Discworld: The Rules, by gileonnen
Title: The Rules
Author: gileonnen
Fandom: Discworld
Pairing/characters: OCs, wizards, Dibbler cameo
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Discworld, its settings, and its characters all belong to Terry Pratchett.
Prompt: Discworld, any character, A gay wizard attempts to determine whether Unseen University's celibacy policy applies to him...and if so, why?
Summary: At age thirteen, Hubert Greenish knew for certain that he was destined to be a wizard.
Warnings: Original characters, circuitous discussion of sexual practice, and cabbages.
In the hallowed halls of Unseen University, there are many books of mystic origin; some are bound in the hide of screeching creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions and must be chained to their lecterns, and some can only be persuaded to reveal their contents after a four-course meal.¹ There are books with pages of thin glass and books carved from the roots of mountain. Ancient Dwarvish genealogies jostle against ill-behaved taxidermy manuals and suspiciously untouched geometry texts. The books spill across the tables in the library, pour from the bookshelves of young students, fence in ancient academics like sandbags against the rising tide of the Century of the Fruitbat--
--but at present, in the Archchancellor's office, there is only one book. It is quite thin, cloth-bound, and labeled in large black font, The Rules.
There aren't very many rules, when one is a wizard. Or rather, there are very few rules that one might conceivably break twice.
1. The wizards are fond of citing these obscure texts when the time comes to reckon up the bills for the larder.
* * *
At age thirteen, Hubert Greenish knew for certain that he was destined to be a wizard. He felt himself to be eminently qualified in every significant respect--by age seven he had begun to develop an appreciable pyramid shape that had only become more pronounced over the years, and he was already picking up the habit of overbearing bluster. The beard wasn't coming yet, and of course he'd need a pointy hat of more respectable provenance than Boffo's (and there was the small matter of learning magic), but once young Hubie had mastered these somewhat more trivial matters, he felt sure that he would grow naturally into the position.
"I 'spect there's more to it than your girth--not that it's a bad girth," said Two-Bit Adam, who was generally thought to be a worldly young man on account of his parents having died in a carriage accident and left him to provide for himself in the big city of Sto Kerrig. Like every other boy of their age, Hubie deferred instinctively to Two-Bit Adam's expertise on matters having to do with anything beyond the village of Stalk. "But the thing of it is--the thing of it is, see, wizards have got theory all packed up in their heads. And theory's all packed with things like Quantum and Ethics and Jography."
"I know Jography," countered Hubie, but he hitched up his trousers and leaned against the fence about the cabbage patch. "So I'll want learning. I knew that already."
"But a wizard's not like a cobbler, or even a taxman--your average taxman can do with learning, but a wizard's got t'be educated. And you won't get any of that outside the Universary, I 'spect." Two-Bit Adam spat between his teeth in a passable imitation of a world-weary man of the fields.
"So what, then? I've got to go to Ankh-Morpork and get myself let into the Universary?"
"That's about the shape of things," Adam answered. "But look, see, I'll go with you. Can't expect a boy like you to keep his head in the city, but the two of us--now, I 'spect the two of us will get on in the city like a pair of cats on a greased roof."
Hubie's mouth fell open. It made him look rather like a funnel set upon the ground. "You and me? Go to the city, and get educated together?"
"Nah, it'd just be you getting educated," said Adam. "Me, I like to think I'd start in a decent kind of trade--with a pushcart, maybe, if I saved up. Tray of onions onna stick. Anything'd be better than sitting about watching the cabbages."
They were on the road by the next morning. By evening, they had managed a mile; by nightfall, they'd bribed a coachman to take them in; by midnight he'd turned them out again and cudgeled them soundly about the ears.
By the next morning, Hubert and Two-Bit Adam were the best of friends.
* * *
Ankh-Morpork! Great city of the Sto Plains, shining pustule on the rim of the Circle Sea! You straddle the River Ankh like a syphilitic seamstress taking a long piss, skirts hiked around her thighs--your charms attract multitudes, and your graces send them fleeing! O great hope of the dispossessed, and greater hope of the dispossesser!
