Moving pictures tds-10

by Terry David John Pratchett

  'Just shut up, old chap, and hold this brick.'

  'Very well, but tell me this; how do you propose to get the wheelchair over?'

  They looked at Poons' wheelchair.

  There are wheelchairs which are lightweight and built to let their owners function fully and independently in modern society. To the thing inhabited by Poons, they were as gazelles to a hippopotamus. Poona was well aware of his function in modern society, and as far as he was concerned it was to be pushed everywhere and generally pandered to.

  It was wide and long and steered by means of a little front wheel and a long cast-iron handle. Cast iron, in fact, featured largely in its construction. Bits of baroque ironwork adorned its frame, which seemed to have been made of iron drainpipes welded together. The rear wheels did not in fact have blades affixed to them, but looked as though these were optional extras. There were various dread levers which only Poons knew the purpose of. There was a huge oilskin hood that could be erected in a matter of hours to protect its occupant from showers, storms and, probably, meteor strikes and falling buildings. By way of fight relief, the front handle was adorned with a selection of trumpets, hooters and whistles, with which Poons was wont to announce his progress around the passages and quadrangles of the University. For the fact was that although the wheelchair needed all the efforts of one strong man to get it moving it had, once actually locomotive, a sort of ponderous unstoppability; it may have had brakes, but Windle Poons had never bothered to find out. Staff and students alike knew that the only hope of survival, if they heard a honk or a blast at close range, was to flatten themselves against the nearest wall while the dreaded conveyance rattled by.

  'We'll never get that over,' said the Dean firmly. 'It must weigh at least a ton. We ought to leave him behind, anyway. He's too old for this sort of thing.'

  'When I was a lad I was over this wall, nun, every night,' said Poons, resentfully. He chuckled. 'We had some scrapes in those days, I can tell you. If I had a penny, mm, for every time the Watch chased me home,' his ancient lips moved in a sudden frenzy of calculation, 'I'd have fivepence-ha'penny.'

  'Maybe if we?' the Chair began, and then said 'What do you mean, fivepence-ha'penny?'

  'I recall once they gave up halfway,' said Poons, happily. 'Oh, those were great times. I remember me and old "Numbers" Riktor and "Tudgy" Spold climbed up on the Temple of Small Gods, you see, in the middle of a service, and Tudgy had got this piglet in a sack, and he?'

  'See what you've done?' complained the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You've set him off now.'

  'We could try lifting it by magic,' said the Chair. 'Gindle's Effortless Elevator should do the trick.'

  '-and then the high priest turned around and, heh, the look on his face! And then old Numbers said, let's?'

  'It's hardly a very dignified use of magic,' sniffed the Dean.

  'Considerably more dignified than heaving the bloody

  thing over the wall ourselves, wouldn't you say?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, rolling up his sleeves. 'Come on, lads.'

  '-and next thing, Pimple was hammering on the door of the Assassins' Guild, and then old Scummidge, who was the porter there, heehee, he was a right terror, anyway, he came out, mm, and then the guards come around the corner?'

  'All ready? Right!'

  '-which puts me in mind of the time me and "Cucumber" Framer got some glue and went round to?'

  'Up your end, Dean!'

  The wizards grunted with effort.

  '-and, mm, I can remember it as if it was only yesterday, the look on his face when?'

  'Now lower away!'

  The iron-shod wheels clanged gently on the cobbles of the alley.

  Poons nodded amiably. 'Great times. Great times,' he muttered, and fell asleep.

  The wizards climbed slowly and unsteadily over the wall, ample backsides gleaming in the moonlight, and stood wheezing gently on the far side.

  'Tell me, Dean,' said the Lecturer, leaning on the wall to stop the shaking in his legs, 'have we made . . . the wall . . . higher in the last fifty years?'

  'I . . . don't . . . think . . . so.'

  'Odd. Used to go up it like a gazelle. Not many years ago. Not many at all, really.'

  The wizards wiped their foreheads and looked sheepishly at one another.

  'Used to nip over for a pint or three most nights,' said the Chair.

  'I used to study in the evenings,' said the Dean, primly.

  The Chair narrowed his eyes.

