Terry Pratchett. Soul music
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... reached theclouds it shrank to a gleaming pinpoint, which winked.
'What,' said Susan, 'was all that about?'
There was a flurry of wings. The raven alighted on the head of the
recently departed Volf.
'Well, these guys believe that if you die in battle some big fat
singing horned women carry you off to a sort of giant feast hall where you
gobble yourself silly for the rest of eternity,' said the raven. It belched
genteelly. 'Damn stupid idea, really.'
'But it just happened!'
'Still a daft idea.' The raven looked around at the stricken
battlefield, empty now except for the fallen and the flocks of his fellow
ravens. 'What a waste,' he added. ' I mean, just look at it all. Such a
terrible waste.'
'Yes!'
'I mean, I'm near bursting and there's hundreds of 'em untouched. I
think I'll see if I can have a doggy bag.'
'They're dead bodies!'
'Right!'
'What are you eating?'
'It's all right,' said the raven, backing away. 'There's enough for
everyone.'
'That's disgusting!'
'I didn't kill 'em,' it said.
Susan gave up.
'She looked a lot like Iron Lily,' she said, as they walked back to the
patient horse. 'Our gym mistress. Sounded like her, too.' She imagined the
warbling Valkyries pounding across the sky. Get some warrior, you bunch of
fainting blossoms . . .
'Convergent evolution,' said the raven. 'Often happens. I read once
where apparently the common octopus has an eye almost exactly the same as
the human eyeb- caw!'
'You were going to say something like: except for the taste, weren't
you?' said Susan.
'Negger grossed by bind,' said the raven indistinctly.
'Sure?'
'Leg go ogg by beak glease?'
Susan released her grip.
'This is dreadful,' she said. 'This is what he used to do? There's no
element of choice?'
SQUEAK
'But what if they don't deserve to die?'
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats contrived to indicate, quite effectively, that in
that case they could apply to the universe and point out that they didn't
deserve to die.
In which case it was up to the universe to say, oh, didn't you? oh,
well, that's all right, then, you can go on living. It was a remarkably
succinct gesture.
'So . . . my grandfather was Death, and he just let nature take its
course? When he could have done some good? That's stupid.'
The Death of Rats shook its skull.
'I mean, was Volf on the right side?' said Susan.
'Hard to say,' said the raven. 'He was a Vasung. The other side were
Bergunds.
Apparently it all started with a Bergund carrying off a Vasung woman a
few hundred years ago. Or it may have been the other way round. Well, the
other side invaded their village. There was a bit of a massacre. And then
the other ones went to the other village and there was another massacre.
After that, you might say, there was some residual bad feeling.'
'Very well, then,' said Susan. 'Who's next?'
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats landed on the saddle. It leaned down and, with some
effort, hauled another hourglass out of the pack. Susan read the label.
It said: Imp y Celyn.
Susan had a sensation of falling backwards.
'I know this name,' she said.
SQUEAK.
'I . . . remember it from somewhere,' said Susan. 'It's important. He's
. . . important . . .'
The moon hung over the desert of Klatch like a huge ball of rock.
It wasn't much of a desert to be graced by so impressive a moon.
It was just part of the belt of deserts, growing progressively hotter
and drier, that surrounded the Great Nef and the Dehydrated Ocean. And no
one would have thought much about it if people very like Mr Clete of the
Musicians' Guild hadn't come along and made maps and put across this part of
the desert an innocent little dotted line that marked a border between
Klatch and Hersheba.
Up until that time the D'regs, a collection of cheerfully warlike
nomadic tribes, had roamed the desert quite freely. Now there was a line,
they were sometimes Klatchian D'regs and sometimes Hershebian D'regs, with
all the rights due to citizens of both states, particularly the right to pay
just as much tax as could be squeezed out of them and be drafted in to fight
wars against people they'd never heard of. So as a result of the dotted line
Klatch was now incipiently at war with Hersheba and the D'regs, Hersheba was
at war with the D'regs and Klatch, and the D'regs were at war with everyone,
including one another, and having considerable fun because the D'reg word
for 'stranger' was the same as for 'target'.