Two-Bit Adam, who had never been further away from home than Sto Kerrig, could feel his horizons metaphorically expanding even as they literally contracted. Or at the very least were literally obscured by tall buildings and tall people. The press of strangers all around him made him uneasy, although he had to admit that when he came out of the crushing crowd he was six pocket watches and three gold teeth richer.
Yes, this was the sort of town where a Two-Bit kid could become an Eight-Bit man, and where a chubby boy in a daft hat might well turn wizard with a modicum of education.
"Well--let's see about renting us a room," said Adam, when they'd stopped in an alley to catch their breath. "Probably won't be much, but I 'spect it'll see us through all right until we can get you set up at Universary. And then it's all pork pie and crackling bits, and feather mattresses, if I know anything about Universary."
"I'd like pork pie and crackling bits," said Hubie. "And a room, now you mention it."
"So that we'll have!" Adam declared. "You watch me--and by the end of the night we'll have a room and pork pie, you see if we don't. Hey, where do you think they'd tell you about rooms for rent?"
Hubie, who had never thought about the matter in even the most abstract sense before, was left digging through his mental stock of traveler's tales. "Oh!" he cried, after a successful rummage. "Why, you'd go to taverns, I'd say. Inns. Places where you stay when you haven't got a place, you see?"
"I do see. Only thing is--if I were an innkeeper, I 'spect I'd want to keep people staying in my place and not gallivanting off renting rooms."
"Hmm." While Hubie contemplated basic economic strategy, Adam put his hands into his pockets.
The pocketwatches were gone. In their place remained only Thieves' Guild receipts.
* * *
"Hubert Greenish, eh?" The registrar tapped his pen on the lectern in what Hubie considered an unnecessarily threatening fashion.
"Yessir, that's me."
"You want to enroll in the University, I take it." He chewed on the end of his pen. His teeth were very white and the front two protruded alarmingly, and he resembled nothing so much as a geriatric vampire rabbit.
Hubie swallowed. "Yessir, I do."
More tapping. Hubie wasn't sure which was worse--tapping or chewing. "You've got your fees in order? Test scores? Recommendations?"
"I ... I've got a friend who could tell you, he thinks with education I'd be suited to being a wizard--"
"No fees, test scores, or recommendations. I see," said the registrar. "Well, this won't do even a little."
Just as Hubie was preparing to turn away and begin the long walk back to Stalk, the registrar smiled just a little. It didn't dispel the exsanguinary-lagomorph impression, but it did make Hubie pause. After a moment, the registrar offered, "I'll have some test scores and recommendations sent for, eh? That work for you, Mister Greenish?"
"That works just fine for me, sir," said Hubie, although he was beginning to feel rather ill. "Er ... that's it?"
"That's it. Class starts in two weeks," the registrar answered. He passed a thin, cloth-bound book over the lectern. "See that you read this. Young boy like you will need to abide by the Rules if he wants to make something of himself--but you can do that, eh?"
"Once I've read them," answered Hubie. He wasn't sure whether to shake the registrar's hand, but felt that if he was then there was surely a secret handshake somewhere in the Rules. In the end, Hubie settled for a bow, and then scuttled out right sharpish.
The registrar looked after him, shaking his head and laughing. "Io's testicles," he muttered to himself--"What did he think we were, the Assassin's Guild? Fees and test scores, indeed."
* * *
They had a room, insofar as it had four walls and at least a partial ceiling. And they had a pork pie to split, although it had only a tenuous claim to 'pie' and none at all to 'pork.' "I bought it off a man with a tray," Two-Bit Adam confided. "Genuine pig product, he said. Genuine actual product from actual pigs."
"I can see that," said Hubie, gnawing gamely on a bit of gristle. "Actual pig ... product."
"And you! You've got yourself let into the Universary!"
"It's a University," Hubie answered. "They gave me a book of rules, too--here, see?" He passed over the slim little book. "I've got to read them and do what they say."
Adam leaned back against the wall (but gently, in case it collapsed) and opened the book to the first page, frowning in concentration at the words. "One," he said. "Refrain from any action that would lead to untimely and certain death. Seems pretty sensible to me." He turned another page. "Two. Not even if it's very interesting. Well, that takes the fun out of it!"
"Still--sounds all right, doesn't it? For a student?"
