact, I believe his remuneration is at least—’ he began, butin Ridcully’s current mood no answer would be the right one.

‘Remuneration? Since when did a wizard work for wages? We are pure academics,Mister Stibbons! We do not care for mere money!’

Unfortunately, Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mentalconfusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an angryArchchancellor, were, to use the proper academic term, unhelpful. And heneglected to think strategically, always a mistake when talking to fellowacademics, and as a result made the mistake of employing, as at this point,common sense.

‘That’s because we never actually pay for anything very much,’ he said, ‘and ifanyone needs any petty cash they just help themselves from the big jar—’

‘We are part of the very fabric of the university, Mister Stibbons! We takeonly what we require! We do not seek wealth! And most certainly we do notaccept a “post of vital importance which includes an attractive package ofremuneration”, whatever the hells that means, “and other benefits including agenerous pension”! A pension, mark you! When ever has a wizard retired?’