Soul Music - Terry Pratchett [1]
“Er…if you would like to be alone, to have a cry—” she’d prompted, in an effort to get things moving on the right track.
“Would that help?” Susan had said.
It would have helped Miss Butts.
All she’d been able to manage was: “I wonder if, perhaps, you fully understood what I have told you?”
The child had stared at the ceiling as though trying to work out a difficult problem in algebra and then said, “I expect I will.”
It was as if she’d already known, and had dealt with it in some way. Miss Butts had asked the teachers to watch Susan carefully. They’d said that was hard, because…
There was a tentative knock on Miss Butts’s study door, as if it was being made by someone who’d really prefer not to be heard.
She returned to the present.
“Come,” she said.
The door swung open.
Susan always made no sound. The teachers had all remarked upon it. It was uncanny, they said. She was always in front of you when you least expected it.
“Ah, Susan,” said Miss Butts, a tight smile scuttling across her face like a nervous tick over a worried sheep. “Please sit down.”
“Of course, Miss Butts.”
Miss Butts shuffled the papers.
“Susan…”
“Yes, Miss Butts?”
“I’m sorry to say that it appears you have been missed in lessons again.”
“I don’t understand, Miss Butts.”
The headmistress leaned forward. She felt vaguely annoyed with herself, but…there was something frankly unlovable about the child. Academically brilliant at the things she liked doing, of course, but that was just it; she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness.
“Have you been…doing it?” she said. “You promised you were going to stop this silliness.”
“Miss Butts?”
“You’ve been making yourself invisible again, haven’t you?”
Susan blushed. So, rather less pinkly, did Miss Butts. I mean, she thought, it’s ridiculous. It’s against all reason. It’s—oh, no…
She turned her head and shut her eyes.
“Yes, Miss Butts?” said Susan, just before Miss Butts said, “Susan?”
Miss Butts shuddered. This was something else the teachers had mentioned. Sometimes Susan answered questions just before you asked them…
She steadied herself.
“You’re still sitting there, are you?”
“Of course, Miss Butts.”
Ridiculous.
It wasn’t invisibility, she told herself. She just makes herself inconspicuous. She…who…
She concentrated. She’d written a little memo to herself against this very eventuality, and it was pinned to the file.
She read:
You are interviewing Susan Sto Helit. Try not to forget it.
“Susan?” she ventured.
“Yes, Miss Butts?”
If Miss Butts concentrated, Susan was sitting in front of her. If she made an effort, she could hear the gel’s voice. She just had to fight against a pressing tendency to believe that she was alone.
“I’m afraid Miss Cumber and Miss Greggs have complained,” she managed.
“I’m always in class, Miss Butts.”
“I daresay you are. Miss Traitor and Miss Stamp say they see you all the time.” There’d been quite a staff room argument about that. “Is it because you like Logic and Math and don’t like Language and History?”
Miss Butts hesitated. There was no way the child could have left the room. If she really stressed her mind, she could catch a suggestion of a voice saying “Don’t know, Miss Butts.”
“Susan, it is really most upsetting when—”
Miss Butts paused. She looked around the study and then glanced at a note pinned to the papers in front of her. She appeared to read it, looked puzzled for a moment, and then rolled it up and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. She picked up a pen and, after staring into space for a moment, turned her attention to the school accounts.
Susan waited politely for a while, and then got up and left as quietly as possible.
Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.
It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country