"I 'spect so." Adam turned another page. Then he frowned. His lips moved for a second, and then he laughed. "Now, hang on, this is rubbish! They--here, read this." He thrust the book at Hubie's face, until the words swam alarmingly close. When Hubie could get enough distance to read it, he still wasn't sure he understood. (The spelling was only part of the problem.)
3. A vvyzzard muste bee sellibate and neuer engauge inne:
a) Marryage
b) Fornycation
c) Buggerie
d) Anny of thee aforesaide vvith a horse OR a camelle OR a daunkee OR a jerraffe
e) Doe nott euen trie yt vvith a haedgehogge.
"Well, there are more parts to it, certainly," he allowed, after a moment. "But it's only sense, right? Wizards can't be having children or there'd be ... there'd be a great lot of wizards, is what there'd be. And the hedgehog, well--that'd hurt."
"So that's it? You're up and done with the pleasures of the flesh? Never going to play Hide the Hamster with--"
"No hamsters, thanks." Hubie wrinkled his nose. "I just never thought much of girls. I mean ... they're very nice, and clever and all that, but what was I going to do with one?"
Adam collapsed dramatically across the mattress. A rat squeaked in alarm and ducked for cover. "If I have to explain that to you, I 'spect we're going to be up all night."
"I know about that," said Hubie at once, sharply. "We have a cow, you know. But it looks, I don't know ... kind of slimy."
"So that's it? Too slimy for you, eh?" He nudged Hubie with his foot. "You really ought to be a wizard, with an attitude like that."
"Good job I'm going to be, then."
After Hubie had read the book from cover to cover, he put The Rules aside, nudged a rat off of his side of the mattress, and went to sleep.
* * *
By the time Hubert Greenish was sixteen, he had learned a great deal about the strangest corners of the cosmos. He knew how to summon beasts from the blackest void and demons from the deepest pits of Hell; he knew how Hex worked as well as anyone else in his year; he knew how to scratch out a term paper at midnight, fueled only by strong coffee and pure terror. He could draw a diagram of colored circles and find out what lay in the overlap.
He had also learned a few things about Marryage, Fornycation, and Buggerie--namely, that they overlapped but did not coincide.
"It's tricky business," said Ponder Stibbons to a spotty boy from Lancre. He was blushing horribly; the Lancre boy looked unperturbed. "The process--is an analogous process, I think we can agree. And whereas strictly speaking there's none of the same--output? Yes, output--there's a healthy suspicion that it might lead to, shall we say, analogous processing ..." He wrung his fingers in his Rocket Wizard shirt. "Anyway, safer not to fiddle with that. You're better off with quantum thaumodynamics."
"What's analogous processing?" asked Hubert, later. The Lancre boy shrugged. "Mining for coal," he answered, which clarified little to nothing. "Ploughing the row. Churning the dark butter--"
"That was very helpful, thanks," said Hubert. "I have something else to do now, somewhere else."
That night, over onions and sausages on sticks, he posed the question to Four-Bit Adam. "Mining for coal, ploughing a field, churning butter--what's the common denominator?"
"Tell me you didn't make sixteen without being able to answer that yourself," said Adam. "Why, it means--" He paused, sausage halfway to his mouth. "Well. When a man and a woman love each other very much--"
"Oh, that," said Hubert, but Adam held up his sausage to stall him.
"Now, I expect you're acquainted with the fact that ladies have, ahem, all kinds of parts."
"I might be, yeah."
"Well. If, as a less than respectable man, you were to use, hmm, the servant's entrance--"
"--I see." Hubert blinked. "And it'd work the same with men as with ladies, wouldn't it?"
For a long moment, Adam studied him. "You've had enough theory for a day," he said at last.
"It's a practical question, isn't it?"
"Not for you, it's not." With that, Adam packed up his sausage-and-onion-onna-stick tray, closing the sides in over the display area to make a box of it. "Rule three, remember? No practice."
"Now look, it specified giraffes and camels and hedgehogs, but it never said anything about men and women, and if there's a gap in the rules then I damn well want to know about it!"
Adam stared. And then he pressed his knuckles to his lips. And then he laughed. "You ask your wizards about that gap, eh? And see what they say."
