Soul Music (10 page)

Albert's rangy, vulture-like shape loomed over her.

‘Would you like a cocoa?' he said.

It was a lot different from the cocoa at the school, which was like hot brown water. Albert's cocoa had fat floating in it; if you turned the mug upside down, it would be a little while before anything fell out.

‘Your mum and dad,' said Albert, when she had a chocolate moustache that was far too young for her, ‘did they ever . . . explain anything to you?'

‘Miss Delcross did that in Biology,' said Susan. ‘She got it wrong,' she added.

‘I mean about your grandfather,' said Albert.

‘I remember things,' said Susan, ‘but I can't remember them until I've seen them. Like the bathroom. Like you.'

‘Your mum and dad thought it best if you forgot,' said Albert. ‘Hah! It's in the bone! They was afraid it was going to happen and it has! You've
inherited
.'

‘Oh, I know about that, too,' said Susan. ‘It's all about mice and beans and things.'

Albert gave her a blank look.

‘Look, I'll try to put it tactful,' he said.

Susan gave him a polite look.

‘Your grandfather is Death,' said Albert. ‘You know? The skeleton in the black robe? You rode in on his horse and this is his house. Only he's . . . gone away. To think things over, or something. What I reckon's happening is you're being sucked in. It's in the bone. You're old enough now. There's a hole and it thinks you're the right shape. I don't like it any more than you do.'

‘Death,' said Susan, flatly. ‘Well, I can't say I didn't have suspicions. Like the Hogfather and the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy?'

‘Yes.'

‘You expect me to believe that, do you?' said Susan, trying to summon up her most withering scorn.

Albert glared back like someone who'd done all his withering a long time ago.

‘It's no skin off
my
nose what you believe, madam,' he said.

‘You really mean the tall figure with the scythe and everything?'

‘Yes.'

‘Look, Albert,' said Susan, in the voice one uses to the simple-minded, ‘even if there was a “Death” like that, and frankly it's quite ridiculous to go anthropomorphizing a simple natural function, no one can inherit
anything
from it. I know about heredity. It's all about having red hair and things. You get it from other people. You don't get it from . . . myths and legends. Um.'

The Death of Rats had gravitated to the cheeseboard, where he was using his scythe to hack off a lump. Albert sat back.

‘I remember when you got brought here,' he said. ‘He'd kept on asking, you see. He was curious. He likes kids. Sees a lot of them really, but . . . not to get to know, if you see what I mean. Your mum and dad didn't want to, but they gave in and brought you all here for tea one day just to keep him quiet. They didn't like to do it because they thought you'd be scared and scream the place down. But
you
 . . . you didn't scream. You laughed. Frightened the life out of your dad, that did. They brought you a couple more times when he asked, but then they got scared about what might happen and your dad put his foot down and that was the end of it. He was about the only one who could argue with the Master, your dad. You'd have been about four then, I think.'

Susan raised her hand thoughtfully and touched the pale lines on her cheek.

‘The Master said they were raising you according to,' Albert sneered, ‘modern methods. Logic. And thinking old stuff is silly. I dunno . . . I suppose they wanted to keep you away from . . . ideas like this . . .'

‘I was given a ride on the horse,' said Susan, not listening to him. ‘I had a bath in the big bathroom.'

‘Soap all over the place,' said Albert. His face contorted into something approaching a smile. ‘I could hear the Master laughing from here. And he made you a swing, too. Tried to, anyway. No magic or anything. With his actual hands.'

Susan sat while memories woke and yawned and unfolded in her head.

‘I remember about that bathroom now,' she said. ‘It's all coming back to me.'

‘Nah, it never went away. It just got papered over.'

‘He was no good at plumbing. What does Y M R-C-I-G-B-S A, A-M mean?'

‘Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association, Ankh-Morpork,' said Albert. ‘It's where I stay if I have to go back down for anything. Soap and suchlike.'

‘But you're not . . . a young man,' said Susan, unable to prevent herself.

‘No one argues,' he snapped. And Susan thought that was probably true. There was some kind of wiry strength in Albert, as if his whole body was a knuckle.

‘He can make just about anything,' she said, half to herself ‘but some things he just doesn't understand, and one of them's plumbing.'

‘Right. We had to get a plumber from Ankh-Morpork, hah, he said he might be able to make it a week next Thursday, and you don't say that kind of thing to the Master,' said Albert. ‘I've never seen a bugger work so fast. Then the Master just made him forget. He can make everyone forget, except—' Albert stopped, and frowned.

‘Seems I've got to put up with it,' he said. ‘Seems you've a
right
. I expect you're tired. You can stay here. There's plenty of rooms.'

‘No, I've got to get back! There'll be terrible trouble if I'm not at school in the morning.'

‘There's no Time here except what people brings with 'em. Things just happen one after the other. Binky'll take you right back to the time you left, if you like. But you ought to stop here a while.'

‘You said there's a hole and I'm being sucked in. I don't know what that means.'

‘You'll feel better after a sleep,' said Albert.

There was no real day or night here. That had given Albert trouble at first. There was just the bright landscape and, above, a black sky with stars. Death had never got the hang of day and night. When the house had human inhabitants it tended to keep a 26-hour day. Humans, left to themselves, adopt a longer diurnal rhythm than the 24-hour day, so they can be reset like a lot of little clocks at sunset. Humans have to put up with Time, but days are a sort of personal option.

Albert went to bed whenever he remembered.

Now he sat up, with one candle alight, staring into space.

