Terry Pratchett. Moving pictures
страница №6
...to sympathetic human girls. And dwarfs. Even dwarfs had better courtship
rituals, for gods' sake.[16] And what humans got up to was amazing.
Whereas all a female troll had to look forward to was a quick thump on
the head and the rest of her life subduing and cooking anything the male
dragged back to the cave.
Well, there were going to be changes. Next time Ruby went home the
troll mountains were going to receive their biggest shake-up since the last
continental collision. In the meantime, she was going to start with her own
life.
She waved a massive hand in a vague way.
'You got to, to sing outside a girl's window,' she said, 'and, and you
got to give her oograah.'
'Oograah?'
'Yeah. Pretty oograah.'[17]
Detritus scratched his head.
'Why?' he said.
Ruby looked panicky for a moment. She also couldn't for the life of her
imagine why the handing over of inedible vegetation was so important, but
she wasn't about to admit it.
'Fancy you not knowing that,' she said scathingly.
The sarcasm was lost on Detritus. Most things were.
'Right,' he said. 'I not so uncultured as you think,' he added. 'I bang
up to date. You wait and see.'
Hammering filled the air. Buildings were spreading backwards from the
nameless main street into the dunes. No-one owned any land in Holy Wood; if
it was empty, you built on it.
Dibbler had two offices now. There was one where he shouted at people,
and a bigger one just outside it where people shouted at each other. Soll
shouted at handlemen. Handlemen shouted at alchemists. Demons wandered over
every flat surface and drowned in the coffee cups and shouted at one
another. A couple of experimental green parrots shouted at themselves.
People wearing odd bits of costume wandered in and just shouted. Silverfish
shouted because he couldn't quite work out why he now had a desk in the
outer office even though he owned the studio.
Gaspode sat stolidly by the door to the inner office. In the past five
minutes he had attracted one half-hearted kick, a soggy biscuit and a pat on
the head.
He reckoned he was ahead of the game, dogwise.
He was trying to listen to all the conversations at once. It was
extremely instructive. For one thing, some of the people coming in and
shouting were carrying bags of money ...
'You what?'
The shout had come from the inner office. Gaspode cocked the other ear.
'I, er, want a day off, Mr Dibbler,' said Victor.
'A day off? You don't want to work?'
'Just for the day, Mr Dibbler.'
'But you don't think I'm going to go around paying people to have days
off, do you? I'm not trade of money, you know. It's not as if we make a
profit, even.
Hold a crossbow to my head, why don't you.'
Gaspode looked at the bags in front of Soll, who was furiously adding
up piles of coins. He raised a cynical eyebrow.
There was a pause. Oh, no, thought Gaspode. The young idiot's
forgetting his lines.
'I don't want paying, Mr Dibbler.'
Gaspode relaxed.
'You don't want paying?'
'No, Mr Dibbler.'
'But you want a job when you get back, I suppose?' said Dibbler
sarcastically.
Gaspode tensed. Victor had taken a lot of coaching.
'Well, I hope so, Mr Dibbler. But I was thinking of going to see what
Untied Alchemists had to offer.'
There was a sound exactly like the sound of a chairback striking the
wall.
Gaspode grinned evilly.
Another bag of money was dropped in front of Soll.
'Untied Alchemists!'
'They really look as if they're making progress with soundies, Mr
Dibbler,' said Victor meekly.
'But they're amateurs! And crooks!'
Gaspode frowned. He hadn't been able to coach Victor past this stage.
'Well, that's a relief, Mr Dibbler.'
'Why's that?'
'Well, it'd be dreadful if they were crooks and professional.'
Gaspode nodded. Nice one. Nice one.
There was the sound of footsteps hurrying around a desk. When Dibbler
spoke next, you could have sunk a well in his voice and sold it at ten
dollars a barrel.
'Victor! Vic! Haven't I been like an uncle to you?'
Well, yes, thought Gaspode. He's like an uncle to most people here.
That's because they're his nephews.
He stopped listening, partly because Victor was going to get his day
off and was very likely going to get paid for it as well, but mainly because
another dog had been led into the room.
It was huge and glossy. Its coat shone like honey.
Gaspode recognized it as pure-bred Ramtop hunting dog. When it sat down
beside him, it was as if a beautifully sleek racing yacht had slipped into a
berth alongside a coal barge.
He heard Soll say, 'So that is Uncle's latest idea, is it? What's it
called?'
'Laddie,' said the handler.
'How much was it?'
'Sixty dollars.'
'For a dog? We're in the wrong business.'
'It can do all kinds of tricks, the breeder said. Bright as a button,
he said. Just what Mr Dibbler is looking for.'
'Well, tie it up there. And if that other mutt starts a fight, kick it
out.'
Gaspode gave Soll a long, thoughtful scrutiny. Then, when the attention
was no longer on them, he sidled closer to the newcomer, looked it up and
down, and spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth.
'What you here for?' he said.
The dog gave him a look of handsome incomprehension.
'I mean, do you b'long to someone or what?' said Gaspode.
The dog whined softly.
Gaspode tried Basic Canine, which is a combination of whines and
sniffs.
'Hallo?' he ventured. 'Anyone in there?'
The dog's tail thumped uncertainly.
'The grub here's ruddy awful,' said Gaspode.
The dog raised its highly-bred muzzle.
'What dis place?' it said.
'This is Holy Wood,' said Gaspode conversationally. 'I'm Gaspode. Named
after the famous Gaspode, you know. Anythin' you want to know, you just-'
'All dese two-legs here. Dur ... What dis place?'
