It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or remember where they live. The other occupants of the Mended Drum were hunched over their drinks around the walls and watching an orang-utan, who was playing Barbarian Invaders and screaming with rage every time he lost a penny.

Hibiscus really wanted to shut. On the other hand, it’d be like blowing up a gold mine. It was all he could do to keep up the supply of clean glasses.

“Have you forgotten yet?” he said.

IT APPEARS I HAVE ONLY FORGOTTEN ONE THING.

“What’s that? Hah, silly of me to ask really, seeing as you’ve forgotten—”

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.

The stranger picked up his most recent glass and wandered over to the Barbarian Invaders machine.

It was made of clockwork of a complex and intricate design. There was a suggestion of many gears and worm drives in the big mahogany cabinet under the game, the whole function of which appeared to be to make rows of rather crudely carved Barbarian Invaders jerk and wobble across a rectangular proscenium. The player, by means of a system of levers and pulleys, operated a small, self-loading catapult that moved below the Invaders. This shot small pellets upward. At the same time the Invaders (by means of a ratchet and pawl mechanism) dropped small metal arrows. Periodically a bell rang and an Invader on horseback oscillated hesitantly across the top of the game, dropping spears. The whole assemblage rattled and creaked continuously, partly because of all the machinery and partly because the orang-utan was wrenching both handles, jumping up and down on the Fire pedal, and screaming at the top of his voice.

“I wouldn’t have it in the place,” said the barman behind him. “But it’s popular with the customers, you see.”

ONE CUSTOMER, ANYWAY.

“Well, it’s better than the fruit machine, at least.”

YES?

“He ate all the fruit.”

There was a screech of rage from the direction of the machine.

The barman sighed. “You wouldn’t think anyone’d make so much fuss over a penny, would you?”

The ape slammed a dollar coin on the counter and went away with two handfuls of change. One penny in a slot allowed a very large lever to be pulled; miraculously, all the Barbarians rose from the dead and began their wobbly invasion again.

“He poured his drink into it,” said the barman. “It may be my imagination, but I think they’re wobbling a bit more now.”

Death watched the game for a while. It was one of the most depressing things he’d ever seen. The things were going to get down to the bottom of the game anyway. Why shoot things at them?

Why…?

He waved his glass at the assembled drinkers.

D’YOU. D’YOU. THING IS, D’YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE, EH, HAVING A MEMORY SO GOOD, RIGHT, SO GOOD YOU EVEN REMEMBER WHAT HASN’T HAPPENED YET? THAT’S ME. OH, YES. RIGHT ENOUGH. AS THOUGH. AS THOUGH. AS THOUGH THERE’S NO FUTURE…ONLY THE PAST THAT HASN’T HAPPENED YET. AND. AND. AND. YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS ANYWAY. YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN AND YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS.

He looked around at the faces. People in the Drum were used to alcoholic lectures, but not ones like this.

YOU SEE. YOU SHEE. YOU SEE STUFF LOOMING UP LIKE ICEBERG THINGS AHEAD BUT YOU MUSTN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT BECAUSE—BECAUSE—BECAUSEITSALAW. CAN’T BREAK THE LAW. ’SCOTABEALAW.

SEE THIS GLASS, RIGHT? SEE IT? ’S LIKE MEMORY. ONNACOUNTA IF YOU PUT MORE STUFF IN, MORE STUFF FLOWS OUT, RIGHT? ’S FACT. EVERYONEGOTTA MEMORY LIKE THIS. ’S WHAT KEEP HUMANS FROM GOING ISS—ISH—INSH—MAD. ’CEPT ME. POOROLE ME. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY TOMORROW. EVERYTHING.

He looked down at his drink.

AH, he said, FUNNY HOW THINGS COME BACK TO YOU, ISN’T IT.

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

Several people applauded as he hit the floor. Then they searched his pockets, or at least made an effort to search his pockets but couldn’t find any. And then they threw him into the river. *

In the giant black study of Death one candle burned, and got no shorter.

Susan leafed frantically through the books.

Life wasn’t simple. She knew that; it was the Knowledge, which went with the job. There was the simple life of living things but that was, well…simple…

There were other kinds of life. Cities had life. Anthills and swarms of bees had life, a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Worlds had life. Gods had a life made up of the belief of their believers.

The universe danced toward 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 toward awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

Perhaps even a music could be alive, if it was old enough. Life is a habit.

People said: I can’t get that darn tune out of my head.

Not just a beat, but a heartbeat.

And anything alive wants to breed.

C.M.O.T. Dibbler liked to be up at first light, in case there was an opportunity to sell a worm to the early bird.

He had set up a desk in the corner of one of Chalky’s workshops. He 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 round.

Quite a large number of people seemed to have found him this morning. Many of them were holding guitars.

“Right,” he said to Asphalt, whose flat head was just visible over the top of the makeshift desk. “All understood? It’ll take you two days to get to Pseudopolis and then you report to Mr. Klopstock at the Bull Pit. And I’ll want receipts for everything.”

“Yes, Mr. Dibbler.”

“It’ll be a good idea to get away from the city for a bit.”

“Yes, Mr. Dibbler.”

“Did I already say I wanted receipts for everything?”

“Yes, Mr. Dibbler,” sighed Asphalt.

“Off you go, then.” Dibbler ignored the troll and beckoned to a group of dwarfs who’d been hanging around patiently. “Okay, you lot, come over here. So you want to be Music With Rocks In stars, do you?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Then listen here to what I say…”

Asphalt looked at the money. It wasn’t much to feed four people for several days. Behind him, the interview continued.

“So what do you call yourselves?”

“Er—dwarfs, Mr. Dibbler,” said the lead dwarf.

“‘Dwarfs’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because we are, Mr. Dibbler,” said the lead dwarf patiently.

“No, no, no. That won’t do. That won’t do at all. You gotta have a name with a bit of”—Dibbler waved his hands in the air—“with a bit of Music With Rocks In…uh…in. Not just ‘Dwarfs.’ You gotta be…oh, I don’t know…something more interesting.”

“But we’re certainly dwarfs,” said one of the dwarfs.

“‘We’re Certainly Dwarfs,’” said Dibbler. “Yes, that might work. Okay. I can book you in at the Bunch of Grapes on Thursday. And into the Free Festival, of course. Since it’s free, you don’t get paid, of course.”

“We’ve written this song,” said the head dwarf, hopefully.

“Good, good,” said Dibbler, scribbling on his notepad.

“It’s called ‘Something’s Gotten Into My Beard.’”

“Good.”

“Don’t you want to hear it?”

Dibbler looked up.

“Hear it? I’d never get anything done if I went around listening to music. Off you go. See you next Wednesday. Next! You all trolls?”

“Dat’s right.”

In this case, Dibbler decided not to argue. Trolls were a lot bigger than dwarfs.

“All right. But you’ve got to spell it with a Z. Trollz. Yep, looks good. Mended Drum, Friday. And the Free Festival. Yes?”

“We’ve done a song—”

“Good for you. Next!”

“It’s us, Mr. Dibbler.”

Dibbler looked at Jimbo, Noddy, Crash, and Scum.

“You’ve got a nerve,” he said. “After last night.”

“We got a bit carried away,” said Crash. “We was wondering if we could have another chance?”

“You did say the audience loved us,” said Noddy.

“Loathed you. I said the audience loathed you,” said Dibbler. “Two of you kept looking at Blert Wheedown’s guitar primer!”

“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 one day.”

“Thursday,” nodded Noddy.

“So now we’re Suck,” said Crash.

Dibbler gave them a long, cool look. 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. There was perhaps an opening.

“All right,” he said. “You can play at the Festival. After that…we’ll see.”

After all, he thought, there was a possibility that they’d still be alive.

A figure climbed slowly and unsteadily out of the Ankh onto a jetty by the Misbegot Bridge, and stood for a moment as mud dripped off him and formed a puddle under the planks.

The bridge was quite high. There were buildings on it, lining it on both sides so that the actual roadway was quite cramped. The bridges were quite popular as building sites, because they had a very convenient sewage system and, of course, a source of fresh water.

There was the red eye of a fire in the shadows under the bridge. The figure staggered toward the light.

The dark shapes around it turned and squinted into the gloom, trying to fathom the nature of the visitor.

“It’s a farm cart,” said Glod. “I know a farm cart when I see one. Even if it is painted blue. And it’s all battered.”

“It’s all you can afford, “said Asphalt. “Anyway, I put fresh straw in.”

“I thought we were going in der stagecoach,” said Cliff.

“Oh, Mr. Dibbler says artistes of your caliber shouldn’t travel in a common public vehicle,” said Asphalt. “Besides, he said you wouldn’t want the expense.”

“What do you think, Buddy?” said Glod.

“Don’t mind,” said Buddy vaguely.

Glod and Cliff shared a glance.

“I bet if you were to go and see Dibbler and demand something better you’d get it,” said Glod hopefully,

“It’s got wheels,” said Buddy. “It’ll do.”

He climbed aboard and sat down in the straw.

“Mr. Dibbler’s had some new shirts done.” said Asphalt, aware that there was not a lot of jolliness in the air. “It’s for the tour. Look, it says on the back everywhere you’re going, isn’t that nice?”

“Yes, when the Musicians’ Guild twist our heads round we’ll be able to see where we’ve been,” said Glod.

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.

“Buggrit, buggrit! The grawney man, says I. Buggrit. He’s a yellow gloak, so he is. Ten thousand years! Buggrit.”

REALLY?

Death relaxed.

There were half a dozen people around the fire. And they were convivial. A bottle was circling the group. Well, actually it was half a tin, and Death hadn’t quite worked out what was in it or in the rather larger tin that was bubbling on the fire of old boots and mud.

They hadn’t asked him who he was.

None of them had names, as far as he could tell. They had…labels, like Stalling Ken and Coffin Henry and Foul Ole Ron, which said something about what they were but nothing about what they had been.

The tin reached him. He passed it on as tactfully as he could, and lay back peacefully.

People without names. People who were as invisible as he was. People for whom Death was always an option. He could stay here a while.

“Free music,” Clete growled. “Free! What sort of idiot makes music for free? At least you put a hat down, get people to drop the odd copper in. Otherwise what’s the point?”

He stared at the paperwork in front of him for so long that Satchelmouth coughed politely.

“I’m thinking,” said Mr. Clete. “That wretched Vetinari. He said it’s up to Guilds to enforce Guild law—”

“I heard they’re leaving the city,” said Satchelmouth. “On tour. Out in the country, I heard. It’s not our law out there.”

“The country,” said Mr. Clete. “Yes. Dangerous place, the country.”

“Right,” said Satchelmouth. “There’s turnips, for a start.”

Mr. Clete’s eye fell on the Guild’s account books. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that far too many people put their trust in iron and steel when gold made some of the best possible weapons.

“Is Mr. Downey still head of the Assassins’ Guild?” he said.

The other musicians looked suddenly nervous.

“Assassins?” said Herbert “Mr. Harpsichord” Shuffle. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called in the Assassins. This is Guild business, isn’t it? Can’t have another Guild interfering.”

“That’s right,” said Satchelmouth. “What’d happen if people knew we’d used the Assassins?”

“We’d get a lot more members,” said Mr. Clete in his reasonable voice, “and we could probably put the subscriptions up. Hat. Hat. Hat.”

“Now hang on a minute,” said Satchelmouth. “I don’t mind us seeing to people who won’t join. That’s proper Guild behavior, that is. But Assassins…well…”

“Well what?” said Clete.

“They assassinate people.”

“You want free music, do you?” said Mr. Clete.

“Well, of course I don’t want—”

“I don’t remember you talking like this when you jumped up and down on that street violinist’s fingers last month,” said Clete.

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t, like, assassination,” said Satchelmouth. “I mean, he was able to walk away. Well, crawl away. And he could still earn a living,” he added. “Not one that required the use of his hands, sure, but—”

“And that penny whistle lad? That one that plays a chord now every time he hiccups? Hat. Hat. Hat.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the sa—”

“Do you know Wheedown the guitar maker?” said Mr. Clete.

Satchelmouth was unbalanced by the change in direction.

“I’m told he’s been selling guitars like there was no next Wednesday,” said Mr. Clete. “But I don’t see any increase in membership, do you?”

“Well—”

“Once people get the idea that they can listen to music for nothing, where will it end?”

He glared at the other two.

“Dunno, Mr. Clete,” said Shuffle obediently.

“Very well. And the Patrician has been ironical at me,” said Clete. “I’m not having that again. It’s the Assassins this time.”

“I don’t think we should actually have people killed,” said Satchelmouth doggedly.

“I don’t want to hear any more from you,” said Mr. Clete. “This is Guild business.”

“Yes, but it’s our Guild—”

“Exactly! So shut up! Hat! Hat! Hat!”

The cart rattled between the endless cabbage fields that led to Pseudopolis.

“I’ve been on tour before, you know,” said Glod. “When I was with Snori Snoriscousin And His Brass Idiots. Every night a different bed. You forget what day of the week it is after a while.”

“What day of der week is it now?” said Cliff.

“See? And we’ve only been on the road…what…three hours?” said Glod.

“Where’re we stopping tonight?” said Cliff.

“Scrote,” said Asphalt.

“Sounds a really interesting place,” said Cliff.

“Been there before, with the circus,” said Asphalt. “It’s a one-horse town.”

Buddy looked over the side of the cart, but it wasn’t worth the effort. 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.

Spaced every mile or so on the checkerboard of fields was a village, and spaced rather farther apart were the towns. They were called towns because they were bigger than the villages. The cart passed through a couple of them. They had two streets in the form of a cross, one tavern, one seed store, one forge, one livery stable with a name like JOE’S LIVERY STABLE, a couple of barns, three old men sitting outside the tavern, and three young men lounging outside JOE’S swearing that one day really soon now they were going to leave town and make it big in the world outside. Real soon. Any day now.

“Reminds you of home, eh?” said Cliff, nudging Buddy.

“What? No! Llamedos is all mountains and valleys. And rain. And mist. And evergreens.”

Buddy sighed.

“You had a great house there, I expect?” said the troll.

“Just a shack,” said Buddy. “Made of earth and wood. Well, mud and wood really.”

He sighed again.

“It’s like this on the road,” said Asphalt. “Melancholy. No one to talk to but each other, I’ve known people go totally ins—”

“How long has it been now?” said Cliff.

“Three hours and ten minutes,” said Glod.

Buddy sighed.

They were invisible people, Death realized. He was used to invisibility. It went with the job. Humans didn’t see him until they had no choice.

On the other hand, he was an anthropomorphic personification. Whereas Foul Ole Ron was human, at least technically.

Foul Ole Ron made a small living by following people until they gave him money not to. He’d also got a dog, which added something to Foul Ole Ron’s smell. It was a greyish brown terrier with a torn ear and vast patches of bare skin; it begged with an old hat in its remaining teeth, and since people will generally give to animals that which they’d withhold from humans, it added considerably to the earning power of the group.

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.

He had a sign on which was chalked “For sum muny I wunt follo you home. Coff Coff.”

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

And the one they called the Duck Man had a duck on his head. No one mentioned it. No one drew attention to it. It seemed to be a minor feature of no consequence, like Arnold’s leglessness and Foul Ole Ron’s independent smell or Henry’s volcanic spitting. But it kept nagging at Death’s otherwise peaceful mind.

He wondered how to broach the subject.

AFTER ALL, he thought, HE MUST KNOW, MUSTN’T HE? IT’S NOT LIKE LINT ON YOUR JACKET OR SOMETHING…

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.

The beggars spent their day wandering invisibly around the streets, where people who didn’t see them carefully circled out of their way and threw them the occasional coin. Mr. Scrub fitted in very well. When he asked for money, people found it hard to say no.

Scrote didn’t even have a river. It existed simply because there’s only so much land you can have before you have to have something else.

It had two streets in the form of a cross, one tavern, one seed store, one forge, a couple of barns and, in a gesture of originality, one livery stable called SETH’S LIVERY STABLE.

Nothing moved. Even the flies were asleep. Long shadows were the only occupants of the streets.

“I thought you said dis was a one-horse town,” said Cliff, as they pulled up in the rutted, puddled area that was probably glorified by the name of Town Square.

“It must have died,” said Asphalt.

Glod stood up in the cart and spread his arms wide. He yelled:

“Hello, Scrote!”

The name board over the livery stable parted from its last nail and landed in the dust.

“What I like about this life on the road,” said Glod, “is the fascinating people and interesting places.”

“I expect it 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.”

“Talking of steak…” said Glod.

They looked at the tavern. The cracked and peeling sign just managed to convey the words “The Jolly Cabbage.”

“I doubt it,” said Asphalt.

There were people in the dimly lit tavern, sitting in sullen silence. 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.

They huddled at one table, aware of the eyes on them.

“I’ve heard about places like this,” whispered Glod. “You go into this little town with a name like Friendly or Amity, and next day you’re spareribs.”

“Not me,” said Cliff. “I’m too stony.”

“Well, you’re in the rockery, then,” said the dwarf. He looked round at a row of furrowed faces and raised his mug theatrically.

