Soul Music

"Crunch it up good," moaned Glod, as Cliff took his bowl. "It may be the last chance you get—"

"Maybe no‑one'll turn up and we can go home?" said Cliff.

Buddy ran his fingers over the strings. The others stopped eating as the chords filled up the room.

"Magic," said Cliff, shaking his head.

"Don't you boys worry," said Asphalt. "If there are any problems, it's the other guys who'll get it in the teeth."

Buddy stopped playing.

"What other guys?"

"S funny thing," said the little troll, "suddenly everyone's playing music with rocks in it. Mr Dibbler's signed up another band for the concert, too. To kind of warm it up."

"S called Insanity," said Asphalt.

"Where are they?" said Cliff.

"Well, put it like this… you know how your dressing room is next to the privy?"

Crash, behind the Cavern's raggedy curtain, tried to tune his guitar. Several things got in the way of this simple procedure. Firstly, Blert had realized what his customers really wanted and, praying forgiveness from his ancestors, had spent more time gluing on bits of glittery stuff than he had on the actual functioning sections of the instrument. To put it another way, he'd knocked in a dozen nails and tied the strings to them. But this wasn't too much of a problem, because Crash himself had the musical talent of a blocked nostril.

He looked at Jimbo, Noddy and Scum. Jimbo, now the bass player (Blert, giggling hysterically, had used a bigger lump of wood and some fence wire), was holding up his hand hesitantly.

"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."

Scum peered around the curtain.

"Crash?"

"Yes?"

"There's hundreds of people out there. Hundreds! A lot of 'em have got guitars, too. They're sort of waving 'em in the air!"

Insanity listened to the roar from the other side of the curtain. Crash did not have too many brain‑cells, and they often had to wave to attract one another's attention, but he had a tiny flicker of doubt that the sound that Insanity had achieved, while a good sound, was the sound that he'd heard last night in the Drum. The sound made him want to scream and dance, while the other sound made him… well… made him want to scream and smash Scum's drum‑kit over its owner's head, quite frankly.

Noddy took a peek between the curtains.

"Hey, there's a bunch of wiz… I think they're wizards, right in the front row," he said. "I'm… pretty sure they're wizards, but, I mean…"

"You can tell, stupid," said Crash. "They've got pointy hats."

"There's one with… pointy hair…" said Noddy.

The rest of Insanity applied eyes to the gap.

"Looks like… a kind of unicorn spike made out of hair…

"What's that he's got on the back of his robe?" said Jimbo.

"It says BORN TO RUNE," said Crash, who was the fastest reader in the group and didn't need to use his finger at all.

"The skinny one's wearing a flared robe," said Noddy.

"He must be old."

"And they've all got guitars! Do you reckon they've come to see us?"

"Bound to have," said Noddy.

"That's a bodacious audience," said Jimbo.

"Yeah, that's right, bodacious," said Scum. "Er. What's bodacious mean?"

"Means… means it bodes," said Jimbo.

"Right. It looks like it's boding all right."

Crash thrust aside his doubts.

"Let's get out there," he said, "and really show them what Music With Rocks In is about!"

Asphalt, Cliff and Glod sat in one corner of the dressing room. The roar of the crowd could be heard from here.

"Why's he not saying anything?" Asphalt whispered.

"Dunno," said Glod.

Buddy was staring at nothing, with the guitar cradled in his arms. Occasionally he'd slap the casing, very gently, in time with whatever thoughts were sluicing through his head.

"He goes like that sometimes," said Cliff. "Just sits and looks at the air—"

"Hey, they're shouting something out there," said Glod. "Listen."

The roar had a rhythm to it.

"Sounds like "Rocks, Rocks, Rocks"," said Cliff.

The door burst open and Dibbler half‑ran, half‑fell in.

"You've got to get out there!" he shouted. "Right now!"

"I thought the Insanitary boys—"Glod began.

"Don't even ask," said Dibbler. "Come on! Otherwise they'll wreck the place!"

Asphalt picked up the rocks.

"OK," he said.

"No," said Buddy.

"What dis?" said Dibbler. "Nerves?"

"No. Music should be free. Free as the air and the sky."

Glod's head spun around. Buddy's voice had a faint suggestion of harmonics.

"Sure, right, that's what I said," said Dibbler. "The Guild—"

Buddy unfolded his legs and stood up.

"I expect people had to pay to get in here, didn't they?" he said.

Glod looked at the others. No‑one else seemed to have noticed it. But there was a twang on the edge of Buddy's words, a sibilance of strings.

"Oh, that. Of course," said Dibbler. "Got to cover expenses. There's your wages… wear and tear on the floor… heating and lighting… depreciation…"

The roar was louder now. It had a certain footstamping component.