Hubert went to bed thinking about processing and output, and he had a confusing dream in which a butter churn was chasing him through a coal mine while Adam tried to sell him sausages and onions.
* * *
"But I don't see why it's got to be like that!" said Hubert. "There's not any kind of logical reason--you can't even have children by accident that way, or if you could you'd have to be completely Librarian-poo to try a spell like that. But the thing is--"
He paced, agitatedly, the floorboards creaking under his by now considerable weight. He was playing with the sleeves on his robe, worrying at the threads hemming them; he hadn't done that since he was six.
"--the thing is, it's not the same at all. Because if a wizard's not interested in ladies--or hedgehogs--and if there's no chance he ever would be, then why should he just have to close up shop on everything? On everything."
There was no reply. Hubert sighed.
"Anyway. Thank you for listening."
The Bursar smiled from his position near the ceiling, and continued counting atoms one by one.
* * *
Hubert stood outside of the Archchancellor's office, quaking all over. He knew, intellectually, in theory, that the worst that would happen would be that he'd get thrown out of the University--and that wouldn't be so bad, would it? There was work for an educated young man, in Ankh-Morpork. He could get a tray like Adam's and sell sausages with him in the streets. Together, maybe they'd almost rival C.M.O.T. Dibbler himself. And that would be an all right sort of way to make a living, wouldn't it?
They could--
The door swung open, revealing the Archchancellor armed with a crossbow. "Well, now," he boomed. "What's this?"
In the face of that imposing countenance, Hubert counted not fainting as a small but significant victory. "I've c-come to ask about the Rules, sir," he said. He offered his copy for perusal.
Mustrum Ridcully regarded the Rules with a look of distaste, as though they had somehow become rodentlike and slimy under his gaze. "The Rules, eh? What about them?"
"I wanted to ask for ... for clarification, you see." He braced himself. "About rule three."
"Hedgehogs are non-negotiable, I'm afraid," said the Archchancellor. "Well-known song about it. Terrible idea."
"Yes, and it's very sensible," Hubert agreed. "It was more to do with--ah, intraspecies relations. I understand that wizards aren't supposed to have children--"
"Haven't got a girl in trouble, have you? Young ..." Ridcully's search for Hubert's name proved futile. Hubert only shook his head.
"Not a girl in trouble. I'm only asking ... ah, what is the University's official policy on ... men?"
"Men?" Ridcully's brows drew together. "Healthy young things. Make good wizards. Only ever had one girl in the ranks, and she was a bit of a weird one. Quantum, you know," he said, and tapped his nose.
When Hubert didn't answer right away, the Archchancellor's frown deepened.
And then deepened.
When the realization came over him, it came like a pyrotechnic display. "Oh," he said. "You mean men."
"I do, sir."
"Well--I don't think we have an official policy on that. Never came up before; not to say it's never come up." He seized Hubert's book and leafed through to rule three, making a tsking sound as though the book had disappointed him. "Not a damn thing in here. Not a damn thing. Unless that's what ne-u-er means."
"I don't think it is, sir."
"No? Well. Damn inconvenient." Ridcully pondered the matter for a staggering two and a half seconds. "Unless you've got a man in trouble, seems fair game to me."
* * *
"Sausage?" asked Eight-Bit Adam.
"Don't mind if I do," said Professor Greenish, taking the stick from him and polishing off the sausage in short order. "You ought to come back to the university with me. I've got enough books in my study, they'd never find you--and if they did, what could they say?"
"Nah, I've got to make an honest living. No good being a kept man," Adam said. "And I've just opened the restaurant."
"I'm not complaining about the restaurant."
"You're not complaining at all, I say," said Adam, but he was grinning. "Now, are you going to come back and help me scrub the pans?"
"D'you mean 'scrub the pans'?"
"I do." He took Hubert by the arm, leading him away from the counter and to the back room--and at that moment Hubert was grateful that they'd held onto each other, from Stalk to the fabled gutters of Ankh-Morpork. "Here," said Adam, handing him a scrubbing brush. "Let's put that education to work."
That night they shared the little bedroom over the Taste of the Sto Plains, and their snores rose to the air with the aroma of cabbage and onions.
