Soul Music

Expecting Dibbler not to think about anything concerning money was like expecting rocks not to think about gravity.

'Hello? Albert?'

Susan pushed open the kitchen door. The huge room was empty.

'Albert?'

She tried upstairs. There was her own room, and there was a corridor of doors that didn't open and possibly never could - the doors and frames had an all-in-one, moulded-together look. Presumably Death had a bedroom, although proverbially Death never slept. Perhaps he just lay in bed reading.

She tried the handles until she found one that turned.

Death did have a bedroom.

He'd got many of the details right. Of course. After all, he saw quite a lot of bedrooms. In the middle of the acres of floor was a large four-poster bed, although when Susan gave it an experimental prod it turned out that the sheets were as solid as rock.

There was a full-length mirror, and a wardrobe. She had a look inside, just in case there was a selection of robes, but there was nothing in there except a few old shoes in the bottom.[26]

A dressing table held a jug-and-basin set with a motif of skulls and omegas, and a variety of bottles and other items.

She picked them up, one by one. After-shave lotion. Pomade. Breath freshener. A pair of silver-backed hairbrushes.

It was all rather sad. Death clearly had picked up an idea of what a gentleman should have on his dressing table, without confronting one or two fundamental questions.

Eventually she found a smaller, narrower staircase.

'Albert?'

There was a door at the top.

'Albert? Anyone?'

It's not actually barging in if I call out first, she told herself. She pushed open the door.

It was a very small room. Really small. It contained a few sticks of bedroom furniture and a small narrow bed. A small bookcase contained a handful of small uninteresting-looking books. There was a piece of ancient paper on the floor which, when Susan picked it up, turned out to be covered with numbers, all crossed out except the last one, which was: 19.

One of the books was Gardening In Difficult Conditions.

She went back down to the study. She'd known that there was no-one in the house. There was a dead feeling in the air.

There was the same feeling in the gardens. Death could create most things, except for plumbing. But he couldn't create life itself. That had to be added, like yeast in bread. Without it, everything was beautifully neat and tidy and boring, boring, boring.

This is what it must have been like, she thought. And then, one day, he adopted my mother. He was curious.

She took the path through to the orchard again.

And when I was born Mum and Dad were so afraid that I felt at home here they brought me up to be… welt… a Susan. What kind of name is that for Death's granddaughter? A girl like that should have better cheekbones, straight hair and a name with Vs and Xs in it.

And there, once again, was the thing he'd made for her. All by himself. Working it all out from first principles…

A swing. A simple swing.

It was already burning hot in the desert between Klatch and Hersheba.

The air shimmied, and then there was a pop. Albert appeared on a sand-dune. There was a clay-brick fort on the horizon.

'The Klatchian Foreign Legion,' he muttered, as sand began its inexorable progress into his boots.

Albert trudged towards it with the Death of Rats sitting on his shoulder.

He knocked on the door, which had a number of arrows in it. After a while a small hatch slid back.

'What do you want, offendi?' said a voice from somewhere behind it.

Albert held up a card.

'Have you seen someone who didn't look like this?' he demanded.

There was silence.

'Then let's say: have you seen some mysterious stranger who didn't talk about his past?' said Albert.

'This is the Klatchian Foreign Legion, offendi. People don't talk about their past. They join up to… to…

It dawned on Albert as the pause lengthened that it was up to him to get the conversation going again.

'Forget?'

'Right. Forget. Yes.'

'So have you had any recent recruits who were a little, shall we say, odd?'

'Might have done,' said the voice slowly. 'Can't remember.'

The hatchway slammed shut.

Albert hammered on it again. The hatchway opened. 'Yes, what is it?'

'Are you sure you can't remember?'

'Remember what?'

Albert took a deep breath.

'I demand to see your commanding officer!'

The hatch shut. The hatch opened.

'Sorry. It appears that I am the commanding officer. You're not a D'reg or a Hershebian, are you?'

'Don't you know?'

'I'm… pretty sure I must have done. Once. You know how it is… head like… thing, you know… With holes in… You drain lettuce in it… er…'

There was the sound of bolts being pulled back, and a wicket door opened in the gateway.

The possible officer was a sergeant, in so far as Albert was at all familiar with Klatchian ranks. He had the look about him of someone who, among the things he couldn't remember, would include a good night's sleep. If he could remember to.

There were a few other Klatchian soldiers inside the fort, sitting or, just barely, standing. Many were bandaged. And there was a rather greater number of soldiers slumped or lying on the packed sand who'd never need a night's sleep ever again.

'What's been happening here?' said Albert. His tone was so authoritative that the sergeant found himself saluting.

'We were attacked by Dregs, sir,' he said, swaying slightly. 'Hundreds of them! They outnumbered us… er… what's the number after nine? Got a one in it.'

'Ten.'

'Ten to one, sir.'

'I see you survived, though,' said Albert.

'Ah,' said the sergeant. 'Yes. Er. Yes. That's where it all gets a bit complicated, in fact. Er. Corporal? That's you. No, you just next to him. The one with the two stripes?'

'Me?' said a small fat soldier.

'Yes. Tell him what happened.'

'Oh. Right. Er. Well, the bastards had shot us full of arrows, right? An' it looked like it was all up with us. Then someone suggested sticking bodies up on the battlements with their spears and crossbows and everything so's the bastards'd think we was still up to strength—'

'It's not an original idea, mind you,' said the sergeant. 'Been done dozens of times.'

'Yeah,' said the corporal awkwardly. 'That's what they must've thought. And then… and then… when they was galloping down the sand-dunes… when they was almost on us, laughing and everything, saying stuff like 'that old trick again'… someone shouted 'Fire!' and they