Discworld 16 - Soul Music

by Terry Pratchett

  “I didn’t think the music was that bad,” said Ridcully.

  “No, er, not in pain, er, I wouldn’t say that,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, beginning to go red, “but, er, when the young man was waggling his hips like that—”

  “He definitely looks elvish to me,” said Ridcully.

  “—er, I think she threw some of her, er, under…things onto the stage.”

  This silenced even Ridcully, at least for a while. Every wizard was suddenly busy with his own private thoughts.

  “What, Mrs. Whitlow?” the Chair of Indefinite Studies began.

  “Yes.”

  “What, her—?”

  “I, er, think so.”

  Ridcully had once seen Mrs. Whitlow’s washing line. He’d been impressed. He’d never believed there was so much pink elastic in the world.

  “What, really her—?” said the Dean, his voice sounding as though it was coming from a long way away.

  “I’m, er, pretty sure.”

  “Sounds dangerous to me,” said Ridcully briskly. “Could do someone a serious injury. Now then, you lot, back to the University right now for cold baths all round.”

  “Really her—?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. Somehow, none of them felt able to leave the idea alone.

  “Make yourself useful and find the Bursar,” snapped Ridcully. “And I’d have you lot up in front of the University authorities first thing in the morning, if it wasn’t for the fact that you are the University authorities…”

  Foul Ole Ron, professional maniac and one of Ankh-Morpork’s most industrious beggars, blinked in the gloom. Lord Vetinari had excellent night vision. And, unfortunately, a well-developed sense of smell.

  “And then what happened?” he said, trying to keep his face turned away from the beggar. Because the fact was that although in actual size Foul Ole Ron was a small hunched man in a huge grubby overcoat, in smell he filled the world.

  In fact Foul Ole Ron was a physical schizophrenic. There was Foul Ole Ron, and there was the smell of Foul Ole Ron, which had obviously developed over the years to such an extent that it had a distinct personality. Anyone could have a smell that lingered long after they’d gone somewhere else, but the smell of Foul Ole Ron could actually arrive somewhere several minutes before he did, in order to spread out and get comfortable before he arrived. It had evolved into something so striking that it was no longer perceived with the nose, which shut down instantly in self-defense; people could tell that Foul Ole Ron was approaching by the way their earwax started to melt.

  “Buggrit, buggrit, wrong side out, I told ’em, buggrem…”

  The Patrician waited. With Foul Ole Ron you had to allow time for his wandering mind to get into the same vicinity as his tongue.

  “…spyin’ on me with magic, I told ’em, bean soup, see here…and then everyone was dancing, you see, and then afterwards there were two of the wizards in the street and one of them was going on about catching the music in a box and Mr. Dibbler was interested and then the coffeehouse exploded and they all went back to the University…buggrit, buggrit, buggrem, see if I don’t.”

  “The coffeehouse exploded, did it?”

  “Frothy coffee all over the place, yerronner…bugg—”

  “Yes, yes, and so on,” said the Patrician, waving a thin hand. “And that’s all you can tell me?”

  “Well…bug—”

  Foul Ole Ron caught the Patrician’s eye and got a grip on himself. Even in his own highly individualized sanity he could tell when not to push his threadbare luck. His Smell wandered around the room, reading documents and examining the pictures.

  “They say,” he said, “that he drives all the women mad.” He leaned forward. The Patrician leaned back. “They say after he moved his hips like that…Mrs. Whitlow threw her…wossnames…onto the stage.”

  The Patrician raised an eyebrow.

  “‘Wossnames’?”

  “You know,” Foul Ole Ron moved his hands vaguely in the air.

  “A pair of pillow cases? Two sacks of flour? Some very baggy trou—oh. I see. My word. Were there any casualties?”

  “Dunno, yerronner. But there’s something I do know.”

  “Yes?”

  “Uh…Cumbling Michael says yerronner sometimes pays for information…?”

  “Yes, I know, I can’t imagine how these rumors get about,” said the Patrician, getting up and opening a window. “I shall have to have something done about it.”

