Moving pictures tds-10

by Terry David John Pratchett

'Well I thought I'd have a quick look at the click before it got shown?'

  'You did?' said Dibbler.

  'And what did I find, in the middle of the burning city scene, but five minutes showing nothing but a plate of spare ribs in Harga's Special Peanut Sauce. I know why, of course. I just want to know why this.'

  Dibbler grinned guiltily. 'The way I see it,' he said, 'if one little quick picture can make people want to go and buy things, just think what five minutes' worth could do.'

  Soll stared at him. .

  'I'm really hurt by this,' said Dibbler. 'You didn't trust me. Your own uncle. After I gave you my solemn promise not to try anything again, you didn't trust me? That wounds me, Soll. I'm really wounded. Whatever happened to integrity round here?'

  'I think you probably sold it to someone, Uncle.'

  'I'm really hurt,' said Dibbler.

  'But you didn't keep your promise, Uncle.'

  'That's got nothing to do with it. That's just business. We're talking family here. You got to learn to trust family, Soll. Especially me.'

  Soll shrugged. 'OK. OK.'

  'Right?'

  'Yes, Uncle.' Soll grinned. 'You've got my solemn promise on that.'

  'That's my boy.'

  At the other end of the row, Victor and Ginger were staring at the blank screen in sullen horror.

  'You know what's going to happen now, don't you,' said Ginger.

  'Yes. Someone's going to start playing music out of a hole in the floor.'

  'Was that cave really a picture pit?'

  'Sort of, I think,' said Victor, carefully.

  'But the screen here is just a screen. It's not . . . well, it's just a screen. Just a better class of sheet. It's not -'

  There There was a blast of sound from the front of the hall. With a clanking and the hiss of desperately escaping air, Bezam's daughter Calliope rose slowly out of the floor, attacking the keys on a small organ with all the verve of several hours' practice and the combined efforts of two strong trolls working the bellows behind the scenes. She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.

  Down in the stalls, the Dean passed a bag along to the Chair.

  'Have a chocolate-covered raisin,' he said.

  'They look like rat droppings,' said the Chair.

  The Dean peered at them in the gloom.

  'So that's it,' he said. 'The bag fell on the floor a minute ago, and I thought there seemed rather a lot.'

  'Shsss!' said a woman in the row behind. Windle Poons' scrawny head turned like a magnet.

  'Hoochie koochie!' he cackled. 'Twopence more and up goes the donkey!'

  The lights went down further. The screen flickered. Numbers appeared and blinked briefly, counting down.

  Calliope peered intently at the score in front of her, rolled up her sleeves, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and launched a spirited attack on what was just discernible as the old Ankh-Morporkian civic anthem. [27]

  The lights went out.

  The sky flickered. It wasn't like proper fog at all. It shed a silvery, slatey light, flickering internally like a cross between the Aurora Coriolis and summer lightning.

  In the direction of Holy Wood the sky blazed with light. It was visible even in the alley behind Sham Harga's House of Ribs, where two dogs were enjoying the All-You-Can-Drag-Out-Of-The-­Midden-For-Free Special.

  Laddie looked up and growled.

  'I don't blame you,' said Gaspode. 'I said it boded. Didn't I say there was boding happening?'

  Sparks crackled off his fur.

  'Come on,' he said. 'We'd better warn people. You're good at that.'

  Clickaclickaclicka . . .

  It was the only noise inside the Odium. Calliope had stopped playing and was staring up at the screen.

  Mouths hung open, and closed only to bite on handfuls of banged grains.

  Victor was dimly aware that he'd fought it. He'd tried to look away. Even now, a little voice in his own head was telling him that things were wrong, but he ignored it. Things were clearly right. He'd shared in the sighs as the heroine tried to preserve the old family mine in a Worlde Gonne Madde . . . He'd shuddered at the fighting in the war. He'd watched the ballroom scene in a romantic haze. He . . .

  . . . was aware of a cold sensation against his leg. It was as though a half-melted ice cube was soaking through his trousers. He tried to ignore it, but it had a definite unignorable quality.

