Soul Music

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Other children get given xylophones. Susan just had to ask her grandfather to take his vest off.

Yes. There's a Death in the Family.

It's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe -- especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy.

This is a story about Death's granddaughter, who inherited the job and grew to enjoy it until a little string in her heart went "twang."

And this is a story about Imp the bard, who went to the city of Ankh-Morpork to make his fortune in a rock band and who was so unlucky that all his dreams came true. Almost.

But most of all, this is a story about Sex and Drugs and Music With Rocks In It.

Well... one out of three ain't bad.

Quotes

...the Death of the Discworld, for reasons of his own, once rescued a baby girl and took her to his home between the dimensions. He let her grow to become sixteen because he believed that older children were easier to deal with than younger children, and this shows that you can be an immortal anthropromorphic personification and still get things, as it were, dead wrong...

This is also a story about sex and drugs and Music With Rocks In.

Well...

...one out of three ain't bad.

Then the oil from the coach‑lamps ignites and there is a second explosion, out of which rolls -- because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy -- a burning wheel.

...she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness.

Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.

It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country's main export. It had rain mines.

It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.

Sometimes, some teachers had trouble seeing her. This was fine. She'd generally take a book into the classroom and read it peacefully, while all around her The Principal Exports of Klatch happened to other people.

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.

Or what, for that matter.

[Death] liked black. It went with anything. It went with everything, sooner or later.

Miss Eulalie Butts and her colleague Miss Delcross had founded the College on the astonishing idea that, since gels had nothing much to do until someone married them, they might as well occupy themselves by learning things.

...Miss Butts sincerely believed that there were no basic differences between boys and gels.

At least, none worth talking about.

None that Miss Butts would talk about, anyway.

...[Miss Butts] believed in encouraging logical thought and a healthy enquiring mind among the nascent young women in her care, a course of action which is, as far as wisdom is concerned, on a par with going alligator‑hunting in a cardboard boat during the sinking season.

For example, when she lectured to the school, pointed chin trembling, on the perils to be found outside in the town, three hundred healthy inquiring minds decided that 1) they should be sampled at the earliest opportunity, and logical thought wondered 2) exactly how Miss Butts knew about them.

It'd be sensible to go to Quirm to get the feel of city life. It'd be sensible to learn a bit about how city people thought before heading for Ankh-Morpork, which they said was the largest city in the world. It'd be sensible to try and get some kind of job in Quirm and raise a bit of extra cash. It'd be sensible to learn to walk before he started to run.

Common sense told Imp all these things, so he marched off firmly towards Ankh-Morpork.

The College dressed its gels in a loose navy blue woolen smock that stretched from neck to just above the ankle -- practical, healthy, and as attractive as a plank.

School regulations required [Susan's hair] to be in two plaits, but it had an uncanny tendency to unravel itself and spring back into its preferred shape, like Medusa's snakes.

[Footnote:The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.]

Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept trying to interfere with it.

Albert put the cigarette to his lips. It had been expertly rolled. Only an expert could get a rollup so thin and yet so soggy.

"The secret of existence is to disdain earthly ties, shun the chimera of material worth, and seek oneness with the Infinite," he said. "And keep your thieving hands off my begging bowl."

Death: I'VE SEEN THE INFINITE. IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL.
Wise Man: "Don't be daft. You can't see the Infinite. 'Cos it's infinite."
Death: I HAVE.
Wise Man: "All right, what did it look like?"
Death: IT'S BLUE.

And I suppose you know what sound is made by one hand clapping, do you?" said the holy man nastily.

YES. CL. THE OTHER HAND MAKES THE AP.

People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too.

"Very hot on licenses, the Guild of Musicians," said Nobby. "They catch you playing music without a license, they take your instrument and they shove--"

"Now, now," said the other watchman, "Don't go scaring the boy."

"Let's just say it's not much fun if you're a piccolo player," said Nobby.

Colon: "That shop there . . . was it there yesterday?"
Nobby: "'Course. It's always been there. Been there years."
Colon: "Yeah, right. It's just that... I mean... was it there for years yesterday?"

Trolls disliked druids, too. Any sapient species which spends a lot of time in a stationary, rocklike pose objects to any other species which drags it sixty miles on rollers and buries it up to its knees in a circle.

"Glod Glodsson," said the dwarf. "You just play the harp?"

"Anything with strings on it," said Imp. "But the harp is the queen of instruments, see."

"I can blow anything," said Glod.

"Realllly?" said Imp. He sought for some polite comment. "That must make you very popular."

Imp selected a small rock and flicked it with his finger. It went bop. A smaller one went bing.

"What do you do with them?" he said.

"I bang them together."

"And then what?"

"What do you mean, 'And then what?'"

"What do you do after you've banged them together?"

"I bang them together again," said Lias, one of nature's drummers.

There was indeed a river, according to legend, one drop of which would rob a man of his memory.

Many people assumed that this was the river Ankh, whose waters can be drunk or even cut up and chewed. A drink from the Ankh would quite probably rob a man of his memory, or at least cause things to happen to him that he would on no account wish to recall.

The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his.

It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit.

...although the Guild had a president and council, it also had Mr. Clete, who took the minutes and made sure things ran smoothly and smiled very quietly to himself. It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like a mushroom after rain, Mr. Clete.

"Decided to put aside ethnic differences in the cause of making more money."

"You do fried rat?" said Glod.

"Best damn fried rat in the city," said Gimlet.

"OK. Give me four fried rats."

"And some dwarf bread," said Imp.

"And some coke," said Lias patiently.

"You mean rat heads or rat legs?"

"No. Four fried rats."

"And some coke."

"You want ketchup on those rats?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"No ketchup."

"And some coke."

"And two hard‑boilled eggs," said Imp.

-- Thank you, Jake and Elwood

"I don't think I've ever seen two hundred dollars," said Glod. "Not while I've been awake."

