Soul Music

catchy,” said the Dean.
    “It’s catching ,” said Ridcully.
    The Lecturer in Recent Runes was frowning in concentration. Forks jangled across the woodwork. A spoon caught a glancing blow, pinwheeled through the air, and hit the Bursar on the ear.
    “What the hells does he think he’s doing?”
    “That really hurt!”
    The wizards clustered around the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He paid them no attention whatsoever. Sweat poured down his beard.
    “He just broke the cruet,” said Ridcully.
    “It’s going to smart for hours .”
    “Ah, yes, he’s as hot as mustard,” said the Dean.
    “I’d take that with a pinch of salt,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    Ridcully straightened up. He raised a hand.
    “Now, someone’s about to say something like ‘I hope the Watch don’t ketchup with him,’ aren’t you?” he said. “Or ‘That’s a bit of a sauce ’ or I bet you’re all trying to think of somethin’ silly to say about pepper. I’d just like to know what’s the difference between this faculty and a bunch of pea-brained idiots.”
    “Hahaha,” said the Bursar nervously, still rubbing his ear.
    “It wasn’t a rhetorical question.” Ridcully snatched the knives out of the Lecturer’s hands. The man went on beating the air for a moment and then appeared to wake up.
    “Oh, hello, Archchancellor. Is there a problem?”
    “What were you doing?”
    The Lecturer looked down at the table.
    “He was syncopating,” said the Dean.
    “I never was!”
    Ridcully frowned. He was a thick-skinned, single-minded man with the tact of a sledgehammer and about the same sense of humor, but he was not stupid. And he knew that wizards were like weather vanes, or the canaries that miners used to detect pockets of gas. They were by their nature tuned to an occult frequency. If there was anything strange happening, it tended to happen to wizards first. They turned, as it were, to face it. Or dropped off their perch.
    “Why’s everyone suddenly so musical?” he said. “Using the term in its loosest sense, of course.” He looked at the assembled wizardry. And then down toward the floor.
    “You’ve all got crépe on your shoes!”
    The wizards looked at their feet with some surprise.
    “My word, I thought I was a bit taller,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I put it down to the celery diet.” *
    “Proper footwear for a wizard is pointy shoes or good stout boots,” said Ridcully. “When one’s footwear turns creepy, something’s amiss.”
    “It’s crepe,” said the Dean. “It’s got a little pointy thingy over the—”
    Ridcully breathed heavily.
    “ When your boots change by themselves —” he growled.
    “There’s magic afoot?”
    “Haha, good one, Senior Wrangler,” said the Dean.
    “I want to know what’s going on,” said Ridcully, in a low and level voice. “And if you don’t all shut up, there will be trouble.”
    He reached into the pockets of his robe and, after a few false starts, produced a pocket thaumometer. He held it up. There was always a high level of background magic in the University, but the little needle was on the “Normal” mark. On average, anyway. It was ticking backward and forward across it like a metronome.
    Ridcully held it up so they could all see.
    “What’s this?” he said.
    “Four-four time?” said the Dean.
    “Music ain’t magic,” said Ridcully. “Don’t be daft. Music’s just twanging and banging and—”
    He stopped.
    “Has anyone got anything they should be telling me?”
    The wizards shuffled their blue-suede feet nervously.
    “Well,” said the Senior Wrangler, “it is a fact that last night, er, I, that is to say, some of us, happened to be passing by the Mended Drum—”
    “Bona-Fide Travelers,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s allowable for Bona-Fide Travelers to get a Drink at Licensed Premises at any Hour of Day or Night. City statute, you know.”
    “Where were you traveling from, then?” Ridcully demanded.
    “The Bunch of Grapes.”
    “That’s just around the corner.”
    “Yes, but we were…tired.”
    “All right, all right,” said Ridcully, in the voice of a man who knows that pulling at a thread any more will cause the whole vest to unravel. “The Librarian was with you?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, there was this music—”
    “Sort of twangy,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    “Melody led,” said the Dean.
    “It was…”
    “…sort of…”
    “…in a way it…”
    “…kind of