Soul Music

There was, instead, a cessation of sound, the end of a noise which Susan realized she'd been hearing all along. All the time. All her life. A kind of sound you never notice until it stops...

The strings were still.

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.

Death played the empty chord.

The beat slowed. And began to weaken. The universe spun on, every atom of it. But soon the whirling would end and the dancers would look around and wonder what to do next.

It's not time for THAT! Play something else!

I CANNOT.

Death nodded towards Buddy.

BUT HE CAN.

He threw the guitar towards Buddy. It passed right through him.

Susan ran and snatched it up, holding it out.

" You've got to take it! You've got to play! You've got to start the music again!"

She strummed frantically at the strings. Buddy winced.

" Please!" she shouted. "Don't fade away!"

The music screamed in her head.

Buddy managed to grasp the guitar, but stood looking at it as if he'd never seen it before.

" What'll happen if he doesn't play it?" said Glod.

" You'll all die in the wreckage!"

AND THEN, said Death, THE MUSIC WILL DIE. AND THE DANCE WILL END. THE WHOLE DANCE.

The ghostly dwarf gave a cough.

"We're getting paid for this number, right?" he said.

YOU'LL GET THE UNIVERSE.

"And free beer?"

Buddy held the guitar to him. His eyes met Susan's.

He raised his hand, and played.

The single chord rang out across the gorge, and echoed back with strange harmonics.

THANK YOU, said Death. He stepped forward and took the guitar.

He moved suddenly, and smashed the thing against a rock. The strings parted, and something accelerated away, towards the snow and the stars.

Death looked at the wreckage with some satisfaction.

NOW THAT'S MUSIC WITH ROCKS IN.

He snapped his fingers.

The moon rose over Ankh‑Morpork.

The park was deserted. The silver light flowed over the wreckage of the stage, and the mud and halfconsumed sausages that marked the spot where the audience had been. Here and there it glinted off broken sound traps.

After a while some of the mud sat up and spat out some more mud.

" Crash? Jimbo? Scum?" it said.

" Is that you, Noddy?" said a sad shape hanging from one of the stage's few remaining beams.

The mud pulled some more mud out of its ears. "Right! Where's Scum?"

" I think they threw him into the lake."

" Is Crash alive?"

There was a groan from under a heap of wreckage. "Pity," said Noddy, with feeling.

A figure emerged out of the shadows, squelching.

Crash half crawled, half fell out of the rubble.

" 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."

" My dad said he'd kill me if I took drugs," said Noddy.

" This is your brain on drugs..." said Jimbo.

" No, this is your brain, Scum, on this lump here."

" Oh, cheers. Thanks."

" A painkiller'd be favourite right now," said Jimbo.

A little closer to the lake a heap of sacking slid sideways.

" Archchancellor?"

" Yes, Mr Stibbons?"

" I think someone trod on my hat."

" So what?"

" It's still on my head."

Ridcully sat up, easing the ache in his bones.

" Come on, lad," he said. "Let's go home. I'm not sure I'm that interested in music any more. It's a world of hertz."

A coach rattled along the winding mountain road. Mr Clete was standing on the box, whipping the horses.

Satchelmouth got unsteadily to his feet. The cliff edge was so close he could see right down into the darkness.

" I've had just about altogether too much of this by half," he shouted, and tried to snatch at the whip.

" Stop that! We'll never catch up with them!" shouted Clete.

" So what? Who cares? I liked their music!"

Clete turned. His expression was terrible.

" Traitor!"

The butt‑end of the whip caught Satchelmouth in the stomach. He staggered back, clutched at the edge of the coach, and dropped.

His outflung arm caught hold of what felt like a thin branch in the darkness. He swung wildly over the drop until his boots got a purchase on the rock, and his other hand gripped a broken fence‑post.

He was just in time to see the cart rumble straight on. The road, on the other hand, curved sharply.

Satchelmouth shut his eyes and held on tight until the last scream and crackle and splinter had died away. When he opened them, it was just in time to see a burning wheel bounce down the canyon.

" Blimey," he said, "it was lucky there... was... some... thing..."

His gaze went up. And up.

YES. IT WAS, WASN'T IT?

Mr Clete sat up in the ruins of the cart. It was clearly very much on fire. He was lucky, he told himself, to have survived that.

A black‑robed figure walked through the flames.