Terry Pratchett. Moving pictures
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...ziest person in the history ofthe world.
Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence
of effort. Victor had passed through there a long time ago, had gone
straight through commonplace idleness and out on the far side. He put more
effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labour.
He had never wanted to be a wizard. He'd never wanted much, except
perhaps to be left alone and not woken up until midday. When he'd been
small, people had said things like, 'And what do you want to be, little
man?' and he'd said, 'I don't know. What have you got?'
They didn't let you get away with that sort of thing for very long. It
wasn't enough to be what you were, you had to be working to be something
else.
He'd tried. For quite a long while he'd tried wanting to be a
blacksmith, because that looked interesting and romantic. But it also
involved hard work and intractable bits of metal. Then he'd tried wanting to
be an assassin, which looked dashing and romantic. But it also involved hard
work and, when you got right down to it, occasionally having to kill
someone. Then he'd tried wanting to be an actor, which looked dramatic and
romantic, but it had involved dusty tights, cramped lodgings and, to his
amazement, hard work.
He'd allowed himself to be sent to the University because it was easier
than not going.
He tended to smile a lot, in a faintly puzzled way. This gave people
the impression that he was slightly more intelligent than they were. In
fact, he was usually trying to work out what they had just said.
And he had a thin moustache, which in a certain light made him look
debonair and, in another, made him look as though he had been drinking a
thick chocolate milk shake.
He was quite proud of it. When you became a wizard you were expected to
stop shaving and grow a beard like a gorse bush. Very senior wizards looked
capable of straining nourishment out of the air via their moustaches, like
whales. It was now half-past one. He was ambling back from the Mended Drum,
the most determinedly disreputable of the city's taverns. Victor Tugelbend
always gave the impression of ambling, even when he was running.
He was also quite sober and a bit surprised, therefore, to find himself
in the Plaza of Broken Moons. He'd been heading for the little alley behind
the University and the piece of wall with the conveniently spaced removable
bricks where, for hundreds and hundreds of years, student wizards had
quietly got around, or more precisely climbed over, Unseen University's
curfew restrictions.
The plaza wasn't on the route.
He turned to amble back the way he had come, and then stopped. There
was something unusual going on.
Usually there'd be a storyteller there, or some musicians, or an
entrepreneur looking for prospective buyers of such surplus Ankh-Morpork
landmarks as the Tower of Art or the Brass Bridge.
Now there were just some people putting up a big screen, like a
bedsheet stretched between poles.
He sauntered over to them. 'What're you doing?' he said amiably.
'There's going to be a performance.'
'Oh. Acting,' said Victor, without much interest.
He mooched back through the damp darkness, but stopped when he heard a
voice coming from the gloom between two buildings.
The voice said 'Help', quite quietly.
Another voice said, 'Just hand it over, right?'
Victor wandered closer, and squinted into the shadows.
'Hallo?' he said. 'Is everything all right?'
There was a pause, and then a low voice said, 'You don't know what's
good for you, kid.'
He's got a knife, Victor thought. He's coming at me with a knife. That
means I'm either going to get stabbed or I'm going to have to run away,
which is a real waste of energy.
People who didn't apply themselves to the facts in hand might have
thought that Victor Tugelbend would be fat and unhealthy. In fact, he was
undoubtedly the most athletically-inclined student in the University. Having
to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that
he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with
decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags
of flab.
So he brought one hand round in a backhanded swipe. It didn't just
connect, it lifted the mugger off his feet.
Then he looked for the prospective victim, who was still cowering
against the wall.
'I hope you're not hurt,' he said.
'Don't move!'
'I wasn't going to,' said Victor.
The figure advanced from the shadows. It had a package under one arm,
and its hands were held in front of its face in an odd gesture, each
forefinger and thumb extended at right angles and then fitted together, so
that the man's little weaselly eyes appeared to be looking out through a
frame.
He's probably warding off the Evil Eye, Victor thought. He looks like a
wizard, with all those symbols on his dress.
'Amazing!' said the man, squinting through his fingers. 'Just turn your
head slightly, will you? Great! Pity about the nose, but I expect we can do
something about that.'
He stepped forward and tried to put his arm round Victor's shoulders.
'It's lucky for you', he said, 'that you met me.'
'It is?' said Victor, who had been thinking it was the other way
around.
'You're just the type I'm looking for,' said the man.
'Sorry,' said Victor. 'I thought you were being robbed.'
'He was after this,' said the man, patting the package under his arm.
It rang like a gong. 'Wouldn't have done him any good, though.'
'Not worth anything?' said Victor.
'Priceless.'
'That's all right, then,' said Victor.
The man gave up trying to reach across both of Victor's shoulders,
which were quite broad, and settled for just one of them.
'But a lot of people would be disappointed,' he said. 'Now, look. You
stand well. Good profile. Listen, lad, how would you like to be in moving
pictures?'
'Er,' said Victor. 'No. I don't think so.'
The man gaped at him.
'You did hear what I said, didn't you?' he said. 'Moving pictures?'
'Yes.'
'Everyone wants to be in moving pictures!'
'No, thanks,' said Victor, politely. 'I'm sure it's a worthwhile job,
but moving pictures doesn't sound very interesting to me.'
'I'm talking about moving pictures!'
'Yes,' said Victor mildly. 'I heard you.'
