In the heartlands of the great dark continent of Klatch the air was heavy and pregnant with the promise of the coming monsoon.
   Bullfrogs croaked in the rushes [14] by the slow brown river. Crocodiles dozed on the mudflats.
   Nature was holding its breath.
   A cooing broke out in the pigeon loft of Azhural N'choate, stock dealer. He stopped dozing on the veranda, and went over to see what had caused the excitement.
   In the vast pens behind the shack a few threadbare bewilderbeests, marked down for a quick sale, yawning and cudding in the heat, looked up in alarm as N'choate leapt the veranda steps in one bound and tore towards them.
   He rounded the zebra pens and homed in on his assistant M'Bu, who was peacefully mucking out the ostriches.
   'How many-' he stopped, and began to wheeze.
   M'Bu, who was twelve years old, dropped his shovel and patted him heavily on the back.
   'How many-' he tried again.
   'You been overdoing it again, boss?' said M'Bu in a concerned voice.
   'How many elephants we got?'
   'I just done them,' said M'Bu. 'We got three.'
   'Are you sure?'
   'Yes, boss,' said M'Bu, evenly. 'It's easy to be sure, with elephants.'
   Azhural crouched in the red dust and hurriedly began to scrawl figures with a stick.
   'Old Muluccai's bound to have half a dozen,' he muttered. 'And Tazikel's usually got twenty or so, and then the people on the delta generally have-'
   'Someone want elephants, boss?'
   '-got fifteen head, he was telling me, plus also there's a load at the logging camp probably going cheap, call it two dozen-'
   'Someone want a lot of elephants, boss?'
   '-was saying there's a herd over T'etse way, shouldn't be a problem, then there's all the valleys over towards-'
   M'Bu leaned on the fence and waited.
   'Maybe two hundred, give or take ten,' said Azhural, throwing down the stick. 'Nowhere near enough.'
   'You can't give or take ten elephants, boss,' said M'Bu firmly. He knew that counting elephants was a precision job. A man might be uncertain about how many wives he had, but never about elephants. Either you had one, or you didn't.
   'Our agent in Klatch has an order for', Azhural swallowed, 'a thousand elephants. A thousand! Immediately! Cash on delivery!'
   Azhural let the paper drop to the ground. 'To a place called Ankh-Morpork,' he said despondently. He sighed. 'It would have been nice,' he said.
   M'Bu scratched his head and stared at the hammerhead clouds massing over Mt F'twangi. Soon the dry veldt would boom to the thunder of the rains.
   Then he reached down and picked up the stick.
   'What're you doing?' said Azhural.
   'Drawing a map, boss,' said M'Bu.
   Azhural shook his head. 'Not worth it, boy. Three thousand miles to Ankh, I reckon, I let myself get carried away. Too many miles, not enough elephants.'
   'We could go across the plains, boss,' said M'Bu. 'Lot of elephants on the plains. Send messengers ahead. We could pick up plenty more elephants on the way, no problem. That whole plain just about covered in damn elephants.'
   'No, we'd have to go around on the coast,' said the dealer, drawing a long curving line in the sand. 'The reason being, there's the jungle just here,' he tapped on the parched ground, 'and here,' he tapped again, slightly concussing an emerging locust that had optimistically mistaken the first tap for the onset of the rains. 'No roads in the jungle.'
   M'Bu took the stick and drew a straight line through the jungle.
   'Where a thousand elephants want to go, boss, they don't need no roads.'
   Azhural considered this. Then he took the stick and drew a jagged line by the jungle.
   'But here's the Mountains of the Sun,' he said. 'Very high. Lots of deep ravines. And no bridges.'
   M'Bu took the stick, indicated the jungle, and grinned.
   'I know where there's a lot of prime timber just been uprooted, boss,' he said.
   'Yeah? OK, boy, but we've still got to get it into the mountains.'
   'It just so happen that a t'ousand real strong elephants'll be goin' that way, boss.'
   M'Bu grinned again. His tribe went in for sharpening their teeth to points. [15] He handed back the stick.
   Azhural's mouth opened slowly.
   'By the seven moons of Nasreem,' he breathed. 'We could do it, you know. It's only, oh, thirteen or fourteen hundred miles that way. Maybe less, even. Yeah. We could really do it.'
   'Yes, boss.'
   'Y'know, I've always wanted to do something big with my life. Something real,' said Azhural. 'I mean, an ostrich here, a giraffe there . . . it's not the sort of thing you get remembered for . . . ' He stared at the purple-grey horizon. 'We could do it, couldn't we?' he said.
   'Sure, boss.'
   'Right over the mountains!'
   'Sure, boss.'
   If you looked really hard, you could just see that the purple-grey was topped with white.
   'They're pretty high mountains,' said Azhural, his voice now edged with doubt.
   'Slope go up, slope go down,' said M'Bu gnomically.
   'That's true,' said Azhural. 'Like, on average, it's flat all the way.'
   He gazed at the mountains again.
   'A thousand elephants,' he muttered. 'D'you know, boy, when they built the Tomb of King Leonid of Ephebe they used a hundred elephants to cart the stone? And two hundred elephants, history tells us, were employed in the building of the palace of the Rhoxie in Klatch city.'
   Thunder rumbled in the distance.
   'A thousand elephants,' Azhural repeated. 'A thousand elephants. I wonder what they want them for?'
 
   The rest of the day passed in a trance for Victor.
   There was more galloping and fighting, and more rearranging of time. Victor still found that hard to understand. Apparently the film could be cut up and then stuck together again later, so that things happened in the right order. And some things didn't have to happen at all. He saw the artist draw one card which said 'In thee Kinges' Palace, One Houre Latre.'
   One hour of Time had been vanished, just like that. Of course, he knew that it hadn't really been surgically removed from his life. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time in books. And on the stage, too. He'd seen a group of strolling players once, and the performance had leapt magically from 'A Battlefield in Tsort' to 'The Ephebian Fortresse, That Nighte' with no more than a brief descent of the sackcloth curtain and a lot of muffled bumping and cursing as the scenery was changed.
   But this was different. Ten minutes after doing a scene, you'd do another scene that was taking place the day before, somewhere else, because Dibbler had rented the tents for both scenes and didn't want to have to pay any more rent than necessary. You just had to try and forget about everything but Now, and that was hard when you were also waiting every moment for that fading sensation . . .
   It didn't come. Just after another half-hearted fight scene Dibbler announced that it was all finished.
   'Aren't we going to do the ending?' said Ginger.
   'You did that this morning,' said Soll.
   'Oh.'
   There was a chattering noise as the demons were let out of their box and sat swinging their little legs on the edge of the lid and passing a tiny cigarette from hand to hand. The extras queued up for their wages. The camel kicked the Vice-President in Charge of Camels. The handlemen wound the great reels of film out of the boxes and went away to whatever arcane cutting and gluing the handlemen got up to in the hours of darkness. Mrs Cosmopilite, Vice-President in Charge of Wardrobe, gathered up the costumes and toddled off, possibly to put them back on the beds.
   A few acres of scrubby backlot stopped being the rolling dunes of the Great Nef and went back to being scrubby backlot again. Victor felt that much the same thing was happening to him.
   In ones and twos, the makers of moving-picture magic departed, laughing and joking and arranging to meet at Borgle's later on.
   Ginger and Victor were left alone in a widening circle of emptiness.
   'I felt like this the first time the circus went away,' said Ginger.
   'Mr Dibbler said we were going to do another one tomorrow,' said Victor. 'I'm sure he just makes them up as he goes along. Still, we got ten dollars each. Minus what we owe Gaspode,' he added conscientiously. He grinned foolishly at her. 'Cheer up,' he said. 'You're doing what you've always wanted to do.'
   'Don't be stupid. I didn't even know about moving pictures a couple of months ago. There weren't any.'
   They strolled aimlessly towards the town.
   'What did you want to be?' he ventured.
   She shrugged. 'I didn't know. I just knew I didn't want to be a milkmaid.'
   There had been milkmaids at home. Victor tried to recollect anything about them. 'It always looked quite an interesting job to me, milkmaiding,' he said vaguely. 'Buttercups, you know. And fresh air.'
   'It's cold and wet and just as you've finished the bloody cow kicks the bucket over. Don't tell me about milking. Or being a shepherdess. Or a goosegirl. I really hated our farm.'
   'Oh.'
   'And they expected me to marry my cousin when I was fifteen.'
   'Is that allowed?'
   'Oh, yes. Everyone marries their cousins where I come from.'
   'Why?' said Victor.
   'I suppose it saves having to worry about what to do on Saturday nights.'
   'Oh.'
   'Didn't you want to be anything?' said Ginger, putting a whole sentence-worth of disdain in a mere three letters.
   'Not really,' said Victor. 'Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it's just another job. I bet even people like Cohen the Barbarian get up in the morning thinking, "Oh, no, not another day of crushing the jewelled thrones of the world beneath my sandalled feet."'
   'Is that what he does?' said Ginger, interested despite herself.
   'According to the stories, yes.'
   'Why?'
   'Search me. It's just a job, I guess.'
   Ginger picked up a handful of sand. There were tiny white shells in it, which stayed behind as it trickled away between her fingers.
   'I remember when the circus came to our village,' she said. 'I was ten. There was this girl with spangled tights. She walked a tightrope. She could even do somersaults on it. Everybody cheered and clapped. They wouldn't let me climb a tree, but they cheered her. That's when I decided.'
   'Ah,' said Victor, trying to keep up with the psychology of this. 'You decided you wanted to be someone?'
   'Don't be silly. That's when I decided I was going to be a lot more than just someone.'
   She threw the shells towards the sunset and laughed. 'I'm going to be the most famous person in the world, everyone will fall in love with me, and I shall live forever.'
   'It's always best to know your own mind,' said Victor diplomatically.
   'You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?' said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. 'It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad ploughmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out.'
   She took a deep breath. 'It's all the people who never get to know what it is they can really be. It's all the wasted chances. Well, Holy Wood is my chance, do you understand? This is my time for getting!'
   Victor nodded. 'Yes,' he said. Magic for ordinary people, Silverfish had called it. A man turned a handle, and your life got changed.
   'And not just for me,' Ginger went on. 'It's a chance for all of us. The people who aren't wizards and kings and heroes. Holy Wood's like a big bubbling stew but this time different ingredients float to the top. Suddenly there's all these new things for people to do. Do you know the theatres don't allow women to act? But Holy Wood does. And in Holy Wood there's jobs for trolls that don't just involve hitting people. And what did the handlemen do before they had handles to turn?'
   She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of Ankh-Morpork's distant glow.
   'Now they're trying to find ways of adding sound to moving pictures,' she said, 'and out there are people who'll turn out to be amazingly good at making, making . . . making soundies. They don't even know it yet but they're out there. I can feel them. They're out there.'
   Her eyes were glowing gold. It might just be the sunset, Victor thought, but . . .
   'Because of Holy Wood, hundreds of people are finding out what it is they really want to be,' said Ginger. 'And thousands and thousands are getting a chance to forget themselves for an hour or so. This whole damn world is being given a shake!'
   'That's it,' said Victor. 'That's what worries me. It's as though we're being slotted in. You think we're using Holy Wood, but Holy Wood is using us. All of us.' 'How? Why?' 'I don't know, but-'
   'Look at wizards,' Ginger went on, vibrating with indignation. 'What good has their magic ever done anyone?'
   'I think it sort of holds the world together-' Victor began.
   'They're pretty good at magic flames and things, but can they make a loaf of bread?' Ginger wasn't in the mood for listening to anyone. 'Not for very long,' said Victor helplessly. 'What does that mean?'
   'Something real like a loaf of bread contains a lot of . . . well . . . I suppose you'd call it energy,' said Victor. 'It takes a massive amount of power to create that amount of energy. You'd have to be a pretty good wizard to make a loaf that'd last in this world for more than a tiny part of a second. But that's not what magic is really about, you see,' he added quickly, 'because this world is-'
   'Who cares?' said Ginger. 'Holy Wood's really doing things for ordinary people. Silver screen magic.' 'What's come over you? Last night-'
   'That was then,' said Ginger impatiently. 'Don't you see? We could be going somewhere. We could be becoming someone. Because of Holy Wood. The world is our-'
   'Lobster,' said Victor.
   She waved a hand irritably. 'Any shellfish you like,' she said. 'I was thinking of oysters, actually.' 'Were you? I was thinking of lobsters.'
 
   'Bursaar!'
   I shouldn't have to run around like this at my age, thought the Bursar, scurrying down the corridor in answer to the Archchancellor's bellow. Why's he so interested in the damn thing, anyway? Wretched pot! 'Coming, Master,' he trilled.
   The Archchancellor's desk was covered with ancient documents.
   When a wizard died, all his papers were stored in one of the outlying reaches of the Library. Shelf after shelf of quietly mouldering documents, the haunt of mysterious beetles and dry rot, stretched away into an unguessable distance. Eyeryone kept telling everyone that there was a wealth of material here for researchers, if only someone could find the time to do it.
   The Bursar was annoyed. He couldn't find the Librarian anywhere. The ape never seemed to be around these days. He'd had to scrabble among the stuff himself.
   'I think this is the last, Archchancellor,' he said, tipping an avalanche of dusty paperwork on to the desk. Ridcully flailed at a cloud of moths.
   'Paper, paper, paper,' he muttered. 'How many damn bits of paper in his stuff, eh?'
   'Er . . . 23,813, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar. 'He kept a record.'
   'Look at this,' said the Archchancellor. ' "Star Enumerator" . . . "Rev Counter for Use in Ecclesiastical Areas" . . . "Swamp Meter" . . . Swamp meter! The man was mad!'
   'He had a very tidy mind,' said the Bursar.
   'Same thing.'
   'Is it, er, really important, Archchancellor?' the Bursar ventured. 'Damn thing shot pellets at me,' said Ridcully.
   'Twice!'
   'I'm sure it wasn't, er, intended-'
   'I want to see how it was made, man! Just think of the sportin' possibilities!'
   The Bursar tried to think of the possibilities.
   'I'm sure Riktor didn't intend to make any kind of offensive device,' he'ventured, hopelessly.
   'Who gives a damn what he intended? Where is the thing now?'
   'I had a couple of servants put sandbags around it.'
   'Good idea. It's-'
   . . . whumm . . . whumm . . .
   It was a muffled sound from the corridor. The two wizards exchanged a meaningful glance .
   . . . whumm . . . whummWHUMM.
   The Bursar held his breath.
   Plib.
   Plib..
   Plib.
   The Archchancellor peered at the hourglass on the mantelpiece. 'It's doin' it every five minutes now,' he said.
   'And it's up to three shots,' said the Bursar. 'I'll have to order some more sandbags.'
   He flicked through a heap of paper. A word caught his eye.
   Reality.
   He glanced at the handwriting that flowed across the page. It had a very small, cramped, deliberate look. Someone had told him that this was because Numbers Riktor had been an anal retentive. The Bursar didn't know what that meant, and hoped never to find out.
   Another word was: Measurement. His gaze drifted upwards, and took in the underlined title: Some Notes on the Objective Measurement of Reality.
   Over the page was a diagram. The Bursar stared at it.
   'Found anything?' said the Archchancellor, without looking up.
   The Bursar shoved the paper up the sleeve of his robe.
   'Nothing important,' he said. Down below, the surf boomed on the beach. ( . . . and below the surface, the lobsters walked backwards along the deep, drowned streets . . . )
   Victor threw another piece of driftwood on to the fire. It burned blue with salt.
   'I don't understand her,' he said. 'Yesterday she was quite normal, today it's all gone to her head.'
   'Bitches!' said Gaspode, sympathetically.
   'Oh, I wouldn't go that far,' said Victor. 'She's just aloof.'
   'Loofs!' said Gaspode.
   'That's what intelligence does for your sex life,' said Don't-call-me-Mr-Thumpy. 'Rabbits never have that sort of trouble. Go, Sow, Thank You Doe.'
   'You could try offering her a moushe,' said the cat. 'Preshent company exchepted, of course,' it added guiltily, trying to avoid Definitely-Not-Squeak's glare.
   'Being intelligent hasn't done my social life any favours, either,' said Mr Thumpy bitterly. 'A week ago, no prob lems. Now suddenly I want to make conversation, and all they do is sit there wrinklin' their noses at you. You feel a right idiot.'
   There was a strangulated quacking.
   'The duck says, have you done anything about the book?' said Gaspode.
   'I had a look at it when we broke for lunch,' said Victor.
   There was another irritable quack.
   'The duck says, yes, but what have you done about it?' said Gaspode.
   'Look, I can't go all the way to Ankh-Morpork just like that,' snapped Victor. 'It takes hours! We film all day as it is!'
   'Ask for a day off,' said Mr Thumpy.
   'No-one asks for a day off in Holy Wood!' said Victor. 'I've been fired once, thank you.'
   'And he took you on again at more money,' said Gaspode. 'Funny, that.' He scratched an ear. 'Tell him your contract says you can have a day off.'
   'I haven't got a contract. You know that. You work, you get paid. It's simple.'
   'Yeah,' said Gaspode. 'Yeah. Yeah? A verbal contract. It's simple. I like it.'
 
   Towards the end of the night Detritus the troll lurked awkwardly in the shadows by the back door of the Blue Lias. Strange passions had wracked his body all day. Every time he'd shut his eyes he kept seeing a figure shaped like a small hillock. He had to face up to it. Detritus was in love.
   Yes, he'd spent many years in Ankh-Morpork hitting people for money. Yes, it had been a friendless, brutalizing life. And a lonely one, too. He'd been resigned to an old-age of bitter bachelorhood and suddenly, now, Holy Wood was handing him a chance he'd never dreamed of.
   He'd been strictly brought up and he could dimly remember the lecture he'd been given by his father when he was a young troll. If you saw a girl you liked, you didn't just rush at her. There were proper ways to go about things.
   He'd gone down to the beach and found a rock. But not any old rock. He'd searched carefully, and found a large sea-smoothed one with veins of pink and white quartz. Girls liked that sort of thing. Now he waited, shyly, for her to finish work.
   He tried to think of what he would say. No-one had ever told him what to say. It wasn't as if he was a smart troll like Rock or Morry, who had a way with words. Basically, he'd never needed much of what you might call a vocabulary. He kicked despondently at the sand. What chance did he have with a smart lady like her?
   There was a thump of heavy feet, and the door opened. The object of desire stepped out into the night and took a deep breath, which had the same effect on Detritus as an ice cube down the neck. He gave his rock a panicky look. It didn't seem anything like big enough now, when you saw the size of her. But maybe it was what you did with it that mattered.
   Well, this was it. They said you never forgot your first time . . .
   He wound up his arm with the rock in it and hit her squarely between the eyes. That's when it all started to go wrong.
   Tradition said that the girl, when she was able to focus again, and if the rock was of an acceptable standard, should immediately be amenable to whatever the troll suggested, i.e., a candle-lit human for two, although of course that sort of thing wasn't done any more now, at least if there was any chance of being caught.
   She shouldn't narrow her eyes and catch him a ding across the ear that made his eyeballs rattle.
   'You stupid troll!' she shouted, as Detritus staggered around in a circle. 'What you do that for? You think I unsophisticated girl just off mountain? Why you not do it right?'
   'But, but,' Detritus began, in terror at her rage, 'I not able to ask father permission to hit you, not know where he living-'
   Ruby drew herself up haughtily.
   'All that old-fashioned stuff very uncultured now,' she sniffed. 'It's not the modern way. I not interested in any troll', she added, 'that not up-to-date. A rock on the head may be quite sentimental,' she went on, the certainty draining out of her voice as she surveyed the sentence ahead of her, 'but diamonds are a girl's best friend.' She hesitated. That didn't sound right, even to her.
   It certainly puzzled Detritus.
   'What? You want I should knock my teeth out?' he said.
   'Well, all right, not diamonds,' Ruby conceded. 'But there proper modern ways now. You got to court a girl.'
   Detritus brightened. 'Ah, but I-' he began.
   'That's court, not caught,' said Ruby wearily. 'You got to, to, to-' She paused.
   She wasn't all that sure what you had to do. But Ruby had spent some weeks in Holy Wood, and if Holy Wood did anything, it changed things; in Holy Wood she'd plugged into a vast cross-species female freemasonry she hadn't suspected existed, and she was learning fast. She'd talked at length to sympathetic human girls. And dwarfs. Even dwarfs had better courtship rituals, for gods' sake. [16] And what humans got up to was amazing.
   Whereas all a female troll had to look forward to was a quick thump on the head and the rest of her life subduing and cooking anything the male dragged back to the cave.
   Well, there were going to be changes. Next time Ruby went home the troll mountains were going to receive their biggest shake-up since the last continental collision. In the meantime, she was going to start with her own life.
   She waved a massive hand in a vague way.
   'You got to, to sing outside a girl's window,' she said, 'and, and you got to give her oograah.'
   'Oograah?'
   'Yeah. Pretty oograah.' [17]
   Detritus scratched his head.
   'Why?' he said.
   Ruby looked panicky for a moment. She also couldn't for the life of her imagine why the handing over of inedible vegetation was so important, but she wasn't about to admit it.
   'Fancy you not knowing that,' she said scathingly.
   The sarcasm was lost on Detritus. Most things were.
   'Right,' he said. 'I not so uncultured as you think,' he added. 'I bang up to date. You wait and see.'
 
   Hammering filled the air. Buildings were spreading backwards from the nameless main street into the dunes. No-one owned any land in Holy Wood; if it was empty, you built on it.
   Dibbler had two offices now. There was one where he shouted at people, and a bigger one just outside it where people shouted at each other. Soll shouted at handlemen. Handlemen shouted at alchemists. Demons wandered over every flat surface and drowned in the coffee cups and shouted at one another. A couple of experimental green parrots shouted at themselves. People wearing odd bits of costume wandered in and just shouted. Silverfish shouted because he couldn't quite work out why he now had a desk in the outer office even though he owned the studio.
   Gaspode sat stolidly by the door to the inner office. In the past five minutes he had attracted one half-hearted kick, a soggy biscuit and a pat on the head. He reckoned he was ahead of the game, dogwise.
   He was trying to listen to all the conversations at once. It was extremely instructive. For one thing, some of the people coming in and shouting were carrying bags of money . . .
   'You what?'
   The shout had come from the inner office. Gaspode cocked the other ear.
   'I, er, want a day off, Mr Dibbler,' said Victor.
   'A day off? You don't want to work?'
   'Just for the day, Mr Dibbler.'
   'But you don't think I'm going to go around paying people to have days off, do you? I'm not trade of money, you know. It's not as if we make a profit, even. Hold a crossbow to my head, why don't you.'
   Gaspode looked at the bags in front of Soll, who was furiously adding up piles of coins. He raised a cynical eyebrow.
   There was a pause. Oh, no, thought Gaspode. The young idiot's forgetting his lines.
   'I don't want paying, Mr Dibbler.'
   Gaspode relaxed.
   'You don't want paying?'
   'No, Mr Dibbler.'
   'But you want a job when you get back, I suppose?' said Dibbler sarcastically.
   Gaspode tensed. Victor had taken a lot of coaching.
   'Well, I hope so, Mr Dibbler. But I was thinking of going to see what Untied Alchemists had to offer.'
   There was a sound exactly like the sound of a chairback striking the wall. Gaspode grinned evilly.
   Another bag of money was dropped in front of Soll.
   'Untied Alchemists!'
   'They really look as if they're making progress with soundies, Mr Dibbler,' said Victor meekly.
   'But they're amateurs! And crooks!'
   Gaspode frowned. He hadn't been able to coach Victor past this stage.
   'Well, that's a relief, Mr Dibbler.'
   'Why's that?'
   'Well, it'd be dreadful if they were crooks and professional.'
   Gaspode nodded. Nice one. Nice one.
   There was the sound of footsteps hurrying around a desk. When Dibbler spoke next, you could have sunk a well in his voice and sold it at ten dollars a barrel.
   'Victor! Vic! Haven't I been like an uncle to you?'
   Well, yes, thought Gaspode. He's like an uncle to most people here. That's because they're his nephews.
   He stopped listening, partly because Victor was going to get his day off and was very likely going to get paid for it as well, but mainly because another dog had been led into the room.
   It was huge and glossy. Its coat shone like honey.
   Gaspode recognized it as pure-bred Ramtop hunting dog. When it sat down beside him, it was as if a beautifully sleek racing yacht had slipped into a berth alongside a coal barge.
   He heard Soll say, 'So that is Uncle's latest idea, is it? What's it called?'
   'Laddie,' said the handler.
   'How much was it?'
   'Sixty dollars.'
   'For a dog? We're in the wrong business.'
   'It can do all kinds of tricks, the breeder said. Bright as a button, he said. Just what Mr Dibbler is looking for.'
   'Well, tie it up there. And if that other mutt starts a fight, kick it out.'
   Gaspode gave Soll a long, thoughtful scrutiny. Then, when the attention was no longer on them, he sidled closer to the newcomer, looked it up and down, and spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth.
   'What you here for?' he said.
   The dog gave him a look of handsome incomprehension.
   'I mean, do you b'long to someone or what?' said Gaspode.
   The dog whined softly.
   Gaspode tried Basic Canine, which is a combination of whines and sniffs.
   'Hallo?' he ventured. 'Anyone in there?'
   The dog's tail thumped uncertainly.
   'The grub here's ruddy awful,' said Gaspode.
   The dog raised its highly-bred muzzle.
   'What dis place?' it said.
   'This is Holy Wood,' said Gaspode conversationally. 'I'm Gaspode. Named after the famous Gaspode, you know. Anythin' you want to know, you just-'
   'All dese two-legs here. Dur . . . What dis place?'
   Gaspode stared.
   At that moment Dibbler's door opened. Victor emerged, coughing, at one end of a cigar.
   'Great, great,' said Dibbler, following him out. 'Knew we could sort it out. Don't waste it, boy, don't waste it. They cost a dollar a box. Oh, I see you brought your little doggie.'
   'Woof,' said Gaspode, irritably.
   The other dog gave a short sharp bark and sat up with obedient alertness radiating from every hair.
   'Ah,' said Dibbler, 'and I see we've got our wonder dog.'
   Gaspode's apology for a tail twitched once or twice.
   Then the truth dawned.
   He glared at the larger dog, opened his mouth to speak, caught himself just in time, and managed to turn it into a 'Bark?'
   'I got the idea the other night, when I saw your dog,' said Dibbler. 'I thought, people like animals. Me, I like dogs. Good image, the dog. Saving lives, Man's best friend, that kind of stuff.'
   Victor looked at Gaspode's furious expression.
   'Gaspode's quite bright,' he said.
   'Oh, I expect you think he is,' said Dibbler. 'But you've just got to look at the two of them. On the one hand there's this bright, alert, handsome animal, and on the other there's this dust ball with a hangover. I mean, no contest, am I right?'
   The wonder dog gave a brisk yap.
   'What dis place? Good boy Laddie!'
   Gaspode rolled his eyes.
   'See what I mean?' said Dibbler. 'Give him the right name, a bit, a training, and a star is born.' He slapped Victor on the back again. 'Nice to see you, nice to see you, drop in again any time, only not too frequently, let's have lunch sometime, now get out, Soll!'
   'Coming, Uncle.'
   Victor was suddenly alone, apart from the dogs and the room full of people. He took the cigar out of his mouth, spat on the glowing end, and carefully hid it behind a potted plant.
   'A star is whelped,' said a small, withering voice from below.
   'What he say? Where dis place?'
   'Don't look at me,' said Victor. 'Nothing to do with me.'
   'Will you just look at it? I mean, are we talking Thicko City here or what?' sneered Gaspode.
   'Good boy Laddie!'
   'Come on,' said Victor. 'I'm supposed to be on set in five minutes.'
   Gaspode trailed after him, muttering under his horrible breath. Victor caught the occasional 'old rug' and 'Man's best friend' and 'bloody wonder bloody dog'. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer.
   'You're just jealous,' he said.
   'What, of an overgrown puppy with a single-figure IQ?' sneered Gaspode.
   'And a glossy coat, cold nose and probably a pedigree as long as your ar as my arm,' said Victor.
   'Pedigree? Pedigree? What's a pedigree? It's just breedin'. I had a father too, you know. And two grandads. And four great grandads. And many of 'em were the same dog, even. So don't you tell me from no pedigree,' said Gaspode.
   He paused to cock a leg against one of the supports of the new 'Home of Century of the Fruitbat Moving Pictures' sign.
   That was something else that had puzzled Thomas Silverfish. He'd come in this morning, and the handpainted sign saying 'Interesting and Instructive Films' had gone and had been replaced by this huge billboard. He was sitting back in the office with his head in his hands, trying to convince himself that it had been his idea.
   'I'm the one Holy Wood called,' Gaspode muttered, in a self-pitying voice. 'I came all the way here, and then they chose that great hairy thing. Probably it'll work for a plate of meat a day, too.'
   'Well, look, maybe you weren't called to Holy Wood to be a wonder dog,' said Victor. 'Maybe it's got something else in mind for you.'
   This is ridiculous, he thought. Why are we talking about it like this? A place hasn't got a mind. It can't call people to it . . . well, unless you count things like homesickness. But you can't be homesick for a place you've never been to before, it stands to reason. The last time people were here must have been thousands of years ago.
   Gaspode sniffed at a wall.
   'Did you tell Dibbler everything I told you?' he said.
   'Yes. He was very upset when I mentioned about going to Untied Alchemists.'
   Gaspode sniggered.
   'An' you told him what I said about a verbal contract not being worth the paper it's printed on?'
   'Yes. He said he didn't understand what I meant. But he gave me a cigar. And he said he'd pay for me and Ginger to go to AnkhMorpork soon. He said he's got a really big picture planned.'
   'What is it?' said Gaspode suspiciously.
   'He didn't say.'
   'Listen, lad,' said Gaspode, 'Dibbler's making a fortune. I counted it. There were five thousand, two hundred and seventy-three dollars and fifty-two pence on Son's desk. And you earned it. Well, you and Ginger did.'
   'Gosh!'
   'Now, there's some new words I want you to learn,' said Gaspode. 'Think you can?'
   'I hope so.'
   ' "Per-cent-age of the gross" ', said Gaspode. 'There. Think you can remember it?'
   ' "Per-cent-age of the gross",' said Victor.
   'Good lad.'
   'What does it mean?'
   'Don't you worry about that,' said Gaspode. 'You just have to say it's what you want, OK. When the time's right.'
   'When will the time be right, then?' said Victor.
   Gaspode grinned nastily. 'Oh, I reckon when Dibbler's just got a mouthful of food'd be favourite.'
 
