Soul Music

'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