Mort

'Er,' he began, 'I don't have to die to get the job, do I?'

BEING DEAD IS NOTCOMPULSORY.

'And ... the bones ...?'

NOT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO.

Mort breathed out again. It had been starting to prey on his mind.

'If father says it's all right,' he said.

They looked at Lezek, who was scratching his beard.

'How do you feel about this, Mort?' he said, with the brittle brightness of a fever victim. 'It's not everyone's idea of an occupation. It's not what I had in mind, I admit. But they do say that undertaking is an honoured profession. It's your choice.'

'Undertaking?' said Mort. Death nodded, and raised his finger to his lips in a conspiratorial gesture.

'It's interesting,' said Mort slowly. 'I think I'd like to try it.'

'Where did you say your business was?' said Lezek. 'Is it far?'

NO FURTHER THAN THE THICKNESS OF A SHADOW, said Death. WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.

'Ah,' said Lezek, 'you get about a bit, then.' He looked puzzled, like a man struggling to remember something important, and then obviously gave up.

Death patted him on the shoulder in a friendly fashion and turned to Mort.

HAVE YOU ANY POSSESSIONS, BOY?

'Yes,' said Mort, and then remembered. 'Only I think I left them in the shop. Dad, we left the sack in the clothes shop!'

'It'll be shut,' said Lezek. 'Shops don't open on Hogswatch Day. You'll have to go back the day after tomorrow – well, tomorrow now.'

IT IS OF LITTLE ACCOUNT, said Death. WE WILL LEAVE NOW. NO DOUBT I WILL HAVE BUSINESS HERE SOON ENOUGH.

'I hope you'll be able to drop in and see us soon,' said Lezek. He seemed to be struggling with his thoughts.

'I'm not sure that will be a good idea,' said Mort.

'Well, goodbye, lad,' said Lezek. 'You're to do what you're told, you understand? And – excuse me, sir, do you have a son?'

Death looked rather taken aback.

NO, he said, I HAVE NO SONS.

'I'll just have a last word with my boy, if you've no objection.'

THEN I WILL GO AND SEE TO THE HORSE, said Death, with more than normal tact.

Lezek put his arm around his son's shoulders, with some difficulty in view of their difference in height, and gently propelled him across the square.

'Mort, you know your uncle Hemesh told me about this prenticing business?' he whispered.

'Yes?'

'Well, he told me something else,' the old man confided. 'He said it's not unknown for an apprentice to inherit his master's business. What do you think of that, then?'

'Uh. I'm not sure,' said Mort.

'It's worth thinking about,' said Lezek.

'I am thinking about it, father.'

'Many a young lad has started out that way, Hemesh said. He makes himself useful, earns his master's confidence, and, well, if there's any daughters in the house . . . did Mr, er, Mr say anything about daughters?'

'Mr who?' said Mort.

'Mr . . . your new master.'

'Oh. Him. No. No, I don't think so,' said Mort slowly. 'I don't think he's the marrying type.'

'Many a keen young man owes his advancement to his nuptials,' said Lezek.

'He does?'

'Mort, I don't think you're really listening.'

'What?'

Lezek came to a halt on the frosty cobbles and spun the boy around to face him.

'You're really going to have to do better than this,' he said. 'Don't you understand, boy? If you're going to amount to anything in this world then you've got to listen. I'm your father telling you these things.'

Mort looked down at his father's face. He wanted to say a lot of things: he wanted to say how much he loved him, how worried he was; he wanted to ask what his father really thought he'd just seen and heard. He wanted to say that he felt as though he stepped on a molehill and found that it was really a volcano. He wanted to ask what 'nuptials' meant.

What he actually said was, 'Yes. Thank you. I'd better be going. I'll try and write you a letter.'

'There's bound to be someone passing who can read it to us,' said Lezek. 'Goodbye, Mort.' He blew his nose.

'Goodbye, dad. I'll come back to visit,' said Mort. Death coughed tactfully, although it sounded like the pistol-crack of an ancient beam full of death-watch beetle.

WE HAD BETTER BE GOING, he said. HOP UP, MORT.

As Mort scrambled behind the ornate silver saddle Death leaned down and shook Lezek's hand.

THANK YOU, he said.

'He's a good lad at heart,' said Lezek. 'A bit dreamy, that's all. I suppose we were all young once.'

Death considered this.

No, he said, I DON'T THINK SO.

He gathered up the reins and turned the horse towards the Rim road. From his perch behind the black-robed figure Mort waved desperately.

Lezek waved back. Then, as the horse and its two riders disappeared from view, he lowered his hand and looked at it. The handshake . . . it had felt strange. But, somehow, he couldn't remember exactly why.

Mort listened to the clatter of stone under the horse's hooves. Then there was the soft thud of packed earth as they reached the road, and then there was nothing at all.

He looked down and saw the landscape spread out below him, the night etched with moonlight silver. If he fell off, the only thing he'd hit was air.

He redoubled his grip on the saddle.

Then Death said, ARE YOU HUNGRY, BOY?

'Yes, sir.' The words came straight from his stomach without the intervention of his brain.

Death nodded, and reined in the horse. It stood on the air, the great circular panorama of the Disc glittering below it. Here and there a city was an range glow; in the warm seas nearer the Rim there was a hint of phosphorescence. In some of the deep valleys the trapped daylight of the Disc, which is slow and slightly heavy[1] was evaporating like silver steam.

But it was outshone by the glow that rose towards the stars from the Rim itself. Vast streamers of light shimmered and glittered across the night. Great golden walls surrounded the world.

'It's beautiful,' said Mort softly. 'What is it?'

THE SUN is UNDER THE DISK, said Death.

'Is it like this every night?'

EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE'S LIKE THAT.

'Doesn't anyone know?'

ME. You. THE GODS. GOOD, IS IT?

'Gosh!'

Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world.

1

Practically anything can go faster than Disc light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles – kingons, or possibly queons – that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.