“Cabbages doing well?” he said. “I see in the fields they’re nice and yellow. Ripe, eh? That’s good, eh?”

“That’s Root Fly, that is,” said someone in the shadows.

“Good, good,” said Glod. He was a dwarf. Dwarfs didn’t farm.

“We don’t like circuses in Scrote,” said another voice. It was a slow, deep voice.

“We’re not a circus,” said Glod brightly. “We’re musicians.”

“We don’t like musicians in Scrote,” said another voice.

There seemed to be more and more figures in the gloom.

“Er…what do you like in Scrote?” said Asphalt.

“Well,” said the barman, now a mere outline in the gathering darkness, “Round about this time of year we generally have a barbecue down by the rockery.”

Buddy sighed.

It was the first time he’d made a sound since they’d arrived in the town.

“I guess we’d better show them what we play,” he said. There was a twang in his voice.

It was sometime later.

Glod looked at the door handle. It was a door handle. You got hold of it with your hand. But what was supposed to happen next?

“Door handle.” he said, in case that would help.

“Y’r sposed do s’ning w’vit,” said Cliff, from somewhere near the floor.

Buddy leaned past the dwarf and turned the handle.

“A’m’zing,” said Glod, and stumbled forward. He levered himself off the floor and looked around.

“Wh’s ths?”

“The tavern keeper said we could stay here for free,” said Buddy.

“S’mess,” said Glod. “Some’ne fetch me a brm and a scr’bing brsh this min’t.”

Asphalt wobbled in, carrying the luggage and with Cliff’s sack of rocks in his teeth. He dropped the lot on the floor.

“Well, that was astonishing, sir,” he said. “The way you just went into that barn and said, and said…what was it you said?”

“Let’s do the show right here,” said Buddy, lying down on a straw mattress.

“Amazing! They must have been coming in from miles around!”

Buddy stared at the ceiling and played a few chords.

“And that barbecue!” said Asphalt, still radiating enthusiasm. “The sauce!”

“The be’f!” said Glod.

“Der charcoal,” murmured Cliff happily. There was a wide black ring around his mouth.

“An’d who’davthought,” said Glod, “that you could brew a beer I’ke that outa cauliflowers?”

“Had a great head on it,” said Cliff.

“I thought we were going to be in a bit of trouble there, before you played,” said Asphalt, shaking the beetles out of another mattress. “I don’t know how you got them dancing like that.”

“Yes,” said Buddy.

“And we din’t even get paid,” murmured Glod. He slumped back. Shortly there were snores, given a slightly metallic edge by the reverberation in his helmet.

When the others were asleep Buddy put the guitar down on the bed, quietly opened the door, and crept downstairs and into the night.

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.

There was a smell of stale beer, dying cabbages, barbecue embers, and insufficient sanitation.

He leaned against Seth’s livery stable. It shifted slightly.

It was fine when he was onstage or, as it had been tonight, on an old barn door set on a few bricks. Everything was in bright colors. He could feel white-hot images arcing across his mind. His body felt as though it were on fire but also, and this was the important bit, as if it was meant to be on fire. He felt alive.

And then, afterward, he felt dead.

There was still color in the world. He could recognize it as color, but it seemed to be wearing Cliff’s smoked glasses. Sounds came as if through cotton wool. Apparently the barbecue had been good, he had Glod’s word for that; but to Buddy it had been texture and not much else.

A shadow moved across the space between two buildings…

On the other hand, he was the best. He knew it, not as some matter of pride or arrogance, but simply as a matter of fact. He could feel the music flowing out of him and into the audience…

“This one, sir?” whispered a shadow beside the livery stable, as Buddy wandered along the moonlit street.

“Yes. This one first and then into the tavern for the other two. Even the big troll. There’s a spot on the back of the neck.”

“But not Dibbler, sir?”

“Strangely, no. He’s not here.”

“Shame. I bought a meat pie off him once.”

“It’s an attractive suggestion, but no one’s paying us for Dibbler.”

The Assassins drew their knives, the blades blackened to avoid the telltale shine.

“I could give you tuppence, sir, if that’d help.”

“It’s certainly tempting—”

The senior Assassin pressed himself against the wall as Buddy’s footsteps grew louder.

He gripped his knife at waist height. no one who knew anything about knives ever used the famous overarm stabbing motion so beloved of illustrators. It was amateurish and inefficient. A professional would strike upward; the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.

He drew his hand back and tensed—

A hourglass, glowing faintly blue, was suddenly thrust in front of his eyes.

LORD ROBERT SELACHII? said a voice by his ear, THIS IS YOUR LIFE.

He squinted. There was no mistaking the name engraved on the glass. He could see every little grain of sand, pouring into the past…

He turned, took one look at the hooded figure, and ran for it. His apprentice was already a hundred yards away, and still accelerating.

“Sorry? Who’s that?”

Susan tucked the hourglass back into her robe and shook out her hair.

Buddy appeared.

“You?”

“Yes. Me,” said Susan.

Buddy took a step nearer.

“Are you going to fade away again?” he said.

“No. I have actually just saved your life, as a matter of fact.”

Buddy looked around at the otherwise empty night.

“From what?”

Susan bent down and picked up a blackened knife.

“This,” she said.

“I know we’ve had this conversation before, but who are you? Not my fairy godmother, are you?”

“I think you have to be a lot older,” said Susan. She backed away. “And probably a lot nicer, too. Look, I can’t tell you any more. You’re not even supposed to see me. I’m not supposed to be here. Neither are you—”

“You’re not going to tell me to stop playing again, are you?” said Buddy angrily. “Because I won’t! I’m a musician! If I don’t play, what am I then? I might as well be dead! Do you understand? Music is my life!”

He took a few steps nearer.

“Why’re you following me around? Asphalt said there’d be girls like you!”

“What on Disc do you mean, ‘girls like me’?”

Buddy subsided a bit, but only a little.

“They follow actors and musicians around,” he said, “because of, you know, the glamour and everything—”

“Glamour? Some smelly cart and a tavern that smells of cabbages?”

Buddy held up his hands.

“Listen,” he said urgently. “I’m doing all right. I’m working, people are listening to me…I don’t need any more help, all right? I’ve got enough to worry about, so please keep out of my life—”

There was the sound of running feet and Asphalt appeared, with the other members of the band behind him.

“The guitar was screaming,” said Asphalt. “Are you all right?”

“You’d better ask her,” muttered Buddy.

All three of them looked directly at Susan.

“Who?” said Cliff.

“She’s right in front of you.”

Glod waved a stubby hand in the air, missing Susan by inches.

“It was probably dat cabbage,” said Cliff to Asphalt.

Susan stepped backward quietly.

“She’s right there! But she’s going away now, can’t you see?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” said Glod, taking Buddy’s arm. “She’s going away now, and good riddance, so just you come on back—”

“Now she’s getting on that horse!”

“Yes, yes, a big black horse—”

“It’s white, you idiot!”

Hoofprints burned red on the ground for a moment, and then faded.

“And it’s gone now!”

The Band With Rocks In stared into the night.

“Yes, I can see that, now you mention it,” said Cliff. “Dat’s a horse dat isn’t dere, sure enough.”

“Yes, that’s certainly what a horse that’s gone looks like,” said Asphalt carefully.

“None of you saw her?” said Buddy, as they maneuvered him gently back through the pre-dawn greyness.

“I heard where musicians, really good musicians, got followed around by these half-naked young women called Muses,” said Cliff.

“Like Cantaloupe,” said Cliff.

“We don’t call ’em Muses,” said Asphalt, grinning. “I told you, when I worked for Bertie the Balladeer and His Troubadour Rascals, we used to get any amount of young women hanging arou—”

“Amazing how legends get started, when you come to think about it,” said Glod. “Just you come along now, my lad.”

“She was there,” Buddy protested. “She was there.”

“Cantaloupe?” said Asphalt. “You sure, Cliff?”

“Read it in a book once,” said the troll. “Cantaloupe. I’m pretty sure. Something like that.”

“She was there,” said Buddy.

The raven snored gently on top of his skull, counting dead sheep.

The Death of Rats came through the window in an arc, bounced off a dribbly candle, and landed on all fours on the table.

The raven opened one eye.

“Oh, it’s you—”

Then a claw was round its leg, and the Death of Rats jumped off the skull and into infinite space.

There were more cabbage fields next day, although the landscape did begin to change a bit.

“Hey, that’s interesting,” said Glod.

“What is?” said Cliff.

“There’s a field of beans over there.”

They watched it until it was out of sight.

“Nice of the people to give us all this food, though,” said Asphalt. “We shan’t be wanting for cabbages, eh?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Glod. He turned to Buddy, who was sitting with his chin resting on his arms.

“Cheer up, we’ll be in Pseudopolis in a couple of hours,” he said.

“Good,” said Buddy, distantly.

Glod climbed back into the front of the cart and pulled Cliff toward him.

“Notice the way he goes all quiet?” he whispered.

“Yup. Do you think it’ll be…you know…done by der time we get back?”

“You can get anything done in Ankh-Morpork,” said Glod firmly. “I must have knocked on every damn door in the Street of Cunning Artificers. Twenty-five dollars!”

“You’re complaining? It ain’t your tooth dat’s paying for it.”

They both turned to look at their guitarist.

He was staring out across the endless fields.

“She was there,” he muttered.

Feathers spiraled toward the ground.

“You didn’t have to go and do that,” said the raven, fluttering upright. “You could simply ask.”

SQUEAK.

“All right, but before would have been better.” The raven ruffled its feathers and looked around at the bright landscape under the dark sky.

“This is the place then, is it?” it said. “You’re sure you’re not the Death of Ravens too?”

SQUEAK.

“Shape doesn’t mean much. Anyway, you’ve got a pointy snout. What was it you were wanting?”

The Death of Rats grabbed a wing and pulled.

“All right, all right!”

The raven glanced at a garden gnome. It was fishing in an ornamental pond. The fish were skeletal, but this didn’t seem to interfere with their enjoyment of life, or whatever it was they were enjoying.

It fluttered and hopped along after the rat.

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler stood back.

Jimbo, Crash, Noddy, and Scum looked at him expectantly.

“What’re all the boxes for, Mr. Dibbler?” said Crash.

“Yeah,” said Scum.

Dibbler carefully positioned the tenth box on its tripod.

“You boys seen an iconograph?” he said.

“Oh, yes…I mean, yeah,” said Jimbo. “They’ve got a little demon inside them that paints pictures of things you point it at.”

“This is like that, only for sound,” said Dibbler.

Jimbo squinted past the open lid.

“Can’t see any…I mean, can’t see no demon,” he said.

“That’s because there isn’t one,” said Dibbler. It was worrying him, too. He’d 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.

“Now then…Suck—” he began.

“The Surreptitious Fabric,” said Jimbo.

“What?”

“The Surreptitious Fabric,” Jimbo repeated helpfully. “It’s our new name.”

“Why have you changed it? You haven’t been Suck for twenty-four hours.”

“Yeah, but we thought the name was holding us back.”

“How could it be holding you back? You aren’t moving.” Dibbler glared at them and shrugged. “Anyway, whatever you call yourselves…I want you to sing your best song, what am I saying, in front of these boxes. Not yet…not yet…wait a moment…”

Dibbler retired to the farthest corner of the room and pulled his hat down over his ears.

“All right, you can start,” he said.

He stared in blissful deafness at the group for several minutes until a general cessation of movement suggested that whatever they had been perpetrating had been committed.

Then he inspected the boxes. The wires were vibrating gently, but there was barely any sound.

The Surreptitious Fabric clustered round.

“Is it working, Mr. Dibbler?” said Jimbo.

Dibbler shook his head.

“You boys don’t have what it takes,” he said.

“What does it take, Mr. Dibbler?”

“You’ve got me there. You’ve got something,” he said, at the sight of their dejected faces, “but not a lot of it, whatever it is.”

“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 to 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, granddad,” 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 practiced eye of one who knows the value of good props.

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 doorframe. There was a skull-and-bones motif on it.

“Excellent taste,” he said.

SQUEAK. SQUEAK.

“Well, anyone can do plumbing, I expect,” said the raven. “Interesting fact: did you know the lavatory was actually named after Sir Charles Lavatory? Not many people—”

SQUEAK.

The Death of Rats pushed at the big door leading to the kitchen. It swung open with a creak but, here again, there was something not quite right. A listener had the sense that the creak had been added by someone who, feeling that a door like that with a door surround like that ought to creak, had inserted one.

Albert was washing up at the stone sink and staring at nothing.

“Oh,” he said, turning, “it’s you. What’s this thing?”

“I’m a raven,” said the raven, nervously. “Incidentally, one of the most intelligent birds. Most people would say it’s the mynah bird, but—”

SQUEAK!

The raven ruffled its feathers.

“I’m here as an interpreter,” it said.

“Has he found him?” said Albert.

The Death of Rat squeaked at length.

“Looked everywhere. No sign,” said the raven.

“Then he don’t want to be found,” said Albert. He smeared the grease on a plate with a skull pattern on it. “I don’t like that.”

SQUEAK.

“The rat says that’s not the worst thing,” said the raven. “The rats says you ought to know what the granddaughter has been doing…”

The rat squeaked. The raven talked.

The plate shattered on the sink.

“I knew it!” Albert shouted. “Saving him! She hasn’t got the faintest idea! Right! I’m going to sort this out. The Master thinks he can slope off, eh? Not from old Albert! You two wait here!”

There were already posters up in Pseudopolis. News travels fast, especially when C.M.O.T. Dibbler is paying for the horses…

“Hello, Pseudopolis!”

They had to call out the City Watch. They had to organize a bucket chain from the river. Asphalt had to stand outside Buddy’s dressing room with a club. With a nail in it.

Albert, in front of a scrap of mirror in his bedroom, brushed his hair furiously. It was white. At least, long ago it was white. Now it was the color of a tobacco addict’s index finger.

“It’s my duty, that’s what it is,” he muttered. “Don’t know where he’d be without me. Maybe he does remember the future, but he always gets it wrong! Oh, he can go on worrying about the eternal verities, but who has to sort it out when all’s said and done…Muggins, that’s who.”

He glared at himself in the mirror.

“Right!” he said.

There was a battered shoe box under the bed. Albert pulled it out very, very carefully and took the top off. It was half-full of cotton wool; nestling in the wool, like a rare egg, was a lifetimer.

Engraved on it was the name: Alberto Malich.

The sand inside was frozen, immobile, in midpour. There wasn’t much left in the top bulb.

No time passed, here.

It was part of the Arrangement. He worked for Death, and time didn’t pass, except when he went into the World.

There was a scrap of paper by the glass. The figures “91” had been written at the top, but lower numbers trailed down the page after it. 73…68…37…19.

Nineteen!

He must have been daft. He’d let his life leak away by hours and minutes, and there had been a lot more of them lately. There’d been all that business with the plumber, of course. And shopping. The Master didn’t like to go shopping. It was hard to get served. And Albert had taken a few holidays, because it was nice to see the sun, any sun, and feel wind and rain; the Master did his best, but he could never get them right. And decent vegetables, he couldn’t do them properly either. They never tasted grown.

Nineteen days left in the world. But more than enough.

Albert slipped the lifetimer into his pocket, put on an overcoat, and stamped back down the stairs.

“You,” he said, pointing to the Death of Rats. “You can’t sense a trace of him? There must be something. Concentrate.”

SQUEAK.

“What did he say?”

“He said all he can remember is something about sand.”

“Sand,” said Albert. “All right. Good start. We search all the sand.”

SQUEAK?

“Wherever the Master is, he’ll make an impression.”

Cliff awoke to a swish-swish sound. The shape of Glod was outlined in the light of dawn, wielding a brush.

“What’re you doing, dwarf?”

“I got Asphalt to get some paint,” said Glod. “These rooms are a disgrace.”

Cliff raised himself on his elbows and looked around.

“What do you call der color on der door?”

“Eau-de-nil.”

“Nice.”

“Thank you,” said Cliff.

“The curtains are good, too.”

The door creaked open. Asphalt came in, with a tray, and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Oh, sorry,” he said.

“I’ll paint over the mark,” said Glod.

Asphalt put the tray down, trembling with excitement.

“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 you 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. Nice curtains, by the way.”

All three of them looked at Buddy.

“He hasn’t moved,” said Glod. “Flopped down right after the show and out like a light.”

“He was certainly leaping around last night,” said Cliff.

Buddy continued to snore gently.

“When we get back,” said Glod, “we ought to have a nice holiday somewhere.”

“Dat’s right,” said Cliff. “If we get out of dis alive, I’m going to put my rock kit on my back and take a long walk, and der first time someone says to me ‘what are dem things on your back?’ dat’s where I’m gonna settle down.”

Asphalt peered down into the street.

“Can you all eat fast?” he said. “Only there’s some men in uniform out here. With shovels.”

Back in Ankh-Morpork, Mr. Clete was astonished.

“But we hired you!” he said.

“The term is ‘retained,’ not ‘hired,’” said Lord Downey, head of the Assassins’ Guild. He looked at Clete with an expression of unconcealed distaste. “Unfortunately, however, we can no longer entertain your contract.”