   Holy Wood Hill bustled like an ant heap. On the seaward side Fir Wood Studios were making The Third Gnome. Microlithic Pictures, which was run almost entirely by the dwarfs, was hard at work on Golde Diggers of 1457, which was going to be followed by The Golde Rushe. Floating Bladder Pictures was hard at work with Turkey Legs. And Borgle's was packed out.
   'I don't know what it's called, but we're doing one about going to see a wizard. Something about following a yellow sick toad,' a man in one half of a lion suit explained to a companion in the queue.
   'No wizards in Holy Wood, I thought.'
   'Oh, this one's all right. He's not very good at the wizarding.'
   'So what's new?'
   Sound! That was the problem. Alchemists toiled in sheds all over Holy Wood, screaming at parrots, pleading with mynah birds, constructing intricate bottles to trap sound and bounce it around harmlessly until it was time for it to be let out. To the sporadic boom of octo-cellulose exploding was added the occasional sob of exhaustion or scream of agony as an enraged parrot mistook a careless thumb for a nut.
   The parrots weren't the success they'd hoped for. It was true that they could remember what they heard and repeat it after a fashion, but there was no way to turn them off and they were in the habit of ad-libbing other sounds they'd heard or, Dibbler suspected, had been taught by mischievous handlemen. Thus, brief snatches of romantic dialogue would be punctuated with cries of 'Waaaarrrk! Showusyerknickers!' and Dibbler said he had no intention of making that kind of picture, at least at the moment.
   Sound! Whoever got sound first would rule Holy Wood, they said. People were flocking to the clicks now, but people were fickle. Colour was different. Colour was just a matter of breeding demons who could paint fast enough. It was sound that meant something new.
   In the meantime, there were stop-gap measures. The dwarfs' studio had shunned the general practice of putting the dialogue on cards between scenes and had invented sub-titles, which worked fine provided the performers remembered not to step too far forward and knock over the letters.
   But if sound was missing, then the screen had to be filled from side to side with a feast for the eyes. The sound of hammering was always Holy Wood's background noise, but it redoubled now . . .
   The cities of the world were being built in Holy Wood.
   Untied Alchemists started it, with a one-tenth-size wood and canvas replica of the Great Pyramid of Tsort. Soon the backlots sprouted whole streets in Ankh-Morpork, palaces from Pseudopolis, castles from the Hublands. In some cases, the streets were painted on the back of the palaces, so that princes and peasants were separated by one thickness of painted sacking.
   Victor spent the rest of the morning working on a one-reeler. Ginger hardly said a word to him, even after the obligatory kiss when he rescued her from whatever it was Morry was supposed to be today. Whatever magic Holy Wood worked on them it wasn't doing it today. He was glad to get away.
   Afterwards he wandered across the backlot to watch them putting Laddie the Wonder Dog through his paces.
   There was no doubt, as the graceful shape streaked like an arrow over obstacles and grabbed a trainer by a well-padded arm, that here was a dog almost designed by Nature for moving pictures. He even barked photogenically.
   'An' do you know what he's sayin'?' said a disgruntled voice beside Victor. It was Gaspode, a picture of bowlegged misery.
   'No. What?' said Victor.
   "'Me Laddie. Me good boy. Good boy Laddie,"' said Gaspode. 'Makes you want to throw up, doesn't it?'
   'Yes, but could you leap a six-foot hurdle?' said Victor.
   'That's intelligent, is it?' said Gaspode. 'I always walk around - what's that they're doing now?'
   'Giving him his lunch, I think.'
   'They call that lunch, do they?'
   Victor watched Gaspode stroll over and peer into the dog's bowl. Laddie gave him a sideways look. Gaspode barked quietly. Laddie whined. Gaspode barked again.
   There was a lengthy exchange of yaps.
   Then Gaspode strolled back, and sat down beside Victor.
   'Watch this,' he said.
   Laddie took the food bowl in his mouth, and turned it upside down.
   'Disgustin' stuff,' said Gaspode. 'All tubes and innards. I wouldn't give it to a dog, and I am one.'
   'You made him tip out his own dinner?' said Victor, horrified.
   'Very obedient lad, I thought,' said Gaspode smugly.
   'What a nasty thing to do!'
   'Oh, no. I give 'im some advice, too.'
   Laddie barked peremptorily at the people clustering around him. Victor heard them muttering.
   'Dog don't eat his dinner,' came Detritus' voice, 'dog go hungry.'
   'Don't be daft. Mr Dibbler says he's worth more than we are!'
   'Perhaps it's not what he's used to. I mean, a posh dog like him an' all. It's a bit yukky, isn't it?'
   'It dog food! That what dogs are supposed to eat!'
   'Yeah, but is it wonder dog food? What're wonder dogs fed on?'
   'Mr Dibbler'll feed you to him if there's any trouble.'
   'All right, all right. Detritus, go around to Borgle's. See what he's got. Not the stuff he gives to the usual customers, mind.'
   'That IS the stuff he give to usual customers.'
   'That's what I mean.'
   Five minutes later Detritus trailed back carrying about nine pounds of raw steak. It was dumped in the dog bowl. The trainers looked at Laddie.
   Laddie cocked an eye towards Gaspode, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
   The big dog put one foot on one end of the steak, took the other end in his mouth, and tore off a lump. Then he padded over the compound and dropped it respectfully in front of Gaspode, who gave it a long, calculating stare.
   'Well, I dunno,' he said at last. 'Does that look like ten per cent to you, Victor?'
   'You negotiated his dinner?'
   Gaspode's voice was muffled by meat. 'I reckon ten per cent is ver' fair. Very fair, in the circumstances.'
   'You know, you really are a son of a bitch,' said Victor.
   'Proud of it,' said Gaspode, indistinctly. He bolted the last of the steak. 'What shall we do now?'
   'I'm supposed to get an early night. We're starting for Ankh very early tomorrow,' said Victor doubtfully.
   'Still not made any progress with the book?'
   'No.'
   'Let me have a look, then.'
   'Can you read?'
   'Dunno. Never tried.'
   Victor looked around them. No-one was paying him any attention. They never did. Once the handles stopped turning, no-one bothered about performers; it was like being temporarily invisible.
   He sat down on a pile of lumber, opened the book randomly at an early page, and held it out in front of Gaspode's critical stare.
   Eventually the dog said, 'It's got all marks on it.'
   Victor sighed. 'That's writing,' he said.
   Gaspode squinted. 'What, all them little pictures?'
   'Early writing was like that. People drew little pictures to represent ideas.'
   'So . . . if there's a lot of one picture, it means it's an important idea?'
   'What? Well, yes. I suppose so.'
   'Like the dead man.'
   Victor was lost.
   'The dead man on the beach?'
   'No. The dead man on the pages. See? Everywhere, there's the dead man.'
   Victor gave him an odd look, and then turned the book around and peered at it.
   'Where? I don't see any dead men.'
   Gaspode snorted.
   'Look, all over the page,' he said. 'He looks just like those tombs you get in old temples and stuff. You know? Where they do this statchoo of the stiff lyin' on top of the tomb, with his arms crossed an' holdin' his sword. Dead noble.'
   'Good grief! You're right! It does look sort of . . . dead . . . '
   'Prob'ly all the writing's goin' on about what a great guy he was when he was alive,' said Gaspode knowledgeably. 'You know, "Slayer of thousands" stuff. Prob'ly he left a lot of money for priests to say prayers and light candles and sacrifice goats and stuff. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. You know, you'd get dese guys whorin' and drinkin' and carryin' on regardless their whole life, and then when the old Grim Reaper starts sharpenin' his scythe they suddenly becomes all pious and pays a lot of priests to give their soul a quick wash-and-brush-up and gen'rally keep on tellin' the gods what a decent chap they was.'
   'Gaspode?' said Victor levelly.
   'What?'
   'You were a performing dog. How come you know all this stuff?'
   'I ain't just a pretty face.'
   'You aren't even a pretty face, Gaspode.'
   The little dog shrugged. 'I've always had eyes and ears,' he said. 'You'd be amazed, the stuff you see and hear when you're a dog. I dint know what any of it meant at the time, of course. Now I do.'
   Victor stared at the pages again. There certainly was a figure which, if you half-closed your eyes, looked very much like a statue of a knight with his hands resting on his sword.
   'It might not mean a man,' he said. 'Pictographic writing doesn't work like that. It's all down to context, you see.' He racked his brains to think of some of the books he'd seen. 'For example, in the Agatean language the signs for "woman" and "slave" written down together actually mean "wife".'
   He looked closely at the page. The dead man or the sleeping man, or the standing man resting his hands on his sword, the figure was so stylized it was hard to be sure seemed to appear beside another common picture. He ran his finger along the line of pictograms.
   'See,' he said, 'it could be the man figure is only part of a word. See? It's always to the right of this other picture, which looks a bit like a bit like a doorway, or something. So it might really mean-'he hesitated.' "Doorway/man",' he hazarded.
   He turned the book slightly.
   'Could be some old king,' said Gaspode. 'Could mean something like The Man with the Sword is Imprisoned, or something. Or maybe it means Watch Out, There's a Man with a Sword behind the Door. Could mean anything, really.'
   Victor squinted at the book again. 'It's funny,' he said. 'It doesn't look dead. Just . . . not alive. Waiting to be alive? A waiting man with a sword?'
   Victor peered at the little man-figure. It had hardly any features, but still managed to look vaguely familiar.
   'You know,' he said, 'it looks just like my Uncle Osric . . .'
 

Clickaclickaclicka. Click.
   The film spun to a standstill. There was a thunder of applause, a stamping of feet and a barrage of empty banged grain bags.
   In the very front row of the Odium the Librarian stared up at the now-empty screen. It was the fourth time that afternoon he'd watched Shadow of the Dessert, because there's something about a 300lb orangutan that doesn't encourage people to order it out of the pit between houses. A drift of peanut shells and screwed up paper bags lay around his feet.
   The Librarian loved the clicks. They spoke to something in his soul. He'd even started writing a story which he thought would make a very good moving picture. [18] Everyone he showed it to said it was jolly good, often even before they'd read it.
   But something about this click was worrying him. He'd sat through it four times, and he was still worried.
   He eased himself out of the three seats he was occupying and knuckled his way up the aisle and into the little room where Bezam was rewinding the film.
   Bezam looked up as the door opened.
   'Get out-' he began, and then grinned desperately and said, 'Hallo, sir. Pretty good click, eh? We'll be showing it again any minute now and what the hell are you doing? You can't do that!'
   The Librarian ripped the huge roll of film off the projector and pulled it through his leathery fingers, holding it up to the light. Bezam tried to snatch it back and got a palm in his chest that sat him firmly on the floor, where great coils of film piled up on top of him.
   He watched in horror as the great ape grunted, grasped a piece of the film in both hands and, with two bites, edited it. Then the Librarian picked him up, dusted him off, patted him on the head, thrust the great pile of unwound click into his helpless arms, and ambled swiftly out of the room with a few frames of film dangling from one paw.
   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 subject 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.
   'And the People said to one another, Funny, he lookes just like my Uncle Osbert . . . '
   The Librarian turned the page.
   ' . . . But there were among them, humans and animals alike, those touched by the magic of Holy Wood. It goeth through the generations like an ancient curse, until the priests cease in their Remembrance and the Golden Man sleepeth. Then let the world Beware . . . '
   The Librarian let the book snap shut.
   It wasn't an uncommon legend. -He'd read it before at least, had read most of it in books considerably less dangerous than this. You came across variants in all the cities of the Sto Plain. There had been a city once, in the mists of pre-history bigger than Ankh-Morpork, if that were possible. And the inhabitants had done something, some sort of unspeakable crime not just against Mankind or the gods but against the very nature of the universe itself, which had been so dreadful that it had sunk beneath the sea one stormy night. Only a few people had survived to carry to the barbarian peoples in the less-advanced parts of the Disc all the arts and crafts of civilization, such as usury and macrame.
   No-one had ever really taken it seriously. It was just one of those usual 'If you don't stop it you'll go blind' myths that civilizations tended to hand on to their descendants.
   After all, Ankh-Morpork itself was generally considered as wicked a city as you could hope to find in a year of shore leaves, and seemed to have avoided any kind of supernatural vengeance, although it was always possible that it had taken place and no-one had noticed.
   Legend had always put the nameless city far away and long ago.
   No-one knew where it was, or even if it had existed.
   The Librarian glanced at the symbols again.
   They were very familiar. They were on the old ruins all over Holy Wood.
 
   Azhural stood on a low hill, watching the sea of elephants move below him. Here and there a supply wagon bobbed between the dusty grey bodies like a rudderless boat. A mile of veldt was being churned into a soggy mud wallow, bare of grass although, by the smell of it, it'd be the greenest patch on the Disc after the rains came.
   He dabbed at his eyes with a corner of his robe.
   Three hundred and sixty-three! Who'd have thought it?
   The air was solid with the piqued trumpeting of three hundred and sixty-three elephants. And with the hunting and trapping parties already going on ahead, there should be plenty more. According to M'Bu, anyway. And he wasn't going to argue.
   Funny, that. For years he'd thought of M'Bu as a sort of mobile smile. A handy lad with a brush and shovel, but not what you might call a major achiever.
   And then suddenly someone somewhere wanted a thousand elephants, and the lad had raised his head and a gleam had come into his eye and you could see that under that grin was a skilled kilopachydermatolist ready to answer the call. Funny. You could know someone for their whole life and not realize that the gods had put them in this world to move a thousand elephants around the place.
   Azhural had no sons. He'd already made up his mind to leave everything to his assistant. Everything he had at this
   point amounted to three hundred and sixty-three elephants and, ahaha, a mammoth overdraft, but it was the thought that counted.
   M'Bu trotted up the path towards him, his clipboard held firmly under one arm.
   'Everything ready, boss,' he said. 'You just got to say the word.'
   Azhural drew himself up. He looked around at the heaving plain, the distant baobab trees, the purple mountains. Oh, yes. The mountains. He'd had misgivings about the mountains. He'd mentioned them to M'Bu, who said, 'We'll cross them bridges when we get to 'em, boss,' and when Azhural had pointed out that there weren't any bridges, had looked him squarely in the eye and said firmly, 'First we build them bridge, then we cross 'em.'
   Far beyond the mountains was the Circle Sea and Ankh-Morpork and this Holy Wood place. Far-away places with strange sounding names.
   A wind blew across the veldt, carrying faint whispers, even here.
   Azhural raised his staff.
   'It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,' he said. 'We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing . . . we're wearing . . . sort of things, like glass, only dark . . . dark glass things on our eyes . . . ' His voice trailed off. His brow furrowed, as if he'd just been listening to his own voice and hadn't understood it. '
   The air seemed to glitter.
   He saw M'Bu staring at him.
   He shrugged. 'Let's go,' he said.
   M'Bu cupped his hands. He'd spent all night working out the order of the march.
   'Blue Section bilong Uncle N'gru - forward!' he shouted. 'Yellow Section bilong Aunti Googool - forward! Green Section bilong Second-cousin! Kck! forward . . . '
   An hour later the veldt in front of the low hill was deserted except for a billion flies and one dung beetle who couldn't believe his luck.
   Something went 'plop' on the red dust, throwing up a little crater.
   And again, and again.
   Lightning split the trunk of a nearby baobab.
   The rains began.
 
   Victor's back was beginning to ache. Carrying young women to safety looked a good idea on paper, but had major drawbacks after the first hundred yards.
   'Have you any idea where she lives?' he said. 'And is it somewhere close?'
   'No idea,' said Gaspode.
   'She once said something about it being over a clothes shop,' said Victor.
   'That'll be in the alley alongside Borgle's then,' said Gaspode.
   Gaspode and Laddie led the way through the alleys and up a rickety outside staircase. Maybe they smelled out Ginger's room. Victor wasn't going to argue with mysterious animal senses.
   Victor went up the back stairs as quietly as possible. He was dimly aware that where people stayed was often infested by the Common or Greatly Suspicious Landlady, and he felt that he had enough problems as it was.
   He used Ginger's feet to push open the door.
   It was a small room, low-ceilinged and furnished with the sad, washed-out furniture found in rented rooms across the multiverse. At least, that's how it had started out.
   What it was furnished with now was Ginger.
   She had saved every poster. Even those from early clicks, when she was just in very small print as A Girl. They were thumb-tacked to the walls. Ginger's face and his own stared at him from every angle.
   There was a large mirror at one end of the poky room, and a couple of half-burned candles in front of him.
   Victor deposited the girl carefully on the narrow bed and then stared around him, very carefully. His sixth, seventh and eighth senses were screaming at him. He was in a place of magic.
   'It's like a sort of temple,' he said. 'A temple to . . . herself.'
   'It gives me the willies,' said Gaspode.
   Victor stared. Maybe he'd always successfully avoided being awarded the pointy hat and big staff, but he had acquired wizard instincts. He had a sudden vision of a city under the sea, with octopuses curling stealthily through the drowned doorways and lobsters watching the streets.
   'Fate don't like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everyone knows that.'
   I'm going to be the most famous person in the whole world, thought Victor. That's what she sail. He shook his head.
   'No,' he said aloud. 'She just likes posters. It's just ordinary vanity.'
   It didn't sound believable, even to him. The room fairly hummed with . . .
   . . . what? He hadn't felt anything like it before. Power of some sort, certainly. Something that was brushing tantalizingly against his senses. Not exactly magic. At least, not the kind he was used to. But something that seemed similar while not being the same, like sugar compared with salt; the same shape and the same colour, but . . .
   Ambition wasn't magical. Powerful, yes, but not magical . . . surely?
   Magic wasn't difficult. That was the big secret that the whole baroque edifice of wizardry had been set up to conceal. Anyone with a bit of intelligence and enough perseverance could do magic, which was why the wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointyhat business.
   The trick was to do magic and get away with it.
   Because it was as if the human race was a field of corn and magic helped the users grow just that bit taller, so that they stood out. That attracted the attention of the gods and Victor hesitated other Things. outside this world.
   People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end.
   All over the entire room, sometimes.
   He pictured Ginger, back on the beach. I want to be the most famous person in the whole world. Perhaps that was something new, come to think of it. Not ambition for gold, or power, or land or all the things that were familiar parts of the human world. Just ambition to be yourself, as big as possible. Not ambition for, but to be.
   He shook his head. He was just in some room in some cheap building in some town that was about as real as, as, as, well, as the thickness of a click. It wasn't the place to have thoughts like this.
   The important thing was to remember that Holy Wood wasn't a real place at all.
   He stared at the posters again. You just get one chance, she said. You live for maybe seventy years, and if you're lucky you get one chance. Think of all the natural skiers who are born in deserts. Think of all the genius blacksmiths who were born hundreds of years before anyone invented the horse. All the skills that are never used. All the wasted chances.
   How lucky for me, he thought gloomily, that I happen to be alive at this time.
   Ginger turned over in her sleep. At least her breathing was more regular now.
   'Come on,' said Gaspode. 'It's not right, you being alone in a lady's boodwah.'
   'I'm not alone,' Victor said. 'She's with me.'
   'That's the point,' said Gaspode.
   'Woof,' Laddie added, loyally.
   'You know,' said Victor, following the dogs down the stairs, 'I'm beginning to feel there's something wrong here. There's something going on and I don't know what it is. Why was she trying to get into the hill?'
   'Prob'ly in league with dread Powers,' said Gaspode.
   'The city and the hill and the old book and everything,' said Victor, ignoring this. 'It all makes sense if only I knew what was connecting it.'
   He stepped out into the early evening, into the lights and noise of Holy Wood.
   'Tomorrow we'll go up there in the daylight and sort this out once and for all,' he said.
   'No, we won't,' said Gaspode. 'The reason being, tomorrow we're goin' to Ankh-Morpork, remember?'
   'We?' said Victor. 'Ginger and I are going. I didn't know about you.'
   'Laddie goin', too,' said Gaspode. 'I-'
   'Good boy Laddie!'
   'Yeah, yeah. I heard the trainers say. So I've got to go with him to see he don't get into any trouble, style of fing.'
   Victor yawned. 'Well, I'm going to go to bed. We'll probably have to start early.'
   Gaspode looked innocently up and down the alley. Somewhere a door opened and there was the sound of drunken laughter.
   'I fought I might have a bit of a stroll before turnin' in,' he said. 'Show Laddie-'
   'Laddie good boy!'
   '-the sights and that.'
   Victor looked doubtful.
   'Don't keep him out too late,' he said. 'People will worry.9
   'Yeah, right,' said Gaspode. 'G'night.'
   He sat and watched Victor wander off.
   'Huh,' he said, under his dreadful breath. 'Catch anyone worryin' about me.' He glared up at Laddie, who sprang to obedient attention.
   'Right, young fells-me-pup,' he said. ' 'S time you got educated. Lesson One, Glomming Free Drinks in Bars. It's lucky for you', he added, 'that you met me.'
 
