'Couldn't say, master. I suppose people  think it's more ... satisfying the other way ...' Albert hesitated, and then frowned. 'You know, now that I come to tell someone . .

     Death looked  down at the shape under the falling snow. Then he set the lifetimer on the air and touched it with a finger. A spark flashed across.

     'You ain't really allowed to do that,' said Albert, feeling wretched.

     THE  HOGFATHER CAN.  THE  HOGFATHER GIVES  PRESENTS.  THERE'S NO BETTER PRESENT THAN A FUTURE.

     'Yeah, but...'

ALBERT.

     'All right, master.'

     Death scooped up the girl and strode to the end of the alley.

     The  snowflakes  fen like angel's feathers.  Death stepped out into the street and accosted two figures who were tramping through the drifts.

     TAKE  HER  SOMEWHERE WARM  AND  GIVE HER A  GOOD DINNER, he  commanded, pushing the bundle into the arms of one of them. AND I MAY WELL BE CHECKING UP LATER.

     Then he turned and disappeared into the swirling snow.

     Constable Visit looked down at the little girl in his arms, and then at Corporal Nobbs.

     'What's all this about, corporal?'

     Nobby pulled aside the blanket.

     'Search me,' he said. 'Looks like we've been chosen  to  do  a  bit  of charity.'

     'I don't call it  very charitable, just dumping someone on people  like this.'

     'Come on, there'll still be  some grub  left in  the  Watchhouse,' said Nobby. He'd  got  a very deep and certain  feeling that this was expected of him.  He  remembered  a  big man  in a  grotto, although  he  couldn't quite remember the face. And he couldn't quite remember the face of the person who had handed over the girl, so that meant it must be the same one.

     Shortly afterwards  there was some tinkling  music  and  a very  bright light  and  two  rather  affronted  angels appeared  at the other end of the alley, but Albert threw snowballs at them until they went away.

     Hex worried Ponder Stibbons. He didn't know how it worked, but everyone else assumed that he did. Oh, he had  a good  idea about some parts, and  he was pretty certain  that Hex  thought about things by  turning them all into numbers and crunching them (a clothes wringer from the laundry, or CWL,  had been plumbed in for this very purpose), but why did it  need a lot  of small religious pictures? And there was the  mouse. It didn't seem to do much, but whenever they  forgot  to give it its cheese Hex stopped working. There were all  those ram skulls. The ants wandered over to them  occasionally but they didn't seem to do anything.

     What Ponder  was worried about was the fear that he was  simply engaged in a cargo cult. He'd read  about them.  Ignorant[16] and credulous[17]  people, whose island might once have been visited by some itinerant merchant vessel  that  traded pearls and coconuts for such fruits of civilization as glass beads, mirrors, axes and sexual diseases,  would later make big model ships out of bamboo in the hope  of once again attracting this magical cargo. Of course,  they were far too ignorant and credulous to know that just because you built the shape you didn't get the substance ...

     He'd built the shape of Hex and, it occurred to him, he'd built it in a magical  university  where the border between  the real  and 'not  real' was stretched  so  thin  you could almost see through it.  He got  the  horrible suspicion that,  somehow, they  were merely making solid  a sketch  that was hidden somewhere in the air.

     Hex knew what it ought to be.

     All that  business  about the electricity, for  example. Hex had raised the subject one night, not long after it'd asked for the mouse.

     Ponder  prided himself that he knew  pretty much all  there was to know about  electricity. But  they'd  tried rubbing balloons and glass rods until they'd been able to stick Adrian  onto the  ceiling,  and it  hadn't had any effect on Hex. Then they'd tried tying a lot of. cats to a wheel which, when revolved against some beads  of amber, caused any amount of  electricity all over the place. The wretched  stuff  hung  around for days, but there didn't seem any way of ladling it into Hex and anyway no one could stand the noise.

     So far the Archchancellor had vetoed the lightning rod idea.

     All this depressed Ponder. He was  certain that the world ought to work in a more efficient way.

     And now even  the things that he  thought  were  going right were going wrong.

     He  stared glumly at Hex's quill  pen in  its tangle  of springs  and wire.

     The door was thrown open. Only one person could make a door bang on its hinges like that. Ponder didn't even turn round.

     'Hello again, Archchancellor.'

     'That  thinking engine of yours working?' said Ridcully. 'Only  there's an interesting little...'

     'It's not working,' said Ponder.

     'It ain't. What's this, a half-holiday for Hogswatch?'

     'Look' said Ponder.

     Hex wrote: +++ Whoops! Here Comes The  Cheese! +++MELON MELON MELON +++ Error   At   Address:   14,   Treacle Mine Road, AnkhMorpork+++   !!!!! +++Oneoneoneoneoneone +++ Redo From Start +++

     'What's going on?' said Ridcully, as the others pushed in behind them.

     'I know it sounds stupid,  Archchancellor, but  we think it might have caught something off the Bursar.'

     'Daftness, you mean?'

     'That's ridiculous, boy!'  said the Dean. 'Idiocy is not a communicable disease.'

     Ridcully puffed his pipe.

     'I used  to think that, too,' he said. 'Now Im not so sure. Anyway, you can catch wisdom, can't you?'

     'No,  you can't,'  snapped the  Dean.  'It's  not  like 'flu, Ridcully. Wisdom is ... well, instilled.'

     'We bring students here and hope they  catch wisdom off us, don't  we?' said Ridcully.

     'Well, metaphorically,' said the Dean.

     'And if you hang around with a bunch of  idiots  you're bound to become pretty daft yourself,' Ridcully went on.

     'I suppose in a manner of speaking . .

     'And you've only got to talk  to  the poor old Bursar for  five minutes and you think you're going a bit potty yourself, am I right?'

     The  wizards  nodded  glumly.  The  Bursar's  company,  although  quite harmless, had a habit of making one's brain squeak.

     'So  Hex  here  has caught daftness  off  the  Bursar,'  said Ridcully. 'Simple. Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.' He banged his pipe  on  the  side of  Hex's  listening tube and shouted:  'FEELING ALL RIGHT, OLD CHAP?'

     Hex  wrote: +++ Hi Mum  Is  Testing  +++ MELON MELON  MELON +++ Out  Of Cheese Error +++ !!!!! +++ Mr Jelly! Mr Jelly! +++

     'Hex  seems perfectly  able  to work  out anything  purely to  do  with numbers but when it tries anything else it does this,' said Ponder.

     'See? Bursar Disease,' said Ridcully. 'The bee's knees when it comes to adding up, the pig's  ear at everything else.  Try  giving  him  dried  frog pills?'

     'Sorry, sir, but  that  is a  very uninformed suggestion,' said Ponder. 'You can't give medicine to machines.'

     'Don't see  why not,'  said  Ridcully. He banged on the  tube again and bellowed, 'SOON  HAVE YOU BACK ON  YOUR ... your ...  yes, indeed, old chap! Where's that board with all the letter and  number buttons, Mr Stibbons? Ah, good.'  He sat  down  and  typed,  with one finger, as slowly as  a  company chairman:

D-R-Y-D-F-R-O-R-G-?-P-I-L-L-S

     Hex's pipes jangled.

     'That can't possibly work sir,' said Ponder.

     'It ought to,' said Ridcully. 'If he can get the idea of being ill, he can get the idea of being cured.'