“They’re musicians,” said Clete. “How hard can they be to kill?”

“My associates are somewhat reluctant to talk about it,” said Lord Downey. “They seem to feel that the clients are protected in some way. Obviously, we will return the balance of your fee.”

“Protected,” muttered Clete, as they stepped thankfully through the archway of the Assassins’ Guild.

“Well, I told you what it was like in the Drum when—” Satchelmouth began.

“That’s just superstition,” snapped Clete. He glanced up at a wall, where three Festival posters flaunted their primary colors.

“It was stupid of you to think Assassins would be any good outside the city,” muttered Clete.

“Me? I never—”

“Get them more than five miles from a decent tailor and a mirror and they go all to pieces,” Clete added.

He stared at the poster.

“Free,” he muttered. “Did you put it about that anyone who plays at this Festival is right out of the Guild?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t think they’re worrying, sir. I mean, some of ’em have been getting together, sir. See, they say since there’s a lot more people want to be musicians than we’ll allow in the Guild, then we should—”

“That’s mob rule!” said Clete. “Banding together to force unacceptable rules on a defenseless city!”

“Trouble is, sir,” said Satchelmouth, “if there’s a lot of them…if they think of talking to the palace…well, you know the Patrician, sir…”

Clete nodded glumly. Any Guild was powerful just so long as it self-evidently spoke for its constituency. He thought of hundreds of musicians flocking to the palace. Hundreds of non-Guild musicians…

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

The only glimmer of hope was that they’d all be too busy messing around with music to think about the bigger picture. It had certainly worked for Clete.

Then he remembered that the blasted Dibbler man was involved. Expecting Dibbler not to think about anything concerning money was like expecting rocks not to think about gravity.

“Hello? Albert?”

Susan pushed open the kitchen door. The huge room was empty.

“Albert?”

She tried upstairs. There was her own room, and there was a corridor of doors that didn’t open and possibly never could—the doors and frames had an all-in-one, molded-together look. Presumably Death had a bedroom, although proverbially Death never slept. Perhaps he just lay in bed reading.

She tried the handles until she found one that turned.

Death did have a bedroom.

He’d got many of the details right. Of course. After all, he saw quite a lot of bedrooms. In the middle of the acres of floor was a large four-poster bed, although when Susan gave it an experimental prod it turned out that the sheets were as solid as rock.

There was a full-length mirror, and a wardrobe. She had a look inside, just in case there was a selection of robes, but there was nothing in there except a few old shoes in the bottom. ^*

A dressing table held a jug-and-basin set with a motif of skulls and omegas, and a variety of bottles and other items.

She picked them up, one by one. After-shave lotion. Pomade. Breath freshener. A pair of silverbacked hairbrushes.

It was all rather sad. Death clearly had picked up an idea of what a gentleman should have on his dressing table, without confronting one or two fundamental questions.

Eventually she found a smaller, narrower staircase.

“Albert?”

There was a door at the top.

“Albert? Anyone?”

It’s not actually barging in if I call out first, she told herself. She pushed open the door.

It was a very small room. Really small. It contained a few small sticks of bedroom furniture and a small narrow bed. A small bookcase contained a handful of small, uninteresting-looking books. There was a piece of ancient paper on the floor which, when Susan picked it up, turned out to be covered with numbers, all crossed out except the last one, which was: 19.

One of the books was Gardening In Difficult Conditions.

She went back down to the study. She’d known that there was no one in the house. There was a dead feeling in the air.

There was the same feeling in the gardens. Death could create most things, except for plumbing. But he couldn’t create life itself. That had to be added, like yeast in bread. Without it, everything was beautifully neat and tidy and boring, boring, boring.

This is what it must have been like, she thought. And then, one day, he adopted my mother. He was curious.

She took the path through to the orchard again.

And when I was born mum and dad were so afraid that I felt at home here they brought me up to be…well…a Susan. What kind of name is that for Death’s granddaughter? A girl like that should have better cheekbones, straight hair, and a name with Vs and Xs in it.

And there, once again, was the thing he’d made for her. All by himself. Working it all out from first principles…

A swing. A simple swing.

It was already burning hot in the desert between Klatch and Hersheba.

The air shimmied, and then there was a pop. Albert appeared on a sand dune. There was a claybrick fort on the horizon.

“The Klatchian Foreign Legion,” he muttered, as sand began its inexorable progress into his boots.

Albert trudged toward it with the Death of Rats sitting on his shoulder.

He knocked on the door, which had a number of arrows in it. After a while a small hatch slid back.

“What do you want, offendi?” said a voice from somewhere behind it.

Albert held up a card.

“Have you seen someone who didn’t look like this?” he demanded.

There was silence.

“Then let’s say: have you seen some mysterious stranger who didn’t talk about his past?” said Albert.

“This is the Klatchian Foreign Legion, offendi. People don’t talk about their past. They join up to…to…”

It dawned on Albert as the pause lengthened that it was up to him to get the conversation going again.

“Forget?”

“Right. Forget. Yes.”

“So have you have had any recent recruits who were a little, shall we say, odd?”

“Might have done,” said the voice slowly. “Can’t remember.”

The hatchway slammed shut.

Albert hammered on it again. The hatchway opened.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Are you sure you can’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

Albert took a deep breath.

“I demand to see your commanding officer!”

The hatch shut. The hatch opened.

“Sorry. It appears that I am my commanding officer. You’re not a D’reg or a Hershebian, are you?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m…pretty sure I must have done. Once. You know how it is…head like…thing, you know…With holes in…You drain lettuce in it…er…”

There was the sound of bolts being pulled back, and a wicket door opened in the gateway.

The possible officer was a sergeant, insofar as Albert was at all familiar with Klatchian ranks. He had the look about him of someone who, among the things he couldn’t remember, would include a good night’s sleep. If he could remember to.

There were a few other Klatchian soldiers inside the fort, sitting or, just barely, standing. Many were bandaged. And there was a rather greater number of soldiers slumped or lying on the packed sand who’d never need a night’s sleep ever again.

“What’s been happening here?” said Albert. His tone was so authoritative that the sergeant found himself saluting.

“We were attacked by D’regs, sir,” he said, swaying slightly. “Hundreds of them! They outnumbered us…er…what’s the number after nine? Got a one in it.”

“Ten.”

“Ten to one, sir.”

“I see you survived, though,” said Albert.

“Ah,” said the sergeant. “Yes. Er. Yes. That’s where it all gets a bit complicated, in fact. Er. Corporal? That’s you. No, you just next to him. The one with the two stripes?”

“Me?” said a small fat soldier.

“Yes. Tell him what happened.”

“Oh. Right. Er. Well, the bastards had shot us full of arrows, right? An’ it looked like it was all up with us. Then someone suggested sticking bodies up on the battlements with their spears and crossbows and everything so’s the bastards’d think we was still up to strength—”

“It’s not an original idea, mind you,” said the sergeant. “Been done dozens of times.”

“Yeah,” said the corporal awkwardly. “That’s what they must’ve thought. And then…and then…when they was galloping down the sand dunes…when they was almost on us, laughing and everything, saying stuff like ‘that old trick again’…someone shouted fire and they did.”

“The dead men—?”

“I joined the Legion to…er…you know, with your mind…” the corporal began.

“Forget?” said Albert.

“That’s right. Forget. And I’ve been getting good at it. But I’m not going to forget my old mate Nudger Malik stuck full of arrows and still giving the enemy what for,” said the corporal.

“Not for a long time. I’m going to give it a try, mind you.”

Albert looked up at the battlements. They were empty.

“Someone formed ’em up in formation and they all marched out, afterwards,” said the corporal. “And I went out to look later just now and there was just graves. They must have dug them for one another…”

“Tell me,” said Albert, “who is this ‘someone’ to whom you keep referring?”

The soldiers looked at one another.

“We’ve just been talking about that,” said the sergeant. “We’ve been trying to remember. He was in…the Pit…when it started…”

“Tall, was he?” said Albert.

“Could have been tall, could have been tall,” nodded the corporal. “He had a tall voice, certainly.” He looked puzzled at the words coming out of his own mouth.

“What did he look like?”

“Well, he had a…with…and he was about…more or less a…”

“Did he look…loud and deep?” said Albert.

The corporal grinned with relief. “That’s him,” he said. “Private…Private…Beau…Beau…can’t quite remember his name…”

“I know that when he walked out of the…” the sergeant began, and began to snap his fingers irritably,”…thing you open and shut. Made of wood. Hinges and bolts on it. Thank you. Gate. That’s right…gate. When he went out of the gate he said…what was it he said, corporal?”

“He said ‘EVERY LAST DETAIL,’ sir.”

Albert looked around the fort.

“So he’s gone.”

“Who?”

“The man you were just telling me about.”

“Oh. Yes. Er. Have you any idea who he was, offendi? I mean, it was amazing…talk about morale…”

“Esprit de corpse?” said Albert, who could be nasty at times. “I suppose he didn’t say where he was going next?”

“Where who was going next?” said the sergeant, wrinkling his forehead in honest inquiry.

“Forget I asked,” said Albert.

He took a last look round the little fort. It probably didn’t matter much in the history of the world whether it survived or not, whether the dotted line on the map went one way or the other. Just like the Master to tinker with things…

Sometimes he tries to be human, too, he thought. And he makes a pig’s ear out of it.

“Carry on, sergeant,” he said, and wandered back into the desert.

The legionnaires watched him disappear over the dunes, and then got on with the job of tidying up the fort.

“Who d’you think he was?”

“Who?”

“The person you just mentioned.”

“Did I?”

“Did you what?”

Albert crested a dune. From here the dotted line was just visible, winding treacherously across the sand.

SQUEAK.

“You and me both,” said Albert.

He removed an extremely grubby handkerchief from a pocket, knotted it in all four corners, and put it on his head.

“Right,” he said, but there was a trace of uncertainty in his voice. “Seems to me we’re not being logical about this.”

SQUEAK.

“I mean, we could be chasing him all over the place.”

SQUEAK.

“So maybe we ought to think about this.”

SQUEAK.

“Now…if you were on the Disc, definitely feeling a bit strange, and could go absolutely anywhere, anywhere at all…where would you go?”

SQUEAK?

“Anywhere at all. But somewhere where no one remembers your name.”

The Death of Rats looked around at the endless, featureless, and above all dry desert.

SQUEAK?

“You know, I think you’re right.”

It was in an apple tree.

He built me a swing, Susan remembered.

She sat and stared at the thing.

It was quite complicated. Insofar as the thinking behind it could be inferred from the resulting construction, it had run like this:

Clearly a swing should be hung from the stoutest branch.

In fact—safety being paramount—it would be better to hang it from the two stoutest branches, one to each rope.

They had turned out to be on opposite sides of the tree.

Never go back. That was part of the logic. Always press on, step by logical step.

So…he’d removed about six feet from the middle of the tree’s trunk, thus allowing the swing to, well, swing.

The tree hadn’t died. It was still quite healthy.

However, the lack of a major section of trunk had presented a fresh problem. This had been overcome by the addition of two large props under the branches, a little farther out from the ropes of the swing, keeping the whole top of the tree at about the right height off the ground.

She remembered how she’d laughed, even then. And he’d stood there, quite unable to see what was wrong.

And then she saw it all, all laid out.

That was how Death worked. He never understood exactly what he was doing. He’d do something, and it would turn out wrong. Her mother: suddenly he had a grown woman on his hands and didn’t know what to do next. So he did something else to make it right, which made it more wrong. Her father. Death’s apprentice! And when that went wrong, and its potential wrongness was built right into it, he did something else to make it right.

He’d turned over the hourglass.

After that, it was all a matter of math.

And the Duty.

“Hello…hells, Glod, tell me where we are…Sto Lat! Yay!”

It was an even bigger audience. There’d been more time for the posters to be up, more time for the word of mouth from Ankh-Morpork. And, the band realized, a solid core of people had followed them from Pseudopolis.

In a brief break between numbers, just before the bit where people started leaping around on the furniture, Cliff leaned over to Glod.

“You see dat troll in der front row?” he said. “The one Asphalt’s jumping on der fingers of?”

“The one that looks like a spoil heap?”

“She was in Pseudopolis,” said Cliff, beaming. “She keeps looking at me!”

“Go for it, lad,” said Glod, emptying the spit from his horn. “In like Flint, eh?”

“You think she’s one of dem groupies Asphalt told us about?”

“Could be.”

Other news had traveled fast, too. Dawn saw another redecorated hotel room, a royal proclamation from Queen Keli that the band was to be out of the city in one hour on pain of pain, and one more rapid exit.

Buddy lay in the cart as it bumped over the cobbles toward Quirm.

She hadn’t been there. He’d scanned the audience on both nights, and she hadn’t been there. He’d even got up in the middle of the night and walked through the empty streets, in case she was looking for him. Now he wondered if she existed. If it came to that, he was only half-certain that he existed, except for the times when he was onstage.

He half listened to the conversation from the others.

“Asphalt?”

“Yes, Mr. Glod?”

“Cliff and me can’t help noticing something.”

“Yes, Mr. Glod?”

“You’ve been carrying a heavy leather bag around, Asphalt.”

“Yes, Mr. Glod.”

“It was a bit heavier this morning, I think.”

“Yes, Mr. Glod.”

“It’s got the money in it, yes?”

“Yes, Mr. Glod.”

“How much?”

“Er. Mr. Dibbler said I wasn’t to worry you with money stuff,” said Asphalt.

“We don’t mind,” said Cliff.

“That’s right,” said Glod. “We want to worry.”

“Er.” Asphalt licked his lips. There was something deliberate in Cliff’s manner. “About two thousand dollars, Mr. Glod.”

The cart bounced on for a while. The landscape had changed a little. There were hills, and the farms were smaller.

“Two thousand dollars,” said Glod. “Two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars.”

“Why d’you keeping saying two thousand dollars?” said Cliff.

“I’ve never had a chance to say two thousand dollars.”

“Just don’t like it so loud.”

“TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!”

“Ssh!” said Asphalt, desperately, as Glod’s shout echoed off the hills. “This is bandit country!”

Glod eyed the satchel. “You’re telling me,” he said.

“I don’t mean Mr. Dibbler!”

“We’re on the road between Sto Lat and Quirm,” said Glod patiently. “This isn’t the Ramtops road. This is civilization. They don’t rob you on the road in civilization.” He glanced darkly at the satchel again. “They wait until you’ve got into the cities. That’s why it’s called civilization. Hah, can you tell me the last time anyone was ever robbed on this road?”

“Friday, I believe,” said a voice from the rocks. “Oh, bugg—”

The horses reared up and then galloped forward. Asphalt’s crack of the whip had been an almost instinctive reaction.

They didn’t slow down until they were several miles farther along the road.

“Just shut up about money, all right?” hissed Asphalt.

“I’m a professional musician,” said Glod. “Of course I think about money. How far is it to Quirm?”

“A lot less now,” said Asphalt. “A couple of miles.”

And after the next hill the city lay before them, nestling in its bay.

There was a cluster of people at the town’s gates, which were closed. Afternoon sunlight glittered off helmets.

“What do you call them long sticks with axes on the end?” said Asphalt.

“Pikes,” said Buddy.

“There’s certainly a lot of them,” said Glod.

“Dey can’t be for us, can dey?” said Cliff. “We’re only musicians.”

“And I can see some men in long robes and gold chains and things,” said Asphalt.

“Burghers,” said Glod.

“You know that horseman that passed us this morning…” said Asphalt. “I’m thinking that maybe news travels.”

“Yes, but we didn’t break up dat theater,” said Cliff.

“Well, you only gave them six encores,” said Asphalt.

“We didn’t do all dat rioting in der streets.”

“I’m sure the men with the pointy blades will understand that.”

“Maybe dey don’t want der hotels redecorated. I said it was a mistake, orange curtains with yellow wallpaper.”

The cart came to a halt. A rotund man with a tricorn hat and a fur-trimmed cloak scowled uncomfortably at the band.

“Are you the musicians known as the Band With Rocks In?” he said.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” said Asphalt.

“I am the mayor of Quirm. According to the laws of Quirm, Music With Rocks In cannot be played in the city. Look, it says so right here…”

He flourished a scroll; Glod caught it.

“That ink looks wet to me,” he said.

“Music With Rocks In represents a public nuisance, is proven to be injurious to health and morals and causes unnatural gyrations of the body,” said the man, pulling the scroll back.

“You mean we can’t come into Quirm?” said Glod.

“You can come in if you must,” said the mayor. “But you’re not to play.”

Buddy stood up on the cart.

“But we’ve got to play,” he said. The guitar swung around on its strap. He gripped the neck and raised his strumming hand threateningly.

Glod looked around in desperation. Cliff and Asphalt had put their hands over their ears.

“Ah!” he said. “I think what we have here is an occasion for negotiation, yes?”

He got down from the cart.

“I expect what your worship hasn’t heard of,” he said, “is the music tax.”

“What music tax?” said Asphalt and the mayor together.