Gaspode stared.
At that moment Dibbler's door opened. Victor emerged, coughing, at one
end of a cigar.
'Great, great,' said Dibbler, following him out. 'Knew we could sort it
out. Don't waste it, boy, don't waste it. They cost a dollar a box. Oh, I
see you brought your little doggie.'
'Woof,' said Gaspode, irritably.
The other dog gave a short sharp bark and sat up with obedient
alertness radiating from every hair.
'Ah,' said Dibbler, 'and I see we've got our wonder dog.'
Gaspode's apology for a tail twitched once or twice.
Then the truth dawned.
He glared at the larger dog, opened his mouth to speak, caught himself
just in time, and managed to turn it into a 'Bark?'
'I got the idea the other night, when I saw your dog,' said Dibbler. 'I
thought, people like animals. Me, I like dogs. Good image, the dog. Saving
lives, Man's best friend, that kind of stuff.'
Victor looked at Gaspode's furious expression.
'Gaspode's quite bright,' he said.
'Oh, I expect you think he is,' said Dibbler. 'But you've just got to
look at the two of them. On the one hand there's this bright, alert,
handsome animal, and on the other there's this dust ball with a hangover. I
mean, no contest, am I right?'
The wonder dog gave a brisk yap.
'What dis place? Good boy Laddie!'
Gaspode rolled his eyes.
'See what I mean?' said Dibbler. 'Give him the right name, a bit, a
training, and a star is born.' He slapped Victor on the back again. 'Nice to
see you, nice to see you, drop in again any time, only not too frequently,
let's have lunch sometime, now get out, Soll!'
'Coming, Uncle.'
Victor was suddenly alone, apart from the dogs and the room full of
people. He took the cigar out of his mouth, spat on the glowing end, and
carefully hid it behind a potted plant.
'A star is whelped,' said a small, withering voice from below.
'What he say? Where dis place?'
'Don't look at me,' said Victor. 'Nothing to do with me.'
'Will you just look at it? I mean, are we talking Thicko City here or
what?' sneered Gaspode.
'Good boy Laddie!'
'Come on,' said Victor. 'I'm supposed to be on set in five minutes.'
Gaspode trailed after him, muttering under his horrible breath. Victor
caught the occasional 'old rug' and 'Man's best friend' and 'bloody wonder
bloody dog'.
Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer.
'You're just jealous,' he said.
'What, of an overgrown puppy with a single-figure IQ?' sneered Gaspode.
'And a glossy coat, cold nose and probably a pedigree as long as your
ar - as my arm,' said Victor.
'Pedigree? Pedigree? What's a pedigree? It's just breedin'. I had a
father too, you know. And two grandads. And four great grandads. And many of
'em were the same dog, even. So don't you tell me from no pedigree,' said
Gaspode.
He paused to cock a leg against one of the supports of the new 'Home of
Century of the Fruitbat Moving Pictures' sign.
That was something else that had puzzled Thomas Silverfish. He'd come
in this morning, and the handpainted sign saying 'Interesting and
Instructive Films' had gone and had been replaced by this huge billboard. He
was sitting back in the office with his head in his hands, trying to
convince himself that it had been his idea.
'I'm the one Holy Wood called,' Gaspode muttered, in a self-pitying
voice. 'I came all the way here, and then they chose that great hairy thing.
Probably it'll work for a plate of meat a day, too.'
'Well, look, maybe you weren't called to Holy Wood to be a wonder dog,'
said Victor. 'Maybe it's got something else in mind for you.'
This is ridiculous, he thought. Why are we talking about it like this?
A place hasn't got a mind. It can't call people to it ... well, unless you
count things like homesickness. But you can't be homesick for a place you've
never been to before, it stands to reason. The last time people were here
must have been thousands of years ago.
Gaspode sniffed at a wall.
'Did you tell Dibbler everything I told you?' he said.
'Yes. He was very upset when I mentioned about going to Untied
Alchemists.'
Gaspode sniggered.
'An' you told him what I said about a verbal contract not being worth
the paper it's printed on?'
'Yes. He said he didn't understand what I meant. But he gave me a
cigar. And he said he'd pay for me and Ginger to go to AnkhMorpork soon. He
said he's got a really big picture planned.'
'What is it?' said Gaspode suspiciously.
'He didn't say.'
'Listen, lad,' said Gaspode, 'Dibbler's making a fortune. I counted it.
There were five thousand, two hundred and seventy-three dollars and
fifty-two pence on Son's desk. And you earned it. Well, you and Ginger did.'
'Gosh!'
'Now, there's some new words I want you to learn,' said Gaspode. 'Think
you can?'
'I hope so.'
' "Per-cent-age of the gross" ', said Gaspode. 'There. Think you can
remember it?'
' "Per-cent-age of the gross",' said Victor.
'Good lad.'
'What does it mean?'
'Don't you worry about that,' said Gaspode. 'You just have to say it's
what you want, OK. When the time's right.'
'When will the time be right, then?' said Victor.
Gaspode grinned nastily. 'Oh, I reckon when Dibbler's just got a
mouthful of food'd be favourite.'
Holy Wood Hill bustled like an ant heap. On the seaward side Fir Wood
Studios were making The Third Gnome. Microlithic Pictures, which was run
almost entirely by the dwarfs, was hard at work on Golde Diggers of 1457,
which was going to be followed by The Golde Rushe. Floating Bladder Pictures
was hard at work with Turkey Legs. And Borgle's was packed out.
'I don't know what it's called, but we're doing one about going to see
a wizard. Something about following a yellow sick toad,' a man in one half
of a lion suit explained to a companion in the queue.
