Discworld 16 - Soul Music

by Terry Pratchett

  I’ve got to ask, Susan thought. I’ve got to say it. Or I’m not human.

  “I could go back and save them…?” Only the faintest tremor suggested that the statement was a question.

  SAVE? FOR WHAT? A LIFE THAT HAS RUN OUT? SOME THINGS END. I KNOW THIS. SOMETIMES I HAVE THOUGHT OTHERWISE. BUT…WITHOUT DUTY, WHAT AM I? THERE HAS TO BE A LAW.

  He climbed into the saddle and, still without turning to face her, spurred Binky out and over the gorge.

  There was a haystack behind a livery stable in Phedre Road. It bulged for a moment, and there was a muffled swearing.

  A fraction of a second later there was a bout of coughing and another, much better, swearword inside a grain silo down near the cattle market.

  Very shortly after that some rotten floorboards in an old feed store in Short Street exploded upward, followed by a swearword that bounced off a flour sack.

  “Idiot rodent!” bellowed Albert, fingering grain out of his ear.

  SQUEAK.

  “I should think so! What size do you think I am?”

  Albert brushed hay and flour off his coat and walked over to the window.

  “Ah,” he said, “let us repair to the Mended Drum, then.”

  In Albert’s pocket, sand resumed its interrupted journey from future to past.

  Hibiscus Dunelm had decided to close up for an hour. It was a simple process. First he and his staff collected any unbroken mugs and glasses. This didn’t take long. Then there was a desultory search for any weapons with a high resale value, and a quick search of any pockets whose owners were unable to object on account of being drunk, dead, or both. Then the furniture was moved aside and everything else was swept out of the back door and into the broad brown bosom of the river Ankh where it piled up and, by degrees, sank.

  Finally, Hibiscus locked and bolted the big front door…

  It wouldn’t shut. He looked down. A boot was wedged in it.

  “We’re shut,” he said.

  “No, you ain’t.”

  The door ground back, and Albert was inside.

  “Have you seen this person?” he demanded, thrusting a pasteboard oblong in front of Dunelm’s eyes.

  This was a gross breach of etiquette. Dunelm wasn’t in the kind of job where you survived if you told people you’d seen people. Dunelm could serve drinks all night without seeing anyone.

  “Never seen him before in my life,” he said, automatically, without even looking at the card.

  “You’ve got to help me,” said Albert, “otherwise something dreadful will happen.”

  “Push off!”

  Albert kicked the door shut behind him.

  “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said. On his shoulder the Death of Rats sniffed the air suspiciously.

  A moment later Hibiscus was having his chin pressed firmly into the boards of one of his tables.

  “Now, I know he’d come in here,” said Albert, who wasn’t even breathing heavily, “because everyone does, sooner or later. Have another look.”

  “That’s a Caroc card,” said Hibiscus indisctinctly. “That’s Death!”

  “That’s right. He’s the one on the white horse. You can’t miss him. Only he wouldn’t look like that in here, I expect.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said the landlord, trying desperately to wriggle out of the iron grip. “You want me to tell you if I’ve seen someone who doesn’t look like that?”

  “He’d have been odd. Odder than most.” Albert thought for a moment. “And he’d have drunk a lot, if I know him. He always does.”

  “This is Ankh-Morpork, you know.”

  “Don’t be cheeky, or I’ll get angry.”

  “You mean you’re not angry now?”

  “I’m just impatient. You can try for angry if you like.”

  “There was…someone…week or so ago. Can’t remember exactly what he looked like—”

  “Ah. That’d be him.”

  “Drank me dry, complained about the Barbarian Invader game, got legless, and then…”

  “What?”

  “Can’t recall. We just threw him out.”

  “Out the back door?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s just river out there.”

  “Well, most people come round before they sink.”

  SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.

  “Did he say anything?” said Albert, too busy to pay attention.