Author: gileonnen
Fandom: Discworld
Pairing/characters: OCs, wizards, Dibbler cameo
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Discworld, its settings, and its characters all belong to Terry Pratchett.
Prompt: Discworld, any character, A gay wizard attempts to determine whether Unseen University's celibacy policy applies to him...and if so, why?
Summary: At age thirteen, Hubert Greenish knew for certain that he was destined to be a wizard.
Warnings: Original characters, circuitous discussion of sexual practice, and cabbages.
In the hallowed halls of Unseen University, there are many books of mystic origin; some are bound in the hide of screeching creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions and must be chained to their lecterns, and some can only be persuaded to reveal their contents after a four-course meal.¹ There are books with pages of thin glass and books carved from the roots of mountain. Ancient Dwarvish genealogies jostle against ill-behaved taxidermy manuals and suspiciously untouched geometry texts. The books spill across the tables in the library, pour from the bookshelves of young students, fence in ancient academics like sandbags against the rising tide of the Century of the Fruitbat--
--but at present, in the Archchancellor's office, there is only one book. It is quite thin, cloth-bound, and labeled in large black font, The Rules.
There aren't very many rules, when one is a wizard. Or rather, there are very few rules that one might conceivably break twice.
1. The wizards are fond of citing these obscure texts when the time comes to reckon up the bills for the larder.
* * *
At age thirteen, Hubert Greenish knew for certain that he was destined to be a wizard. He felt himself to be eminently qualified in every significant respect--by age seven he had begun to develop an appreciable pyramid shape that had only become more pronounced over the years, and he was already picking up the habit of overbearing bluster. The beard wasn't coming yet, and of course he'd need a pointy hat of more respectable provenance than Boffo's (and there was the small matter of learning magic), but once young Hubie had mastered these somewhat more trivial matters, he felt sure that he would grow naturally into the position.
"I 'spect there's more to it than your girth--not that it's a bad girth," said Two-Bit Adam, who was generally thought to be a worldly young man on account of his parents having died in a carriage accident and left him to provide for himself in the big city of Sto Kerrig. Like every other boy of their age, Hubie deferred instinctively to Two-Bit Adam's expertise on matters having to do with anything beyond the village of Stalk. "But the thing of it is--the thing of it is, see, wizards have got theory all packed up in their heads. And theory's all packed with things like Quantum and Ethics and Jography."
"I know Jography," countered Hubie, but he hitched up his trousers and leaned against the fence about the cabbage patch. "So I'll want learning. I knew that already."
"But a wizard's not like a cobbler, or even a taxman--your average taxman can do with learning, but a wizard's got t'be educated. And you won't get any of that outside the Universary, I 'spect." Two-Bit Adam spat between his teeth in a passable imitation of a world-weary man of the fields.
"So what, then? I've got to go to Ankh-Morpork and get myself let into the Universary?"
"That's about the shape of things," Adam answered. "But look, see, I'll go with you. Can't expect a boy like you to keep his head in the city, but the two of us--now, I 'spect the two of us will get on in the city like a pair of cats on a greased roof."
Hubie's mouth fell open. It made him look rather like a funnel set upon the ground. "You and me? Go to the city, and get educated together?"
"Nah, it'd just be you getting educated," said Adam. "Me, I like to think I'd start in a decent kind of trade--with a pushcart, maybe, if I saved up. Tray of onions onna stick. Anything'd be better than sitting about watching the cabbages."
They were on the road by the next morning. By evening, they had managed a mile; by nightfall, they'd bribed a coachman to take them in; by midnight he'd turned them out again and cudgeled them soundly about the ears.
By the next morning, Hubert and Two-Bit Adam were the best of friends.
* * *
Ankh-Morpork! Great city of the Sto Plains, shining pustule on the rim of the Circle Sea! You straddle the River Ankh like a syphilitic seamstress taking a long piss, skirts hiked around her thighs--your charms attract multitudes, and your graces send them fleeing! O great hope of the dispossessed, and greater hope of the dispossesser!
