Moving Pictures (28 page)

And you never, never get a chance to stay in your seat for the second house.

Candlelight flickered in the University corridor.

The Bursar did not think of himself as a brave man. The most he felt happy about tackling was a column of numbers, and being good at numbers had taken him further up the hierarchy of Unseen University than magic had ever done. But he couldn’t let this pass.

…whumm…whumm…whumm
whumm
whummWHUMM
WHUMM
.

He crouched behind a pillar and counted eleven pellets. Little jets of sand puffed out of the bags. They were coming at two-minute intervals now.

He ran to the heap of sandbags and tugged at them.

Reality wasn’t the same everywhere. Well, of course, every wizard knew
that
. Reality wasn’t very thick anywhere on the Discworld. In some places it was very thin indeed. That was why magic
worked
. What Riktor thought he could measure was
changes
in reality, places where the real was rapidly becoming unreal. And every wizard knew what could happen if things became unreal enough to form a hole.

But, he thought, as he clawed at the bags, you’d need massive amounts of magic. We’d be
bound
to spot that amount of magic. It’d stand out like…well, like a lot of magic.

I must have taken at least fifty seconds so far.

He peered at the vase in its bunker.

Oh.

He’d been hoping he might be wrong.

All the pellets had been expelled in one direction. Half a dozen sandbags had been shot full of holes. And Numbers had thought that a couple of pellets in a month indicated a dangerous build-up of unreality…

The Bursar mentally drew a line from the vase, through the damaged sandbags, to the far end of the corridor.

…whumm…whumm…

He jerked back, and then realized that there was no need to worry. All the pellets were being shot out of the ornamental elephant’s head opposite him. He relaxed.

…whumm…whumm…

The vase rocked violently as mysterious machinery swung around inside it. The Bursar put his head closer to it. Yes, there was definitely a hissing sound, like air being squeezed—

Eleven pellets slammed at high speed into the sandbags.

The vase recoiled back, in accordance with the famous principle of reaction. Instead of hitting a sandbag, it hit the Bursar.

Ming-ng-ng.

He blinked. He took a step backward. He fell over.

Because Holy Wood’s disturbances in reality were extending weak but opportunist tendrils even as far as Ankh-Morpork, a couple of little bluebirds flew around his head for a moment and went “tweet-tweet-tweet” before vanishing.

Gaspode lay on the sand and wheezed. Laddie danced around him, barking urgently.

“We’re well out of that,” he managed, and stood up and shook himself.

Laddie barked and looked incredibly photogenic.

“All right, all right,” sighed Gaspode. “How about if we go and find some breakfast and maybe catch up on our sleep and then we’ll—”

Laddie barked again.

Gaspode sighed.

“Oh, all
right
,” he said. “Have it your way. But you won’t get any thanks, you know.”

The dog whizzed away across the sand. Gaspode followed at a more leisurely, ambling pace, and was very surprised when Laddie doubled back, picked him up gently by the scruff of the neck, and bounded off again.

“You’re only doin’ this to me ’cos I’m small,” Gaspode complained, as he swung from side to side, and “No, not that way! Humans’ll be no good at this time o’ the morning. We want trolls. They’ll still be up and about and they’re dab hands at the underground stuff. Take the next right. We want the Blue Lias and—oh,
bugger
.”

It had suddenly dawned on him that he was going to be required to talk.

And in public.

You could spend ages carefully concealing your vocal abilities from people and then, bingo, you were on the spot and you had to talk. Otherwise young Victor and Cat Woman would be molderin’ down there forever. Young Laddie was going to drop him in front of someone and look expectant and he’d have to
explain
. And afterward spend his whole life as some sort of freak.

Laddie trotted up the street and into the smoky portals of the Blue Lias, which was crowded. He threaded his way through a maze of treetrunk legs to the bar, barked sharply, and dropped Gaspode on the floor.

He looked expectant.

The buzz of conversation stopped.

“Is that Laddie?” said a troll. “What he want?”

Gaspode wandered groggily to the nearest troll and tugged politely at a trailing strip of rusty chain mail.

“’Scuse me,” he said.

