Soul Music (30 page)

He prodded what was under the cover and beckoned the nearest maid.

‘Which one are you?' he said. ‘Molly, Polly or Dolly?'

‘Molly, your lordship,' said the maid, dropping a curtsy and trembling slightly. ‘Is there something wrong?'

‘A-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong, a-do-wrong-wrong,' said the other two maids.

‘What happened to the kippers? What's this? Looks like a beef patty in a bun,' said Ridcully, staring at the girls.

‘Mrs Whitlow gave instructions to the cook,' said Molly nervously. ‘It's a—'

‘—yay-yay-yay—'

‘—it's a burger.'

‘You're telling me' said Ridcully. ‘And why've you got a beehive made of hair on your head, pray? Makes you look like a matchstick.'

‘Please sir, we—'

‘You went to see the Music With Rocks In concert, did you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Yay, yay.'

‘You, er, you didn't throw anything on the stage, did you?'

‘No, sir!'

‘Where's Mrs Whitlow?'

‘In bed with a cold, sir.'

‘Not at all surprised.' Ridcully turned to Susan. ‘People are playing silly burgers, I'm afraid.'

‘I eat only muesli at breakfast,' said Susan.

‘There's porridge,' said Ridcully. ‘We do it for the Bursar because it's not exciting.' He lifted the lid of a tureen. ‘Yes, still here,' he said. ‘There's some things Music With Rocks In can't change, and one of them's porridge. Let me help you to a ladleful.'

They sat on either side of the long table.

‘Well, isn't this nice?' Ridcully said.

‘Are you laughing at me?' said Susan suspiciously.

‘Not at all. In my experience, what you mostly get in herring nets is herring. But, speaking as a mortal – a customer, as you might say – I'm interested to know why Death is suddenly a teenage girl instead of the animate natomy we've come to know and . . . know.'

‘Natomy?'

‘Another word for skeleton. Probably derived from “anatomy”.'

‘He's my grandfather.'

‘Ah. Yes, you said. And that's true, is it?'

‘It sounds a bit silly, now I come to tell someone else.'

Ridcully shook his head.

‘You should do my job for five minutes. Then tell me about silly,' he said. He took a pencil out of his pocket and cautiously lifted the top half of the bun on his plate.

‘There's
cheese
in this,' he said, accusingly.

‘But he's gone off somewhere and next thing I know I've inherited the whole thing. I mean, I didn't
ask
for it! Why me? Having to go around with this silly scythe thing . . . that's not what I wanted out of life—'

‘It's certainly not something you get careers leaflets about,' said Ridcully.

‘Exactly.'

‘And I suppose you're stuck with it?' said Ridcully.

‘We don't know where he's gone. Albert says he's very depressed about something but he won't say what.'

‘Dear me. What could depress Death?'

‘Albert seems to think he might do something . . . silly.'

‘Oh, dear. Not
too
silly, I hope. Could that be possible? It'd be . . . morticide, I suppose. Or cidicide.'

To Susan's amazement Ridcully patted her hand.

‘But I'm sure we'll all sleep safer in our beds knowing that you're in charge,' he said.

‘It's all so
untidy
! Good people dying stupidly, bad people living to a ripe old age . . . it's so
disorganized
. There's no sense to it. There's no justice at all. I mean, there's this boy—'

‘What boy?'

To Susan's horror and amazement she found that she was blushing. ‘Just some boy,' she said. ‘He was supposed to have died quite ridiculously, and I was going to save him, and then the
music
saved him, and now it's getting him into all sorts of trouble and I've got to save him anyway and I
don't know why
.'

‘Music?' said Ridcully. ‘Does he play a sort of guitar?'

‘Yes! How did you know?'

Ridcully sighed. ‘When you're a wizard you get an instinct for these things.' He prodded his burger some more. ‘And lettuce, for some reason. And one very, very thin slice of pickled cucumber.'

He let the bread drop.

‘The music
is
alive,' he said.

Something that had been knocking on Susan's attention for the past ten minutes finally used its boots.

‘Oh, my god,' she said.

‘Which one would that be?' said Ridcully politely.

‘It's so
simple
! It strolls into traps! It changes people! They want to play m— I've got to go,' said Susan hurriedly. ‘Er. Thank you for the porridge . . .'

‘You haven't eaten any of it,' Ridcully pointed out mildly.

‘No, but . . . but I had a really good look at it.'

She vanished. After a little while Ridcully leaned forward and waved his hand vaguely in the space where she had been sitting, just in case.

Then he reached into his robe and pulled out the poster about the Free Festival. Great big things with tentacles, that was the problem. Get enough magic in one place and the fabric of the universe gave at the heel just like one of the Dean's socks which, Ridcully noticed, had been in some extremely bright colours the last few days.

He waved a hand at the maids.

‘Thank you, Molly, Dolly or Polly,' he said. ‘You can clear this stuff away.'

‘Yay-yay.'

‘Yes, yes, thank you.'

Ridcully felt rather alone. He'd quite enjoyed talking to the girl. She seemed to be the only person in the place who wasn't mildly insane or totally preoccupied with something that he, Ridcully, didn't understand.

He wandered back to his study, but was distracted by the sounds of hammering coming from the Dean's chambers. The door was ajar.

The senior wizards had quite large suites that included study, workshop and bedroom. The Dean was hunched over the furnace in the workshop area, with a smoked-glass mask over his face and a hammer in his hand. He was hard at work. There were sparks.

This was much more cheering, Ridcully thought. Maybe this was an end to all this Music With Rocks In nonsense and a return to some real magic.

