Soul Music (24 page)

‘I'd have quit after the first time, me,' said Glod.

‘Nah,' said Asphalt, with a contented smile. ‘Couldn't do that. Show business is in me soul.'

Ponder looked down at the thing they had hammered together.

‘I don't understand it either,' he said. ‘But . . . it looks as though we can trap it in a string, and it makes the string play the music
again
. It's like an iconograph for sound.'

They'd put the wire inside the box, which resonated beautifully. It played the same dozen bars, over and over again.

‘A box of music,' said Ridcully. ‘My word!'

‘What I'd like to try,' said Ponder, ‘is getting the musicians to play in front of a lot of strings like this. Perhaps we could trap the music.'

‘What for?' said Ridcully. ‘What on Disc for?'

‘Well . . . if you could get music in boxes you wouldn't need musicians any more.'

Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. They were a scruffy bunch, in his experience. Quite unhygienic.

He shook his head, reluctantly.

‘Not this sort of music,' he said. ‘We want to stop it, not make more of it.'

‘What exactly is wrong with it?' said Ponder.

‘It's . . . well, can't you see?' said Ridcully. ‘It makes people act funny. Wear funny clothes. Be rude. Not do what they're told. I can't do a thing with them. It's not right. Besides . . . remember Mr Hong.'

‘It's certainly very unusual,' said Ponder. ‘Can we get some more? For study purposes? Archchancellor?'

Ridcully shrugged. ‘We follow the Dean,' he said.

‘Good grief,' breathed Buddy, in the huge echoing emptiness. ‘No wonder they call it the Cavern. It's
huge
.'

‘I feel dwarfed,' said Glod.

Asphalt ambled to the front of the stage.

‘One two, one two,' he said. ‘One. One. One two, one tw—'

‘Three,' said Buddy helpfully.

Asphalt stopped and looked embarrassed.

‘Just trying the, you know, just trying the . . . trying out the . . .' he muttered. ‘Just trying . . . it.'

‘We'll never fill this,' said Buddy.

Glod poked in a box by the side of the stage.

He said, ‘We might. Look at these.'

He unrolled a poster. The others clustered around.

‘Dat's a picture of us,' said Cliff. ‘Someone painted a picture of us.'

‘Looking mean,' said Glod.

‘'S a good one of Buddy,' said Asphalt. ‘Waving his guitar like that.'

‘Why's there all that lightning and stuff?' said Buddy.

‘I never look that mean even when I'm mean,' said Glod.

‘“The New Sounde Dat's Goin' Arounde”,' Cliff read, his forehead wrinkling with the effort.

‘“The Bande With Rockes”,' said Glod.

‘Oh,
no
. It says we're going to be here and
everything
,' moaned Glod. ‘We're dead.'

‘“Bee There Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng”,' said Cliff. ‘I don't understand that.'

‘There's dozens of these rolls in here,' said Glod. ‘They're
posters
. You know what that means? He's been having them stuck up in places. Talking of which, when the Musicians' Guild get hold of us—'

‘Music's free,' said Buddy. ‘It has to be free.'

‘What?' said Glod. ‘Not in
this
dwarf's town!'

‘Then it should be,' said Buddy. ‘People shouldn't have to pay to play music.'

‘Right! That boy's right! That's just what I've always said! Isn't that what I've always said? That's what I've said, right enough.'

Dibbler emerged from the shadows in the wings. There was a troll with him who, Buddy surmised, must have been Chrysoprase. He wasn't particularly big, or even very craggy. In fact he had a smooth and glossy look to him, like a pebble found on a beach. There wasn't a trace of lichen anywhere.

And he was wearing clothes. Clothes, other than uniforms or special work clothes, weren't normally a troll thing. Mostly they wore a loincloth to keep stuff in, and that was that. But Chrysoprase had a suit on. It looked badly tailored. It was in fact very well tailored, but even a troll with no clothes on looks fundamentally badly tailored.

Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business.