Imp: "We can't raise money by being musicians. It's the Guild Law. If they catch you, they take your instrument and shove-- Llet's just say it's not much fun for the piccollo pllayer."
Glod: "I shouldn't think the trombonist is very happy either."

"I'll sort out something," said Glod. "I'm a dwarf. We know about money. Knowing about money is practically my middle name."

"That a long middle name."

Musicians were often short on money; it was one definition of a musician.

"You don't get craftsmanship like that these days."

"Only because we've learned from experience!"

"I'm not taking that," said the old woman. "It's been in a troll's mouth!"

"You eat eggs, don't you?" said Glod.

Glod: "Three of us... that's a band."
Imp: "We haven't even practised together properlly."
Glod: "We'll practise as we go along. 'Welcome to the world of professional musicianship."

The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly.

"I don't speak rodent. We only do Klatchian in Modern Languages and I only know how to say 'My aunt's camel has fallen in the mirage'."

You never got cockroaches or rats or any kind of vermin in a dwarf home. At least not while the owner could still hold a frying pan.

As Susan saw it, the world offered two choices. She could go back to bed, or she could follow the rat.

Which would be a stupid thing to do. Soppy people in books did that sort of thing. They ended up in some idiot world with goblins and talking animals. And they were such sad, wet girls. They always let things happen to them, without making any effort. They just went around saying things like "My goodness me," when it was obvious that any sensible human being could soon get the place properly organized.

"Look... I work for this wizard, right? Down in the town. I sit on this skull all day and go 'caw' at people--"

"Why?"

"Because a raven sitting on a skull and going 'caw' is as much part of your actual wizarding modus operandi as the big dribbling candles and the old stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. Don't you know anything? I should have thought anyone knows that who knows anything about anything. Why, a proper wizard might as well not even have bubbling green stuff in bottles as be without his raven sitting on a skull and going 'caw'--"

Susan: "Look, I'd just like you to know that I don't believe any of this. I don't believe there's a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe."
Raven: "He's standing in front of you."
Susan: "That's no reason to believe it."
Raven: "I can see you've certainly had a proper education."

"You'd never find things out if you went back now. You'd just get educated."

Raven: "Can I tell her? Can I tell her? Your grandfather... is... (dah dah dah DAH) ...Dea--"
Death of Rats: SQUEAK!
Raven: "She's got to know some time."
Susan: "Deaf? My grandfather is deaf"

There are the people of the day, and the creatures of the night.

And it's important to remember that the creatures of the night aren't simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes a lot more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide.

[The raven] didn't have a name. Animals don't normally bother with them. The wizard who thought he owned him called him Quoth, but that was only because he didn't have a sense of humor and, like most people without a sense of humor, prided himself on the sense of humor he hadn't, in fact, got.

Geography consisted of the flora of the Sto Plains [Cabbages], chief exports of the Sto Plains [Cabbages], and the fauna of the Sto Plains [Anything that ate cabbages and didn't mind not having any friends].

...fried food was considered unhealthy by Miss Butts, and, therefore, bought out of school at every opportunity.

Whereas Gloria was banned from Sport because of her tendency to use her ax in a threatening manner. Miss Butts had suggested that an ax wasn't a ladylike weapon, even for a dwarf, but Gloria had pointed out that, on the contrary, it had been left to her by her grandmother, who had owned it all her life and polished it every Saturday, even if she hadn't used it at all that week.

There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knife point, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shoveling manure in a stable.

A couple of the jodhpured girls were fussing around [the horse]. Susan recognized Cassandra Fox and Lady Sara Grateful, almost identical in their love of anything on four legs that went "neigh" and their disdain for anything else, their ability to apparently look at the world with their teeth, and their expertise in putting at least four vowels in the word "oh".

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

"What's the matter?" said Susan. "Have none of you ever seen a horse jump before?"

"Yes. The interesting point is..." Gloria begain, in that slow, deliberate tone of voice people use when they don't want the universe to shatter, "is that, usually, they come down again."

Until an unfortunate axe incident, Gloria had been captain of the school basketball team.

Lias: "The Mended Drum? They throw axes!"
Glod: "We'd be safe there. The Guild won't play in there."
Lias: "Well, yah, dey lose members in there. Their members lose members."

"Look, it'll get us exposure," said Glod.

"I don't want exposure in de Drum," said Lias. "Exposure's the last thing I want in de Drum. In de Drum, I want something to hide behind."

Quirm wasn't a night town. People who came to Quirm looking for a good time went somewhere else. Quirm was so respectable that even dogs asked for permission before going to the lavatory.

There was a brass plate screwed on the wall beside the door. It said: "C.V. Cheesewaller, DM (Unseen), B. Thau, B.F."

It was the first time Susan had ever heard metal speak.

There was the usual wizardly paraphernalia -- a forge, a bench with bottles and bundles strewn over it, a bookcase with books rammed in anyhow, a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling, some very big candles that were just lava streams of wax, and a raven on a skull.

"They get it all out of a catalogue," said the raven. "Believe me. It all comes in a big box. You think candles get dribbly like that by themselves? That's three days' work for a skilled candle dribbler."

According to rural legend ... the Hogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings, and ham to all children who have been good. He says Ho Ho Ho a lot. Children who have been bad get a bag full of bloody bones (it's these little details which tell you it's a tale for the little folk). There's a song about him. It begins: You'd Better Watch Out...

"A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing," said the skull. "A lot more dangerous than just a little. I always used to say that, when I was alive."

"When was that, exactly?"

"Can't remember. I think I was pretty knowledgable. Probably a teacher or philosopher, something of that kidney. And now I'm on a bench with a bird crapping on my head."

"Very allegorical," said the raven.

Belief makes a hollow place. Something has to roll in to fill it.