  He looked down.

  ' 'Scuse me,' said Gaspode.

  Victor's eyes focused. Then his eyes found themselves being dragged back to the screen, where a huge version of himself was kissing a huge version of Ginger.

  There was another feeling of sticky coldness. He surfaced again.

  'I can bite your leg if you like,' said Gaspode.

  'I, er, I?' Victor began.

  'I can bite it quite hard,' Gaspode added. 'Just say the word.'

  'No, er?'

  'Something's boding, just like I said. Bode, bode, bode. Laddie's tried barkin' until he's hoarse and no-one's listenin'. So I fort I'd try the old cold nose technique. Never fails.'

  Victor looked around him. The rest of the audience were staring at the screen as if they were prepared to remain in their seats for . . . for . . .

  . . . forever.

  When he lifted up his arms from his seat, sparks crackled from his fingers, and there was a greasy feel to the air that even student wizards soon learned to associate with a vast accumulation of magical potential. And there was fog in the pit. It was ridiculous, but there it was, covering the floor like a pale silver tide.

  He shook Ginger's shoulder. He waved a hand in front of her eyes. He shouted in her ear.

  Then he tried the Patrician, and Dibbler. They yielded to pressure but swayed gently back into position again.

  'The film's doing something to them,' he said. 'It must be the film. But I can't see how. It's a perfectly ordinary film. We don't use magic in Holy Wood. At least . . . not normal magic . . . '

  He struggled over unyielding knees until he reached the aisle, and ran up it through the tendrils of fog. He hammered on the door of the picture-throwing room. When that got no answer he kicked it down.

  Bezam was staring intently at the screen through a small square hole cut in the wall. The picture-thrower was click­ing away happily by itself. No-one was turning the handle. At least, Victor corrected himself, no-one he could see.

  There was a distant rumble, and the ground shook.

  He stared at the screen. He recognized this bit. It was just before the Burning of Ankh-Morpork scene.

  His mind raced. What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn't exist if there weren't people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people's heads. And in front of him were hundreds of people really believing what they were seeing . . .

  Victor scrabbled among the rubbish on Bezam's bench for some scissors or a knife, and found neither. The machine whirred on, winding reality from the future to the past.

  In the background, he could hear Gaspode saying, 'I expect I've saved the day, right?'

  The brain normally echoes with the shouts of various inconsequential thoughts seeking attention. It takes a real emergency to get them to shut up. It was happening now. One clear thought that had been trying to make itself heard for a long time rang out in the silence.

  Supposing there was somewhere where reality was a little thinner than usual? And supposing you did something there that weakened reality even more. Books wouldn't do it. Even ordinary theatre wouldn't do it, because in your heart you knew it was just people in funny clothes on a stage. But Holy Wood went straight from the eye into the brain. In your heart you thought it was real. The clicks would do it.

  That was what was under Holy Wood Hill. The people of the old city had used the hole in reality for entertainment. And then the Things had found them.

  And now people were doing it again. It was like learning
to juggle lighted torches in a firework factory. And the Things had been waiting . . .

  But why was it still happening? He'd stopped Ginger.

  The film clicked on. There seemed to be a fog around the picture throwing box, blurring its outline.

  He snatched at the spinning handle. It resisted for a moment, and then broke. He gently pushed Bezam off his chair, picked it up and hit the throwing box with it. The chair exploded into splinters. He opened the cage at the back and took out the salamanders, and still the film danced on the distant screen.

  The building shook again.

  You only get one chance, he thought, and then you die.

  He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. Then he reached out for the flashing line of the film itself, and gripped it.

  It snapped. The box jerked backwards. Film went on unreeling in glittering coils which lunged at him briefly and then slithered down to the floor.

  Clickaclick . . . a . . . click.

  The reels spun to a halt.

  Victor cautiously stirred the heap of film with his foot. He'd been half expecting it to attack him like a snake.

  'Have we saved the day?' prompted Gaspode. 'I'd ap­preciate knowing.'

  Victor looked at the screen.

  'No,' he said.

