Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

It was two hours after, midnight.

It had them now, and poured joyfully out of the hill, poured its glitter into the world.

Holy Wood dreams . . .

It dreams for everyone.

In the hot breathless darkness of a clapboard shack, Ginger Withel dreamed of red carpets and cheering crowds. And a grating. She kept coming back to a grating, in the dream, where a rush of warm air blew up her skirts . . .

In the not much cooler darkness of a marginally more expensive shack, Silverfish the moving picturesmith dreamed of cheering crowds, and someone giving him a prize for the best moving picture ever made. It was a great big statue.

Out in the sand dunes Rock and Morry dozed fitfully, because trolls are night creatures by nature and sleeping in darkness bruised the instincts of eons. They dreamed of mountains.

Down on the beach, under the stars, Victor dreamed of pounding hooves, flowing robes, pirate ships, sword fights, chandeliers . . .

On the next dune, Gaspode the Wonder Dog slept with one eye open and dreamed of wolves.

But Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was not dreaming, because he was not asleep.

It had been a long ride to Ankh-Morpork and he preferred selling horses to riding them, but he was there now.

The storms that so carefully avoided Holy Wood didn't worry about Ankh-Morpork, and it was pouring with rain. That didn't stop the city's night life, though - it just made it damper.

There was nothing you couldn't buy in Ankh-Morpork, even in the middle of the night. Dibbler had a lot of things to buy. He needed posters painted. He needed all sorts of things. Many of them involved ideas he'd had to invent in his head on the long ride, and now had to explain very carefully to other people. And he had to explain it fast.

The rain was a solid curtain when he finally staggered out into the grey light of dawn. The gutters overflowed. Along the rooftops, repulsive gargoyles threw up expertly over passers-by although, since it was now five a.m., the crowds had thinned out a bit.

Throat took a deep breath of the thick city air. Real air. You would have to go a long way to find air that was realer than Ankh-Morpork air. You could tell just by breathing it that other people had been doing the same thing for thousands of years.

hink', said Mrs Whitlow, 'that it should be put haway somewhere out of 'arm's way, if it's hall the hsame to you.'

'Yes, yes, yes, of course,' said the Bursar hurriedly. Staff were hard to keep at Unseen University.

'Get rid of it,' said the Archchancellor.

The Bursar was horrified. 'Oh, no, sir,' he said. 'We never throw things out. Besides, it is probably quite valuable.'

'Hmm,' said Ridcully. 'Valuable?'

'Possibly an important historical artifact, Master.'

'Shove it in my study, then. I said the place needs bright'nin' up. It'll be one of them conversation pieces, right? Got to go now. Got to see a man about trainin' a gryphon. Good day, ladies-'

'Er, Archchancellor, I wonder if you could just sign-' the Bursar began, but to a closing door.

No-one asked Ksandra which of the pottery elephants had spat the ball, and the direction wouldn't have meant anything to them anyway.

That afternoon a couple of porters moved the universe's only working resograph[5] into the Archchancellor's study.

No-one had found a way to add sound to moving pictures, but there was a sound that was particularly associated with Holy Wood. It was the sound of nails being hammered.

Holy Wood had gone critical. New houses, new streets, new neighbourhoods, appeared overnight. And, in those areas where the hastily-educated alchemical apprentices were not yet fully alongside the trickier stages of making octo-cellulose, disappeared even faster. Not that it made a lot of difference. Barely would the smoke have cleared before someone was hammering again.

And Holy Wood grew by fission. All you needed was a steadyhanded, non-smoking lad who could read alchemical signs, a handleman, a sackful of demons and lots of sunshine. Oh, and some people. But there were plenty of those. If you couldn't breed demons or mix chemicals or turn a handle rhythmically, you could always hold horses or wait on tables and look interesting while you hoped. Or, if all else failed, hammer nails. Building after rickety building skirted the ancient hill, their thin planks already curling and bleaching in the pitiless sun, but there was already a pressing need for more.

Because Holy Wood was calling. More people arrived every day. They didn't come to be ostlers, or tavern wenches, or short-order carpenters. They came to make movies.

And they didn't know why.