Soul Music

'Dis is bribery, is it?' he whispered.

'This is taxation,' said Glod.

The watchman saluted again.

'But really, sir, the guards at—'

'Captain,' snapped the mayor, still staring thoughtfully at Glod, 'this is politics! Please!'

'As well?' said Cliff.

'And to show goodwill,' said Glod, 'it'd be a good idea if we paid the tax before the peformance, don't you think?'

The mayor looked at them in astonishment, a man not certain he could get his mind around the idea of musicians with money.

'Your worship, the message said—'

'Two hundred and fifty dollars,' said Glod.

'Your worship—'

'Now, captain,' said the mayor, apparently reaching a decision, 'we know that folk are a bit odd in Sto Lat. It's only music, after all. I said I thought it was an odd note. I can't see the harm in music. And these young me- people are clearly very successful,' he added. This obviously carried a lot of weight with the mayor, as it does with many people. No-one likes a poor thief.

'Yes,' he went on, 'it'd be just like the Lats to try that on us. They think we're simple just because we live out here.'

'Yes, but the Pseudopo '

'Oh, them. Stuck-up bunch. Nothing wrong with a bit of music, is there? Especially,' the mayor eyed Glod, 'when it's for the civic good. Let 'em in, captain.'

Susan saddled up.

She knew the place. She'd even seen it once. They'd put a new fence along the road now, but it was still dangerous.

She knew the time, too.

Just before they called it Dead Man's Curve.

'Hello, Quirm!'

Buddy struck a chord. And a pose. A faint white glow, like the glitter of cheap sequins, outlined him.

'Uh-huh-huh!'

The cheering became the familiar wall of sound.

I thought we were going to get killed by people who didn't like us, Glod thought. Now I think it's possible to be killed by people who love us…

He looked around carefully. There were guards around the walls; the captain had been no fool. I just hope Asphalt put the horse and cart outside like I asked him…

He glanced at Buddy, sparkling in the limelight.

A couple of encores and then down the back stairs and away, Glod thought. The big leather satchel had been chained to Cliff's leg. Anyone snatching it would find themselves towing one ton of drummer.

I don't even know what we're going to play, thought Glod. I never do, I just blow and… there it is. You can't tell me that's right.

Buddy whirled his arm like a discus thrower and a chord sprang away and into the ears of the audience.

Glod raised the horn to his lips. The sound that emerged was like burning black velvet in a windowless room.

Before the Music With Rocks In spell filled his soul, he thought: I'm going to die. That's part of the music. I'm going to die really soon. I can feel it. Every day. It's getting closer…

He glanced at Buddy again. The boy was scanning the audience, as if he was looking for someone in the screaming throng.

They played 'There's A Great Deal Of Shaking Happening'. They played 'Give Me That Music With Rocks In'. They played 'Pathway To Paradise' (and a hundred people in the audience swore to buy a guitar in the morning).

They played with heart and especially with soul.

They got out after the ninth encore. The crowd was still stamping its feet for more as they climbed through the privy window and dropped into the alley.

Asphalt emptied a sack into the leather satchel. 'Another seven hundred dollars!' he said, helping them onto the cart.

'Right, and we get ten dollars each,' said Glod.

'You tell Mr Dibbler,' said Asphalt, as the horses' hoofs clattered towards the gates.

'I will.'

'It doesn't matter,' said Buddy. 'Sometimes you do it for the money, but sometimes you do it for the show.'

'Hah! That'll be the day.' Glod fumbled under the seat. Asphalt had stashed two crates of beer there.

'There's the Festival tomorrow, lads,' rumbled Cliff. The gate arch passed above them. They could still hear the stamping from here.

'After that we'll have a new contract,' said the dwarf. 'With lots of zeroes in it.'

'We got zeroes now,' said Cliff.

'Yeah, but they ain't got many numbers in front of them. Eh, Buddy?'

They looked around. Buddy was asleep, the guitar clutched to his chest.

'Out like a candle,' said Glod.

He turned back again. The road stretched ahead of them, pale in the starlight.

'You said you just wanted to work,' said Cliff. 'You said you didn't want to be famous. How'd you like it, having to worry about all that gold, and having girls throw their chain mail at you?'

'I'd just have to put up with it.'

'I'd like a quarry,' said the troll.

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. Heart-shaped.'

A dark, stormy night. A coach, horses gone, plunged through the rickety, useless fence and dropped, tumbling, into the gorge below. It didn't even strike an outcrop of rock before it hit the dried river-bed far below and erupted into fragments. Then the oil from the coach-lamps ignited and there was a second explosion, out of which rolled - because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy - a burning wheel.

What was strange to Susan was that she felt nothing. She could think sad thoughts, because in the circumstances they had to be sad. She knew who was in the coach. But it had already happened. There was nothing she could do to stop it, because if she'd stopped it, it wouldn't have happened. And she was here watching it happen. So she hadn't. So it had. She felt the logic of the situation dropping into place like a series of huge leaden slabs.

Perhaps there was somewhere where it hadn't happened. Perhaps the coach had skidded the other way, perhaps there had been a convenient rock, perhaps it hadn't come this way at all, perhaps the coachman had remembered about the sudden curve. But those possibilities could only exist if there was this one.

This wasn't her knowledge. It flowed in from a mind far, far older.

Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

She rode Binky into the shadows by the cliff road, and waited. After a minute or two there was a clattering of stones and a horse and rider came up an almost vertical path from the river-bed.

Binky's nostrils flared. Parapsychology has no word for the uneasy feeling you have when you're in the presence of yourself.[27]

Susan watched Death dismount and stand looking down at the river-bed, leaning on his scythe.

She thought: but he could have done something.

Couldn't he?

The figure straightened, but did not turn around.