  There were still images there. They weren't very clear, but he could still make out the vague shapes of himself and Ginger, hanging on to existence. And the screen itself was moving. It bulged here and there, like ripples of a pool of dull mercury. It looked unpleasantly familiar.

  'They've found us,' he said.

  'Who have?' said Gaspode.

  'You know those ghastly creatures you were talking about?'

  Gaspode's brow furrowed. 'The ones from before the dawnatime?'

  'Where they come from, there is no time,' said Victor. The audience was stirring.

  'We must get everyone out of here,' he said. 'But without panicking?'

  There was a chorus of screams. The audience was waking up.

  The screen Ginger was climbing out. She was three times normal size and flickered visibly. She was also vaguely transparent, but she had weight, because the floor buckled and splintered under her feet.

  The audience was climbing over itself to get away. Victor fought his way down the aisle just as Poons' wheelchair went past backwards in the flow of people, its occupant flailing desperately and shouting, 'Hey! Hey! It's just getting good!'

  The Chair grabbed Victor's arm urgently.

  'Is it meant to do this?' he demanded.

  'No!'

  'It's not some sort of special kinematographic effect, then?' said the Chair hopefully.

  'Not unless they've got really good in the last twenty-four hours,' said Victor. 'I think it's the Dungeon Dimensions.'

  The Chair stared intently at him.

  'You are young Victor, aren't you,' he said.

  'Yes. Excuse me,' said Victor. He pushed past the astonished wizard and climbed over the seats to where Ginger was still sitting, staring at her own image. The monster Ginger was looking around and blinking very slowly, like a lizard.

  'That's me?'

  'No!' said Victor. 'That is, yes. Maybe. Not really. Sort of. Come on.'

  'But it looks just like me!' said Ginger, her voice modulated with hysteria.

  'That's because they're having to use Holy Wood! It . . . it defines how they can appear, I think,' said Victor hurriedly. He tugged her out of the seat and into the air, his feet kicking up mist and scattering banged grains. She stumbled along after him, looking over her shoulder.

  'There's another one trying to come out of the screen,' she said.

  'Come on!'

  'It's you!'

  'I'm me! It's . . . something else! It's just having to use my shape!'

  'What shape does it normally use?'

  'You don't want to know!'

  'Yes I do! Why do you think I asked?' she yelled, as they stumbled through the broken seats.

  'It looks worse than you can imagine!'

  'I can imagine some pretty bad things!'

  'That's why I said worse!'

  'Oh.'

  The giant spectral Ginger passed them, flickering like a strobe light, and smashed its way out through the wall. There were screams from the outside.

  'It looks like it's getting bigger,' whispered Ginger.

  'Go outside,' said Victor. 'Get the wizards to stop it.'

  'What're you going to do?'

  Victor drew himself up to his full height. 'There are some Things', he said, 'that a man has to do by himself.'

  She gave him a look of irritated incomprehension.

  'What? What? Do you want to go to the lavatory or something?'

  'Just get out!'

  He shoved her towards the doors, then turned and saw the two dogs looking at him expectantly.

  'And you two, too,' he said.

  Laddie barked.

  'Dog's gotta stay by 'is master, style of fing,' said Gaspode, shame-facedly.

  Victor looked around in desperation, picked up a fragment of seat, opened the door, threw the wood as far as possible and shouted 'Fetch!'

  Both dogs bounded away after it, propelled by instinct. On his way past, though, Gaspode had just enough selfcontrol to say, 'You bastard!'

  Victor pulled open the door of the picture-throwing room and came out with handfuls of Blown Away.

  The giant Victor was having trouble leaving the screen. The head and one arm had pulled free and were threedimensional. The arm flailed vaguely -at Victor as he methodically threw coils of octo-cellulose over it. He ran back to the booth and pulled out the stacks of clicks that Bezam, in defiance of common sense, had stored under the bench.

  Working with the methodical calmness of bowel-twisting terror, he carried the cans by the armload to the screen and heaped them there. The Thing managed to wrench another arm free of two-dimensionality and tried to scrabble at them, but whatever was controlling it was having trouble controlling this new shape. It was probably unused to having only two arms, Victor told himself.

