Soul Music (13 page)

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?'

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?'

‘Join? Join what?'

‘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 . . .'

‘Right,' said the corporal, with relief. ‘What's your name, soldier?'

‘You don't have to say, actually. That's what the . . . the . . .'

‘. . . what it's all about. People join to . . . to . . . with your mind, you know, when you can't . . . things that happened . . .'

‘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 difficulty, at the label thus revealed.

‘Corporal . . . Medium? Does that sound right?'

‘Corporal . . . Hand Wash Only?'

‘Corporal . . . Cotton?'

‘Right. Well, welcome to the . . . er . . .'

‘Right. The pay is three dollars a week and all the sand you can eat. I hope you like sand.'

‘Believe me, you won't ever forget sand,' said the corporal bitterly.

‘What did you say your name was?'

The stranger remained silent.

‘Not that it matters,' said Corporal Cotton. ‘In the . . .'

‘. . . 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—'

The corporal blinked. For some inexplicable reason the word ‘bone' kept elbowing its way into the melting, flowing mess that was his consciousness.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Er. It's a twenty-year tour, legionary. 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.

The city slid under them again. Where there were wider streets and squares she could make out individual 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 aggressiveness. 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 okay 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?'