Two-Bit Adam, who had never been further away from home than Sto Kerrig, could feel his horizons metaphorically expanding even as they literally contracted. Or at the very least were literally obscured by tall buildings and tall people. The press of strangers all around him made him uneasy, although he had to admit that when he came out of the crushing crowd he was six pocket watches and three gold teeth richer.
Yes, this was the sort of town where a Two-Bit kid could become an Eight-Bit man, and where a chubby boy in a daft hat might well turn wizard with a modicum of education.
"Well--let's see about renting us a room," said Adam, when they'd stopped in an alley to catch their breath. "Probably won't be much, but I 'spect it'll see us through all right until we can get you set up at Universary. And then it's all pork pie and crackling bits, and feather mattresses, if I know anything about Universary."
"I'd like pork pie and crackling bits," said Hubie. "And a room, now you mention it."
"So that we'll have!" Adam declared. "You watch me--and by the end of the night we'll have a room and pork pie, you see if we don't. Hey, where do you think they'd tell you about rooms for rent?"
Hubie, who had never thought about the matter in even the most abstract sense before, was left digging through his mental stock of traveler's tales. "Oh!" he cried, after a successful rummage. "Why, you'd go to taverns, I'd say. Inns. Places where you stay when you haven't got a place, you see?"
"I do see. Only thing is--if I were an innkeeper, I 'spect I'd want to keep people staying in my place and not gallivanting off renting rooms."
"Hmm." While Hubie contemplated basic economic strategy, Adam put his hands into his pockets.
The pocketwatches were gone. In their place remained only Thieves' Guild receipts.
* * *
"Hubert Greenish, eh?" The registrar tapped his pen on the lectern in what Hubie considered an unnecessarily threatening fashion.
"Yessir, that's me."
"You want to enroll in the University, I take it." He chewed on the end of his pen. His teeth were very white and the front two protruded alarmingly, and he resembled nothing so much as a geriatric vampire rabbit.
Hubie swallowed. "Yessir, I do."
More tapping. Hubie wasn't sure which was worse--tapping or chewing. "You've got your fees in order? Test scores? Recommendations?"
"I ... I've got a friend who could tell you, he thinks with education I'd be suited to being a wizard--"
"No fees, test scores, or recommendations. I see," said the registrar. "Well, this won't do even a little."
Just as Hubie was preparing to turn away and begin the long walk back to Stalk, the registrar smiled just a little. It didn't dispel the exsanguinary-lagomorph impression, but it did make Hubie pause. After a moment, the registrar offered, "I'll have some test scores and recommendations sent for, eh? That work for you, Mister Greenish?"
"That works just fine for me, sir," said Hubie, although he was beginning to feel rather ill. "Er ... that's it?"
"That's it. Class starts in two weeks," the registrar answered. He passed a thin, cloth-bound book over the lectern. "See that you read this. Young boy like you will need to abide by the Rules if he wants to make something of himself--but you can do that, eh?"
"Once I've read them," answered Hubie. He wasn't sure whether to shake the registrar's hand, but felt that if he was then there was surely a secret handshake somewhere in the Rules. In the end, Hubie settled for a bow, and then scuttled out right sharpish.
The registrar looked after him, shaking his head and laughing. "Io's testicles," he muttered to himself--"What did he think we were, the Assassin's Guild? Fees and test scores, indeed."
* * *
They had a room, insofar as it had four walls and at least a partial ceiling. And they had a pork pie to split, although it had only a tenuous claim to 'pie' and none at all to 'pork.' "I bought it off a man with a tray," Two-Bit Adam confided. "Genuine pig product, he said. Genuine actual product from actual pigs."
"I can see that," said Hubie, gnawing gamely on a bit of gristle. "Actual pig ... product."
"And you! You've got yourself let into the Universary!"
"It's a University," Hubie answered. "They gave me a book of rules, too--here, see?" He passed over the slim little book. "I've got to read them and do what they say."
Adam leaned back against the wall (but gently, in case it collapsed) and opened the book to the first page, frowning in concentration at the words. "One," he said. "Refrain from any action that would lead to untimely and certain death. Seems pretty sensible to me." He turned another page. "Two. Not even if it's very interesting. Well, that takes the fun out of it!"
"Still--sounds all right, doesn't it? For a student?"
