Soul Music

useful as a mermaid in a chorus line.”
    “Just fetch them out again, will you? And that timber.”
    “But you said—”
    “And bring me a saw. And then nip out and get me, oh, a couple of gallons of black paint. And some sequins.”
    “Sequins, boss?”
    “You can get them up at Mrs. Cosmopilite’s dress shop. And ask her if she’s got any of those glittery ankhstones. And some fancy material for straps. Oh…and see if she can lend us her biggest mirror…”
    Blert hitched up his trousers again.
    “And then go down to the docks and hire a troll and tell him to stand in the corner and if anyone else comes in and tries to play…” he paused, and then remembered, “‘Pathway to Paradise,’ I think they said it’s called…he’s to pull their head off.”
    “Shouldn’t he give them a warning?” said Gibbsson.
    “That will be the warning.”

    It was an hour later.
    Ridcully had got bored and sent Tez the Terrible over to the kitchens to see about a snack. Ponder and the other two had been busying themselves around the flask, messing around with crystal balls and wire. And now…
    There was a wire stretched between two nails on the bench. It was a blur as it twanged an interesting beat.
    Big curved green lines hung in the air above it.
    “What’s that?” said Ridcully.
    “That’s what the sound looks like,” said Ponder.
    “Sound looks like,” said Ridcully. “Well, there’s a thing. I never saw sound looking like that. This is what you boys use magic for, is it? Looking at sound? Hey, we’ve got some nice cheese in the kitchen, how about we go and listen to how it smells?”
    Ponder sighed.
    “It’s what sound would be if your ears were eyes,” he said.
    “Really?” said Ridcully, brightly. “Amazing!”
    “It looks very complicated,” said Ponder. “Simple when you look at it from a distance and up close, very, very complex. Almost…
    “Alive,” said Ridcully, firmly.
    “Er…”
    It was the one known as Skazz. He looked about seven stone and had the most interesting haircut Ridcully had ever seen, since it consisted of a shoulder-length fringe of hair all round. It was only the tip of his nose poking out which told the world which way he was facing. If he ever developed a boil on the back of his neck, people would think he was walking the wrong way.
    “Yes, Mister Skazz?” said Ridcully.
    “Er. I read something about this once,” said Skazz.
    “Remarkable. How did you manage that?”
    “You know the Listening Monks up in the Ramtops? They say that there’s a background noise to the universe? A sort of echo of some sound?”
    “Sounds sensible to me. The whole universe starting up, bound to make a big bang,” said Ridcully.
    “It wouldn’t have to be very loud,” said Ponder. “It’d just have to be everywhere, all at once. I read that book. Old Riktor the Counter wrote it. The Monks are still listening to it, he said. A sound that never fades away.”
    “Sounds like loud to me,” said Ridcully. “Got to be loud to be heard any distance. If the wind’s in the wrong direction, you can’t even hear the bells on the Assassins’ Guild.”
    “It wouldn’t have to be loud to be heard everywhere,” said Ponder. “The reason being, at that point everywhere was all in one place.”
    Ridcully gave him the look people give conjurers who’ve just removed an egg from their ear.
    “Everywhere was all in one place?”
    “Yes.”
    “So where was everywhere else?”
    “That was all in one place, too.”
    “The same place?”
    “Yes.”
    “Crunched up very small?”
    Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin.
    “Haha, in fact you could say it was crunched up very big,” said Ponder, who always walked into it. “The reason being, space didn’t exist until there was a universe, so anything there was, was everywhere.”
    “The same everywhere we had just now?”
    “Yes.”
    “All right. Go on.”
    “Riktor said he thought that the sound came first. One great big complicated chord. The biggest, most complicated sound there ever was. A sound so complex that you couldn’t play it within a universe, any more than you can open a box with the crowbar that’s inside it. One great chord which…as it were… played everything into being. Started the music, if you like.”
    “A sort of ta-dahhh ?” said Ridcully.
    “I suppose so.”
    “I thought the universe came into