Which is not to say that belief denies logic. For example, it's fairly obvious that the Sandman needs only a small sack.

On the Discworld, he doesn't bother to take the sand out first.

There's going to be trouble over this, Susan told herself.

And then she thought: I'm on the back of a horse a hundred feet up in the air, being taken somewhere mysterious that's a bit like a magic land with goblins and talking animals. There's only so much more trouble I could get into...

Besides, is riding a flying horse against school rules? I bet it's not written down anywhere.

[Susan] stared at a menu nailed to the wall. It was misspelled, of course, because the menu of the folkier kind of restaurant always has to have misspellings in it, so that customers can be lured into a false sense of superiority.

An old man was eating his supper, very noisily. In between forkfuls, he was talking to himself with his mouth full. It was a kind of auto bad manners.

[Albert] wasn't a small man, Susan realized. He was quite tall, but he walked with the kind of lopsided stoop normally associated with laboratory assistants of an Igor turn of mind.

Miss Butts advocated avoiding fried foods and eating plenty of vegetables for what she referred to as Daily Health. She put a lot of troubles down to an absence of Daily Health. Albert looked like the embodiment of them all as he scuttled around the kitchen, grabbing at the air.

Albert's cocoa had fat floating in it; if you turned the mug upside down, it would be a little while before anything fell out.

"You expect me to believe that, do you?" said Susan, trying to summon up her most withering scorn.

Albert glared back like someone who'd done all of his withering a long time ago.

He was vaguely aware that childhood was a tricky business, especially toward the end. There was all the business with pimples and bits of your body having a mind of their own.

...Death operated in general rather than particular terms, just like a monarchy.

If you are a subject in a monarchy, you are ruled by the monarch. All the time. Waking or sleeping. Whatever you -- or they -- happen to be doing.

It's part of the general conditions of the situation. The Queen doesn't actually have to come around to your actual house, hog the chair and the TV remote control, and issue actual commands about how one is parched and would enjoy a cup of tea. It all takes place automatically, like gravity.

There were no working clocks in the house [of Death], except the special one in the hall. Any others got depressed and stopped, or unwound themselves all in one go.

The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explaination for everything, even if you had to make it up.

Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying pan. It wasn't a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one.

Susan: "Haven't you got any muesli?"
Albert: "Is that some kind of sausage?"
Susan: "It's nuts and grains."
Albert: "Any fat in it?"
Susan: "I don't think so."
Albert: "How're you supposed to fry it, then?"
Susan: "You don't fry it."
Albert: "You call that breakfast?"
Susan: "It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast. I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge--"
Albert: "Who says?"

If someone had told Susan that Death had a house, she would have called them mad or, even worse, stupid. But if she'd had to imagine one, she'd have drawn, in sensible black crayon, some towering, battle-mented, Gothic mansion. It would loom, and involve other words ending in "oom", like gloom and doom. There would have been thousands of windows. She'd fill odd corners of the sky with bats. It would be impressive.

It wouldn't be a cottage. It wouldn't have a rather tasteless garden. It wouldn't have a mat in front of the door with "Welcome" on it.

Lady Odile Flume, in the fifth form, was always boasting that her great-great-grandmother had once been seduced by the god Blind Io in the form of a vase of daisies, which apparently made her a demi-hemi-semi-goddess. She said her mother found it useful to get a table in restaurants.

The Mended Drum had traditionally gone in for, well, traditional pub games, such as dominoes, darts, and Stabbing People In The Back and Taking All Their Money.

There had been the Quizzing Device, a three‑ton water‑driven monstrosity based on a recently discovered design by Leonard of Quirm. It had been a bad idea. Captain Carrot of the Watch, who had a mind like a needle under his open smiling face, had surreptitiously substituted a new roll of questions like: Were you nere Vortin's Diamond Warehouse on the Nite of the 15th? and: Who was the Third Man Who did the Blagging At Bearhugger's Distillery Larst week? and had arrested three customers before they caught on.

The wall behind the stage had clearly seen action. [Imp] stared at it as Lias patiently stacked up his stones.

"Oh, just a bit of fruit and old eggs," said Glod. "People probably get a bit boisterous. I shouldn't worry about that."

"I'm not worried about it," said Imp.

"I should think not."

"It's the ax marks and arrow holles I'm worried about."

"People like songs they can snigger along to."

The point was that people were dying and acts of incredibly stupid heroism were being performed.

"ER," she said, "ANYONE HERE BEEN KILLED AND CALLED VOLF?"

"Why'd you want to come here?" she said.

"This is a battlefield, isn't it?" said the raven patiently. "You've got to have ravens afterwards." Its freewheeling eyes swivelled in its head. "Carrion regardless, as you might say."

And after it, mounted on a horse almost as fine as Binky, was a woman. Very definitely. A lot of woman. She was as much woman as you could get in one place without getting two women.

"What happened?" said Volf. He looked down. "That's me down there, isn't it?" he said. He turned slowly. "And down there. And over there. And..."

Susan: "What was all that about?"
Raven: "Well, these guys believe that if you die in battle, some big fat singing horned women carry you off to a sort of giant feast hall where you gobble yourself silly for the rest of eternity. Damn stupid idea, really."
Susan: "But it just happened!"
Raven: "Still a daft idea."

"But what if they don't deserve to die?"

SQUEAK.

The Death of Rats contrived to indicate, quite effectively, that in that case they could apply to the universe and point out that they didn't deserve to die. In which case it was up to the universe to say, oh, didn't you? oh, well, that's all right, then, you can go on living. It was a remarkably succinct gesture.

So as a result of the dotted line Klatch was now incipiently at war with Hersheba and the D'regs, Hersheba was at war with the D'regs and Klatch, and the D'regs were at war with everyone, including one another, and having considerable fun because the D'reg word for "stranger" was the same as for "target."