  'Yes, you always did,' he said. 'I recall.'

  It was dawning on the wizards that they were outside the University, at night and without permission, for the first time in decades. A certain suppressed excitement crackled from man to man. Any watcher trained in reading body language would have been prepared to bet that, after the click, someone was going to suggest that they might as well go somewhere and have a few drinks, and then someone else would fancy a meal, and then there was always room for a few more drinks, and then it would be 5 a.m. and the city guards would be respectfully knocking on the University gates and asking if the Archchancellor would care to step down to the cells to identify some alleged wizards who were singing an obscene song in six-part harmony, and perhaps he would also care to bring some money to pay for all the damage. Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

  The Chair reached up and grasped the brim of his tall, wide and floppy wizarding hat.

  'Right, boys,' he said. 'Hats off.'

  They de-hatted, but with reluctance. A wizard gets very attached to his pointy hat. It gives him a sense of identity. But, as the Chair had pointed out earlier, if people knew you were a wizard because you were wearing a pointy hat, then if you took the pointy hat off, they'd think you were just some rich merchant or something.

  The Dean shuddered. 'It feels like I've taken all my clothes off,' he said.

  'We can tuck them in under Poons' blanket,' said the Chair. 'No­one'll know it's us.'

  'Yes,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, 'but will we?'

  'They'll just think we're, well, solid burghers.'

  'That's just what I feel like,' said the Dean. 'A solid

  burgher.'j

  'Or merchants,' said the Chair. He smoothed back his white hair.

  'Remember,' he said, 'if anyone says anything, we're not wizards. Just honest merchants out for an enjoyable evening, right?'

  'What does an honest merchant look like?' said a wizard.

  'How should I know?' said the Chair. 'So no-one is to do any magic,' he went on. 'I don't have to tell you what'll happen if the Archchancellor hears that his staff has been seen at the common entertainments.'

  'I'm more worried about our students finding out,' shuddered the Dean.

  'False beards,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, triumphantly. 'We should wear false beards.'

  The Chair rolled his eyes.

  'We've all GOT beards,' he said. 'What kind of disguise would false beards be?'

  'Ah! That's the clever bit,' said the Lecturer. 'No-one would suspect that anyone wearing a false beard would have a real beard underneath, would they?'

  The Chair opened his mouth to refute this, and then hesitated.

  'Well?' he said.

  'But where'd we get false beards at this time of night?' said a wizard doubtfully.

  The Lecturer beamed, and reached into his pocket. 'We don't have to,' he said. 'That's the really clever bit: I brought some wire with me, you see, and all you need do is break two bits off, twiddle them into your sideburns, then loop them over your ears rather clumsily like this,' he demonstrated, 'and there you are.'

  The Chair stared.

  'Uncanny,' he said, at last. 'It's true! You look just like someone wearing a very badly-made false beard.'

  'Amazing, isn't it?' said the Lecturer happily, passing out the wire. 'It's headology, you know.'

  There were a few minutes of busy twanging and the occasional whimper as a wizard punctured himself with wir
e, but eventually they were ready. They looked shyly at one another.

  'If we got a pillow case without a pillow in it and shoved it down inside the Chair's robe so the top was showing, he'd look just like a thin man making himself tremendously fat with a huge pillow,' said one of them enthusiastically. He caught the Chair's eye, and went quiet.

  A couple of wizards grasped the handles of Poons' terrible wheelchair and started it rumbling over the damp cobbles.

  'Wassat? What's everyone doing?' said Poons, suddenly waking up.

  'We're going to play solid burghers,' said the Dean.

  'That's a good game,' said Poons.

  'Can you hear me, old chap?'

  The Bursar opened his eyes.

  The University sanitarium wasn't very big, and was seldom used. Wizards tended to be either in rude health, or dead. The only medicine they generally required was an antacid formula and a dark room until lunch.

  'Brought you something to read,' said the voice, diffidently.

  The Bursar managed to focus on the spine of Adventures with Crossbow and Rod.

  'Nasty knock you had there, Bursar. Been asleep all day.'

  The Bursar looked blearily at the pink and orange haze, which gradually refined itself into the Archchancellor's pink and orange face.