   Two canine shapes staggered uncertainly up the midnight street.
   'We're poor li'l lambs', Gaspode howled, 'wot have loorst our way . . . ' 'Woof! Woof! Woof!'
   'We're li'l loorst sheeps wot have wot have . . . ' Gaspode sagged down, and scratched an ear, or at least where he vaguely thought an ear might be. His leg waved uncertainly in the air. Laddie gave him a sympathetic look.
   It had been an amazingly successful evening. Gaspode had always got his free drinks by simply sitting and staring intently at people until they got uncomfortable and poured him some beer in a saucer in the hope that he would drink it and go away. It was slow and tedious, but as a technique it had served him well. Whereas Laddie . . .
   Laddie did tricks. Laddie could drink out of bottles. Laddie could bark the number of fingers people held up; so could Gaspode, of course, but it had never occurred to him that such an activity could be rewarded.
   Laddie could home in on young women who were being taken out for the evening by a hopeful swain and lay his head on their lap and give them such a soulful look that the swain would buy him a saucer of beer and a bag of goldfish-shaped biscuits just in order to impress the prospective loved-one. Gaspode had never been able to do that, because he was too short for laps and, anyway, got nothing but disgusted screams if he tried it.
   He'd sat under the table in perplexed disapproval to begin with, and then in alcoholic perplexed disapproval, because Laddie was generosity itself when it came to sharing saucers of beer.
   Now, after they'd both been thrown out, Gaspode decided it was time for a lecture in true dogness.
   'You don't want to go himblong. Umlong. Humbling yourself to 'umans,' he said. 'It's letting everyone down. We'll never frow off the shackles of dependency on mankind if dogs like you go aroun' bein' glad to see people the whole time. I was person'ly disgusted when you did that Lyin'-on-your-back-and-playin'-dead routine, let me tell you.'
   'Woof.'
   'You're just a running dog of the human imperialists,' said Gaspode severely.
   Laddie put his paws over his nose.
   Gaspode tried to stand up, tripped over his legs, and sat down heavily. After a while a couple of huge tears coursed down his fur.
   'Concourse,' he said, 'I never had a chance, you know.' He managed to get back on all four feet. 'I mean, look at the start I had in life. Frone inna river inna sack. An actual sack, Dear little puppy dog opens his eyes, look out in wonder at the world, style offing, he's in this sack.' The tears dripped off his nose. 'For two weeks I thought the brick was my mother.'
   'Woof,' said Laddie, with uncomprehending sympathy.
   'Just my luck they threw me in the Ankh,' Gaspode went on. 'Any other river, I'd have drowned and gone to doggy heaven. I heard where this big black ghostly dog comes up to you when you die an' says, your time has gome. Cone. Come.'
   Gaspode stared at nothing much. 'Can't sink in the Ankh, though,' he said thoughtfully. 'Ver' tough river, the Ankh.'
   'Woof.'
   'It shouldn't happen to a dog,' said Gaspode. 'Metaphorically.'
   'Woof.'
   Gaspode peered blearily at Laddie's bright, alert and irrevocably stupid face.
   'You don't understand a bloody word I've been saying, do you?' he muttered.
   'Woof.' said Laddie, begging.
   'Lucky bugger,' sighed Gaspode.
   There was a commotion at the other end of the alley. He heard a voice say, 'There he is! Here, Laddie! Here, boy!' The words dripped relief.
   'It's the Man,' growled Gaspode. 'You don't have to go.)
   'Good boy Laddie! Laddie good boy!' barked Laddie, trotting forward obediently, if a little unsteadily.
   'We've been looking for you everywhere!' muttered one of the trainers, raising a stick.
   'Don't hit it!' said the other trainer. 'You'll ruin everything.' He peered into the alley, and met Gaspode's stare coming the other way.
   'That's the fleabag that's been hanging around,' he said. 'It gives me the creeps.'
   'Heave something at it,' suggested the other man.
   The trainer reached down and picked up a stone. When he stood up again the alley was empty. Drunk or sober, Gaspode had perfect reflexes in certain circumstances.
   'See?' the trainer said, glaring at the shadows. 'It's like it's some kind of mind reader.'
   'It's just a mutt,' said his companion. 'Don't worry about it. Come on, get the leash on this one and let's get him back before Mr Dibbler finds out.'
   Laddie followed them obediently back to Century of the Fruitbat, and allowed himself to be chained up to his kennel. Possibly he didn't like the idea, but it was hard to be sure in the network of duties, obligations and vague emotional shadows that made up what, for want of a better word, had to be called his mind.
   He pulled experimentally on the chain once or twice, and then lay down, awaiting developments.
   After a while a small hoarse voice on the other side of the fence said, 'I could send you a bone with a file in it, only you'd eat it.'
   Laddie perked up.
   'Good boy Laddie! Good boy Gaspode!'
   'Ssh! Ssh! At least they ort to let you speak to a lawyer,' said Gaspode. 'Chaining someone up's against human rights.'
   'Woof.'
   'Anyway, I paid 'em back. I followed the 'orrible one back to his house an' piddled all down his front door.'
   'Woof.'
   Gaspode sighed, and waddled away. Sometimes, in his heart of hearts, he wondered whether it wouldn't after all be nice to belong to someone. Not just be owned by them or chained up by them, but actually belong, so that you were glad to see them and carried their slippers in your mouth and pined away when they died, etc.
   Laddie actually liked that kind of stuff, if you could call it 'liked'; it was more like something built into his bones. Gaspode wondered darkly if this was true dogness, and growled deep in his throat. It wasn't, if he had anything to do with it. Because true dogness wasn't about slippers and walkies and pining for people, Gaspode was sure. Dogness was about being tough and independent and mean.
   Yeah.
   Gaspode had heard that all canines could interbreed, even back to the original wolves, so that must mean that, deep down inside, every dog was a wolf. You could make a dog out of a wolf, but you couldn't take the wolf out of a dog. When the hardpad was acting up and the fleas were feisty and acting full of plumptiousness, it was a comforting thought.
   Gaspode wondered how you went about mating with a wolf, and what happened to you when you stopped.
   Well, that didn't matter. What mattered was that true dogs didn't go around going mad with pleasure just because a human said something to them.
   Yeah.
   He growled at a pile of trash and dared it to disagree.
   Part of the pile moved, and a feline face with a defunct fish in its mouth peered out at him. He was just about to bark half-heartedly at it, for tradition's sake, when it spat the fish out and spoke to him.
   'Hallo, Gathpode.'
   Gaspode relaxed. 'Oh. Hallo, cat. No offence meant. Didn't know it was you.'
   'I hateth fisth,' said the cat, 'but at leasth they don't talk back.'
   Another part of the trash moved and Squeak the mouse emerged.
   'What're you two doin' down here?' said Gaspode. 'I thought you said it was safer on the hill.'
   'Not any more,' said the cat. 'It'sh getting too shpooky.'
   Gaspode frowned. 'You're a cat,' he said disapprovingly. 'You ort to be right alongside the idea of spooky.'
   'Yeah, but that doesh'nt exhtend to having golden sparks crackling off your fur and the ground shaking the whole time. And weird voices that you think must be happening in your own head,' said cat. 'It's becoming eldritch up there.'
   'So we all came down,' said Squeak. 'Mr Thumpy and the duck are hiding out in the dunes-'
   Another cat dropped off the fence beside them. It was large and ginger and not blessed with Holy Wood intelligence. It stared at the sight of a mouse looking relaxed in the presence of a cat.
   Squeak nudged cat on the paw. 'Get rid of it,' he said.
   Cat glared at the newcomer. 'Sod off,' he said. 'Go on, beat it. Gods; thish ish so humiliating.'
   'Not just for you,' said Gaspode, as the new cat trotted away shaking its head. 'If some of the dogs in this town see me chatting to a cat, my street cred is going to go way down.'
   'We were reckoning', said the cat, with the occasional nervous glance towards Squeak, 'that maybe we ought to give in and see if, see if, see if-'
   'He's trying to say there might be a place for us in moving pictures,' said Squeak. 'What do you think?'
   'As a double act?' said Gaspode. They nodded.
   'Not a chance,' he said. 'Who's going to pay good money to see cats and mice chasing one another? They're only interested even in dogs if they jus' pander to humans the whole time, so they certainly ain't going to watch a cat chase a mouse. Take it from me. I know about movin' pictures.'
   'Then it's about time your humans got it sorted out so we can go home,' snapped the mouse. 'The boy isn't doing anything.'
   'He's useless,' said the mouse.
   'He's in love,' said Gaspode. 'It's very tricky.'
   'Yeah, I know how it ish,' said the cat sympathetically. 'People throwing old boots and things at you.'
   'Old boots?' said the mouse.
   'That'sh what's always happened to me when I've been in love,' said cat wistfully.
   'It's different for humans,' said Gaspode uncertainly. 'You don't get so many boots and buckets of water thrown at you. It's more, er, flowers and arguing and stuff.'
   The animals looked glumly at one another.
   'I've watched 'em,' said Squeak. 'She thinks he's a idiot.'
   'That's all part of it,' added Gaspode. 'They call it romance.'
   Cat shrugged. 'Give me a boot every time. You know where you stand, with a boot.'
 

The glittering spirit of Holy Wood streamed out into the world, no longer a trickle but a flood. It bubbled in the veins of people, even of animals. When the handlemen turned their handles, it was there. When the carpenters hammered their nails, they hammered for Holy Wood. Holy Wood was in Borgle's stew, in the sand, in the air. It was growing.
   And it was going to flower . . .
   Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, or C.M.O.T. as he liked to be called, sat up in bed and stared at the darkness.
   In his head a city was on fire.
   He fumbled hurriedly beside his bed for the matches, managed to light the candle, and eventually located a pen.
   There was no paper. He specifically told everyone there ought to be some paper by his bed, in case he woke up with an idea. That's when you got the best ideas, when you were asleep.
   At least there was a pen and ink . . .
   Images sleeted past his eyes. Catch them now, or let them go forever . . .
   He snatched up the pen and started to scribble on the bedsheets.
   A Man and A Woman Aflame With Passione in A Citie Riven by Sivil War!
   The pen scritched and spluttered its way across the coarse linen.
   Yes! Yes! This was it!
   He'd show 'em, with their silly plaster pyramids and penny-and-dime palaces. This was the one they'd have to look up to! When the history of Holy Wood was written this was the one they'd point to and say: That was the Moving Picture to End all Moving Pictures!
   Trolls! Battles! Romance! People with thin moustaches! Soldiers of fortune! And one woman's fight to keep the Dibbler hesitated something-or-other she loves, we'll think about this later, in a world gone mad!
   The pen jerked and tore and raced onwards.
   Brother against brother! Women in crinoline dresses slapping people's faces! A mighty dynasty brought low!
   A great city aflame! Not with passione, he made a note in the margin, but with flame.
   Possibly even
   He bit his lip.
   Yeah. He'd been waiting for this! Yeah!A thousand elephants!
   (Later Soll Dibbler said, 'Look, Uncle, the Ankh-Morpork civil war great idea. No problem with that. Famous historical occurrence, no problem. It's just that none of the historians mentioned seeing any elephants.'
   'It was a big war,' said Dibbler defensively. 'You're bound to miss things.'
   'Not a thousand elephants, I think.'
   'Who's running this studio?'
   'It's just that-'
   'Listen,' said Dibbler. 'Maybe they didn't have a thousand elephants, but we're going to have a thousand elephants, 'cos a thousand elephants is more real, OK?')
   The sheet gradually filled up with Dibbler's excited scrawl. He reached the bottom and continued over the woodwork of the bed.
   By the gods, this was the real stuff! No fiddly little battles here. They'd need just about every handleman in Holy Wood!
   He sat back, panting with exhilarated exhaustion.
   He could see it now. It was as good as made.
   All it needed was a title. Something with a ring to it. Something that people would remember. Something he scratched his chin with the pen that said that the affairs of ordinary people were so much chaff in the great storms of history. Storms, that was it. Good imagery, a storm. You got thunder. Lightning. Rain. Wind.
   Wind. That was it!
   He crawled up to the top of the sheet and, with great care, wrote:
   BLOWN AWAY.
 
   Victor tossed and turned in his narrow bed, trying to get to sleep. Images marched through his half-dozing mind. There were chariot races and pirate ships and things he couldn't identify, and in the middle of it all this thing, climbing a tower. Something huge and terrible, grinning defiance at the world. And someone screaming . . .
   He sat up, drenched in sweat.
   After a few minutes he swung his legs out of bed and went to the window.
   Above the lights of the town Holy Wood Hill brooded in the first dim light of dawn. It was going to be another fine day.
 
   Holy Wood dreams surged through the streets, in great invisible golden waves.
   And Something came with it.
   Something that never, never dreamed at all. Something that never went to sleep.
   Ginger got out of bed and also looked towards the hill, although it is doubtful if she saw it. Moving like a sightless person in a familiar room, she padded across to the door, down the steps, and out into the tail of the night.
   A small dog, a cat and a mouse watched from the shadows as she moved silently down the alley and headed for the hill.
   'Did you see her eyes?' said Gaspode.
   'Glowing,' said the cat. 'Yukth!'
   'She's going to the hill,' said Gaspode. 'I don't like that.'
   'So what?' said Squeak. 'She's always around the hill somewhere. Goes up there every night and moons around looking dramatic.'
   'What?'
   'Every night. We thought it was all this romance stuff.'
   'But you can see by the way she's movin' that somethin's not right,' said Gaspode desperately. 'That's not walkin', that's lurchin'. Like she's bein' pulled along by a inner voice, style of fing.'
   'Don't look like that to me,' said Squeak. 'Walking on two legs is lurching, in my book.'
   'You've only got to look at her face to see there's somethin' wrong!'
   'Of course there's something wrong. She's a human,' said Squeak.
   Gaspode considered the options. There weren't many. The obvious one was to find Victor and get him to come back here. He rejected it. It sounded too much like the silly, bouncy sort of thing that Laddie would do. It suggested that the best a dog could think of when confronted with a puzzle was to find a human to solve it.
   He trotted forward and gripped the trailing hem of the sleepwalker's nightdress firmly in his jaws. She walked on, pulling him off his feet. The cat laughed, far too sarcastically for Gaspode's liking.
   'Time to wake up, miss,' he growled, letting the nightdress go. Ginger strode onwards.
   'See?' said the cat. 'Give them an opposed thumb and they think they're something shpecial.'
   'I'm going to follow her,' said Gaspode. 'A girl could come to harm out by herself at night.'
   'That's dogs for you,' said the cat to Squeak. 'Alwaysh fawning on people. It'll be diamante collars and a bowl with his name on it nexsht, I'm telling you.'
   'If you're lookin' to lose a mouthful of fur you've come to the right place, kitty,' snarled Gaspode, barring his rotting teeth again.
   'I don't have to tolerate that short of thing,' said the cat, lifting its nose haughtily. 'Come, Squeak. Let us hie us to a garbage heap where there ain't sho much rubbish.'Gaspode scowled at their departing backs.
   'Pussy!' he yelled after them.
   Then he trotted after Ginger, hating himself. If I was a wolf, which technic'ly I am, he thought, there'd definitely be a rending of jaws and similar. Any girl wandering around by herself would be in dead trouble. I could attack, I could attack any time I liked, I'm jus' choosing not to. One thing I'm not doin', I'm not sort of keepin' an eye on her. I know Victor told me to keep an eye on her, but catch me goin' around doin' what humans tell me. I'd like to see humans that could give me orders. Tear his froat out, jus' like that. Hah.
   An' if anything happened to her he'd go around moonin' for days and prob'ly forget to feed me. Not that dogs like me needs humans to feed 'em, I could be out bringing down reindeers just by leaping on their backs and bitin' their jugulars off, but it's damn convenient getting it all on a plate.
   She was moving quite fast. Gaspode's tongue hung out as he strove to keep up. His head was aching.
   He risked a few sideways squints to see if any other dogs were watching. If they were, he thought, he could pretend he was chasin' her. Which was what he was doing, anyway. Yeah. The trouble was, he never had much breath at the best of times, and it was getting hard to keep pace. She ought to have the decency to slow down a bit.
   Ginger began to climb the lower slopes of the hill.
   Gaspode considered barking loudly, and then if anyone drew attention to this afterwards he could always say it was to frighten her. Trouble was, he had about enough wind left for a threatening wheeze.
   Ginger topped a rise and went down into the little dell among the trees.
   Gaspode staggered after her, righted himself, opened his mouth to whimper a warning, and almost swallowed his tongue.
   The door had opened several inches. More sand rolled down the heap even as Gaspode watched.
   And he could hear voices. They didn't seem to be speaking words but the bones of words, meaning without disguise. They hummed around his bullet head like mendicant mosquitoes, begging and cajoling and
   -he was the most famous dog in the world. The knots unravelled from his coat, the frayed patches sprouted glossy curls, his fur grew on his suddenly-supple frame and withdrew from his teeth. Plates appeared in front of him not laden with the multi-coloured and mysterious organs that he was normally expected to eat but with dark red steak. There was sweet water, no, there was beer in a bowl with his name on it. Tantalizing odours on the air suggested that a number of lady dogs would be happy to make his acquaintance after he had drunk and dined. Thousands of people thought he was marvellous. He had a collar with his name on it, and -
   No, that couldn't be right. Not a collar. It'd be a squeaky toy next, if you dint draw the line at collars.
   The image collapsed in confusion, and now -
   the pack bounded through the dark, snow-covered trees, falling in behind him, red mouths agape, long legs eating up the road. The fleeing humans on the sledge didn't have a chance; one was thrown aside when a runner bounced off a branch, and lay screaming in the road as Gaspode and the wolves fell upon -
   No, that wasn't right, he thought wretchedly. You dint actually eat humans. They got up your nose all right, the gods knew, but you couldn't acktually eat 'em.
   A confusion of instincts threatened to short-circuit his schizophrenically doggy mind.
   The voices gave up their assault in disgust and turned their attention to Ginger, who was methodically trying to shift more sand.
   One of Gaspode's fleas bit him sharply. It was probably dreaming of being the biggest flea in the world. His leg came up automatically to scratch it, and the spell faded.
   He blinked.
   'Bloody hell,' he whined.
   This is what's happening to the humans! Wonder what they're making her dream?
   The hairs rose along Gaspode's back.
   You didn't need any special mysterious animal instincts here. Perfectly generalized everyday instincts were enough to horrify him. There was something dreadful on the other side of the door.
   She was trying to let it out.
   He had to wake her up.
   Biting wasn't really a good idea. His teeth weren't that good these days. He doubted very much if barking would be any better. That left one alternative . . .
   The sand moved eerily under his paws; maybe it was dreaming of being rocks. The scrawny trees around the hollow were wrapped in sequoia fantasies. Even the air that curled around Gaspode's bullet head moved sluggishly, although it's anyone's guess what the air dreams about.
   Gaspode trotted up to Ginger and pushed his nose against her leg.
 
   The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.
 
   Ginger blinked. The glow faded from her eyes. She looked down, her expression of horror turning to astonishment and then, when she saw Gaspode leering up at her, back to a more mundane horror.
   ' 'Allo,' Gaspode said, ingratiatingly.
   She backed away, bringing her hands up protectively. Sand dribbled between her fingers. Her eyes flickered towards it in bewilderment, and then back to Gaspode.
   'Gods, that's horrible,' she said. 'What's going on? Why am I here?' Her hands flew to her mouth. 'Oh no,' she whispered, 'not again!'
   She stared at him for a moment, glared up at the doorway, then turned, hitched up her nightdress, and hurried back to town through the morning mists.
   Gaspode struggled after her, aware of anger in the air, desperately trying to put as much space as possible between the door and himself.
   Sunnink dreadful in there, he thought. Prob'ly tentacled fings that rips your face off. I mean, when you finds mysterious doors in old hills, stands to reason wot comes out ain't going to be pleased to see you. Evil creatures wot Man shouldn't wot of, and here's one dog wot don't want to wot of them either. Why couldn't she . . .
   He grumbled on towards the town.
   Behind him the door moved the tiniest fraction of an inch.
 
   Holy Wood was awake long before Victor, and the hammering from Century of the Fruitbat echoed around the sky. Waggonloads of timber were queuing up to enter the archway. He was buffeted and pushed aside by a hurrying stream of plasterers and carpenters. Inside, crowds of workmen scurried around the arguing figures of Silverfish and C.M.O.T. Dibbler.
   Victor reached them just as Silverfish said, in astonished, tones, 'The whole city?'
   'You can leave out the bits round the edge,' said Dibbler. 'But I want the whole of the centre. The palace, the University, the Guilds everything that makes it a real city, understand? It's got to be right!'
   He was red in the face. Behind him loomed Detritus the troll, patiently holding what appeared to be a bed over his head on one massive hand, like a waiter with a tray. Dibbler had the sheets in one hand. Then Victor realized that the whole bed, not just the sheets, was covered in writing.
   'But the cost -' Silverfish protested.
   'We'll find the money somehow,' said Dibbler calmly.
   Silverfish couldn't have looked more horrified if Dibbler had worn a dress. He tried to rally.
   'Well, if you're determined, Throat-'
   'Right!'
   '-I suppose, come to think of it, maybe we could amortize the cost over several clicks, maybe even hire it out afterwards-'
   'What are you talking about?' demanded Dibbler. 'We're building it for Blown Away!'
   'Yes, yes, of course,' said Silverfish soothingly. 'And then afterwards, we can-'
   'Afterwards? There won't be any afterwards! Haven't you read the script? Detritus, show him the script!'
   Detritus obligingly dropped the bed between them.
   'It's your bed, Throat.'
   'Script, bed, what's the difference? Look . . . here . . . just above the carving . . . '
   There was a pause while Silverfish read. It was quite a long one. Silverfish wasn't used to reading matter that didn't come in columns with totals at the bottom. Eventually he said, 'You're going . . . to . . . set it on
   'It's historical. You can't argue with history,' said Dibbler smugly. 'The city was burned down in the civil war, everyone knows that.'
   Silverfish drew himself up. 'The city might have been,' he said stiffly, 'but I didn't have to find the budget for it! It's recklessly extravagant!'
   'I'll pay for it somehow,' said Dibbler, calmly.
   'In a word - im-possible!'
   'That's two words,' said Dibbler.
   'There's no way I can work on something like this,' said Silverfish, ignoring the interruption. 'I've tried to see your point of view, haven't I? But you've taken moving pictures and you're trying to turn them into, into, into dreams. I never wanted them to be like this! Include me out!'
   'OK.' Dibbler looked up at the troll.
   'Mr Silverfish was just leaving,' he said. Detritus nodded, and then slowly and firmly picked up Silverfish by his collar.
   Silverfish went white. 'You can't get rid of me like that,' he said.
   'You want to bet?'
   'There won't be an alchemist in Holy Wood who'll work for you! We'll take the handlemen with us! You'll be finished!'
   'Listen! After this click the whole of Holy Wood will be coming to me for a job! Detritus, throw this bum out!'
   'Right you are, Mr Dibbler,' rumbled the troll, gripping Silverfish's collar.
   'You haven't heard the last of this, you you scheming, devious megalomaniac!'
   Dibbler removed his cigar.
   'That's Mister Megalomaniac to you,' he said.
   He replaced the cigar, and nodded significantly to the troll, who gently but firmly grasped Silverfish by a leg as well.
   'You lay a finger on me and you'll never work in this town again!' shouted Silverfish.
   'I got a job anyway, Mr Silverfish,' said Detritus calmly, carrying Silverfish towards the gate. 'I'm VicePresident of Throwing Out People Mr Dibbler Doesn't like the Face Of.'
   'Then you'll have to take on an assistant!' snarled Silverfish.
   'I got a nephew looking for a career,' said the troll. 'Have a nice day.'
   'Right,' said Dibbler, rubbing his hands briskly. 'Soll!'
   Soll appeared from behind a trestle table loaded with rolled-up plans, and took a pencil out of his mouth.
   'Yes, Uncle?'
   'How long will it take?'
   'About four days, Uncle.' 'That's too long. Hire more people. I want it done by tomorrow, right?'
   'But, Uncle-'
   'Or you're sacked,' said Dibbler. Soll looked frightened.
   'I'm your nephew, Uncle,' he protested. 'You can't sack nephews.'
   Dibbler looked around and appeared to notice Victor for the first time.
   'Ah, Victor. You're good at words,' he said. 'Can I sack a nephew?'
   'Er. I don't think so. I think you have to disown them, or something,' said Victor lamely. 'But-'
   'Right! Right!' said Dibbler. 'Good man. I knew it was some kind of a word like that. Disown. Hear that, Soll?'
   'Yes, Uncle,' said Soll dispiritedly. 'I'll go and see if I can find some more carpenters, then, shall I?'
   'Right.' Soll flashed Victor a look of terrified astonishment as he scurried away. Dibbler started haranguing a group of handlemen. Instructions spouted out of the man like water from a fountain.
   'I reckon no-one's goin' to Ankh-Morpork this morning, then,' said a voice by Victor's knee.
   'He's certainly very, er, ambitious today;' said Victor. 'Not like himself at all.'
   Gaspode scratched an ear. 'There was sunnink I got to tell you. What was it, now? Oh, yeah. I remember. Your girlfriend is an agent of demonic powers. That night we saw her on the hill she was prob'ly on her way to commune with evil. What d'you fink of that, eh?'
   He grinned. He was rather proud of the way he'd introduced the subject.
   'That's nice,' said Victor abstractedly. Dibbler was certainly acting even stranger than usual. Even stranger than usual for Holy Wood, even . . .
   'Yeah,' said Gaspode, slightly annoyed at this reception. 'A-cavortin' at night with eldritchly occult Intelligences from the Other Side, I shouldn't wonder.'
   'Good,' said Victor. You didn't normally burn things in Holy Wood. You saved them and painted on the other side. Despite himself, he began to get interested.
   '-a cast of thousands,' Dibbler was saying. 'I don't care where you get them from, we'll hire everyone in Holy Wood if we have to, right? And I want-'
   'A-helpin' them in their evil attempts to take over the whole world, if I'm any judge,' said Gaspode.
   'Does she?' said Victor. Dibbler was talking to a couple of apprentice alchemists now. What was that. A twentyreeler? But no-one had ever dreamed of going above five!
   'Yeah, a-diggin' away to rouse them from their ancient slumber to reek havoc, style offing,' said Gaspode. 'Prob'ly aided by cats, you mark my-'
   'Look, just shut up a minute, will you?' said Victor, irritably. 'I'm trying to hear what they're saying.'
   'Well, 'scuse me. I was jus' tryin' to save the world,' muttered Gaspode. 'If gharstely creatures from Before the Dawna Time starts wavin' at you from under your bed, jus' you don't come complainin' to me.'
   'What are you going on about?' said Victor.
   'Oh, nothin'. Nothin'.'
   Dibbler looked up, caught sight of Victor's craning face, and waved at it.
   'You, lad! Come here! Have I got a part for you!'
   'Have you?' said Victor, pushing his way through the crowd.
   'That's what I said!'
   'No, you asked if-' Victor began, and gave up.
   'And where's Miss Ginger, may I ask?' said Dibbler. 'Late again?'
   ' . . . prob'ly sleepin' in . . . ' grumbled a sullen and totally ignored voice from down below in the sea of legs, '. . . prob'ly takes it out of you, messin' with the occult . . . '
   'Soll, send someone to fetch her here-'
   'Yes, Uncle.'
   '. . .wot can you expect, huh, people who like cats're capable of anythin', you can't trust 'em. . . '
   'And find someone to transcribe the bed.'
   'Yes, Uncle.'
   ' . . . but do they listen! Not them. Bet if I had a glossy coat an' ran aroun' yappin' they'd listen all right . . . '
   Dibbler opened his mouth to speak, and then frowned and raised a hand.
   'Where's that muttering coming from?' he said.
   ' . . . prob'ly saved the whole world for 'em, by rights I'd get a statchoo put up to me nose but no, oh no, not for you Mr Gaspode, on account of you not bein' the right kinda person, so . . . '
   The whine stopped. The crowd shuffled aside, revealing a small bowlegged grey dog, which looked up impassively at Dibbler.
   'Bark?' it said, innocently.
   Events always moved fast in Holy Wood, but the work on Blown Away sped forward like a comet. The other Fruitbat clicks were halted. So were most of the others in the town, because Dibbler was hiring actors and handlemen at twice what anyone else would pay.
   And a sort of Ankh-Morpork rose among the dunes. It would have been cheaper, Soll complained, to have risked the wrath of the wizards, sneaked some filming in Ankh-Morpork itself, and then slipped someone a fistful of dollars to put a match to the place.
   Dibbler disagreed.
   'Apart from anything else,' he declared, 'it wouldn't look right.'
   'But it's the real Ankh-Morpork, Uncle,' said Soll. 'It's got to look exactly right. How can it not look right?'
   'Ankh-Morpork doesn't look all that genuine, you know,' said Dibbler thoughtfully.
   'Of course it's bloody genuine!' snapped Soll, the bonds of .kinship stretching to snapping point. 'It's really there! It's really itself! You can't make it any more genuine! It's as genuine as it can get!'
   Dibbler took his cigar out of his mouth.
   'No, it isn't,' he said. 'You'll see.'
   Ginger turned up around lunchtime, looking so pale that even Dibbler didn't shout at her. She kept glaring at Gaspode, who tried to stay out of her way.Dibbler was preoccupied, anyway. He was in his office, explaining The Plot.
   It was basically quite simple, running on the familiar lines of Boy Meets Girl, Girl Meets Another Boy, Boy Loses Girl, except that on this occasion there was a civil war in the middle of it . . .
   The origins of the Ankh-Morpork Civil War (8.32 p.m., Grune 3, 432 -10.45 a. m., Grune 4, 432) have always been a subject of heated debate among historians. There are two main theories: 1. The common people, having been heavily taxed by a particularly stupid and unpleasant king, decided that enough was enough and that it was time to do away with the outmoded concept of monarchy and replace it with, as it turned out, a series of despotic overlords who still taxed heavily but at least had the decency not to pretend the gods had given them the right to do it, which made everyone feel a bit better OR 2. One of the players in a game of Cripple Mr Onion in a tavern had accused another of palming more than the usual number of aces, and knives had been drawn, and then someone had hit someone with a "bench, and then someone else had stabbed someone, and arrows started to fly, and someone had swung on the chandelier, and a carelesslyhurled axe had hit someone in the street, and then the Watch had been called in, and someone had set fire to the place, and someone had hit a lot of people with a table, and then everyone lost their tempers and commenced to start fighting.
   Anyway, it all caused a civil war, which is something every mature civilization needs to have had . . . [20]
   'The way I see it,' said Dibbler, 'there's this high-born girl living all by herself in this big house, right, and her young man goes off to fight for the rebels, you see, and she meets this other guy, and there's the chemistry between them-'
   'They blow up?' said Victor.
   'He means they fall in love,' said Ginger coldly.
   'That sort of thing,' nodded Dibbler. 'Eyes meeting across a crowded room. And she's all alone in the world except for the servants and, let's see, yeah, perhaps her pet dog-'
   'This'll be Laddie?' said Ginger.
   'Right. And of course she's going to do everything she can to preserve the family mine, so she's kind of flirting with 'em both, the men, not the dog, and then one of them gets killed in the war and the other one throws her over but it's all OK because she's tough at heart.' He sat back. 'What d'you think?' he said.
   The people sitting around the room looked uneasily at one another.
   There was a fidgety silence.
   'It sounds great, Uncle,' said Soll, who wasn't looking for any more problems today.
   'Technically very challenging,' said Gaffer.
   There was a chorus of relieved assent from the rest of the team.
   'I don't know,' said Victor slowly.
   Everyone else's eyes turned on him in the same way that spectators at the lion pit watch the first condemned criminal to be pushed out through the iron gate. He went on: 'I mean, is that all? It doesn't sound, well, very complicated for such a long click. People sort of falling in love while a civil war is going on in the background . . . I don't see how you can make much of a picture out of that.'
   There was another troubled silence. A couple of people near Victor moved away. Dibbler was staring at him.
   Victor could hear, coming from under his chair, an almost inaudible little voice.
   ' . . . oh, of course, there's always a part for Laddie . . . woes he got that I haven't got, that's wot I'd like to . . . '
   Dibbler was still staring fixedly at Victor.
   Then he said, 'You're right. You're right. Victor's right. Why didn't anyone else spot it?'
   'That's just what I was thinking, Uncle,' said Soll hurriedly. 'We need to flesh it out a bit.'
   Dibbler waved his cigar vaguely. 'We can think up some more stuff as we go, no problem. Like . . . like . . . how about a chariot race? People always like a chariot race. It's gripping. Will he fall out, will the wheels come off? Yeah. A chariot race.'
   'I've, er, been reading a bit about the Civil War,' said Soll cautiously, 'and I don't think there's any mention of-'
   'Of there not being chariot races, am I right?' said Dibbler, in soapy tones containing the razor blade of menace. Soll sagged.
   'Since you put it like that, Uncle,' he said, 'you're right.'
   'And . . . ' Dibbler stared reflectively, ' . . . we could try . . . a great big shark?' Even Dibbler sounded slightly surprised at his own suggestion.
   Soll looked hopefully at Victor.
   'I'm almost certain sharks didn't fight in the Civil War,' said Victor.
   'You sure?'
   'I'm sure people would have noticed,' said Victor.
   'They'd have got trampled by the elephants,' muttered Soll.
   'Yeah,' said Dibbler, sadly. 'It was just a thought. Don't know why I said it, really.'
   He stared at nothing for a while, and then shook his head briskly.
   A shark, Victor thought. All the little golden fishes of your own thoughts are swimming away happily, and then the water moves and this great shark of a thought comes in from outside. As if someone's doing our thinking for us.
   'You just don't know how to behave,' Victor told Gaspode, when they were alone. 'I could hear you grumbling under the chair the whole time.'
   'I might not know how to behave, but at least I don't go mooning around over some girl who's letting dretful Creatures of the Night into the world,' said Gaspode.
   'I should hope not,' said Victor, and then, 'What do you mean?'
   'Aha! Now he listens! Your girlfriend?'
   'She's not my girlfriend!'
   'Would?be girlfriend,' said Gaspode, 'is goin' out every night and tryin' to open that door in the hill. She tried it again last night, after you'd gone. I saw her. I stopped her,' he added, defiantly. 'Not that I expect any credit, of course. There's some dretful in there, an' she's lettin' it out. No wonder she's always late and tired in the mornings, what with spendin' the whole night diggin'.'
   'How do you know they're dreadful?'said Victor weakly.
   'Put it like this,' said Gaspode. 'If something's shoved in a cave under a hill behind great big doors, it's not 'cos people want it to come out every night to wash the dishes, is it? 'Corse,' he added charitably, 'I'm not sayin' she knows she's doing it. Prob'ly they've got a grip of her weak an' feeble cat?lovin' female mind and are twisting it to their evil will.'
   'You do talk a lot of crap sometimes,' said Victor, but he didn't sound very convincing even to himself.
   'Ask her, then,' said the dog, smugly.
   'I will!'
   'Right!'
   Exactly how, though? thought Victor, as they trudged out into the sunshine. Excuse me, miss, my dog says that you . . . no. I say, Ginger, I understand that you're going out and . . . no. Hey, Ginj, how come my dog saw . . . no.
   Perhaps he should just start up a conversation and wait until it got around naturally to monstrosities from Beyond the Void.
   But it would have to wait, because of the row that was going on.
   It was over the third major part in Blown Away. Victor was of course the dashing but dangerous hero, Ginger was the only possible choice for the female lead, but the second male role ?the dull but dutiful one ? was causing trouble.
   Victor had never seen anyone stamp their foot in anger before. He'd always thought it was something they did only in books. But Ginger was doing it.
   'Because I'd look an idiot, that's why!' she was saying.
   Soll, who was by now feeling like a lightning rod on a stormy day, waved his hand frantically.
   'But he's ideal for the role!' he said. 'It calls for a solid character?'
   'Solid? Of course he's solid! He's made of stone!' shouted Ginger. 'He might have a suit of chain mail and a false moustache but he's still a troll!'
   Rock, looming monolithically over the pair of them, cleared his throat noisily.
   'Excuse me,' he said, 'I hope we're not going to get elementalist about this?'
   Now it was Ginger's turn to wave her hands. 'I like trolls,' she said. 'As trolls, that is. But you can't seriously mean me to do a romantic scene with a, a, a cliff face.'
   'Now look here,' said Rock, his voice winding up like a pitcher's arm. 'What you're saying is, is OK for trolls to be shown bashing people with clubs, is not OK to show trolls have finer feelings like squashy humans?'
   'She's not saying that at all,' said Soll desperately. 'She's not?'
   'If you cut me, do I not bleed?' said Rock.
   'No, you don't,' said Soll, 'but?'
   'Ah, yes, but I would. If I had blood, I'd bleed all over the place.'
   'And another thing,' said a dwarf, prodding Soll in the knee. 'It says in the script that she owns a mine full of happy, laughing, singing dwarfs, right?'
   'Oh, yes,' said Soll, putting the troll problem on one side. 'What about it?'
   'It's a bit stereotypical, isn't it?' said the dwarf. 'I mean, it's a bit dwarfs = miners. I don't see why we have to be type?cast like this all the time.'
   'But most dwarfs are miners,' said Soll desperately.
   'Well, OK, but they're not happy about it,' said another dwarf. 'And they don't sing the whole time.'
   'That's right,' said a third dwarf. ' 'Cos of safety, see? You can bring the whole roof down on you, singing.'
   'And there's no mines anywhere near Ankh-Morpork,' said possibly the first dwarf, although they all looked identical to Soll. 'Everyone knows that. It's on loam. We'd be a laughing stock, if our people saw us mining for jewels anywhere near Ankh-Morpork.'
   'I wouldn't say I've got a cliff face,' rumbled Rock, who sometimes took a little time to digest things. 'Craggy, maybe. But not cliffy.'
   'The fact is,' said one of the dwarfs, 'we don't see why humans get all the good roles and we get all the titchy bit parts.'
   Soll gave the jolly little laugh of someone in a corner who hopes that a joke will lighten the atmosphere a bit.
   'Ah,' he said, 'that's because you?'
   'Yes?' said the dwarfs in unison.
   'Um,' said Soll, and struck out quickly for a change of subject. 'You see, the whole point, as I understand it, is that Ginger will do absolutely anything to keep the mansion and the mine and='
   'I hopes we can get on,' said Gaffer, 'only I've got to muck the imps out in an hour.'
   'Oh, I see,' said Rock. 'I'm absolutely anything, am I?'
   'You don't keep mines,' said one of the dwarfs. 'Mines keep you. You take the treasure out. You don't put it in. That's fundamental to the whole mine business.'
   'Well, perhaps this mine is worked out,' said Soll quickly. 'Anyway, she?'
   'Well, in that case, you don't keep it,' said another dwarf, in the expansive manner of one about to settle down to a good long explanation. 'You abandon it, propping and shoring where necessary, and sink another shaft on a line with the major seam?'
   'Allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures,' said another dwarf.
   'Of course, allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures, and then?'
   'And general crustal shifting.'
   'All right, and then?'
   'Unless you're just cutting and filling, of course.'
   'Granted, but?'
   'I don't see', Rock began, 'that my face could be called?'
   'SHUT UP!' screamed Soll. 'Everyone shut up! SHUT UP! The next person who doesn't shut up will never work in this town again! Understand? Do I make myself CLEAR? Right.' He coughed, and continued in a more normal voice: 'Very well. Now, I want it understood that this is a Breathtaking, Block?busting Romantic film about a woman's fight to save the?' he consulted his clipboard, and went on valiantly, '?everything she loves against the background of a World Gone Mad, and I don't want any more trouble from anyone.'
   A dwarf tentatively raised his hand.
   ' 'Scuse me?'
   'Yes?' said Soll.
   'Why is it all Mr Dibbler's films are set against the background of a world gone mad?' said the dwarf.
   Soll's eyes narrowed. 'Because Mr Dibbler', he growled, 'is a very observant man.'
 