  He threw the last can on to the heap.

  'In our world you have to obey our rules,' he said. 'And I bet you burn just as well as anything else, hey?'

  The Thing struggled to pull a leg free.

  Victor patted his pockets. He ran back to the booth and scrabbled around madly.

  Matches. There weren't any matches!

  He pushed open the doors to the, foyer and dashed out into the street, where the crowds were milling around in horrified fascination and watching a fifty-foot Ginger disentangling Itself from the wreckage of a building.

  Victor heard a clicking beside him. Gaffer the handleman was intently capturing the scene on film.

  The Chair was shouting at Dibbler.

  'Of course we can't use magic against it! They need magic! Magic only makes them stronger.'

  'You must be able to do something!' screamed Dibbler.

  'My dear sir, we didn't start meddling with things best left -' the Chair hesitated in mid-snarl, 'unmeddled-with with,' he finished lamely.

  'Matches!' Victor shouted. 'Matches! Hurry!'

  They all stared at him.

  Then the Chair nodded. 'Ordinary fire,' he said. 'You're right. That should do it. Good thinking, boy.' He fumbled in a pocket and produced the bundle of matches that chain­smoking wizards always carried.

  'You can't burn the Odium,' snapped Dibbler. 'There's heaps of film in there!'

  Victor ripped a poster off the wall, wrapped it in a crude torch, and lit one end.

  'That's what I'm going to burn,' he said.

  ' 'Scuse me?'

  'Stupid! Stupid!' shouted Dibbler. 'That stuff burns really fast!'

  ' 'Scuse me?'

  'So what? I wasn't intending to hang around in there,' said Victor.

  'I mean really fast!'

  ' 'Scuse me,' said Gaspode patiently. They looked down at him.

  'Me an' Laddie could do it,' he said.
'Four legs're better 'n two and so forth, y'know? When it comes to savin' the day.'

  Victor looked at Dibbler and raised his eyebrows.

  'I suppose they might be able to,' Dibbler conceded. Victor nodded. Laddie leaped gracefully, snatched the torch out of his hand and ran back into the building with Gaspode lurching after him.

  'Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?' said Dibbler.

  'He says he can't,' said Victor.

  Dibbler hesitated. The excitement was unhinging him a little. 'Well,' he said, 'I suppose he should know.'

  The dogs bounded towards the screen. The Victor-Thing was nearly through, half-sprawled among the cans.

  'Can I light the fire?' said Gaspode. ' 'Smy job, really.'

  Laddie barked obediently and dropped the blazing paper. Gaspode snapped it up and advanced cautiously towards the Thing.

  'Savin' the day,' he said, indistinctly, and dropped the torch on a coil of film. It flared instantly and burned with a sticky white fire, like slow magnesium.

  'OK,' he said. 'Now, let's get the hell out of?'

  The Thing screamed. What semblance there still was of Victor left it, and something like an explosion in an aquarium twisted among the flames. A tentacle whipped out and grabbed Gaspode by the leg.

  He turned and tried to bite it.

  Laddie ricocheted back down the stricken hall and launched himself at the flailing arm. It recoiled, knocking him over and spinning Gaspode across the floor.

  The little dog sat up, took a few wobbling steps, and fell over.

  'Bloody leg's been and gone,' he muttered. Laddie gave him a sorrowful look. Flames crackled around the film cans. .

  'Go on, get out of here, you stupid mutt,' said Gaspode. 'The whole thing's goin' to go up in a minute. No! Don't pick me up! Put me down! You haven't got time-'

  The walls of the Odium expanded with apparent slowness, every plank and stone maintaining its position relative to all the others but floating out by itself.

  Then Time caught up with events.

  Victor threw himself flat on his face.

  Boom.

  An orange fireball lifted the roof and billowed up into the foggy sky. Wreckage smashed against the walls of other houses. A red-hot film can scythed over the heads of the recumbent wizards, making a menacing wipwipwip noise, and exploded against a distant wall.