The fort was one of the legacies of the dotted line.
Now it was a dark rectangle on the hot silver sands. From it came what
could very accurately be called the strains of an accordion, since someone
seemed to want to play a tune but kept on running into difficulties after a
few bars, and starting again.
Someone knocked on the door.
After a while there was a scraping on the other side and a small hatch
opened.
'Yes, offendi?'
IS THIS THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION?
The face of the little man on the other side of the door went blank.
'Ah,' he said, 'you've got me there. Hang on a moment.' The hatch shut.
There was a whispered discussion on the other side of the door. The hatch
opened.
'Yes, it appears we are the . . . the . . . what was that again? Right,
got it .
. . the Klatchian Foreign Legion. Yes. What was it you were wanting?'
I WISH TO JOIN.
'Join? Join what?'
THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION.
'Where's that?'
There was some more whispering.
'Oh. Right. Sorry. Yes. That's us.'
The doors swung open. The visitor strode in. A legionary with
corporal's stripes on his arm walked up to him.
'You'll have to report to...' his eyes glazed a little,... you know...
big man, three stripes... on the tip of my tongue a moment ago...'
SERGEANT?
'Right,' said the corporal, with relief. 'What's your name, soldier?'
ER ...
'You don't have to say, actually. That's what the ... the...'
KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION?
'... what it's all about. People join to ... to ... with your mind, you
know, when you can't ... things that happened ...'
FORGET?
'Right. I'm ...' The man's face went blank. 'Wait a minute, would you?'
He looked down at his sleeve. 'Corporal.. .' he said. He hesitated,
looking worried. Then an idea struck him and he pulled at the collar of his
vest and twisted his neck until he could squint, with considerable
dif-ficulty, at the label thus revealed.
'Corporal ... Medium? Does that sound right?'
I DON'T THINK SO.
'Corporal ... Hand Wash Only?'
PROBABLY NOT.
'Corporal ... Cotton?'
IT'S A POSSIBILITY.
'Right. Well, welcome to the ... er ...'
KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION ...
'Right. The pay is three dollars a week and all the sand you can eat. I
hope you like sand.'
I SEE YOU CAN REMEMBER ABOUT SAND.
'Believe me, you won't ever forget sand,' said the corporal bitterly.
I NEVER DO.
'What did you say your name was?'
The stranger remained silent.
'Not that it matters,' said Corporal Cotton. ' In the...' KLATCHIAN
FOREIGN LEGION?
'... right... we give you a new name. You start out afresh.'
He beckoned to another man.
'Legionary... ?'
'Legionary... er... ugh... er... Size 15, Sir.'
'Right. Take this... man away and get him a...' he snapped his fingers
irritably, '... you know... thing... clothes, everyone wears them ...
sand coloured-'
UNIFORM?
The corporal blinked. For some inexplicable reason the word 'bone' kept
elbowing its way into the melt-ing, flowing mess that was his consciousness.
'Right,' he said. 'Er. It's a twenty year tour, legion-ary. I hope
you're man enough for it.'
I LIKE IT ALREADY, said Death.
'I suppose it's legal for me to go in licensed premises?' said Susan,
as Ankh Morpork appeared on the horizon again.
SQUEAK.
The city slid under them again. Where there were wider streets and
squares she could make out individ-ual figures. Huh, she thought ... if only
they knew I was up here! And, despite everything, she couldn't help feeling
superior. All the people down there had to think about were, well, ground
level things.
Mundane things. It was like looking down at ants.
She'd always known she was different. Much more aware of the world,
when it was obvious that most people went through it with their eyes shut
and their brains set to 'simmer'. It was comforting in a way to know that
she was different. The feeling wrapped around her like an overcoat.
Binky landed on a greasy jetty. On one side the river sucked at the
wooden pilings.
Susan slid off the horse, unshipped the scythe, and stepped inside the
Mended
Drum.
