‘You didn’t seem to let that stop you,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t normally do something like that. I must have been . . . ill. Or something.’
‘Oh, good. And that makes me feel a lot better, does it?’
‘Shall we sit in the shade? It’s very hot out here.’
‘Your eyes went all . . . smouldery.’
‘Did they?’
‘They looked really odd.’
‘I felt really odd.’
‘I know. It’s this place. It gets to you. D’you know,’ she said, sitting down on the sand, ‘there’s all kind of rules for the imps and things, they mustn’t be worn out, what
kind of food they get, stuff like that: No-one cares about us, though. Even the trolls get better treatment.’
‘It’s the way they go around being seven foot tall and weighing 1,000 lbs all the time, I expect,’ said Victor.
‘My name’s Theda Withel, but my friends call me Ginger,’ she said.
‘My name’s Victor Tugelbend. Er. But my friends call me Victor,’ said Victor.
‘This is your first click, is it?’
‘How can you tell?’
‘You looked as though you were enjoying it.’
‘Well, it’s better than working, isn’t it?’
‘You wait until you’ve been in it as long as I have,’ she said bitterly.
‘How long’s that?’
‘Nearly since the start. Five weeks.’
‘Gosh. It’s all happened so fast.’
‘It’s the best thing that’s ever happened,’ said Ginger flatly.
‘I suppose so . . . er, are we allowed to go and eat?’ said Victor.
‘No. They’ll be shouting for us again any minute,’ said Ginger.
Victor nodded. He had, on the whole, got through life quite happily by doing what he pleased in a firm yet easy-going sort of way, and he didn’t see why he should stop that even in Holy Wood.
‘Then they’ll have to shout,’ he said. ‘I want something to eat and a cool drink. Maybe I’ve just caught a bit too much sun.’
Ginger looked uncertain. ‘Well, there’s the commissary, but-‘
‘Good. You can show me the way.’
‘They fire people just like that-‘
‘What, before the third reel?’
‘They say “There’s plenty more people who’re dying to break into moving pictures”, you see-‘
‘Good. That means they’ll have all afternoon to find two of them who look just like us.’ He strolled past Morry, who was also trying to keep in the shade of a rock.
‘If anyone wants us,’ he said, ‘we’ll be having some lunch.’
‘What, right now?’ said the troll.
‘Yes,’ said Victor firmly, and strode on.
Behind him he could see Dibbler and Silverfish locked in heated discussion, with occasional interruptions from the handleman, who spoke in the leisurely tones of one who knows he’s going to get paid six dollars today regardless.
‘-we’ll call it an epic. People will talk about it for ages.’
‘Yes, they’ll say we went bankrupt!’
‘Look, I know where I can get some coloured woodcuts done at practically cost-‘
‘-I was finking, maybe if I got some string and tied the moving picture box on to wheels, so it can be moved around-‘
‘People’ll say, that Silverfish, there’s a moving-picture-smith with the guts to give the people what they want, they’ll say. A man to roll back the wossname of the medium-‘
‘-maybe if I was to make a sort of pole and swivel arrangement, we could bring the picture box right up close to-‘
‘What? You think they’ll say that?’
‘Trust me, Tommy.’
‘Well . . . all right. All right. But no elephants. I want to make that absolutely clear. No elephants.’
‘Looks weird to me,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Looks like a bunch of pottery elephants. Thought you said it was a machine?’
‘More . . . more of a device,’ said the Bursar uncertainly. He gave it a prod. Several of the pottery elephants wobbled. ‘Riktor the Tinkerer built it, I think. It was before my time.’
It looked like a large, ornate pot, almost as high as a man of large pot height. Around its rim eight pottery elephants hung from little bronze chains; one of them swung backwards and forwards at the Bursar’s touch.
The Archchancellor peered down inside.
‘It’s all levers and bellows,’ he said, distastefully.
The Bursar turned to the University housekeeper.
‘Well, now, Mrs Whitlow,’ he said, ‘what exactly happened?’
Mrs Whitlow, huge, pink and becorseted, patted her ginger wig and nudged the tiny maid who was hovering beside her like a tugboat.
‘Tell his lordship, Ksandra,’ she ordered.
Ksandra looked as though she was regretting the whole thing.
‘Well, sir, please, sir, I was dusting, you see-‘
‘She hwas dusting,’ said Mrs Whitlow, helpfully. When Mrs Whitlow was in the grip of acute class consciousness she could create aitches where nature never intended them to be.
