01 Truckers by Pratchett Terry

Author:Pratchett, Terry [Terry, Pratchett,]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T21:40:26.196000+00:00

'Maybe,' said Grimma. 'Perhaps. But he won't be able to answer you, because he's dead.' 'But he can't die! He's always been here!' said Gurder, aghast. 'You've got it wrong. Sir? Sir!' Masklin took the Thing out of the Abbot's unresisting hands as other Stationeri, hearing Gurder's voice, hurried in.

'Thing?' he said quietly, walking away from the crowd around the bed, 'I hear you.' 'Is he dead?' 'I detect no life functions.' What does that mean?' 'It means "yes".' 'Oh.' Masklin considered this. 'I thought you had to be eaten or squashed first. I didn't think you just sort of stopped.' The Thing didn't volunteer any information.

'Any idea what I should do now?' said Masklin. 'Gurder was right. They are not going to leave all this warmth and food. I mean, some of the youngsters might, for a lark. But if we're going to survive outside we'll need lots of people. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. And what am I supposed to say to them: Sorry, you've all got to leave it all behind?' The Thing spoke.

'No,' it said.

Masklin had never seen a funeral before. Come to that, he'd never seen a nome die from being alive too long. Oh, people had been eaten, or had never come back, but no one had simply come to an end.

Where do you bury your dead?' Gurder had asked. 'Inside badgers and foxes, often,' he'd replied, and hadn't been able to resist adding, 'You know. The handsome and agile hunters?' This was how the nomes said farewell to their dead: The body of the old Abbot was ceremoniously dressed in a green coat and a pointy red hat. His long white beard was carefully combed out and then he lay, peacefully, on his bed as Gurder read the service.

'Now that it has pleased you, Arnold Bros (est. 1905), to take our brother to your great Gardening Department beyond Consumer Accounts, where there is Ideal Lawn Edging and an Amazing Floral Display and the pool of eternal life in Easy-to-Lay Polythene with Real Crazy-Paving Edging, we will give him the gifts a nome must take on his journey.' The Count de Ironmongri stepped forward. 'I give him,' he said, laying an object beside the nome, 'the Spade Of Honest Toil.' 'And I,' said the Duke de Haberdasheri, 'lay beside him the Fishing Rod of Hope.' Other leading nomes brought other things: the Wheelbarrow of Leadership, the Shopping Basket of Life. Dying in the Store was quite complicated, Masklin gathered.

Grimma blew her nose as Gurder completed the service and the body was ceremoniously carried away.

To the sub-basement, they later learned, and the incinerator. Down in the realms of Prices Slashed, the Security, where he sat at night-times, legend said, and drank his horrible tea.

'That's a bit dreadful, I reckon,' said Granny Morkie, as they stood around aimlessly afterwards. 'In my young day, if a person died, we buried 'em. In the ground.' 'Ground?' said Gurder.

'Sort of floor,' explained Granny.

'Then what happened?' said Gurder.

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