Colonel: "What's your name, soldier?"
Death: ER...
Colonel: "You don't have to say, actually. That's what the ... the..."
Death: KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION?
Colonel: "...what it's all about. Peple join to ... to ... with your mind, you know, when you can't ... things that happened..."
Death: FORGET?
Colonel: "Right."

The patrons of the Drum tended to be democratic in their approach to aggressiveness. They liked to see that everybody got some.

No one actually tried to kill musicians in the Drum. Axes were thrown and crossbows fired in a good-humored, easygoing way. No one really aimed, even if they were capable of doing so. It was more fun watching people dodge.

This was music that had not only escaped but had robbed a bank on the way out.

The guitar screamed like an angel who had just discovered why it was on the wrong side.

[The music] made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the Universe to see what happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters.

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 locked his hands together and cracked his knuckles, which is impressive when you have as many knuckles as an orang-utan.

It had been an uneventful night. About an hour earlier a sixty-four-foot organ pipe had dropped out of the sky. Detritus had wandered over to inspect the crater, but he wasn't quite certain if this was criminal activity. Besides, for all he knew this was how you got organ pipes.

"Cliff?"

"Yup?"

"We might get caught."

"He can't stop us. We're on a mission from Glod."

There was an old dwarf legend about the famous Horn of Furgle, which sounded itself when danger was near and also in the presence, for some reason, of horseradish.

And there was even an Ankh-Morpork legend, wasn't there, about some old drum in the Palace or somewhere that was supposed to bang itself if an enemy fleet was seen sailing up the Ankh? The lgend had died out in recent centuries, partially because this was the Age of Reason and partially because no enemy fleet could sail up the Ankh without a gang of men with shovels going in front.

The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. [Susan's] parents had sent her there for that very reason.

They'd assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling people about self-defense so that no one would ever attack them.

Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive their notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards

The Reader had a theory that all the really good books in any building -- at least, all the really funny ones^* -- gravitate to a pile in the privy but no one ever has time to read all of them, or even knows how they came to be there. His research was causing extreme constipation and a queue outside the door every morning.

[Footnote: The ones with cartoons about cows and dogs. And captions like: "As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day."]

Ridcully liked big greasy breakfasts, especially if they included those slightly translucent sausages with the green flecks that you can only hope is a herb of some sort.

The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.

...the big volume open in front of him contained some of the collected drawings of Leonard of Quirm, skilled artist and certified genius with a mind that wandered so much it came back with souvenirs.

The Archchancellor made himself comfortable at his snooker table.

He'd long ago got rid of the official desk. A snooker table was much to be preferred. Things didn't fall off the edge, there were a number of handy pockets to keep sweets and things in, and when he was bored he could shovel the paperwork off and set up trick shots.

He was a wizard. Trick shots for a wizard aren't the old three‑times round‑the‑table jobs. His best one was once off the cushion, once off a seagull, once off the back of the head of the Bursar who'd been walking along the corridor outside last Tuesday (a bit of temporal spin there) and a tricky rebound off the ceiling. He'd missed sinking the actual shot by a whisker, but it had been pretty tricky, even so.

"'Blert Wheedown's Guitar Primer'," he read. "'Play your Way to Succefs in Three Easy Lefsons and Eighteen Hard Lefsons'."

"Wizards don't scare me. Everyone knows there's a rule that you mustn't use magic against civilians." The man thrust his face close to Ridcully and raised a fist.

Ridcully snapped his fingers. There was an inrush of air, and a croak.

"I've always thought of it more as a guideline," he said, mildly.

Wizards often turned up in ample time for the next meal. In fact they were often there in good time to have second helpings of the previous one.

...[Ridcully] knew that wizards were like weathervanes, 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. They turned, as it were, to face it. Or dropped off their perch.

[Susan] wasn't a truly bad name, it wasn't like poor Iodine in the fourth form, or Nigella, a name which means "oops, we wanted a boy."

Glod wandered quietly into the University Library. Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn't have to experience it.

They'd never told her about this. Parents never do. Your father could be Death's apprentice and your mother Death's adopted daughter, but that's just fine detail when they become Parents. Parents were never young. They were just waiting to become Parents.

Susan: "How did you know who I am?"
Death: I HAVE A UNIQUE MEMORY.
Susan: "How can you remember me? I haven't even been conceived yet!"
Death: I DID SAY UNIQUE.

CALLING SOMETHING A FIGURE OF SPEECH DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT TRUE.

Death: GETTING ENTANGLED WITH HUMANS CLOUDS THE THINKING. TAKE IT FROM ME. DON'T GET INVOLVED.
Susan: "But I am a human."
Death: I DIDN'T SAY IT WAS GOING TO BE EASY, DID I?

Deafness doesn't prevent composers hearing the music. It prevents them hearing the distractions.

Susan: "I don't see why we shouldn't change things if it makes the world better."
Death: HAH.
Susan: "Are you too scared to change the world?"
Death: YOU SAY THAT TO ME? YOU STAND THERE IN YOUR PRETTY DRESS AND SAY THAT TO ME? YOU PRATTLE ON ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD? COULD YOU FIND THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT IT? TO KNOW WHAT MUST BE DONE AND DO IT, WHATEVER THE COST?

Buddy tried to look as inconspicuous as a human can look if he is accompanying a dwarf with a big horn, an ape, and a troll carrying a piano in a bag.

"I swore I'd be the most famous musician in the world. ... Isn't it what every artist wants?" said Buddy.

"In my experience," said Glod, "what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid."

"I'd like people to say 'we need a good horn man, get Glod Glodsson.'"

"Sounds a bit dull," said Buddy.

"I like dull. It lasts."

...Ridcully believed that everything had come into being by chance or, in the particular case of the Dean, out of spite.

Ridcully smacked his lips loudly.