'No wizards in Holy Wood, I thought.'
'Oh, this one's all right. He's not very good at the wizarding.'
'So what's new?'
Sound! That was the problem. Alchemists toiled in sheds all over Holy
Wood, screaming at parrots, pleading with mynah birds, constructing
intricate bottles to trap sound and bounce it around harmlessly until it was
time for it to be let out. To the sporadic boom of octo-cellulose exploding
was added the occasional sob of exhaustion or scream of agony as an enraged
parrot mistook a careless thumb for a nut.
The parrots weren't the success they'd hoped for. It was true that they
could remember what they heard and repeat it after a fashion, but there was
no way to turn them off and they were in the habit of ad-libbing other
sounds they'd heard or, Dibbler suspected, had been taught by mischievous
handlemen. Thus, brief snatches of romantic dialogue would be punctuated
with cries of 'Waaaarrrk! Showusyerknickers!' and Dibbler said he had no
intention of making that kind of picture, at least at the moment.
Sound! Whoever got sound first would rule Holy Wood, they said. People
were flocking to the clicks now, but people were fickle. Colour was
different. Colour was just a matter of breeding demons who could paint fast
enough. It was sound that meant something new.
In the meantime, there were stop-gap measures. The dwarfs' studio had
shunned the general practice of putting the dialogue on cards between scenes
and had invented sub-titles, which worked fine provided the performers
remembered not to step too far forward and knock over the letters.
But if sound was missing, then the screen had to be filled from side to
side with a feast for the eyes. The sound of hammering was always Holy
Wood's background noise, but it redoubled now ...
The cities of the world were being built in Holy Wood.
Untied Alchemists started it, with a one-tenth-size wood and canvas
replica of the Great Pyramid of Tsort. Soon the backlots sprouted whole
streets in Ankh-Morpork, palaces from Pseudopolis, castles from the
Hublands. In some cases, the streets were painted on the back of the
palaces, so that princes and peasants were separated by one thickness of
painted sacking.
Victor spent the rest of the morning working on a one-reeler. Ginger
hardly said a word to him, even after the obligatory kiss when he rescued
her from whatever it was Morry was supposed to be today. Whatever magic Holy
Wood worked on them it wasn't doing it today. He was glad to get away.
Afterwards he wandered across the backlot to watch them putting Laddie
the
Wonder Dog through his paces.
There was no doubt, as the graceful shape streaked like an arrow over
obstacles and grabbed a trainer by a well-padded arm, that here was a dog
almost designed by Nature for moving pictures. He even barked
photogenically.
'An' do you know what he's sayin'?' said a disgruntled voice beside
Victor. It was Gaspode, a picture of bowlegged misery.
'No. What?' said Victor.
"'Me Laddie. Me good boy. Good boy Laddie,"' said Gaspode. 'Makes you
want to throw up, doesn't it?'
'Yes, but could you leap a six-foot hurdle?' said Victor.
'That's intelligent, is it?' said Gaspode. 'I always walk around -
what's that they're doing now?'
'Giving him his lunch, I think.'
'They call that lunch, do they?'
Victor watched Gaspode stroll over and peer into the dog's bowl. Laddie
gave him a sideways look. Gaspode barked quietly. Laddie whined. Gaspode
barked again.
There was a lengthy exchange of yaps.
Then Gaspode strolled back, and sat down beside Victor.
'Watch this,' he said.
Laddie took the food bowl in his mouth, and turned it upside down.
'Disgustin' stuff,' said Gaspode. 'All tubes and innards. I wouldn't
give it to a dog, and I am one.'
'You made him tip out his own dinner?' said Victor, horrified.
'Very obedient lad, I thought,' said Gaspode smugly.
'What a nasty thing to do!'
'Oh, no. I give 'im some advice, too.'
Laddie barked peremptorily at the people clustering around him. Victor
heard them muttering.
'Dog don't eat his dinner,' came Detritus' voice, 'dog go hungry.'
'Don't be daft. Mr Dibbler says he's worth more than we are!'
'Perhaps it's not what he's used to. I mean, a posh dog like him an'
all. It's a bit yukky, isn't it?'
'It dog food! That what dogs are supposed to eat!'
'Yeah, but is it wonder dog food? What're wonder dogs fed on?'
'Mr Dibbler'll feed you to him if there's any trouble.'
'All right, all right. Detritus, go around to Borgle's. See what he's
got. Not the stuff he gives to the usual customers, mind.'
'That IS the stuff he give to usual customers.'
'That's what I mean.'
Five minutes later Detritus trailed back carrying about nine pounds of
raw steak. It was dumped in the dog bowl. The trainers looked at Laddie.
Laddie cocked an eye towards Gaspode, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
The big dog put one foot on one end of the steak, took the other end in
his mouth, and tore off a lump. Then he padded over the compound and dropped
it respectfully in front of Gaspode, who gave it a long, calculating stare.
'Well, I dunno,' he said at last. 'Does that look like ten per cent to
you, Victor?'
'You negotiated his dinner?'
Gaspode's voice was muffled by meat. 'I reckon ten per cent is ver'
fair. Very fair, in the circumstances.'
'You know, you really are a son of a bitch,' said Victor.
'Proud of it,' said Gaspode, indistinctly. He bolted the last of the
steak.
'What shall we do now?'
'I'm supposed to get an early night. We're starting for Ankh very early
tomorrow,' said Victor doubtfully.
'Still not made any progress with the book?'
'No.'
'Let me have a look, then.'
