Soul Music

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 dat many teeth.”
    “I didn’t mean buy it,” said Glod. “Just…borrow it for a while.”
    “Dat’s 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 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 toward the organ. The air around it vibrated as if superheated.
    “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 afterward.
    The Lecturer in Recent Runes swore that the sixty-four-foot Gravissima organ pipe went skyward 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 courses she really couldn’t say. They seemed to be projections of things too strange even for this strange dimension.
    She’d wanted to save his life, and that was right . She knew it. As soon as she’d seen his name she…, well, it was important. She’d inherited some of Death’s memory. She couldn’t have met the boy, but perhaps he had. She felt that the name and the face had established themselves so deeply in her mind now that the rest of her thoughts were forced to orbit them.
    Something else had saved his life first .
    She held the lifetimer up to her ear again.
    She found herself tapping her foot.
    And realized that distant shadows were moving.
    She ran across the floor, the real floor, the one outside the boundaries of the carpet.
    The shadows looked more like mathematics would be if it was