“Oh, it’s the latest thing,” said Glod. “On account of the popularity of Music With Rocks In. Music tax, fifty pence a ticket. Must have amounted to, oh, $250 dollars in Sto Lat, I reckon. More than twice that in Ankh-Morpork, of course. The Patrician thought it up.”

“Really? Sounds like Vetinari right enough,” said the mayor. He rubbed his chin. “Did you say $250 dollars in Sto Lat? Really? And that place is hardly any size.”

A watchman with a feather in his helmet saluted nervously.

“Excuse me, your worship, but the note from Sto Lat did say—”

“Just a minute,” said the mayor testily. “I’m thinking…”

Cliff leaned down.

“Dis is bribery, is it?” he whispered.

“This is taxation,” said Glod.

The watchman saluted again.

“But really, sir, the guards at—”

“Captain,” snapped the mayor, still staring thoughtfully at Glod, “this is politics!”

“As well?” said Cliff.

“And to show goodwill,” said Glod, “it’d be a good idea if we paid the tax before the performance, don’t you think?”

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

“Your worship, the message said—”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars,” said Glod.

“Your worship—”

“Now, Captain,” said the mayor, apparently reaching a decision, “we know that folk are a bit odd in Sto Lat. It’s only music, after all. I said I thought it was an odd note. I can’t see the harm in music. And these young me—people are clearly very successful,” he added. This obviously carried a lot of weight with the mayor, as it does with many people. No one likes a poor thief.

“Yes,” he went on, “it’d be just like the Lats to try that on us. They think we’re simple just because we live out here.”

“Yes, but the Pseudopo—”

“Oh, them. Stuck-up bunch. Nothing wrong with a bit of music, is there? Especially,” the mayor eyed Glod, “when it’s for the civic good. Let ’em in, Captain.”

Susan saddled up.

She knew the place. She’d even seen it once. They’d put a new fence along the road now, but it was still dangerous.

She knew the time, too.

Just before they called it Dead Man’s Curve.

“Hello, Quirm!”

Buddy struck a chord. And a pose. A faint white glow, like the glitter of cheap sequins, outlined him.

“Uh-huh-huh!”

The cheering became the familiar wall of sound.

I thought we were going to get killed by people who didn’t like us, Glod thought. Now I think it’s possible to be killed by people who love us…

He looked around carefully. There were guards around the walls; the captain had been no fool. I just hope Asphalt put the horse and cart outside like I asked him…

He glanced at Buddy, sparkling in the limelight.

A couple of encores and then down the back stairs and away, Glod thought. The big leather satchel had been chained to Cliff’s leg. Anyone snatching it would find themselves towing one ton of drummer.

I don’t even know what we’re going to play, thought Glod. I never do. I just blow and…there it is. You can’t tell me that’s right.

Buddy whirled his arm liked a discus thrower and a chord sprang away and into the ears of the audience.

Glod raised the horn to his lips. The sound that emerged was like burning black velvet in a windowless room.

Before the Music With Rocks In spell filled his soul, he thought: I’m going to die. That’s part of the music. I’m going to die really soon. I can feel it. Every day. It’s getting closer…

He glanced at Buddy again. The boy was scanning the audience, as if he was looking for someone in the screaming throng.

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).

They played with heart and especially with soul.

They got out after the ninth encore. The crowd was still stamping its feet for more as they climbed through the privy window and dropped into the alley.

Asphalt emptied a sack into the leather satchel. “Another seven hundred dollars!” he said, helping them onto the cart.

“Right, and we get ten dollars each,” said Glod.

“You tell Mr. Dibbler,” said Asphalt, as the horses’ hooves clattered toward the gates.

“I will.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Buddy. “Sometimes you do it for the money, but sometimes you do it for the show.”

“Hah! That’ll be the day.” Glod fumbled under the seat. Asphalt had stashed two crates of beer there.

“There’s the Festival tomorrow night,” rumbled Cliff. The gate arch passed above them. They could still hear the stamping from here.

“After that we’ll have a new contract,” said the dwarf. “With lots of zeroes in it.”

“We got zeroes now,” said Cliff.

“Yeah, but they ain’t got many numbers in front of them. Eh, Buddy?”

They looked around. Buddy was asleep, the guitar clutched to his chest.

“Out like a candle,” said Glod.

He turned back again. The road stretched ahead of them, pale in the starlight.

“You said you just wanted to work,” said Cliff. “You said you didn’t want to be famous. How’d you like it, having to worry about all dat gold, and having girls throw deir chain mail at you?”

“I’d just have to put up with it.”

“I’d like a quarry,” said the troll.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Heart-shaped.”

A dark, stormy night. A coach, horses gone, plunged through the rickety, useless fence and dropped, tumbling into the gorge below. It didn’t even strike an outcrop of rock before it hit the dried riverbed far below, and erupted into fragments. Then the oil from the coach lamps ignited and there was a second explosion, out of which rolled—because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy—a burning wheel.

What was strange to Susan was that she felt nothing. She could think sad thoughts, because in the circumstances they had to be sad. She knew who was in the coach. But it had already happened. There was nothing she could do to stop it, because if she’d stopped it, it wouldn’t have happened. And she was here watching it happen. So she hadn’t. So it had. She felt the logic of the situation dropping into place like a series of huge leaden slabs.

Perhaps there was somewhere where it hadn’t happened. Perhaps the coach had skidded the other way, perhaps there had been a convenient rock, perhaps it hadn’t come this way at all, perhaps the coachman had remembered about the sudden curve. But those possibilities could only exist if there was this one.

This wasn’t her knowledge. It flowed in from a mind far, far older.

Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

She rode Binky into the shadows by the cliff road, and waited. After a minute or two there was a clattering of stones and a horse and rider came up an almost vertical path from the riverbed.

Binky’s nostrils flared. Parapsychology has no word for the uneasy feeling you have when you’re in the presence of yourself. ^*

Susan watched Death dismount and stand looking down at the riverbed, leaning on his scythe.

She thought: but he could have done something.

Couldn’t he?

The figure straightened, but did not turn around.

YES. I COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING.

“How…how did you know I was here…?”

Death waved a hand irritably.

I REMEMBER YOU. AND NOW UNDERSTAND THIS: YOUR PARENTS KNEW THAT THINGS MUST HAPPEN. EVERYTHING MUST HAPPEN SOMEWHERE. DO YOU NOT THINK I SPOKE TO THEM OF THIS? BUT I CANNOT GIVE LIFE. I CAN ONLY GRANT…EXTENSION. CHANGELESSNESS. ONLY HUMANS CAN GIVE LIFE. AND THEY WANTED TO BE HUMAN, NOT IMMORTAL. IF IT HELPS YOU, THEY DIED INSTANTLY. INSTANTLY.

I’ve got to ask, Susan thought. I’ve got to say it. Or I’m not human.

“I could go back and save them…?” Only the faintest tremor suggested that the statement was a question.

SAVE? FOR WHAT? A LIFE THAT HAS RUN OUT? SOME THINGS END. I KNOW THIS. SOMETIMES I HAVE THOUGHT OTHERWISE. BUT…WITHOUT DUTY, WHAT AM I? THERE HAS TO BE A LAW.

He climbed into the saddle and, still without turning to face her, spurred Binky out and over the gorge.

There was a haystack behind a livery stable in Phedre Road. It bulged for a moment, and there was a muffled swearing.

A fraction of a second later there was a bout of coughing and another, much better, swearword inside a grain silo down near the cattle market.

Very shortly after that some rotten floorboards in an old feed store in Short Street exploded upward, followed by a swearword that bounced off a flour sack.

“Idiot rodent!” bellowed Albert, fingering grain out of his ear.

SQUEAK.

“I should think so! What size do you think I am?”

Albert brushed hay and flour off his coat and walked over to the window.

“Ah,” he said, “let us repair to the Mended Drum, then.”

In Albert’s pocket, sand resumed its interrupted journey from future to past.

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. Then the furniture was moved aside and everything else was swept out of the back door and into the broad brown bosom of the river Ankh where it piled up and, by degrees, sank.

Finally, Hibiscus locked and bolted the big front door…

It wouldn’t shut. He looked down. A boot was wedged in it.

“We’re shut,” he said.

“No, you ain’t.”

The door ground back, and Albert was inside.

“Have you seen this person?” he demanded, thrusting a pasteboard oblong in front of Dunelm’s eyes.

This was a gross breach of etiquette. Dunelm wasn’t in the kind of job where you survived if you told people you’d seen people. Dunelm could serve drinks all night without seeing anyone.

“Never seen him before in my life,” he said, automatically, without even looking at the card.

“You’ve got to help me,” said Albert, “otherwise something dreadful will happen.”

“Push off!”

Albert kicked the door shut behind him.

“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said. On his shoulder the Death of Rats sniffed the air suspiciously.

A moment later Hibiscus was having his chin pressed firmly into the boards of one of his tables.

“Now, I know he’d come in here,” said Albert, who wasn’t even breathing heavily, “because everyone does, sooner or later. Have another look.”

“That’s a Caroc card,” said Hibiscus indisctinctly. “That’s Death!”

“That’s right. He’s the one on the white horse. You can’t miss him. Only he wouldn’t look like that in here, I expect.”

“Let me get this straight,” said the landlord, trying desperately to wriggle out of the iron grip. “You want me to tell you if I’ve seen someone who doesn’t look like that?”

“He’d have been odd. Odder than most.” Albert thought for a moment. “And he’d have drunk a lot, if I know him. He always does.”

“This is Ankh-Morpork, you know.”

“Don’t be cheeky, or I’ll get angry.”

“You mean you’re not angry now?”

“I’m just impatient. You can try for angry if you like.”

“There was…someone…week or so ago. Can’t remember exactly what he looked like—”

“Ah. That’d be him.”

“Drank me dry, complained about the Barbarian Invader game, got legless, and then…”

“What?”

“Can’t recall. We just threw him out.”

“Out the back door?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s just river out there.”

“Well, most people come round before they sink.”

SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.

“Did he say anything?” said Albert, too busy to pay attention.

“Something about remembering everything, I think. He said…he said being drunk didn’t make him forget. Kept going on about doorknobs and…hairy sunlight.”

“Hairy sunlight?”

“Something like that.”

And the pressure on Hibiscus’s arm was suddenly released. He waited a second or two and then, very cautiously, turned his head.

There was no one behind him.

Very carefully, Hibiscus bent down to look under the tables.

Albert stepped out into the dawn and, after some fumbling, produced his box. He opened it and glanced at his lifetimer, then snapped the lid shut.

“All right,” he said. “What next?”

SQUEAK!

“What?”

And someone hit him across the head.

It wasn’t a killing stroke. Timo Laziman of the Thieves’ Guild knew what happened to thieves who killed people. The Assassins’ Guild came and talked briefly to them—in fact, all they said was “Goodbye.”

All he’d wanted to do was knock the old man out so that he could rifle his pockets.

He’d not expected the sound as the body hit the ground. It was like the tinkle of broken glass, but with unpleasant overtones that carried on echoing in Timo’s ears long after they should have stopped.

Something leapt from the body and whirred into his face. Two skeletal claws grabbed his ears and a bony muzzle jerked forward and hit him hard on the forehead. He screamed and ran for it.

The Death of Rats dropped to the ground again and scurried back to Albert. It patted his face, kicked him frantically a few times, and then, in desperation, bit him on the nose.

Then the rat grabbed Albert’s collar and tried to pull him out of the gutter, but there was a warning tinkle of glass.

The eye sockets turned madly toward the Drum’s closed door. Ossified whiskers bristled.

A moment later Hibiscus opened the door, if only to stop the thunderous knocking.

“I said we’re—”

Someone shot between his legs, paused momentarily to bite him on the ankle, and scuttled toward the back door, nose pressed firmly to the floor.

It was called Hide Park not because people could, but because a hide was once a measure of land capable of being plowed by one man with three-and-one-half oxen on a wet Thursday, and the park was exactly this amount of land, and people in Ankh-Morpork stick to tradition and often to other things as well.

And it had trees, and grass, and a lake with actual fish in it. And, by one of those twists of civic history, it was a fairly safe place. People seldom got mugged in Hide Park. Muggers like somewhere safe to sunbathe, just like everyone else. It was, as it were, neutral territory.

And it was already filling up, even though there was nothing much to see except the workmen still hammering together a large stage by the lake. An area behind it had been walled off with strips of cheap sacking nailed to stakes. Occasionally excited people would try to get in and would be thrown into the lake by Chrysoprase’s trolls.

Among the practicing musicians, Crash and his group were immediately noticeable, partly because Crash had his shirt off so that Jimbo could paint iodine on the wounds.

“I thought you were joking,” he growled.

“I did say it was in your bedroom,” said Scum.

“How’m I going to play my guitar like this?” said Crash.

“You can’t play your guitar anyway,” said Noddy.

“I mean, look at my hand. Look at it.”

They looked at his hand. Jimbo’s mum had put a glove on it after treating the wounds; they hadn’t been very deep, because even a stupid leopard won’t hang around anyone who wants to take its trousers off.

“A glove,” said Crash, in a terrible voice. “Whoever heard of a serious musician with a glove? How can I ever play my guitar with a glove on?”

“How can you ever play your guitar anyway?”

“I don’t know why I put up with you three,” said Crash. “You’re cramping my artistic development. I’m thinking of leaving and forming my own band.”

“No you won’t,” said Jimbo, “because you won’t find anyone even worse than us. Let’s face it. We’re rubbish.”

He was voicing a hitherto unspoken yet shared thought. The other musicians around them were, it was true, quite bad. But that’s all they were. Some of them had some minor musical talent; as for the rest, they merely couldn’t play. They didn’t have a drummer who missed the drums and a bass guitarist with the same natural rhythm as a traffic accident. And they’d generally settled on their name. They might be unimaginative names, like “A Big Troll and Some Other Trolls,” or “Dwarfs With Altitude,” but at least they knew who they were.

“How about We’re A Rubbish Band?” said Noddy, sticking his hands in his pockets.

“We may be rubbish,” snarled Crash, “but we’re Music With Rocks In rubbish.”

“Well, well, and how’s it all going, then?” said Dibbler, pushing his way through the sacking. “It won’t be long now—what’re you doing here?”

“We’re in the program, Mr. Dibbler,” said Crash meekly.

“How can you be in the program when I don’t know what you’re called?” said Dibbler, waving a hand irritably at one of the posters. “Your name up there, is it?”

“We’re probably where it says Ande Supporting Bands,” said Noddy.

“What happened to your hand?” said Dibbler.

“My trousers bit it,” said Crash, glowering at Scum. “Honest, Mr. Dibbler, can’t you give us one more chance?”

“We’ll see,” said Dibbler, and strode away.

He was feeling too cheerful to argue much. The sausages-in-a-bun were selling very fast, but they were just covering minor expenses. There were ways of making money out of Music With Rocks In that he’d never thought of…and C.M.O.T. Dibbler thought of money all the time.

For example, there were the shirts. They were of cotton so cheap and thin that it was practically invisible in a good light and tended to dissolve in the wash. He’d sold six hundred already! At five dollars each! All he had to do was buy them at ten for a dollar from Klatchian Wholesale Trading and pay Chalky half a dollar each to print them.

And Chalky, with un-troll-like initiative, had even printed off his own shirts. They said:

CHALKIES,
12 THE SCOURS

THYNGS DONE.

And people were buying them, paying money to advertise Chalky’s workshop. Dibbler had never dreamed that the world could work like this. It was like watching sheep shear themselves. Whatever was causing this reversal of the laws of commercial practice he wanted in big lumps.

He’d already sold the idea to Plugger the shoemaker in New Cobblers^* and a hundred shirts had just walked out of the shop, which was more than Plugger’s merchandise usually did. People wanted clothes just because they had writing on!

He was making money. Thousands of dollars in a day! And a hundred music traps were lined up in front of the stage, ready to capture Buddy’s voice. If it went on at this rate, in several billion years he’d be rich beyond his wildest dreams!

Long Live Music With Rocks In!

There was only one small cloud in this silver lining.

The Festival was due to start at noon. Dibbler had planned to put on a lot of the small, bad groups first—that is to say, all of them—and finish with The Band. So there was no reason to worry if they weren’t here right now.

But they weren’t here right now. Dibbler was worried.

A tiny dark figure quartered the shores of the Ankh, moving so fast as to be a blur. It zigzagged desperately back and forth, snuffling.

People didn’t see it. But they saw the rats. Black, brown and grey, they were leaving the godowns and wharfs by the river, running over one another’s backs in a determined attempt to get as far away as possible.

A haystack heaved, and gave birth to a Glod.

He rolled out onto the ground, and groaned. Fine rain was drifting over the landscape. Then he staggered upright, looked around at the rolling fields, and disappeared behind a hedge for the moment.

He trotted back a few seconds later, explored the haystack for a while until he found a part that was lumpier than normal, and kicked it repeatedly with his metal-tipped boot.

“Ow!”

“C-flat,” said Glod. “Good morning, Cliff. Hello, world! I don’t think I can stand life in the fast leyline, you know—the cabbages, the bad beer, all those rats pestering you all the time—”

Cliff crawled out.

