Soul Music - Terry Pratchett [25]
SQUEAK
“No. I haven’t finished looking.”
Susan set off for the door, with the rat skrittering across the floor after her.
The third room turned out to be…
…the bathroom.
Susan hesitated. You expected hourglasses in this place. You expected the skull-and-bones motif. But you didn’t expect the very large white porcelain tub, on its own raised podium like a throne, with giant brass taps and—in faded blue letters just over the thing that held the plug chain—the words: C. H. Lavatory & Son, Mollymog St, Ankh-Morpork.
You didn’t expect the rubber duck. It was yellow.
You didn’t expect the soap. It was suitably bone white, but looked as if it had never been used. Beside it was a bar of orange soap which certainly had been used—it was hardly more than a sliver. It smelled a lot like the vicious stuff used at school.
The bath, though big, was a human thing. There was brown-lined crazing around the plug hole and a stain where the tap had dripped. But almost everything else had been designed by the person who hadn’t understood deskishness, and now hadn’t understood ablutionology either.
They had created a towel rail an entire athletics team could have used for training. The black towels on it were fused onto it and were quite hard. Whoever actually used the bathroom probably dried themselves on one white-and-blue, very worn towel with the initials Y.M.R-C-I-G-B-S A, A-M. on it.
There was even a lavatory, another fine example of C. H. Lavatory’s porcelainic art, with an embossed frieze of green-and-blue flowers on the cistern. And again, like the bath and the soap, it suggested that this room had been built by someone…and then someone else had come along afterward to add small details. Someone with a better knowledge of plumbing, for a start. And someone else who understood, really understood, that towels should be soft and capable of drying people, and soap should be capable of bubbles.
You didn’t expect any of it until you saw it. And then it was like seeing it again.
The bald towel dropped off the rail and skipped across the floor, until it fell away to reveal the Death of Rats.
SQUEAK?
“Oh, all right,” said Susan. “Where do you want me to go now?”
The rat scurried to the open door and disappeared into the hall.
Susan followed it to yet another door. She turned yet another handle.
Another room within a room lay beyond. There was a tiny area of lit tiling in the darkness, containing the distant vision of a table, a few chairs, a kitchen dresser—
—and someone. A hunched figure was sitting at the table. As Susan cautiously approached she heard the rattle of cutlery on a plate.
An old man was eating his supper, very noisily. In between forkfuls, he was talking to himself with his mouth full. It was a kind of auto bad manners.
“’s not my fault! (spray) I was against it from the start but, oh no, he has to go and (recover piece of ballistic sausage from table) start gettin’ involved, I told him, i’s’not as if you’re not involved (stab unidentified fried object) oh no, that’s not his way (spray, jab fork at the air) once you get involved like that, I said, how’re you getting out, tell me that (make temporary egg and ketchup sandwich) but, oh no—”
Susan walked around the patch of carpet. The man took no notice.
The Death of Rats shinned up the table leg and landed on a slice of fried bread.
“Oh. It’s you.”
SQUEAK.
The old man looked around.
“Where? Where?”
Susan stepped onto the carpet. The man stood up so quickly that his chair fell over.
“Who the hells are you?”
“Could you stop pointing that sharp bacon at me?”
“I asked you a question, young woman!”
“I’m Susan.” This didn’t sound enough. “Duchess of Sto Helit,” she added.
The man’s wrinkled face wrinkled still further as he strove to comprehend this. Then he turned away and threw his hands up in the air.
“Oh, yes!” he bawled, to the room in general. “That just puts the entire tin lid on it, that does!”
He waved a finger at the Death of Rats, who leaned backward.
“You cheating little rodent! Oh, yes! I