The man shook his head. 'Well,'- he said, 'you've made my day. First
time in weeks I've met someone who isn't desperate to get into moving
pictures. I thought everyone wanted to get into moving pictures. I thought
as soon as I saw you: he'll be expecting a job in moving pictures for this
night's work.'
'Thanks all the same,' said Victor. 'But I don't think I'd take to it.'
'Well, I owe you something.' The little man fumbled in a pocket and
produced a card. Victor took it. It read:
Thomas Silverfish Interesting and Instructive Kinematography One and
Two Reelers Nearly non-explosive Stock 1, Holy Wood
'That's if ever you change your mind,' he said. 'Everyone in Holy Wood
knows me.'
Victor stared at the card. 'Thank you,' he said vaguely. 'Er. Are you a
wizard?'
Silverfish glared at him.
'Whatever made you think that?' he snapped.
'You're wearing a dress with magic symbols-'
'Magic symbols? Look closely, boy! These are certainly not the
credulous symbols of a ridiculous and outmoded belief system! These are the
badges of an enlightened craft whose clear, new dawn is just ... er,
dawning! Magic symbols!' he finished, in tones of withering scorn. 'And it's
a robe, not a dress,' he added.
Victor peered at the collection of stars and crescent moons and things.
The badges of an enlightened craft whose new dawn was just dawning looked
just like the credulous symbols of a ridiculous and outmoded belief system
to him, but this was probably not the time to say so.
'Sorry,' he said again. 'Couldn't see them clearly.'
'I'm an alchemist,' said Silverfish, only slightly mollified.
'Oh, lead into gold, that sort of thing,' said Victor.
'Not lead, lad. Light. It doesn't work with lead. Light into gold ... '
'Really?' said Victor politely, as Silverfish started to set up a
tripod in the middle of the plaza.
A small crowd was collecting. A small crowd collected very easily in
Ankh-Morpork. As a city, it had some of the most accomplished spectators in
the universe. They'd watch anything, especially if there was any possibility
of anyone getting hurt in an amusing way.
'Why don't you stay for the show?' said Silverfish, and hurried off.
An alchemist. Well, everyone knew that alchemists were a little bit
mad, thought Victor. It was perfectly normal.
Who'd want to spend their time moving pictures? Most of them looked all
right where they were.
'Sausages inna bun! Get them while they're hot!' bellowed a voice by
his ear. He turned.
'Oh, hallo, Mr Dibbler,' he said.
'Evening, lad. Want to get a nice hot sausage down you?'
Victor eyed the glistening tubes in the tray around Dibbler's neck.
They smelled appetizing. They always did. And then you bit into them, and
learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits
of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out
that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything.
'Special rate for students,' Dibbler whispered conspiratorially.
'Fifteen pence, and that's cutting my own throat.' He flapped the frying pan
lid strategically, raising a cloud of steam.
The piquant scent of fried onions did its wicked work.
'Just one, then,' Victor said warily.
Dibbler flicked a sausage out of the pan and snatched it into a bun
with the expertise of a frog snapping a mayfly.
'You won't live to regret it,' he said cheerfully,
Victor nibbled a bit of onion. That was safe enough.
'What's all this?' he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the
flapping screen.
'Some kind of entertainment,' said Dibbler. 'Hot sausages! They're
lovely!' He lowered his voice again to its normal conspiratorial hiss.
'All the rage in the other cities, I hear,' he added. 'Some sort of
moving pictures. They've been trying to get it right before coming to
Ankh-Morpork.'
They watched Silverfish and a couple of associates fumble technically
with the box on the tripod. White light suddenly appeared at a circular
orifice on the front of it, and illuminated the screen. There was a
halfhearted cheer from the crowd.
'Oh,' said Victor. 'I see. Is that all? It's just plain old shadow
play. That's all it is. My uncle used to do it to amuse me. You know? You
kind of move your hands in front of the light and the shadows make a kind of
silhouettey picture.'
'Oh, yeah,' said Dibbler uncertainly. 'Like "Big Elephant", or "Bald
Eagle". My grandad used to do that sort of stuff.'
'Mainly my uncle did "Deformed Rabbit",' said Victor. 'He wasn't very
good at it, you see. It used to get pretty embarrassing. We'd all sit round
desperately guessing things like "Surprised Hedgehog" or "Rabid Stoat" and
he'd go off to bed in a sulk because we hadn't guessed he was really doing
"Lord Henry Skipps and His Men beating the Trolls at the Battle of
Pseudopolis". I can't see what's so special about shadows on a screen.'
'From what I hear it's not like that,' said Dibbler. 'I sold one of the
men a Jumbo Sausage Special earlier on, and he said it's all down to showing
pictures very fast. Sticking lots of pictures together and showing them one
after another. Very, very fast, he said.'
'Not too fast,' said Victor severely. 'You wouldn't be able to see them
go past if they were too fast.'
'He said that's the whole secret, not seeing 'em go past,' said
Dibbler. 'You have to see 'em all at once, or something.'
'They'd all be blurred,' said Victor. 'Didn't you ask him about that?'
'Er, no,' said Dibbler. 'Point of fact, he had to rush off just then.
Said he felt a bit odd.'
Victor looked thoughtfully at the remnant of his sausage in a bun and,
as he did so, he was aware of being stared at in his turn.
He looked down. There was a dog sitting by his feet.
It was small, bow-legged and wiry, and basically grey but with patches
of brown, white and black in outlying areas, and it was staring.