“I must have had some bad ammonium chloride last night,” he said. “Is der top of my head still on?”

“Yes.”

“Pity.”

They hauled Asphalt out by his boots and brought him round by pounding him repeatedly.

“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. Where’s Buddy?”

The three circled the haystack, prodding at bulges which turned out to be damp hay.

They found him on a small rise in the ground, not very far away. A few holly bushes grew there, carved into curves by the wind. He was sitting under one, guitar on his knees, rain plastering his hair to his face.

He was asleep, and soaking wet.

On his lap, the guitar played raindrops.

“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 rain was slackening off. Cliff glanced at the sky.

“Sun’s high,” he said.

“Oh, no!” said Asphalt. “How long were you asleep?”

“Same as I am awake,” said Cliff.

“It’s almost noon. Where did I leave the horses? Has anyone seen the cart? Someone wake him up!”

A few minutes later they were back on the road.

“An’ you know what?” said Cliff. “We left so quick last night I never did know if she turned up.”

“What was her name?” said Glod.

“Dunno,” said the troll.

“Oh, that’s real love, that is,” said Glod.

“Ain’t you got any romance in your soul?” said Cliff.

“Eyes crossed in a crowded room?” said Glod. “No, not really—”

They were pushed aside as Buddy leaned forward.

“Shut up,” he said. The voice was low and contained no trace whatsover of humor.

“We were only joking,” said Glod.

“Don’t.”

Asphalt concentrated on the road, aware of the general lack of amiability.

“I expect you’re looking forward to the Festival, eh?” he said, after a while.

No one replied.

“I expect there’ll be big crowds,” he said.

There was silence, except for the clatter of the hooves and the rattle of the cart. They were in the hills now, where the road wound alongside a gorge. There wasn’t even a river down there, except in the wettest season. It was a gloomy area. Asphalt felt that it was getting gloomier.

“I expect you’ll really have fun,” he said, eventually.

“Asphalt?” said Glod.

“Yes, Mr. Glod?”

“Watch the road, will you?”

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.

“Don’t you think we should have brought the senior wizards, sir?” said Ponder, struggling to keep up.

“I’m afraid that taking them along in their present frame of mind would only make whatever happens”—Ridcully sought for a useful phrase, and settled for—“happen worse. I’ve insisted they stay in college.”

“How about Drongo and the others?” said Ponder hopefully.

“Would they be any good in the event of a thaumaturgical dimension rip of enormous proportions?” said Ridcully. “I remember poor old Mr. Hong. One minute he was dishing up an order of double cod and mushy peas, the next…”

“Kaboom?” said Ponder.

“‘Kaboom?’” said Ridcully, forcing his way up the crowded street. “Not that I heard tell. More like ‘Aaaaerrrrscream-gristle-gristle-gristle-crack’ and a shower of fried food. Big Mad Adrian and his friends any good when the chips are down?”

“Um. Probably not, Archchancellor.”

“Correct. People shout and run about. That never did any good. A pocket full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten.”

“Nine times out of ten?”

“Correct.”

“How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?”

“Well…there was Mr. Hong…that business with the Thing in the Bursar’s wardrobe…that dragon, you remember…” Ridcully’s lips moved silently as he counted on his fingers. “Nine times, so far.”

“It worked every time, sir?”

“Absolutely! So there’s no need to worry. Gangway! Wizard comin’ through.”

The city gates were open. Glod leaned forward as the cart rumbled in.

“Don’t go straight to the park,” he said.

“But we’re late,” said Asphalt.

“This won’t take long. Go to the Street of Cunning Artificers first.”

“That’s right on the other side of the river!”

“It’s important. We’ve got to pick up something.”

People flocked the streets. This wasn’t unusual, except that this time most of them were moving the same way.

“And you get down in the back of the cart,” said Glod to Buddy. “We don’t want young women trying to rip your clothes off, eh, Buddy…?”

He turned. Buddy had gone to sleep again.

“Speaking for myself—” Cliff began.

“You’ve only got a loincloth,” said Glod.

“Well, dey could grab it, couldn’t dey?”

The cart threaded its way through the streets until it turned into Cunning Artificers.

It was a street of tiny shops. In this street you could have anything made, repaired, crafted, rebuilt, copied, or forged. Furnaces glowed in every doorway; smelters smoked in every backyard. Makers of intricate clockwork eggs worked alongside armourers. Carpenters worked next door to men who carved ivory into tiny shapes so delicate that they used grasshoppers’ legs, cast in bronze, for saws. At least one in every four craftsmen was making tools to be used by the other three. Shops didn’t just abut, they overlapped; if a carpenter had a big table to make, he relied on the goodwill of his neighbors to make space, so that he’d be working at one end of it while two jewelers and a potter were using the other end as a bench. There were shops where you could drop in to be measured in the morning and pick up a complete suit of chain mail with an extra pair of pants in the afternoon.

The cart stopped outside one small shop and Glod leapt down and went inside.

Asphalt heard the conversation:

“Have you done it?”

“Here you are, mister. Right as rain.”

“Will it play? You know I said where you have to have spent a fortnight wrapped in a bullock hide behind a waterfall before you should touch one of these things.”

“Listen, mister, for this kind of money it had me in the shower for five minutes with a chamois leather on me head. Don’t tell me that’s not good enough for folk music.”

There was a pleasant sound, which hung in the air for a moment before being lost in the busy din of the street.

“We said twenty dollars, right?”

“No, you said twenty dollars. I said twenty-five dollars,” said a cunning voice.

“Just a minute, then.”

Glod came out, and nodded at Cliff.

“All right,” he said. “He’s too cunning for me. Cough up.”

Cliff growled, but fumbled for a moment somewhere at the back of his mouth.

They heard the cunning artificer say, “What the hell’s that?”

“A molar. Got to be worth at least—”

“It’ll do.”

Glod came out again with a sack, which he tucked under the seat.

“Okay,” he said. “Head for the park.”

They went in through one of the back gates. Or, at least, tried to. Two trolls barred their way. They had the glossy marble patina of Chrysoprase’s basic gang thugs. He didn’t have henchmen. Most trolls weren’t clever enough to hench.

“Dis is for der bands,” one said.

“Dat’s right,” said the other one.

“We are The Band,” said Asphalt.

“Which one?” said the first troll. “I got a list here.”

“Dat’s right.”

“We’re the Band With Rocks In,” said Glod.

“Hah, you ain’t them. I’ve seen them. Dere’s a guy with this glow round him, and when he plays der guitar it goes—”

Whauauauaummmmm-eeeee-gngngn.

“Dat’s right—”

The chord curled around the cart.

Buddy was standing up, guitar at the ready.

“Oh, wow,” said the first troll. “This are amazing!” He fumbled in his loincloth and produced a dog-eared piece of paper. “You couldn’t write your name down, could you? My boy Clay, he won’t believe I met—”

“Yes, yes,” said Buddy wearily. “Pass it up.”

“Only it not for me, it for my boy Clay—” said the troll, jumping from one foot to the other in excitement.

“How d’you spell it?”

“It don’t matter, he can’t read anyway.”

“Listen,” said Glod, as the cart trundled into the backstage area. “Someone’s already playing. I said we—”

Dibbler hurried up.

“What kept you?” he said. “You’ll be on soon! Right after…Boyz From the Wood. How did it go? Asphalt, come here.”

He pulled the small troll into the shadows at the back of the stage.

“You brought me some money?” he said.

“About three thousand—”

“Not so loud!”

“I’m only whispering it, Mr. Dibbler.”

Dibbler looked around carefully. 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.

“You be sure and keep an eye on it, right? There’s going to be more before this day’s out. I’ll give Chrysoprase his seven hundred dollars and the rest is all prof—” He caught Asphalt’s beady little eye and remembered himself. “Of course, there’s depreciation…overheads…advertising…market research…buns…mustard…basically, I’ll be lucky if I break even. I’m practically cutting me own throat in this deal.”

“Yes, Mr. Dibbler.”

Asphalt peered around the edge of the stage.

“Who’s that playing now, Mr. Dibbler?”

“‘And you.’”

“Sorry, Mr. Dibbler?”

“Only they write it & U,” said Dibbler. He relaxed a little and pulled out a cigar. “Don’t ask me why. The right kind of name for musicians ought to be something like Blondie and His Merry Troubadours. Are they any good?”

“Don’t you know, Mr. Dibbler?”

“It’s not what I call music,” said Dibbler. “When I was a lad we had proper music with real words…‘Summer is icumen in, lewdly sing cuckoo,’ that sort of thing.”

Asphalt looked at & U again.

“Well, it’s got a beat and you can dance to it,” he said, “but they’re not very good. I mean, people are just watching them. They don’t just watch when The Band are playing, Mr. Dibbler.”

“You’re right,” said Dibbler. He looked at the front of the stage. In between the candles were a row of music traps.

“You’d better go and tell them to get ready. I think this lot are running out of ideas.”

“Um. Buddy?”

He looked up from his guitar. Some of the other musicians were tuning theirs, but he’d found he never had to. He couldn’t, anyway. The pegs didn’t move.

“What is it?”

“Um,” said Glod. He waved vaguely at Cliff, who grinned sheepishly and produced the sack from behind his back.

“This is…well, we thought…that is, all of us,” said Glod, “that…well, we saw it, you see, and I know you said it couldn’t be repaired but there’s people in this city that can do just about anything so we asked around, and we knew how much it meant to you, and there’s this man in the Street of Cunning Artificers and he said he thought he could do it and it cost Cliff another tooth but here you are anyway because you’re right, we’re on top of the music business right enough and it’s because of you and we know how much this meant to you so it’s a sort of thank-you present, well, go on then, give it to him.”

Cliff, who’d lowered his arm again as the sentence began to extend, pushed the sack toward the puzzled Buddy.

Asphalt poked his head through the sacking.

“We guys better get on the stage,” he said. “Come on!”

Buddy put down the guitar. He opened the sack, and began to pull at the linen wrappings inside.

“It’s been tuned and everything,” said Cliff helpfully.

The harp gleamed in the sun as the last wrapping came off.

“They can do amazing things with glue and stuff,” said Glod. “I mean, I know you said there wasn’t anyone left in Llamedos that could repair it. But this is Ankh-Morpork. We can fix nearly everything.”

“Please!” said Asphalt, as his head reappeared. “Mr. Dibbler says you’ve got to come, they’ve started to throw things!”

“I don’t know much about strings,” said Glod, “But I had a go. Sounds…kind of nice.”

“I…er…don’t know what to say,” said Buddy.

The chanting was like a hammer.

“I…won this,” said Imp y Celyn, sometimes known as Buddy, in a small, distant world of his own. “With a song. ‘Sioni Bod Da,’ it was. I worked on it alll winter. Alll about…home, you know. And going away, see? And trees and things. The judges were…very plllleased. They said that in fifty years I might realllly understand music.”

He pulled the harp toward him.

Dibbler pushed his way through the rabble of musicians backstage until he found Asphalt.

“Well?” he said. “Where are they?”

“They’re just sitting around talking, Mr. Dibbler.”

“Listen,” said Dibbler. “You hear the crowd? It’s Music With Rocks In they want! If they don’t get it…they’d just better get it, all right? Letting the anticipation build up is all very well but…I want them onstage right now!”

Buddy stared at his fingers. Then he looked up, white faced, at the other bands milling around.

“You…with the guitar…” he said hoarsely.

“Me, sir?”

“Give it to me!”

Every nascent group in Ankh-Morpork was in awe of The Band With Rocks In. The guitarist handed his instrument over with the expression of one passing over a holy item to be blessed.

Buddy stared at it. It was one of Mr. Wheedown’s best.

He struck a chord.

The sound sounded like lead would sound if you could make guitar strings out of it.

“Okay, boys, what’s the problem?” said Dibbler, hurrying toward them. “There’s six thousand ears out there waiting to be filled up with music and you’re still sitting around?”

Buddy handed the guitar back to the musician and swung his own instrument around on its strap. He played a few notes that seemed to twinkle in the air.

“But I can play this,” he said. “Oh, yes.”

“Right, good, now get up there and play it,” said Dibbler.

“Someone else give me a guitar!”

Musicians fell over themselves to hand them to him. He strummed frantically at a couple. But the notes weren’t simply flat. Flat would have been an improvement.

The Musicians’ Guild contingent had managed to secure an area close to the stage by the simple expedient of hitting any encroachers very hard.

Mr. Clete scowled at the stage.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “It’s rubbish. It’s all the same. It’s just noise. What’s so good about it?”

Satchelmouth, who had twice had to stop himself tapping his feet, said, “We haven’t had the main band yet. Er. Are you sure you want to—”

“We’re within our rights,” said Clete. He looked around at the shouting people. “There’s a hot dog seller over there. Anyone else fancy a hot dog? Hot dog?” The Guild men nodded. “Hot dog? Right. That’s three hot d—”

The audience cheered. It wasn’t the way that an audience normally applauds, with it starting at one point and rippling outward, but all at once, every single mouth opening at the same time.

Cliff had knuckled onto the stage. He sat down behind his rocks and looked desperately back toward the wings.

Glod trailed on, blinking in the lights.

And that seemed to be it. The dwarf turned and said something which was lost in the noise, and then stood looking awkward while the cheers gradually subsided.

Buddy came on, staggering slightly as if he’d been pushed.

Up until then Mr. Clete had thought the crowd were yelling. And then he realized that it had been a mere murmur of approval compared to what was happening now.

It went on and on while the boy stood there, head bowed.

“But he’s not doing anything,” Clete shouted into Satchelmouth’s ear. “Why’re they all cheering him for not doing anything?”

“Can’t say, sir,” said Satchelmouth.

He looked around at the glistening, staring, hungry faces, feeling like an atheist who has wandered into Holy Communion.

The applause went on. It redoubled again when Buddy slowly raised his hands to the guitar.

“He’s not doing anything!” screamed Clete.

“He’s got us bang to rights, sir,” Satchelmouth bellowed. “He’s not guilty of playing without belonging to the Guild if he doesn’t play!”

Buddy looked up.

He stared at the audience so intently that Clete craned to see what it was the wretched boy was staring at.

It was nothing. There was a patch of it right in front of the stage. People were packed tight everywhere else but there, right in front of the stage, was a little area of cleared grass. It seemed to rivet Buddy’s attention.

“Uh-huh-huh…”

Clete rammed his hands over his ears but the force of the cheering made his head echo.

And then, very gradually, layer by layer, it died away. It yielded to the sound of thousands of people being very quiet, which was somehow, Satchelmouth thought, a lot more dangerous.

Glod glanced at Cliff, who made a face.

Buddy was still standing, staring at the audience.

If he doesn’t play, Glod thought, then we’ve had it.

He hissed at Asphalt, who sidled over.

“Is the cart ready?”

“Yes, Mr. Glod.”

“You filled up the horses with oats?”

“Just like you said, Mr. Glod.”

“Okay.”

The silence was velvet. And it had that quality of suction found in the Patrician’s study and in holy places and deep canyons, engendering in people a terrible desire to shout or sing or yell their name. It was a silence that demanded: fill me up.

Somewhere in the darkness, someone coughed.

Asphalt heard his name hissed from the side of the stage. With extreme reluctance he sidled over to the darkness, where Dibbler was frantically beckoning him.

“You know that bag?” said Dibbler.

“Yes, Mr. Dibbler. I put it—”

Dibbler held up two small but very heavy sacks.

“Tip these in and be ready to leave in a big hurry.”

“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Dibbler, because Glod said—”

“Do it now!”

Glod looked around. If I throw away the horn and helmet and this chain mail shirt, he thought, I might just get out of here alive. What’s he doing?

Buddy put down the guitar and walked into the wings. He returned before the audience had realized what was happening. He was carrying the harp.

He stood facing the audience.

Glod, who was closest to him, heard him murmur: “Just once? Cwm on? Just one more time? And then I’lll do whatefer you want, see? I’ll pay for it.”

There were a few faint chords from the guitar.

Buddy said, “I mean it, see.”

There was another chord.

“Just once.”

Buddy smiled at a empty space in the audience, and began to play.

Every note was sharp as a bell and as simple as sunlight—so that in the prism of the brain it broke up and flashed into a million colors.

Glod’s mouth hung open. And then the music unfolded in his head. It wasn’t Music With Rocks In, although it used the same doors. 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.^* He remembered life in the caves under Copperhead, before the city had called him, and more than anything else he wanted to be home. He’d never realized that humans could sing hole.

Cliff laid aside his hammers. The same notes crept into his corroded ears, but in his mind they became quarries and moorlands. He told himself, as emotion filled his head with its smoke, that right after this he was going to go back and see how his old mum was, and never leave ever again.

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

The Lecturer in Recent Runes thumped the crystal ball.

“The sound is a bit tinny,” he said.

“Get out of the way, I can’t see,” said the Dean.

Recent Runes sat down again.

They stared at the little image.

“This doesn’t sound like Music With Rocks In,” said the Bursar.

“Shut up,” said the Dean. He blew his nose.

It was sad music. But it waved the sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could but you were still alive.

The Dean, who was as impressionable as a dollop of warm wax, wondered if he could learn to play the harmonica.