Dibbler had been right. The new city was the old city distilled. Narrow alleys were narrower, tall buildings taller. Gargoyles were more fearsome, roofs more pointed. The towering Tower of Art in Unseen University was, here, even taller and more precariously towering even though it was at? the same time only one quarter the size; the Unseen University was more baroque and buttressed; the Patrician's Palace more pillar'd. Carpenters swarmed over a construction that, when it was finished, would make Ankh­Morpork look like a very indifferent copy of itself, except that the buildings in the original city were not, by and large, painted on canvas stretched over timber and didn't have the dirt carefully sprayed on. Ankh-Morpork's buildings had to get dirty all by themselves.
   It looked far more like Ankh-Morpork than Ankh-Morpork ever had.
 
   Ginger had been ushered off to the changing tents before Victor had a chance to speak to her, and then shooting started and it was too late.
   Century of the Fruitbat (and now it said on the sign, in slightly smaller type: More Stars than There Are in the Heavens [21]) believed that a click should be made in less than ten times the time it took to watch. Blown Away was going to be different. There were battles. There were night scenes, the imps painting away furiously by torchlight. Dwarfs worked merrily in a mine never seen before or since, where fake gold nuggets the size of chickens had been stuck in the plaster walls. Since Soll demanded that their lips should be seen to move they sang a risque version of the 'Hihohiho' song, which had rather caught on among holy Wood's dwarf population.
   It was just possible that Soll knew how it all fitted together. Victor didn't. It was always best, he had learned, never to try to follow the plot of any click you were in, and in any case Soll wasn't just shooting back to front but sides to middle as well. It was totally confusing, just like real life.
   When he did get a chance to talk to Ginger, two handlemen and everyone else in the cast who currently had nothing to do were watching them.
   'OK, people,' said Soll. 'This is the scene near the end where Victor meets Ginger after all they've been through together, and on the card he'll be saying?' He stared at the big black oblong handed to him. 'Yes, he'll be saying "Frankly, my dear, I'd give anything for one of . . . Harga's . . . prime . . . pork . . . ribs . . . in . . . special . . . curry . . . sauce. . . " '
   Soll's voice slowed and stopped. When he breathed in, it was like a whale surfacing.
   'Who wrote THIS?'
   One of the artists cautiously raised a hand.
   'Mr Dibbler told me to,' he said quickly.
   Soll leafed through the big heap of cards that represented the dialogue for a large part of the click. His lips tightened. He nodded to one of the people with clipboards and said, 'Could you just run ever to the office and ask my uncle to stroll over here, if he's got a moment?'
   Soll pulled a card out of the stack and read, ' "I sure miss the old mine but for a taste of real country cooking I always . . . go . . . to . . .Harp's . . .House . . . Of . . ." I see.'
   He selected another at random. 'Ah. I see here a wounded Royalist soldier's last words are "What I wouldn't give right now for a $1 Eat-Till-It-Hurts special at. . . Harga's . . . House . . . of . . . Ribs . . . Mother!" '
   'I think it's very moving,' said Dibbler, behind him. 'There won't be a dry eye in the house, you'll see.'
   'Uncle?' Soll began.
   Dibbler raised his hands. 'I said I'd raise the money somehow,' he said, 'and Sham Harga's even helping us with the food for the barbecue scene.'
   'You said you weren't going to interfere with the script!'
   'That's not interfering,' said Dibbler stolidly. 'I don't see how that could be considered interfering. I just polished it up here and there. I think it's rather an improvement. Besides, Harp's All-You­-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar is amazing value these days.'
   'But the click is set hundreds of years ago!' shouted Soll.
   'We=ell,' said Dibbler. 'I suppose someone could say, "I wonder if the food at Harga's House of Ribs will still be as good in hundreds of years' time?" '
   'That isn't moving pictures. That is crass commerce!'
   'I hope so,' said Dibbler. 'We're in real trouble if it isn't.'
   'Now look?' Soll began, threateningly.
   Ginger turned to Victor.
   'Can we go somewhere and talk?' she said, quietly. 'Without your dog,' she added, in her normal voice. 'Definitely without your dog.'
   'You want to talk to me?' said Victor.
   'There hasn't been much of a chance, has there?'
   'Right. Certainly. Gaspode, stay. There's a good dog.' Victor derived a quiet satisfaction from the brief look of pure disgust that flashed across Gaspode's face.
   Behind them the eternal Holy Wood argument had wound up to cruising speed, with Soll and C.M.O.T. standing nose to nose and arguing in a circle of amused and interested staff.
   'I don't have to take this, you know! I can resign!'
   'No, you can't! You're my nephew! You can't resign from being a nephew?!'
   Ginger and Victor sat down on the steps of a canvas and wood mansion. They had absolute privacy. No one was going to bother to watch them with a rip snorter of a row going on a few yards away.
   'Er,' said Ginger. Her fingers twisted among themselves. Victor couldn't help noticing that the nails were worn down.
   'Er,' she said again. Her face was a picture of anguish, and pale under the make-up. She isn't beautiful, Victor felt himself think, but you could have real trouble believing it.
   'I, er, don't know how to say this,' she said, 'but, er, has anyone noticed me walking in my sleep?'
   'To the hill?' said Victor.
   Her head whipped around like a snake.
   'You know? How do you know? Have you been spying on me?' she snapped. It was the old Ginger again, all fire and venom and the aggressiveness of paranoia.
   'Laddie found you . . . asleep yesterday afternoon,' said
   Victor, leaning back.
   'During the day?'
   'Yes.'
   She put her hands to her mouth. 'It's worse than I thought,' she whispered. 'It's getting worse! You know when you met me up the hill? Just before Dibbler found us, and thought we were . . . spooning . . . ' she blushed.
   'Well, I didn't even know how I'd got there!'
   'And you went back last night,' said Victor.
   'The dog told you, did he?' she said, dully.
   'Yes. Sorry.'
   'It's every night now,' moaned Ginger. 'I know, because even if I go back to bed there's sand all over the floor and my nails are all broken! I go there every night and I don't know why!'
   'You're trying to open the door,' said Victor. 'There's this big ancient door now, where part of the hill has slid away, and?'
   'Yes, I've seen it, but why?'
   Well, I've got a couple of ideas,' said Victor cautiously.
   'Tell me!'
   'Um. Well, have you heard of something called a genius loci?,
   'No.' Her brow wrinkled. 'It's clever, is it?'
   'It's the sort of soul of a place. It can be quite strong. It can be made strong, by worship or love or hate, if it goes on long enough. And I'm wondering if the spirit of a place can call to people. And animals, too. I mean, Holy Wood is a different sort of place, isn't it? People act differently here. Everywhere else, the most important things are gods or money or cattle. Here, the most important thing is to be important.'
   He had her full attention. 'Yes?' she said encouragingly, and, 'It doesn't sound too bad so far.'
   'I'm getting to the bad bit.'
   'Oh.'
   Victor swallowed. His brain was bubbling like a bouillon. Half­remembered facts surfaced tantalizingly and sank again. Dry old tutors in high old rooms had been telling him dull old things which were suddenly as urgent as a knife, and he dredged desperately for them.
   'I'm not?' he croaked. He cleared his throat. 'I'm not sure it's right, though,' he managed. 'It's come from somewhere else. It can happen. You've heard of ideas whose time has come?'
   'Yes.'
   'Well, they're the tame ones. There's other ones. Ideas so full of vigour they don't even wait for their time. Wild ideas. Escaped ideas. And the trouble is, when you get something like that, you get a hole?'
   He looked at her polite, blank expression. Analogies bubbled to the surface like soggy croutons. Imagine all the worlds that have ever been are in one sense pressed together like a sandwich . . . a pack of cards . . . a book . . . a folded sheet . . . if conditions are right, things can go through rather than along . . . but if you open a gate between worlds, there are terrible dangers, as for instance . . .
   As for instance . . .
   As for instance . . .
   As for instance what?
   It rose up in his memory like the suddenly discovered bit of suspicious tentacle just when you thought it was safe to eat the paella.
   'It could be that something else is trying to come through the same way,' he ventured. 'In the, uh, in the nowhere between the somewhere there are creatures which on the whole I'd rather not describe to you.'
   'You already have,' said Ginger, in a tense voice.
   'And, uh, they're generally quite keen to get into the real worlds and perhaps they're somehow making contact with you when you're asleep and . . . ' He gave up. He couldn't bear her expression any more.
   'I could be entirely wrong,' he said quickly.
   'You've got to stop me opening the door,' she whispered. 'I could be one of Them.'
   'Oh, I don't think so,' said Victor loftily. 'They've generally got too many arms, I think.'
   'I tried putting tacks on the floor to wake myself up,' said Ginger.
   'Sounds awful. Did it work?'
   'No. They were all back in their bag in the morning. I must have picked them up again.'
   Victor pursed his lips. 'That could be a good sign,' he said.
   'Why?'
   'If you were being summoned by, uh, unpleasant things,
   I think they wouldn't bother what you walked over.'
   'Urgh.'
   'You haven't got any idea why it's all happening, have you?' Victor said.
   'No! But I always get the same dream.' Her eyes narrowed. 'Hey, how come you know all this stuff?'
   'I ... a wizard told me, once,' said Victor.
   'You're not a wizard yourself?'
   'Absolutely not. No wizards in Holy Wood. And this dream?'
   'Oh, it's too strange to mean anything. Anyway, I used to dream it even when I was small. It starts off with this mountain, only it's not a normal mountain, because?'
   Detritus the troll loomed over them.
   'Young Mr Dibbler says it's time to start shooting again,'
   he rumbled.
   'Will you come to my room tonight?' hissed Ginger.
   'Please? You can wake me up if I start sleepwalking again.'
   'Well, er, yes, but your landlady might not like it?' Victor began.
   'Oh, Mrs Cosmopilite is very broadminded,' said Ginger.
   'She is?'
   'She'll just think we're having sex,' said Ginger.
   'Ah,' said Victor hollowly. 'That's all right, then.'
   'Young Mr Dibbler don't like being kept waiting,' said Detritus.
   'Oh, shut up,' said Ginger. She stood up and brushed the dust off her dress. Detritus blinked. People didn't usually tell him to shut up. A few worried fault-lines appeared on his brow. He turned and tried another loom, this time aimed at Victor.
   'Young Mr Dibbler don't like?'
   'Oh, go away,' snapped Victor, and wandered off after her.
   Detritus stood alone and screwed up his eyes in the effort of thought. Of course, people did occasionally say things like 'Go away' and 'Shut up' to him, but always with the tremor of terrified bravado in their voice, and so naturally he always riposted 'Hur hur' and hit them. But no-one had ever spoken to him as if his existence was the last thing in the world they could possibly be persuaded to worry about. His massive shoulders sagged. Perhaps all this hanging around Ruby was bad for him.
   Soll was standing over the artist who lettered the cards. He looked up as Victor and Ginger approached.
   'Right,' he said, 'places, everyone. We'll go straight on to the ballroom scene.' He looked pleased with himself.
   'Are the words all sorted out?' said Victor.
   'No problem,' said Soll proudly. He glanced at the sun. 'We've lost a lot of time,' he added, 'so let's not waste any more.'
   'Fancy you being able to get C.M.O.T. to give in like that,' said Victor.
   'He had no argument at all. He's gone back to his office to sulk, I expect,' said Soll loftily. 'OK, everyone, let's all get?'
   The lettering artist tugged at his sleeve.
   'I was just wondering, Mr Soll, what you wanted me to put in the big scene now Victor doesn't mention ribs?'
   'Don't worry me now, man!'
   'But if you could just give me an idea?'
   Soll firmly unhooked the man's hand from his sleeve. 'Frankly,' he said, 'I don't give a damn,' and he strode off towards the set.
   The artist was left alone. He picked up his paintbrush. His lips moved silently, shaping themselves around the words.
   Then he said, 'Hmm. Nice one.'
 
   Banana N'Vectif, cunningest hunter in the great yellow plains of Klatch, held his breath as he tweezered the last piece into place. Rain drummed on the roof of his hut.
   There. That was it.
   He'd never done anything like this before, but he knew he was doing it right.
   He'd trapped everything from zebras to thargas in his time, and what had he got to show for it? But yesterday, when he'd taken a load of skins into N'kouf, he'd heard a trader say that if any man ever built a better mousetrap, then the world would beat a path to his door.
   He'd lain awake all night thinking about this. Then, in the first light of dawn, he scratched a few designs on the but wall with a stick, and got to work. He had taken the opportunity to look at a few mousetraps while he was in the town, and they were definitely less than perfect. They hadn't been built by hunters.
   Now he picked up the twig and pushed it gently into the mechanism.
   Snap.
   Perfect.
   Now, all he had to do was take it into N'kouf and see if the merchant
   The rain was very loud indeed. In fact, it sounded more like
   When Banana woke up he was lying in the ruins of his but and they were in a half-mile wide swathe of trodden mud.
   He looked muzzily at what remained of his home. He looked at the brown scar that stretched from horizon to horizon. He looked at the dark, muddy cloud just visible at one end of it.Then he looked down. The better mousetrap was now a rather nice two-dimensional design, squashed into the middle of an enormous footprint.
   He said, 'I didn't know it was that good.'
 
   According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles.
   Something that both Dibblers were agreed on was that, if they'd been in charge, no one would have been able to get away with such a low-grade war. It was a crime that people should have been allowed to stage a major turning-point in the history of the city without using thousands of people and camels and ditches and earthworks and siege-engines and trebuckets and horses and banners.
   'And in a bloody fog, too,' said Gaffer. 'No thought about light levels.'
   He surveyed the proposed field of battle, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand. There would be eleven handlemen working on this one, from every conceivable angle. One by one they held up their thumbs.
   Gaffer rapped on the picture box in front of him.
   'Ready, lads?' he said.
   There was a chorus of squeaks.
   'Good lads,' he said. 'Get this one right and thee can have an extra lizard for thy tea.'
   He grasped the handle with one hand and picked up a megaphone with the other.
   'Ready when you are, Mr Dibbler!' he yelled.
   C.M.O.T. nodded and was about to raise his hand when Soll's arm shot out and grabbed it. The nephew was staring intently at the ranged ranks of horsemen.
   'Just one moment,' he said levelly, and then cupped his hands and raised his voice to a shout. 'Hey, you there! Fifteenth knight along! Yes, you! Would you mind unfurling your banner, please? Thank you. Could you please report to Mrs Cosmopilite for a new one. Thank you.'
   Soll turned to his uncle, his eyebrows raised.
   'It's . . . it's a heraldic device,' said Dibbler quickly.
   'Crossed spare ribs on a bed of lettuce?' said Soll.
   'Very keen on their food, those old knights?'
   'And I liked the motto,' said Soll. ' "Every (k)night is Gormay Night At Harga's House of Ribs." If we had sound, I wonder what his battle cry would have been?'
   'You're my own flesh and blood,' said Dibbler, shaking his head. 'How can you do this to me?'
   'Because I'm your own flesh and blood,' said Soll.
   Dibbler brightened. Of course, when you looked at it like that, it didn't seem so bad.
 
   This is Holy Wood. To pass the time quickly, you just film the clock hands moving fast . . .
   In Unseen University, the resograph is already recording seven pubs a minute.
 