There was a riot going on. The patrons of the Drum tended to be
democratic in their approach to aggress-iveness. They liked to see that
everyone got some. So, although it was the consensus of the audience that
the trio were lousy musicians, and therefore a suitable target, various
fights had broken out because people had been hit by badly aimed missiles,
or hadn't had a fight all day, or were just trying to reach the door.
Susan had no difficulty in spotting Imp y Celyn. He was at the front of
the stage, his face a mask of terror. Behind him was a troll, with a dwarf
trying to hide behind it.
She glanced at the hourglass. Just a few more seconds ...
He was really rather attractive, in a dark, curly-headed sort of way.
He looked a little elvish.
And familiar.
She'd felt sorry for Volf, but at least he was on a battlefield. Imp
was on a stage. You didn't expect to die on stage.
I'm standing here with a scythe and an hourglass waiting for someone to
die.
He's not much older than me and I'm not supposed to do anything about
it. That's silly. And I'm sure I've seen him ... before ...
No one actually tried to kill musicians in the Drum. Axes were thrown
and crossbows fired in a good-humoured, easy going way. No one really aimed,
even if they were capable of doing so. It was more fun watching people
dodge.
A big, red bearded man grinned at Lias, and selected a small throwing
axe from his bandolier. It was OK to throw axes at trolls. They tended to
bounce off.
Susan could see it all. It'd bounce off, and hit Imp. No one's fault,
really.
Worse things happened at sea. Worse things happened in Ankh Morpork all
the time, often continuously.
The man doesn't even mean to kill him. It's so sloppy. That's not how
things should go. Someone ought to do something about it.
She reached over to grab the axe handle.
SQUEAK!
'Shut up!'
Whaaauum.
Imp stood like a discus thrower as the chord filled across the noisy
room.
It rang like an iron bar dropped on a library floor at midnight.
Echoes bounced back from the corners of the room. Each one bore its own
load of harmonics.
It was an explosion of sound in the same way that a Hogswatchnight
rocket explodes, each falling spark exploding again ...
Imp's fingers caressed the strings, picking out three more chords. The
axe thrower lowered his axe.
This was music that had not only escaped but had robbed a bank on the
way out.
It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone,
raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver.
It was music that went down to the feet by way of the pelvis without
paying a call on Mr Brain.
The troll picked up his hammers, looked blankly at his stones, and then
began to beat out a rhythm.
The dwarf took a deep breath, and extracted from the horn a deep,
throbbing sound.
People drummed their fingers on the edge of the tables. The orang was
sitting with a huge rapt grin on his face, as though he'd swallowed a banana
sideways.
Susan looked down at the hourglass marked Imp y Celyn.
The top bulb was now quite empty of sand, but something blue flickered
in there.
She felt tiny pin like claws scrabble up her back and find purchase on
her shoulder.
The Death of Rats looked down at the glass.
SQUEAK, it said, quietly.
Susan still wasn't good on Rat but she thought she knew 'uh oh' when
she heard it.
Imp's fingers danced over the strings, but the sound that came from
them was no relative to the tones of harp or lute. The guitar screamed like
an angel who had just discovered why it was on the wrong side. Sparks
glittered on the strings.
Imp himself had his eyes shut and was holding the instrument close to
his chest, like a soldier holding a spear at the port. It was hard to know
who was playing what.
And still the music flooded out.
The Librarian's hair was standing on end, all over his body. The ends
crackled.
It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of
fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and
stick your fingers in the electric socket of the universe to see what
happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover
it with posters.
Now various muscles on the Librarian's body were twitching with the
beat as the music earthed itself through him.
There was a small party of wizards in the corner. They were watching
the performance with their mouths open.
And the beat strode on, and crackled from mind to mind, snapping its
fingers and curling its lip.
Live music. Music with rocks in it, running wild ...
Free at last! It leapt from head to head, crackling in through the ears
and heading for the hindbrain. Some were more susceptible than others ...
closer to the beat ...