The last note faded.

There was no applause. The audience sagged a little, as each individual came down from whatever reflective corner they’d been occupying. One or two of them murmured things like “Yeah, that’s how it is,” or “You an’ me both, brother.” A lot of people blew their noses, sometimes on other people.

And then reality snuck back in, as it always does.

Glod heard Buddy say, very quietly, “Thank you.”

The dwarf leaned sideways and said, out of the corner of his mouth:

“What was that?”

Buddy seemed to shake himself awake.

“What? Oh. It’s called “Sioni Bod Da.” What do you think?”

“It’s got…hole,” said Glod. “It’s definitely got hole.”

Cliff nodded. When you’re a long way from the old familiar mine or mountain, when you’re lost among strangers, when you’re just a great big aching nothingness inside…only then can you really sing hole.

“She’s watching us,” whispered Buddy.

“The invisible girl?” said Glod, staring at the empty grass.

“Yes.”

“Ah, yes. I can definitely not see her. Good. And now, if you don’t play Music With Rocks In this time, we’re dead.”

Buddy picked up the guitar. The strings trembled under his fingers. He felt elated. He’d been allowed to play it in front of them. Everything else was unimportant now. Whatever happened next didn’t matter.

“You ain’t heard nothing yet,” he said.

He stamped his foot.

“One, two, one two three four—”

Glod had time to recognize the tune before the music took him. He’d heard it only a few seconds before. But now it swung.

Ponder peered into his box.

“I think we’re trapping this, Archchancellor,” he said, “But I don’t know what it is.”

Ridcully nodded, and scanned the audience. They were listening with their mouths open. The harp had scoured their souls, and now the guitar was hot-wiring their spines.

And there was an empty patch near the stage.

Ridcully put a hand over one eye and focused until the other eye watered. Then he smiled.

He turned to look at the Musicians’ Guild and saw, to his horror, that Satchelmouth was raising a crossbow. He seemed to be doing it with reluctance; Mr. Clete was prodding him.

Ridcully raised a finger and appeared to scratch his nose.

Even above the sound of the playing he heard the twang as the crossbow’s string broke and, to his secret delight, a yelp from Mr. Clete as a loose end caught his ear. He hadn’t even thought of that.

“I’m just an old softy, that’s my trouble,” Ridcully said to himself. “Hat. Hat. Hat.”

“You know, this was an extremely good idea,” said the Bursar, as the tiny images moved in the crystal ball. “What an excellent way to see things. Could we perhaps have a look at the Opera House?”

“How about the Skunk Club in Brewer Street?” said the Senior Wrangler.

“Why?” said the Bursar.

“Just a thought,” said the Senior Wrangler quickly. “I’ve never been in there at all in any way, you understand.”

“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s really not a proper use of a magic crystal—”

“I can’t think of a better use of a magic crystal,” said the Dean, “than to see people playing Music With Rocks In.”

Mr. Scrub, The Duck Man, Coffin Henry, Arnold Sideways, Foul Ole Ron and Foul Ole Ron’s Smell and Foul Ole Ron’s dog ambled around the edges of the crowd. Pickings had been particularly good. They always were when Dibbler’s hot dogs were on sale. There were some things people wouldn’t eat even under the influence of Music With Rocks In. There were some things even mustard couldn’t disguise.

Arnold gathered up the scraps and put them in a basket on his trolley. There was going to be the prince of a primal soup under the bridge tonight.

The music had poured over them. They ignored it. Music With Rocks In was the stuff of dreams, and there were no dreams under the bridge.

Then they’d stopped, and listened, as new music poured out over the park and took every man and woman and thing by the hand and showed him or her or it the way home.

The beggars stood and listened, mouths open. Someone looking from face to face, if anyone did look at the invisible beggars, would have had to turn away…

Except from Mr. Scrub. You couldn’t turn away there.

When the band were playing Music With Rocks In again the beggars got back down to earth.

Except for Mr. Scrub. He just stood and stared.

The last note rang out.

Then, as the tsunami of applause began to roll, The Band ran off the stage.

Dibbler watched happily from the wings at the other side of the stage. He’d been a bit worried for a while there, but it all seemed back on course now.

Someone tugged at his sleeve.

“What’re they doing, Mr. Dibbler?”

Dibbler turned.

“Scum, isn’t it?” he said.

“It’s Crash, Mr. Dibbler.”

“What they’re doing, Scum, is not giving the audience what they want,” said Dibbler. “Superb business practice. Wait till they’re screaming for it, and then take it away. You wait. By the time the crowd is stamping its feet they’ll come prancing back on again. Superb timing. When you learn that sort of trick, Scum—”

“It’s Crash, Mr. Dibbler.”

“—then maybe you’ll know how to play Music With Rocks In. Music With Rocks In, Scum—”

“—Crash—”

“isn’t just music,” said Dibbler, pulling some cotton wool out of his ears. “It’s lots of things. Don’t ask me how.”

Dibbler lit a cigar. The din made the match flame flicker.

“Any minute now,” he said. “You’ll see.”

There was a fire that had been made of old boots and mud. A grey shape circled it, snuffling excitedly.

“Get on, get on, get on!”

“Mr. Dibbler’s not going to like this,” moaned Asphalt.

“Tough one for Mr. Dibbler,” said Glod, as they hauled Buddy into the cart. “Now I want to see those hooves spark, know what I mean?”

“Head for Quirm,” said Buddy, as the cart jerked into motion. He didn’t know why. It just seemed the right destination.

“Not a good idea,” said Glod. “People’ll probably want to ask questions about that cart I pulled out of the swimming pool.”

“Head toward Quirm!”

“Mr. Dibbler’s really not going to like this,” said Asphalt, as the cart swung out onto the road.

“Any…moment…now,” said Dibbler.

“I expect so,” said Crash. “Because they’re stamping their feet, I think.”

There was indeed a certain thumping under the cheers.

“You wait,” said Dibbler. “They’ll judge it just right. No problem. Akk!”

“You’re supposed to put your cigar in your mouth the other way round, Mr. Dibbler,” said Crash meekly.

The waning moon lit the landscape as the cart bounced out of the gates and along the Quirm road.

“How did you know I’d got the cart made ready?” said Glod, as they landed after a brief flight.

“I didn’t,” said Buddy.

“But you ran out!”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It was…just…time.”

“Why d’you want to go to Quirm?” said Cliff.

“I…I can get a boat home, can’t I?” said Buddy. “That’s right. A boat home.”

Glod glanced at the guitar. This felt wrong. It couldn’t just…and then they’d just walk away…

He shook his head. What could go wrong now?

“Mr. Dibbler’s really not going to like this,” moaned Asphalt.

“Oh, shut up,” said Glod. “I don’t know what he’s got not to like.”

“Well, for a start,” said Asphalt, “the main thing, the thing he won’t like most, is…um…we’ve got the money…”

Cliff reached down under the seat. There was a dull, clinking noise, of the sort made by a lot of gold keeping nice and quiet.

The stage was trembling with the vibration of the stamping. There was some shouting now.

Dibbler turned to Crash and grinned horribly.

“Hey, I’ve just had a great idea,” he said.

A tiny shape swarmed up the road from the river. Ahead of it, the lights of the stage glowed in the dusk.

The Archchancellor nudged Ponder and flourished his staff.

“Now,” he said, “if there’s a sudden rip in reality and horrible screaming Things come through, our job is to—” He scratched his head. “What is it the Dean says? Kick a righteous donkey?”

“Some righteous ass, sir,” said Ponder. “He says kick some righteous ass.”

Ridcully peered at the empty stage.

“I don’t see one,” he said.

The four members of The Band sat up and stared straight ahead, over the moonlit plain.

Finally Cliff broke the silence.

“How much?”

“Best part of five thousand dollars—”

“FIVE THOUSAND DOL—?”

Cliff clamped his huge hand over Glod’s mouth.

“Why?” said Cliff, as the dwarf squirmed.

“MMF MMFMMF MMFMMFS?”

“I got a bit confused,” said Asphalt. “Sorry.”

“We’ll never get far enough,” said Cliff. “You know dat? Not even if we die.”

“I tried to tell you all!” Asphalt moaned. “Maybe…maybe we could take it back?”

“MMF MMF MMF?”

“How can we do dat?”

“MMF MMF MMF?”

“Glod,” said Cliff, in a reasonable tone of voice, “I’m going to take my hand away. And you’re not to shout. Right?”

“Mmf.”

“Okay.”

“TAKE IT BACK? FIVE THOUSAND DOL—mmf-mmfmmf—”

“I suppose some of dat is ours,” said Cliff, tightening his grip.

“Mmf!”

“I know I haven’t had any wages,” said Asphalt.

“Let’s get to Quirm,” said Buddy urgently. “We can take out what’s…ours and send the rest back to him.”

Cliff scratched his chin with his free hand.

“Some of it belongs to Chrysoprase,” said Asphalt. “Mr. Dibbler borrowed some money off him to set up the Festival.”

“We won’t get away from him,” said Cliff, “except if we drive all der way to der Rim and chuck ourselves over. And even den, only maybe.”

“We could explain…couldn’t…we…?” said Asphalt.

A vision of Chrsyoprase’s gleaming marble head formed in their vision.

“Mmf.”

“No.”

“Quirm, then,” said Buddy.

Cliff’s diamond teeth glittered in the moonlight.

“I thought…” he said, “I thought…I heard something on der road back there. Sounded like harness—”

The invisible beggars began to wander away from the park. Foul Ole Ron’s Smell had stayed on for a while, because it was enjoying the music. And Mr. Scrub still hadn’t moved.

“We got nearly twenty sausages,” said Arnold Sideways.

Coffin Henry coughed a cough with bones in it.

“Buggrem!” said Foul Ole Ron, “I told ’em, spying’ on me with rays!”

Something bounded across the trodden turf toward Mr. Scrub, ran up his robe, and grabbed either side of his hood with both paws.

There was the hollow sound of two skulls meeting.

Mr. Scrub staggered backward.

SQUEAK!

Mr. Scrub blinked and sat down suddenly.

The beggars stared down at the little figure jumping up and down on the cobbles. Being of an invisible nature themselves, they were naturally good at seeing things unseen by other men or, in the case of Foul Ole Ron, by any known eyeball.

“That’s a rat,” said The Duck Man.

“Buggrit,” said Foul Ole Ron.

The rat pranced in circles on its hind legs, squeaking loudly. Mr. Scrub blinked again. And Death stood up.

I HAVE TO GO, he said.

SQUEAK!

Death strode away, stopped, and came back. He pointed a skeletal finger at The Duck Man.

WHY, he said, ARE YOU WALKING AROUND WITH THAT DUCK?

“What duck?”

AH. SORRY.

“Listen, how can it go wrong?” said Crash, waving his hands frantically. “It’s got to work. Everyone knows that when you get your big chance because the star is ill or something, then the audience’ll go mad for you. It happens every time, right?”

Jimbo, Noddy, and Scum peered around the curtain at the pandemonium. They nodded uncertainly.

Of course things always went well when you had your big chance.

“We could do ‘Anarchy in Ankh-Morpork,’” said Jimbo doubtfully.

“We haven’t got that right,” said Noddy.

“Yeah, but there’s nothing new about that.”

“I suppose we could give it a try…”

“Excellent!” said Crash. He raised his guitar defiantly. “We can do it! For the sake of sex and drugs and Music With Rocks In!”

He was aware of their disbelieving stares.

“You never said you’d had any drugs,” said Jimbo accusingly.

“If it comes to that,” said Noddy, “I don’t reckon you’ve ever had—”

“One out of three ain’t bad!” shouted Crash.

“Yes it is, it’s only thirty-three per—”

“Shut up!”

People were stamping their feet and clapping their hands derisively.

Ridcully squinted along his staff.

“There was the Holy St. Bobby,” he said. “I suppose he was a righteous ass, come to think about it.”

“Sorry?” said Ponder.

“He was a donkey,” said Ridcully. “Hundreds of years ago. Got made a bishop in the Omnian church for carrying some holy man, I believe. Can’t get more righteous than that.”

“No…no…no…Archchancellor,” said Ponder. “It’s just a sort of military saying. It means…the…you know, sir…backside.”

“I wonder how we tell which bit that is?” said Ridcully. “The creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions have legs and things all over the place.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Ponder wearily.

“Perhaps we’d just better kick everything, to be on the safe side.”

Death caught up with the rat near the Brass Bridge.

No one had disturbed Albert. Since he was in the gutter, he’d become nearly as invisible as Coffin Henry.

Death rolled his sleeve up. His hand moved through the fabric of Albert’s coat as if it was mist.

DAFT OLD FOOL ALWAYS TOOK IT WITH HIM, he muttered. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHAT HE THOUGHT I’D DO WITH IT…

The hand came out, cupping a fragment of curved glass. A pinch of sand glittered on it.

THIRTY-FOUR SECONDS, said Death. He handed the glass to the rat. FIND SOMETHING TO PUT THIS IN. AND DON’T DROP IT.

He stood up, and surveyed the world.

There was the glong-glong-glong noise of an empty beer bottle bouncing on the stones as the Death of Rats trotted back out of the Mended Drum.

Thirty-four seconds of sand orbited slightly erratically inside it.

Death hauled his servant to his feet. No time was passing for Albert. His eyes were glazed, his body clock idled. He hung from his master’s arm like a cheap suit.

Death snatched the bottle from the rat and tilted it gently. A bit of life began to flow.

WHERE IS MY GRANDDAUGHTER? he said. YOU HAVE TO TELL ME. OTHERWISE I CAN’T KNOW.

Albert’s eyes clicked open.

“She’s trying to save the boy, Master!” he said. “She doesn’t know the meaning of the word Duty—”

Death tipped the bottle back. Albert froze in mid-sentence.

BUT WE DO, DON’T WE, said Death bitterly. YOU AND ME.

He nodded to the Death of Rats.

LOOK AFTER HIM, he said.

Death snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened, apart from the click.

ER. THIS IS VERY EMBARRASSING. SHE HAS SOME OF MY POWER. I DO SEEM MOMENTARILY UNABLE TO…ER…

The Death of Rats squeaked helpfully.

NO. YOU LOOK AFTER HIM. I KNOW WHERE THEY’RE GOING. HISTORY LIKES CYCLES.

Death looked at the towers of Unseen University, rising over the rooftops.

AND SOMEWHERE IN THIS TOWN IS A HORSE I CAN RIDE.

“Hold on. Something’s coming…” Ridcully glared at the stage. “What are they?”

Ponder stared.

“I think…they may be human, sir.”

The crowd had stopped stamping its collective feet and watching in a sullen, “this had better be good” silence.

Crash stepped forward with a big mad glossy grin on his face.

“Yes, but any minute they’ll split down the middle and gharstely creatures will come out,” said Ridcully hopefully.

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.”

Ponder looked aghast. “Sir, you’re not telling me you ever—”

“No, but that’s what it’d sound like, sure enough. Exactly like that.”

The crowd hovered, uncertain of this new development.

“Hello, Ankh-Morpork!” said Crash. He nodded at Scum, who hit his drums at the second attempt.

Ande Supporting Bands launched into its first and, in the event, last number. Three last numbers, in fact. Crash was trying for “Anarchy in Ankh-Morpork,” Jimbo had frozen because he couldn’t see himself in a mirror and was playing the only page he could remember from Blert Wheedown’s book, which was the index, and Noddy had got his fingers caught in the strings.

As far as Scum was concerned, tunes’ names were things that happened to other people. He was concentrating on the rhythm. Most people don’t have to. But for Scum, even clapping his hands was an exercise in concentration. So he played in a small contented world of his own, and didn’t even notice the audience rise like a bad meal and hit the stage.

Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs were on duty at the Deosil Gate, sharing a comradely cigarette and listening to the distant roar of the Festival.

“Sounds like a big night,” said Corporal Nobbs.

“Right enough, Sarge.”

“Sounds like some trouble.”

“Good job we’re out of it, Sarge.”

A horse came clattering up the street, its rider struggling to keep on. As it got closer they made out the contorted features of C.M.O.T. Dibbler, riding with the ease of a sack of potatoes.

“Did a cart just go through here?” he demanded.

“Which one, Throat?” said Sergeant Colon.

“What do you mean, which one?”

“Well, there was two,” said the sergeant. “One with a couple of trolls in, and one with Mr. Clete just after that. You know, the Musicians’ Guild—”

“Oh, no!”

Dibbler pummeled the horse into action again and bounced off into the night.

“What was that about?” said Nobby.

“Someone probably owes him a penny,” said Sergeant Colon, leaning on his spear.

There was the sound of another horse approaching. The watchmen flattened themselves against the wall as it thundered past.

It was big, and white. The rider’s black cloak streamed in the wind, as did her hair. There was a rush of wind and then they were gone, out onto the plains.

Nobby stared after it.

“That was her,” he said.

“Who?”

“Susan Death.”

The light in the crystal faded to a dot and winked out.

“That’s three days’ worth of magic I won’t see again,” the Senior Wrangler complained.

“Worth every thaum,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

“Not as good as seeing them live, though,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “There’s something about the way the sweat drips on you.”

