Soul Music (17 page)

‘Ah,' said Susan. ‘I suppose a pattern of roses is out of the question? Probably not right for the ambience, I expect.'

She put the cup on the dressing table and tapped it. It went
plink
in a solid sort of way.

‘Well, then,' she said, ‘I
don't
want something soppy and posey. No silly black lace or anything worn by idiots who write poetry in their rooms and dress like vampires and are vegetarians really.'

The images of clothes floated across her reflection. It was clear that black was the only option, but she settled on something practical and without frills. She put her head on one side critically.

‘Well, maybe a bit of lace,' she said. ‘And . . . perhaps a bit more . . . bodice.'

She nodded at her reflection in the mirror. Certainly it was a dress that no Susan would ever wear, although she suspected that there was a basic Susanness about her which would permeate it after a while.

‘It's a good job you're here,' she said, ‘or I'd go totally mad. Haha.'

Then she went to see her grandf . . . Death.

There was one place he
had
to be.

Glod wandered quietly into the University Library. Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn't have to experience it.

He tugged at the robe of a passing young wizard.

‘There's a monkey runs this place, right?' he said. ‘Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?'

The wizard, a pasty-faced post-graduate student, looked down at Glod with the disdainful air a certain type of person always reserves for dwarfs.

It wasn't much fun being a student in Unseen University. You had to find your pleasures where you could. He grinned a big, wide, innocent grin.

‘Why, yes,' he said. ‘I do believe right at this moment he's in his workroom in the basement. But you have to be very careful how you address him.'

‘Is that so?' said Glod.

‘Yes, you have to be sure to say, “Do you want a peanut, Mr Monkey?”' said the student wizard. He signalled a couple of his colleagues. ‘That's so, isn't it? He has to say
Mister
Monkey.'

‘Oh, yes indeedy,' said a student. ‘Actually, if you don't want him to get annoyed it's best to be on the safe side and scratch under your arms. That puts him at his ease.'

‘And go ugh-ugh-ugh,' said a third student. ‘He likes that.'

‘Well, thank you very much,' said Glod. ‘Which way do I go?'

‘We'll show you,' said the first student.

‘That's so very kind.'

‘Don't mention it. Only too glad to help.'

The three wizards led Glod down a flight of steps and into a tunnel. Light filtered down through the occasional pane of green glass set in the floor above. Every so often Glod heard a snigger behind him.

The Librarian was squatting down on the floor in a long, high cellar. Miscellaneous items had been scattered on the floor in front of him; there was a cartwheel, odd bits of wood and bone, and various pipes, rods and lengths of wire that somehow suggested that, around the city, people were puzzling over broken pumps and fences with holes in. The Librarian was chewing the end of a piece of pipe and looking intently at the heap.

‘That's him,' said one of the wizards, giving Glod a push.

The dwarf shuffled forward. There was another outburst of muffled giggling behind him.

He tapped the Librarian on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me—'

‘Ook?'

‘Those guys just called you a monkey,' said Glod, jerking a thumb in the direction of the door. ‘I'd make them say sorry, if I was you.'

There was a creaking, metallic noise, followed very closely by a scuffling outside as the wizards trampled one another in their effort to get away.

The Librarian had bent the pipe into a U-shape, apparently without effort.

Glod went to the door and looked out. There was a pointy hat on the flagstones, trampled flat.

‘That was fun,' he said. ‘If I'd just asked them where the Librarian was, they'd have said bugger off, you dwarf. You have to know how to deal with people in this game.'

He came back and sat down beside the Librarian. The ape put a smaller bend in the pipe.

‘What're you making?' said Glod.

‘Oook-oook-OOK!'

‘My cousin Modo is the gardener here,' said Glod. ‘He says you're a mean keyboard player.' He stared at the hands, busy in the pipe-bending. They were
big
. And of course there were four of them. ‘He was certainly
partly
right,' he added.

The ape picked up a length of driftwood and tasted it.

‘We thought you might like to play pianoforte with us at the Drum tonight,' said Glod. ‘Me and Cliff and Buddy, that is.'

The Librarian rolled a brown eye towards him, then picked up a piece of wood, gripped one end and began to strum.

‘Ook?'

‘That's right,' said Glod. ‘The boy with the guitar.'

‘Eeek.'

The Librarian did a back somersault.

‘Oook
oook
-ooka-ooka-OOOka-OOK!'

‘I can see you're in the swing of it already,' said Glod.

Susan saddled the horse and mounted up.

Beyond Death's garden were fields of corn, their golden sheen the only colour in the landscape. Death might not have been any good at grass (black) and apple trees (gloss black on black), but all the depth of colour he hadn't put elsewhere he'd put in the fields. They rippled as if in the wind, except that there wasn't any wind.

Susan couldn't imagine why he'd done it.

There was a path, though. It led across the fields for half a mile or so, then disappeared abruptly. It looked as though somebody walked out here occasionally and just stood, looking around.

Binky followed the path and stopped at the end. Then he turned, managing not to disturb a single ear.

‘I don't know how you do this,' Susan whispered, ‘but you must be able to do it, and you
know
where I want to go.'

The horse appeared to nod. Albert had said that Binky was a genuine flesh-and-blood horse, but maybe you couldn't be ridden by Death for hundreds of years without learning something. He looked as though he'd been pretty bright to start with.