"Ah, we certainly know what goes into good beer in Ankh-Morpork," he said.

The wizards nodded. They certainly did. That's why they were drinking gin and tonic.

On the opposite side of the room was Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's most spectacularly unsuccessful businessman. He was trying to sell someone a felonious hot dog, a sign that some recent surefire business venture had collapsed.

His determined expression suggested that he was not there for his health, although the fact that the Guild officers had a mean look about them rather hinted he was there for other people's health, mostly in order to take it away.

Dean: "Your trouble, Archchancellor, is that you don't understand people of our age!"
Ridcully: "What ... you mean seven months older than me?"

"Have you been taking dried frog pills, old chap?" said Ridcully.

"Of course not, they're for the mentally unstable!" said the Dean.

"Ah. There's the trouble, then."

Smoke was coming out of the stricken piano. The Librarian's hands were walking through the keys like Casanunda in a nunnery.

Ridcully knew the [Musician] Guild laws. Of course, they had to be enforced. ... This certainly wasn't licensed music -- if ever there was unlicensed music, this was it.

...the kind of music [The Patrician] really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skin, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure.

Vetinari: "And then what happened?"
Michael: "An' then he started singin', yerronner. A song about Great Fiery Balls."
Vetinari: "Pardon?"
Michael: "Somethin' like that. Couldn't really make out the words, the reason bein', the piano exploded."

There were probably city-states, [The Patrician] reasoned, where the rulers only had to worry about the little things ... barbarian invasions, the balance of payments, assassination, the local volcano erupting. There weren't people opening the door of reality and metaphorically saying, "Hi, come on in, pleased to see you, what a nice ax you have there, incidentally, can I make some money out of you since you're here?"

Anyone trying to steal Death's horse soon understood the expression "a world of hurts." Binky had a good aim. It would be a very small, very private world.

"That's dancing, is it? Banging into people? Throwin' one another over yer shoulders? Twirling around all over the place? ... you're supposed to be wizards. People are supposed to look up to you and that's not because you're somersaulting over their heads..."

"mumblemumblemumble," said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause.

"I'm no expert on humans, of course, but I saw some ladies in the audience looking at you like a dwarf looks at a girl when he knows her father's got a big shaft and several rich seams."

"If he can get us paid, I trust him," said Glod.

"As simple as dat?" said Cliff.

"I trust anyone who gives me money."

No one really wanted to attempt to beat up the Librarian if there was anyone smaller available.

Glod: "Did you read the contract?"
Cliff: "Did you?"
Glod: "It was very small writing. But there was a lot of it. Bound to be a good contract, with that much writing on it."
Buddy: "The Librarian ran away. Oooked a lot, and ran away."
Glod: "Hah! Well, he'll be sorry later on. Later on, people'll talk to him and he'll say: I left, you know, before they became famous."

Glod: "And after this, we'll find somewhere else to stay."
Cliff: "What wrong with your place?"
Glod: "It's too drafty. It's got a piano-shaped hole in the door."
Buddy: "Yes, but you put it there."
Glod: "So what?"

"I thought you were just happy to get paid," said Buddy.

"Right. Right. But I'm even happier to get paid a lot."

Glod: "Everyone knows things bought from shops which aren't there next day are dead mysterious and items of Fate. Fate's smiling on us, could be."
Cliff: "Doing something on us. I hope it's smiling."

It wasn't that he didn't understand what it was the young wizards in there were actually doing, but because he strongly suspected that they didn't, either. They seemed to positively enjoy becoming less and less certain about everything and would come in to dinner saying things like "Wow, we've just overturned Marrowleaf's Theory of Thaumic Imponderability! Amazing"' as if it was something to be proud of, instead of gross discourtesy.

Stibbons spent weeks grinding lenses and blowing glassware and had finally produced a device which showed the tremendous number of tiny animals there were in one drop of water from the river Ankh.

The Archchancellor had taken a look and then remarked that anything in which that much life could exist had to be healthy.

They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.

[Her father had] never killed anyone, as far as Susan knew, although he may have talked a few politicians to death.

Then there were the -- hemhem -- troubadours and other swarthy types who thought a guitar was, like a red rose in the teeth, a box of chocolates and a strategically placed pair of socks, another weapon in the battle of the sexes. They didn't play at all, apart from one or two chords, but they were regular customers. When leaping out of a bedroom window just ahead of an angry husband the one thing a paramour is least concerned about leaving behind is his instrument.

Blert never wanted to repeat the next ten seconds. People shouldn't be allowed to do that sort of thing to a defenseless musical instrument.

"...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."

Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin.

"Mind you," said Ponder, "the universe does have a rhythm. Day and night, light and dark, life and death--"

"Chicken soup and croutons," said Ridcully.

"Well, not every metaphor bears close examination."

Crash: "So you and Noddy, you two get guitars. And Scum, you .... you can play the drums."
Scum: "Dunno how."
Crash: "No one knows how to play the drums. There's nothing to know. You just hit them with the sticks."
Scum: "Yeah, but what if I sort of miss?"
Crash: "Sit closer."

Most of Sator Square was the frontage of the University, but there was room for a few other buildings. They were the sort that have a dozen brass plates by the door. The sort that hinted that even wiping your feet on the doormat was going to cost you dear.

Gortlick and Hammerjug were songwriters ... They wrote dwarf songs for all occassions.

Some people say this is not hard to do so long as you can remember how to spell "Gold," but this is a little bit cynical. Many dwarf songs are on the lines of "Gold, gold, gold" but it's all in the inflection.

[Footnote: All right -- all dwarf songs. Except the one about hiho.]

Dwarfs have thousands of words for "gold" but will use any of them in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn't belong to them.

"I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf,

"And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way,

"Yo!"