"I 'spect so." Adam turned another page. Then he frowned. His lips moved for a second, and then he laughed. "Now, hang on, this is rubbish! They--here, read this." He thrust the book at Hubie's face, until the words swam alarmingly close. When Hubie could get enough distance to read it, he still wasn't sure he understood. (The spelling was only part of the problem.)
3. A vvyzzard muste bee sellibate and neuer engauge inne:
a) Marryage
b) Fornycation
c) Buggerie
d) Anny of thee aforesaide vvith a horse OR a camelle OR a daunkee OR a jerraffe
e) Doe nott euen trie yt vvith a haedgehogge.
"Well, there are more parts to it, certainly," he allowed, after a moment. "But it's only sense, right? Wizards can't be having children or there'd be ... there'd be a great lot of wizards, is what there'd be. And the hedgehog, well--that'd hurt."
"So that's it? You're up and done with the pleasures of the flesh? Never going to play Hide the Hamster with--"
"No hamsters, thanks." Hubie wrinkled his nose. "I just never thought much of girls. I mean ... they're very nice, and clever and all that, but what was I going to do with one?"
Adam collapsed dramatically across the mattress. A rat squeaked in alarm and ducked for cover. "If I have to explain that to you, I 'spect we're going to be up all night."
"I know about that," said Hubie at once, sharply. "We have a cow, you know. But it looks, I don't know ... kind of slimy."
"So that's it? Too slimy for you, eh?" He nudged Hubie with his foot. "You really ought to be a wizard, with an attitude like that."
"Good job I'm going to be, then."
After Hubie had read the book from cover to cover, he put The Rules aside, nudged a rat off of his side of the mattress, and went to sleep.
* * *
By the time Hubert Greenish was sixteen, he had learned a great deal about the strangest corners of the cosmos. He knew how to summon beasts from the blackest void and demons from the deepest pits of Hell; he knew how Hex worked as well as anyone else in his year; he knew how to scratch out a term paper at midnight, fueled only by strong coffee and pure terror. He could draw a diagram of colored circles and find out what lay in the overlap.
He had also learned a few things about Marryage, Fornycation, and Buggerie--namely, that they overlapped but did not coincide.
"It's tricky business," said Ponder Stibbons to a spotty boy from Lancre. He was blushing horribly; the Lancre boy looked unperturbed. "The process--is an analogous process, I think we can agree. And whereas strictly speaking there's none of the same--output? Yes, output--there's a healthy suspicion that it might lead to, shall we say, analogous processing ..." He wrung his fingers in his Rocket Wizard shirt. "Anyway, safer not to fiddle with that. You're better off with quantum thaumodynamics."
"What's analogous processing?" asked Hubert, later. The Lancre boy shrugged. "Mining for coal," he answered, which clarified little to nothing. "Ploughing the row. Churning the dark butter--"
"That was very helpful, thanks," said Hubert. "I have something else to do now, somewhere else."
That night, over onions and sausages on sticks, he posed the question to Four-Bit Adam. "Mining for coal, ploughing a field, churning butter--what's the common denominator?"
"Tell me you didn't make sixteen without being able to answer that yourself," said Adam. "Why, it means--" He paused, sausage halfway to his mouth. "Well. When a man and a woman love each other very much--"
"Oh, that," said Hubert, but Adam held up his sausage to stall him.
"Now, I expect you're acquainted with the fact that ladies have, ahem, all kinds of parts."
"I might be, yeah."
"Well. If, as a less than respectable man, you were to use, hmm, the servant's entrance--"
"--I see." Hubert blinked. "And it'd work the same with men as with ladies, wouldn't it?"
For a long moment, Adam studied him. "You've had enough theory for a day," he said at last.
"It's a practical question, isn't it?"
"Not for you, it's not." With that, Adam packed up his sausage-and-onion-onna-stick tray, closing the sides in over the display area to make a box of it. "Rule three, remember? No practice."
"Now look, it specified giraffes and camels and hedgehogs, but it never said anything about men and women, and if there's a gap in the rules then I damn well want to know about it!"
Adam stared. And then he pressed his knuckles to his lips. And then he laughed. "You ask your wizards about that gap, eh? And see what they say."