“I thought it ended just as it was getting good,” said the Chair. “I thought—”

The wizards went rigid as the howl rang through the building. It was slightly animal but also mineral, metallic, edged like a saw.

Eventually the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, “Of course, just because we’ve heard a spine-chilling bloodcurdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn’t automatically mean there’s anything wrong.”

The wizards looked out into the corridor.

“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!”

“But it might be some terrible emanation!”

“You don’t say?” said the Chair, still accelerating.

“All right, please yourself. That’s the students floor up there.”

“Ah. Er—”

The Chair came down slowly, occasionally glancing fearfully up the stairs.

“Look, nothing can get in,” said the Senior Wrangler. “This place is protected by very powerful spells.”

“That’s right,” said Recent Runes.

“And I’m sure we’ve all been strengthening them periodically, as is our duty,” said the Senior Wrangler.

“Er. Yes. Yes. Of course,” said Recent Runes.

The sound came again. There was a slow, pulsating rhythm in the roar.

“The Library, I think,” said the Senior Wrangler.

“Anyone seen the Librarian lately?”

“He always seems to be carrying something when I see him. You don’t think he’s up to something occult, do you?”

“This is a magical university.”

“Yes, but more occult is what I mean.”

“Keep together, will you?”

“I am together.”

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

“Well, (1), a great big—”

“Shut up!”

The Dean opened the Library door. It was warm, and velvety quiet. Occasionally a book would rustle its pages or clank its chains restlessly.

A silvery light was coming from the stairway to the basement. There was also the occasional “ook.”

“He doesn’t sound very upset,” said the Bursar.

The wizards crept down the steps. There was no mistaking the door—the light streamed from it.

The wizards stepped into the cellar.

They stopped breathing.

It was on a raised dais in the center of the floor, with candles all around it.

It was Music With Rocks In.

A tall dark figure skidded around the corner into Sator Square and, accelerating, pounded through the gateway of Unseen University.

It was seen only by Modo, the dwarf gardener, as he happily wheeled his manure barrow through the twilight. It had been a good day. Most days were, in his experience.

He hadn’t heard about the Festival. He hadn’t heard about Music With Rocks In. Modo 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.

He was by nature a contented dwarf, who took in his short stride all the additional problems of gardening in a high magical environment, such as greenfly, whitefly, and lurching things with tentacles. Proper lawn maintenance could be a real problem when things from another dimension were allowed to slither over it.

Someone pounded across it and disappeared through the doorway of the Library.

Modo looked at the marks and said, “Oh, dear.”

The wizards started breathing again.

“Oh, my,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Rave In…” said the Senior Wrangler.

“Now that’s what I call Music With Rocks In,” sighed the Dean. He stepped forward with the rapt expression of a miser in a gold mine.

The candlelight glittered off black and silver. There was a lot of both.

“Oh, my,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was like some kind of incantation.

“I say, isn’t that my nose-hair mirror?” said the Bursar, breaking the spell. “That’s my nose-hair mirror, I’m sure—”

Except that while the black was black the silver wasn’t really silver. It was whatever mirrors and bits of shiny tin and tinsel and wire the Librarian had been able to scrounge and bend into shape…

“—it’s got the little silver frame…why’s it on that two-wheeled cart? Two wheels one after the other? Ridiculous. It’ll fall over, depend upon it. And where’s the horse going to go, may I ask?”

The Senior Wrangler tapped him gently on the shoulder.

“Bursar? Word to the wizard, old chap.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I think if you don’t stop talking this minute, the Dean will kill you.”

There were two small cart wheels, one behind the other, with a saddle in between them. In front of the saddle was a pipe with a complicated double curve in it, so that someone sitting in the saddle would be able to get a grip.

The rest was junk. Bones and tree branches and a jackdaw’s banquet of geegaws. A horse’s skull was strapped over the front wheel, and feathers and beads hung from every point.

It was junk, but as it stood in the flickering glow it had a dark, organic quality—not exactly life, but something dynamic and disquieting and coiled and potent that was making the Dean vibrate on his feet. 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.

“Is he in love?” said the Bursar.

“Make it go!” said the Dean. “It’s got to go! It’s meant to go!”

“Yes, but what is it?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

“It’s a masterpiece,” said the Dean. “A triumph!”

“Oook?”

“Perhaps you have to push it along with your feet?” whispered the Senior Wrangler.

The Dean shook his head in a preoccupied way.

“We’re wizards, aren’t we?” he said. “I expect we could make it go.”

He walked around the circle. The draft from his studded leather robe made the candle flames waver and the shadows of the thing danced on the wall.

The Senior Wrangler bit his lip. “Not too certain about that,” he said. “Looks like it’s got more than enough magic in it as it is. Is it…er…is it breathing or is that just my imagination?”

The Senior Wrangler spun around and waved a finger at the Librarian.

“You built it?” he barked.

The orang-utan shook his head.

“Oook.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he didn’t build it, he just put it together,” said the Dean, without turning his head.

“Ook.”

“I’m going to sit on it,” said the Dean.

The other wizards felt something draining out of their souls and sudden uncertainty sloshing into its place.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, old chap,” said the Senior Wrangler. “You don’t know where it might take you.”

“Don’t care,” said the Dean. He still didn’t take his eyes off the thing.

“I mean it’s not of this world,” said the Senior Wrangler.

“I’ve been of this world for more than seventy years,” said the Dean, “and it is extremely boring.”

He stepped into the circle and put his hand on the thing’s saddle.

It trembled.

EXCUSE ME.

The tall dark figure was suddenly there, in the doorway, and then in a few strides was in the circle.

A skeletal hand dropped onto the Dean’s shoulder and propelled him gently but unstoppably aside.

THANK YOU.

The figure vaulted into the saddle and reached out for the handlebars. It looked down at the thing it bestrode.

Some situations you had to get exactly right…

A finger pointed at the Dean.

I NEED YOUR CLOTHES.

The Dean backed away.

“What?”

GIVE ME YOUR COAT.

The Dean, with great reluctance, shrugged off his leather robe and handed it over.

Death put it on. That was better…

NOW, LET ME SEE…

A blue glow flickered under his fingers and spread in jagged blue lines, forming a corona at the tip of every feather and bead.

“We’re in a cellar!” said the Dean. “Doesn’t that matter?”

Death gave him a look.

NO.

Modo straightened up, and paused to admire his rose bed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he’d ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful, sometimes. Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word.

The flower bed erupted.

Modo had a brief vision of flames and something arcing into the sky before his vision was blotted out by a rain of beads, feathers, and soft black petals.

He shook his head, and ambled off to fetch his shovel.

“Sarge?”

“Yes, Nobby?”

“You know your teeth…”

“What teeth?”

“The teeth like in your mouth?”

“Oh, right. Yep. What about ’em?”

“How come they fit together at the back?”

There was a pause while Sergeant Colon prodded the recesses of his mouth with his tongue.

“It uh ah—” he began, and untangled himself. “Interesting observation, Nobby.”

Nobby finished rolling a cigarette.

“Reckon we should shut the gates, Sarge?”

“Might as well.”

With the exact minimum amount of effort they swung the huge 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.

“I reckon we should—” Colon began, and then peered down the street.

“What’s that light?” he said. “And what’s making that noise?”

Blue light glittered on the buildings at the end of the long street.

“Sounds like some kind of wild animal,” said Corporal Nobbs.

The light resolved itself into two actinic blue lances.

Colon shaded his eyes.

“Looks like some kind of…horse or something.”

“It’s coming straight for the gates!”

The tortured roar bounced off the houses.

“Nobby, I don’t think it’s gonna stop!”

Corporal Nobbs threw himself flat against the wall. Colon, slightly more aware of the responsibilities of rank, waved his hands vaguely at the approaching light.

“Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

And then picked himself up out of the mud.

Rose petals, feathers, and sparks fell softly around him.

In front of him, a hole in the gates sparkled blue around the edges.

“That’s old oak, that is,” he said vaguely. “I just hope they don’t make us pay for it out of our own money. Did you see who it was, Nobby? Nobby?”

Nobby edged carefully along the wall.

“He…he had a rose in his teeth, Sarge.”

“Yes, but would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

Nobby swallowed.

“If I didn’t, Sarge,” he said, “it’d have to be one hell of an identity parade.”

“I don’t like this, Mr. Glod! I don’t like this!”

“Shut up and steer!”

“But this isn’t the kind of road you’re supposed to go fast on!”

“That’s all right! You can’t see where you’re going anyway!”

The cart went around a corner on two wheels. It was starting to snow, a weak, wet snow that melted as soon as it hit the ground.

“But we’re back in the hills! That’s a drop down there! We’ll go over the side!”

“You want Chrsyoprase to catch us?”

“Giddyup, yah!”

Buddy and Cliff clung to the sides of the cart as it rocked from side to side into the darkness.

“Are they still behind us?” Glod yelled.

“Can’t see anything!” shouted Cliff. “If you stopped der cart, maybe we could hear something?”

“Yeah, but suppose we heard something really up close?”

“Giddyup hiyah!”

“Okay, so how about if we throw der money out?”

“FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?”

Buddy looked over the edge of the cart. Darkness with a certain gulchlike quality, a certain suggestion of depth, was a few feet from the side of the road.

The guitar twanged gently to the rhythm of the wheels. He picked it up in one hand. Strange how it was never silent. You couldn’t silence it even by pressing on the strings heavily with both hands; he’d tried.

There was the harp beside it. The strings were absolutely silent.

“This is daft!” shouted Glod, from the front. “Slow down! You nearly had us over the side that time!”

Asphalt hauled on the reins. The cart slowed, eventually, to walking pace.

“That’s better—”

The guitar screamed. The note was so high that it hit the ears like a needle. The horses jerked nervously in the shafts and then shot forward again.

“Hold them!”

“I am!”

Glod turned around, gripping the back of the seat.

“Throw that thing out!”

Buddy gripped the guitar and stood up, moving his arm back to hurl the thing into the gorge.

He hesitated.

“Throw it out!”

Cliff got to his feet and tried to take the guitar.

“No!”

Buddy whirled it around his head and caught the troll on the chin, knocking him backward.

“No!”

“Glod, slow down—”

And a white horse was overtaking them. A hooded shape leaned over and grabbed the reins.

The cart hit a stone and was airborne for a moment before crashing back down on the road. Asphalt heard the splintering of posts as the wheels smashed into the fence, saw the traces snap, felt the cart swing around…

…and stop.

So much happened later that Glod never did tell anyone about the sensation he had, that although the cart had definitely wedged itself uncertainly on the edge of the cliff it had also plunged on, tumbling over and over, toward the rocks…

Glod opened his eyes. The image tugged at him like a bad dream. But he’d been thrown across the cart as it skewed around, and his head was lying on the backboard.

He was looking straight into the gorge. Behind him, wood creaked.

Someone was holding on to his leg.

“Who’s that?” he whispered, in case heavier words would send the cart over.

“It’s me. Asphalt. Who’s that holding on to my foot?”

“Me,” said Cliff. “What’re you holding on to, Glod?”

“Just…something my flailing hand happened to snatch at,” said Glod.

The cart creaked again.

“It’s the gold, isn’t it?” said Asphalt. “Admit it. You’re holding on to 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.

“So who,” said Cliff, as the cart sagged another inch, “is holding Buddy?”

There was a pause while the three counted their extremities and attachments thereto.

“I…er…think he might have gone over,” said Glod.

Four chords rang out.

Buddy hung from a rear wheel, feet over the drop, and jerked as the music played an eight-note riff on his soul.

Never age. Never die. Live forever in that one last white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky.

You will never grow old. They will never say you died.

That’s the deal. You will be the greatest musician in the world.

Live fast. Die young.

The music tugged at his soul.

Buddy’s legs swung up slowly and touched the rocks of the cliff. He braced himself, eyes shut, and pulled at the wheel.

A hand touched his shoulder.

“NO!”

Buddy’s eyes snapped open.

He turned his head and looked into Susan’s face, and then up at the cart.

“What…?” he said, his voice slurred with shock.

He let go with one hand and fumbled clumsily for the guitar strap, slipping it off his shoulder. The strings howled as he gripped the guitar’s neck and flung it into the darkness.

His other hand slipped on the freezing wheel, and he dropped into the gorge.

There was a white blur. He landed heavily on something velvety and smelling of horse sweat.

Susan steadied him with her free hand as she urged Binky upward through the sleet.

The horse alighted on the road, and Buddy slipped off into the mud. He raised himself on his elbows.

“You?”

“Me,” said Susan.

Susan pulled the scythe out of its holster. The blade sprang out; snowflakes that fell on it split gently into two halves without a pause in their descent.

“Let’s get your friends, shall we?”

There was a friction in the air, as if the attention of the world were being focused. Death stared into the future.

OH, BLAST.

Things were coming apart. The Librarian had done his best, but mere bone and wood couldn’t take this sort of strain. Feathers and beads whirled away and landed, smoking, in the road. A wheel parted company from its axle and bounded away, shedding spokes, as the machine took a curve almost horizontally.

It made no real difference. Something like a soul flickered in the air where the missing pieces had been.

If you took a shining machine, and shone a light on it so that there were gleams and highlights, and then took away the machine but left the light…

Only the horse’s skull remained. That and the rear wheel, which spun in forks now only flickering light, and was smoldering.

The thing whirred past Dibbler, causing his horse to throw him into the ditch and bolt.

Death was used to traveling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already.

But he’d never been this fast while going this slow. The landscape had often been a blur, but never while it was only four inches from his knee on the bends.

The cart shifted again. Now even Cliff was looking down into the darkness.

Something touched his shoulder.

“HANG ON TO THIS. BUT DON’T TOUCH THE BLADE.”

Buddy leaned past.

“Glod, if you let go of the bag I can—”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“There’s no pockets in a shroud, Glod.”

“You got the wrong tailor, then.”

In the end Buddy grabbed a spare leg and hauled. One at a time, clambering over one another, The Band eased themselves back onto the road. And turned to look at Susan.

“White horse,” said Asphalt. “Black cloak. Scythe. Um.”

“You can see her too?” said Buddy.

“I hope we’re not going to wish we couldn’t,” said Cliff.

Susan held up a lifetimer and peered at it critically.

“I suppose it’s too late to cut some sort of deal?” said Glod.

“I’m just looking to see if you’re dead or not,” said Susan.

“I think I’m alive,” said Glod.

“Hold on to that thought.”

They turned at a creaking sound. The cart slid forward and dropped into the gorge. There was a crash as it hit an outcrop halfway toward the bottom, and then a more distant thud as it smashed into the rocks. There was a “whoomph” and orange flames blossomed as the oil in the lamps exploded.

Out of the debris, trailing flame, rolled a burning wheel.

“We would have been in dat,” said Cliff.

“You think maybe we’re better off now?” said Glod.

“Yep,” said Cliff. “’Cos we’re not dyin’ in der wreckage of a burning cart.”

“Yes, but she looks a bit…occult.”

“Fine by me. I’ll take occult over deep-fried any day.”

Behind them, Buddy turned to Susan.

“I…think I’ve worked it out,” she said. “The music…twisted up history, I think. It’s not supposed to be in our history. Can you remember where you got it from?”

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.

“A shop in Ankh-Morpork,” said Cliff.

“A mysterious old shop?”

“Mysterious as anything. There—”

“Did you go back? Was it still there? Was it in the same place?”

“Yes,” said Cliff.

“No,” said Glod.

“Lots of interesting merchandise that you wanted to pick up and learn more about?”

“Yes!” said Glod and Cliff together.

“Oh,” said Susan. “That kind of shop.”

“I knew it didn’t belong here,” said Glod. “Didn’t I say it didn’t belong here? I said it didn’t belong here. I said it was eldritch.”

“I thought that meant oblong,” said Asphalt.

Cliff held out his hand.

“It’s stopped snowing,” he said.

“I dropped the thing into the gorge,” said Buddy. “I…didn’t need it anymore. It must have smashed.”

“No,” said Susan. “It’s not as—”

“The clouds…now they look eldritch,” said Glod, looking up.

“What? Oblong?” said Asphalt.

They all felt it…a sensation that the walls had been removed from around the world. The air buzzed.

“What’s this now?” said Asphalt, as they instinctively huddled together.

“You ought to know,” said Glod. “I thought you’ve been everywhere and seen everything?”

White light crackled in the air.

And then the air became light, white as moonlight but as strong as sunlight. There was also a sound, like the roar of millions of voices.

It said: Let me show you who I am. I am the music.

Satchelmouth lit the coach lamps.

“Hurry up, man!” shouted Clete. “We want to catch them, you know! Hat. Hat. Hat.”

“I don’t see that it matters much if they get away,” Satchelmouth grumbled, climbing onto the coach as Clete lashed the horses into motion. “I mean, they’re away. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

“No! You saw them. They’re the…the soul of all this trouble,” said Clete. “We can’t let this sort of thing go on!”