  “Something about remembering everything, I think. He said…he said being drunk didn’t make him forget. Kept going on about doorknobs and…hairy sunlight.”

  “Hairy sunlight?”

  “Something like that.”

  And the pressure on Hibiscus’s arm was suddenly released. He waited a second or two and then, very cautiously, turned his head.

  There was no one behind him.

  Very carefully, Hibiscus bent down to look under the tables.

  Albert stepped out into the dawn and, after some fumbling, produced his box. He opened it and glanced at his lifetimer, then snapped the lid shut.

  “All right,” he said. “What next?”

  SQUEAK!

  “What?”

  And someone hit him across the head.

  It wasn’t a killing stroke. Timo Laziman of the Thieves’ Guild knew what happened to thieves who killed people. The Assassins’ Guild came and talked briefly to them—in fact, all they said was “Goodbye.”

  All he’d wanted to do was knock the old man out so that he could rifle his pockets.

  He’d not expected the sound as the body hit the ground. It was like the tinkle of broken glass, but with unpleasant overtones that carried on echoing in Timo’s ears long after they should have stopped.

  Something leapt from the body and whirred into his face. Two skeletal claws grabbed his ears and a bony muzzle jerked forward and hit him hard on the forehead. He screamed and ran for it.

  The Death of Rats dropped to the ground again and scurried back to Albert. It patted his face, kicked him frantically a few times, and then, in desperation, bit him on the nose.

  Then the rat grabbed Albert’s collar and tried to pull him out of the gutter, but there was a warning tinkle of glass.

  The eye sockets turned madly toward the Drum’s closed door. Ossified whiskers bristled.

  A moment later Hibiscus opened the door, if only to stop the thunderous knocking.

  “I said we’re—”

  Someone shot between his legs, paused momentarily to bite him on the ankle, and scuttled toward the back door, nose pressed firmly to the floor.

  It was called Hide Park not because people could, but because a hide was once a measure of land capable of being plowed by one man with three-and-one-half oxen on a wet Thursday, and the park was exactly this amount of land, and people in Ankh-Morpork stick to tradition and often to other things as well.

  And it had trees, and grass, and a lake with actual fish in it. And, by one of those twists of civic history, it was a fairly safe place. People seldom got mugged in Hide Park. Muggers like somewhere safe to sunbathe, just like everyone else. It was, as it were, neutral territory.

  And it was already filling up, even though there was nothing much to see except the workmen still hammering together a large stage by the lake. An area behind it had been walled off with strips of cheap sacking nailed to stakes. Occasionally excited people would try to get in and would be thrown into the lake by Chrysoprase’s trolls.

  Among the practicing musicians, Crash and his group were immediately noticeable, partly because Crash had his shirt off so that Jimbo could paint iodine on the wounds.

  “I thought you were joking,” he growled.

  “I did say it was in your bedroom,” said Scum.

  “How’m I going to play my guitar like this?” said Crash.

  “You can’t play your guitar anyway,” said Noddy.

  “I mean, look at my hand. Look at it.”

  They looked at his hand. Jimbo’s mum had put a glove on
it after treating the wounds; they hadn’t been very deep, because even a stupid leopard won’t hang around anyone who wants to take its trousers off.

  “A glove,” said Crash, in a terrible voice. “Whoever heard of a serious musician with a glove? How can I ever play my guitar with a glove on?”

  “How can you ever play your guitar anyway?”

  “I don’t know why I put up with you three,” said Crash. “You’re cramping my artistic development. I’m thinking of leaving and forming my own band.”

  “No you won’t,” said Jimbo, “because you won’t find anyone even worse than us. Let’s face it. We’re rubbish.”

  He was voicing a hitherto unspoken yet shared thought. The other musicians around them were, it was true, quite bad. But that’s all they were. Some of them had some minor musical talent; as for the rest, they merely couldn’t play. They didn’t have a drummer who missed the drums and a bass guitarist with the same natural rhythm as a traffic accident. And they’d generally settled on their name. They might be unimaginative names, like “A Big Troll and Some Other Trolls,” or “Dwarfs With Altitude,” but at least they knew who they were.