“He bloody intelligent dog,” said another troll, idly kicking Gaspode aside. “I see him in click yesterday. He can play dead and count up to five.”

“That two more than you can, then.” This got a around of laughter.
²³

“No, shut up. I reckon,” said the first troll, “he trying to tell us something.”

“—’scuse me—”

“You only got to look at the way he leaping about and barking.”

“That right. I saw him in this click, he showing people where to find lost children in caves.”

“—’scuse me—”

A troll brow wrinkled. “To eat ’em, you mean?”

“No, to bring ’em outside.”

“What, like for a barbecue sort of thing?”

“—
’scuse
me—”

Another foot caught Gaspode on the side of his bullet head.

“Could be he found some more. Look at the way he running back and forward to the door. He one clever dog.”

“We could go look,” said the first troll.

“Good idea. It seem like ages since I had my tea.”

“Listen, you not
allowed
to eat people in Holy Wood. It get us bad name! Also Silicon Anti-Defamation League be down on you like a ton of rectangular building things.”

“Yeah, but could be a reward or something.”

“—’SCUSE ME—”

“Right! Also, big improvement for troll image viz-ah-viz public relations if we find lost children.”

“And even if we don’t, we can eat the dog, right?”

The bar emptied, leaving only the usual clouds of smoke, cauldrons of molten troll drinks, Ruby idly scraping the congealed lava off the mugs, and a small, weary, moth-eaten dog.

The small, weary, moth-eaten dog thought hard about the difference between looking and acting like a wonder dog and merely being one.

It said “Bugger.”

Victor remembered being frightened of tigers when he was young. In vain did people point out that the nearest tiger was three thousand miles away. He’d say, “Is there any sea between where they live and here?” and people would say, “Well, no, but—” and he’d say, “Then it’s just a matter of distance.”

Darkness was the same thing. All dreadful dark places were connected by the nature of darkness itself. Darkness was everywhere, all the time, just waiting for the lights to go out. Just like the Dungeon Dimensions, really. Just waiting for reality to snap.

He held on tight to Ginger.

“You needn’t,” she said. “I’ve got a grip on myself now.”

“Oh, good,” he said weakly.

“The trouble is, so have you.”

He relaxed.

“Are you cold?” she said.

“A bit. It’s very clammy down here.”

“Is it your teeth I can hear chattering?”

“Who else’s? No,” he added hurriedly, “don’t even think about it.”

“You know,” she said, after a while, “I don’t remember anything about tying you up. I’m not even very good at knots.”

“These were pretty good,” said Victor.

“I just remember the dream. There was this voice telling me that I must wake the—the sleeping man?”

Victor thought of the armored figure on the slab.

“Did you get a good look at it?” he said. “What was it like?”

“I don’t know about tonight,” said Ginger cautiously.

“But in my dreams it’s always looked a bit like my Uncle Oswald.”

Victor thought of a sword taller than he was. You couldn’t parry a slash from something like that, it’d cut through anything. Somehow it was hard to think of anything looking like an Oswald with a sword like that.

“Why’s he remind you of your Uncle Oswald?” he said.

“Because my Uncle Oswald lay quite still like that. Mind you, I only ever saw him once. And that was at his funeral.”

Victor opened his mouth—and there were distant, blurred voices. A few stones moved. A voice, a little closer now, trilled, “Hallo, little children. This way, little children.”

“That’s Rock!” said Ginger.

“I’d know that voice anywhere,” said Victor. “Hey! Rock! It’s me! Victor!”

There was a worried pause. Then Rock’s voice bellowed: “It’s my friend Victor!”

“That mean we can’t eat him?”

“No one is to eat my friend Victor! We dig him out with speed!”

There was the sound of crunching. Then another troll’s voice complained, “They call this limestone? I call it tasteless.”

There was some more scrabbling. A third voice said, “Don’t see why we can’t eat him. Who’d know?”

“You uncivilized troll,” scolded Rock. “What you thinking of? You eat people, everyone laugh at you, say, ‘He very defective troll, do not know how to behave in polite society’ and stop paying you three dollar a day and send you back to mountains.”

Victor gave what he hoped would sound like a light chuckle.

“They’re a lot of laughs, aren’t they?” he said.