  Let's see, he thought, exactly how did I

  He sat bolt upright and grabbed the Archchancellor's robe and screamed into the big pink and orange face: 'Something dreadful's going to happen!'

  The wizards strolled through the twilight streets. So far the disguise was working perfectly. People were even jostling them. No-one ever knowingly jostled a wizard. It was a whole new experience.

  There was a huge crowd of people outside the entrance to the Odium, and a queue that stretched down the street. The Dean ignored it, and led the party straight up to the doors, whereupon someone said 'Oi!'

  He looked up at a red-faced troll in an ill-fitting military-looking outfit that included epaulettes the size of kettle?drums and no trousers.

  'Yes?' he said.

  'There are a queue, you know,' said the troll.

  The Dean nodded politely. In Ankh-Morpork a queue was, almost by definition, something with a wizard at the head of it. 'So I see,' he said. 'And a very good thing, too. And if you will be so good as to stand aside, we'd like to take our seats.'

  The troll prodded him in the stomach.

  'What you fink you are?' he said. 'A wizard or something?' This got a laugh from the nearest queuers.

  The Dean leaned closer.

  'As a matter of fact, we are wizards,' he hissed.

  The troll grinned at him.

  'Don't come the raw trilobite with me,' he said. 'I can see your false beard!'

  'Now listen-' the Dean began, but his voice became an incoherent squeak as the troll picked him up by the collar of his robe and propelled him out into the road.

  'You get in queue like everyone else,' he said. There was a chorus of jeers from the queue.

  The Dean growled and raised his right hand, fingers spread?

  The Chair grabbed his arm.

  'Oh, yes,' he hissed., 'That'd do a lot of good, wouldn't it? Come on.'

  'Where to?'

  'To the back of the queue!'

  'But we're wizards! Wizards never stand in line for anything!'

  'We're honest merchants, remember?' said the Chair. He glanced at the nearest click-goers, who were giving them odd looks. 'We're honest merchants,' he repeated loudly.

  He nudged the Dean. 'Go on,' he hissed.

  'Go on what?'

  'Go on and say something merchanty.'

  'What sort of thing is that?' said the Dean, mystified.

  'Say something! Everyone's looking at us!'

  'Oh.' The Dean's face creased in panic, and then sal­vation dawned. 'Lovely apples,' he said. 'Get them while they're hot. They're luvverly . . . Will this do?'

  'I suppose so. Now let's go to the end-'

  There was a commotion at the other end of the street. People surged forward. The queue broke ranks and charged. The honest merchants were suddenly surrounded by a desperately-pushing crowd.

  'I say, there is a queue, you know,' said the Hon­est Merchant in Recent Runes diffidently, as he was shoved aside.

  The Dean grabbed the shoulder of a boy who was ferociously elbowing him aside.

  'What is going on, young man?' he demanded.

  'They're a-coming!' shouted the boy.

  'Who are?'

  'The stars!'

  The wizards, as one man, looked upwards.

  'No, they're not,' said the Dean, but the boy had shaken himself free and disappeared in the press of people.

  'Strange primitive superstition,' said the Dean, and the wizards, with the exception of Poons, who was complain­ing and flailing around with his stick, craned forward to see.

  The Bursar met the Archchancellor in a corridor.

  'There's no-one in the Uncommon Room!' screamed the Bursar.

  'The Library's empty!' bellowed the Archchancellor.

  'I've heard about that sort of thing,' the Bursar whim­pered. 'Spontaneous something-or-other. They've all gone spontaneous!'

  'Calm down, man. Just because?'

  'I can't even find any of the servants! You know what happens when reality gives way! Even now giant tentacles are probably?'

  There was a distant whumm . . . whumm noise, and the sound of pellets bouncing off the wall.

  'Always the same direction,' the Bursar muttered.

  'What direction is that, then?'

  'The direction They'll be coming from! I think I'm going mad!'

  'Now, now,' said the Archchancellor, patting him on the shoulder. 'You don't want to go around talking like that. That's crazy talk.'

  Ginger stared, panic-stricken, out of the carriage window.

  'Who are all these people?' she said.

