Soul Music

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 has a strength on 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.
    The 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?”
    “You’re a musician, ain’t you?” said Glod. “What do you think you do?”
    “I hits ’em with the hammers,” said Lias, one of Nature’s drummers.
    “But that bit you did…” said Imp, “You know…in the middle…you know, bam-bah bam-bah bam-bamBAH… how did you know how to do that bit?”
    “It was just the bit dat had to go there,” said Lias.
    Imp looked at the guitar. He’d put it on the table. It was still playing quietly to itself, like a cat purring.
    “That’s not a normall instrument,” he said, shaking a finger at it. “I was just standing there and it started playing alll by itself!
    “Probably belonged to a wizard, like I said,” said Glod.
    “Nah,” said Lias. “Never knew any wizard who was musical. Music and magic don’t mix.”
    They looked at it.
    Imp never heard of an instrument that played itself before, except the legendary harp of Owen Mwnyy, which sang when danger threatened. And that had been back in the days when there were dragons around. Singing harps went well with dragons. They seemed out of place in a city with Guilds and everything.
    The door swung open.
    “That was…astonishing, boys,” said Hibiscus Dunelm. “Never heard anything like it! Can you come back tomorrow night? Here’s your five dollars.”
    Glod counted the coins.
    “We did four encores,” he said darkly.
    “I’d complain to the Guild, if I was you,” said Hibiscus.
    The trio looked at the money. It looked very impressive to people whose last meal had been twenty-four hours ago. It wasn’t Guild rate. On the other hand, it had been a long twenty-four hours.
    “If you come back tomorrow,” said Hibiscus, “I’ll make it…six dollars, how about that?”
    “Oh, wow,” said Glod.

    Mustrum Ridcully was jolted upright in bed, because the bed itself was being gently vibrated across the floor.
    So it had happened at last!
    They were out to get him.
    The tradition of promotion in the University by filling dead men’s shoes, sometimes by firstly ensuring the death of the man in those shoes, had lately ceased. This was largely because of Ridcully himself, who was big and kept himself in trim and, as three late-night aspirants to the Archchancellorship had found, also had very good hearing. They had been variously hung out of the window by their ankles, knocked unconscious with a shovel, and had their arm broken in two places. Besides, Ridcully was known to sleep with two loaded crossbows by his bed. He was a kind man and probably wouldn’t shoot you in both ears.
    That sort of