  Once again, Foul Ole Ron reminded himself that, while he was probably insane, he definitely wasn’t as mad as all that.

  “Only I got this, yerronner,” he said, pulling something out of the horrible recesses of his clothing. “It says writing on it, yerronner.”

  It was a poster, in glowing primary colors. It couldn’t have been very old, but an hour or two as Foul Ole Ron’s chest warmer had aged it considerably. The Patrician unfolded it with a pair of tweezers.

  “Them’s the pictures of the music players,” said Foul Ole Ron helpfully. “And that’s writing. And there’s more writing there, look. Mr. Dibbler had Chalky the troll run ’em off just now, but I nipped in after and threatened to breathe on everyone less’n they gives me one.”

  “I’m sure that worked famously,” said the Patrician.

  He lit a candle and read the poster carefully. In the presence of Foul Ole Ron, all candles burned with a blue edge to the flame.

  “‘Free Festival of Music With Rocks In It,’” he said.

  “That’s where you don’t have to pay to go in,” said Foul Ole Ron helpfully. “Buggrem, buggrit.”

  Lord Vetinari read on.

  “In Hide Park. Next Wednesday. Well, well. A public open space, of course. I wonder if there’ll be many people there?”

  “Lots, yerronner. There was hundreds couldn’t get into the Cavern.”

  “And the band looks like that, do they?” said Lord Vetinari. “Scowling like that?”

  “Sweating, most of the time I saw ’em,” said Foul Ole Ron.

  “‘Bee There or Be A Rectangular Squar Thynge,’” said the Patrician. “This is some sort of occult code, do you think?”

  “Couldn’t say, yerronner,” said Foul Ole Ron. “My brain goes all slow when I’m thirsty.”

  “‘They Are Totallye Unable To Bee Seene! And A Longe Way Oute!’” said Lord Vetinari solemnly. He looked up. “Oh, I am sorry,” he said. “I’m sure I can find someone to give you a cool refreshing drink…?”

  Foul Ole Ron coughed. It had sounded like a perfectly sincere offer but, somehow, he was suddenly not at all thirsty.

  “Don’t let me keep you, then. Thank you so very much,” said Lord Vetinari.

  “Er…”

  “Yes?”

  “Er…nothing…”

  “Very good.”

  When Ron had buggrit, buggrit, buggrem’d down the stairs the Patrician tapped his pen thoughtfully on the paper and stared at the wall.

  The pen kept bouncing on the word Free.

  Finally he rang a small bell. A young clerk put his head around the door.

  “Ah, Drumknott,” said Lord Vetinari. “Just go and tell the head of the Musicians’ Guild he wants a word with me, will you?”

  “Er…Mr. Clete is already in the waiting room, your lordship,” said the clerk.

  “Does he by any chance have some kind of poster with him?”

  “Yes, your lordship.”

  “And is he very angry?”

  “This is very much the case, your lordship. It’s about some festival. He insists you have it stopped.”

  “Dear me.”

  “And he demands that you see him instantly.”

  “Ah. Then leave him for, say, twenty minutes, then show him up.”

  “Yes, your lordship. He keeps saying that he wants to know what you are doing about it.”

  “Good. Then I can ask him the same question.”

  The Patrician sat back. Si non confectus, non reficiat. That was the motto
of the Vetinaris. Everything worked if you just let it happen.

  He picked up a stack of sheet music and began to listen to Salami’s Prelude to a Nocturne on a Theme by Bubbla.

  After a while he looked up.

  “Don’t hesitate to leave,” he snapped. The Smell slunk away.

  SQUEAK!

  “Don’t be stupid! All I did was frighten them off. It’s not as though I hurt them. What’s the good of having the power if you can’t use it?”

  The Death of Rats put his nose in his paws. It was a lot easier, with rats. *

  C.M.O.T. Dibbler often did without sleep, too. He generally had to meet Chalky at night. Chalky was a large troll but tended to dry up and flake in daylight.