'Can you read?'
'Dunno. Never tried.'
Victor looked around them. No-one was paying him any attention. They
never did. Once the handles stopped turning, no-one bothered about
performers; it was like being temporarily invisible.
He sat down on a pile of lumber, opened the book randomly at an early
page, and held it out in front of Gaspode's critical stare.
Eventually the dog said, 'It's got all marks on it.'
Victor sighed. 'That's writing,' he said.
Gaspode squinted. 'What, all them little pictures?'
'Early writing was like that. People drew little pictures to represent
ideas.'
'So ... if there's a lot of one picture, it means it's an important
idea?'
'What? Well, yes. I suppose so.'
'Like the dead man.'
Victor was lost.
'The dead man on the beach?'
'No. The dead man on the pages. See? Everywhere, there's the dead man.'
Victor gave him an odd look, and then turned the book around and peered
at it.
'Where? I don't see any dead men.'
Gaspode snorted.
'Look, all over the page,' he said. 'He looks just like those tombs you
get in old temples and stuff. You know? Where they do this statchoo of the
stiff lyin' on top of the tomb, with his arms crossed an' holdin' his sword.
Dead noble.'
'Good grief! You're right! It does look sort of ... dead ... '
'Prob'ly all the writing's goin' on about what a great guy he was when
he was alive,' said Gaspode knowledgeably. 'You know, "Slayer of thousands"
stuff.
Prob'ly he left a lot of money for priests to say prayers and light
candles and sacrifice goats and stuff. There used to be a lot of that sort
of thing. You know, you'd get dese guys whorin' and drinkin' and carryin' on
regardless their whole life, and then when the old Grim Reaper starts
sharpenin' his scythe they suddenly becomes all pious and pays a lot of
priests to give their soul a quick wash-and-brush-up and gen'rally keep on
tellin' the gods what a decent chap they was.'
'Gaspode?' said Victor levelly.
'What?'
'You were a performing dog. How come you know all this stuff?'
'I ain't just a pretty face.'
'You aren't even a pretty face, Gaspode.'
The little dog shrugged. 'I've always had eyes and ears,' he said.
'You'd be amazed, the stuff you see and hear when you're a dog. I dint know
what any of it meant at the time, of course. Now I do.'
Victor stared at the pages again. There certainly was a figure which,
if you half-closed your eyes, looked very much like a statue of a knight
with his hands resting on his sword.
'It might not mean a man,' he said. 'Pictographic writing doesn't work
like that. It's all down to context, you see.' He racked his brains to think
of some of the books he'd seen. 'For example, in the Agatean language the
signs for "woman" and "slave" written down together actually mean "wife".'
He looked closely at the page. The dead man - or the sleeping man, or
the standing man resting his hands on his sword, the figure was so stylized
it was hard to be sure seemed to appear beside another common picture. He
ran his finger along the line of pictograms.
'See,' he said, 'it could be the man figure is only part of a word.
See? It's always to the right of this other picture, which looks a bit like
- a bit like a doorway, or something. So it might really mean-'he
hesitated.' "Doorway/man",' he hazarded.
He turned the book slightly.
'Could be some old king,' said Gaspode. 'Could mean something like The
Man with the Sword is Imprisoned, or something. Or maybe it means Watch Out,
There's a Man with a Sword behind the Door. Could mean anything, really.'
Victor squinted at the book again. 'It's funny,' he said. 'It doesn't
look dead. Just ... not alive. Waiting to be alive? A waiting man with a
sword?'
Victor peered at the little man-figure. It had hardly any features, but
still managed to look vaguely familiar.
'You know,' he said, 'it looks just like my Uncle Osric ...'
Clickaclickaclicka. Click.
The film spun to a standstill. There was a thunder of applause, a
stamping of feet and a barrage of empty banged grain bags.
In the very front row of the Odium the Librarian stared up at the
now-empty screen. It was the fourth time that afternoon he'd watched Shadow
of the Dessert, because there's something about a 300lb orangutan that
doesn't encourage people to order it out of the pit between houses. A drift
of peanut shells and screwed up paper bags lay around his feet.
The Librarian loved the clicks. They spoke to something in his soul.
He'd even started writing a story which he thought would make a very good
moving picture.[18] Everyone he showed it to said it was jolly good, often
even before they'd read it.
But something about this click was worrying him. He'd sat through it
four times, and he was still worried.
He eased himself out of the three seats he was occupying and knuckled
his way up the aisle and into the little room where Bezam was rewinding the
film.
Bezam looked up as the door opened.
'Get out-' he began, and then grinned desperately and said, 'Hallo,
sir. Pretty good click, eh? We'll be showing it again any minute now and -
what the hell are you doing? You can't do that!'
The Librarian ripped the huge roll of film off the projector and pulled
it through his leathery fingers, holding it up to the light. Bezam tried to
snatch it back and got a palm in his chest that sat him firmly on the floor,
where great coils of film piled up on top of him.
He watched in horror as the great ape grunted, grasped a piece of the
film in both hands and, with two bites, edited it. Then the Librarian picked
him up, dusted him off, patted him on the head, thrust the great pile of
unwound click into his helpless arms, and ambled swiftly out of the room
with a few frames of film dangling from one paw.
Bezam stared helplessly after him.
'You're banned!' he shouted, when he judged the ape to be safely out of
earshot.
Then he looked down at the two severed ends.
Breaks in films weren't unusual. Bezam had spent many a flustered few
minutes feverishly cutting and pasting while the audience cheerfully stamped
its feet and high-spiritedly threw peanuts, knives and double-headed axes at
the screen.
