“Poot? You want me to say poot?”
The Bursar crept up to the group. Arguing over petty details at times of dimensional emergency was a familiar wizardly trait.
“Mrs. Whitlow the housekeeper always says ‘Sugar!’ when she drops something,” he volunteered.
The Archchancellor turned on him.
“She may say sugar,” he growled, “but what she means is shi—”
The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself.
“Oh, darn,” he said miserably. The swear-words settled amiably on his hat.
“They like you,” said the Dean.
“You’re their daddy,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Ridcully scowled. “You b—boys can stop being silly at your Archchancellor’s expense and da—jolly well find out what’s going on,” he said.
The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared.
“You’re doing fine,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Keep it up.”
“Darn darn darn,” said the Archchancellor. “Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty pootity poot.” He shook his head. “It’s no good, it doesn’t relieve my feelings one bit.”
“It’s cleared the air, at any rate,” said the Bursar.
They noticed his presence for the first time.
They looked at the remains of the trolley.
“Things zooming around,” said Ridcully. “Things coming alive.”
They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child.
The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates.
The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along gamely at the back of the crowd.
“What happened?”
“I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and ran away on me!”
“What about the child?”
“Search me. This woman had one of the baskets and she bought some peaches off of me an’ then—”
They all turned. A basket rattled out of the mouth of an alleyway, saw them, turned smartly and shot off across the square.
“But why?” said Ridcully.
“They’re so handy to put things in, right?” said the man. “I got to get them peaches. You know how they bruise.”
“And they’re all going in the same direction,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Anyone else notice that?”
“After them!” screamed the Dean. The other wizards, too bewildered to argue, lumbered after him.
“No—” Ridcully began, and realized that it was hopeless. And he was losing the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the history of bowdlerism.