-- Rat music comes to the Discworld

Glod: "The Cavern? Chrysoprase the troll runs it, that's the problem!"
Cliff: "Dey say he's a godfather in der Brecca."
Dibbler: "Now, now, that's never been proved..."
Glod: "Only 'cos it's very hard to prove things when someone's scooped a hole in your head and buried your feet in it!"

Troll gambling is even simpler than Australian gambling. One of the most popular games is One Up, which consists of throwing a coin in the air and betting on whether it will come down again.

Dibbler: "Meet Asphalt."
Buddy: "Who?"
Asphalt: "'S me."
Cliff: "How come he's so short?"
Asphalt: "'N elephant sat on me."
Glod: "Only sat?"

Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business.

Pople tended not to speak to Chrysoprase in case they said something that offended him. They wouldn't know it at the time, of course. They'd know it later, when they were in some dark alley and a voice behind them said: Mr. Chrysoprase is really upset.

Asphalt: "Mr. Dibbler's signed up another band for the concert, too. To kind of warm it up."
Buddy: "Who?"
Asphalt: "'S called Insanity."
Cliff: "Where are they?"
Asphalt: "Well, put it like this ... you know how your dressing room is next to the privy?"

"What is it, Jimbo?"

"One of my guitar strings has broke."

"Well, you've got five more, ain't you?"

"Yur. But I doesn't know how to play them, like."

"You didn't know how to play six, right? So now you're a bit less ignorant."

Cliff: "What happened to you?"
Crash: "They threw something at us."
Cliff: "What?"
Crash: "Noddy, I think."

There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It's like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It's seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there's nothing much left but a faint smell.

"I got to say it, I ain't never seen an audience so ... hungry. Not even for Miss VaVa Voom, and they were pretty damn peckish then, I can tell you. Of course, no one threw underwear onto the stage. She used to throw it off the stage."

"The money's not important? You keep on saying that! What kind of musician are you?"

"Now, you just go off with Asphalt, the best rooms now, nothing's too much for my boys, and get some sleep without worrying about the bill--"

"Thank you," said Glod.

"--you can pay it in the morning."

"Something bloody stupid's been going on here," he said, "and I'm going to wait quite patiently until the Dean owes up."

Ridcully had once seen Mrs. Whitlow's washing line. He'd been impressed. He never believed there was so much pink elastic in the world.

In fact Foul Ole Ron was a physical schizophrenic. There was Foul Ole Ron, and there was the smell of Foul Ole Ron, which had oviously developed over the years to such an extent that it had a distinct personality. Anyone could have a smell that lingered long after they'd gone somewhere else, but the smell of Foul Ole Ron could actually arrive somewhere several minutes before he did, in order to spread out and get comfortable before he arrived.

Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats -- and then people were suddenly queueing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of ounty offers, and about the natural instince of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: "Tax the rat farms."

It was a travelling computer for druids, a sort of portable stone circle, something they called a "kneetop".

The hotel owner had just left, after going through the "dis is der window, it really opens, dis is der pump, you get water out of it with der handle here, dis is me waiting for some money" routine.

"It's on the floor and it's soft," he said. "Silly me for thinking it was a carpet. Someone fetch me a broom. No, someone fetch me a shovel. Then someone fetch me a broom."

"I knew it!" he said. "Didn't I say? Magic! How many times have we heard this story? There's a mysterious shop no one's ever seen before, and someone goes in and buys some rusty old curio, and it turns out to--"

"Glod--"

"---some kind of talisman or a bottle full of genie, and then when there's trouble they go back and the shop--"

"Glod--?"

"--has mysteriously disappeared and gone back to whatever dimension it came from-- yes, what is it?"

"You're on der wrong side of der road. It's over here."

"I belongs to the Neighborhood Witch scheme, I do! One word from me and you'll be hopping around looking for some princess with an amphibian fixation--"

"Are you the Watch?"

Glod bowed.

"No, ma'am. We're musicians."

"If you blow that, you'd just better have a sacrificial virgin and a big cauldron of breadfruit and turtle meat standing by."

Susan was temporarily speechless. She was reconciled to the irredeemable dumbness of most of mankind, particularly the section of it that stood upright and shaved in the mornings...

No one had ever talked to Death like this. At least, not for long.

The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species "female" but have never expected to get this close to one.

Wizards were rumored to be wise -- in fact, that's where the word came from. [Footnote: From the Old wys-ars, lit.: one who, at bottom, is very smart.]

"It'll all end with monsters from another dimension breaking through, you can rely on that. That's the sort of thing that happens a lot in these parts."

"Have I seen you before?"

I'M IN HERE QUITE OFTEN, YES. A WEEK LAST WEDNESDAY, FOR EXAMPLE.

"Ha! That was a bit of a do. That's when poor old Vince got stabbed."

YES.

"Asking for it, calling yourself Vincent the Invulnerable."

YES. INACCURATE, TOO.

"The Watch are saying it was a suicide."

Death nodded. Going into the Mended Drum and calling yourself Vincent the Invulernable was clearly suicide by Ankh-Morpork standards.

"That's mexical, that is. They put the worm in to show how strong it is."

STRONG ENOUGH TO DROWN WORMS?

"There's some things Music With Rocks In can't change, and one of them's porridge."

"But [Death's] gone off somewhere and next thing I know I've inherited the whole thing. I mean, I didn't ask for it! Why me? Having to go around with this silly scythe thing ... that's not what I wanted out of life--"

"It's certainly not something you get careers leaflets about," said Ridcully.

"I've got to go," said Susan hurriedly. "Er. Thank you for the porridge..."

"You haven't eaten any of it," Ridcully pointed out mildly.

"No, but ... but I had a really good look at it."

...senior wizards developed a distinctive 50" waist, 25" leg shape that suggested someone who sat on a wall and required royal assistance to be put together again.

I HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO GET DRUNK.