He let the coils fall around him and reached for the scissors and glue.
At least - he found, after holding the two ends up to the lantern - the
Librarian hadn't taken a very interesting bit. Odd, that. Bezam wouldn't
have put it past the ape to have taken a bit where the girl was definitely
showing too much chest, or one of the fight scenes. But all he'd wanted was
a piece that showed the Sons galloping down from their mountain fastness, in
single file, on identical camels.
'Dunno what he wanted that for,' he muttered, taking the lid off the
glue pot.
'It just shows a lot of rocks.'
Victor and Gaspode stood among the sand dunes near the beach.
'That's where the driftwood but is,' said Victor, pointing, 'and then
if you look hard you can see there's a sort of road pointing straight
towards the hill.
But there's nothing on the hill but the old trees.'
Gaspode looked back at Holy Wood Bay.
'Funny it bein' circular,' he said.
'I thought so,' said Victor.
'I heard once where there was this city that was so wicked that the
gods turned it into a puddle of molten glass,' said Gaspode, apropos of
nothing. 'And the only person who saw it happen was turned into a pillar of
salt by day and a cheese shaker by night.'
'Gosh. What had the people been doing?'
'Dunno. Prob'ly not much. It doesn't take much to annoy gods.'
'Me good boy! Good boy Laddie!'
The dog came streaking over the dunes, a comet of gold and orange hair.
It skidded to a halt in front of Gaspode, and then began to dance around
excitedly, yapping.
'He's escaped and he wants me to play with him,' said Gaspode
despondently.
'Ridiculous, ain't it? Laddie drop dead.'
Laddie rolled over obediently, all four legs in the air.
'See? He understands every word I say,' muttered Gaspode.
'He likes you,' said Victor.
'Huh,' sniffed Gaspode. 'How're dogs ever goin' to amount to anything
if they bounce around worshipping people just 'cos they've been given a
meal? What's he want me to do with this??'
Laddie had dropped a stick in front of Gaspode and was looking at him
expectantly.
'He wants you to throw it,' said Victor.
'What for?'
'So he can bring it back.'
'What I don't understand,' said Gaspode, as Victor picked up the stick
and hurled it away, Laddie racing along underneath it, 'is how come we're
descended from wolves. I mean, your average wolf, he's a bright bugger, know
what I mean? Chock full of cunnin' an' like that. We're talking grey paws
racing over the trackless tundra, is what I'm getting at.'
Gaspode looked wistfully at the distant mountains. 'And suddenly a
handful of generations later we've got Percy the Pup here with a cold nose,
bright eyes, glossy coat and the brains of a stunned herring.'
'And you,' said Victor. Laddie whirled back in a storm of sand and
dropped the damp stick in front of him. Victor picked it up and threw it
again. Laddie bounded off, yapping himself sick with excitement.
'Well, yeah,' said Gaspode, ambling along in a bowlegged swagger. 'Only
I can look after myself. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. You think Dopey
the Mutt there would last five minutes in Ankh-Morpork? He set one paw in
some o' the streets, he's three sets of fur gloves an' Crispy Fried No. 27
at the nearest Klatchian all-night carryout.'
Victor threw the stick again.
'Tell me,' he said, 'who was the famous Gaspode you're named after?'
'You never heard of him?'
'No.'
'He was dead famous.'
'He was a dog?'
'Yeah. It was years and years ago. There was this ole bloke in Ankh who
snuffed it, and he belonged to one of them religions where they bury you
after you're dead, an', they did, and he had this ole dog-'
'-called Gaspode-?'
'Yeah, and this ole dog had been his only companion and after they
buried the man he lay down on his grave and howled and howled for a couple
of weeks. Growled at everybody who came near. An' then died.'
Victor paused in the act of throwing the stick again.
'That's very sad,' he said. He threw. Laddie tore along underneath it,
and disappeared into a stand of scrubby trees on the hillside.
'Yeah. Everyone says it demonstrates a dog's innocent and undyin' love
for 'is master,' said Gaspode, spitting the words out as if they were ashes.
'You don't believe that, then?'
'Not really. I b'lieve any bloody dog will stay still an' howl when
you've just lowered the gravestone on his tail,' said Gaspode.
There was a ferocious barking.
'Don't worry about it. He's probably found a threatening rock or
something,' said Gaspode.
He'd found Ginger.
The Librarian knuckled purposefully through the maze of Unseen
University's library and descended the steps towards the maximumsecurity
shelves.
Nearly all the books in the Library were, being magical, considerably
more dangerous than ordinary books; most of them were chained to the
bookcases to stop them flapping around.
But the lower levels ...
... there they kept the rogue books, the books whose behaviour or mere
contents demanded a whole shelf, a whole room to themselves. Cannibal books,
books which, if left on a shelf with their weaker brethren, would be found
looking considerably fatter and more smug in the smoking ashes next morning.
Books whose mere contents pages could reduce the unprotected mind to
grey cheese. Books that were not just books of magic, but magical books.
There's a lot of loose thinking about magic. People go around talking
about mystic harmonies and cosmic balances and unicorns, all of which is to
real magic what a glove puppet is to the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the
powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a
star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner
juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in
front of a thousand elephants.
At least, that's what wizards say, which is why they charge such
swingeingly huge fees for getting involved with the bloody stuff.
But down here, in the dark tunnels, there was no hiding behind amulets
and starry robes and pointy hats. Down here, you either had it or you
didn't. And if you hadn't got it, you'd had it.
