Mort

Death sat on a bollard,looking out tosea. He had decided to stop being drunk. It made his head ache.

He'd tried fishing, dancing, gambling and drink, allegedly four of life's greatest pleasures, and wasn't sure that he saw the point. Food he was happy with – Death liked a good meal as much as anyone else. He couldn't think of any other pleasures of the flesh or, rather, he could, but they were, well, fleshy, and he couldn't see how it would be possible to go about them without some major bodily restructuring, which he wasn't going to contemplate. Besides, humans seemed to leave off doing them as they grew older, so presumably they couldn't be that attractive.

Death began to feel that he wouldn't understand people as long as he lived.

The sun made the cobbles steam and Death felt the faintest tingling of that little springtime urge that can send a thousand tons of sap pumping through fifty feet of timber in a forest.

The seagulls swooped and dived around him. A one-eyed cat, down to its eighth life and its last ear, emerged from its lair in a heap of abandoned fish boxes, stretched, yawned, and rubbed itself against his legs. The breeze, cutting through Ankh's famous smell, brought a hint of spices and fresh bread.

Death was bewildered. He couldn't fight it. He was actually feeling glad to be alive, and very reluctant to be Death.

I MUST BE SICKENING FOR SOMETHING, he thought.

Mort eased himself up the ladder alongside Ysabell. It was shaky, but seemed to be safe. At least the height didn't bother him; everything below was just blackness.

Some of Albert's earlier volumes were very nearly falling apart. He reached out for one at random, feeling the ladder tremble underneath them as he did so, brought it back and opened it somewhere in the middle.

'Move the candle this way,' he said.

'Can you read it?'

'Sort of —'

— "turnered hys hand, butt was sorelie vexed that alle me

'It's written in Old,' he said. 'Before they invented spelling. Let's have a look at the latest one.'

It was Albert all right. Mort caught several references to fried bread.

'Let's have a look at what he's doing now,' said Ysabell.

'Do you think we should? It's a bit like spying.'

'So what? Scared?'

'All right.'

He flicked through until he came to the unfilled pages, and then turned back until he found the story of Albert's life, crawling across the page at surprising speed considering it was the middle of the night; most biographies didn't have much to say about sleep, unless the dreams were particularly vivid.

'Hold the candle properly, will you? I don't want to get grease on his life.'

'Why not? He likes grease.'

'Stop giggling, you'll have us both off. Now look at this bit. . . .

— 'He crept through the dusty darkness of the Stack —' Ysabell read – 'his eyes fixed on the tiny glow of candlelight high above. Prying, he thought, poking away at things that shouldn't concern them, the little devils' —

'Mort! He's —'

'Shut up! I'm reading!'

— 'soon put a stop to this. Albert crept silently to the foot of the ladder, spat on his hands, and got ready to push. The master'd never know; he was acting strange these days and it was all that lad's fault, and' —

Mort looked up into Ysabell's horrified eyes.

Then the girl took the book out of Mort's hand, held it at arm's length while her gaze remained fixed woodenly on his, and let it go.

Mort watched her lips move and then realized that he, too, was counting under his breath.

Three, four —

There was a dull thump, a muffled cry, and silence.

'Do you think you've killed him?' said Mort, after a while.

'What, here? Anyway, I didn't notice any better ideas coming from you.'

'No, but – he is an old man, after all.'

'No, he's not,' said Ysabell sharply, starting down the ladder.

'Two thousand years?'

'Not a day over sixty-seven.'

'The books said —'

'I told you, time doesn't apply here. Not real time. Don't you listen, boy?'

'Mort,' said Mort.

'And stop treading on my fingers, I'm going as fast as I can.'

'Sorry.'

'And don't act so wet. Have you any idea how boring it is living here?'

'Probably not,' said Mort, adding with genuine longing, 'I've heard about boredom but I've never had a chance to try it.'

'It's dreadful.'

'If it comes to that, excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be.'

'Anything's got to be better than this.'

There was a groan from below, and then a stream of swearwords.

Ysabell peered into the gloom.

'Obviously I didn't damage his cursing muscles,' she said. 'I don't think I ought to listen to words like that. It could be bad for my moral fibre.'

They found Albert slumped against the foot of the bookshelf, muttering and holding his arm.

'There's no need to make that kind of fuss,' said Ysabell briskly. 'You're not hurt; father simply doesn't allow that kind of thing to happen.'

'What did you have to go and do that for?' he moaned. 'I didn't mean any harm.'

'You were going to push us off,' said Mort, trying to help him up. 'I read it. I'm surprised you didn't use magic.'

Albert glared at him.

'Oh, so you've found out, have you?' he said quietly. 'Then much good may it do you. You've no right to go prying.'

He struggled to his feet, shook off Mort's hand, and stumbled back along the hushed shelves.

'No, wait,' said Mort, 'I need your help!'

'Well, of course,' said Albert over his shoulder. 'It stands to reason, doesn't it? You thought, I'll just go and pry into someone's private life and then I'll drop it on him and then I'll ask him to help me.'

'I only wanted to find out if you were really you,' said Mort, ru

'I am. Everyone is.'

'But if you don't help me something terrible will happen! There's this princess, and she —'

Terrible things happen all the time, boy —'

'— Mort —'

'— and no one expects me to do anything about it.'

'But you were the greatest!'

Albert stopped for a moment, but did not look around.

'Was the greatest, was the greatest. And don't you try to butter me up. I ain't butterable.'

'They've got statues to you and everything,' said Mort, trying not to yawn.

'More fool them, then.' Albert reached the foot of the steps into the library proper, stamped up them and stood outlined against the candlelight from the library.

'You mean you won't help?' said Mort. 'Not even if you can?'