It was an hour later.
The Librarian knuckled and swung through the midnight drizzle, head
exploding with music.
He landed on the lawns of Unseen University and ran into the Great
Hall, hands waving wildly overhead to maintain balance.
He stopped.
Moonlight filtered in through the big windows, illuminating what the
Archchancellor always referred to as 'our mighty organ', to the general
embarrassment of the rest of the faculty.
Rack upon rack of pipes entirely occupied one wall, looking like
pillars in the gloom or possibly resembling the stalagmites of some
monstrously ancient cave.
Almost lost among them was the player's pulpit, with its three giant
keyboards and the hundred knobs for special sound effects.
It wasn't often used, except for the occasional civic affair or
Wizards' Excuse Me. [9]
But the Librarian, energetically pumping the bellows and making
occasional little 'ooks' of excitement, felt there was a lot more that it
could do.
A fully grown male orang utan may look like an amiable pile of old
carpets but he has a strength in him that would make a human of equivalent
weight eat lots of rug. The Librarian only stopped pumping when the lever
was too hot to hold and the air reservoirs were farting and whistling around
the rivets.
Then he swung himself up into the organist's seat.
The whole edifice was humming softly under the enormous pent-up
pressure.
The Librarian locked his hands together and cracked his knuckles, which
is impressive when you have as many knuckles as an orang-utan.
He raised his hands.
He hesitated.
He lowered his hands again and pulled out the Vox Humana, the Vox Dei
and the Vox Diabolica.
The moan of the organ took on a more urgent tone.
He raised his hands.
He hesitated.
He lowered his hands and pulled out all the rest of the stops,
including the twelve knobs with '?' on them and the two with faded labels
warning in several languages that they were on no account to be touched,
.ever, in any circumstances.
He raised his hands.
He raised his feet also, positioning them over some of the more
perilous pedals.
He shut his eyes.
He sat for a moment in contemplative silence, a test pilot ready to
slit the edge of the envelope in the starship Melody.
He let the plangent memory of the music fill his head and flow down his
arms and fill his fingers.
His hands dropped.
'What did we do? What did we do?' said Imp. Excitement ran its barefoot
races up and down his spine.
They were sitting in the tiny cramped room behind the bar.
Glod took off his helmet and wiped the inside.
'Would you believe four beats to the bar, two four time, melody led,
with the bass beat forward in the melody?'
'What's all dat?' said Lias. 'What's all dem words mean?'
'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.
O 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.
'Cliff?'
'Good troll name. Very stony. Very rocky. Nothing wrong with it,' said
Cliff ne 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 ...
'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 ne 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.'
'Days 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.
SQUEAK.
'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 out-side 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?'
SQUEAK.
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.
For the last five minutes he'd also been hearing muffled thumps and the
occasional tinkling noise from inside the Opera House. He'd made a note of
it.
He did not wish to appear stupid. Detritus had never been inside the
Opera House. He didn't know what sound it normally made at 2 a.m.
The front doors opened, and a large oddly shaped flat box came out,
hesitantly.
It advanced in a curious way a few steps forward, a couple of steps
back. And it was also talking to itself.
Detritus looked down. He could see ... he paused ... at least seven
legs of various sizes, only four of which had feet.
He shambled across to the box and banged on the side.
'Hello, hello, hello, what is all this ... then?' he said,
concentrating to get the sentence right.
The box stopped.
Then it said, 'We're a piano.'
Detritus gave this due consideration. He wasn't sure what a piano was.
'A piano move about, does it?' he said.
'It's ... we've got legs,' said the piano.
Detritus conceded the point.
'But it are the middle of the night,' he said.
'Even pianos have to have time off,' said the piano.
Detritus scratched his head. This seemed to cover it.
'Well ... all right,' he said.
He watched the piano jerk and wobble down the marble steps and round
the corner.
It carried on talking to itself:
'How long have we got, d'you think?'
'We ought to make it to the bridge. He not clever enough to be a
drummer.'
'But he's a policeman.'