It was certainly the most penetrating stare Victor had ever seen. It
wasn't menacing or fawning. It was just very slow and very thorough, as
though the dog was memorizing details so that it could give a full
description to the authorities later on.
When it was sure it had his full attention, it transferred its gaze to
the sausage:
Feeling wretched at being so cruel to a poor dumb animal, Victor
flicked the sausage downwards. The dog caught and swallowed it in one
economical movement.
More people were drifting into the plaza now. Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler
had wandered off and was doing a busy trade with those latenight revellers
who were too drunk to prevent optimism triumphing over experience; anyone
who bought a meal at one a.m. after a7 night's revelling was probably going
to be riotously ill anyway, so they might as well have something to show for
it.
Victor was gradually surrounded by a large crowd. It didn't consist
solely of humans. He recognized, a few feet away, the big rangy shape of
Detritus, an ancient troll well known to all the students as someone who
found employment anywhere people needed to be thrown very hard out of places
for money. The troll noticed him, and tried to wink. This involved closing
both eyes, because Detritus wasn't good at complicated things. It was widely
believed that, if Detritus could be taught to read and write sufficiently to
sit down and do an intelligence test, he'd prove to be slightly less
intelligent than the chair. Silverfish picked up a megaphone.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'you are privileged tonight to witness
a turning point in the history of the Century of-' he lowered the megaphone
and Victor heard him whisper urgently to one of his assistants, 'What
century is this? Is it?' and then raised the megaphone again and continued
in the original plummily optimistic tones '-Century of the Fruitbat! No less
than the birth of Moving Pictures! Pictures that move without magic!'
He waited for the applause. There wasn't any. The crowd just watched
him. You needed to do more than end your sentences with exclamation marks to
get a round of applause from an Ankh-Morpork crowd.
Slightly dispirited, he went on, 'Seeing is Believing, they say! But,
ladies and gentlemen, you will not believe the Evidence of Your Own Eyes!
What you are about to witness is a Triumph of Natural Science! A Marvel of
the Age! A Discovery of World, nay, dare I say, Universe-Shaking
Proportions!-'
' 'S got to be better than that bloody sausage, anyway,' said a quiet
voice by Victor's knee.
'-Harnessing Natural Mechanisms to create Illusion! Illusion, Ladies
and Gentlemen, without recourse to Magic! '
Victor let his gaze slide downwards. There was nothing down there but
the little dog, industriously scratching itself. It looked up slowly, and
said 'Woof?'
'-Potential for Learning! The Arts! History! I thank you, Ladies and
Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet!'
There was another hopeful break for applause.
Someone at the front of the crowd said, 'That's right. We ain't.'
'Yeah,' said the woman next to him. 'When're you goin' to stop goin' on
like that and get on with the shadow play?'
'That's right,' snapped a second woman. 'Do "Deformed Rabbit". My kids
always love that one.'
Victor looked away for a while, to lull the dog's suspicions, and then
turned and glared hard at it.
It was amiably watching the crowd, and apparently taking no notice of
him.
Victor poked an exploratory finger in his ear. It must have been a
trick of an echo, or something. It wasn't that the dog had gone 'woof!',
although that was practically unique in itself; most dogs in the universe
never went 'woof!', they had complicated barks like 'whuuugh!' and
'hwhoouf!'. No, it was that it hadn't in fact barked at all. It had said
'woof'.
He shook his head, and looked back as Silverfish climbed down from the
screen and motioned to one of his assistants to start turning a handle at
the side of the box. There was a grinding noise that rose to a steady
clicking. Vague shadows danced across the screen, and then ...
One of the last things Victor remembered was a voice beside his knee
saying,
'Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said "miaow".'
Holy Wood dreams ...
And now it was now eight hours later.
A horribly overhung Ponder Stibbons looked guiltily at the empty desk
beside him. It was unlike Victor to miss exams. He always said he enjoyed
the challenge.
'Get ready to turn over your papers,' said the invigilator at the end
of the hall. The sixty chests of sixty prospective wizards tightened with
dark, unbearable tension. Ponder fumbled anxiously with his lucky pen.
The wizard on the dais turned over the hourglass. 'You may begin,' he
said.
Several of the more smug students turned over their papers by snapping
their fingers. Ponder hated them instantly.
He reached for his lucky inkwell, missed completely in his nervousness,
and then knocked it over. A small black flood rolled over his question
paper.
Panic and shame washed over him nearly as thoroughly. He mopped the ink
up with the hem of his robe, spreading it smoothly over the desk. His lucky
dried frog had been washed away..
Hot with embarrassment, dripping black ink, he looked up in
supplication at the presiding wizard and then cast his eyes imploringly at
the empty desk beside him.
The wizard nodded. Ponder gratefully sidled across the aisle, waited
until his heart had stopped thumping and then, very carefully, turned over
the paper on the desk.
After ten seconds, and against all reason, he turned it over again just
in case there had been a mistake and the rest of the questions had somehow
been on the top side after all.
Around him there was the intense silence of fifty-nine minds creaking
with sustained effort.
Ponder turned the paper over again.
Perhaps it- was some mistake. No ... there was the University seal and
the signature of the Archchancellor and everything. So perhaps it was some
sort of special test. Perhaps they were watching him now to see what he'd do
...
He peered around furtively. The other students seemed to be working
hard.