There were sounds from behind the heavily barred doors as the Librarian
shuffled along. Once or twice something heavy threw itself against a door,
making the hinges rattle.
There were noises.
The orang-utan stopped in front of an arched doorway that was blocked
with a door made not of wood but of stone, balanced so that it could easily
be opened from outside but could withstand massive pressure from within.
He paused for a moment, and then reached into a little alcove and
removed a mask of iron and smoked glass, which he put on, and a pair of
heavy leather gloves reinforced with steel mesh. There was also a torch made
of oil-soaked rags; he lit this from one of the flickering braziers in the
tunnel.
At the back of the alcove was a brass key.
He took the key, and then he took a deep breath.
All the Books of Power had their own particular natures. The Octavo was
harsh and imperious. The Bumper Fun Grimoire went in for deadly practical
jokes. The Joy of Tantric Sex had to be kept under iced water. The Librarian
knew them all, and how to deal with them.
This one was different. Usually people saw only tenth- or twelfthhand
copies, as like the real thing as a painting or an explosion was to, well,
to an explosion.
This was a book that had absorbed the sheer, graphite-grey evil of its
subject matter.
Its name was hacked in letters over the arch, lest men and apes forget.
NECROTELICOMNICON.
He put the key in the lock, and offered up a prayer to the gods.
'Oook,' he said fervently. 'Gook.'
The door swung open.
In the darkness within, a chain gave a fait clink.
'She's still breathing,' said Victor. Laddie leapt around them, barking
furiously.
'Maybe you should loosen her clothing or something,' said Gaspode.
'It's just a thought,' he added. 'You don't have to glare at me like that.
I'm a dog, what do I know?'
'She seems all right, but ... look at her hands,' said Victor. 'What
the hell has she been trying to do?'
'Tryin' to open that door,' said Gaspode.
'What door?'
'That door there.'
Part of the hill had slipped away. Huge blocks of masonry protruded
from the sand. There were the stubs of ancient pillars, sticking up like
fluoridated teeth.
Between two of them was an arched doorway, three times as high as
Victor. It was sealed with a pair of pale grey doors, either of stone or of
wood that had become as hard as stone over the years. One of them was
slightly open, but had been prevented from opening further by the drifts of
sand in front of it.
Frantically scrabbled furrows had been dug deep into the sand. Ginger
had been trying to shift it with her bare hands.
'Stupid thing to do in this heat,' said Victor, vaguely. He looked from
the door to the sea, and then down at Gaspode.
Laddie scrambled up the sand and barked excitedly at the crack between
the doors.
'What's he doing that for?' said Victor, suddenly feeling spooked. 'All
his hair is standing up. You don't think he's got one of those mysterious
animal premonitions of evil, do you?'
'I think he's a pillock,' said Gaspode. 'Laddie shut up!'
There was a yelp. Laddie recoiled from the door, lost his balance on
the shifting sand, and rolled down the slope. He leapt to his feet and
started barking again; not ordinary stupid-dog barking this time, but the
genuine treed-cat variety.
Victor leaned forward and touched the door.
It felt very cold, despite the perpetual heat of Holy Wood, and there
was just the faint suspicion of vibration.
He ran his fingers over the surface. There was a roughness there, as
though there had been a carving that had been worn into obscurity over the
years.
'A door like that,' said Gaspode, behind him, 'a door like that, if you
want my opinion, a door like that, a door like that,' he took a deep breath,
'bodes.'
'Hmm? What? Bodes what?'
'It don't have to bode anything,' said Gaspode. 'Just basic bodingness
is bad enough, take it from me.'
'It must have been important. Looks a bit temple-ish,' said Victor.
'Why'd she want to open it?'
'Bits of cliff sliding down an' mysterious doors appearin',' said
Gaspode, shaking his head. 'That's a lot of boding. Let's go somewhere far
away and really think about it, eh?'
Ginger gave a groan. Victor crouched down.
'What'd she say?'
'Dunno,' said Gaspode.
'It sounded like "I want to be a lawn", I thought?'
'Daft. Touch of the sun there, I reckon,' said Gaspode knowledgeably.
'Maybe you're right. Her head certainly feels very hot.' He picked her
up, staggering a little under the weight.
'Come on,' he managed. 'Let's get down into the town. It'll be getting
dark soon.' He looked around at the stunted trees. The door lay in a sort of
hollow, which presumably caught enough dew to make the growth there slightly
less desiccated than elsewhere.
'You know, this place looks familiar,' he said. 'We did our first click
here.
It's where I first met her.'
'Very romantic,' said Gaspode distantly, hurrying away with Laddie
bounding happily around him. 'If something 'orrible comes out of that door,
you can fink of it as Our Monster.'
'Hey! Wait!'
'Hurry up, then.'
'What would she want to be a lawn for, do you think?'
'Beats me ... '
After they had gone silence poured back into the hollow.
A little later, the sun set. Its long light hit the door, turning the
merest scratches into deep relief. With the help of imagination, they might
just have formed the image of a man.
With a sword.
There was the faintest of noises as, grain by grain, sand trickled away
from the door. By midnight it had opened by at least a sixteenth of an inch.
Holy Wood dreamed.
It dreamed of waking up.
Ruby damped down the fires under the vats, put the benches on the
tables, and prepared to shut the Blue Lias. But just before blowing out the
last lamp she hesitated in front of the mirror.
He'd be waiting out there again tonight. Just like every night. He'd
been in during the evening, grinning to himself. He was planning something.
Ruby had been taking advice from some of the girls who worked in the
clicks, and in addition to her feather boa she'd now invested in a
broad-rimmed hat with some sort of oograah, cherries she thought they were
called, in it. She'd been assured that the effect was stunning.