'So?'
'Cliff?'
'Yup?'
'We might get caught.'
'He can't stop us. We're on a mission from Glod.'
'Right.'
The piano tottered onward through the puddles for a little while, and
then asked itself:
'Buddy?'
'Yup?'
'Why did I just say dat?'
'Say what?'
'About us being on a mission ... you know ... from Glod?'
'Weeell ... the dwarf said to us, go and get the piano, and his name is
Glod, so-'
'Yeah. Yeah. Right ... but ... he could've stopped us, I mean, dere's
nothing special about some mission from some dwarf-'
'Maybe you were just a bit tired.'
'Maybe dat's it,' said the piano, gratefully.
'Anyway, we are on a mission from Glod.'
'Yup.'
Glod sat in his lodgings, watching the guitar.
It had stopped playing when Buddy had gone out, although if he put his
ear close to the strings he was sure that they were still humming very
gently.
Now he very carefully reached out and touched the-
To call the sudden snapping sound discordant would be too mild. The
sound had a snarl, it had talons.
Glod sat back. Right. Right. It was Buddy's instrument. An instrument
played by the same person over the years could become very adapted to them,
although not in Glod's experience to the point of biting someone else. Buddy
hadn't had it a day yet, but the principle maybe was the same.
There was an old dwarf legend about the famous Horn of Furgle, which
sounded itself when danger was near and also in the presence, for some
reason, of horseradish.
And there was even an Ankh Morpork legend, wasn't there, about some old
drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy
fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The legend had died out in recent
centuries, partly because this was the Age of Reason and also because no
enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going
in front.
And there was a troll story about some stones that, on frosty nights
...
The point was that magical instruments turned up every so often.
Glod reached out again.
JUD Adud adud duh.
'All right, all right ...'
The old music shop was right up against the University, after all, and
magic did leak out despite what the wizards always said about the talking
rats and walking trees just being statistical flukes. But this didn't feel
like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music.
Glod wondered whether he should persuade Im- Buddy to take it back to
the shop, get a proper guitar ...
On the other hand, six dollars was six dollars. At least.
Something hammered on the door.
'Who's that?' said Glod, looking up.
The pause outside was long enough to let him guess. He decided to help
out.
'Cliff?' he said.
'Yup. Got a piano here.'
'Bring it on in.'
'Had to break off der legs and der lid and a few other bits but it's
basically OK.'
'Bring it on in, then.'
'Door's too narrow.'
Buddy, coming up the stairs behind the troll, heard the crunch of
woodwork.
'Try it again.'
'Fits perfectly.'
There was a piano shaped hole around the doorway. Glod was standing
next to it, holding his axe. Buddy looked at the wreckage all over the
landing.
'What the hell are you doing?' he said. 'That's someone else's wall !'
'Well? It's someone else's piano.'
'Yes, but ... you can't just hack holes in the wall-'
'What's more important? Some wall or getting the sound right?' said
Glod.
Buddy hesitated. Part of him thought: that's ridiculous, it's only
music.
Another part of him thought, rather more sharply: that's ridiculous,
it's only a wall. All of him said: 'Oh. Since you put it like that ... but
what about the piano player?'
'I told you, I know just where to find one,' said Glod.
A tiny part of him was amazed: I've hacked a hole in my own wall! It
took me days to nail that wallpaper on properly.
Albert was in the stable, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
'Go well?' he said, when Susan's shadow appeared over the half door.
'Er ... yes ... I suppose ...'
'Pleased to hear it,' said Albert, without looking up. The shovel
thumped on the barrow.
'Only ... something happened which probably wasn't usual ...
'Sorry to hear that.'
Albert picked up the wheelbarrow and trundled it in the direction of
the garden.
Susan knew what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to apologize,
and then it'd turn out that crusty old Albert had a heart of gold, and
they'd be friends after all, and he'd help her and tell her things, and
And she'd be some stupid girl who couldn't cope.
No.
She went back to the stable, where Binky was investigating the contents
of a bucket.