Perhaps it was a mistake after all. Yes. The more he came to think
about it, the more logical it seemed. The Archchancellor had probably signed
the papers and then, when the clerks had been copying them out, one of them
had got as far as the all-important first question and then maybe had been
called away or something, and no-one had noticed, and it'd got put on
Victor's desk, but now he wasn't here and Ponder had got it which meant, he
decided, in a sudden rush of piety, that the gods must have wanted him to
get it. After all, it wasn't his fault if some sort of error gave him a
paper like this. It was probably sacrilegious or something to ignore the
opportunity.
They had to accept what you put down. Ponder hadn't shared the room
with the world's greatest authority on examination procedures without
learning a thing or two.
He looked again at the question: 'What is your name?'
He answered it.
After a while he underlined it, several times, with his lucky ruler.
After a little while longer, to show willing, he wrote above it: 'The
anser to questione One is:'.
After a further ten minutes he ventured 'Which is what my name is' on
the line below, and underlined it.
Poor old Victor will be really sorry he missed this, he thought.
I wonder where he is?
There was no road to Holy Wood yet. Anyone trying to get there would
take the highway to Quirm and, at some unmarked point out in the scrubby
landscape, would turn off and strike out towards the sand dunes. Wild
lavender and rosemary lined the banks: There was no sound but the buzzing of
bees and the distant song of a skylark, which only made the silence more
obvious.
Victor Tugelbend left the road at the point where the bank had been
broken down and flattened by the passage of many carts and, by the look of
it, an increasing number of feet.
There were still many miles to go. He trudged on.
Somewhere at the back of his mind a tiny voice was saying things like
'Where am I? Why am I doing this?' and another part of him knew that he
didn't really have to do it at all. Like the hypnotist's victim who knows
they're not really hypnotized and can snap out of it any time they like, but
just happened not to feel like it right now, he let his feet be guided.
He wasn't certain why. He just knew that there was something that he
had to be part of. Something that might never happen again.
Some way behind, but catching up fast, was Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler,
trying to ride a horse. He was not a natural horseman, and fell off
occasionally, which was one reason why he hadn't overtaken Victor yet. The
other was that he had paused, before leaving the city, to sell his
sausage-in-a-bun business cheaply to a dwarf who could not believe his luck
(after actually trying some of the sausages, would still not be able to
believe his luck).
Something was calling Dibbler, and it had a golden voice.
A long way behind Throat, knuckles dragging in the sand, was Detritus
the troll.
It's hard to be certain of what he was thinking, any more than it's
possible to tell what a homing pigeon is thinking. He just knew that where
he ought to be was not where he was.
And finally, even further down the road, was an eight-horse wagon
taking a load of lumber to Holy Wood. Its driver wasn't thinking about
anything very much, although he was slightly puzzled by an incident that
occurred just as he was leaving Ankh-Morpork in the darkness before dawn. A
voice from the gloom by the road had shouted 'Stop in the name of the city
guard!' and he had stopped, and when nothing further had transpired he had
looked around, and there was no-one there.
The wagon rumbled past, revealing to the eye of the imaginative
beholder the small figure of Gaspode the Wonder Dog, trying to make himself
comfortable amongst the balks of timber at the rear. He was going to Holy
Wood too.
And he also didn't know why.
But he was determined to find out.
None would have believed, in the final years of the Century of the
Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and impatiently
by intelligences greater than Man's, or at least much nastier; that their
affairs were being scrutinized and studied as a man with a three-day
appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For A Dollar menu outside
Harga's House of Ribs...
Well, actually ... most wizards would have believed it, if anyone had
told them.
And the Librarian would certainly have believed it.
And Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite of 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork, would
have believed it, too. But she believed the world was round, that a sprig of
garlic in her underwear drawer kept away vampires, that it did you good to
get out and have a laugh occasionally, that there was niceness in everyone
if you only knew where to look, and that three horrible little dwarfs peered
in at her undressing every night.[4]
Holy Wood! ...
... was nothing very much, yet. Just a hill by the sea, and on the
other side of the hill, a lot of sand dunes. It was that special sort of
beautiful area which is only beautiful if you can leave after briefly
admiring its beauty and go somewhere else where there are hot tubs and cold
drinks. Actually staying there for any length of time is a penance.
Nevertheless, there was a town there ... just. Wooden shacks had been
built wherever someone had dropped a load of timber, and they were crude, as
if the builders had resented the time taken from something more important
that they'd much rather be doing. They were square plank boxes.
Except for the front.
If you wanted to understand Holy Wood, Victor said years afterwards,
you had to understand its buildings.
You'd see a box on the sand. It'd have a roughly peaked roof, but that
wasn't important, because it never rained in Holy Wood. There'd be cracks in
the walls, stuffed with old rags. The windows would be holes-glass was too
fragile to cart all the way from Ankh-Morpork. And, from behind, the front
was just like a huge wooden billboard, held up by a network of struts.
From the front, it was a fretted, carved, painted, ornate, baroque
architectural extravaganza. In Ankh-Morpork, sensible men built their houses
plain, so as not to attract attention, and kept the decoration for inside.
But Holy Wood wore its houses inside out.
Victor walked up what passed for the main street in a daze. He had
woken up in the early hours out in the dunes. Why? He'd decided to come to
Holy Wood, but why? He couldn't remember. All he could remember was that, at
the time, it was the obvious thing to do. There had been hundreds of good
reasons.
