Soul Music - catch music

'All right, you lot,' he said, 'what do you make of this?' He produced from his robe a Mended Drum beer tankard with a beer mat fastened over the top with a piece of string.

'What have you got in there, Archchancellor?' said Ponder Stibbons.

'A piece of music, lad.'

'Music? But you can't trap music like that.'

'I wish I was a clever bugger like you and knew every damn thing,' said Ridcully. 'That big flask over there . . . You - Big Mad Adrian -take the top off it, and be ready to slam it down again when I say. Ready with that lid, Mad Adrian . . . right!'

There was a brief angry chord as Ridcully pulled the beer mat off the mug and upended it quickly into the flask. Mad Drongo Adrian slammed the lid down, in total terror of the Archchancellor. And then they could hear it . . . a persistent faint beat, rebounding off the inner walls of the glass flask. The students peered in at it. There was something in there. A sort of movement in the air . . .

'I trapped it in the Drum last night.'

'That's not possible,' said Ponder. 'You can't trap music.'

'That isn't Klatchian mist, lad.'

'It's been in that mug since last night?' said Ponder. 'Yes.'

'But that's not possible!' Ponder looked absolutely crestfallen. There are some people born with the instinctive feeling that the universe is solvable.

***

Soul Music - p123