Moving pictures tds-10

by Terry David John Pratchett

  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 tenthor 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 su
bject 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.