  “How about We’re A Rubbish Band?” said Noddy, sticking his hands in his pockets.

  “We may be rubbish,” snarled Crash, “but we’re Music With Rocks In rubbish.”

  “Well, well, and how’s it all going, then?” said Dibbler, pushing his way through the sacking. “It won’t be long now—what’re you doing here?”

  “We’re in the program, Mr. Dibbler,” said Crash meekly.

  “How can you be in the program when I don’t know what you’re called?” said Dibbler, waving a hand irritably at one of the posters. “Your name up there, is it?”

  “We’re probably where it says Ande Supporting Bands,” said Noddy.

  “What happened to your hand?” said Dibbler.

  “My trousers bit it,” said Crash, glowering at Scum. “Honest, Mr. Dibbler, can’t you give us one more chance?”

  “We’ll see,” said Dibbler, and strode away.

  He was feeling too cheerful to argue much. The sausages-in-a-bun were selling very fast, but they were just covering minor expenses. There were ways of making money out of Music With Rocks In that he’d never thought of…and C.M.O.T. Dibbler thought of money all the time.

  For example, there were the shirts. They were of cotton so cheap and thin that it was practically invisible in a good light and tended to dissolve in the wash. He’d sold six hundred already! At five dollars each! All he had to do was buy them at ten for a dollar from Klatchian Wholesale Trading and pay Chalky half a dollar each to print them.

  And Chalky, with un-troll-like initiative, had even printed off his own shirts. They said:

  CHALKIES,

  12 THE SCOURS

  THYNGS DONE.

  And people were buying them, paying money to advertise Chalky’s workshop. Dibbler had never dreamed that the world could work like this. It was like watching sheep shear themselves. Whatever was causing this reversal of the laws of commercial practice he wanted in big lumps.

  He’d already sold the idea to Plugger the shoemaker in New Cobblers* and a hundred shirts had just walked out of the shop, which was more than Plugger’s merchandise usually did. People wanted clothes just because they had writing on!

  He was making money. Thousands of dollars in a day! And a hundred music traps were lined up in front of the stage, ready to capture Buddy’s voice. If it went on at this rate, in several billion years he’d be rich beyond his wildest dreams!

  Long Live Music With Rocks In!

  There was only one small cloud in this silver lining.

  The Festival was due to start at noon. Dibbler had planned to put on a lot of the small, bad groups first—that is to say, all of them—and finish with The Band. So there was no reason to worry if they weren’t here right now.

  But they weren’t here right now. Dibbler was worried.

  A tiny dark figure quartered the shores of the Ankh, moving so fast as to be a blur. It zigzagged desperately back and forth, snuffling.

  People didn’t see it. But they saw the rats. Black, brown and grey, they were leaving the godowns and wharfs by the river, running over one another’s backs in a determined attempt to get as far away as possible.

  A haystack heaved, and gave birth to a Glod.

  He rolled out onto the ground, and groaned. Fine rain was drifting over the landscape. Then he staggered upright, looked around at the rolling fields, and disappeared behind a hedge for the moment.

  He trotted back a few seconds later, explored the haystack for a while until he found a part that was lumpier than normal, and kicked it repeatedly with his metal-tipped boot.

  “Ow!”

  “C-flat,” said Glod. “Good morning, Cliff. Hello, world! I don’t think I can stand life in the fast leyline, you know—the cabbages, the bad beer, all those rats pestering you all the time—”

  Cliff crawled out.

  “I must have had some bad ammonium chloride last night,” he said. “Is der top of my head still on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pity.”

  They hauled Asphalt out by his boots and brought him round by pounding him repeatedly.

  “You’re our road manager,” said Glod. “You’re supposed to see no harm comes to us.”