   And, towards the end of the afternoon, they burned Ankh­-Morpork.
   The real city had been burned down many times in its long history - out of revenge, or carelessness, or spite, or even just for the insurance. Most of the big stone buildings that actually made it a city, as opposed simply to a load of hovels all in one place, survived them intact and many people [22] considered that a good fire every hundred years or so was essential to the health of the city since it helped to keep down the rats, roaches, fleas and, of course, people not rich enough to live in stone houses.
   The famous Fire during the Civil War had been noteworthy simply because it was started by both sides at the same rime in order to stop the city falling into enemy hands.
   It had not otherwise, according to the history books, been very impressive. The Ankh had been particularly high that summer, and most of the city had been too damp to burn.
   This time it was a lot better.
   Flames poured into the sky. Because this was Holy Wood, everything burned, because the only difference between the stone buildings and the wooden buildings was what was painted on the canvas. The two-dimensional Unseen University burned. The Patrician's backless palace burned. Even the scale-model Tower of Art gushed flames like a roman candle.
   Dibbler watched it with concern.
   After a while Soll , behind him, said, 'Waiting for something, Uncle?'
   'Hmm? Oh, no. I hope Gaffer's concentrating on the tower, that's all,' said Dibbler. 'Very important symbolic landmark.'
   'It certainly is,' said Soll. 'Very important. So important, in fact, that I sent some lads up it at lunchtime just to make sure it was all OK.'
   'You did?' said Dibbler, guiltily.
   'Yes. And do you know what they found? They found someone had nailed some fireworks to the outside. Lots and lots of fireworks, on fuses. It's a good thing they found them because if the things had gone off it would have ruined the shot and we'd never be able to do it again. And, do you know, they said it looked as though the fireworks would spell out words?' Soll added.
   'What words?'
   'Never crossed my mind to ask them,' said Soll. 'Never crossed my mind.'
   He stuck his hands in his pockets and began to whistle under his breath. After a while he glanced sidelong at his uncle.
   ' "Hottest ribs in town",' he muttered. 'Really!'
   Dibbler looked sulky. 'It would have got a laugh, anyway,' he said.
   'Look, Uncle, this can't go on,' said Soll. 'No more of this commercial messing about, right?'
   'Oh, all right.'
   'Sure?'
   Dibbler nodded. 'I've said all right, haven't I?'
   'I want a bit more than that, Uncle.'
   'I solemnly promise not to do any more meddling in the click,' said Dibbler gravely. 'I'm your uncle. I'm family. Is that good enough for you?'
   'Well. All right.'
   When the fire had died down they raked some of the ashes together for a barbecue at the end-of-shooting party, under the stars.
   The velvet sheet of the night drapes itself over the parrot cage that is Holy Wood, and on warm nights like this there are many people with private business to pursue.
   A young couple, strolling hand in hand across the dunes, were frightened to near insensibility when an enormous troll jumped out at them from behind a rock waving its arms and shouting 'Aaaargh!'
   'Scared you, did I?' said Detritus, hopefully.
   They nodded, white-faced.
   'Well, that's a relief,' said the troll. He patted them on the heads, forcing their feet a little way into the sand. 'Thanks very much. Much obliged. Have a nice night,' he added mournfully.
   He watched them walk off hand in hand, and then burst into tears.
   In the handlemen's shed, C.M.O.T. Dibbler stood watching thoughtfully as Gaffer pasted together the day's footage. The handleman was feeling very gratified; Mr Dibbler had never shown the slightest interest in the actual techniques of film handling before now. This may have explained why he was a little freer than usual with Guild secrets that had been handed down sideways from one generation to the same generation.
   'Why are all the little pictures alike?' said Dibbler, as the handleman wound the film on to its spool. 'Seems to me that's wasting money.'
   'They're not really alike,' said Gaffer. 'Each one's a bit different, see? And so people's eyes see a lot of little slightly different pictures very fast and their eyes think they're watching something move.'
   Dibbler took his cigar out of his mouth. 'You mean it's all a trick?' he said, astonished.
   'Yeah, that's right.' The handleman chuckled and reached for the paste pot.
   Dibbler watched in fascination.
   'I thought it was all a special kind of magic,' he said, a shade disappointed. 'Now you tell me it's just a big Find?the­-Lady game?'
   'Sort of. You see, people don't actually see any one picture. They see a lot of them at once, see what I mean?'
   'Hey, I got lost at see there.'
   'Every picture adds to the general effect. People don't see, sorry, any one picture, they just see the effect caused by a lot of them moving past very quickly.'
   'Do they? That's very interesting,' said Dibbler. 'Very interesting indeed.' He flicked the ash from his cigar towards the demons. One of them caught it and ate it.
   'So what would happen', he said slowly, 'if, say, just one picture in the whole click was different.'
   'Funny you should ask,' said Gaffer. 'It happened the other day when we were patching up Beyond the Valley of the Trolls. One of the apprentices had stuck in just one picture from The Golde Rush and we all went around all morning thinking about gold and not knowing why. It was as if it'd gone straight into our heads without our eyes seeing it. Of course, I took my belt to the lad when we spotted it, but we'd never have found out if I hadn't happened to look at the click slowly.'
   He picked up the paste brush again, squared up a couple of strips of film, and fixed them together. After a while he became aware that it had gone very quiet behind him.
   'You all right, Mr Dibbler?' he said.
   'Hmm? Oh.' Dibbler was deep in thought. 'Just one picture had all that effect?'
   'Oh, yes. Are you all right, Mr Dibbler?'
   'Never felt better, lad,' Dibbler said. 'Never felt better.'
   He rubbed his hands together. 'Let's you and me have a little chat, man to man,' he added. 'Because, you know . . . ' he laid a friendly hand on Gaffer's shoulder, ' . . . I've a feeling that this could be your lucky day.'
   And in another alleyway Gaspode sat muttering to himself.
   'Huh. Stay, he says. Givin' me orders. Jus' so's his girlfriend doesn't have to have a horrid smelly dog in her room. So here's me, man's best friend, sittin' out in the rain. If it was rainin', anyway. Maybe it ain't rainin', but if it was rainin', I'd be soaked by now. Serve him right if I just upped and walked away. I could do it, too. Any time I wanted. I don't have to sit here. I hope no-one's thinkin' I'm sittin' here because I've been told to sit here. I'd like to see the human who could give me orders. I'm sittin' here 'cos I want to. Yeah.'
   Then he whined for a bit and shuffled into the shadows, where there was less chance of being seen.
   In the room above, Victor was standing facing the wall. This was humiliating. It had been bad enough bumping into a grinning Mrs Cosmopilite on the stairs. She had given him a big smile and a complicated, elbowintensive gesture that, he felt certain, sweet little old ladies shouldn't know.
   There were clinks and the occasional rustle behind him as Ginger got ready for bed.
   'She's really very nice. She told me yesterday that she had had four husbands,' said Ginger.
   'What did she do with the bones?' said Victor.
   'I'm sure I don't know what you mean,' said Ginger, sniffing. 'All right, you can turn around now. I'm in bed.'
   Victor relaxed, and turned round. Ginger had drawn the covers up to her neck and was holding them there like a besieged garrison manning the barricades.
   'You've got to promise me,' she said, 'that if anything happens, you won't try to take advantage of the situation.'
   Victor sighed. 'I promise.'
   'It's just that I've got a career to think about, you see.'
   'Yes, I see.'
   Victor sat by the lamp and took the book out of his pocket.
   'I'm not trying to be ungrateful or anything like that,' Ginger went on.
   Victor ruffled through the yellowing pages, looking for the place he'd got to. Scores of people had spent their lives by Holy Wood Hill, apparently just to keep a fire alight and chant three times a day. Why?
   'What are you reading?' said Ginger, after a while.
   'It's an old book I found,' said Victor, shortly. 'It's about Holy Wood.'
   'Oh.'
   'I should get some sleep if I were you,' he said, twisting so that he could make out the crabby script in the lamp light.
   He heard her yawn.
   'Did I finish telling you about the dream?' she said.
   'I don't think so,' said Victor, in what he hoped was a politely discouraging voice.
   'It always starts off with this mountain?'
   'Look, you really shouldn't be talking?'
   '-and there are stars around it, you know, in the sky, but one of them comes down and it's not a star at all, it's a woman holding a torch over her head?'
   Victor slowly turned back to the front of the book.
   'Yes?' he said, carefully.
   'And she keeps on trying to tell me something, something I can't make out, about waking something, and then there are a lot of lights and this roar, like a lion or a tiger or something, you know? And then I wake up.'
   Victor's finger idly traced the outline of the mountain under the stars.
   'It's probably just a dream,' he said. 'It probably doesn't mean anything.'
   Of course, Holy Wood Hill wasn't pointed. But perhaps it was once, in the days when there had been a city where now there was a bay. Good grief. Something must have really hated this place.
   'You don't remember anything else about the dream, by any chance?' he asked, with feigned casualness.
   There was no answer. He crept to the bed.
   She was asleep.
   He went back to the chair, which was promising to become annoyingly uncomfortable within half an hour, and turned down the lamp.
   Something in the hill. That was the danger.
   The more immediate danger was that he was going to fall asleep, too.
   He sat in the dark and worried. How did you wake up a sleepwalker, anyway? He recalled vaguely that it was said to be a very dangerous thing to do. There were stories about people dreaming about being executed and then, when someone had touched them on the shoulder to wake them up, their heads had fallen off. How anyone ever knew what a dead person had been dreaming wasn't disclosed. Perhaps the ghost came back afterwards and stood at the end of the bed, complaining.
   The chair creaked alarmingly as he shifted position. Perhaps if he stuck one leg out like this he could rest it on the end of the bed, so that even if he did fall asleep she wouldn't be able to get past without waking him.
   Funny, really. For weeks he'd spent the days sweeping her up in his arms, defending her bravely from whatever it was Morry was dressed up as today, kissing her, and generally riding off into the sunset to live happily, and possibly even ecstatically, ever after. There was probably no-one who'd ever watched one of the clicks who would possibly believe that he'd spend the night sitting in her room on a chair made out of splinters. Even he found it hard to believe, and here he was. You didn't get this sort of thing in clicks. Clicks were all Passione in a Worlde Gone Madde. If this was a click, he certainly wouldn't be sitting around in the dark on a hard chair. He'd be . . . well, he wouldn't be sitting around in the dark on a hard chair, that was for sure.
 

The Bursar locked his study door behind him. You had to do that. The Archchancellor thought that knocking on doors was something that happened to other people.
   At least the horrible man seemed to have lost interest in the resograph, or whatever Riktor had called it. The Bursar had had a dreadful day, trying to conduct University business while knowing that the document was hidden in his room.
   He pulled it out from under the carpet, turned up the lamp, and began to read.
   He'd be the first to admit that he wasn't any good at mechanical things. He gave up quickly on the bits about pivots, octiron pendulums, and air being compressed in bellows.
   He homed in again on the paragraph that said: 'If, then, disturbances in the fabric of reality cause ripples to spread out from the epicentre, then the pendulum will tilt, compress the air in the relevant bellows, and cause the ornamental elephant closest to the epicentre to release a small lead ball into a cup. And thus the direction of the disturbance?'
   . . . whumm . . . whumm . . .
   He could hear it even up here. They'd just heaped more sandbags around it. No-one dared move it now. The Bursar tried to concentrate on his reading.
   '-can be estimated by the number and force?'
   . . .whumm . . . whummWHUMMWHUMM.
   The Bursar found himself holding his breath.
   '-of the expelled pellets, which I estimate in serious disturbances?'
   Plib.
   '-may well exceed two pellets?'
   Plib.
   '-expelled several inches?'
   Plib.
   '-during the?'
   Plib.
   '-course?'
   Plib.
   '-of?'
   Plib.
   '-one?'
   Plib.
   '-month,
   Plib.
 
   Gaspode woke up and quickly hauled himself into what he hoped looked like an alert position.
   Someone was shouting, but politely, as if they wanted to be helped but only if it wouldn't be too much trouble.
   He trotted up the steps. The door was ajar. He pushed it open with his head.
   Victor was lying on his back, tied to a chair. Gaspode sat down and watched him intently, in case he was about to do something interesting.
   'All right, are we?' he said, after a while.
   'Don't just sit there, idiot! Untie these knots,' said Victor.
   'Idiot I may be, but tied up I ain't,' said Gaspode evenly. 'Got the jump on you, did she?'
   'I must have nodded off for a moment,.' said Victor.
   'Long enough for her to get up, rip up a sheet, and tie you to the chair,' said Gaspode.
   'Yes, all right, all right. Can't you gnaw through it, or something?'
   'With these teeth? I could fetch someone, though,' said Gaspode, and grinned.
   'Er, I'm not sure that's a very good?'
   'Don't worry. I'll be right back,' said Gaspode, and padded out.
   'It might be a bit difficult to explain?' Victor called after him, but the dog was down the stairs and ambling along through the maze of backlots and alleys to the rear of Century of the Fruitbat.
   He shuffled up to the high fence. There was the gentle clink of a chain.
   'Laddie?' he whispered hoarsely.
   There was a delighted bark.
   'Good boy Laddie!'
   'Yeah,' said Gaspode. 'Yeah.' He sighed. Had he ever been like that? If he had, thank goodness he hadn't known about it.
   'Me good boy!'
   'Sure, sure. Laddie be quiet,' muttered Gaspode, and squeezed his arthritic body under the fence. Laddie licked his face as he emerged.
   'I'm too old for this sort of stuff,' he muttered, and peered at the kennel.
   'A choke chain,' he said. 'A bloody choke chain. Stop pulling on it, you daft idiot. Back up. Back up. Right.'
   Gaspode shoved a paw into the loop and eased it over Laddie's head.
   'There,' he said. 'If we all knew how to do that, we'd be runnin' the world. Now stop kiddin' around. We need you.'
   Laddie sprang to tongue-lolling attention. If dogs could salute, he would have done.
   Gaspode wriggled under the fence again, and waited. He could hear Laddie's footsteps the other side, but the big dog seemed to be padding away from the fence.
   'No!' hissed Gaspode. 'Follow me!'
   There was a scurry of paws, a swishing noise, and Laddie cleared the high fence and did a four-point landing in front of him.
   Gaspode unpeeled his tongue from the back of his throat.
   'Good boy,' he muttered. 'Good boy.'
 
   Victor sat up, rubbing his head.
   'I caught myself aright crack when the chair fell backwards,' he said.
   Laddie sat looking expectantly, with the remains of the sheet in his mouth.
   'What's he waiting for?' said Victor.
   'You've got to tell him he's a good boy,' sighed Gaspode.
   'Doesn't he expect some meat or a sweet or something?'
   Gaspode shook his head. 'Jus' tell him what a good boy he is. It's better'n hard currency, for dogs.'
   'Oh? Well, then: good boy, Laddie.'
   Laddie bounced up and down excitedly. Gaspode swore under his breath.
   'Sorry about this,' he said. 'Pathetic, isn't it?'
   'Good boy, find Ginger,' said Victor.
   'Look, I can do that,' said Gaspode desperately, as Laddie started snuffling at the floor. 'We all know where she's headed. You don't have to go and?'
   Laddie dashed out of the door, but gracefully. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and gave an eager, follow-me bark.
   'Pathetic,' said Gaspode, miserably.
 
   The stars always seemed to shine more brightly over Holy Wood. Of course, the air was clearer than Ankh, and there wasn't much smoke, but even so . . . they were somehow bigger, too, and closer, as if the sky was a vast lens.
   Laddie streaked over the dunes; pausing occasionally for Victor to catch up. Gaspode followed on some way behind, rolling from side to side and wheezing.
   The trail led to the hollow, which was empty.
   The door was open about a foot. Scuffed sand around it indicated that, whatever may or may not have come out, Ginger had gone in.
   Victor stared at it.
   Laddie sat by the door, staring hopefully at Victor.
   'He's waitin',' said Gaspode.
   'What for?' said Victor apprehensively.
   Gaspode groaned. 'What do you think?' he said.
   'Oh. Yes. There's a good boy, Laddie.'
   Laddie yapped and tried to turn a somersault.
   'What do we do next?' said Victor. 'I suppose we go in, do we?'
   'Could be,' said Gaspode.
   'Er. Or we could wait till she comes out. The fact is, I've never been very happy about darkness,' said Victor.
   'I mean, night-time is OK, but pitch darkness?'
   'I bet Cohen the Barbarian isn't afraid of the dark,' said Gaspode.
   'Well, yes?'
   'And the Black Shadow of the Desert, he's not afraid of the dark either.'
   'OK, but?'
   'And Howondaland Smith, Balgrog Hunter, practic'ly eats the dark for his tea,' said Gaspode.
   'Yes, but I'm not those people!' wailed Victor.
   'Try tellin' that to all those people who handed over their pennies to watch you bein' 'em,' said Gaspode. He scratched at an insomniac flea. 'Cor, it'd be a laugh to have a handleman here now, wouldn't it?' he said, cheerfully. 'Wot a comedy feature it'd make. Mr Hero Not Goin' Into the Dark, we could call it. It'd be better'n Turkey Legs. It'd be funnier'n A Night At The Arena. I reckon people'd queue fo?'
   'All right, all right,' said Victor. 'I'll go a little way in, perhaps.' He looked around desperately at the dried-up trees around the hollow. 'And I'll make a torch,' he added.
 
   He'd expected spiders and dampness and possibly snakes, if nothing worse . . .
   Instead, there was just a dry, roughly square passageway, leading slightly downwards. The air had a slightly salty smell, suggesting that somewhere the tunnel was connected to the sea.
   Victor took a few paces along it, and stopped.
   'Hang on,' he said. 'If the torch goes out, we could get horribly lost.'
   'No, we can't,' said Gaspode. 'Sense of smell, see?'
   'Gosh, that's clever.'
   Victor went on a little further. The walls were covered with big versions of the square ideograms that featured in the book.
   'You know,' he said, pausing to run his fingers over one, 'these aren't really like a written language. It's more as if?'
   'Keep movin' and stop makin' excuses,' said Gaspode behind him.
   Victor's foot kicked against something which bounced away into the darkness.
   'What was it?' he quavered.
   Gaspode snuffled off into the darkness, and returned.
   'Don't worry about it,' he said.
   'Oh?'
   'It's just a skull.'
   'Whose?'
   'He dint say,' said Gaspode.
   'Shut up!'
   Something crunched under Victor's sandal.
   'An' that-' Gaspode began.
   'I don't want to know!'
   'It was a seashell, in fact,' said Gaspode.
   Victor peered into the moving square of darkness ahead of them. The makeshift torch flared in the draught and, if he strained his ears, he could hear a rhythmic sound; it was either a beast roaring in the distance, or the sound of the sea moving in some underground tunnel. He opted for the second suggestion.
   'Something's been calling her,' he said. 'In dreams. Someone that wants to be let out. I'm afraid she's going to get hurt.'
   'She's not worth it,' said Gaspode. 'Messin' around with girls who're in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it. You'd never know what you were going to wake up next to.'
   'Gaspode!'
   'You'll see I'm right.'
   The torch went out.
   Victor waved it desperately and blew on it in a last attempt to rekindle it. A few sparks flared and faded. There simply wasn't enough torch left.
   The darkness flowed back. Victor had never known darkness like it. No matter how long you looked into it, your eyes wouldn't grow accustomed to it. There was nothing to become accustomed to. It was darkness and mother of darkness, darkness absolute, the darkness under the earth, darkness so dense as to be almost tangible, like cold velvet.
   'It's bloody dark,' volunteered Gaspode.
   I've broken out into what they call a cold sweat, thought Victor. So that's what it feels like. I'd always wondered.
   He eased himself sideways until he reached the wall.
   'We'd better go back,' he said, in what he hoped was a matter-of­fact voice. 'There could be anything ahead of us. Ravines or anything. We could get more torches and more people and come back.'
   There was a flat sound from far down the passage.
   Whoomph.
   It was followed by a light so harsh that it projected the image of Victor's eyeballs on the back of his skull. It faded after a few seconds, but was still almost painfully bright. Laddie whimpered.
   'There you are,' said Gaspode hoarsely. 'You've got some light now, so everything's all right.'
   'Yes, but what's making it?'
   'I'm supposed to know, am I?'
   Victor inched forward, his shadow dancing behind him.
   After a hundred yards or so the passageway opened out in what had perhaps once been a natural cave. The light was coming from an arch high up at one end, but it was bright enough to reveal every detail.
   It was bigger even than the Great Hall at the University, and must once have been even more impressive. The light gleamed off baroque gold ornamentation, and on the stalactites that ribbed the roof. Stairs wide enough for a regiment rose from a wide shadowy hole in the floor; a regular thud and boom and a smell of salt said that the sea had found an entrance somewhere below. The air was clammy.
   'Some kind of a temple?' muttered Victor.
   Gaspode sniffed at a dark red drapery hung on one side of the entrance. At his touch it collapsed into a mess of slime.
   'Yuk,' he said. 'The whole place is mouldy!' Something many­-legged scuttled hastily across the floor and dropped into the stairwell.
   Victor reached out gingerly and prodded a thick red rope, slung between gold-encrusted posts. It disintegrated.
   The cracked stairway carried on up to the distant lighted arch. They climbed it, scrambling over heaps of crumbling seaweed and driftwood flung up by some past high tide.
   The arch opened out into another vast cavern, like an amphitheatre. Rows of seats stretched down towards a - a wall?
   It shimmered like mercury. If you could fill an oblong pool of mercury the size of a house, and then tip it on its side without any of it spilling, then it would look something like this.
   Only not so malevolent.
   It was flat and blank but Victor suddenly felt he was being stared at, like something under a lens.
   Laddie whined.
   Then Victor realized what it was that was making him uneasy.
   It wasn't a wall. A wall was attached to something. That thing was attached to nothing. It just hung in the air, billowing and rippling like an image in a mirror, but without the mirror.
   The light was coming from somewhere on the other side of it. Victor could see it now, a bright pinpoint moving around in the shadow at the far end of the chamber.
   He set off down the sloping aisle between the rows of stone seats, the dogs plodding along beside him with their ears flat and their tails between their legs. They waded through something that might once have been carpet; it tore wetly and disintegrated under their feet.
   After they'd gone a few yards Gaspode said, 'I don't know if you've noticed, but some of?'
   'I know,' said Victor, grimly.
   '-the seats, they're still?'
   'I know.'
   '-occupied.'
   'I know.'
   All these people ? these things who had been people - sitting in rows. It's as though they were watching a click.
   He'd almost reached it now. It shimmied above him, a rectangle with length and height but no thickness.
   Just in front of it, almost underneath the silver screen, a smaller flight of steps led him down into a circular pit half filled with debris. By climbing on to it he could see behind the screen, to where the light was.
   It was Ginger. She was standing with one hand held above her head. The torch in it burned like phosphorus.
   She was staring up at a body on a slab. It was a giant. Or, at least, something like a giant. It might just have been a suit of armour with a sword laid on top of it, half buried in dust and sand.
   'It's the thing from the book!' he hissed. 'Ye gods, what does she think she's doing?'
   'I don't think she's thinkin' anythin',' said Gaspode.
   Ginger half turned and Victor saw her face. She was smiling.
   Behind the slab Victor could make out some kind of big, corroded disc. At least it was hanging from the ceiling by proper chains, and not defying gravity in such a disconcerting way.
   'Right,' he said, 'I'm going to put a stop to this right now. Ginger!'
   His voice boomed back at him from the distant walls. He could hear it bouncing away along caverns and corridors er, er, er. There was a thud of falling rock somewhere far behind him.
   'Keep it quiet!' said Gaspode. 'You'll have the whole place down on us!'
   'Ginger!' Victor hissed. 'It's me!'
   She turned and looked at him, or through him, or into him.
   'Victor,' she said sweetly. 'Go away. Far away. Go away now or great harm will befall.'
   'Great harm will befall,' muttered Gaspode. 'That's boding talk, that is.'
   'You don't know what you're doing,' said Victor. 'You asked me to stop you! Come back. Come back with me now.'
   He tried to climb up . . .
   . . . and something sank under his foot. There was a faraway gurgling noise, a metallic clonk, and then one watery musical note billowed up around him and echoed around the cavern. He moved his foot hurriedly, but only on to another part of the ledge which sank like the first, producing a different note.
   Now there was a scraping sound as well. Victor had been standing in a small sunken pit. Now to his horror he realized that it was rising slowly, to the accompaniment of blaring notes and the whirr and wheeze of ancient machinery. He thrust out his hands and hit a corroded lever, which produced a different chord and then snapped off. Laddie was howling. Victor saw Ginger drop her torch and clap her hands over her ears.
   A block of masonry leaned slowly out of the wall and smashed on the seats. Fragments of rock pattered down, and a rumbling counterpoint to the blare suggested that the noise was rearranging the shape of the whole cavern.
   And then it died, with a long strangulated gurgle and a final gasp. A series of jerks and creaks indicated that whatever prehistoric machinery had been activated by Victor had given of its all before collapsing.
   Silence returned.
   Victor eased himself carefully out of the music pit, which was now several feet in the air, and ran over to Ginger. She was on her knees, and sobbing.
   'Come on,' he said. 'Let's get out of here.'
   'Where am I? What's happening?'
   'I couldn't even begin to explain.'
   The torch was spluttering on the floor. It wasn't an actinic fire now, it was just a piece of charred and nearly extinguished driftwood. Victor grabbed it and waved it around until a dull yellow flame appeared.
   'Gaspode?' he snapped.
   'Yeah?'
   'You two dogs lead the way.'
   'Oh, thank you very much.'
   Ginger clung to him as they lurched back up the aisle. Despite the incipient terror, Victor had to admit that it was a very pleasant sensation. He looked around at the occasional occupants of the seats and shuddered.
   'It looks as though they died watching a click,' he said. 'Yeah. A comedy,' said Gaspode, trotting ahead of him.
   'Why do you say that?'
   'They're all grinnin'.'
   'Gaspode!'
   'Well, you've got to look on the bright side, haven't you?' sneered the dog. 'Can't go around bein' miserable jus' because you're in some lost underground tomb with a mad cat lover an' a torch that's goin' to go out any minute?'
   'Keep going! Keep going!'
   They half-fell, half ran down the steps, skidded unpleasantly on the seaweed at the bottom, and headed for the little archway that led to the wonderful prospect of living air and bright daylight. The torch was beginning to scorch Victor's hand. He let it go. At least there had been no problems in the passage; if they kept to one wall and didn't do anything stupid they couldn't help but reach the door. And it must be dawn by now, which meant that it shouldn't be long before they could see the light.
   Victor straightened up. This was pretty heroic, really. There hadn't been any monsters to fight, but probably even monsters would have rotted away centuries ago. Of course it had been creepy, but really it was only, well, archaeology. Now it was all behind him it didn't seem so bad at all . . .
   Laddie, who had been running ahead of them, barked sharply.
   'What's he saying?' said Victor.
   'He's saying', said Gaspode, 'that the tunnel's blocked.'
   'Oh, no!'
   'It was prob'ly your organ recital that did it.'
   'Really blocked?'
   Really blocked. Victor crawled over the heap. Several large roof slabs had come down, bringing tons of broken rock with them. He pulled and pushed at one or two pieces, but this produced only further falls.
   'Perhaps there's another way out?' he said. 'Perhaps you dogs could go and?'
   'Forget it, pal,' said Gaspode. 'Anyway, the only other way must be down those steps. They connect with the sea, right? All you have to do is swim down there and hope your lungs hold out.'
   Laddie barked.
   'Not you,' said Gaspode. 'I wasn't talking to you. Never volunteer for anything.'
   Victor continued his burrowing among the rocks.
   'I don't know,' he said, after a while, 'but it seems to me I can see a bit of light here. What do you think?'
   He heard Gaspode scramble over the stones.
   'Could be, could be,' said the dog grudgingly. 'Looks like a couple of blocks have wedged up and left a space.'
   'Big enough for someone small to crawl through?' said Victor encouragingly.
   'I knew you were going to say that,' said Gaspode.
   Victor heard the scrabble of paws on loose rock. Eventually a muffled voice said, 'It opens up a bit . . . tight squeeze here . . . blimey . . . '
   There was silence.
   'Gaspode?' said Victor apprehensively.
   'It's OK. I'm through. An' I can see the door.'
   'Great!'
   Victor felt the air move and there was a scratching noise. He reached out carefully and his hand met a ferociously hairy body.
   'Laddie's trying to follow you!'
   'He's too big. He'll get stuck!'
   There was a canine grunt, a frantic kicking which showered Victor with gravel, and a small bark of triumph.
   'O'corse, he's a bit skinnier'n me,' said Gaspode, after a while.
   'Now you two run and fetch help,' said Victor. 'Er. We'll wait here.'
   He heard them disappear into the distance. Laddie's faraway barking indicated that they had reached the outside air.
   Victor sat back.
   'Now all we have to do is wait,' he said.
   'We're in the hill, aren't we?' said Ginger's voice in the darkness.
   'Yes.'
   'How did we get here?'
   'I followed you.'
   'I told you to stop me.'
   'Yes, but then you tied me up.'
   'I did no such thing!'
   'You tied me up,' repeated Victor. 'And then you came here and opened the door and made a torch of some sort and went all the way into that - that place. I dread to think of what you'd have done if I hadn't woken you up.'
   There was a pause.
   'I really did all that?' said Ginger uncertainly.
   'You really did.'
   'But I don't remember any of it!'
   'I believe you. But you still did it.'
   'What - what was that place, anyway?'
   Victor shifted in the darkness, trying to make himself comfortable.
   'I don't know,' he confessed. 'At first I thought it was a temple. And it looked as though people used it for watching moving pictures.'
   'But it looked hundreds of years old!'
   'Thousands, I expect.'
   'But look, that can't be right,' said Ginger, in the small voice of one trying to be reasonable while madness is breaking down the door with a cleaver. 'The alchemists only got the idea a few months ago.'
   'Yes. It's something to think about.'
   He reached out and found her. Her body was ramrod stiff and flinched at his touch.
   'We're safe enough here,' he added. 'Gaspode will soon bring back some help. Don't you worry about that.'
   He tried not to think about the sea slapping at the stairs, and the many-legged things that scuttled over the midnight floor. He tried to put out of his mind the thought of octopi slithering silently over the seats in front of that living, shifting screen. He tried to forget the patrons who had been sitting in the darkness while, above them, centuries passed. Perhaps they were waiting for the lady to come around with the banged grains and hot sausages.
   The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues.
   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 . . . whummwhummwhummWHUMM 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 backwards. 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 moulderin' down there forever. Young Laddie was going to drop him in front of someone and
   look expectant and he'd have to explain. And afterwards 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 round 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 forwards 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 armoured 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 isjust 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 alter 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. Afterwards I might just have time to have a couple of hours' sleep.'
   'What do you mean, afterwards?'
   '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 any more, there isn't any way. It's buried. It's over. Thank goodness.'
 