The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self reliance and logical
thought.
Her parents had sent her there for that reason.
They'd assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world
was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling
people about self defence so that no one would ever attack them.
Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After
all, humans derive their notions of what it means to be a normal human being
by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are
other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards. The Librarian was an
orang-utan, and no one thought that was at all odd. The Reader in Esoteric
Studies spent so much time reading in what the Bursar referred to as 'the
smallest room'[11] that he was generally referred to as the Reader in The
Lavatory, even on official documents.
The Bursar himself in any normal society would have been considered
more unglued than a used stamp in a downpour. The Dean had spent seventeen
years writing a treatise on The Use of the Syllable 'ENK' in Levitation
Spells of the Early Confused Period. The Archchancellor, who regularly used
the long gallery above the Great Hall for archery practice and had
accidentally shot the Bursar twice, thought the whole faculty was as crazy
as loons, whatever a loon was. 'Not enough fresh air,' he'd say. 'Too much
sittin' around indoors. Rots the brain.'
More often he'd say, 'Duck!'
None of them, apart from Ridcully and the Librarian, were early risers.
Breakfast, if it happened at all, happened around mid-morning. Wizards
lined the buffet, lifting the big silver lids of the tureens and wincing at
every clang.
Ridcully liked big greasy breakfasts, especially if they included those
slightly translucent sausages with the green flecks that you can only hope
is a herb of some sort. Since it was the Archchancellor's prerogative to
choose the menu, many of the more squeamish wizards had stopped eating
breakfast altogether, and got through the day just on lunch, tea, dinner and
supper and the occasional snack. So there weren't too many in the Great Hall
this morning. Besides, it was a bit draughty. Workmen were busy somewhere up
in the roof.
Ridcully put down his fork.
'All right, who's doing it?' he said. 'Own up, that man.'
'Doing what, Archchancellor?' said the Senior Wrangler.
'Somone's tappin' his foot.'
The wizards looked along the table. The Dean was staring happily into
space.
'Dean?' said the Senior Wrangler.
The Dean's left hand was held not far from his mouth. The other was
making rhythmic stroking motions somewhere in the region of his kidneys.
'I don't know what he thinks he's doin',' said Ridcully, 'but it looks
unhygienic to me.'
'I think he's playing an invisible banjo, Archchancellor,' said the
Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Well, it's quiet, at least,' said Ridcully. He looked at the hole in
the roof, which was letting unaccustomed daylight into the hall. 'Anyone
seen the Librarian?'
The orang utan was busy.
He had holed up in one of the Library cellars, which he currently used
as a general workshop and book hospital. There were various presses and
guillotines, a bench full of tins of nasty substances where he made his own
binding glue and all the other tedious cosmetics of the Muse of literature.
He'd brought a book down with him. It had taken even him several hours
to find it.
The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are
chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly
ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a
mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them
didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more
dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's
brain.
For example, the big volume open in front of him contained some of the
collected drawings of Leonard of Quirm, skilled artist and certified genius
with a mind that wandered so much it came back with souvenirs.
Leonard's books were full of sketches of kittens, of the way water
flows, of the wives of influential Ankh Morporkian merchants whose portraits
had provided his means of making a living. But Leonard had been a genius and
was deeply sensitive to the wonders of the world, so the margins were full
of detailed doodles of whatever was on his mind at that moment vast
water--powered engines for bringing down city walls on the heads of the
enemy, new types of siege guns for pumping flaming oil over the enemy,
gunpowder rockets that showered the enemy with burning phosphorus, and other
manufactures of the Age of Reason.
And there had been something else. The Librarian had noticed it in
passing once before, and had been slightly puzzled by it. It seemed out of
place.[12]
His hairy hand thumbed through the pages. Ah ... here it was ...
Yes. Oh, YES.
... It spoke to him in the language of the Beat ...
The Archchancellor made himself comfortable at his snooker table.
