Soul Music (14 page)

‘You're a musician, ain't you?' said Glod. ‘What do you think you do?'

‘I hits 'em with de hammers,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers.

‘But that bit you did . . .' said Imp, ‘you know . . . in the middle . . . you know,
bam-bah bam-bah bambamBAH
 . . . how did you know how to do that bit?'

‘It was just de bit dat had to go dere,' said Lias.

Imp looked at the guitar. He'd put it on the table. It was still playing quietly to itself, like a cat purring.

‘That's not a normall instrument,' he said, shaking a finger at it. ‘I was just standing there and it started pllaying all by itsellf!'

‘Probably belonged to a wizard, like I said,' said Glod.

‘Nah,' said Lias. ‘Never knew any wizard who was musical. Music and magic don't mix.'

They looked at it.

Imp had never heard of an instrument that played itself before, except the legendary harp of Owen Mwnyy, which sang when danger threatened. And that had been back in the days when there were dragons around. Singing harps went well with dragons. They seemed out of place in a city with guilds and everything.

The door swung open.

‘That was . . . astonishing, boys,' said Hibiscus Dunelm. ‘Never heard anything like it! Can you come back tomorrow night? Here's your five dollars.'

Glod counted the coins.

‘We did four encores,' he said darkly.

‘I'd complain to the Guild, if I was you,' said Hibiscus.

The trio looked at the money. It looked very impressive to people whose last meal had been twenty-four hours ago. It wasn't Guild rate. On the other hand, it had been a long twenty-four hours.

‘If you come back tomorrow,' said Hibiscus, ‘I'll make it . . . six dollars, how about that?'

‘Oh, wow,' said Glod.

Mustrum Ridcully was jolted upright in bed, because the bed itself was being gently vibrated across the floor.

So it had happened at last!

They were out to get him.

The tradition of promotion in the University by filling dead men's shoes, sometimes by firstly ensuring the death of the man in those shoes, had lately ceased. This was largely because of Ridcully himself, who was big and kept himself in trim and, as three late-night aspirants to the Archchancellorship had found, also had very good hearing. They had been variously hung out of the window by their ankles, knocked unconscious with a shovel, and had their arm broken in two places. Besides, Ridcully was known to sleep with two loaded crossbows by his bed. He was a kind man and probably wouldn't shoot you in
both
ears.

That sort of consideration encouraged a more patient type of wizard. Everyone dies sooner or later. They could wait.

Ridcully took stock and found his first impression was mistaken.

There appeared to be no murderous magic going on. There was just sound, cramming the room to every corner.

Ridcully shuffled into his slippers and went out into the corridor, where other members of the faculty were milling around and blearily asking one another what the hell was happening. Plaster rained down on them from the ceiling in a steady fog.

‘Who's causing that din?' shouted Ridcully. There was a mute chorus of unheard replies, and much shrugging of shoulders.

‘Well, I will find
out
,' growled the Archchancellor, and set off for the stairs with the others trailing after him.

He walked without his knees or elbows bending very much, a sure sign of a forthright man in a bad temper.

The trio said nothing all the way out of the Drum. They said nothing all the way to Gimlet's delicatessen. They said nothing while they waited in the queue, and then all they said was: ‘So . . . right . . . that's one Quatre-rodenti with extra newts, hold the chillis, one Klatchian Hots with double salami and a Four Strata, no pitchblende.'

They sat down to wait. The guitar played a little four-note riff. They tried not to think about it. They tried to think about other things.

‘I think I change my name,' said Lias, eventually. ‘I mean . . . Lias? Not a good name for the music business.'

‘What'll you change it to?' said Glod.

‘I thought . . . don't laugh . . . I thought . . . Cliff?' said Lias.

‘Good troll name. Very stony. Very rocky. Nothing wrong with it,' said Cliff
né
Lias, defensively.

‘Well . . . yes . . . but, I dunno, I mean . . . well . . . Cliff? Can't see anyone lasting long in
this
business with a name like
Cliff
.'