If only he could remember one of them.
Not that his mind had any room to review memories. It was too busy
being aware that he was very hungry and acutely thirsty. His pockets had
yielded a total of seven pence. That wouldn't buy a bowl of soup, let alone
a good meal.
He needed a good meal. Things would look a lot clearer after a good
meal.
He pushed through the crowds. Most of them seemed to be carpenters, but
there were others, carrying carboys or mysterious boxes. And everyone was
moving very quickly and resolutely, bent on some powerful purpose of their
own.
Except him.
He trailed up the impromptu street, gawping at the houses, feeling like
a stray grasshopper in an ant hill. Arid there didn't seem to-
'Why don't you look where you're going!'
He rebounded off a wall. When he got his balance the other party in the
collision had already whirred off into the crowd. He stared for a moment and
then ran desperately after her.
'Hey!' he said, 'Sorry! Excuse me? Miss?'
She stopped, and waited impatiently as he caught up.
'Well?' she said.
She was a foot shorter than him and her shape was doubtful since most
of her was covered in a ridiculously frilly dress, although the dress wasn't
as ludicrous as the big blond wig full of ringlets. And her face was white
with make-up apart from her eyes, which were heavily ringed in black. The
general effect was of a lampshade that hadn't been getting much sleep
lately.
'Well?' she repeated, 'Hurry up! They're shooting again in five
minutes!'
'Er-'
She unbent slightly. 'No, don't tell me,' she said. 'You've just got
here. It's all new to you. You don't know what to do. You're hungry. You
haven't got any money. Right?'
'Yes! How did you know?'
'Everyone starts like that. And now you want to break into the clicks,
right?'
'The clicks?'
She rolled her eyes, deep within their black circles.
'Moving pictures!'
'Oh-' I do, he thought. I didn't know it but I do. Yes. That's why I
came here. Why didn't I think of that? 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, that's what I
want to do. I want to, er, break in. And how does one do that?'
'One waits for ever and ever. Until one is noticed.' The girl looked
him up and down with unconcealed contempt. 'Take up carpentry, why don't
you? Holy Wood always needs good wood butchers.'
And then she spun around and was gone, lost in a crowd of busy people.
'Er, thank you,' Victor called after her. 'Thank you.' He raised his
voice and added, 'I hope your eyes get better!'
He jingled the coins in his pocket.
Well, carpentry was out. It sounded too much like hard work. He'd tried
it once, and wood and him had soon reached an agreement - he wouldn't touch
it, and it wouldn't split.
Waiting for ever and ever had its attractions, but you needed money to
do it with.
His fingers closed around a small, unexpected rectangle. He pulled it
out and looked at it.
Silverfish's card.
No. 1 Holy Wood turned out to be a couple of shacks inside a high
fence. There was a queue at the gate. It was made up of trolls, dwarfs and
humans. They looked as though they had been there for some time; in fact,
some of them had such a naturally dispirited way of sagging while remaining
upright that they might have been specially-evolved descendants of the
original prehistoric queuers.
At the gate was a large, heavy-set man, who was eyeing the queue with
the smug look of minor power-wielders everywhere.
'Excuse me-' Victor began.
'Mister Silverfish ain't hiring any more people this morning,' said the
man out of the corner of his mouth., 'So scram.' .
'But he said that if ever I was in- '
'Did I just say scram, friend?'
'Yes, but-'
The door in the fence opened a fraction. A small pale face poked out.
'We need a troll and a coupla humans,' it said. 'One day, usual rates.'
The gate shut again.
The man straightened up and cupped his scarred hands around his mouth.
'Right, you horrible lot!' he shouted. 'You heard the man!' He ran his
eyes over the line with the practised gaze of a stock breeder. 'You, you and
you,' he said, pointing.
'Excuse me,' said Victor helpfully, 'but I think that man over there
was actually first in the-'
He was shoved out of the way. The lucky three shuffled in. He thought
he saw the glint of coins changing hands. Then the gatekeeper turned an
angry red face towards him.
'You,' he said, 'get to the end of the queue. And stay there!'
Victor stared at him. He stared at the gate. He looked at the long line
of dispirited people.
'Um, no,' he said. 'I don't think so. Thanks all the same.'
'Then beat it!'
Victor gave him a friendly smile. He walked to the end of the fence,
and followed it. It turned, at the far end, into a narrow alley.
Victor searched among the usual alley debris for a while until he found
a piece of scrap paper. Then he rolled up his sleeves. And only then did he
inspect the fence carefully until he found a couple of loose boards that,
with a bit of effort, let him through.
This brought him into an area stacked with lumber and piles of cloth.
There was no-one around.
Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no-one with their sleeves
rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in
their hand is ever challenged, he set out across the wood and canvas
wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography.
There were buildings painted on the back of other buildings. There were
trees that were trees, at the front, and just a mass of struts at the back.
There was a flurry of activity although, as far as Victor could see; no-one
was actually producing anything.
He watched a man in a long black cloak, a black hat and a moustache
like a yard brush tie a girl to one of the trees. No-one seemed interested
in stopping him, even though she was struggling. A couple of people were in
fact watching disinterestedly, and there was a man standing behind a large
box on a tripod, turning a handle.
She flung out an imploring arm and opened and shut her mouth
soundlessly.
One of the watchers stood up, sorted through a stack of boards beside
him, and held one up in front of the box.
