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.’