  Other trolls looked down on him because he came from a sedimentary family and was therefore a very low-class troll indeed. He didn’t mind. He was a very amiable character.

  He did odd jobs for people who needed something unusual in a hurry and without entanglements and had clinking money. And this job was pretty odd.

  “Just boxes?” he said.

  “With lids,” said Dibbler. “Like this one I’ve made. And a bit of wire stretched inside.”

  Some people would have said “Why?” or “What for?” but Chalky didn’t make his money like that. He picked up the box and turned it this way and that.

  “How many?” he said.

  “Just ten to start with,” said Dibbler. “But I think there’ll be more later. Lots and lots more.”

  “How many’s ten?” said the troll.

  Dibbler held up both hands, fingers extended.

  “‘ll do them for two dollar,” said Chalky.

  “You want me to cut my own throat?”

  “Two dollar.”

  “Dollar each for these and a dollar-fifty for the next batch.”

  “Two dollar.”

  “All right, all right, two dollars each. That’s ten dollars the lot, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And that’s cutting my own throat.”

  Chalky tossed the box aside. It bounced on the floor and the lid came off.

  Some time later a small greyish brown mongrel dog, on the prowl for anything edible, limped into the workshop and sat peering into the box for a while.

  Then it felt a bit of an idiot and wandered off.

  Ridcully hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building as the city clocks were striking two. He was supporting Ponder Stibbons, who was asleep on his feet.

  Ridcully was not a quick thinker. But he always got there eventually.

  The door opened and Skazz’s hair appeared.

  “Are you facin’ me?” said Ridcully.

  “Yes, Archchancellor.”

  “Let us in, then, the dew’s soaking through me boots.”

  Ridcully looked around as he helped Ponder in.

  “Wish I knew what it was that keeps you lads working all hours,” he said. “I never found magic that interesting when I was a lad. Go and fetch some coffee for Mr. Stibbons here, will you? And then get your friends.”

  Skazz bustled off and Ridcully was left alone, except for the slumbering Ponder.

  “What is it they do?” he said. He never really tried to find out.

  Skazz had been working at a long bench by one wall.

  At least he recognized the little wooden disc. There were small oblong stones ranged on it in a couple of concentric circles, and a candle lantern positioned on a swiveling arm so that it could be moved anywhere around the circumference.

  It was a traveling computer for druids, a sort of portable stone circle, something they called a “kneetop.” The Bursar had sent off for one once. It had said For the Priest In a Hurry on the box. He’d never been able to make it work properly and now it was used as a doorstop. Ridcully couldn’t see what they had to do with magic. After all, it wasn’t much more than a calendar and you could get a perfectly good calendar for 8p.

  Rather more puzzling was the huge array of glass tubes behind it. That was where Skazz had been working; there was a litter of bent glassware and jars and bits of cardboard where the student had been sitting.

  The tubing seemed to be alive.

  Ridcully leaned forward.

  It was full of ants.

  They scuttled along the tubing and through complex little spirals in their thousands. In the silence of the room, their bodies made a faint, continuous rustling.

  There was a slot level with the Archchancellor’s eyes. The word “In” was written on a piece of paper that had been pasted onto the glass.

  And on the bench was an oblong card which looked just the right shape to go in the slot. It had round holes punched in it.

  There were two round holes, then a whole pattern of round holes, and then a further two holes. On it, in pencil, someone had scribbled “2 + 2.”

  Ridcully was the kind of man who’d push any lever, just to see what it did.

  He put the card in the obvious slot…

  There was an immediate change in the rustling. Ants trailed in their thousands through the tubing. Some of them appeared to be carrying seeds…

  There was a small dull sound and a card dropped out of the other end of the glass maze.

  It had four holes in it.

  Ridcully was still staring at it when Ponder came up behind him, rubbing his eyes.

  “’s our ant counter,” he said.

  “Two plus two equals four,” said Ridcully. “Well, well, I never knew that.”

  “It can do other sums as well.”