  “Well, I’m doing that, ain’t I?” Asphalt muttered. “I’m not hitting you, Mr. Glod. Where’s Buddy?”

  The three circled the haystack, prodding at bulges which turned out to be damp hay.

  They found him on a small rise in the ground, not very far away. A few holly bushes grew there, carved into curves by the wind. He was sitting under one, guitar on his knees, rain plastering his hair to his face.

  He was asleep, and soaking wet.

  On his lap, the guitar played raindrops.

  “He’s weird,” said Asphalt.

  “No,” said Glod. “He’s wound up by some strange compulsion which leads him through dark pathways.”

  “Yeah. Weird.”

  The rain was slackening off. Cliff glanced at the sky.

  “Sun’s high,” he said.

  “Oh, no!” said Asphalt. “How long were you asleep?”

  “Same as I am awake,” said Cliff.

  “It’s almost noon. Where did I leave the horses? Has anyone seen the cart? Someone wake him up!”

  A few minutes later they were back on the road.

  “An’ you know what?” said Cliff. “We left so quick last night I never did know if she turned up.”

  “What was her name?” said Glod.

  “Dunno,” said the troll.

  “Oh, that’s real love, that is,” said Glod.

  “Ain’t you got any romance in your soul?” said Cliff.

  “Eyes crossed in a crowded room?” said Glod. “No, not really—”

  They were pushed aside as Buddy leaned forward.

  “Shut up,” he said. The voice was low and contained no trace whatsover of humor.

  “We were only joking,” said Glod.

  “Don’t.”

  Asphalt concentrated on the road, aware of the general lack of amiability.

  “I expect you’re looking forward to the Festival, eh?” he said, after a while.

  No one replied.

  “I expect there’ll be big crowds,” he said.

  There was silence, except for the clatter of the hooves and the rattle of the cart. They were in the hills now, where the road wound alongside a gorge. There wasn’t even a river down there, except in the wettest season. It was a gloomy area. Asphalt felt that it was getting gloomier.

  “I expect you’ll really have fun,” he said, eventually.

  “Asphalt?” said Glod.

  “Yes, Mr. Glod?”

  “Watch the road, will you?”

  The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his exp
erience, anything that couldn’t be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well.

  “Don’t you think we should have brought the senior wizards, sir?” said Ponder, struggling to keep up.

  “I’m afraid that taking them along in their present frame of mind would only make whatever happens”—Ridcully sought for a useful phrase, and settled for—“happen worse. I’ve insisted they stay in college.”

  “How about Drongo and the others?” said Ponder hopefully.

  “Would they be any good in the event of a thaumaturgical dimension rip of enormous proportions?” said Ridcully. “I remember poor old Mr. Hong. One minute he was dishing up an order of double cod and mushy peas, the next…”

  “Kaboom?” said Ponder.

  “‘Kaboom?’” said Ridcully, forcing his way up the crowded street. “Not that I heard tell. More like ‘Aaaaerrrrscream-gristle-gristle-gristle-crack’ and a shower of fried food. Big Mad Adrian and his friends any good when the chips are down?”

  “Um. Probably not, Archchancellor.”

  “Correct. People shout and run about. That never did any good. A pocket full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten.”

  “Nine times out of ten?”

  “Correct.”

  “How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?”

  “Well…there was Mr. Hong…that business with the Thing in the Bursar’s wardrobe…that dragon, you remember…” Ridcully’s lips moved silently as he counted on his fingers. “Nine times, so far.”

  “It worked every time, sir?”

  “Absolutely! So there’s no need to worry. Gangway! Wizard comin’ through.”

  The city gates were open. Glod leaned forward as the cart rumbled in.

  “Don’t go straight to the park,” he said.

  “But we’re late,” said Asphalt.

  “This won’t take long. Go to the Street of Cunning Artificers first.”

  “That’s right on the other side of the river!”