He'd long ago got rid of the official desk. A snooker table was much to
be preferred. Things didn't fall off the edge, there were a number of handy
pockets to keep sweets and things in, and when he was bored he could shovel
the paperwork off and set up trick shots.[13] He never bothered to shovel
the paperwork back on afterwards. In his experience, anything really
important never got written down, because by then people were too busy
shouting.
He picked up his pen and started to write.
He was composing his memoirs. He'd got as far as the title: Along the
Ankh with Bow, Rod and Staff with a Knob on the End.
'Not many people realize,' he wrote, 'that the river Ankh has a large
and varied pifcine population-'[14]
He flung down the pen and stormed along the corridor into the Dean's
office.
'What the hell's that?' he shouted.
The Dean jumped.
'It's, it's, it's a guitar, Archchancellor,' said the Dean, walking
hurriedly backwards as Ridcully approached. 'I just bought it.'
'I can see that, I can hear that, what was it you were tryin' to do?'
'I was practising, er, riffs,' said the Dean. He waved a badly printed
woodcut defensively in Ridcully's face.
The Archchancellor grabbed it.
'Blert Wheedown's Guitar Primer",' he read. ' "Play your Way to Succefs
in
Three Easy Lefsons and Eighteen Hard Lefsons". Well? I've nothin'
against guitars, pleasant airs, a spying young maidens one morning in May
and so on, but that wasn't playin'. That was just noise. I mean, what was it
supposed to be?'
'A lick based on an E pentatonic scale using the major seventh as a
passing tone?' said the Dean.
The Archchancellor peered at the open page.
'But this says "Lesson One: Fairy Footsteps",' he said.
'Um, um, um, I was getting a bit impatient,' said the Dean.
'You've never been musical, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'It's one of your
good points.
Why the sudden interest what have you got on your feet?'
The Dean looked down.
'I thought you were a bit taller,' said Ridcully. 'You standing on a
couple of planks?'
'They're just thick soles,' said the Dean. 'Just ... just something the
dwarfs invented, I suppose ... dunno ... found them in my closet ... Modo
the gardener says he thinks they're crepe.'
'That's strong language for Modo, but I'd say he's right enough.'
'No ... it's a kind of rubbery stuff ...' said the Dean, dismally.
'Erm ... excuse me, Archchancellor ...'
It was the Bursar, standing in the doorway. A large red faced man was
behind him, craning over his shoulder.
'What is it, Bursar?'
'Erm, this gentleman has got a-'
'It's about your monkey,' said the man.
Ridcully brightened up.
'Oh, yes?'
'Apparently, erm, he sto removed some wheels from this gentleman's
carriage,' said the Bursar, who was on the depressive side of his mental
cycle.
'You sure it was the Librarian?' said the Archchancellor.
'Fat, red hair, says "ook", a lot?'
'That's him. Oh, dear. I wonder why he did that?' said Ridcully.
'Still, you know what they say ... a five hundred pound gorilla can sleep
where he likes.'
'But a three hundred pound monkey can give me my bloody wheels back,'
said the man, unmoved. 'If I don't get my wheels back, there's going to be
trouble.'
'Trouble?' said Ridcully.
'Yeah. And don't think you can scare me. Wizards don't scare me.
Everyone knows there's a rule that you mustn't use magic against civilians.'
The man thrust his face close to Ridcully and raised a fist.
Ridcully snapped his fingers. There was an inrush of air, and a croak.
'I've always thought of it more as a guideline,' he said, mildly.
'Bursar, go and put this frog in the flowerbed and when he becomes his old
self give him ten dollars. Ten dollars would be all right, wouldn't it?'
'Croak,' said the frog hastily.
'Good. And now will someone tell me what's going on?'
There was a series of crashes from downstairs.
'Why do I think,' said Ridcully to the world in general, 'that this
isn't going to be the answer?'
The servants had been laying the tables for lunch. This generally took
some time. Since wizards took their meals seriously, and left a lot of mess,
the tables were in a permanent state of being laid, cleaned or occupied.