‘She remembered about the bathroom,' he muttered. ‘And she knows about things she couldn't have seen. She couldn't have been told. She's got his memory. She
inherited
.'

SQUEAK,
said the Death of Rats. He tended to sit by the fire at nights.

‘Last time he went off, people stopped dyin',' said Albert. ‘But they ain't stopped dyin' this time. And the horse went to her.
She's
fillin' the hole.'

Albert glared at the darkness. When he was agitated it showed by a sort of relentless chewing and sucking activity, as if he was trying to extract some forgotten morsel of teatime from the recesses of a tooth. Now he was making a noise like a hairdresser's U-bend.

He couldn't remember ever having been young. It must have happened thousands of years ago. He was seventy-nine, but Time in Death's house was a reusable resource.

He was vaguely aware that childhood was a tricky business, especially towards the end. There was all the business with pimples and bits of your body having a mind of their own. Running the executive arm of mortality was certainly an extra problem.

But the point was, the horrible, inescapable point was, that
someone
had to do it.

For, as has been said before, Death operated in general rather than particular terms, just like a monarchy.

If you are a subject in a monarchy, you are ruled by the monarch. All the time. Waking or sleeping. Whatever you – or they – happen to be doing.

It's part of the general conditions of the situation. The Queen doesn't actually have to come around to your actual house, hog the chair and the TV remote control, and issue actual commands about how one is parched and would enjoy a cup of tea. It all takes place automatically, like gravity. Except that, unlike gravity, it needs someone at the top. They don't necessarily have to do a great deal. They just have to be there. They just have to
be
.

‘Her?' said Albert.

‘She'll crack soon enough,' said Albert. ‘Oh, yes. You can't be an immortal and a mortal at the same time, it'll tear you in half. I almost feels sorry for her.'

SQUEAK,
agreed the Death of Rats.

‘And that ain't the worst bit,' said Albert. ‘You wait till her memory
really
starts working . . .'

‘You listen to me,' said Albert. ‘You'd better start looking for him
right away
.'

Susan awoke, and had no idea what time it was.

There was a clock by the bedside, because Death knew there should be things like bedside clocks. It had skulls and bones and the omega sign on it, and it didn't work. There were no working clocks in the house, except the special one in the hall. Any others got depressed and stopped, or unwound themselves all in one go.

Her room looked as though someone had moved out yesterday. There were hairbrushes on the dressing table, and a few odds and ends of make-up. There was even a dressing-gown on the back of the door. It had a rabbit on the pocket. The cosy effect would have been improved if it hadn't been a skeletal one.

She had a rummage through the drawers. This must have been her mother's room. There was a lot of pink. Susan had nothing against pink in moderation, but this wasn't it; she put on her old school dress.

The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up.

The Death of Rats landed on the dressing table, claws scrabbling for a purchase. He removed the tiny scythe from his jaws.

‘I think,' said Susan carefully, ‘that I would like to go home now, thank you.'

The little rat nodded, and leapt.

It landed on the edge of the pink carpet and scurried away across the dark floor beyond.

When Susan stepped off the carpet the rat stopped and looked around in approval. Once again, she felt she'd passed some sort of test.

She followed it out into the hall and then into the smoky cavern of the kitchen. Albert was bent over the stove.

‘Morning,' he said, out of habit rather than any acknowledgement of the time of day. ‘You want fried bread with your sausages? There's porridge to follow.'

Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying-pan. It wasn't a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one. Albert could make an egg wish it had never been laid.

‘Haven't you got any muesli?' she said.

‘Is that some kind of sausage?' said Albert suspiciously.

‘It's nuts and grains.'

‘Any fat in it?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘How're you supposed to fry it, then?'

‘You don't fry it.'

‘You call that
breakfast
?'

‘It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast,' said Susan. ‘I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge—'

‘Who says?'

‘A boiled egg, then?'

‘Hah, boiling's no good, it don't kill off all the germs.'

‘
BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.
' As the echoes bounced across and died away, Susan wondered where the voice had come from.

Albert's ladle tinkled on the tiles.

‘Please?' said Susan.

‘You did the voice,' said Albert.

‘Don't bother about the egg,' said Susan. The voice had made her jaw ache. It worried her even more than it worried Albert. After all, it was her mouth. ‘I want to go home!'

‘You are home,' said Albert.

‘This place? This isn't my home!'

‘Yeah? What's the inscription on the big clock?'

‘“Too Late”,' said Susan promptly.

‘Where are the beehives?'

‘In the orchard.'

‘How many plates've we got?'

‘Seven—' Susan shut her mouth firmly.

‘See? It's home to part of you,' said Albert.

‘Look . . . Albert,' said Susan, trying sweet reason in case it worked any better this time round, ‘maybe there is . . . someone . . . sort of . . . in charge of things, but I'm really no one special . . . I mean . . .'

‘Yeah? How come the horse knows you?'

‘Yes, but I really
am
just a normal girl—'

‘Normal girls didn't get a My Little Binky set on their third birthday!' snapped Albert. ‘Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset about that. He was
trying
.'

‘I mean I'm an ordinary kid!'

‘Listen, ordinary kids get a xylophone. They don't just ask their grandad to take his shirt off!'

‘I mean I can't help it! That's not my fault! It's not fair!'

‘Really? Oh, why didn't you say?' said Albert sourly. ‘That cuts a lot of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the universe that it's not fair. I bet it'll say, oh, all right then, sorry you've been troubled, you're let off.'

‘That's sarcasm! You can't talk to me like that! You're just a servant!'