The barman looked at the rows and rows of glasses. There were wineglasses. There were cocktail glasses. There were beer mugs. There were steins in the shape of jolly fat men. There was a bucket.

"I think you're on the right lines," he hazarded.

It was the most impressive collapse the bar had ever seen. The tall dark stranger fell backwards slowly, like a tree. There was no cissy sagging of the knees, no cop‑out bouncing off a table on the way down. He simply went from vertical to horizontal in one marvellous geometric sweep.

The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity.

The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

[Dibbler] was, by and large, against the idea of a permanent office. On the positive side it made him easier to find, but on the negative side, it made him easier to find. The success of Dibbler's commercial strategy hinged on him being able to find customers, not the other way around.

Crash: "'We was wondering if we could have another chance?"
Noddy: "You did say the audience loved us."
Dibbler: "Loathed you. I said the audience loathed you."

"We've changed our name," said Jimbo. "We thought, well, Insanity was a bit daft, it's not a proper name for a serious band that's pushing back the boundaries of musical expression and is definitely going to be big some day."

"Thursday," nodded Noddy.

"So now we're Suck," said Crash.

Bear-baiting, bull-harassing, dog-fighting and sheep-worrying were currently banned in Ankh-Morpork, although the Patrician did permit the unrestricted hurling of rotten fruit at anyone suspected of belonging to a street theater group.

The bridges were quite popular as building sites, because they had a very convenient sewage system and, of course, a source of fresh water.

Asphalt cracked his whip over the horses. They ambled off at a pace that suggested they intended to keep it up all day, and no idiot too soft to really use a whip properly was going to change their minds.

The rich silty Sto Plains were the grocery of the continent, but not an awe-inspiring panorama unless you were the kind of person who gets excited about fifty-three types of cabbage and eighty-one types of bean.

Coffin Henry, on the other hand, earned his money by not going anywhere. People organizing important social occasions sent him anti‑invitations and little presents of money to ensure he wouldn't turn up. This was because, if they didn't, Henry had a habit of sidling ingratiatingly into the wedding party and inviting people to look at his remarkable collection of skin diseases. He also had a cough which sounded almost solid.

Arnold Sideways had no legs. It was a lack that didn't seem to figure largely among his concerns. He would grab people by the knees and say "Have you got change for a penny?" invariably profiting by the ensuing cerebral confusion.

By common agreement they'd called Death Mr. Scrub. He didn't know why. On the other hand, he was among people who could hold a lengthy discussion with a door. There may have been a logical reason.

Cliff: "I thought you said dis was a one-horse town."
Asphalt: "It must have died."

"I expect [the town] comes alive at night," said Asphalt.

"Yes," said Cliff. "Yes, I can believe dat. Yes. Dis looks like der kind of town dat comes alive at night. Dis looks like der whole town should be buried at dere crossroads with a stake through it."

The travelers were served by the innkeeper, whose manner suggested that he hoped they died horribly just as soon as they left the premises. The beer tasted as if it was happy to connive at this state of affairs.

It would have been nice if there had been a full moon. Or even a crescent. A full moon would have been better. But there was just a half‑moon, which never appears in romantic or occult paintings despite the fact that it is indeed the most magical phase.

[Dibbler would] have been a little bit happier if there'd been a demon or some sort of magic. Something simple and understandable. He didn't like the idea of meddling in science.

Jimbo: "The Surreptitious Fabric. It's our new name."
Dibbler: "Why have you changed it? You haven't been Suck for twenty four hours."
Jimbo: "Yeah, but we thought the name was holding us back."
Dibbler: "How could it be holding you back? You aren't moving."

"Scum," said Crash quietly, "what have you bought?"

"Look at it this way," said Scum with sweating brightness, "it's sort of lepoardskin trousers and a lepoardskin shirt and a lepoardskin hat."

"Scum," said Crash, his voice low with resigned menace, "you've bought a leopard, haven't you?"

"Too many beggars around these days, my father says," said Crash, as they pushed past. "He says the Beggars' Guild ought to do something about it."

"But the beggars all belong to the Guild," said Jimbo.

"Well, they shouldn't allow so many people to join."

"Yes, but it's better than being on the streets."

"Yeah, I liked it best when we were The Whom," said Noddy.

"But we were only The Whom for half an hour!" said Crash.^* "Yesterday. In between bein' The Blots and Lead Balloon, remember?"

[Footnote: A very grammatical half an hour, however.]

"It's not doing our career any good if people don't know who we are."

"Mr. Dibbler says it definitely is," said Noddy.

"Yes, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, my father says," said Crash.

"There you go, old man," said Scum, back down the street.

THANK YOU, said the grateful Death.

"Everyone's talking about you guys!" he said. "And they're saying it was about time they built a new theater anyway. I've got your eggs and bacon, eggs and rat, eggs and coke, and ... and ... what was it ... oh, yes. The Captain of the Watch says if you're still in the city at sunrise he will personally have you buried alive. I've got the cart all ready by the back door. Young women have been writing things on it in lipstick."

The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn't work, however, got broken.

Expecting Dibbler not to think about things concerning money was like expecting rocks not to think about gravity.

"Two thousand dollars," said Glod. "Two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars."

"Why d'you keep saying two thousand dollars?" said Cliff.

"I've never had a chance to say two thousand dollars."

"This is civilization. They don't rob you on the road in civilization. They wait until you've got into the cities. That's why it's called civilization."

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

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).

Hibiscus Dunelm had decided to close up for an hour. It was a simple process. First he and his staff collected any unbroken mugs and glasses. This didn't take long. Then there was a desultory search for any weapons with a high resale value, and a quick search of any pockets whose owners were unable to object on account of being drunk, dead or both.

"A glove," said Crash, in a terrible voice. "Whoever heard of a serious musician with a glove?"

[Dibbler] was making money. ... If it went on at this rate, in several billion years he'd be rich beyond his wildest dreams!