  'They're fans,' said Dibbler.

  'But I'm not hot!'

  'Uncle means that they're people who like seeing you in the clicks,' said Soll. 'Er. Like you a lot.'

  'There's women out there too,' said Victor. He gave a cautious wave. In the crowd, a woman swooned.

  'You're famous,' he said. 'You said you always wanted to be famous.'

  Ginger looked out at the crowd again. 'I never thought it would be like this, though. They're all shouting our names!'

  'We've put a lot of effort into telling people about Blown Away,' said Soll.

  'Yes,' said Dibbler. 'We said it was the greatest click in the entire history of Holy Wood.'

  'But we've been making clicks for only a couple of months,' Ginger pointed out.

  'So what? That's still a history,' said Dibbler.

  Victor saw the look in Ginger's face. Exactly how long was Holy Wood's real history? Perhaps there was some ancient stone calendar, down there on the sea bed, among the lobsters. Perhaps there was no way it could be measured. How did you measure the age of an idea?

  'A lot of civic dignitaries are going to be there, too,' said Dibbler. 'The Patrician and the nobles and the Guild heads and some of the high priests. Not the wizards, of course, the stuck-up old idiots. But it'll be a night to remember right enough.'

  'Will we have to be introduced to them all?' said Victor.

  'No. They'll be introduced to you,' said Dibbler. 'It'll be the biggest thrill of their lives.'

  Victor stared out at the crowds again.

  'Is it my imagination,' he said, 'or is it getting foggy?'

  Poons hit the Chair across the back of the legs with his stick.

  'What's going on?' he said. 'Why's everyone cheering?'

  'The Patrician's just got out of his carriage,' said the Chair.

  'Don't see what's so wonderful about that,' said Poons. 'I've got out of carriages hundreds of times. There's no trick to it at all.'

  'It's a bit odd,' the Chairman admitted. 'And they cheered the head of the Assassins' Guild and the High Priest of Blind Io, too. And now someone's rolle
d out a red carpet.'

  'What, in the street? In Ankh-Morpork?'

  'Yes.'

  'Wouldn't like to have their cleaning bill,' said Poons.

  The Lecturer in Recent Runes nudged the Chair heavily in the ribs, or at least at the point where the ribs were overlaid by the strata of fifty years of very good dinners.

  'Quiet!' he hissed. 'They're coming!'

  'Who?'

  'Someone important, by the look of it.'

  The Chair's face creased in panic behind his false real beard. 'You don't think they've invited the Archchancellor, do you?'

  The wizards tried to shrink inside their robes, like upright turtles.

  In fact it was a far more impressive coach than any of the crumbling items in the University's mews. The crowd surged forward against the line of trolls and city guards and stared expectantly at the carriage door; the very air hummed with anticipation.

  Mr Bezam, his chest so inflated with self-importance that he appeared to be floating across the ground, bobbed towards the carriage door and opened it.

  The crowd held its collective breath, except for a small part of it that hit surrounding people with its stick and muttered, 'What's happening? What's going on? Why won't anyone tell me what's happening? I demand someone tell me, mm, what's happening?'

  The door stayed shut. Ginger was gripping the handle as if it was a lifeline.

  'There's thousands of them out there!' said Ginger. 'I can't go out there!'

  'But they all watch your clicks,' pleaded Soll. 'They're your public.'

  'No!'

  Soll threw up his hands. 'Can't you persuade her?' he said to Victor.

  'I'm not even sure I can persuade myself,' said Victor.

  'But you've spent days in front of these people,' said Dibbler.

  'No I haven't,' said Ginger. 'It was just you and the handlemen and the trolls and everyone. That was different. Anyway, that wasn't really me,' she added. 'That was Delores De Syn.'

  Victor bit his lip thoughtfully.

  'Maybe you ought to send Delores de Syn out there, then,' he said.

  'How can I do that?' she demanded.

  'Well . . . why not pretend it's a click .

  The Dibblers, uncle and nephew, exchanged glances. Then Soll cupped his hands around his face like the eye of a picture box and Dibbler, after a prompting nudge, placed one hand on his nephew's head and turned an invisible handle in his ear.