The trouble, she had to admit, was that he was, well, a very hunky
troll. For millions of years troll women had been naturally attracted to
trolls built like a monolith with an apple on top. Ruby's treacherous
instincts were firing messages up her spine, insidiously insisting that in
those long fangs and bandy legs was everything a troll girl could wish for
in a mate.
Trolls like Rock or Morry, of course, were far more modern and could do
things like use a knife and fork, but there was something, well, reassuring
about Detritus. Perhaps it was the way his knuckles touched the ground so
dynamically. And apart from anything else, she was sure she was brighter
than he was. There was a sort of gormless unstoppability about him that she
found rather fascinating. That was the instincts at work again -intelligence
has never been a particularly valuable survival trait in a troll.
And she had to admit that, whatever she might attempt in the way of
feather boas and fancy hats, she was pushing 140 and was 400 lbs above the
fashionable weight.
If only he'd buck his ideas up.
Or at least, buck one idea up.
Maybe this make-up the girls had been talking about could be worth a
try.
She sighed, blew out the lamp, opened the door and stepped out into a
maze of roots.
A gigantic tree stretched the whole length of the alley. He must have
dragged it for miles. The few surviving branches poked through windows or
waved forlornly in the air.
In the middle of it all was Detritus, perched proudly on the trunk, his
face split in a watermelon grin, his arms spread wide.
'Tra-laa!' he said.
Ruby heaved a gigantic sigh. Romance wasn't easy, when you were a
troll.
The Librarian forced the page open and chained it down. The book tried
to snap at him.
Its contents had made it what it was. Evil and treacherous.
It contained forbidden knowledge. Well, not actually forbidden. No-one
had ever gone so far as forbidding it. Apart from anything else, in order to
forbid it you'd have to know what it was, which was forbidden. But it
definitely contained the sort of information which, once you knew it, you
wished you hadn't.[19] Legend said that any mortal man who read more than a
few lines of the original copy would die insane.
This was certainly true. Legend also said that the book contained
illustrations that would make a strong man's brain dribble out of his ears.
This was probably true, too. Legend went on to say that merely opening
the Necrotelicomnicon would cause a man's flesh to crawl off his hand and up
his arm.
No-one actually knew if this was true, but it sounded horrible enough
to be true and no-one was about to try any experiments.
Legend had a lot to say about the Necrotelicomnicon, in fact, but
absolutely nothing to say about orang-utans, who could tear the book into
little bits and chew it for all legend cared. The worst that had ever
happened to the Librarian after looking at it was a mild migraine and a
touch of eczema, but that was no reason to take chances. He adjusted the
smoked glass of the visor and ran one black-leather finger down the Index;
the words bridled as the digit slid past, and tried to bite it.
Occasionally he'd hold the strip of film up to the light of the
flickering torch.
The wind and sand had blurred them, but there was no doubt that there
were carvings on the rock. And the Librarian had seen designs like that
before.
He found the reference he was looking for and, after a brief struggle
during which he had to threaten the Necrotelicomnicon with the torch, forced
the book to turn to the page.
He peered closer.
Good old Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches ...
' ... and in that hill, it is said, a Door out of the World was found,
and people of the city watched What was Seen therein, knowing not that Dread
waited between the universes ... '
The Librarian's fingertip dragged from right to left across the
pictures, and skipped to the next paragraph.
' ... for Others found the Gate of Holy Wood and fell upon the World,
and in one nighte All Manner of Madnesse befell, and Chaos prevailed, and
the City sank beneath the Sea, and all became one withe the fishes and the
lobsters save for the few who fled ... '
He curled a lip, and looked further down the page.
' ... a Golden Warrior, who drove the Fiends back and saved the World,
and said, Where the Gate is, There Am I Also; I Am He that was Born of Holy
Wood, to guard the Wild Idea. And they said, What must we do to Destroy the
Gate Forever, and he said unto them, This you Cannot Do, for it is Not a
Thing, but I will Guard the Gate for you. And they, not having been Born
yesterday, and fearing the Cure more than the Malady, said to him, What will
you Take from Us, that you will Guard the Door. And he grew until he was the
height of a tree and said, Only your Remembrance, that I do Not Sleep. Three
times a day will you remember Holy Wood. Else The Cities of the World Will
Tremble and Fall, and you will See the Greatest of them All in Flames. And
with that the Golden Man took up his golden sword and went into the Hill and
stood at the Gate, forever.
'And the People said to one another, Funny, he lookes just like my
Uncle Osbert ... '
The Librarian turned the page.
' ... But there were among them, humans and animals alike, those
touched by the magic of Holy Wood. It goeth through the generations like an
ancient curse, until the priests cease in their Remembrance and the Golden
Man sleepeth. Then let the world Beware ... '
The Librarian let the book snap shut.
It wasn't an uncommon legend. -He'd read it before at least, had read
most of it - in books considerably less dangerous than this. You came across
variants in all the cities of the Sto Plain. There had been a city once, in
the mists of pre-history - bigger than Ankh-Morpork, if that were possible.
And the inhabitants had done something, some sort of unspeakable crime not
just against Mankind or the gods but against the very nature of the universe
itself, which had been so dreadful that it had sunk beneath the sea one
stormy night. Only a few people had survived to carry to the barbarian
peoples in the less-advanced parts of the Disc all the arts and crafts of
civilization, such as usury and macrame.
No-one had ever really taken it seriously. It was just one of those
usual 'If you don't stop it you'll go blind' myths that civilizations tended
to hand on to their descendants.