"You're our road manager," said Glod. "You're supposed to see no harm comes to us."

"Well, I'm doing that, ain't I?" Asphalt muttered. "I'm not hitting you, Mr. Glod."

"He's weird," said Asphalt.

"No," said Glod. "He's wound up by some strange compulsion which leads him through dark pathways."

"Yeah. Weird."

The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn't be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well.

Ridcully: "I remember poor old Mr. Hong. One minute he was dishing up an order of double cod and mushy peas, the next..."
Ponder: "Kaboom?"
Ridcully: "'Kaboom'? Not that I heard tell. More like 'Aaaaerrrrscream‑gristle gristle‑gristle‑crack' and a shower of fried food."

Ridcully: "A pocket full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten."
Stibbons: "Nine times out of ten?"
Ridcully: "Correct."
Stibbons: "How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?"
Ridcully: "Well ... there was Mr. Hong ... that business with the Thing in the Bursar's wardrobe ... that dragon, you remember ... Nine times, so far."

Troll: "You couldn't write your name down, could you? My boy Clay, he won't believe I met--"
Buddy: "Yes, yes. Pass it up."
Troll: "Only it not for me, it for my boy Clay--"
Buddy: "How d'you spell it?"
Troll: "It don't matter, he can't read anyway."

There was no such thing as a whisper in Ankh-Morpork when the sum involved had the word "thousand" in it somewhere; people could hear you think that kind of money in Ankh-Morpork.

The fall of the notes conjured up memories of the mine where he'd been born, and dwarf bread just like mum used to hammer out of her anvil, and the moment when he'd first realized that he'd fallen in love. [Footnote: He'd still got the nugget somewhere.]

Mr. Dibbler found his own mind spawn strange and disturbing thoughts. They involved things you couldn't sell and shouldn't pay for...

"She's watching us," whispered Buddy.

"The invicible girl?" said Glod, staring at the empty grass.

"Yes."

"Ah, yes. I can definitely not see her."

Crash: "We can do it! For the sake of sex and drugs and Music With Rocks In!"
Jimbo: "You never said you'd had any drugs."
Noddy: "If it comes to that, I don't reckon you've ever had--"
Crash: "One out of three ain't bad!"
Noddy: "Yes it is, it's only thirty-three per--"
Crash: "Shut up!"

Crash hefted his guitar and played a chord.

"My word!" said Ridcully.

"Sir?"

"That sounded exactly like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn-up bum."

"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong."

"It came from downstairs somewhere," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, heading for the staircase.

"So why are you going upstairs?"

"Because I'm not daft!"

"For if we are united, what can possibly harm us?"

"Well, (1), a great big--"

"Shut up!"

Modo [the gardener] didn't hear about most things, because he wasn't listening. He liked compost. Next to compost he liked roses, because they were something to compost the compost for.

Proper lawn maintenance could be a real problem when things from another dimension were allowed to slither over it.

It radiated something that suggested that, just by existing and looking like it did, it was breaking at least nine laws and twenty-three guidelines.

With the exact minimum amount of effort they swung the huge [city] gates together. It wasn't much of a precaution. The keys had been lost a long time ago. Even the sign 'Thank you for Nott Invading Our City' was barely readable now.

"Are they still behind us?" Glod yelled.

"Can't see anything!" shouted Cliff. "If you stopped the cart, maybe we could hear something?"

"Yeah, but suppose we heard something really up close?"

"It's the gold, isn't it?" said Asphalt. "Admit it. You're holding onto the gold."

"Idiot dwarf!" shouted Cliff. "Let it go or we're going to die!"

"Letting go of five thousand dollars is dying," said Glod.

"Fool! You can't take it with you!"

Asphalt scrambled for purchase on the wood. The cart shifted.

"It's going to be the other way around in a minute," he muttered.

"There's no pockets in a shroud, Glod."

"You got the wrong tailor, then."

Buddy just stared. When you've been saved from certain death by an attractive girl on a white horse, you don't expect a shopping quiz.

Death was aware that at some point he would have to stop. But it was creeping up on him that in whatever dark vocabulary the ghost machine had been envisaged, the words "slow down" were as inconceivable as "drive safely."

After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four--

And the universe came into being.

It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles.

Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.

There was a roar like the scream of a camel who has just seen two bricks.

You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn't it? Sorry.

There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.

Glod: "We're getting paid for this number, right?"
Death: YOU'LL GET THE UNIVERSE.
Glod: "And free beer?"

"You'fe got to admit," he mumbled, because at some stage in the performance a guitar had hit him in the teeth, "that waf Music Wif Rocks In..."

"All right," said Jimbo, and slithered off his beam. "But next time, thanks all the same, I'd rather try sex 'n' drugs."

"Archchancellor?"

"Yes, Mr. Stibbons?"

"I think someone trod on my hat."

"So what?"

"It's still on my head."

"Let's go home. I'm not sure I'm that interested in music any more. It's a world of hertz."

"But my parents still died."

I COULDN'T HAVE GIVEN THEM MORE LIFE. I COULD ONLY HAVE GIVEN THEM IMMORTALITY. THEY DIDN'T THINK IT WAS WORTH THE PRICE.

YOU'RE WELCOME TO COME AND VISIT, OF COURSE.

"Thank you."

YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE A HOME THERE. IF YOU WANT IT.

"Really?"

I SHALL KEEP YOUR ROOM EXACTLY AS YOU LEFT IT.

"Thank you."

A MESS.

"Sorry."

"What happened to ... you know ... changing the fate of one individual means changing the world?"

SOMETIMES THE WORLD NEEDS CHANGING.

Susan stared at him.

The blue glow in Death's eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and the darkness beyond...

...which went on and on, forever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone.

You could choose immortality, or you could choose humanity.

You had to do it for yourself.