It was black. On it, in white, were the words 'Noe! Noe!'
He walked away. The villain twirled his moustache. The man walked back
with a board. This time it said 'Ahar! My proude beauty!'
Another of the seated watchers picked up a megaphone.
'Fine, fine,' he said. 'OK, take a five minutes break and then everyone
back here for the big fight scene.'
The villain untied the girl. They wandered off. The man stopped turning
the handle, lit a cigarette, and then opened the top of the box.
'Everyone get that?' he said.
There was a chorus of squeaks.
Victor walked over and tapped the megaphone man on his shoulder.
'Urgent message for Mr Silverfish?' he said.
'He's in the offices over there,' said the man, jerking his thumb over
his shoulder without looking around.
'Thank you.'
The first shed he poked his head into contained nothing but rows of
small cages stretching away into the gloom. Indistinct things hurled
themselves against the bars and chittered at him. He slammed the door
hurriedly.
The next door revealed Silverfish, standing in front of a desk covered
with bits of glassware and drifts of paper. He didn't turn around.
'Just put it over there,' he said absently.
'It's me, Mr Silverfish,' said Victor.
Silverfish turned around and peered vaguely at him, as if it was
Victor's fault that his name meant nothing.
'Yes?'
'I've come because of that job,' said Victor. 'You know?'
'What job? What should I know?' said Silverfish. 'How the hell did you
get in here?'
'I broke into moving pictures,' said Victor. 'But it's nothing that a
hammer and a few nails won't put right.'
Panic bloomed on Silverfish's face. Victor pulled out the card and
waved it in what he hoped was a reassuring way.
'In Ankh-Morpork?' he said. 'A couple of nights ago? You were being
menaced?' Realization dawned. 'Oh, yes,' said Silverfish faintly. 'And you
were the lad who was of some help.'
'And you said to come and see you if I wanted to move pictures,' said
Victor. 'I didn't, then, but I do now.' He gave Silverfish a bright smile.
But he thought: he's going to try and wriggle out of it. He's
regretting the offer. He's going to send me back to the queue.
'Well, of course,' said Silverfish, 'a lot of very talented people want
to be in moving pictures. We're going to have sound any day now. I mean, are
you a carpenter? Any alchemical experience? Have you ever trained imps? Any
good with your hands at all?'
'No,' Victor admitted.
'Can you sing?'
'A bit. In the bath. But not very well,' Victor conceded.
'Can you dance?'
'No.' 'Swords? Do you know how to handle a sword?'
'A little,' said Victor. He'd used one sometimes in the gym. He'd never
in fact fought an opponent, since wizards generally abhor exercise and the
only other University resident who ever entered the place was the Librarian,
and then only to use the ropes and rings. But Victor had practised an
energetic and idiosyncratic technique in front of the mirror, and the mirror
had never beaten him yet.
'I see,' said Silverfish gloomily. 'Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle
a sword a little.'
'But I have saved your life twice,' said Victor.
'Twice?' snapped Silverfish.
'Yes,' said Victor. He took a deep breath. This was going to be risky.
'Then,' he said, 'and now.'
There was a long pause.
Then Silverfish said, 'I really don't think there's any call for that.'
'I'm sorry, Mr Silverfish,' Victor pleaded. 'I'm really not that kind
of person but you did say and I've walked all this way and I haven't got any
money and I'm hungry and I'll do anything you've got. Anything at all.
Please.'
Silverfish looked at him doubtfully.
'Even acting?' he said.
'Pardon?'
'Moving about and pretending to do things,' said Silverfish helpfully.
'Yes!'.
'Seems a shame, a bright, well-educated lad like you,' said Silverfish.
'What do you do?'
'I'm studying to be a w-,' Victor began. He remembered Silverfish's
antipathy towards wizardry, and corrected himself, 'a clerk.'
'A waclerk?' said Silverfish.
'I don't know if I'd be any good at acting, though,' Victor confessed.
Silverfish looked surprised. 'Oh, you'll be OK,' he said. 'It's very
hard to be bad at acting in moving pictures.'
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a dollar coin.
'Here,' he said, 'go and get something to eat.'
He looked Victor up and down.
'Are you waiting for something?' he said.
'Well,' said Victor, 'I was hoping you could tell me what's going on.'
'How do you mean?'
'A couple of nights ago I watched your, your click,' he felt slightly
proud of remembering the term, 'back in the city and suddenly I wanted to be
here more than anything else. I've never really wanted anything in my life
before!'
Silverfish's face broke into a relieved grin.
'Oh, that,' he said. 'That's just the magic of Holy Wood. Not wizard's
magic,' he added hastily, 'which is all superstition and mumbo-jumbo. No.
This is magic for ordinary people. Your mind is fizzing with all the
possibilities. I know mine was,' he added. . 'Yes,' said Victor uncertainly.
'But how does it work?'
Silverfish's face lit up.
'You want to know?' he said. 'You want to know how things work?'
'You see, most people are so disappointing,' Silverfish said. 'You show
them something really wonderful like the picture box, and they just go "oh".
They never ask how it works. Mr Bird!'
The last word was a shout. After a while a door opened on the far side
of the shack and a man appeared.
He had a picture box on a strap round his neck. Assorted tools hung
from his belt. His hands were stained with chemicals and he had no eyebrows,
which Victor was later to learn was a sure sign of someone who had been
around octo-cellulose for any length of time. He also had his cap on back to
front.