‘Everythin' all right, Dean?' he said.

The Dean pushed up the glass and nodded.

‘Nearly finished, Archchancellor,' he said.

‘Heard you bangin' away right down the passage,' said Ridcully, conversationally.

‘Ah. I'm working on the pockets,' said the Dean.

Ridcully looked blank. Quite a number of the more difficult spells involved heat and hammering, but pockets was a new one.

The Dean held up a pair of trousers.

They were not, strictly speaking, as trousery as normal trousers; senior wizards developed a distinctive 50” waist, 25” leg shape that suggested someone who sat on a wall and required royal assistance to be put together again. They were dark blue.

‘You were hammerin' them?' said Ridcully. ‘Mrs Whitlow been heavy on the starch again?'

He looked closer.

‘You're
rivetin
' them together?'

The Dean beamed.

‘These trousers,' he said, ‘are where it's at.'

‘Are you talkin' Music With Rocks In again?' said Ridcully suspiciously.

‘I mean they're cool.'

‘Well, better than a thick robe in this weather,' Ridcully conceded, ‘but— you're not going to put them on now, are you?'

‘Why not?' said the Dean, struggling out of his robe.

‘Wizards in trousers? Not in
my
university! It's cissy. People'd laugh,' said Ridcully.

‘You always try and stop me doing anything I want!'

‘There's no need to take that tone with me—'

‘Huh, you never listen to anything I say and I don't see why I shouldn't wear what I like!'

Ridcully glared around the room.

‘This room is a total mess!' he bellowed. ‘Tidy it up right now!'

‘Sharn't!'

‘Then it's no more Music With Rocks In for you, young man!'

Ridcully slammed the door behind him.

He slammed it open again and added, ‘And I never gave you permission to paint it black!'

He slammed the door shut.

He slammed it open.

‘They don't suit you, either!'

The Dean rushed out into the passage, waving his hammer.

‘Say what you like,' he shouted, ‘when history comes to name these, they certainly won't call them Archchancellors!'

It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or to remember where they live. The other occupants of the Mended Drum were hunched over their drinks around the walls and watching an orang-utan, who was playing Barbarian Invaders and screaming with rage every time he lost a penny.

Hibiscus really wanted to shut. On the other hand, it'd be like blowing up a goldmine. It was all he could do to keep up the supply of clean glasses.

‘Have you forgotten yet?' he said.

‘What's that? Hah, silly of me to ask really, seeing as you've forgotten—'

The barman looked at the rows and rows of glasses. There were wine glasses. There were cocktail glasses. There were beer mugs. There were steins in the shape of jolly fat men. There was a bucket.

‘I think you're on the right lines,' he hazarded.

The stranger picked up his most recent glass and wandered over to the Barbarian Invaders machine.

It was made of clockwork of a complex and intricate design. There was a suggestion of many gears and worm drives in the big mahogany cabinet under the game, the whole function of which appeared to be to make rows of rather crudely carved Barbarian Invaders jerk and wobble across a rectangular proscenium. The player, by means of a system of levers and pulleys, operated a small self-loading catapult that moved below the Invaders. This shot small pellets upwards. At the same time the Invaders (by means of a ratchet-and-pawl mechanism) dropped small metal arrows. Periodically a bell rang and an Invader on horseback oscillated hesitantly across the top of the game, dropping spears. The whole assemblage rattled and creaked continuously, partly because of all the machinery and partly because the orang-utan was wrenching both handles, jumping up and down on the Fire pedal, and screaming at the top of his voice.

‘I wouldn't have it in the place,' said the barman behind him. ‘But it's popular with the customers, you see.'

‘Well, it's better than the fruit machine, at least.'

‘He ate all the fruit.'

There was a screech of rage from the direction of the machine.

The barman sighed. ‘You wouldn't think anyone'd make so much fuss over a penny, would you?'

The ape slammed a dollar coin on the counter and went away with two handfuls of change. One penny in a slot allowed a very large lever to be pulled; miraculously, all the Barbarians rose from the dead and began their wobbly invasion again.

‘He poured his drink into it,' said the barman. ‘It may be my imagination, but I think they're wobbling a bit more now.'

Death watched the game for a while. It was one of the most depressing things he'd ever seen. The things were going to get down to the bottom of the game anyway. Why shoot things at them?

Why . . . ?

He waved his glass at the assembled drinkers.

He looked around at the faces. People in the Drum were used to alcoholic lectures, but not ones like this.

SEE THIS GLASS, RIGHT? SEE IT? ‘S LIKE MEMORY. ONNACOUNTA IF YOU PUT MORE STUFF IN, MORE STUFF FLOWS OUT, RIGHT?
'
S
'
FACT. EVERYONEGOTTA MEMORY LIKE THIS.
'
S
'
WHAT KEEPS HUMANS FROM GOING ISS— ISH— INSH— MAD. 'CEPT ME. POOROLE ME. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY TOMORROW. EVERYTHING.

He looked down at his drink.

AH,
he said,
FUNNY HOW THINGS COME BACK TO YOU, ISN'T IT?

It was the most impressive collapse the bar had ever seen. The tall dark stranger fell backwards slowly, like a tree. There was no cissy sagging of the knees, no cop-out bouncing off a table on the way down. He simply went from vertical to horizontal in one marvellous geometric sweep.

Several people applauded as he hit the floor. Then they searched his pockets, or at least made an effort to search his pockets but couldn't find any. And then they threw him into the river.
²⁴

In the giant black study of Death one candle burned, and got no shorter.