‘Better than Glod, anyway.'

‘I'm sticking with Glod,' said Glod. ‘And Imp is sticking with Imp, right?'

Imp looked at the guitar. It's not right, he thought. I hardly touched it. I just . . . And I feel so tired . . . I . . .

‘Not sure,' he said, wretchedly. ‘Not sure if Imp is the right name for . . . this music.' His voice trailed off. He yawned.

‘Imp?' said Glod, after a while.

‘Hmm?' said Imp. And he'd felt someone was watching him out there. That was daft, of course. He couldn't say to someone ‘I was on stage and I thought someone was watching me'. They'd say ‘Really? That's really
occult
, that is . . .'

‘Imp?' said Glod, ‘why're you snapping your fingers like that?'

Imp looked down.

‘Was I?'

‘Yes.'

‘Just thinking. My name . . . it's not right for this music, either.'

‘What does it mean in real language?' said Glod.

‘Well, all my family are
y Celyns
,' said Imp, ignoring the insult to an ancient tongue. ‘It means “of the holllly”. That's allll that grows in Llamedos, you see. Everything else just rots.'

‘I wasn't goin' to say,' said Cliff, ‘but
Imp
sounds a bit like
elf
to me.'

‘It just means “small shoot”,' said Imp. ‘You know. Like a bud.'

‘Bud y Celyn?' said Glod. ‘Buddy? Worse than Cliff, in my opinion.'

‘I . . . think it sounds right,' said Imp.

Glod shrugged, and pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket.

‘We've still got more'n four dollars,' he said. ‘I know what we should do with it, too.'

‘We should put it towards Guild membership,' said the new Buddy.

Glod stared into the middle distance.

‘No,' he said. ‘We haven't got the sound right. I mean, it was very good, very . . .
new
,' he stared hard at Imp-cum-Buddy, ‘but there's still something missing . . .'

The dwarf gave Buddy
né
Imp another penetrating stare.

‘Do you know you're shaking all over?' he said. ‘Moving around on your seat like you got a pant full of ant.'

‘I can't help it,' said Buddy. He wanted to sleep, but a rhythm was bouncing around inside his head.

‘I saw it too,' said Cliff. ‘When we was walking here, you were bouncing along.' He looked under the table. ‘And you is tapping your feet.'

‘And you
keep
snapping your fingers,' said Glod.

‘I can't stop thinking about the music,' said Buddy. ‘You're right. We need . . .' he drummed his fingers along the table, ‘. . . a sound like . . .
pang pang pang PANG Pang
 . . .'

‘You mean a keyboard?' said Glod.

‘Do I?'

‘They've got one of those new pianofortes just over the river in the Opera House,' said Glod.

‘Yah, but dat sort of thing ain't for our kind of music,' said Cliff. ‘Dat sort of thing is for big fat guys in powdered wigs.'

‘I reckon,' said Glod, giving Buddy another lopsided stare, ‘if we put it anywhere near Im— near Buddy, it'll be for our kind of music soon enough. So go and get it.'

‘I heard where it cost four hundred dollars,' said Cliff. ‘No one's got that many teeth.'

‘I didn't mean
buy
it,' said Glod. ‘Just . . . borrow it for a while.'

‘Dat's stealing,' said Cliff.

‘No it's not,' said the dwarf. ‘We'll let them have it back when we've finished with it.'

‘Oh. Dat's all right den.'

Buddy wasn't a drummer or a troll and he could see the technical flaw in Glod's argument. And, a few weeks ago, he'd have said so. But then he'd been a good circle-going boy from the valleys, who didn't drink, didn't swear and played the harp at every druidic sacrifice.

Now he
needed
that piano. The sound had been
nearly
right.

He snapped his fingers in time with his thoughts.

‘But we ain't got anyone to play it,' said Cliff.

‘You get the piano,' said Glod. ‘I'll get the piano player.'