After all, Ankh-Morpork itself was generally considered as wicked a
city as you could hope to find in a year of shore leaves, and seemed to have
avoided any kind of supernatural vengeance, although it was always possible
that it had taken place and no-one had noticed.
Legend had always put the nameless city far away and long ago.
No-one knew where it was, or even if it had existed.
The Librarian glanced at the symbols again.
They were very familiar. They were on the old ruins all over Holy Wood.
Azhural stood on a low hill, watching the sea of elephants move below
him. Here and there a supply wagon bobbed between the dusty grey bodies like
a rudderless boat. A mile of veldt was being churned into a soggy mud
wallow, bare of grass - although, by the smell of it, it'd be the greenest
patch on the Disc after the rains came.
He dabbed at his eyes with a corner of his robe.
Three hundred and sixty-three! Who'd have thought it?
The air was solid with the piqued trumpeting of three hundred and
sixty-three elephants. And with the hunting and trapping parties already
going on ahead, there should be plenty more. According to M'Bu, anyway. And
he wasn't going to argue.
Funny, that. For years he'd thought of M'Bu as a sort of mobile smile.
A handy lad with a brush and shovel, but not what you might call a major
achiever.
And then suddenly someone somewhere wanted a thousand elephants, and
the lad had raised his head and a gleam had come into his eye and you could
see that under that grin was a skilled kilopachydermatolist ready to answer
the call. Funny.
You could know someone for their whole life and not realize that the
gods had put them in this world to move a thousand elephants around the
place.
Azhural had no sons. He'd already made up his mind to leave everything
to his assistant. Everything he had at this point amounted to three hundred
and sixty-three elephants and, ahaha, a mammoth overdraft, but it was the
thought that counted.
M'Bu trotted up the path towards him, his clipboard held firmly under
one arm.
'Everything ready, boss,' he said. 'You just got to say the word.'
Azhural drew himself up. He looked around at the heaving plain, the
distant baobab trees, the purple mountains. Oh, yes. The mountains. He'd had
misgivings about the mountains. He'd mentioned them to M'Bu, who said,
'We'll cross them bridges when we get to 'em, boss,' and when Azhural had
pointed out that there weren't any bridges, had looked him squarely in the
eye and said firmly, 'First we build them bridge, then we cross 'em.'
Far beyond the mountains was the Circle Sea and Ankh-Morpork and this
Holy Wood place. Far-away places with strange sounding names.
A wind blew across the veldt, carrying faint whispers, even here.
Azhural raised his staff.
'It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,' he said. 'We've got three
hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's
about to break and we're wearing ... we're wearing ... sort of things, like
glass, only dark ... dark glass things on our eyes ... ' His voice trailed
off. His brow furrowed, as if he'd just been listening to his own voice and
hadn't understood it. '
The air seemed to glitter.
He saw M'Bu staring at him.
He shrugged. 'Let's go,' he said.
M'Bu cupped his hands. He'd spent all night working out the order of
the march.
'Blue Section bilong Uncle N'gru - forward!' he shouted. 'Yellow
Section bilong Aunti Googool - forward! Green Section bilong Second-cousin!
Kck! - forward...'
An hour later the veldt in front of the low hill was deserted except
for a billion flies and one dung beetle who couldn't believe his luck.
Something went 'plop' on the red dust, throwing up a little crater.
And again, and again.
Lightning split the trunk of a nearby baobab.
The rains began.
Victor's back was beginning to ache. Carrying young women to safety
looked a good idea on paper, but had major drawbacks after the first hundred
yards.
'Have you any idea where she lives?' he said. 'And is it somewhere
close?'
'No idea,' said Gaspode.
'She once said something about it being over a clothes shop,' said
Victor.
'That'll be in the alley alongside Borgle's then,' said Gaspode.
Gaspode and Laddie led the way through the alleys and up a rickety
outside staircase. Maybe they smelled out Ginger's room. Victor wasn't going
to argue with mysterious animal senses.
Victor went up the back stairs as quietly as possible. He was dimly
aware that where people stayed was often infested by the Common or Greatly
Suspicious Landlady, and he felt that he had enough problems as it was.
He used Ginger's feet to push open the door.
It was a small room, low-ceilinged and furnished with the sad,
washed-out furniture found in rented rooms across the multiverse. At least,
that's how it had started out.
What it was furnished with now was Ginger.
She had saved every poster. Even those from early clicks, when she was
just in very small print as A Girl. They were thumb-tacked to the walls.
Ginger's face - and his own stared at him from every angle.
There was a large mirror at one end of the poky room, and a couple of
half-burned candles in front of him.
Victor deposited the girl carefully on the narrow bed and then stared
around him, very carefully. His sixth, seventh and eighth senses were
screaming at him.
He was in a place of magic.
'It's like a sort of temple,' he said. 'A temple to ... herself.'
'It gives me the willies,' said Gaspode.
Victor stared. Maybe he'd always successfully avoided being awarded the
pointy hat and big staff, but he had acquired wizard instincts. He had a
sudden vision of a city under the sea, with octopuses curling stealthily
through the drowned doorways and lobsters watching the streets.
'Fate don't like it when people take up more space than they ought to.
Everyone knows that.'
I'm going to be the most famous person in the whole world, thought
Victor.
That's what she sail. He shook his head.
'No,' he said aloud. 'She just likes posters. It's just ordinary
vanity.'
It didn't sound believable, even to him. The room fairly hummed with
... ... what? He hadn't felt anything like it befor...