Hubert went to bed thinking about processing and output, and he had a confusing dream in which a butter churn was chasing him through a coal mine while Adam tried to sell him sausages and onions.
* * *
"But I don't see why it's got to be like that!" said Hubert. "There's not any kind of logical reason--you can't even have children by accident that way, or if you could you'd have to be completely Librarian-poo to try a spell like that. But the thing is--"
He paced, agitatedly, the floorboards creaking under his by now considerable weight. He was playing with the sleeves on his robe, worrying at the threads hemming them; he hadn't done that since he was six.
"--the thing is, it's not the same at all. Because if a wizard's not interested in ladies--or hedgehogs--and if there's no chance he ever would be, then why should he just have to close up shop on everything? On everything."
There was no reply. Hubert sighed.
"Anyway. Thank you for listening."
The Bursar smiled from his position near the ceiling, and continued counting atoms one by one.
* * *
Hubert stood outside of the Archchancellor's office, quaking all over. He knew, intellectually, in theory, that the worst that would happen would be that he'd get thrown out of the University--and that wouldn't be so bad, would it? There was work for an educated young man, in Ankh-Morpork. He could get a tray like Adam's and sell sausages with him in the streets. Together, maybe they'd almost rival C.M.O.T. Dibbler himself. And that would be an all right sort of way to make a living, wouldn't it?
They could--
The door swung open, revealing the Archchancellor armed with a crossbow. "Well, now," he boomed. "What's this?"
In the face of that imposing countenance, Hubert counted not fainting as a small but significant victory. "I've c-come to ask about the Rules, sir," he said. He offered his copy for perusal.
Mustrum Ridcully regarded the Rules with a look of distaste, as though they had somehow become rodentlike and slimy under his gaze. "The Rules, eh? What about them?"
"I wanted to ask for ... for clarification, you see." He braced himself. "About rule three."
"Hedgehogs are non-negotiable, I'm afraid," said the Archchancellor. "Well-known song about it. Terrible idea."
"Yes, and it's very sensible," Hubert agreed. "It was more to do with--ah, intraspecies relations. I understand that wizards aren't supposed to have children--"
"Haven't got a girl in trouble, have you? Young ..." Ridcully's search for Hubert's name proved futile. Hubert only shook his head.
"Not a girl in trouble. I'm only asking ... ah, what is the University's official policy on ... men?"
"Men?" Ridcully's brows drew together. "Healthy young things. Make good wizards. Only ever had one girl in the ranks, and she was a bit of a weird one. Quantum, you know," he said, and tapped his nose.
When Hubert didn't answer right away, the Archchancellor's frown deepened.
And then deepened.
When the realization came over him, it came like a pyrotechnic display. "Oh," he said. "You mean men."
"I do, sir."
"Well--I don't think we have an official policy on that. Never came up before; not to say it's never come up." He seized Hubert's book and leafed through to rule three, making a tsking sound as though the book had disappointed him. "Not a damn thing in here. Not a damn thing. Unless that's what ne-u-er means."
"I don't think it is, sir."
"No? Well. Damn inconvenient." Ridcully pondered the matter for a staggering two and a half seconds. "Unless you've got a man in trouble, seems fair game to me."
* * *
"Sausage?" asked Eight-Bit Adam.
"Don't mind if I do," said Professor Greenish, taking the stick from him and polishing off the sausage in short order. "You ought to come back to the university with me. I've got enough books in my study, they'd never find you--and if they did, what could they say?"
"Nah, I've got to make an honest living. No good being a kept man," Adam said. "And I've just opened the restaurant."
"I'm not complaining about the restaurant."
"You're not complaining at all, I say," said Adam, but he was grinning. "Now, are you going to come back and help me scrub the pans?"
"D'you mean 'scrub the pans'?"
"I do." He took Hubert by the arm, leading him away from the counter and to the back room--and at that moment Hubert was grateful that they'd held onto each other, from Stalk to the fabled gutters of Ankh-Morpork. "Here," said Adam, handing him a scrubbing brush. "Let's put that education to work."
That night they shared the little bedroom over the Taste of the Sto Plains, and their snores rose to the air with the aroma of cabbage and onions.