   There's a bar like it in every town. It's dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don't address their words to one another and they don't listen, either. They just talk the hurt inside. It's a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits.It always does a brisk trade.
   On this dawn the mourners sat ranged along the counter, each in his cloud of gloom, each certain that he was the most unfortunate individual in the Whole world.
   'I created it,' said Silverfish, morosely. 'I thought it would be educational. It could broaden people's horizons. I didn't intend for it to be a, a, a show. With a thousand elephants!' he added nastily.
   'Yeah,' said Detritus. 'She don't know what she wants. I do what she want, then she say, that not right, you a troll with no finer feelin', you do not understand what a girl wants. She say, Girl want sticky things to eat in box with bow around, I make box with bow around, she open box, she scream, she say flayed horse not what she mean. She don't know what she wants.'
   'Yeah,' said a voice from under Silverfish's stool. 'It'd serve 'em all right if I went off an' joined the wolves.'
   'I mean, take this Blown Away thing,' said Silverfish. 'It's not even real. It's not like things really were. It's just lies. Anyone can tell lies.'
   'Yeah,' said Detritus. 'Like, she say, Girl want music under window, I play music under window, everyone in street wake up and shouting out of house, You bad troll, what you hitting rocks this time of night? And she never even wake up.'
   'Yeah,' said Silverfish.
   'Yeah,' said Detritus.
   'Yeah,' said the voice under the stool.
   The man who ran the bar was naturally cheerful. It wasn't hard to be cheerful, really, when your customers acted like lightning rods for any misery that happened to be floating around. He'd found that it wasn't a good idea to say things like, 'Never mind, look on the bright side,' because there never was one, or 'Cheer up, it may never happen,' because often it already had. All that was expected of him was to keep the drink coming.
   He was a little puzzled this morning, though. There seemed to be an extra person in the bar, quite apart from whoever it was speaking up from the floor. He kept getting the feeling that he was serving an extra drink, and even getting paid for it, and even talking to the mysterious purchaser. But he couldn't see him. In fact he wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, or who he was talking to.
   He wandered down to the far end of the bar.
   A glass slid towards him.
   SAME AGAIN, said a voice out of the shadows.
   'Er,' said the barman. 'Yeah. Sure. What was it?'
   ANYTHING.
   The barman filled it with rum. It was pulled away.
   The barman sought for something to say. For some reason, he was feeling terrified.
   'Don't see you in here, much,' he managed.
   I COME FOR THE ATMOSPHERE. SAME AGAIN.
   'Work in Holy Wood, do you?'said the barman, topping up the glass quickly. It vanished again.
   NOT FOR SOME TIME. SAME AGAIN.
   The barman hesitated. He was, at heart, a kindly soul. 'You don't think you've had enough, do you?' he said.
   I KNOW EXACTLY WHEN I'VE HAD ENOUGH.
   'Everyone says that, though.'
   I KNOW WHEN. EVERYONE'S HAD ENOUGH.
   There was something very odd about that voice. The barman wasn't quite sure that he was hearing it with his ears. 'Oh. Well, er,' he said. 'Same again?'
   NO. BUSY DAY TOMORROW. KEEP THE CHANGE.
   A handful of coins slid across the counter. They felt icy cold, and most of them were heavily corroded.
   'Oh, er?' the barman began.
   The door opened and shut, letting in a cold blast of air despite the warmth of the night.
   The barman wiped the top of the bar in a distracted way, carefully avoiding the coins.
   'You see some funny types, running a bar,' he muttered. A voice by his ear said, I FORGOT. A PACKET OF NUTS, PLEASE.
 
   Snow glittered on the rimward outriders of the Ramtop mountains, that great world-spanning range which, where it curves around the Circle Sea, forms a natural wall between Klatch and the great flat Sto plains.
   It was the home of rogue glaciers and prowling avalanches and high, silent fields of snow.
   And yetis. Yetis are a high-altitude species of troll, and quite unaware that eating people is out of fashion. Their view is: if it moves, eat it. If it doesn't, then wait for it to move. And then eat it.
   They'd been listening all day to the sounds. Echoes had bounced from peak to peak along the frozen ranges until, now, it was a steady dull rumble.
   'My cousin', said one of them, idly probing a hollow tooth with a claw, 'said they was enormous grey animals. Elephants.'
   'Bigger'n us?' said the other yeti.
   'Nearly as bigger'n us,' said the first yeti. 'Loads of them, he said. More than he could count.'
   The second yeti sniffed the wind and appeared to consider this.
   'Yeah, well,' he said, gloomily. 'Your cousin can't count above one.'
   'He said there was lots of big ones. Big fat grey elephants, all climbing, all roped together. Big and slow. All carrying lots of oograah.'
   Ah.
   The first yeti indicated the vast sloping snowfield.
   'Good and deep today,' he said. 'Nothing's gonna move fast in this, right? We lie down in the snow, they won't see us till they're right on top of us, we panic 'em, it's Big Eats time.' He waved his enormous paws in the air. 'Very heavy, my cousin said. They'll not move fast, you mark my words.'
   The other yeti shrugged.
   'Let's do it,' he said, against the sound of distant, terrified trumpeting.
   They lay down in the snow, their white hides turning them into two unsuspicious mounds. It was a technique that had worked time and again, and had been handed down from yeti to yeti for thousands of years, although it wasn't going to be handed much further.
   They waited.
   There was a distant bellowing as the herd approached.
   Eventually the first troll said, very slowly, because it had been working this out for a long time. 'What do you get, right, what do you get if, you cross . . . a mountain with a elephant?'
   It never got an answer.
   The yetis had been right.
   When five hundred crude two-elephant bobsleighs crested the ridge ten feet away at sixty miles an hour, their strapped on occupants trumpeting in panic, they never saw the yetis until they were right on top of them.
 
   Victor got only two hours' sleep but got up feeling remarkably refreshed and optimistic.
   It was all over. Things were going to be a whole lot better now. Ginger had been quite nice to him last night - well, a few hours ago -and whatever it was in the hill had been well and truly buried.
   You got that sort of thing sometimes, he thought, as he poured some water into the cracked basin and had a quick wash. Some wicked old king or wizard gets buried and their spirit creeps about, trying to put things right or something. Well-known effect. But now there must be a million tons of rock blocking the tunnel, and I can't see anyone doing any creeping through that.
   The unpleasantly alive screen surfaced briefly in his memory, but even that didn't seem so bad now. It had been dark in there, there had been lots of moving shadows, he had been wound up like a spring in any case, no wonder his eyes had played tricks on him. There had been the skeletons, too, but even they now lacked the power to terrify. Victor had heard of tribal leaders up on the cold plains who'd be buried with whole armies of mounted horsemen, so that their souls would live on in the next world. Maybe there was something like that
   here, once. Yes, it all seemed much less horrifying in the cold light of day.
   And that's just what it was. Cold light.
   The room was full of the kind of light you got when you woke up on a winter's morning and knew, by the light, that it had snowed. It was a light without shadows.
   He went to the window and looked out on a pale silver glow.
   Holy Wood had vanished.
   The visions of the night fountained up in his mind again, as the darkness returns when the light goes out.
   Hang on, hang on, he thought, fighting the panic. It's only fog. You're bound to get fog sometimes, this close to the sea. And it's glowing like that because the sun's out. There's nothing occult about fog. It's just fine drops of water floating in the air. That's all it is.
   He dragged his clothes on and threw open the door to the passage and almost tripped over Gaspode, who had been lying full length in front of the door like the world's most unwashed draught excluder.
   The little dog raised himself unsteadily on his front paws, fixed Victor with a yellow eye and said, 'I jus' want you to know, right, that I ain't lyin' in front of your door 'cos of any of this loyal-dog­protectin'-his-master nonsense, OK, it's jus' that when I got back here-'
   'Shut up, Gaspode.'
   Victor opened the outer door. Fog drifted in. It seemed to have an exploratory feel to it; it came in as if it had been waiting for just this opportunity.
   'Fog's just fog,' he said aloud. 'Come on. We're going to Ankh­-Morpork today, remember?'
   'My head,' said Gaspode, 'my head feels like the bottom of a cat's basket.'
   'You can sleep on the coach. I can sleep on the coach, if it comes to that.'
   He took a few steps into the silvery glow, and was almost immediately lost. Buildings loomed vaguely at him in the thick clammy air.
   'Gaspode?' he said hesitantly. Fog's just fog, he repeated. But it feels crowded. It feels like that, if it suddenly went away, I'd see lots of people watching me. From outside. And that's ridiculous, because I am outside, so there's nothing outside of outside. And it's flickering.
   'I expect you'll be wantin' me to lead the way,' said a smug voice by his knee.
   'It's very quiet, isn't it?' said Victor, trying to sound nonchalant. 'I expect it's the fog muffling everything.'
   'O'corse, maybe gharstely creatures have come up out o' the sea and murthered every mortal soul except us,' said Gaspode conversationally.
   'Shut up!'
   Something loomed up out of the brightness. As it got closer it got smaller, and the tentacles and antennae that Victor's imagination had been furnishing became the more-or-less ordinary arms and legs of Soll Dibbler.
   'Victor?' he said uncertainly.
 
   Soll's relief was visible. 'Can't see a thing in this stuff,' he said. 'We thought you'd got lost. Come on, it's nearly noon. We're more or less ready to go.'
   'I'm ready.'
   'Good.' Fog droplets had condensed on Soll's hair and clothing. 'Er,' he said. 'Where are we, exactly?'
   Victor turned around. His lodgings had been behind him.
   'The fog changes everything, doesn't it?' said Soll unhappily. 'Er, do you think your little dog can find his way to the studio? He seems quite bright.'
   'Growl, growl,' said Gaspode, and sat up and begged in what Victor at least recognized as a sarcastic way.
   'My word,' said Soll. 'It's as if he understands, isn't it?'
   Gaspode barked sharply. After a second or two there was a barrage of excited answering barks.
   'Of course, that'll be Laddie,' said Soll. 'What a clever dog!'
   Gaspode looked smug.
   'Mind you, that's Laddie in a nutshell,' said Soll, as they set off towards the barking. 'I expect he could teach your dog a few tricks, eh?'
   Victor didn't dare look down.
   After a few false turns the archway of Century of the Fruitbat passed overhead like a ghost. There were more people here; the site seemed to be filling up with lost wanderers who didn't know where else to go.
   There was a coach waiting outside Dibbler's office and Dibbler himself stood beside it, stamping his feet.
   'Come on, come on,' he said, 'I've sent Gaffer ahead with the film. Get in, the pair of you.'
   'Can we travel in this?' said Victor.
   'What's to go wrong?' said Dibbler. 'There's one road to Ankh­Morpork. Anyway, we'll probably be well out of this stuff when we leave the coast. I don't see why everyone's so nervy. Fog's fog.'
   'That's what I say,' said Victor, climbing into the coach.
   'It's just a mercy we finished Blown Away yesterday,' said Dibbler. 'All this is probably just something seasonal. Nothing to worry about at all.'
   'You said that before,' said Soll. 'You said it at least five times so far this morning.'
   Ginger was hunched on one seat, with Laddie lying underneath it. Victor slid along until he was next to her.
   'Did you get any sleep?' he whispered.
   'Just an hour or two, I think,' she said. 'Nothing happened. No dream or anything.'
   Victor relaxed.
   'Then it really is over,' he said. 'I wasn't sure.'
   'And the fog?' she demanded.
   'Sorry?' said Victor guiltily.
   'What's causing the fog?'
   'Well,' said Victor, 'as I understand it, when cool air passes over warm ground, water is precipitated out of?'
   'You know what I mean! It's not like normal fog at all! It - sort of drifts oddly,' she finished lamely. 'And you can nearly hear voices,' she added.
   'You can't nearly hear voices,' said Victor, in the hope that his own rational mind would believe him. 'You either hear them or you don't. Listen, we're both just tired. That's all it is. We've been working hard and, er, not getting much sleep, so it's understandable that we think we're nearly hearing and seeing things.'
   'Oh, so you're nearly seeing things, are you?' said Ginger triumphantly. 'And don't you go around using that calm and reasonable tone of voice on me,' she added. 'I hate it when people go around being calm and reasonable at me.'
   'I hope you two lovebirds aren't having a tiff?'
   Victor and Ginger stiffened. Dibbler clambered up into the opposite seat, and leered encouragingly at them. Soll followed. There was a slam as the driver shut the carriage door.
   'We'll stop for a meal when we're halfway,' said Dibbler,. as they lurched forward. He hesitated, and then sniffed suspiciously.
   'What's that smell?' he said.
   'I'm afraid my dog is under your seat,' said Victor.
   'Is it ill?' said Dibbler.
   'I'm afraid it always smells like that.'
   'Don't you think it would be a good idea to give it a bath?'
   A mutter on the edge of hearing said: 'Do you think it would be a good idea to have your feet bitten right orf?'
 
   Meanwhile, over Holy Wood, the fog thickened . . .
 
   The posters for Blown Away had been circulating in Ankh­Morpork for several days, and interest was running at fever pitch.
   They'd even got as far as the University this time. The Librarian had one pinned up in the fetid, book-lined nest he called home, [24] and various others were surreptitiously circulating among the wizards themselves.
   The artist had produced a masterpiece. Held in Victor's arms, against the background of the flaming city, Ginger was portrayed as not only showing nearly all she had but quite a lot of what she had not, strictly speaking, got.
   The effect on the wizards was everything that Dibbler could possibly have hoped for. In the Uncommon Room, the poster was passed from hand to shaking hand as if it might explode.
   'There's a girl who's got It,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. He was one of the fattest wizards, and so overstuffed that he seemed to be living up to his title. He looked as though horsehair should be leaking from frayed patches. People felt an overpowering urge to rummage down the side of him for loose change.
   'What's "It", Chair?' said another wizard.
   'Oh, you know. It. Oomph. The old way-hey-hey.'
   They watched him politely and expectantly, like people awaiting the punch line.
   'Good grief, do I have to spell it out?' he said.
   'He means sexual magnetism,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, happily. 'The lure of wanton soft bosoms and huge pulsating thighs, and the forbidden fruits of desire which?'
   A couple of wizards carefully moved their chairs away from him.
   'Ah, sex,' said the Dean of Pentacles, interrupting the Lecturer in Recent Runes in mid-sigh. 'Far too much of it these days, in my opinion.'
   'Oh, I don't know,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He looked wistful.
   The noise woke up Windle Poons, who had been dozing in his wheelchair by the fire. There was always a roaring fire in the Uncommon Room, summer or winter.
   'Wassat?' he said.
   The Dean leaned towards an ear.
   'I was saying', he said loudly, 'that we didn't know the meaning of the word "sex" when we were young.'
   'That's true. That's very true,' said Poons. He stared reflectively at the flames. 'Did we ever, mm, find out, do you remember?'
   There was a moment's silence.
   'Say what you like, she's a fine figure of a young woman,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes defiantly.
   'Several young women,' said the Dean.
   Windle Poons focused unsteadily on the poster.
   'Who's the young feller?' he said.
   'What young feller?' said several wizards.
   'He's in the middle of the picture,' said Poons. 'He's holding her in his arms.'
   They looked again. 'Oh, him,' said the Chair, dismissively.
   'Seems to me I've, mm, seen him before,' said Poons.
   'My dear Poons, I hope you haven't been sneaking off to the moving pictures,' said the Dean, grinning at the others. 'You know it's demeaning for a wizard to patronize the common entertainments. The Archchancellor would be very angry with us.'
   'Wassat?' said Poons, cupping a hand to his ear.
   'He does look a bit familiar, now that you mention it,' said the Dean, peering at the poster.
   The Lecturer in Recent Runes put his head on one side.
   'It's young Victor, isn't it?' he said.
   'Eh?' said Poons.
   'You know, you could be right,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'He had the same type of weedy moustache.'
   'Who's this?' said Poons.
   'But he was a student. He could have been a wizard,' said the Dean. 'Why would he want to go off and fondle young women?'
   'It's a Victor all right, but not our Victor. Says here he's "Victor Maraschino",' said the Chair.
   'Oh, that's just a click name,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes airily. 'They all have funny names like that. Delores De Syn and Blanche Languish and Rock Cliffe and so on . . . ' He realized that they were looking at him accusingly. 'Or so I'm told,' he added lamely. 'By the porter. He goes to see a click nearly every night.'
   'What're you on about?' said Poons, waving his walking stick in the air.
   'The cook goes every night, too,' said the Chair. 'So do most of the kitchen staff. You just try getting so much as a ham sandwich after nine o'clock.'
   'Just about everyone goes,' said the Lecturer. 'Except us.'
   One of the other wizards peered intently at the bottom of the poster.
   'It says here,' he said, ' "A Sarger of Passione and Broad Staircases in Ankh-Morpork's Turbelent Histry!" '
   'Ah. It's historical, then, is it?' said the Lecturer.
   'And it says "A Epic Love Story that Astoundede Goddes and Menne!!" '
   'Oh? Religious, as well.'
   'And it says, "Withe a 1,000 elephants!!!" '
   'Ah. Wildlife. Always very educational, wildlife,' said the Chair, looking speculatively at the Dean. The other wizards were doing so, too.
   'It seems to me', said the Lecturer, slowly, 'that no-one could possibly object to senior wizards viewing a work of historical, religious and, er, wildliforific interest.'
   'University rules are very specific,' said the Dean, but not very enthusiastically.
   'But surely only meant for the students,' said the Lecturer. 'I can quite understand that students shouldn't be allowed to watch something like this. They'd probably whistle and throw things at the screen. But it couldn't be seriously suggested, could it, that senior wizards such as ourselves shouldn't examine this popular phenomenon?'
   Poons' flailing walking stick caught the Dean sharply across the back of his legs.
   'I demand to know what everyone's talking about!' he snapped.
   'We don't see why senior wizards shouldn't be allowed to watch moving pictures!' bellowed the Chair.
   'Jolly good thing, too!' snapped Poons. 'Everyone likes to look at a pretty woman.'
   'No-one mentioned anything about any pretty women. We were far more interested in examining popular phenomenons,' said the Chair.
   'Call it what you like, mm?' cackled Windle Poons.
   'If people see wizards strolling out of the gate and going into a common moving-picture pit they'll lose all respect for the profession,' said the Dean. 'It's not even as if it's proper magic. It's just trickery.'
   'Y'know,' said one of the lesser wizards, thoughtfully, 'I've always wondered exactly what these wretched clicks are. Some kind of puppet show, are they? Are these people acting on a stage? Or a shadow play?'
   'See?' said the Chair. 'We're supposed to be wise, and we don't even know.'
   They all looked at the Dean.
   'Yes, but who wants to see a lot of young women dancing around in tights?' he said, hopelessly.

Ponder Stibbons, luckiest post-graduate wizard in the history of the University, sauntered happily towards the secret entrance over the wall. His otherwise uncrowded mind was pleasantly awash with thoughts of beer and maybe a visit to the clicks and maybe a Klatchian extra-hot curry to round off the evening, and then-
   It was the second worst moment in his life.
   They were all there. All the senior staff. Even the Dean. Even old Poons in his wheelchair. All standing there in the shadows, looking at him very sternly. Paranoia exploded its dark fireworks in the dustbin of his mind. They were all waiting just for him.
   He froze.
   The Dean spoke.
   'Oh. Oh. Oh. Er. Ah. Um. Um,' he began, and then seemed to catch up with his tongue. 'Oh. What's this? Forward this minute, that man!'
   Ponder hesitated. Then he ran for it.
   After a while the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, 'That was young Stibbons, wasn't it? Has he gone?'
   'I think so.'
   'He's bound to say something to someone.'
   'No he won't,' said the Dean.
   'Do you think he saw where we'd taken out the bricks?'
   'No, I was standing in front of the holes,' said the Chair.
   'Come on, then. Where were we?'
   'Look, I really think this is most unwise,' said the Dean.
   '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 wire, 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 rolled 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.
   'Action!' he directed.
 
   The carriage door swung open.
   The crowd gasped, like a mountain breathing in. Victor stepped out, reached up, took Ginger's hand . . .
   The crowd cheered, madly.
   The Lecturer in Recent Runes bit his fingers in sheer excitement. The Chair made a strange hoarse noise in the back of his throat.
   'You know you said what could a boy find to do that was better than being a wizard?' he said.
   'A true wizard should only be interested in one thing,' muttered the Dean. 'You know that.'
   'Oh, I know it.'
   'I was referring to magic.'
   The Chair peered at the advancing figures.
   'You know, that is young Victor. I'll swear it,' he said.
   'That's disgusting,' said the Dean. 'Fancy choosing to hang around young women when he could have been a wizard.'
   'Yeah. What a fool,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who was having trouble with his breathing.
   There was a sort of communal sigh.
   'You got to admit she's a bit of a corker, though,' said the Chair.
   'I'm an old man and if someone doesn't let me see very soon,' said a cracked voice behind them, 'someone's going to be feeling the wrong end of, mm, my stick, all right?'
   Two of the wizards edged aside and eased the wheelchair through. Once moving, it coasted right up to the edge of the carpet, bruising any knees or ankles that stood in its way.
   Poons' mouth fell open.
   Ginger gripped Victor's hand.
   'There's a group of fat old men in false beards waving at you over there,' she said through clenched and grinning teeth.
   'Yes, I think they're wizards,' Victor grinned back.
   'One of them keeps bouncing up and down in his wheelchair and shouting things like "Way-hey!" and "Whoopwhoop!" and "Hubba­hubba!" '
   'That's the oldest wizard in the world,' said Victor. He waved at a fat lady in the crowd, who fainted.
   'Good grief! What was he like fifty years ago?'
   'Well, for one thing he was eighty. [25] Don't blow him a kiss!'
   The crowd roared its approval.
   'He looks sweet.'
   'Just keep smiling and waving.'
   'Oh, gods, look at all those people waiting to be introduced to us!'
   'I can see 'em,' said Victor.
   'But they're important!'
   'Well, so are we. I guess.'
   'Why?'
   'Because we're us. It's like you said, that time on the beach. We're us, just as big as we can be. It's just what you wanted. We're-'
   He stopped.
   The troll at the door of the Odium gave him a hesitant salute. The thump as its hand smacked into its ear was quite audible above the roar of the crowd . . .
   Gaspode waddled at high speed down an alleyway, with Laddie trotting obediently at his heels. No-one had paid them any attention when they jumped, or in Gaspode's case plopped, down from the carriage.
   'All evening in some stuffy pit ain't my idea of a good night out,' muttered Gaspode. 'This is the big city. This ain't Holy Wood. You stick by me, pup, and you'll be all right. First stop, the back door of Harga's House of Ribs. They know me there. OK?'
   'Good boy Laddie!'
   'Yeah,' said Gaspode.
 
   'Look at what it's wearing!' said Victor.
   'Red velvet jacket with gold frogging,' said Ginger out of the corner of her mouth. 'So what? A pair of trousers would have been a good idea.'
   'Oh, gods,' breathed Victor.
   They stepped into the brightly-lit foyer of the Odium.
   Bezam had done his best. Trolls and dwarfs had worked overnight to finish it.
   There were red plush drapes, and pillars, and mirrors.
   Plump cherubs and miscellaneous fruit, all painted gold, seemed to cover every surface.
   It was like stepping into a box of very expensive chocolates.
   Or a nightmare. Victor half expected to hear the roar of the sea, to see drapes fall away with a smear of black slime.
   'Oh, gods,' he repeated.
   'What's the matter with you?' said Ginger, grinning fixedly at the line of civic dignitaries waiting to be introduced to them.
   'Wait and see,' said Victor hoarsely. 'It's Holy Wood! Holy Wood's been brought to Ankh-Morpork!'
   'Yes, but?'
   'Don't you remember anything? That night in the hill? Before you woke up?'
   'No. I told you.'
   'Wait and see,' Victor repeated. He glanced at a decorated easel against one wall.
   It said: 'Three showings a day!'
   And he thought of sand dunes, and ancient myths, and lobsters.
 
   Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that they often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all.
   The Archchancellor put an overflowing ashtray on a corner that threatened to roll up. He dragged a finger across the grubby surface.
   'Says here "Here be Dragons",' he said. 'Right inside the city, too. Odd, that.'
   'That's just Lady Ramkin's Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons,' said the Bursar, distractedly.
   'And here there's "Terra Incognita",' said the Archchancellor. 'Why's that?'
   The Bursar craned to see. 'Well, it's probably more interesting than putting in lots of cabbage farms.'
   'And there's "Here be Dragons" again.'
   'I think that's just a lie, in fact.'
   The Archchancellor's horny thumb continued in the direction they'd worked out. He brushed aside a couple of fly specks.
   'Nothing here at all,' he said, peering closer. 'Just the sea. And?' he squinted - 'The Holy Wood. Mean anything?'
   'Isn't that where the alchemists all went?' said the Bursar:
   'Oh, them.'
   'I suppose', said the Bursar slowly, 'they wouldn't be doing some kind of magic out there?'
   'Alchemists. Doing magic?'
   'Sorry. Ridiculous idea, I know. The porter told me they do some sort of, oh, shadow play or something. Or puppets. Or something similar. Pictures. Or something. I wasn't really paying attention. I mean . . . alchemists. Really! I mean, assassins . . . yes. Thieves . . . yes. Even merchants . . . merchants can be really devious, sometimes. But alchemists -show me a more unworldly, bumbling, well-meaning . . . '
   His voice trailed off as his ears caught up with his mouth.
   'They wouldn't dare, would they?' he said.
   'Would they?'
   The Bursar gave a hollow laugh. 'No-o-o. They wouldn't dare! They know we'd be down on them like a ton of bricks if they tried any magic round here . . . ' His voice trailed off again.
   'I'm sure they wouldn't,' he said.
   'I mean, even that far away,' he said.
   'They wouldn't dare,' he said.
   'Not magic. Surely not?' he said.
   'I've never trusted those grubby-handed bastards!' he said. 'They're not like us, you know. They've got no idea of proper dignity!
 