'This is Gaffer Bird,' beamed Silverfish. 'Our head handleman. Gaffer,
this is Victor. He's going to act for us.'
'Oh,' said Gaffer, looking at Victor in the same way that a butcher
might look at a carcass. 'Is he?'
'And he wants to know how things work!' said Silverfish. Gaffer gave
Victor another jaundiced look.
'String,' he said gloomily. 'It all works by string. You'd be amazed
how things'd fall to bits around here,' he said, 'if it weren't for me and
my ball of string.'
There was a sudden commotion from the box round his neck. He thumped it
with the flat of his hand.
'You lot can cut that out,' he said. He nodded at Victor.
'They gets fractious if their routine is upset,' he said.
'What's in the box?' said Victor.
Gaffer winked at Silverfish. 'I bet you'd like to know,' he said.
Victor remembered the caged things he'd seen in the shed.
'They sound like common demons,' he said cautiously.
Gaffer gave him an approving look, such as might be given to a stupid
dog who had just done a rather clever trick.
'Yeah, that's right,' he conceded.
'But how do you stop them escaping?' said Victor.
Gaffer leered. 'Amazin' stuff, string,' he said.
Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was one of those rare people with the ability
to think in straight lines.
Most people think in curves and zig-zags. For example, they start from
a thought like: I wonder how I can become very rich, and then proceed along
an uncertain course which includes thoughts like: I wonder what's for
supper, and: I wonder who I know who can lend me five dollars?
Whereas Throat was one of those people who could identify the thought
at the other end of the process, in this case I am now very rich, draw a
line between the two, and then think his way along it, slowly and patiently,
until he got to the other end.
Not that it worked. There was always, he found, some small but vital
flaw in the process. It generally involved a strange reluctance on the part
of people to buy what he had to sell.
But his life savings were now resting in a leather bag inside his
jerkin. He'd been in Holy Wood for a day. He'd looked at its ramshackle
organization, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There
seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn't a problem. There was always
room at the top.
A day's enquiries and careful observation had led him to Interesting
and Instructive Kinematography. Now he stood on the far side of the street,
watching carefully.
He watched the queue. He watched the man on the gate. He reached a
decision. He strolled along the queue. He had brains. He knew he had brains.
What he needed now was muscle. Somewhere here there was bound to-
'Aft'noon, Mister Dibbler.'
That flat head, those rangy arms, that curling lower lip, that croaking
voice that bespoke an IQ the size of a walnut. It added up to-
'It's me. Detritus,' said Detritus. 'Fancy seein' you here, eh?'
He gave Dibbler a grin like a crack appearing in a vital bridge
support.
'Hallo, Detritus. You working in films?' said Dibbler.
'Not exactly working,' said Detritus, bashfully.
Dibbler looked quietly at the troll, whose chipped fists were generally
the final word in any street fight.
'I call that disgusting,' he said. He pulled out his money bag and
counted out five dollars. 'How would you like to work for me, Detritus?'
Detritus touched his jutting brow respectfully.
'Right you are, Mr Dibbler,' he said.
'Just step this way.'
Dibbler strolled back up to the head of the queue. The man at the door
thrust out an arm to bar his way.
'Where d'you think you're going, pal?' he said.
'I have an appointment with Mr Silverfish,' said Dibbler.
'And he knows about this, does he?' said the guard, in tones that
suggested that he personally would not believe it even if he saw it written
on the sky.
'Not yet,' said Dibbler.
'Well, my friend, in that case you can just get yourself to-'
'Detritus?'
'Yes, Mr Dibbler?'
'Hit this man.'
'Right you are, Mr Dibbler.'
Detritus's arm whirled round in a 180 degree arc with oblivion on the
end of it. The guard was lifted off his feet and smashed through the door,
coming to a stop in its wreckage twenty feet away. There was a cheer from
the queue.
Dibbler looked approvingly at the troll. Detritus was wearing nothing
except a ragged loincloth which covered whatever it was that trolls felt it
necessary to conceal.
'Very good, Detritus.'
'Right you are, Mr Dibbler.'
'But we shall have to see about getting you a suit,' said Dibbler.
'Now, please guard the gate. Don't let anyone in.'
'Right you are, Mr Dibbler.'
Two minutes later a small grey dog trotted through the troll's short
and bandy legs and hopped over the remains of the gate, but Detritus didn't
do anything about this because everyone knew dogs weren't anyone.
'Mr Silverfish?' said Dibbler.
Silverfish, who had been cautiously crossing the studio with a box of
fresh film stock, hesitated at the sight of a skinny figure bearing down on
him like a long-lost weasel. Dibbler's expression was the expression worn by
something long and sleek and white as it swims over the reef and into the
warm shallow waters of the kiddies' paddling area.
'Yes?' said Silverfish. 'Who're you? How did you get-'
'Dibbler's the name,' said Dibbler. 'But I'd like you to call me
Throat.'
He clasped Silverfish's unresisting hand and then placed his other hand
on the man's shoulder and stepped forward, pumping the first hand
vigorously. The effect was of acute affability, and it meant that if
Silverfish backed away he would dislocate his own elbow.
'And I'd just like you to know', Dibbler went on, 'that we're all
incredibly impressed at what you boys are doing here.'
Silverfish watched his own hand being strenuously made friends with,
and grinned uncertainly.
'You are?' he ventured.
