Soul Music

" Er... this doesn't mean we're not allowed to play at the Free Festival, does it, Mr Dibbler?" said Crash.

" Maybe," said Dibbler, smiling benevolently.

" Thanks a lot, Mr Dibbler!"

The Surreptitious Fabric wandered out into the street.

" We need to get it together if we're going to wow them at the Festival," said Crash.

" What, you mean... like... learn to play?" said Jimbo.

" No! Music With Rocks In just happens. If you go around learning you'll never get anywhere," said Crash. "No, I mean..." He looked around. "Better clothes, for one thing. Did you see about them leather coats, Noddy?"

" Sort of," said Noddy.

" What do you mean, sort of?"

" Sort of leather. I went down the tannery in Phedre Road and they had some leather all right, but it's a bit... whiffy...

" All right, we can get started on them tonight. And how about those leopardskin trousers, Scum? You know we said leopardskin trousers'd be a great idea."

A look of transcendental worry crossed Scum's face.

" I kind of got some," he said.

" You either got them or you ain't," said Crash.

" Yeah, but they're kind of..." said Scum. "Look, I couldn't find a shop that'd heard of anything like that but, er, you know that circus that was here last week? Only I had a word with the guy in the top hat and, well, it was a kind of a bargain and–"

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

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

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

" Sort of leopardy, yes."

" Oh, good grief–"

" But sort of a real steal for twenty dollars," said Scum. "Nothing important wrong with it, the man said."

" Why'd he get rid of it, then?" Crash demanded.

" It's sort of deaf. Can't hear the lion‑tamer, he said."

" Well, that's no good to us!"

" Don't see why. Your trousers don't have to listen."

SPARE A COPPER, YOUNG SIR?

"Push off, grandad," said Crash easily.

GOOD LUCK TO 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."

Scum, who out of the whole group had the least amount of cerebral activity to get between him and true observation of the world, was trailing behind. He had an uneasy feeling that he'd just walked over someone's grave.

" That one looked a bit sort of thin," he muttered.

The others weren't paying any attention. They were back to the usual argument.

" I'm fed up with being Surreptitious Fabric," said Jimbo. "It's a silly name."

" Really, really thin," said Scum. He felt in his pocket.

" 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?"

Scum located a tenpenny piece and turned back.

" There's bound to be some good name," said Jimbo. "I just bet we'll know it's right just as soon as we see it."

" Oh, yeah. Well, we've got to come up with some name we don't start arguing about after five minutes," said Crash. "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.

Scum hurried to catch up with the others, who were back on the subject of leopards with hearing difficulties.

"Where did you put it, Scum?" said Crash.

" Well, you know your sort of bedroom–'

" How do you kill a leopard?" said Noddy.

" Hey, here's an idea," said Crash, gloomily. "We let it choke to death on Scum."

The raven inspected the hallway clock with the prac­tised eye of one who knows the value of good props.

As Susan had noted, it was not so much small as dimensionally displaced; it looked small, but in the same way that something very big a long way away looks small ‑ that is to say, the mind keeps reminding the eyes that they are wrong. But this was up close as well. It was made of some dark, age‑blackened wood. There was a pendulum, which oscillated slowly.

The clock had no hands.

" Impressive," said the raven. "That scythe blade on the pendulum. Nice touch. Very Gothic. No‑one could look at that clock and not think–"

SQUEAK!

" All right, all right, I'm coming." The raven flut­tered across to an ornamental door‑frame. There was a skull‑and‑bones motif on it.

" Excellent taste," it said.

SQUEAK. SQUEAK.