‘I'd like you lads to meet Chrysoprase,' said Dibbler. ‘An old friend of mine. Me and him go way back. That right, Chrys?'

‘Indeed.' Chrysoprase gave Dibbler the warm friendly smile a shark bestows on a haddock with whom it suits it, for now, to swim in the same direction. A certain play of silicon muscles in the corners also suggested that, one day, certain people would regret ‘Chrys'.

‘Mr Throat tells me youse boys is the best ting since slicing bread,' he said. ‘Youse got everyting youse need?'

They nodded, mutely. People tended not to speak to Chrysoprase in case they said something that offended him. They wouldn't know it at the time, of course. They'd know it later, when they were in some dark alley and a voice behind them said: Mr Chrysoprase is
really upset
.

‘Youse go and rest up in your dressing room,' he went on. ‘Youse wants any food or drink, youse only got to say.'

He'd got diamond rings on his fingers. Cliff couldn't stop staring at them.

The dressing room was next to the privies and half full of beer barrels. Glod leaned on the door.

‘I don't need the money,' he said. ‘Just let me get out of here with my life, that's all I ask.'

‘Oo ownt ave oo orry—' Cliff began.

‘You're trying to speak with your mouth shut, Cliff,' said Buddy.

‘I
said
, you don't have to worry, you've got der wrong sort of teeth,' said the troll.

There was a knock on the door. Cliff slammed his hand back over his mouth. But the knock turned out to belong to Asphalt, who was carrying a tray.

There were three types of beer. There were even smoked rat sandwiches with the crusts and tails cut off. And there was a bowl of finest anthracite coke with ash on it.

‘Crunch it up good,' moaned Glod, as Cliff took his bowl. ‘It may be the last chance you get—'

‘Maybe no one'll turn up and we can go home?' said Cliff.

Buddy ran his fingers over the strings. The others stopped eating as the chords filled up the room.

‘Magic,' said Cliff, shaking his head.

‘Don't you boys worry,' said Asphalt. ‘If there are any problems, it's the other guys who'll get it in the teeth.'

Buddy stopped playing.

‘What other guys?'

‘'S funny thing,' said the little troll, ‘suddenly everyone's playing music with rocks in it. Mr Dibbler's signed up another band for the concert, too. To kind of warm it up.'

‘Who?'

‘'S called Insanity,' said Asphalt.

‘Where are they?' said Cliff.

‘Well, put it like this . . . you know how
your
dressing room is
next
to the privy?'

Crash, behind the Cavern's raggedy curtain, tried to tune his guitar. Several things got in the way of this simple procedure. Firstly, Blert had realized what his customers really wanted and, praying forgiveness from his ancestors, had spent more time gluing on bits of glittery stuff than he had on the actual functioning sections of the instrument. To put it another way, he'd knocked in a dozen nails and tied the strings to them. But this wasn't too much of a problem, because Crash himself had the musical talent of a blocked nostril.

He looked at Jimbo, Noddy and Scum. Jimbo, now the bass player (Blert, giggling hysterically, had used a bigger lump of wood and some fence wire), was holding up his hand hesitantly.

‘What is it, Jimbo?'

‘One of my guitar strings has broke.'

‘Well, you've got five more, ain't you?'

‘Yur. But I doesn't know how to play them, like.'

‘You didn't know how to play six, right? So now you're a bit less ignorant.'

Scum peered around the curtain.

‘Crash?'

‘Yes?'

‘There's hundreds of people out there. Hundreds! A lot of 'em have got guitars, too. They're sort of waving 'em in the air!'

Insanity listened to the roar from the other side of the curtain. Crash did not have too many brain-cells, and they often had to wave to attract one another's attention, but he had a tiny flicker of doubt that the sound that Insanity had achieved, while a
good
sound, was
the
sound that he'd heard last night in the Drum.
The
sound made him want to scream and dance, while the
other
sound made him . . . well . . . made him want to scream and smash Scum's drum-kit over its owner's head, quite frankly.