And all the time they kept glancing at the guitar.

The wizards advanced in a body towards the organ. The air around it vibrated as if super-heated.

‘What an unholy noise!' shouted the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘Oh, I don't know!' screamed the Dean. ‘It's rather catchy!'

Blue sparks crackled between the organ pipes. The Librarian could just be seen high in the trembling structure.

‘Who's pumping it?' screamed the Senior Wrangler.

Ridcully looked around at the side. The handle seemed to be going up and down by itself.

‘I'm not having this,' he muttered, ‘not in
my
damn university. It's worse than
students
.'

And he raised his crossbow and fired, right at the main bellows.

There was a long-drawn-out wail in the key of A, and then the organ exploded.

The history of the subsequent seconds was put together during a discussion in the Uncommon Room where the wizards went for a stiff drink or, in the Bursar's case, a warm milk shortly afterwards.

The Lecturer in Recent Runes swore that the 64-foot Gravissima organ pipe went skywards on a pillar of flame.

The Chair of Indefinite Studies and the Senior Wrangler said that when they found the Librarian upside down in one of the fountains in Sator Square, outside the University, he was going ‘ook ook' to himself and grinning.

The Bursar said that he'd seen a dozen naked young women bouncing up and down on his bed, but the Bursar occasionally said things like this anyway, especially when he'd been indoors a lot.

The Dean said nothing at all.

His eyes were glazed.

Sparks crackled in his hair.

He was wondering if he'd be allowed to paint his bedroom black.

. . .
the beat went on . . 
.

The lifetimer of Imp stood in the middle of the huge desk. The Death of Rats walked around it, squeaking under his breath.

Susan looked at it, too. There was no doubt that all the sand was in the bottom bulb. But something else had filled the top and was pouring through the pinch. It was pale blue and coiling in frantically on itself, like excited smoke.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it?' she said.

‘Nor me.'

Susan stood up. The shadows around the walls, now that she'd got used to them, seemed to be of
things
– not exactly machinery, but not exactly furniture either. There had been an orrery on the lawn at the college. The distant shapes put her in mind of it, although what stars it measured in what dark courses she really couldn't say. They seemed to be projections of things too strange even for this strange dimension.

She'd wanted to save his life, and that was
right
. She knew it. As soon as she'd seen his name she . . . well, it was important. She'd inherited some of Death's memory. She couldn't have met the boy, but perhaps
he
had. She felt that the name and the face had established themselves so deeply in her mind now that the rest of her thoughts were forced to orbit them.

Something else had saved him first.

She held the lifetimer up to her ear again.

She found herself tapping her foot.

And realized that distant shadows were moving.

She ran across the floor, the real floor, the one outside the boundaries of the carpet.

The shadows looked more like mathematics would be if it was solid. There were vast curves of . . . something. Pointers like clock hands, but longer than a tree, moved slowly through the air.

The Death of Rats climbed on to her shoulder.

‘I suppose you don't know what's happening?'

Susan nodded. Rats, she supposed, died when they should. They didn't try to cheat, or return from the dead. There were no such things as zombie rats. Rats knew when to give up.

She looked at the glass again. The boy – and she used the term as girls will of young males several years older than them – the boy had played a chord on the guitar or whatever it was, and history had been bent. Or had skipped, or something.

Something besides her didn't want him dead.

It was two o'clock in the morning, and raining.

Constable Detritus, Ankh-Morpork City Watch, was guarding the Opera House. It was an approach to policing that he'd picked up from Sergeant Colon. When you were all by yourself in the middle of a rainy night, go and guard something big with handy overhanging eaves. Colon had pursued this policy for years, as a result of which no major landmark had ever been stolen.
¹⁰

It had been an uneventful night. About an hour earlier a 64-foot organ pipe had dropped out of the sky. Detritus had wandered over to inspect the crater, but he wasn't quite certain if this was
criminal
activity. Besides, for all he knew this was how you got organ pipes.