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.