Satchelmouth glanced sideways. The thought was flooding into his mind, and not for the first time, that Mr. Clete was not playing with a full orchestra, that he was one of those people who built their own hot madness out of sane and chilly parts. Satchelmouth was by no means averse to the finger-foxtrot and the skull fandango, but he’d never murdered anyone, at least on purpose. Satchelmouth had been made aware that he had a soul and, though it had a few holes in it and was a little ragged around the edges, he cherished the hope that some day the god Reg would find him a place in a celestial combo. You didn’t get the best gigs if you were a murderer. You probably had to play the viola.

“How about if we leave it right now?” he said. “They won’t be back—”

“Shut up!”

“But there’s no point—”

The horses reared. The coach rocked. Something went past in a blur and vanished in the darkness, leaving a line of blue flames that flickered for a little while and then went out.

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.”

It was not in its very nature to reduce speed in any circumstances other than the dramatically calamitous at the end of the third verse.

That was the trouble with Music With Rocks In. It liked to do things its own way.

Very slowly, still spinning, the front wheel rose off the ground.

Absolute darkness filled the universe.

A voice spake: “Is that you, Cliff?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Is this me: Glod?”

“Yup. Sounds like you.”

“Asphalt?”

“’Sme.”

“Buddy?”

“Glod?”

“And…er…the lady in black?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know where we are, Miss?”

There was no ground under them. But Susan didn’t feel that she was floating. She was simply standing. The fact that it was on nothing was a minor point. She wasn’t falling because there was nowhere to fall to, or from.

She’d never been interested in geography. But she had a very strong feeling that this place was not locatable on any atlas.

“I don’t know where our bodies are,” she said, carefully.

“Oh, good,” said the voice of Glod. “Really? I’m here, but we don’t know where my body is? How about my money?”

There was the sound of faint footsteps far away in the darkness. They approached, slowly and deliberately. And stopped.

A voice said: One. One. One, two. One, two.

Then the footsteps went back into the distance.

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. Everything, all together, streaming out in one huge rush that contained within itself, like reverse fossils, everything that it was going to be.

And, zigzagging through the expanding cloud, alive, that first wild live music.

This had shape. It had spin. It had rhythm. It had a beat, and you could dance to it.

Everything did.

A voice right inside Susan’s head said: And I will never die.

She said, aloud: “There’s a bit of you in everything that lives.”

Yes. I am the heartbeat. The back beat.

She still couldn’t see the others. The light was streaming past her.

“But he threw away the guitar.”

I wanted him to live for me.

“You wanted him to die for you! In the wreckage of the cart!”

What is the difference? He would be dead anyway. But to die in music…People will always remember the songs he never had the chance to sing. And they will be the greatest songs of all.

Live your life in a moment.

And then live forever. Don’t fade away.

“Send us back!”

You never left.

She blinked. They were still on the road. The air flickered and crackled, and was full of wet snow.

She looked around into Buddy’s horrified face.

“We’ve got to get away—”

He held up a hand. It was transparent.

Cliff had almost vanished. Glod was trying to grip the handle of the money bag, but his fingers were slipping through it. His face was full of the terror of death or, possibly, of poverty.

Susan shouted: “He threw you away! That’s not fair!”

A piercing blue light was heading up the road. No cart could move that fast. There was a roar like the scream of a camel who has just seen two bricks.

The light reached the bend, skidded, hit a rock, and leapt into space over the gorge.

There was just time for a hollow voice to say OH B—

…before it hit the far wall in one great, spreading circle of flame.

Bones bounced and rolled down to the riverbed, and were still.

Susan spun around, scythe ready to swing. But the music was in the air. It had no soul to aim for.

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

You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be. This is how the legend has to go.

She reached out and tried to take Buddy’s hand. She could feel it, but only as a coldness.

“Can you hear me?” she shouted, above the triumphant chords.

He nodded.

“It’s…it’s like a legend! It has to happen! And I can’t stop it—how can I kill something like music?”

She ran to the edge of the gorge. The cart was well on fire. They wouldn’t appear in it. They would have been in it.

“I can’t stop it! It’s not fair!”

She pounded at the air with her fists.

“Grandfather!”

Blue flames flickered fitfully on the rocks of the dry riverbed.

A small fingerbone rolled across the stones until it came up against another, slightly larger, bone.

A third bone tumbled off a rock and joined them.

In the semidarkness there was a rattling among the stones, and a handful of little white shapes bounced and tumbled between the rocks until a hand, index finger reaching for the sky, rose into the night.

Then there was a series of deeper, more hollow noises as longer, larger things skipped end over end through the gloom.

“I was going to make it better!” shouted Susan. “What’s the good of being Death if you have to obey idiot rules all the time?”

BRING THEM BACK.

As Susan turned, a toe bone hopped across the mud and scuttled into place somewhere under Death’s robe.

He strode forward, snatched the scythe from Susan and, in one movement, whirled it over his head and smashed it on a rock. The blade shattered.

He reached down and picked up a fragment. It glittered in his fingers like a tiny star of blue ice.

IT WAS NOT A REQUEST.

When the music spoke, the falling snow danced.

You can’t kill me.

Death reached into his robe, and brought out the guitar. Bits of it had broken off, but this didn’t matter; the shape flickered in the air. The strings glowed.

Death took a stance that Crash would have died to achieve, and raised one hand. In his fingers the sliver glinted. If light could have made a noise, it would have flashed ting.

He wanted to be the greatest musician in the world. There has to be a law. Destiny runs its course.

For once, Death appeared not to smile.

He brought his hand down on the strings.

There was no sound.

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 do next.

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

I CANNOT.

Death nodded toward Buddy.

BUT HE CAN.

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

Susan ran and snatched it up, held 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, toward 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 half-consumed 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, 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 favorite 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 anymore. 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 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.

Mr. Clete looked at it. He’d never believed in this sort of thing. He never believed in anything. But if he had believed, he would have believed in someone…bigger.

He looked down at what he’d thought was his body, and realized that he could see through it, and that it was fading away.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Hat. Hat. Hat.”

The figure grinned, and swung its tiny scythe.

SNH, SNH, SNH.

Much later on, people went down into the canyon and sorted out the remains of Mr. Clete from the remains of everything else. There wasn’t very much.

There was some suggestion that he was some musician…some musician had fled the city or something…hadn’t he? Or was that something else? Anyway, he was dead now. Wasn’t he?

No one took any notice of the other things. Stuff tended to congregate in the dry riverbed. There was a horse’s skull, and some feathers and beads. And a few pieces of guitar, smashed open like an eggshell. Although it would be hard to say what had flown.

Susan opened her eyes. She felt wind on her face. There were arms on either side of her. They were supporting her while, at the same time, grasping the reins of a white horse.

She leaned forward. Clouds were scudding by, far below.

“All right,” she said, “And now what happens?

Death was silent for a moment.

HISTORY TENDS TO SWING BACK INTO LINE. THEY ARE ALWAYS PATCHING IT UP. THERE ARE ALWAYS SOME MINOR LOOSE ENDS…I DARESAY SOME PEOPLE WILL HAVE SOME CONFUSED MEMORIES ABOUT A CONCERT OF SOME SORT IN THE PARK. BUT WHAT OF IT? THEY WILL REMEMBER THINGS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.

“But they did happen!”

AS WELL.

Susan stared down at the dark landscape. Here and there were the lights of homesteads and small villages, where people were getting on with their lives without thought of what was passing by, high over their heads. She envied them.

“So,” she said, “just for an example, you understand…what would happen to The Band?”

OH, THEY MIGHT BE ANYWHERE. Death glanced at the back of Susan’s head. TAKE THE BOY, FOR EXAMPLE. PERHAPS HE LEFT THE BIG CITY. PERHAPS HE WENT SOMEWHERE ELSE. GOT A JOB JUST TO MAKE ENDS MEET. BIDED HIS TIME. DID IT HIS WAY.

“But he was due in the Drum that night!”

NOT IF HE DIDN’T GO THERE.

“Can you do that? His life was due to end! You said you can’t give life!”

NOT ME. YOU MIGHT.

“What do you mean?”

LIFE CAN BE SHARED.

“But he’s…gone. It’s not as though I’m ever likely to see him again.”

YOU KNOW YOU WILL.

“How do you know that?”

YOU’VE ALWAYS KNOWN. YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. SO DO I. BUT YOU ARE HUMAN AND YOUR MIND REBELS FOR YOUR OWN SAKE. SOMETHING GETS ACROSS, THOUGH. DREAMS, PERHAPS. PREMONITIONS. FEELINGS. SOME SHADOWS ARE SO LONG THEY ARRIVE BEFORE THE LIGHT.

“I don’t think I understood any of that.”

WELL, IT HAS BEEN A LONG DAY.

More clouds passed underneath.

“Grandfather?”

YES.

“You’re back?”

IT SEEMS SO. BUSY, BUSY, BUSY.

“So I can stop? I don’t think I was very good at it.”

YES.

“But…you’ve just broken a lot of laws…”

PERHAPS THEY’RE SOMETIMES ONLY GUIDELINES.

“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.

“I…think I know what they mean.”

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.”

I CAN HARDLY SEE THE FLOOR. YOU COULD HAVE TIDIED IT UP A BIT.

“Sorry.”

The lights of Quirm glittered below. Binky touched down smoothly.

Susan looked around at the dark school buildings.

“So I’ve…also…been here all the time?” she said.

YES. THE HISTORY OF THE LAST FEW DAYS HAS BEEN…DIFFERENT. YOU DID QUITE WELL IN YOUR EXAMS.

“Did I? Who sat them?”

YOU DID.

“Oh.”

Susan shrugged. “What grade did I get in Logic?”

“YOU GOT AN A.”

“Oh, come on. I always get A-plus!”

YOU SHOULD HAVE REVISED MORE.

Death swung up into the saddle.

“Just a minute,” said Susan, quickly. She knew she had to say it.

YES?

“What happened to…you know…changing the fate of one individual means changing the world?”

SOMETIMES THE WORLD NEEDS CHANGING.

“Oh. Er. Grandfather?

YES?

“Er…the swing…” said Susan. “The one down in the orchard. I mean…it was pretty good. A good swing.”

REALLY?

“I was just too young to appreciate it.”

YOU REALLY LIKED IT?

“It had…style. I shouldn’t think anyone else ever had one like it.”

THANK YOU.

“But…all this doesn’t alter anything, you know. The world is still full of stupid people. They don’t use their brains. They don’t seem to want to think straight.”

UNLIKE YOU?

“At least I make an effort. For example…if I’ve been here for the last few days, who’s in my bed now?”

I THINK YOU JUST WENT OUT FOR A MOONLIGHT STROLL.

“Oh. That’s all right, then.”

Death coughed.

I SUPPOSE…?

“Sorry?”

I KNOW IT’S RIDICULOUS, REALLY.

“What is?”

I SUPPOSE…YOU HAVEN’T GOT A KISS FOR YOUR OLD GRANDDAD?

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.

She reached up and pulled his head down and kissed the top of his skull. It was smooth and ivory white, like a billiard ball.

She turned and stared at the shadowy buildings in an attempt to hide her embarrassment.

“I just hope I remembered to leave a window open.” Oh, well, nothing for it. She had to know, even if she felt angry with herself for asking. “Look, the…er, the people I met…do you know if I ever see—”

When she turned back there was nothing there. There were only a couple of hoofprints, fading on the cobbles.

There was no open window. She went around to the door and climbed the stairs in the darkness.

“Susan!”

Susan felt herself fading protectively, out of habit. She stopped it. There was no need for that. There had never been a need for that.

A figure stood at the end of the passage, in a circle of lamplight.

“Yes, Miss Butts?”

The headmistress peered at her, as if waiting for her to do something.

“Are you all right, Miss Butts?”

The teacher rallied. “Do you know it’s gone midnight? For shame! And you’re out of bed! And that is certainly not the school uniform!”

Susan looked down. It was always hard to get every little detail right. She was still wearing the black dress with the lace.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s right.” She gave Miss Butts a bright friendly smile.

“Well, there are school rules, you know,” said Miss Butts, but her tone was hesitant.

Susan patted her on the arm. “I think they’re probably more like guidelines, don’t you? Eulalie?”

Miss Butts’s mouth opened and shut. And Susan realized that the woman was actually quite short. She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. Amazingly, she’d apparently been able to keep this a secret from people.

“But I’d better be off to bed,” said Susan, her mind dancing on adrenaline. “And you, too. It’s far too late to be wandering around drafty corridors at your age, don’t you think? Last day tomorrow, too. You don’t want to look tired when the parents arrive.”

“Er…yes. Yes. Thank you, Susan.”

Susan gave the forlorn teacher another warm smile and headed for the dormitory, where she undressed in the dark and got between the sheets.

The room was silent except for the sound of nine girls breathing quietly and the rhythmic muffled avalanche that was Princess Jade asleep.

And, after a while, the sound of someone sobbing and trying not to be heard. It went on for a long time. There was a lot of catching up to do.

Far above the world, Death nodded. You could choose immortality, or you could choose humanity.

You had to do it for yourself.

It was the last day of the term, and, therefore, chaotic. Some girls were leaving early, there was a stream of parents of various races, and there was no question of there being any teaching. It was generally accepted all round that the rules were relaxed.

Susan, Gloria, and Princess Jade wandered down to the floral clock. It was a quarter to daisy.

Susan felt empty, but also stretched like a string. She was surprised sparks weren’t coming from her fingertips.

Gloria had bought a bag of fried fish from the shop in Three Roses. The smell of hot vinegar and solid cholesterol arose from the paper, without the taint of fried rot that normally gave the shop’s produce its familiar edge.

“My father says I’ve got to go home and marry some troll,” said Jade. “Hey, if there’s any good fish bones in there, I’ll have them.”

“Have you met him?” said Susan.

“No. But my father says he’s got a great big mountain.”

“I wouldn’t put up with that, if I was you,” said Gloria, through a mouthful of fish. “This is the Century of the Fruitbat, after all. I’d put my foot down right now and say no. Eh, Susan?”

“What?” said Susan, who’d been thinking of something else; then, when everything had been repeated, she said, “No. I’d see what he was like first. Perhaps he’s quite nice. And then the mountain is a bonus.”

“Yes. That’s logical. Didn’t your dad send you a picture?” said Gloria.

“Oh, yes,” said Jade.

“Well…?”

“Um…it had some nice crevasses,” said Jade thoughtfully. “And a glacier that my father says is permanent even at midsummer.”

Gloria nodded approvingly.

“He sounds a nice boy.”

“But I’ve always liked Crag from the next valley. Father hates him. But he’s working very hard and saving up and he’s nearly got enough for his own bridge.”

Gloria sighed. “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman,” she said. She nudged Susan. “Want some fish?”

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“It’s really good. Not stale old stuff like it used to be.”

“No, thanks.”

Gloria gave her another nudge.

“Want to go and get your own, then?” she said, leering behind her beard.

“Why should I do that?”

“Oh, quite a few girls have gone down there today,” said the dwarf. She leaned closer. “It’s the new boy working down there,” she said. “I’d swear he’s elvish.”

Something inside Susan was plucked and went twang.

She stood up.

“So that’s what he meant! Things that haven’t happened yet.”

“What? Who?” said Gloria.

“The shop in Three Roses Alley?”

“That’s right.”

The door to the wizard’s house was open. The wizard had put a rocking chair in the doorway and was asleep in the sun.

A raven was perched on his hat. Susan stopped and glared at it.

“And have you got any comment to make?”

“Croak croak,” said the raven, and ruffled its feathers.

“Good,” said Susan.

She walked on, aware that she was blushing. Behind her a voice said, “Hah!” She ignored it.

There was a blur of movement among the debris in the gutter.

Something hidden by a fish wrapper went:

SNH, SNH, SNH.

“Oh yes, very funny,” said Susan.

She walked on.

And then broke into a run.

Death smiled and pushed aside the magnifying lens and turned away from the Discworld to find Albert watching him.

JUST CHECKING, he said.

“That’s right, Master,” said Albert. “I’ve saddled up Binky.”

YOU UNDERSTAND I WAS JUST CHECKING?

“Right you are, Master.”

HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?

“Fine, Master.”

STILL GOT YOUR BOTTLE?

Yes, Master.” It was on the shelf in Albert’s bedroom.

He followed Death out into the stable yard, helped him into the saddle, and passed up the scythe.

AND NOW I MUST BE GOING OUT, said Death.

“That’s the ticket, Master.”

SO STOP GRINNING LIKE THAT.

“Yes, Master.”

Death rode out, but found himself guiding the white horse down the track to the orchard.

He stopped in front of one particular tree, and stared at it for some time. Eventually he said:

LOOKS PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO ME.

Binky turned obediently away and trotted into the world.

The lands and cities of it lay before him. Blue light flamed along the blade of the scythe.

Death felt attention on him. He looked up at the universe, which was watching him with puzzled interest.

A voice which only he heard said: So you’re a rebel, little Death? Against what?

Death thought about it. If there was a snappy answer, he couldn’t think of one.

So he ignored it, and rode toward the lives of humanity.

They needed him.

Somewhere, in some other world far away from the Discworld, someone tentatively picked up a musical instrument that echoed to the rhythm in their soul.

It will never die.

It’s here to stay.