   The crowd surging around the box office was getting deeper and more angry by the minute.
   'Well, have you gone through all your pockets?' demanded the Chair.
   'Yes!' muttered the Dean.
   'Have another look, then.'
   As far as wizards were concerned, paying to get into anything was something that happened to other people. A pointy hat usually did nicely.
   While the Dean struggled, the Chair beamed madly at the young woman who was selling tickets. 'But I assure you, dear lady,' he said desperately, 'we are wizards.'
   'I can see your false beards,' said the girl, and sniffed. 'We get all sorts in here. How do I know you aren't three little boys in your dad's coat?'
   'Madam!'
   'I've got two dollars and fifteen pence,' said the Dean, picking the coins out of a handful of fluff and mysterious occult objects.
   'That's two in the stalls, then,' said the girl, grudgingly unreeling two tickets. The Chair scooped them up.
   'Then I'll take Windle in,' he said quickly, turning to the others. 'I'm afraid the rest of you had better get back to your honest trading.' He moved his eyebrows up and down suggestively.
   'I don't see why we should?' the Dean began.
   'Otherwise we'll be in arrears,' the Chair went on, mugging furiously. 'If you don't get back.'
   'See here, that was my money, and?' the Dean said, but the Lecturer in Recent Runes grabbed his arm.
   'Just come along,' he said, winked slowly and deliberately at the Chair. 'Time we were getting back.'
   'I don't see why-'the Dean gurgled, as they dragged him off.
 
   Grey clouds swirled in the Archchancellor's magic mirror. Many wizards had them, but not many ever bothered to use them. They were quirky and unreliable. They weren't even much good for shaving in.
   Ridcully was surprisingly adept at using one.
   'Stalkin',' he offered as a brief explanation. 'Couldn't be having with all that crawlin' around in damp bracken for hours, bigods. Help yourself to a drink, man. And one for me.'
   The clouds flickered.
   'Can't seem to see anything else,' he said. 'Odd, that. Just fog, flashing away.
   The Archchancellor coughed. It was beginning to dawn on the Bursar that, against all expectation, the Archchancellor was quite bright.
   'Ever seen one of these shadow moving puppet play picture things?' Ridcully asked.
   'The servants go,' said the Bursar. This, Ridcully decided, meant 'no'.
   'I think we should have a look,' he said.
   'Very well, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar, meekly.
 
   An inviolable rule about buildings for the showing of moving pictures, applicable throughout the multiverse, is that the ghastliness of the architecture around the back is inversely proportional to the gloriousness of the architecture in the front. At the front: pillars, arches, gold leaf, lights. At the back: weird ducts, mysterious prolapses of pipework, blank walls, fetid alleys.
   And the window to the lavatories.
   'There's no reason at all why we should have to do this,' moaned the Dean, as the wizards struggled in the darkness.
   'Shut up and keep pushing,' muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes, from the other side of the window.
   'We should have changed something into money,' said the Dean. 'Just a quick illusion. Where's the harm in that?'
   'It's called watering the currency,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You can get thrown into the scorpion pit for stuff' like that. Where am I putting my feet? Where am I putting my feet?'
   'You're fine,' said a wizard. 'Right, Dean. Up you come.'
   'Oh, dear,' moaned the Dean, as he was dragged through the narrow window into the unmentionable gloom beyond. 'No good will come of this.'
   'Just watch where you're putting your feet. Now see what you've done? Didn't I tell you to watch where you were putting your feet? Anyway, come on.'
   The wizards skulked, or in the Dean's case, squelched furtively through the backstage area and into the darkened, bustling auditorium, where Windle Poons was keeping some seats free by the simple expedient of waving his stick at anyone who came near them. They sidled in, tripping over one another's legs, and sat down.
   They stared at the shadowy grey rectangle at the other end of the hall.
   After a while the Chair said, 'Can't see what people see in it, myself.'
   'Has anyone done "Deformed Rabbit"?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
   'It hasn't started yet,' hissed the Dean.
   'I'm hungry,' complained Poons. 'I'm an old man, mm, and I'm hungry.'
   'Do you know what he did?' said the Chair. 'Do you know what the old fool did? When a young lady with a torch was showing us to our seats he pinched her on the . . . the fundament!'
   Poons sniggered. 'Hubba-hubba! Does your mother know you're out?' he cackled.
   'It's all too much for him,' the Chair complained. 'We never should have brought him.'
   'Do you realize we're missing our dinner?' said the Dean.
   The wizards fell silent at this. A stout woman edging past Poons' wheelchair suddenly started and looked around suspiciously and saw nothing except a dear old man, obviously fast asleep.
   'And it's goose on Tuesdays,' said the Dean.
   Poons opened one eye and honked the horn on his wheelchair.
   'Tantarabobs! How's your granny off for soap!' he muttered triumphantly.
   'See what I mean?' said the Chair. 'He doesn't know what century it is.'
   Poons turned a beady black eye on him.
   'Old I am, mm, and daft I may be,' he said, 'but I ain't goin' to be hungry.' He rummaged around in the unspeakable depths of the wheelchair and produced a greasy black bag. It jingled. 'I saw a young lady up the front a-selling of special moving-picture food,' he said.
   'You mean you had money all the time?' said the Dean. 'And you never told us?'
   'You never asked,' said Poons.
   The wizards stared hungrily at the bag.
   'They be having buttered banged grains and sausages in buns and chocolate things with things on and things,' said Poons. He gave them a toothless and crafty look. 'You can have some too, if you like,' he added graciously.
 
   The Dean ticked off his purchases. 'Now,' he said, 'that's six Patrician-sized tubs of banged grains with extra butter, eight sausages in a bun, a jumbo cup of fizzy drink, and a bag of chocolate-covered raisins.' He handed over the money.
   'Right,' said the Chair, gathering up the containers. 'Er. Do you think we should get something for the others?'
 
   In the picture-throwing room Bezam cursed as he threaded the huge reel of Blown Away into the picture-throwing box.
   A few feet away, in a roped-off section of the balcony, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, was also ill at ease.
   They were, he had to admit, a pleasant enough young couple. He just wasn't sure why he was sitting next to them, and why they were so important.
   He was used to important people, or at least to people who thought they were important. Wizards became important through high deeds of magic. Thieves became important for daring robberies and so, in a slightly different way, did merchants. Warriors became important through winning battles and staying alive. Assassins became important through skilful inhumations. There were many roads to prominence, but you could see them, you could work them out. They made some sort of sense.
   Whereas these two people had merely moved interestingly in front of this new-fangled moving-picture machinery. The rankest actor in the city's theatre was a mufti-skilled master of thespianism by comparison to them, but it wouldn't occur to anyone to line the streets and shout out his name.
   The Patrician had never visited the clicks before. As far as he could ascertain, Victor Maraschino was famous for a sort of smouldering look that had middle-aged ladies who should know better swooning in the aisles, and Miss De Syn's forte was acting languidly, slapping faces, and looking fantastic while lying among silken cushions.
   While he, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, ruled the city, preserved the city, loved the city, hated the city and had spent a lifetime in the service of the city . . .
   And, as the common people had been filing into the stalls, his razor-keen hearing had picked up the conversation of two of them:
   'Who's that up there?'
   'That's Victor Maraschino and Delores De Syn! Do you know nothing?'
   'I mean the tall guy in black.'
   'Oh, dunno who he is. Just some bigwig, I expect.'
   Yes, it was fascinating. You could become famous just for being, well, famous. It occurred to him that this was an extremely dangerous thing and he might probably have to have someone killed one day, although it would be with reluctance. [26] In the meantime, there was a kind of secondary glory that came from being in the company of the truly celebrated, and to his astonishment he was enjoying it.
   Besides he was also sitting next to Miss del Syn, and the envy of the rest of the audience was so palpable he could taste it, which was more than he could do with the bagful of fluffy white starchy things he'd been given to eat.
   On his other side, the horrible Dibbler man was explaining the mechanics of moving pictures in the utterly mistaken belief that the Patrician was listening to a word of it.
   There was a sudden roar of applause.
   The Patrician leaned sideways to Dibbler.
   'Why are all the lamps being turned down?' he said.
   'Ah, sir,' said Dibbler, 'that is so you can see the pictures better.'
   'Is it? One would imagine it would make the pictures harder to see,' said the Patrician.
   'It's not like that with the moving pictures, sir,' said Dibbler.
   'How very fascinating.'
   The Patrician leaned the other way, to Ginger and Victor. To his mild surprise they were looking extremely tense. He'd noticed that as soon as they had walked into the Odium. The boy looked at all the ridiculous ornamentation as if it was something dreadful, and when the girl had stepped into the pit proper he'd heard her gasp.
   They looked as though they were in shock.
   'I expect this is all perfectly commonplace to you,' he said.
   'No,' said Victor. 'Not really. We've never been in a proper picture pit before.'
   'Except once,' said Ginger grimly.
   'Yes. Except once.'
   'But, ah, you make moving pictures,' said the Patrician kindly.
   'Yes, but we never see them. We just see bits of them, when the handlemen are gluing it all together. The only clicks I've ever seen were on an old sheet outdoors,' said Victor.
   'So this is all new to you?' said the Patrician.
   'Not exactly,' said Victor, grey-faced.
   'Fascinating,' said the Patrician, and went back to not listening to Dibbler. He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him.
   Further along the row Soll leaned across to his uncle and dropped a small coil of film in his lap.
   'This belongs to you,' he said sweetly.
   'What is it?' said Dibbler.
   '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.
   There was a high, thin keening that stopped abruptly.
   The Ginger-Thing rocked in the heat. The gust of hot air lifted its huge skirts in billows around its waist and it stood, flickering and uncertain, as debris rained down around it.
   Then it turned awkwardly and lurched onward.
   Victor looked at Ginger, who was staring at the thinning clouds of smoke over the pile of rubble that had been the Odium.
   'That's wrong,' she was muttering. 'It doesn't happen like that. It never happens like that. Just when you think it's too late, they come galloping out of the smoke.' She turned dull eyes upon him. 'Don't they?' she pleaded.
   'That's in the clicks,' said Victor. 'This is reality.,
   'What's the difference?'
   The Chair grabbed Victor's shoulder and spun him around.
   'It's heading for the Library!' he repeated. 'You've got to stop it! If it gets there the magic'll make it invincible! We'll never beat it! It'll be able to bring others!'
   'You're wizards,' said Ginger. 'Why don't you stop it?'
   Victor shook his head. 'The Things like our magic,' he said. 'If you use it anywhere around them, it only makes them stronger. But I don't see what I can do . . . '
   His voice trailed off. The crowd was watching him expectantly.
   They weren't looking at him as if he was their only hope. They were looking at him is if he was their certainty.
   He heard a small child say, 'What happens now, Mum?'
   The fat woman holding it said, authoritatively, 'It's easy. He rushes up and stops it just at the last minute. Happens every time. Seen him do it before.'
   'I've never done it before!' said Victor.
   'Saw you do it,' said the woman smugly. 'In Sons of the Dessert. When this lady here', she gave a brief curtsey in the direction of Ginger, 'was on that horse what threw her over the cliff, and you galloped up and grabbed her at the last minute. Very impressive, I thought.'
   'That wasn't Sons of the Dessert,' said an elderly man pedantically, while he filled his pipe, 'that was Valley of the Trolls.'
   'It was Sons,' said a thin woman behind him. 'I should know, I watched it twenty-seven times.'
   'Yes, it was very good, wasn't it,' said the first woman. 'Every time I see a scene where she leaves him and he turns to her and gives her that look, I burst into tears?'
   'Excuse me, but that wasn't Sons of the Dessert,' said the man, speaking slowly and deliberately. 'You're thinking of the famous plaza scene in Burninge Passiones.'
   The fat woman took Ginger's unresisting hand and patted it.
   'You've got a good man there,' she said. 'The way he always rescues you every time. If I was being dragged off by mad trolls my ole man wouldn't say a word except to ask where I wanted my clothes sent.'
   'My husband wouldn't get out of his chair if I was being et by dragons,' said the thin woman. She gave Ginger a gentle prod. 'But you want to wear more clothes, miss. Next time you're taken off to be rescued, you insist they let you take a warm coat. I never see you on the screen without thinking to myself, she's temptin' a dose of 'flu, going around like that.'
   'Where's 'is sword?' said the child, kicking its mother on the shin.
   'I expect he'll be off to fetch it directly,' she said, giving Victor an encouraging smile.
   'Er. Yes,' he said. 'Come on, Ginger.' He grabbed her hand.
   'Give the lad room,' shouted the pipe smoker authoritatively.
   A space cleared around them. Ginger and Victor saw a thousand expectant faces watching them.
   'They think we're real,' moaned Ginger. 'No-one's doing anything because they think you're a hero, for gods' sake! And we can't do anything! This Thing is bigger than both of us!'
   Victor stared down at the damp cobblestones. I can probably remember some magic, he thought, but ordinary magic's no good against the Dungeon Dimensions. And I'm pretty sure real heroes don't hang around in the middle of cheering crowds. They get on with the job. Real heroes are like poor old Gaspode. No-one ever notices them until afterwards. That's the reality.'
   He raised his head slowly.
   Or is this the reality?
   The air crackled. There was another kind of magic. It was snapping wildly in the world now, like a broken film. If only he could grab it . . .
   Reality didn't have to be real. Maybe if conditions were right, it just had to be what people believed . . .
   'Stand back,' he whispered.
   'What're you going to do?' said Ginger.
   'Try some Holy Wood kind of magic.'
   'There's nothing magic about Holy Wood!'
   'I . . . think there is. A different sort. We've felt it. Magic's where you find it.'
   He took a few deep breaths, and let his mind unravel slowly. That was the secret. You did it, you just didn't think about it. You just let the instructions come from outside. It was just a job. You just felt the eye of the picture-box on you, and it was a different world, a world that was just a flickering silver square.
   That was the secret. The flicker.
   Ordinary magic just moved things around. It couldn't create a real thing that'd last for more than a second, because that took a lot of power.
   But Holy Wood easily created things over and over again, dozens of times a second. They didn't have to last for long. They just had to last for long enough.
   But you had to work Holy Wood magic by Holy Wood's rules . . .
   He extended a rock-steady hand towards the dark sky.
   'Lights!'
   There was a sheet of lightning that illuminated the whole city . . .
   'Picture box!'
   Gaffer spun the handle furiously.
   'Action!'
   No-one saw where the horse came from. It was just there, leaping over the heads of the crowd. It was white, with lots of impressive silver work on the bridle. Victor swung up into the saddle as it cantered past, then made it rear impressively so that it pawed the air. He drew a sword which hadn't been there a moment before.
   The sword and the horse flickered almost imperceptibly.
   Victor smiled. Light glinted off a tooth. Ting. A glint, but no sound; they hadn't invented sound, yet.
   Believe it. That was the way. Never stop believing. Fool the eye, fool the brain.
   Then he galloped between the cheering lines of spectators towards the University and the big scene.
   The handleman relaxed. Ginger tapped him on the shoulder.
   'If you stop turning that handle,' she said sweetly, 'I'll break your bloody neck.'
   'But he's nearly out of shot?'
   Ginger propelled him towards Windle Poons' ancient wheelchair and gave Windle a smile that made little clouds of wax boil out of his ears.
   'Excuse me,' she said, in a sultry voice that caused all the wizards to curl their toes up in their pointy shoes, 'but could we borrow you for a minute?'
'Way-hey! Draw it mild!

. . . whumm . . . whumm . . .
   Ponder Stibbons knew about the vase, of course. All the students had wandered along to have a look at it.
   He didn't pay it much attention as he sneaked along the corridor, attempting once again to make a bid for an evening's freedom .
   . . . whummwhummWHUMMWHUMMWHUMMMMwhu mm.
   All he had to do was cut across through the cloisters and . . .
   PLIB.
   All eight pottery elephants shot pellets at once. The resograph exploded, turning the roof into something like a pepper shaker.
   After a minute or two Ponder got up, very carefully. His hat was simply a collection of holes held together by thread. A piece had been taken out of one of his ears.
   'I only wanted a drink,' he said, muzzily. 'What's wrong with that?'
 
   The Librarian crouched on the dome of the Library, watching the crowds scurrying through the streets as the monstrous figure lurched nearer.
   He was slightly surprised to see it followed by some sort of spectral horse whose hooves made no sound on the cobbles.
   And that was followed by a three-wheeled bathchair that took the corner on only two of them, sparks streaming away behind it. It was loaded down with wizards, all shouting at the tops of their voices. Occasionally one of them would lose his grip and have to run behind until he could get up enough speed to leap on again.
   Three of them hadn't made it. That is, one of them had made it sufficiently to get a grip on the trailing leather cover, and the other two had made it just enough to grab the robe of the one in front, so that now, every time it took a bend, a tail of three wizards going 'whaaaaa' snapped wildly across the road behind it.
   There were also a number of civilians, but if anything they were shouting louder than the wizards.
   The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that was undoubtedly the 57th strangest. [28]
   Up here the could very clearly hear the voices.
   '-got to keep it turning! He can only make it work if you keep it turning! It's Holy Wood magic! He's making it work in the real world!' That was a girl's voice.
   'All right, but the imps get very fractious if?' That was a man's voice under extreme pressure.
   'Bugger the imps!'
   'How can he make a horse?' That was the Dean. The Librarian recognized the whine. 'That's high-grade magic!'
   'It's not a real horse, it's a moving-picture horse.' The girl again. 'You! You're slowing down!'
   'I'm not! I'm not! Look, I'm turning the handle, I'm turning the handle!'
   'He can't ride on a horse that isn't real!'
   'You're a magician and you really believe that?'
   'Wizard, actually.'
   'Well, whatever. This isn't your kind of magic.'
   The Librarian nodded, and then stopped listening. He had other things to do.
   The Thing was almost level with the Tower of Art, and would soon turn to head for the Library. Things always homed in on the nearest source of magic. They needed it.
   The Librarian had found a long iron pike in one of the University's mouldering storerooms. He held it carefully in one foot while he unfastened the rope he'd tied to the weathercock. It stretched all the way up to the top of the Tower; it had taken him all night to fix it up.
   He surveyed the city below, and then pounded his chest and roared:
   'AaaaAAAaaaAAA - hngh, hngh.'
   Maybe the pounding wasn't entirely necessary, he thought, while he waited for the buzzing noises and little flashing lights to go away.
   He gripped the pike in one hand, the rope in the other, and leapt.
   The most graphic way of describing the Librarian's swing across the buildings of Unseen University is to simply transcribe the noises made during the flight.
   First: 'AaaAAAaaaAAAaaa.' This is self-explanatory, and refers to the early part of the swing, when everything looked as if it was going well. .
   Then: 'Aaarghhhh.' This was the noise made as he missed the lurching Thing by several metres and was realizing that, if you have tied a rope to the top of a very high and extremely solid stone tower and are now swinging towards it, failing to hit something on the way is an error which you will regret for the rest of your truncated life.
   The rope completed its swing. There was a noise exactly like a rubber sack full of butter hitting a stone slab and this was followed, after a moment or two, by a very quiet 'oook'.
   The pike clanged away in the darkness. The Librarian spread-eagled himself starfish-like against the wall, ramming fingers and toes into every available crevice.
   He might have been able to climb his way down but the option never became available, because the Thing reached out a flickering hand and plucked him off the wall with a noise like a sink-plunger clearing a difficult blockage.
   It held him up to what was currently its face.
 
   The crowds flowed into the square in front of Unseen University, with the Dibblers to the fore.
   'Look at them,' Cut-me-own-Throat sighed. 'There must be thousands of them, and no-one's selling 'em anything.'
   The wheelchair slid to a halt in another spray of sparks.
   Victor was waiting for it, the spectral horse flickering under him. Not one horse, but a succession of horses. Not moving, but changing from frame to frame.
   Lightning flashed again.
   'What's he doing?' said the Chair.
   'Trying to keep It from getting to the Library,' said the Dean, peering through the rain that was beginning to thud on the cobbles. 'To stay alive in reality, Things need magic to hold themselves together. They've got no natural morphogenic field, you see, and-'
   'Do something! Blow it up with magic!' shouted Ginger. 'Oh, that poor monkey!'
   'We can't use magic! That's like pouring oil on a fire!' snapped the Dean. 'Besides . . . I don't know how you go about blowing up a fifty-foot woman. It's not the sort of thing I've ever been called upon to do.'
   'It's not a woman! It's . . . it's a film creature, you idiot! Do you think I'm really that big?' shouted Gin­ger. 'It's using Holy Wood! It's a Holy Wood monster! From film land!'
 
   'Steer, godsdamnit! Steer!'
   'I don't know how to!'
   'You just have to throw your weight about!'
   The Bursar gripped the broomstick nervously. It's all very well for you to say, he thought. You're used 'to it.
   They had been stepping out of the Great Hall when a giant woman had lurched past the gate with a gibbering ape in one hand. Now the Bursar was trying to control an antique broom out of the University museum while a madman behind him feverishly tried to load a crossbow.
   Airborne, the Archchancellor had said. It was absolutely essential that they were airborne.
   'Can't you keep it steady?' the Archchancellor demanded.
   'It's not made for two, Archchancellor!'
   'Can't damn well aim with you weavin' around the sky like this, man!'
   The contagious spirit of Holy Wood, whipping across the city like a steel hawser with one end suddenly cut free, sliced once again through the Archchancellor's mind.
   'We don't leave our people in there,' he muttered.
   'Apes, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar automatically.
 
   The Thing lurched towards Victor. It moved uneasily, fighting against the forces of reality that tugged at it. It flickered as it tried to maintain the shape it had climbed into the world with, so that images of Ginger alternated with glimpses of something that writhed and coiled.
   It needed magic.
   It eyed Victor and the sword, and if it was capable of something so sophisticated as knowledge, it knew that it was vulnerable.
   It turned, ant bore down on Ginger and the wizards.
   Who burst into flame.
 
   The Dean burned with a particularly pretty blue colour.
   'Don't worry, young lady,' said the Chair from the heart of his fire. 'It's illusion. It's not real.'
   'You're telling me?' said Ginger. 'Get on with it!'
   The wizards moved forward.
   Ginger heard footsteps behind her. It was the Dibblers.
   'Why's it frightened of the flame?' said Soll, and the Thing backed away from the advancing wizards. 'It's just illusion. It must be able to feel there's no heat.'
   Ginger shook her head. She looked like someone surfing on a curling wave of hysteria, perhaps because it is not every day you see giant images of yourself trampling down a city.
   'It's used Holy Wood magic,' she said. 'So it can't disobey Holy Wood rules. It can't feel, it can't hear. It can only see. What it sees is what is real. And what film fears is fire.'
   Now the giant Ginger was pressed against the tower.
   'Well, it's trapped,' said Dibbler. 'They've got it now.'
   The Thing blinked at the advancing flames.
   It turned. It reached up with its free hand. It began to climb the tower.
 
   Victor slid off his horse and stopped concentrating. It vanished.
   Despite his panic, he found room for a tiny gloat. If only wizards had gone to the clicks, they'd have known exactly how to do it.
   It was the critical fusion frequency. Even reality had one. If you could only make something exist for a tiny part of a second, that didn't mean you'd failed. It meant you had to keep on doing it.
   He scurried crabwise along the base of the tower, staring up at the climbing Thing, and tripped over something metallic. It turned out to be the Librarian's dropped pike. A little further off, the end of the rope trailed in a puddle.
   He stared at them for a moment, then used the pike to chop a few feet off the rope to make a crude shoulder strap for the weapon.
   He grabbed the rope and gave it an experimental tug, and then . . .
   There was an unpleasant lack of resistance to the pull. He threw himself backwards just before hundreds of feet of sodden rope smacked damply on to the paving.
   He looked around desperately for another route to the top.
 
   The Dibblers watched open mouthed as the Thing climbed. It wasn't moving very fast, and occasionally had to wedge the gibbering Librarian into a handy buttress while it found the next handhold, but it was moving up.
   'Oh, yes. Yes. Yes,' breathed Soll. 'What a picture! Pure kinema!'
   'A giant woman carrying a screaming ape up a tall building,' sighed Dibbler. 'And we're not even having to pay wages!'
   'Yeah,' said Soll.
   'Yeah . . . ' said Dibbler. There was a tiny note of uncertainty in his voice.
   Soll looked wistful.
   'Yeah,' he repeated. 'Er.'
   'I know what you mean,' said Dibbler slowly.
   'It's . . . I mean, it's really great, but . . . well, I can't help feeling . . . '
   'Yeah. There's something wrong,' said Dibbler flatly.
   'Not wrong,' said Soll desperately. 'Not exactly wrong. Not wrong as such. Just missing . . . ' He stopped, at a loss for words.
   He sighed. And Dibbler sighed.
   Overhead, the thunder rolled.
   And out of the sky came a broomstick with two scream­ing wizards on it
 
   Victor pushed open the door at the base of the Tower of Art.
   It was dark inside, and he could hear water dripping down from the distant roof.
   The tower was said to be the oldest building in the world. It certainly felt like it. It wasn't used for anything now, and the internal floors had long ago rotted away, so that all that was left inside was the staircase.
   It was a spiral, made of huge slabs set into the wall itself. Some of them were missing. It'd be a dangerous climb, even in daylight.
   In the dark . . . not a chance.
   The door slammed open behind him and Ginger strode in, dragging the handleman behind her.
   'Well?' she said. 'Hurry up. You've got to save that poor monkey.'
   'Ape,' said Victor absently.
   'Whatever.'
   'It's too dark,' Victor muttered.
   'It's never too dark in the clicks,' said Ginger flatly. 'Think about it.'
   She nudged the handleman, who said, very quickly, 'She's right. 'S never dark in the clicks. Stands to reason. You've got to have enough light to see the dark by.'
   Victor glanced up at the gloom, and then back at Ginger.
   'Listen!' he said urgently. 'If I . . . if something goes wrong, tell the wizards about the . . . you know. The pit. The Things will be trying to break through there, too.'
   'I'm not going back there!'
   There was a roll of thunder.
   'Get going!' shouted Ginger, white-faced. 'Lights! Pic­ture box! Action! And stuff like that!'
   Victor gritted his teeth and ran for it. There was enough light to give the darkness a shape, and he leapt from stair to stair with the magic of Holy Wood reciting its litany in his head.
   'There has to be enough light', he panted, 'to see the darkness.'
   He staggered onwards.
   'And in Holy Wood I never run out of strength,' he added, hoping his legs would believe him.
   That took care of the next turn.
   'And in Holy Wood I have to be in the nick of time,' he shouted. He leaned against the wall for a moment and fought for breath.
   'Always in the nick of time,' he muttered.
   He started to run upwards again.
   The slabs passed under his feet like a dream, like squares of movie clicking through the picture box.
   And he'd arrive in the nick of time. Thousands of people knew he would.
   If heroes didn't arrive in the nick of time, where was the sense in anything? And?
   There was no slab in front of his falling foot.
   His other foot was already arching to leave the step.
   He focused every ounce of energy into one tendon­twanging push, felt his toes hit the edge of the next slab up, flung himself forward and then jumped again because it was that or snap a leg.
   'This is nuts.'
   He ran onward, straining to look for more missing slabs.
   'Always in the nick of time,' he muttered.
   So maybe he could stop and have a rest? He could
   still make it in the nick of time. That's what the nick of time meant . . .
   No. You had to play fair.
   There was another missing slab ahead.
   He stared blankly at the space.
   There was going to be a whole tower of this.
   He concentrated briefly and jumped on to nothing. The nothing became a slab for the fraction of a second he needed to jump off on to the next one.
   He grinned in the dark, and a sparkle of light twin­kled on a tooth.
   Nothing created by Holy Wood magic was real for long.
   But you could make it real for long enough.
   Hooray for Holy Wood.
 