‘-and then it started me’king a noise-‘
‘Hit made hay hnoise,’ said Mrs Whitlow. ‘So she come and told me, your lordship, h’as hper my instructions.’
‘What kind of noise, Ksandra? said the Bursar, as kindly as he could.
‘Please, sir, sort of-‘ she screwed up her eyes, ‘ “whumm . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . whumm . . . whummwhummwhumm WHUMMWHUMM – plib”, sir.’
‘Plib,’ said the Bursar, solemnly.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Hplib,’ echoed Mrs Whitlow.
‘That was when it spat at me, sir,’ said Ksandra.
‘Hexpectorated,’ corrected Mrs Whitlow.
‘Apparently one of the elephants spat out a little lead pellet, Master,’ said the Bursar. ‘That was the, er, the “plib”,’
‘Did it, bigods,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Can’t have pots going around gobbin’ all over people.’
Mrs Whitlow twitched.
‘What’d it go and do that for?’ Ridcully added.
‘I really couldn’t say, Master. I thought perhaps you’d know. I believe Riktor was a lecturer here when you were a student. Mrs Whitlow is very concerned’, he added, in tones that made it clear that when Mrs Whitlow was concerned about something it would be an unwise Archchancellor who ignored her, ‘about staff being magically interfered with.’
The Archchancellor tapped the pot with his knuckles. ‘What, old “Numbers” Riktor? Same fella?’
‘Apparently, Archchancellor.’
‘Total madman. Thought you could measure everythin’. Not just lengths and weights and that kind of stuff, but everythin’. “If it exists,” he said, “you ought to be able to measure it.”‘ Ridcully’s eyes misted with memory. ‘Made all kinds of weird widgets. Reckoned you could measure truth and beauty and dreams and stuff. So this is one of old Riktor’s toys, is it? Wonder what it measured?’
‘Ay think’, said Mrs Whitlow, ‘that it should be put haway somewhere out of ‘arm’s way, if it’s hall the hsame to you.’
‘Yes, yes, yes, of course,’ said the Bursar hurriedly. Staff were hard to keep at Unseen University.
‘Get rid of it,’ said the Archchancellor.
The Bursar was horrified. ‘Oh, no, sir,’ he said. ‘We never throw things out. Besides, it is probably quite valuable.’
‘Hmm,’ said Ridcully. ‘Valuable?’
‘Possibly an important historical artifact, Master.’
‘Shove it in my study, then. I said the place needs bright’nin’ up. It’ll be one of them conversation pieces, right? Got to go now. Got to see a man about trainin’ a gryphon. Good day, ladies-‘
‘Er, Archchancellor, I wonder if you could just sign-‘ the Bursar began, but to a closing door.
No-one asked Ksandra which of the pottery elephants had spat the ball, and the direction wouldn’t have meant anything to them anyway.
That afternoon a couple of porters moved the universe’s only working resograph[5] into the Archchancellor’s study.
No-one had found a way to add sound to moving pictures, but there was a sound that was particularly associated with Holy Wood. It was the sound of nails being hammered.
Holy Wood had gone critical. New houses, new streets, new neighbourhoods, appeared overnight. And, in those areas where the hastily-educated alchemical apprentices were not yet fully alongside the trickier stages of making octo-cellulose, disappeared even faster. Not that it made a lot of difference. Barely would the smoke have cleared before someone was hammering again.
And Holy Wood grew by fission. All you needed was a steadyhanded, non-smoking lad who could read alchemical signs, a handleman, a sackful of demons and lots of sunshine. Oh, and some people. But there were plenty of those. If you couldn’t breed demons or mix chemicals or turn a handle rhythmically, you could always hold horses or wait on tables and look interesting while you hoped. Or, if all else failed, hammer nails. Building after rickety building skirted the ancient hill, their thin planks already curling and bleaching in the pitiless sun, but there was already a pressing need for more.
Because Holy Wood was calling. More people arrived every day. They didn’t come to be ostlers, or tavern wenches, or short-order carpenters. They came to make movies.
And they didn’t know why.
As Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler knew in his heart, wherever two or more people are gathered together, someone will be trying to sell them a suspicious sausage in a bun.
Now that Dibbler was in fact engaged elsewhere, others had arisen to fulfil that function.