“Join in!” Flan shouted.
They did. It was so easy and harmless and a great relief besides. Before Flan had made one full circuit of the hall, everybody in it was rushing to seize the waist at the end of the line and join in — step and step and step and step and leg out. Their trained voices rose lustily. “Let’s all do the conga — Ah!”
Flan, capering energetically, led them out of the nearest door and up the ramp beyond. “This is what you’re supposed to do!” she panted. “Conga, people!”
Halfway up the ramp, she knew she had got it right. She was not sure quite what was right, except that she knew it was. Mages were racing down side passages and leaping onto the ramp to join the line, laughing at the absurd dance and seizing the chance to express frustrations by being harmlessly silly. The bouncing, singing line was twice as long when it left the ramp and bounced and shot its legs out into Records Horn. By this time, Flan knew it was more than that. The sullen vibrations of the citadel were changing, rising to meet the rhythm she was making. Bursts of energy came to her in glad gusts. She knew that if need be, she could conga for the next twenty-four hours.
They swept up the mages from Records and congaed on toward Calculus. There Sandra, sobbing inside a concerned crowd of mage-calculators, looked up, saw the line, and shouted, “Yes! Conga him out, man!” And the entire Horn joined in. Warm and rhythmic, they bounced and shot legs out, downward to collect the cadets next. To Sandra, with her arms wrapped around Brother Gamon and her face in the prickly blue cloth of his uniform, it was as if life suddenly became new and clean and simple. By the time the line had collected the servicemen and bounced on to sweep in Maintenance Horn and Defense, the surprising pain of love, of the conflicting loyalties Sandra felt at all times, had melted simply to rhythm and song and to Brother Gamon bouncing in front of her, as if difficulties had never been. Absurd mirth flooded her as they swept down on Alchemy Horn. The cadets and servicemen, like a lusty shot in the arm, were roaring out what they thought the words were.
“Bets and balls and bonkers — AH!”
In fact, since the line was now a quarter of a mile long, there was the usual difference of opinion as to just what the words were. Alchemy Horn was certain they were “Can’t stand it all much longer — AH!” and Crafting sang, “Wronger still and wronger — AH!” while Observer Horn, when the mages there found the capering line roaring through their midst, joined it eagerly under the impression the words were “The High Head is a plonker — AH!”
Roz stood for a minute aghast, then for another minute with her arms folded and her lip curled — it was unbelievably silly and nonserious — but, as the blue-clad capering line receded from her down the corridor, where the front of it was already jolting and singing up and around the ramps on the next level, Roz was aware she had a choice. It seemed to be handed to her by the citadel itself. For the first time she became conscious that the place did indeed have vibrations, potent and awesome, like a voice. It spoke to her. Either she could join in this unusual and crazy piece of magic and become part of it, or she must stay aside and remain aside forever. She was suddenly aware there were others refusing to join in. She sensed Brother Wilfrid for one, hiding in a cupboard full of spare uniforms, and the obdurate Horn Head of Defense, who was still single-handedly guarding Arth from nonexistent invaders. Roz could be like those, the citadel told her, or — But Roz was always one who could not abide to be out of things. She sprinted after the capering line and flung herself onto the end of it. Step and step and step and step and boot in! And yelled out her own individual words. “If you can’t beat ’em join ’em — Ah!”
On the upper level the line was snaking through dormitories and recreation halls, where it swept up any mages who happened to be there and went snaking on down to Kitchen. Some accompanied the line as outriders and spectators. There were a number of mages up there too elderly to dance, and these followed excitedly, the way people follow processions, limping hurriedly through corridors parallel with the dancers in order to intercept them as they went bouncing and yelling uproariously through the kitchens and gathered in everyone at work there.
Brother Milo fled the line, to an alcove in the corridor beyond, appalled and shaken by the fierce new vibrations the dancers brought with them. But in the alcove he found himself pressed against the angular warmth of another body. He sprang around to find it was Helen. “What are you doing here? I thought you were banned from Kitchen?”
“I am indeed,” she told him, “and if you notice, I’m not in there. Your bloody High Horns made it physically impossible for me to cross the threshold.”
“No doubt he knows best,” Brother Milo piously said.
Helen’s reply was blasphemous, but Brother Milo was saved from hearing it. The conga was upon them, and past, and still going past, and continuing to pass them, an apparently endless line of blue-clad bouncing, yelling mages, a mere body-width away in the corridor. “Hellband fall on wrong uns!” Brother Milo heard. But next second the words seemed to be “Spells are all much stronger — ah!” or were they really singing, “Helen’s food will conquer — ah!” or was it again “Blessings fall upon her — ah!” Helen, he noticed uneasily, was jogging to the time of the ditty, with her widest, coolest smile. She bent down to him to shout, “I want you to join in this!”
He shouted back, “Are you trying to seduce me again?”
“No!” she bawled. “I gave that up days ago. I know you’re a saint!”
“Naturally celibate,” he yelled reprovingly. “I told you — I keep my Oath.”
“I’m not asking you to break your damned Oath!” she roared in his face. “I’m just asking you to dance! Is that so bad? I want to — I will if you will!”
It did look fun, Brother Milo thought, wistfully watching joyous faces prancing past. And nothing in the Oath said anything about dancing. The end of the line was coming past now. He could hear himself speak when he protested, “I don’t know the words!”
“Nobody ever does,” said Helen. “Make some up.”
And here came the end of the line, the two kitchen cadets, out of step and shooting the wrong leg out and roaring, “Cesspits are for honkers — Ah!”
“Oh, all right,” said Brother Milo. He seized the waist of the hinder cadet and joined in, lustily singing, “Decline and fall and conquer — Ah!” He felt Helen seize his waist, but there really was no harm in it. “And conquer — Ah!” they both bellowed, dancing toward the main ramp. Some latecomer joined in behind Helen. As soon as she felt her waist grasped, it was clear to her that Brother Milo had given in to more than dancing. He would break his Oath with her as soon as they stopped. She felt as much sadness as triumph — which was ridiculous, since this was one of the things she was here for, for God’s sake! “Decline and fall and conquer — Ah!” She resolved that he should enjoy it tremendously. It seemed the least she could do.
Halfway up the main ramp, bouncing tirelessly at the head of the line, Flan felt as if she were in a dervishlike trance by then. It was wonderful. Almost every mage in Arth was coiling up the main ramp behind her toward Healing Horn, some upside down, some sideways, each singing for all he was worth, and the whole fortress vibrating with it. She was dimly aware that the rhythms were fiercer. The line of heads apparently jogging above her as they came up after her were singing something different now. Flan changed her own song to match the change. “I came I saw I conquered—Ah!” Flan sang, too loud in her own ears to hear that the mages coiling up the ramp were in fact singing, “Let’s pull the High Head’s legs off — Ah! Let’s finish the old bastard—Ah!” No one knew where this began, but once begun, it overtook and replaced even the servicemen’s new words, which were very dirty indeed. “LET’S KILL THAT BROTHER LAWRENCE!” they roared, and pounded upward to do it.