Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

'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.

ean 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.