Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

'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.