Binky began to trot, and then canter, and then gallop. And then the sky flickered, just once.

Susan had expected more than that. Flashing stars, some sort of explosion of rainbow colours . . . not just a flicker. It seemed a rather dismissive way of travelling nearly seventeen years.

The cornfields had gone, but the garden was pretty much the same. There was the strange topiary and the pond with the skeletal fish. There were, pushing jolly wheelbarrows and carrying tiny scythes, what might have been garden gnomes in a mortal garden but here were cheery little skeletons in black robes. Things tended not to change.

The stables were a little different, though. Binky was in them, for a start.

He whinnied quietly as Susan led him into an empty stall next to himself.

‘I'm sure you two know each other,' she said. She'd never expected it to work, but it had to, didn't it? Time was something that happened to other people, wasn't it?

She slipped into the house.

Susan crept along behind the shelves of lifetimers. No one noticed her. When you are watching Death fight, you don't notice shadows in the background.

They'd never told her about this. Parents never do. Your father could be Death's apprentice and your mother Death's adopted daughter, but that's just fine detail when they become Parents. Parents were never young. They were merely waiting to become Parents.

Susan reached the end of the shelves.

Death was standing over her father . . . she corrected herself, the boy who
would be
her father.

Three red marks burned on his cheek where Death had struck him. Susan raised a hand to the pale marks on her own face.

But that's not how heredity works
.

At least . . . the normal kind . . 
.

Her mother . . . the girl who
would become
her mother . . . was pressed against a pillar. She had actually improved with age, Susan thought. Her dress sense certainly had. And she mentally shook herself. Fashion comments?
Now?

Death stood over Mort, sword in one hand and Mort's own lifetimer in the other.

YOU DON'T KNOW HOW SORRY THIS MAKES ME,
he said.

‘
I
might,' said Mort.

Death looked up, and looked straight at Susan. His eye sockets flared blue for a moment. Susan tried to press herself into the shadows.

He looked back down at Mort for a moment, and then at Ysabell, and then back at Susan, and then back down at Mort. And laughed.

And turned the hourglass over.

And snapped his fingers.

Mort vanished, with a small ‘pop' of imploding air. So did Ysabell and the others.

It was, suddenly, very quiet.

Death put the hourglass down, very carefully, on the table and looked at the ceiling for a while. Then he said:

Albert appeared from behind a pillar.

‘Yes, Master. Hehe, you sorted him out right enough—'

Albert scurried off in the direction of the kitchen.

Once again there was the closest thing there could ever be to silence in the room of lifetimers.

Susan did so, and stood before the Ultimate Reality.

Death was seven feet tall. He looked taller. Susan had vague memories of a figure carrying her on its shoulders through the huge dark rooms, but in memory it had been a human figure – bony, but human in a way she was certain of but couldn't quite define.

This wasn't human. It was tall, and haughty, and terrible. He might unbend enough to bend the Rules, Susan thought, but that doesn't make him human. This is the keeper of the gate of the world. Immortal, by definition. The end of everything.

He is my
grandfather
.

Will be, anyway. Is. Was.

But . . . there was the thing in the apple tree. Her mind kept swinging back to that. You looked up at the figure, and thought about the tree. It was almost impossible to keep both images in one mind.

WELL, WELL, WELL. YOU HAVE A LOT OF YOUR MOTHER ABOUT YOU,
said Death.
AND YOUR FATHER.

‘How did you know who I am?' said Susan.

‘How can you
remember
me? I haven't even been conceived yet!'

I DID SAY UNIQUE. YOUR NAME IS
—

‘Susan, but . . .'

SUSAN?
said Death bitterly.
THEY REALLY WANTED TO MAKE SURE, DIDN'T THEY?

He sat down in his chair, steepled his fingers and looked at Susan over the top of them.

She looked back, matching stare for stare.

TELL ME,
said Death, after a while,
WAS I . . . WILL I BE . . . AM I A GOOD GRANDFATHER?

Susan bit her lip thoughtfully.

‘If I tell you, won't that be a paradox?'

‘Well . . . you've got bony knees.'

Death stared at her.

‘Sorry.'

‘You've gone missing back . . . there. I'm having to do the Duty. Albert is very worried. I came here to . . . find things out. I didn't know my father worked for you.'

‘What have you done with him?'

Albert had appeared on the edge of the carpet, bearing a tea-tray.

Albert looked around, and totally failed to see Susan. If you could be invisible to Miss Butts, everyone else was easy.

‘If you say so, Master.'

SO,
said Death, when Albert had shuffled away,
I HAVE GONE MISSING. AND YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE INHERITED THE FAMILY BUSINESS. YOU?

‘I didn't want to! The horse and the rat just turned up!'

‘Er . . . I think that's something that's
going
to happen.'

‘I think Albert knows something, but he changes the subject.'

Albert reappeared, carrying another cup and saucer. He plonked it down pointedly on Death's desk, with the air of one who is being put upon.

‘That'll be all, will it, Master?' he said.

Albert left again, more slowly than normal. He kept looking over his shoulder.

‘He doesn't change, does he?' said Susan. ‘Of course, that's the point about this place—'

‘Sorry?'

‘They're . . .' Susan hesitated, ‘all right. But a cat's just a cat.'