  “You tellin’ me ants can count?”

  “Oh, no. Not individual ants…it’s a bit hard to explain…the holes in the cards, you see, block up some tubes and let them through others and…” Ponder sighed, “we think it might be able to do other things.”

  “Like what?” Ridcully demanded.

  “Er, that’s what we’re trying to find out…”

  “You’re trying to find out? Who built it?”

  “Skazz.”

  “And now you’re trying to find out what it does?”

  “Well, we think it might be able to do quite complicated math. If we can get enough bugs in it.”

  Ants were still bustling around the enormous crystalline structure.

  “Had a rat thingy, a gerbil or something, when I was a lad,” said Ridcully, giving up in the face of the incomprehendable. “Spent all the time on a treadmill. Round and round, all night long. This is a bit like that, yes?”

  “In very broad terms,” said Ponder carefully.

  “Had an ant farm, too,” said Ridcully, thinking faraway thoughts. “The little devils never could plow straight.” He pulled himself together. “Anyway, get the rest of your chums here right now.”

  “What for?”

  “A bit of a tutorial,” said Ridcully.

  “Aren’t we going to examine the music?”

  “In good time,” said Ridcully. “But first, we’re going to talk to someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Ridcully. “We’ll know when he turns up. Or her.”

  Glod looked at their suite. The hotel owner had just left, after going through the “dis is der window, it really opens, dis is der pump, you get water out of it wit der handle here, dis is me waiting for some money” routine.

  “Well, that just about does it. That just about puts the iron helmet on it, that does,” he said, “We play Music With Rocks In all evening, and we’ve got a room that looks like this?”

  “It’s homely,” said Cliff. “Looks, trolls don’t have much to do with der frills of life—”

  Glod looked toward his feet.

  “It’s on the floor and it’s soft,” he said. “Silly me for thinking it was a carpet. Someone fetch me a broom. No, someone fetch me a shovel. Then someone fetch me a broom.”

  “It’ll do,” said Buddy.

  He put down his guitar and stretched out on the wooden slab that was apparently one of the beds.

  “Cliff,
” said Glod, “can I have a word?”

  He jerked a stubby thumb at the door.

  They conferred on the landing.

  “It’s getting bad,” said Glod.

  “Yep.”

  “He hardly says a word now when he’s not onstage.”

  “Yep.”

  “Ever met a zombie?”

  “I know a golem. Mr. Dorfl down in Long Hogmeat.”

  “Him? He’s a genuine zombie?”

  “Yep. Got a holy word on his head, I seen it.”

  “Yuk. Really? I buy sausages from him.”

  “Anyway…what about zombies?”

  “…you couldn’t tell from the taste, I thought he was a really good sausage maker…”

  “What was you saying about zombies?”

  “…funny how you can know someone for years and then find out they’ve got feet of clay…”

  “Zombies…” said Cliff patiently.

  “What? Oh. Yes. I mean he acts like one.” Glod recalled some of the zombies in Ankh-Morpork. “At least, like zombies are supposed to act.”

  “Yep. I know what you mean.”

  “And we both know why.”

  “Yep. Er. Why?”

  “The guitar.”

  “Oh, dat. Yeah.”

  “When we’re onstage, that thing is in charge—”

  In the silence of the room, the guitar lay in the dark by Buddy’s bed and its strings vibrated gently to the sound of the dwarf’s voice…

  “Okay, so what do we do about it?” said Cliff.

  “It’s made of wood. Ten seconds with an ax, no more problem.”

  “I’m not sure. Dat ain’t no ordinary instrument.”

  “He was a nice kid when we met him. For a human,” said Glod.

  “So what do we do? I don’t think we could get it off him.”

  “Maybe we could get him to—”

  The dwarf paused. He was aware of a fuzzy echo to his voice.

  “That damn thing is listening to us!” he hissed. “Let’s go outside.”

  They ended up out in the road.

  “Can’t see how it can listen,” said Cliff. “An instrument’s for listening to.”