   The Thing was flickering more slowly now, spending less time looking like a giant version of Ginger and more looking like the contents of a taxidermist's sink trap. It pulled its dripping bulk over the top of the tower and lay there. Air whistled through its breathing tubes. Under its tentacles the rock crumbled, as the magic drained away and was replaced by the hungry appetite of Time.
   It was bewildered. Where were the others? It was alone and besieged in a strange place . . .
   . . . and now it was angry. It extended an eye and glared at the ape struggling in what had been a hand. Thunder rocked the tower. Rain cascaded off the stones.
   The Thing extended a pseudopod and wrapped it around the Librarian's waist . . .
   . . . and became aware of another figure, ridiculously small, erupting from the stairwell.
 
   Victor unslung the pike from his back. What did you do now? When you were dealing with humans you had options. You could say 'Hey, put down that ape and come on out with your feelers up.' You could . . .
   A claw-tipped tentacle as thick as his arm slammed down on the stones, cracking them.
   He leapt backwards and brought the pike around in a backhanded swipe that drew a deep yellow slash in the Thing's hide. It howled and shuffled around with unpleasant speed to flail more tentacles at him.
   Shape, thought Victor. They've got no real shape in this world. It has to spend too much time holding itself together. The more it has to concentrate on me, the less it can concentrate on not falling to bits.
   An assortment of mismatched eyes extended from vari­ous bits of the Thing.
   As they focused on Victor they crinkled with angry bloodshot veins.
   OK, he thought. I've got its attention. Now what?
   He stabbed at a snapping claw and jumped with his knees up under his chin when a mercifully unidentifiable pseudopod tried to chop his legs from under him.
   Another tentacle snaked out.
   An arrow passed through it with the same effect as a steel pellet shooting through a sock filled with custard. The Thing screeched.
   The broomstick barrelled over the top of the tower, with the Archchancellor feverishly reloading.
   Victor heard a distant, 'If it bleeds, we can kill it!' followed by 'What do you mean, we?'
   Victor pressed forward, hacking at anything that looked vulnerable. The creature changed form, trying to thicken its hide or grow a carapace wherever the pike fell, but it wasn't fast enough. They're right. It can be killed, Victor thought. It may take all day, but it's not invincible ?. . .
   And then there was Ginger in front of him, her ex­pression filled with pain and shock.
   He hesitated.
   An arrow thudded into what might have been its body.
   'Tally ho! Take us round again, Bursar!'
   The image dissolved. The Thing screeched, threw the Librarian aside like a doll, and lurched at Victor with all tentacles at full stretch. One of them knocked him over, three others dragged the pike from his hands, and then the Thing was rearing up, like a leech, raising the iron pike to knock its tormentors out of the sky.
   Victor raised himself up on his elbows and concentrated.
   Just real for long enough.
   The lightning bolt outlined the Thing in blue-and-white light. After the thunderclap the creature swayed drunk­enly, with little tendrils of electricity coruscating across it and making whizzing noises. A few limbs were smoking.
   It was trying to hold itself together against the forces roaring around inside its body. It skewed wildly across the stone, making odd little mewling noises, and then, with one good eye glaring balefully at Victor, stepped off into space.
   Victor pushed himself up on his hands and knees and dragged himself to the edge.
   Even on the way down the Thing wasn't giving up. It was trying frantic evolutions of feather and hide and membranes in an attempt to find something that would survive the fall ?
   Time slowed. The air took on a purple haze. Death swung his scythe.
   YOU BELONG DEAD, he said.
   - and then there was a sound like wet laundry hitting a wall and, it turned out, the only thing that could survive the fall was a corpse.
 
   The crowd moved closer in the pouring rain.
   Now that all the control was gone the Thing was dissolving into its component molecules, that were washing into the gutters and down to the river and out into the cold depths of the sea.
   'It's deliquescing,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
   'Is it?' said the Chair. 'I thought that it was some kind of shop.'
   He prodded it with his foot.
   'Careful,' said the Dean. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie.'
   The Chair studied it.
   'It looks bloody dead to me,' he said. 'Hang on - there's something moving?'
   One of the outflung tentacles slumped aside.
   'Did it land on someone?' said the Dean.
   It did. They pulled out the twitching body of Ponder Stibbons, and prodded and patted him in a well-meant way until he opened his eyes.
   'What happened?' he said.
   'A fifty-foot monster fell on you,' said the Dean, simply. 'Are you, er, all right?'
   'I only wanted one drink,' Ponder muttered. 'I'd have come straight back, honest.'
   'What are you talking about, lad?'
   Ponder ignored him. He got up, swaying a bit, and staggered off towards the Great Hall, and never, ever, went out again.
   'Funny chap,' said the Chair. They looked back down at the Thing, which had nearly dissolved.
   ' 'Twas beauty killed the beast,' said the Dean, who liked to say things like that.
   'No it wasn't,' said the Chair. 'It was it splatting into the ground like that.'
 
   The Librarian sat up and rubbed his head.
   The book was thrust in front of his eyes.
   'Read it!' said Victor.
   'Oook.'
   'Please!'
   The ape opened it at a page of pictograms. He blinked at them for a moment. Then his finger went to the bottom right-­hand comer of the page and began to trace the signs from right to left.
   Right to left.
   That was how you were supposed to read them, Victor thought.
   Which meant that he'd been exactly wrong all the time.
 
   Gaffer the handleman panned his picture box along the row of wizards and then down to the rapidly-dissolving monster.
   The handle stopped turning. He raised his head and gave everyone a bright smile.
   'If you could just bunch up tighter, gentlemen?' he said. The wizards obediently shuffled even closer. 'The light's not very good.'
   Soll wrote down, 'Wizards Joking at the Corepse, take 3,' on a piece of card.
   'Shame you didn't get the fall,' he said, the edges of his voice deckled with hysteria. 'Maybe we can stunt it up or something?'
   Ginger sat in the shadows by the tower, hugging her knees and trying to stop trembling. Among the shapes the Thing had tried just before the end had been her own.
   She pulled herself upright and, holding on to the rough stonework to steady herself, walked uncertainly away. She wasn't certain what the future held, but coffee would be involved if she had any say in the matter.
   As she passed the tower door there was a clattering of feet and Victor staggered out, with the Librarian swinging along behind him.
   He opened his mouth to speak, and started to gasp for air. The orang-utan pushed him aside and grabbed Ginger firmly by the arm. It was a warm, soft grip, but with just a hint that, if he really ever needed to, the Librarian could easily turn any arm into a tube of jelly with bits in it.
   'Gook!'
   'Look, it's over,' said Ginger. 'The monster's dead. That's how things end, OK? And now I'm going to get something to drink.'
   'Oook!'
   'Oook yourself.'
   Victor raised his head.
   'It's . . . not over,' he said.
   'It is for me. I just saw myself turn into a . . . a THING with tentacles. A Thing like that has a bit of an effect on a girl, you know.'
   'It's not important!' Victor managed. 'We got it wrong! Look, they'll keep on coming now! You've got to come back to Holy Wood! They'll be coming through there, too!'
   'Gook!' the Librarian agreed, jabbing the book with a purple fingernail.
   'Well, they can do it without me,' said Ginger.
   'No, they can't! I mean, they will anyway! But you can stop them! Oh, stop looking at me like that!' He nudged the Librarian. 'Go on, tell her,' he said.
   'Gook,' said the Librarian, patiently. 'Oook.'
   'I can't understand him!' wailed Ginger.
   Victor's brow wrinkled. 'You can't?'
   'It's all just monkey noises to me!'
   Victor's eyes swivelled sideways. 'Er?'
   The Librarian stood like a small prehistoric statue for a moment. Then he took Ginger's hand, very gently, and patted it.
   'Oook,' he said, graciously.
   'Sorry,' said Ginger.
   'Listen!' said Victor. 'I got it wrong! You weren't trying to help Them, you were trying to stop them! I read it the wrong way round! It's not a man behind a gate, it's a man in front of a gate! And a man in front of a gate', he took a deep breath, 'is a guard!'
   'Yes, but we can't get to Holy Wood! It's miles away!'
   Victor shrugged. 'Go and get the handleman,' he said.
 
   The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odour.
   The grey light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest.
   They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been.
   It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road towards Holy Wood and was soon out of sight.
   A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box.
   It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming.
   Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn.
   One of the farmers nudged the other.
   'Oi've seen this on the clicks,' he said. 'It's always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens.'
   His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe.
   'It'd be a sight worth seeing that,' he said.
   'Sure would.'
   ' 'Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage.'
   There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly towards the road.
   The farmers looked at one another.
   'Well, dang me,' said one of them.
 
   Holy Wood was a glow on the horizon. The earth tremors were stronger now.
   The flickering chariot came out of a stand of trees and paused at the top of the incline that led down to the town.
   Mist wreathed Holy Wood. From out of it spears of light criss­crossed the sky.
   'We're too late?' said Ginger hopefully.
   'Almost too late,' said Victor.
   'Oook,' said the Librarian. His fingernail raced back and forth as he read the ancient pictograms - right to left, right to left.
   'I knew there was something not right,' Victor had said. 'That sleeping statue . . . the guard. The old priests sang songs and did ceremonies to keep him awake. They remembered Holy Wood as best they could.'
   'But I don't know anything about a guard!'
   'Yes, you do. Like, deep down inside.'
   'Gook,' said the Librarian, tapping a page. 'Oook!'
   'He says you're probably descended from the original High Priestess. He thinks everyone in Holy Wood is descended from . . . you see . . . I mean, the first time the Things broke through the entire city was destroyed and the survivors fled everywhere, you see, but everyone has this way of remembering even things that happened to their ancestors, I mean, it's like there's this great big pool of memory and we're linked, up to it and when it all started happening again we were all called to the place, and you tried to put it right, only it was weak so it couldn't get through to you unless you were asleep?'
   He trailed off helplessly.
   ' "Oook"?' said Ginger suspiciously. 'You got all this from "oook"?'
   'Well, not just one,' Victor admitted.
   'I've never heard such a lot of?' Ginger began, and stopped. A hand softer than the softest leather was pushed into hers. She looked around into a fare that compared badly to a deflated football.
   'Oook,' said the Librarian.
   Ginger locked eyes with him for a moment.
   Then she said, 'But I've never felt the least bit like a high priestess . . . '
   'That dream you told me about,' said Victor. 'It sounded pretty high priestessy to me. Very . . . very-'
   'Gook.'
   'Sacerdotal. Yeah,' Victor translated.
   'It's just a dream,' said Ginger nervously. 'I've, dreamed it occasionally as far back as I can remember.'
   'Oook oook.'
   'What'd he say?' said Ginger.
   'He says that's probably a lot further back than you think.'
   Ahead of them Holy Wood glittered like frost, like a city made of congealed starlight.
   'Victor?' said Ginger.
   'Yes?'
   'Where is everybody?'
   Victor looked down the road. Where there should have been people, refugees, desperately fleeing . . . was nothing.
   Just silence, and the light.
   'Where are they?' she repeated.
   He looked at her expression.
   'But the tunnel fell down!' he said, saying it loudly in the hope that this would make it true. 'It was all sealed off!'
   'It wouldn't take trolls long to clear a way through, though,' said Ginger.
   Victor thought about the - the Cthinema. And the first house, which had been going on for thousands of years. And all the people he knew, sitting there, for another thousand years. While overhead the stars changed.
   'Of course, they might just be . . . well . . . somewhere else,' he lied.
   'But they're not,' said Ginger. 'We both know that.'
   Victor stared helplessly at the city of lights.
   'Why us?' he said. 'Why is it happening to us?'
   'Everything has to happen to someone,' said Ginger.
   Victor shrugged. 'And you only get one chance,' he said. 'Right?'
   'Just when you need to save the world, there's a world for you to save,' said Ginger.
   'Yeah,' said Victor. 'Lucky old us.'
 

The two farmers peered in through the barn doors. Stacks of cabbage waited stolidly in the gloom.
   'Told you it were cabbage,' said one of them. 'Knew it weren't chickens. Oi knows a cabbage when I sees one, and of believes what I sees.'
   From far above came voices, getting closer:
   'For gods' sake, man, can't you steer?'
   'Not with you throwing your weight about, Archchancellor!'
   'Where the hell are we? Can't see a thing in this fog!'
   'I'll just see if I can point it ? don't lean over like that! Don't lean over like that! I said don't lean?!'
   The farmers dived sideways as the broomstick corkscrewed through the open doorway and disappeared among the ranks of cabbage. There was a distant, brassica'd squelch.
   Eventually a muffled voice said: 'You leaned.'
   'Nonsense. A fine mess you got me into. What is it?'
   'Cabbages, Archchancellor.'
   'Some kind of vegetable?'
   'Yes.'
   'Can't stand vegetables. Thins the blood.'
   There was a pause. Then the farmers heard the other voice say: 'Well, I'm very sorry about that, you bloodthirsty overbearing tub of lard.'
   There was another pause.
   Then: 'Can I sack you, Bursar?'
   'No, Archchancellor. I've got tenure.'
   'In that case, help me out and let's go and find a drink.'
   The farmers crept away.
   'Dang me,' said the believer in cabbages. 'They're wizards. Best not to meddle in the affairs of danged wizards.'
   'Yeah,' said the other farmer. 'Er . . . what does dang mean? Exactly?'
 
   It was the time of the silence.
   Nothing moved in Holy Wood except the light. It flickered slowly. Holy Wood light, Victor thought.
   There was a feeling of dreadful expectation. If a movie set was a dream waiting to be made real, then the town was one step further up the scale - a real place waiting for something new, something that ordinary language couldn't define.
   ',' he said, and stopped.
   '-' said Ginger.
   '?'
   '!'
   They stared at one another for a moment. Then Victor grabbed her hand and dragged her into the nearest building, which turned out to be the commissary.
   The scene inside was indescribable and remained so until Victor found the blackboard that was used for what was laughingly referred to as the menu.
   He picked up the chalk.
   'I'M TALKING BUT I CANT HERE ME,' he wrote, and solemnly handed her the chalk.
   'ME TO. Y?'
   Victor tossed the chalk up and down thoughtfully, and then wrote: 'I THINK BCOS WE NEVER INVENTED SOUND MOVIES. IF WE DIDNT HAVE IMPS THAT COULD PAINT IN COLOR MAYBE THERE WOULD JUST BE BLAK AND WHITE HERE TOO.' .
   They stared at the scene around them. There were untouched or half-eaten meals on almost every table. This wasn't particularly unusual at Borgle's, but normally they were accompanied by people complaining bitterly.
   Ginger delicately dipped a finger in the nearest plate.
   'Still warm,' she mouthed.
   'Let's go,' said Victor quietly, pointing at the door.
   She tried to say something complicated, scowled at his blank expression, and wrote: 'WE SHUOD WAIT FOR
   THE WIZARDS.'
   Victor stood frozen for a moment. Then his lips shaped a phrase that Ginger would not admit to knowing and he made a dash for the outside.
   The overloaded chair was already bowling along the street with smoke billowing from its axles. He jumped up and down in front of it, waving his arms.
   A long silent conversation went on. There was a lot of chalking on the nearest wall. Finally Ginger couldn't contain her impatience any longer and hurried over.
   'YOUVE GOT TO STAY AWAY. IF THEY BRAKE THRU YOU WIL BE A MEAL.'
   'SO WILL YOU.' This was neater handwriting; it was the Dean's.
   Victor wrote: 'XCEPT I THINK I KNOW WHAT'S HAPNEN. ANYWAY, YOU WILL BE NEEDED IF IT GOES WRONG.'
   He nodded at the Dean and hurried back to Ginger and the Librarian. He gave the ape a worried look. Technically the Librarian was a wizard - at least, when he'd been human he was a wizard, so presumably he still was. On the other hand, he was also an ape, and a handy man to have around in an emergency. He decided to ask it.
   'Come on,' he mouthed.
   It was easy enough to find the way to the hill. Where there had been a path there was now a broad trail, poignantly scattered with the debris of hurried passage. A sandal. A discarded picture box. A trailing red feather boa.
   The door into the hill had been torn off its hinges. A dull glow came from the tunnel. Victor shrugged and marched inside.
   The debris hadn't been cleared right away, but it had been pushed aside and flattened down to allow the crowd to go through. The ceiling hadn't fallen in. This wasn't because of the debris. It was because of Detritus.
   He was holding it up.
   Nearly up. He was already down on one knee.
   Victor and the Librarian stacked boulders around the troll until he could let the weight off his shoulders. He groaned, or at least looked as if he'd groaned, and toppled forward. Ginger helped him up.
   'What happened?' she mouthed at him.
   '??' Detritus looked puzzled at the absence of his voice and tried to squint at his mouth.
   Victor sighed. He had a vision of the Holy Wood people stampeding blindly along the passage, the trolls scrabbling at the blockage. Since Detritus was the toughest, naturally he'd play a major part. And since the only function he normally used his brain for was to stop the top of his head falling in, equally naturally he'd be the one left holding up the weight on the hill. Victor imagined him calling out, unheard, as the rest of them hurried by.
   He wondered whether to write him a cheery message, but in Detritus' case this was almost certainly a waste of time. Anyway, the troll wasn't about to hang around. He loped off along the tunnel with a grim look on his face, concentrating fiercely on some private errand of his own. His trailing knuckles left two furrows in the dust.
   The passage opened out into the cavern which was, Victor now realized, a sort of ante-chamber to the pit itself. Maybe thousands of years ago supplicants had flocked out here to buy . . . what? Consecrated sausages, maybe, and the holy banged grains.
   Spectral light filled it now. It was still full of damp and ancient mould wherever Victor looked. Yet wherever he didn't look, at the edges of his vision, he kept getting the feeling that the place was decorated like a palace with red plush draperies and baroque gold decorations. He kept turning his head sharply, trying to trap the ghostly, glittering image.
   He met the Librarian's worried frown, and chalked on the cave wall:
   'REALITIES MERGING?'
   The Librarian nodded.
   Victor winced, and led his little group of Holy Wood guerrillas -at least, two guerrillas and one orang-utan up the worn steps into the pit.
   Victor realized later that it was Detritus who saved them all.
   They took one look at the swirling images on the obscene screen and . . .
   Dream. Reality. Believe.
   Await . . .
   . . . and Detritus tried to walk through them. Images designed to trap and throw a glamour over any sapient mind bounced off the back of his rocky skull and came right out again. He paid them no attention at all. He had other fish to fry. [29]
   Being trampled almost to death by a preoccupied troll is almost the ideal cure for a person confused about what is real and what isn't. Reality is something walking heavily up your spine.
   Victor hauled himself back on to his feet, pulled the others towards him, pointed to the flickering, bulging oblong at the other end of the hall, and mouthed 'Don't look!'
   They nodded.
   Ginger gripped his arm tightly as they inched their way down from the aisle.
   All of Holy Wood was there. They saw faces they knew ranged along the seats, immobile in the shivering light, every expression nailed in place.
   He felt her nails dig into his skin. There was Rock, and Morry, and Fruntkin from the commissary, and Mrs Cosmopilite the wardrobe lady. There was Silverfish, and a row of other alchemists. There were the carpenters, and the handlemen, and all the stars that never were, all the people who had held horses or cleaned tables or stood in queues and waited and waited for their big chance . . .
   Lobsters, thought Victor. There was a great city and lots of people died and now it's the home of lobsters.
   The Librarian pointed.
   Detritus had found Ruby in the very front row, and was trying to pull her out of her seat. Whichever way he moved her, her eyes swivelled towards the dancing images. When he stood in front of her she blinked for a moment, scowled, and knocked him aside.
   Then her expression slid back to vacuity and she settled into her seat.
   Victor laid' a hand on his shoulder and made what he hoped would be soothing, beckoning motions. Detritus' face was a fresco of misery.
   The suit of armour was still on the slab behind the screen, in front of the tarnished disc.
   They stared at it, hopelessly.
   Victor tentatively drew his finger through the dust. It left a streak of shiny yellow metal. He looked at Ginger.
   'What now?' he mouthed.
   She shrugged. It meant - how should I know? I was asleep, before.
   The screen above them was bulging very fatly now. How long before the Things came through?
   Victor tried shaking the - well, call it a man. A very tall man. In seamless golden armour. Might as well try to shake awake a mountain.
   He reached over and tried to free the sword, although it was longer than he was and, even if he could lift it, would be as manoeuvrable as a barge.
   It was gripped fast.
   The Librarian was trying to read the book by the light of the screen, feverishly thumbing through the pages.
   Victor chalked on the side of the slab: 'CAN'T YOU THINK OF ANYTHIN AT AL?'
   Ginger took the chalk: 'NO! YOU WOKE ME UP!! I DON'T NO HOW TO DO IT!!! WHATEVR IT IS!!!.'
   The fourth exclamation mark only failed to be completed because the chalk snapped. There was a distant 'ping' as part of it hit something.
   Victor took the other half out of her hand.
   'MAYBE YOU SHOUD HAV A LOOK AT THE BOOK,'
   he suggested.
   The Librarian nodded and tried to put the book in her hands. She waved him off for a moment, and stood staring into the shadows.
   She took the book.
   She looked from the ape to the troll to the man.
   Then she pulled her arm back and hurled the book away from her.
   This time it wasn't a ping. It was a definite, low and very resonant 'booong'. Something could make a noise in the place with no sound.
   Victor skidded around the slab.
   The big disc was a gong. He tapped it. Bits of corrosion fell off, but the metal shivered under the light blow and gave out another tinny rumble under his touch. Below it, now that his eyes were instinctively seeing it out, was a six-foot metal pole with a padded ball at one end.
   He grabbed it and heaved it off its supports. Or tried to, at least. It was rusted solidly in place.
   The Librarian positioned himself at the other end, caught Victor's eye, and this time they hauled on it together. Flakes of rust dug into Victor's hands.
   It was immovable. The gong hammer and its supports had been turned by time and salt air into one single metallic whole.
   Then time seemed to slow and became a series of frozen events in the flickering light, like moving pictures sliding through the box.
   Click.
   Detritus reached down over Victor's head, grasped the hammer by its middle, and lifted it up, tearing the rusted supports out of the very rock.
   Click.
   They threw themselves flat as he gripped it in both hands, flexed his muscles, and took a swing at the gong.
   Click.
   Click.
   Click.
   Click.
   Caught in a series of tableaux, Detritus appeared to move instantly into . . . click . . . different but connected positions as he pivoted on one horny foot, the hammer head . . . click . . . making a bright arc in the darkness.
   Click.
   The impact knocked the gong so far backwards that the chains broke, and it slammed against the wall of the pit.
   Sound came back quickly and in vast quantities, as though it had been dammed up somewhere and had then suddenly been released, to slosh joyfully back into the world and drown every eardrum.
   Booong.
   Click.
 
   The giant figure on the slab sat upright slowly, dust cascading off it in slow streams. Underneath it was gold, untarnished by the years.
   It moved slowly but deliberately, as though propelled by clockwork. One hand grasped the giant sword. The other gripped the edge of the slab to steady the figure as its long, tapering legs swung down to the ground.
   It stood upright, ten feet tall, rested its hands on the hilt of the sword, and halted. It didn't look very much different from its posture on the slab, but this time there was an air of alertness about it, a sense of huge energies idly ticking over. It paid no attention at all to the four who had awoken it.
   The screen stopped its wild pulsating. Something had sensed the presence of the golden man and was focusing its attention on him. Which meant that it was temporarily removing it from elsewhere.
   There was a stirring from the audience. They were waking up.
   Victor grabbed the Librarian and Detritus.
   'You two,' he said. 'Get everyone out of here. Get them out of here fast.'
   'Gook!'
   The Holy Wood people didn't need much encouragement. Seeing the shapes on the screen clearly, without the cushion of hypnosis, was enough to make anything brainier than Detritus have a sudden urge to be a long way away. Victor could see them struggling over the seats, fighting to escape from the pit.
   Ginger started to follow them. Victor stopped her.
   'Not yet,' he said, quietly. 'Not us.'
   'What do you mean?' she demanded.
   He shook his head. 'We have to be the last ones out,' he said. 'It's all part of Holy Wood. You can use the magic, but it uses you, too. Besides, don't you want to see how it all ends?'
   'I had rather hoped to see how it all ends from a long way off.'
   'OK, look at it another way . . . it's going to take a couple of minutes for them to get out. We might as well have a clear run at it, eh?'
   They could hear shouts in the ante-chamber as the former audience piled into the tunnel.
   Victor walked up the suddenly-deserted aisle to the back row and sat down in a vacated seat.
   'I hope old Detritus is bright enough not to be left holding up the ceiling again,' he said.
   Ginger sighed, and sat down next to him.
   Victor put his feet up on the seat in front of him and fumbled in his pockets.
   'Would you like', he said, 'some banged grains?'
   The golden man was just visible under the screen. His head was bowed.
   'You know, he does look like my Uncle Oswald,' said Ginger.
   The screen went dark with such suddenness the inrushing blackness almost made a noise.
   This must have happened many times before, Victor thought. In dozens of universes. The wild idea arrives, and somehow the golden man, the Oswald or whatever, arises. To control it. Or something. Maybe wherever Holy Wood goes, Osric follows.
   A point of purple light appeared, and grew faster very quickly. Victor felt that he was dropping down a tunnel.
   The golden figure raised its head.
   The light twisted, and took on random features. The screen wasn't there any more. This was something entering the world. It wasn't an image at the other end of the hall, but something frantically trying to exist.
   The golden man drew back his sword.
   Victor shook Ginger's shoulder.
   'I think this is where we leave,' he said.
   .The sword connected. Golden light filled the cave.
   Victor and Ginger were already racing down the steps of the ante­chamber when the first shock hit. They stared at the tunnel's empty mouth.
   'Not on your life,' said Ginger. 'I'm not going to be trapped in there again.'
   The flooded stairs lay in front of them. Of course, they must connect to the sea, and really it was only a few yards away, but the water was inky black and, in Gaspode's word, boding.
   'Can you swim?' said Victor. One of the cavern's rotting pillars crashed down behind them. From the pit itself came a terrible wailing.
   'Not very well,' said Ginger.
   'Me neither,' he said. The commotion behind them was getting worse.
   'Still,' he said, taking her hand. 'We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.'
   They jumped.
 
   Victor surfaced fifty yards offshore, lungs bursting. Ginger erupted a few feet away. They trod water, and watched.
   The earth trembled.
   Holy Wood Town, built of unseasoned wood and short nails, was shaking apart. Houses folded down on themselves slowly, like packs of cards. Here and there small explosions indicated that stores of octo-cellulose were involved. Canvas cities and plaster mountains slid into ruin.
   And between it all, dodging the falling timber but letting nothing else stand in their way, the people of Holy Wood ran for their lives. Handlemen, actors, alchemists, imps, trolls, dwarfs - they ran like ants whose heap is ablaze, heads down, legs pumping, eyes fixed furiously on the horizon.
   A whole section of hill caved in.
   For a moment Victor thought he saw the huge golden figure of Osbert, as insubstantial as dust motes in a shaft of light, rise over Holy Wood and bring its sword around in one all-embracing sweep.
   Then it was gone.