Soul Music - Terry Pratchett [40]
“Well, all my family are y Celyns,” said Imp, ignoring the insult to an ancient tongue. “It means ‘of the hollly.’ That’s all that grows in Llamedos, you see. Everything else just rots.”
“I wasn’t goin’ to say,” said Cliff, “but Imp sounds a bit like elf to me.”
“It just means ‘smalll shoot,’” said Imp. “You know. Like a bud.”
“Bud y Celyn?” said Glod. “Buddy? Worse than Cliff, in my opinion.”
“I…think it sounds right,” said Imp.
Glod shrugged, and pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket.
“We’ve still got more’n four dollars,” he said. “I know what we should do with it, too.”
“We should put it toward Guild membership,” said the new Cliff.
Glod stared into the middle distance.
“No,” he said. “We haven’t got the sound right. I mean, it was very good, very…new,” he stared hard at Imp-cum-Buddy, “but there’s still something missing…”
The dwarf gave Buddy né Imp another penetrating stare.
“Do you know you’re shaking all over?” he said. “Moving around on your seat like you got a pant full of ant.”
“I can’t help it,” said Buddy. He wanted to sleep, but a rhythm was bouncing around inside his head.
“I saw it too,” said Cliff. “When we was walking here, you were bouncing along.” He looked under the table. “And you is tapping your feet.”
“And you keep snapping your fingers,” said Glod.
“I can’t stop thinking about the music,” said Buddy. “You’re right. We need…” he drummed his fingers along the table, “…a sound like…pang pang pang PANG Pang…”
“You mean a keyboard?” said Glod.
“Do I?”
“They’ve got one of those new pianofortes just over the river in the Opera House,” said Glod.
“Yah, but dat sort of thing ain’t for our kind of music,” said Cliff. “Dat sort of thing is for big fat guys in powdered wigs.”
“I reckon,” said Glod, giving Buddy another lopsided stare, “if we put it anywhere near Im—near Buddy, it’ll be for our kind of music soon enough. So go and get it.”
“I heard where it cost four hundred dollars,” said Cliff. “No one’s got dat many teeth.”
“I didn’t mean buy it,” said Glod. “Just…borrow it for a while.”
“Dat’s stealing,” said Cliff.
“No it’s not,” said the dwarf. “We’ll let them have it back when we’ve finished with it.”
“Oh. Dat’s all right den.”
Buddy wasn’t a drummer or a troll and could see the technical flaw in Glod’s argument. And, a few weeks ago, he’d have said so. But then he’d been a good circle-going boy from the valleys, who didn’t drink, didn’t swear, and played the harp at every druidic sacrifice.
Now he needed that piano. The sound had been nearly right.
He snapped his fingers in time with his thoughts.
“But we ain’t got anyone to play it,” said Cliff.
“You get the piano,” said Glod. “I’ll get the piano player.”
And all the time they kept glancing at the guitar.
The wizards advanced in a body toward the organ. The air around it vibrated as if superheated.
“What an unholy noise!” shouted the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
“Oh, I don’t know!” screamed the Dean. “It’s rather catchy!”
Blue sparks crackled between the organ pipes. The Librarian could just be seen high in the trembling structure.
“Who’s pumping it?” screamed the Senior Wrangler.
Ridcully looked around at the side. The handle seemed to be going up and down by itself.
“I’m not having this,” he muttered. “Not in my damn university. It’s worse than students.”
And he raised his crossbow and fired, right at the main bellows.
There was a long drawn out wail in the key of A, and then the organ exploded.
The history of the subsequent seconds was put together during a discussion in the Uncommon Room where the wizards went for a stiff drink, or in the Bursar’s case a warm milk, shortly afterward.
The Lecturer in Recent Runes swore that the sixty-four-foot Gravissima organ pipe went skyward on a pillar of flame.
The Chair of Indefinite Studies and the Senior Wrangler said that when they found the Librarian upside down in one of the fountains in Sator Square, outside the University, he was going “ook ook” to himself and grinning.
The Bursar said that he’d seen a dozen