'All this-', Dibbler released Silverfish's shoulder just long enough to
expansively indicate the energetic chaos around them. 'Fantastic!' he said.
'Marvellous! And that last thing of yours, what was it called now-?'
'High Jinks at the Store,' said Silverfish. 'That's the one where the
thief steals the sausages and the shop-keeper chases him?'
'Yeah,' said Dibbler, his fixed smile glazing for only a second . or
two before becoming truly sincere again. 'Yeah. That was. it. Amazing! True
genius! A beautifully sustained metaphor!'
'That cost us nearly twenty dollars, you know,' said Silverfish, with
shy pride.
'And another forty pence for the sausages, of course.'
'Amazing!' said Dibbler. 'And it must have been seen by hundreds of
people, yes?'
'Thousands,' said Silverfish.
There was no analogy for Dibbler's grin now. If it had managed to be
any wider, the top of his head would have fallen off.
'Thousands?' he said. 'Really? That many? And of course they all pay
you, oh, how much-?'
'Oh, we just take up a collection at the moment,' said Silverfish.
'Just to cover costs while we're still in the experimental stage, you
understand.' He looked down. 'I wonder,' he added, 'could you stop shaking
my hand now?'
Dibbler followed his gaze. 'Of course!' he said, and let go.
Silverfish's hand carried on going up and down for a while of its own
accord, out of sheer muscular spasm.
Dibbler was silent for a moment, his expression that of a man in deep
communion with some inner god. Then he said, 'You know, Thomas - may I call
you Thomas? when I saw that masterpiece I thought, Dibbler, behind all this
is a creative artist-'
'-how did you know my name was-'
'-a creative artist, I thought, who should be free to pursue his muse
instead of being- burdened with all the fussy details of management, am I
right?'
'Well ... it's true that all this paperwork is a bit-'
'My thoughts exactly,' said Dibbler, 'and I said, Dibbler, you should
go there right now and offer him your services. You know. Administrate. Take
the load off his shoulders. Let him get on with what he does best, am I
right? Tom?'
'I, I, I, yes, of course, it's true that my forte is really more in-'
'Right! Right!' said Dibbler. 'Tom, I accept!'
Silverfish's eyes were glassy.
'Er,' he said.
Dibbler punched him playfully on the shoulder. 'Just you show me the
paperwork,' he said, 'and then you can get right out there and do whatever
it is you do so well.'
'Er. Yes,' said Silverfish.
Dibbler grasped him by both arms and gave him a thousand watts of
integrity.
'This is a proud moment for me,' he said hoarsely. 'I can't tell you
how much this means to me. I can honestly say this is the happiest day of my
life. I want you to know that. Tommy. Sincerely.'
The reverential silence was broken by a faint sniggering.
Dibbler looked around slowly. There was no-one behind them apart from a
small grey mongrel dog sitting in the shade of a heap of lumber. It noticed
his expression and put its head on one side.
'Woof?' it said.
Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler looked around momentarily for something to
throw, realized that this would be out of character, and turned back to the
imprisoned Silverfish.
'You know,' he said sincerely, 'it's really lucky for me that I met
you.'
Lunch in a tavern had cost Victor the dollar plus a couple of pence. It
was a bowl of soup. Everything cost a lot, said the soup-seller, because it
all had to be brought a long way.
There weren't any farms around Holy Wood. Anyway, who'd grow things
when they could be making movies?
Then he reported to Gaffer for his screen test.
This consisted of standing still for a minute while the handleman
watched him owlishly over the top of a picture box. After the minute had
passed Gaffer said,
'Right. You're a natural, kid.'
'But I didn't do anything,' said Victor. 'You just told me not to
move.'
'Yeah. Quite right. That's what we need. People who know how to stand
still,' said Gaffer. 'None of this fancy acting like in the theatre.'
'But you haven't told me what the demons do in the box,' said Victor.
'They do this,' said Gaffer, unclicking a couple of latches. A row of
tiny malevolent eyes glared out at Victor.
'These six demons here', he said, pointing cautiously to avoid the
claws, 'look out through the little hole in the front of the box and paint
pictures of what they see. There has to be six of them, OK? Two to paint and
four to blow on it to get it dry. On account of the next picture coming
down, see. That's because every time this handle here. is turned, the strip
of transparent membrane is wound down one notch for the next picture.' He
turned the handle. It went clickaclicka, and the imps gibbered.
'What did they do that for?' said Victor.
'Ah,' said Gaffer, 'that's because the handle also drives this little
wheel with whips on. It's the only way to get them to work fast enough. He's
a lazy little devil, your average imp. It's all feedback, anyway. The faster
you turn the handle, the faster the film goes by, the faster they have to
paint. You got to get the speed just right. Very important job,
handlemanning.'
'But isn't it all rather, well, cruel?'
Gaffer looked surprised. 'Oh, no. Not really. I gets a rest every half
an hour. Guild of Handlemen regulations.'
He walked further along the bench, where another box stood with its
back panel open. This time a cageful of sluggishlooking lizards blinked
mournfully at Victor.
'We ain't very happy with this,' said Gaffer, 'but it's the best we can
do. Your basic salamander, see, will lie in the desert all day, absorbing
light, and when it's frightened it excretes the light again. Self-defence
mechanism, it's called. So as the film goes past and the shutter here clicks
backwards and forwards, their light goes out through the film and these...
