The back door to the dwarf Bjorn Hammerhock's workshop lifted off the latch and creaked open. He went to see if there was anyone there, and shivered.
He shut the door.
'Bit of a chilly breeze,' he said, to the room's other occupant. 'Still, we could do with it.'
The ceiling of the workshop was only about five feet above the floor. That was more than tall enough for a dwarf.
Ow, said a voice that no-one heard.
Hammerhock looked at the thing clamped in the vice, and picked up a screwdriver.
Ow.
'Amazing,' he said. 'I think that moving this tube down the barrel forces the, er, six chambers to slide along, presenting a new one to the, er, firing hole. That seems clear enough. The triggering mechanism is really just a tinderbox device. The spring . . . here . . . has rusted through. I can easily replace that. You know,' he said, looking up, 'this is a very interesting device. With the chemicals in the tubes and all. Such a simple idea. Is it a clown thing? Some kind of automatic slap-stick?'
He sorted through a bin of metal offcuts to find a piece of steel, and then selected a file.
'I'd like to make a few sketches afterwards,' he said.
About thirty seconds later there was a pop and a cloud of smoke.
Bjorn Hammerhock picked himself up, shaking his head.
'That was lucky!' he said. 'Could have been a nasty accident there.'
He tried to fan some of the smoke away, and then reached for the file again.
His hand went through it.
AHEM.
Bjorn tried again.
The file was as insubstantial as the smoke.
'What?'
AHEM.
The owner of the strange device was staring in horror at something on the floor. Bjorn followed his gaze.
'Oh,' he said. Realization, which had been hovering on the edge of Bjorn's consciousness, finally dawned. That was the thing about death. When it happened to you, you were among the first to know.
His visitor grabbed the device from the bench and rammed it into a cloth bag. Then he looked around wildly, picked up the corpse of Mr Hammerhock, and dragged it through the door towards the river.
There was a distant splash, or as close to a splash as you could get from the Ankh.
'Oh dear,' said Bjorn. 'And I can't swim, either.'
THAT WILL NOT, OF COURSE, BE A PROBLEM, said Death.
Bjorn looked at him.
'You're a lot shorter than I thought you'd be,' he said.
THIS IS BECAUSE I'M KNEELING DOWN, MR HAMMER-HOCK.
'That damn thing killed me!'
YES.
'That's the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.' ,
TO ANYONE. BUT NOT, I SUSPECT, THE LAST TIME.
Death stood up. There was a clicking of knee joints. He no longer cracked his skull on the ceiling. There wasn't a ceiling any more. The room had gently faded away.
There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, 'Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!' or 'Aaargh, primitive-and-out-moded-concept on a crutch!'
Bjorn didn't waste time asking questions. A lot of things become a shade urgent when you're dead.
'I believe in reincarnation,' he said.
I KNOW.
'I tried to live a good life. Does that help?'
THAT IS NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE . . . SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION . . . YOU'LL BE BJORN AGAIN.
He waited.
'Yes. That's right,' said Bjorn. Dwarfs are known for their sense of humour, in a way. People point them out and say: 'Those little devils haven't got a sense of humour.'
UM. WAS THERE ANYTHING AMUSING IN THE STATEMENT I JUST MADE?
'Uh. No. No . . . I don't think so.'
IT WAS A PUN, OR PLAY ON WORDS. BJORN AGAIN.
'Yes?'
DID YOU NOTICE IT?
'I can't say I did.'
OH.
'Sorry.'
I'VE BEEN TOLD I SHOULD TRY TO MAKE THE OCCASION A LITTLE MORE ENJOYABLE.
'Bjorn again.'
YES.
'I'll think about it?
THANK YOU.
'Hright,' said Sergeant .Colon, 'this, men, is your truncheon, also nomenclatured your night stick or baton of office.' He paused while he tried to remember his army days, and brightened up.
'Hand you will look after hit,' he shouted. 'You will eat with hit, you will sleep with hit, you—'
' 'Scuse me.'
'Who said that?'
'Down here. It's me, Lance-Constable Cuddy.'
'Yes, pilgrim?'
'How do we eat with it, sergeant?'
Sergeant Colon's wound-up machismo wound down. He was suspicious of Lance-Constable Cuddy. He strongly suspected Lance-Constable Cuddy was a trouble-maker.
'What?'
'Well, do we use it as a knife or a fork or cut in half for chopsticks or what?'
'What are you talking about?'
'Excuse me, sergeant?'
'What is it, Lance-Constable Angua?'
'How exactly do we sleep with it, sir?'
'Well, I . . . I meant . . . Corporal Nobbs, stop that sniggering right now!' Colon adjusted his breastplate and decided to strike out in a new .direction.
'Now, hwat we have 'ere is a puppet, mommet or heffigy' – indicating a vaguely humanoid shape made of leather and stuffed with straw, mounted on a stake -'called by the hnickname of Harthur, weapons training, for the use hof. Forward, Lance-Constable Angua. Tell me, Lance-Constable, do you think you could kill a man?'
'How long will I have?'
There was a pause while they picked up Corporal Nobbs and patted him on the back until he settled down.
'Very well,' said Sergeant Colon, 'what you must do now is take your truncheon like so, and on the command one, proceed smartly to Harthur and on the command two, tap him smartly upon the bonce. Hwun . . . two . . .'
The truncheon bounced off Arthur's helmet.
'Very good, only one thing wrong. Anyone tell me what it was?'
They shook their heads.
'From behind,' said Sergeant Colon. 'You hit 'em from behind. No sense in risking trouble, is there? Now you have a go, Lance-Constable Cuddy.'
'But sarge—'
'Do it.'