Noddy took a peek between the curtains.

‘Hey, there's a bunch of wiz . . . I think they're wizards, right in the front row,' he said. ‘I'm . . . pretty sure they're wizards, but, I mean . . .'

‘You can
tell
, stupid,' said Crash. ‘They've got pointy hats.'

‘There's one with . . . pointy hair . . .' said Noddy.

The rest of Insanity applied eyes to the gap.

‘Looks like . . . a kind of unicorn spike made out of hair . . .'

‘What's that he's got on the back of his robe?' said Jimbo.

‘It says BORN TO RUNE,' said Crash, who was the fastest reader in the group and didn't need to use his finger at all.

‘The skinny one's wearing a flared robe,' said Noddy.

‘He
must
be old.'

‘And they've all got guitars! Do you reckon they've come to see us?'

‘Bound to have,' said Noddy.

‘That's a bodacious audience,' said Jimbo.

‘Yeah, that's right, bodacious,' said Scum. ‘Er. What's bodacious mean?'

‘Means . . . means it bodes,' said Jimbo.

‘Right. It looks like it's boding all right.'

Crash thrust aside his doubts.

‘Let's get out there,' he said, ‘and really show them what Music With Rocks In is about!'

Asphalt, Cliff and Glod sat in one corner of the dressing room. The roar of the crowd could be heard from here.

‘Why's he not saying anything?' Asphalt whispered.

‘Dunno,' said Glod.

Buddy was staring at nothing, with the guitar cradled in his arms. Occasionally he'd slap the casing, very gently, in time with whatever thoughts were sluicing through his head.

‘He goes like that sometimes,' said Cliff. ‘Just sits and looks at the air—'

‘Hey, they're shouting something out there,' said Glod. ‘Listen.'

The roar had a rhythm to it.

‘Sounds like “Rocks, Rocks, Rocks”,' said Cliff.

The door burst open and Dibbler half-ran, half-fell in.

‘You've got to get out there!' he shouted. ‘Right now!'

‘I thought the Insanitary boys—' Glod began.

‘Don't even ask,' said Dibbler. ‘Come on! Otherwise they'll wreck the place!'

Asphalt picked up the rocks.

‘OK,' he said.

‘No,' said Buddy.

‘What dis?' said Dibbler. ‘Nerves?'

‘No. Music should be free. Free as the air and the sky.'

Glod's head spun around. Buddy's voice had a faint suggestion of harmonics.

‘Sure, right, that's what I said,' said Dibbler. ‘The Guild—'

Buddy unfolded his legs and stood up.

‘I expect people had to pay to get in here, didn't they?' he said.

Glod looked at the others. No one else seemed to have noticed it. But there was a twang on the edge of Buddy's words, a sibilance of strings.

‘Oh,
that
. Of course,' said Dibbler. ‘Got to cover expenses. There's your wages . . . wear and tear on the floor . . . heating and lighting . . . depreciation . . .'

The roar was louder now. It had a certain foot-stamping component.

Dibbler swallowed. He suddenly had the look of a man prepared to make the supreme sacrifice.

‘I could . . . maybe go up . . . maybe . . . a dollar,' he said, each word fighting its way out of the strongroom of his soul.

‘If we go on stage now, I want us to do another performance,' said Buddy.

Glod glared suspiciously at the guitar.

‘What?
No
problem. I can soon—' Dibbler began.

‘Free.'

‘Free?' The word got past Dibbler's teeth before they could snap shut. He rallied magnificently. ‘You don't want paying? Certainly, if—'

Buddy didn't move.

‘I mean, we don't get paid and people don't have to pay to listen. As many people as possible.'

‘Yes!'

‘Where's the profit in that?'

An empty beer bottle vibrated off the table and smashed on the floor. A troll appeared in the doorway, or at least part of it did. It wouldn't be able to get into the room without ripping the door-frame out, but it looked as though it wouldn't think twice about doing so.

‘Mr Chrysoprase says, what's happening?' it growled.