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.