Place settings alone took a lot of time. Each wizard required nine
knives, thirteen forks, twelve spoons and one rammer, quite apart from all
the wine glasses.
Wizards often turned up in ample time for the next meal. In fact they
were often there in good time to have second helpings of the last one.
A wizard was sitting there now.
'That's Recent Runes, ain't it?' said Ridcully.
He had a knife in each hand. He also had the salt, pepper and mustard
pots in front of him. And the cake stand. And a couple of tureen covers. All
of which he was hitting vigorously with the knives.
'What's he doing that for?' said Ridcully. 'And, Dean, will you stop
tapping your feet?'
'Well, it's catchy,' said the Dean.
'It's catching,' said Ridcully.
The Lecturer in Recent Runes was frowning in concentration. Forks
jangled across the woodwork. A spoon caught a glancing blow, pinwheeled
through the air and hit the Bursar on the ear.
'What the hells does he think he's doing?'
'That really hurt!'
The wizards clustered around the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He paid them
no attention whatsoever. Sweat poured down his beard.
'He just broke the cruet,' said Ridcully.
'It's going to smart for hours.'
'Ah, yes, he's as hot as mustard,' said the Dean.
'I'd take that with a pinch of salt,' said the Senior Wrangler.
Ridcully straightened up. He raised a hand.
'Now, someone's about to say something like "I hope the Watch don't
ketchup with him", aren't you?' he said. 'Or "That's a bit of a sauce", or I
bet you're all trying to think of somethin' silly to say about pepper. I'd
just like to know what's the difference between this faculty and a bunch of
pea brained idiots.'
'Hahaha,' said the Bursar nervously, still rubbing his ear.
'It wasn't a rhetorical question.' Ridcully snatched the knives out of
the Lecturer's hands. The man went on beating the air for a moment, and then
appeared to wake up.
'Oh, hello, Archchancellor. Is there a problem?'
'What were you doing?'
The Lecturer looked down at the table.
'He was syncopating,' said the Dean.
'I never was!'
Ridcully frowned. He was a thick skinned, single-minded man with the
tact of a sledgehammer and about the same sense of humour, but he was not
stupid. And he knew that wizards were like weathervanes, or the canaries
that miners used to detect pockets of gas. They were by their nature tuned
to an occult frequency.
If there was anything strange happening, it tended to happen to
wizards. They turned, as it were, to face it. Or dropped off their perch.
'Why's everyone suddenly so musical?' he said. 'Using the term in its
loosest sense, of course.' He looked at the assembled wizardry. And then
down towards the floor.
'You've all got crepe on your shoes!'
The wizards looked at their feet with some surprise.
'My word, I thought I was a bit taller,' said the Senior Wrangler. ' I
put it down to the celery diet.'[15]
'Proper footwear for a wizard is pointy shoes or good stout boots,'
said Ridcully. 'When one's footwear turns creepy, something's amiss.'
'It's crepe,' said the Dean. 'It's got a little pointy thingy over
the-' Ridcully breathed heavily. 'When your boots change by themselves-' he
growled.
'There's magic afoot?'
'Haha, good one, Senior Wrangler,' said the Dean.
'I want to know what's going on,' said Ridcully, in a low and level
voice, 'and if you don't all shut up there will be trouble.'
He reached into the pockets of his robe and, after a few false starts,
produced a pocket thaumometer. He held it up. There was always a high level
of background magic in the University, but the little needle was on the
'Normal' mark. On average, anyway. It was ticking backwards and forwards
across it like a metronome.
Ridcully held it up so they could all see.
'What's this?' he said.
'Four four time?' said the Dean.
'Music ain't magic,' said Ridcully. 'Don't be daft. Music's just
twanging and banging and-'
He stopped.
'Has anyone got anything they should be telling me?'
The wizards shuffled their blue suede feet nervously.
'Well,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'it is a fact that last night, er, I,
that is to say, some of us, happened to be passing by the Mended Drum-'
'Bona Fide Travellers,' said the Lecturer in Recent Rune...