“Heaps,” said Ginger.

“Of course, all that stuff about eating people is just bravado. They hardly ever do it. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

“I’m not. I’m worried because I walk around all the time when I’m asleep and I don’t know why. You make it sound as if I was going to wake up that sleeping creature. It’s a horrible thought. Something’s inside my head.”

There was a crash as more rocks were pulled aside.

“That’s the odd thing,” said Victor. “When people are, er, possessed, the, er, possessing thing doesn’t usually care much about them or anyone else. I mean, it wouldn’t have just tied me up. It would have hit me over the head with something.”

He reached for her hand in the dark.

“That thing on the slab,” he said.

“What about it?”

“I’ve seen it before. It’s in the book I found. There’s dozens of pictures of it, and they must have thought it was very important to keep it behind the gate. That’s what the pictograms say, I think. Gate…man. The man behind the gate. The prisoner. You see, I’m sure the reason why all the priests or whoever they were had to go and chant there every day was—”

A slab by his head was pulled aside and weak daylight poured through. It was very closely followed by Laddie, who tried to lick Victor’s face and bark at the same time.

“Yes, yes! Well done, Laddie,” said Victor, trying to fight him off. “Good dog. Good boy, Laddie.”

“Good boy Laddie! Good boy Laddie!”

The bark brought several small shards of stone down from the ceiling.

“Aha!” said Rock. Several other troll heads appeared behind him as Victor and Ginger stared out of the hole.

“They not little children,” muttered the one who had been complaining about the eating ban. “They look stringy.”

“I tell you before,” said Rock menacingly, “no eating people. It cause no end of trouble.”

“Why not just one leg? Then everyone’ll be—”

Rock picked up a half-ton slab in one hand, weighed it thoughtfully, and then hit the other troll so hard with it that it broke.

“I tell you before,” he told the recumbent figure, “it trolls like you getting us a bad name. How can we take rightful place in brotherhood of sapient species with defective trolls like you letting side down aller time?”

He reached through the hole and pulled Victor out bodily.

“Thanks, Rock. Er. There’s Ginger in there, too.”

Rock gave him a crafty nudge that bruised a couple of ribs.

“So I see,” he said. “And she wearing very pretty silk neggleliggle. You find nice place to indulge in bit of ‘What is the health of your parent?’ and the Disc move for you, yeah?” The other trolls grinned.

“Uh, yes, I suppose—” Victor began.

“That’s not true at all!” snapped Ginger, as she was helped through the hole. “We weren’t—”

“Yes, it is!” said Victor, making furious signals with his hands and eyebrows. “It’s absolutely true! You’re absolutely right, Rock!”

“Yeah,” said one of the trolls behind Rock. “I seen them on the clicks. He kissing her and carrying her off the whole time.”

“Now
listen
,” Ginger began.

“And now we get out of here fast,” said Rock. “This whole ceiling looking very defective to me. Could go at any time.”

Victor glanced up. Several of the blocks were dipping ominously.

“You’re right,” he said. He grabbed the arm of the protesting Ginger and hustled her along the passage. The trolls gathered up the fallen compatriot who did not know how to behave in polite company and plodded after them.

“That was
disgusting
, giving them the impression that—” Ginger hissed.

“Shut up!” snapped Victor. “What did you want me to say, hmm? I mean, what sort of explanation do you think would fit? What would you like people to know?”

She hesitated.

“Well, all right,” she conceded. “But you could have thought of something else. You could have said we were exploring, or looking for, for fossils—” her voice trailed off.

“Yes, in the middle of the night with you in a silk neggleliggle,” said Victor. “What
is
a neggleliggle, anyway?”

“He meant negligee,” said Ginger.

“Come on, let’s get back to town. Afterward I might just have time to have a couple of hours’ sleep.”

“What do you mean, afterward?”

“We’re going to have to buy these lads a big drink—”

There was a low rumble from the hill. A cloud of dust billowed out of the doorway and covered the trolls. The rest of the roof had gone.

“And that’s it,” said Victor. “It’s over. Can you make the sleepwalking part of you understand that? It’s no good trying to get in anymore, there isn’t any way. It’s buried. It’s over. Thank goodness.”