Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

'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.