Moving Pictures (30 page)

“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 Ankh-Morpork 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 toward 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 mustache.”

“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 toward 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. Poons 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 light 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, mm, 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 around 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.