The Thing screamed. What semblance there still was of Victor left it, and something like an explosion in an aquarium twisted among the flames. A tentacle whipped out and grabbed Gaspode by the leg.
He turned and tried to bite it.
Laddie ricocheted back down the stricken hall and launched himself at the flailing arm. It recoiled, knocking him over and spinning Gaspode across the floor.
The little dog sat up, took a few wobbling steps, and fell over.
'Bloody leg's been and gone,' he muttered. Laddie gave him a sorrowful look. Flames crackled around the film cans. .
'Go on, get out of here, you stupid mutt,' said Gaspode. 'The whole thing's goin' to go up in a minute. No! Don't pick me up! Put me down! You haven't got time-'
The walls of the Odium expanded with apparent slowness, every plank and stone maintaining its position relative to all the others but floating out by itself.
Then Time caught up with events.
Victor threw himself flat on his face.
Boom.
An orange fireball lifted the roof and billowed up into the foggy sky. Wreckage smashed against the walls of other houses. A red-hot film can scythed over the heads of the recumbent wizards, making a menacing wipwipwip noise, and exploded against a distant wall.
There was a high, thin keening that stopped abruptly.
The Ginger-Thing rocked in the heat. The gust of hot air lifted its huge skirts in billows around its waist and it stood, flickering and uncertain, as debris rained down around it.
Then it turned awkwardly and lurched onward.
Victor looked at Ginger, who was staring at the thinning clouds of smoke over the pile of rubble that had been the Odium.
'That's wrong,' she was muttering. 'It doesn't happen like that. It never happens like that. Just when you think it's too late, they come galloping out of the smoke.' She turned dull eyes upon him. 'Don't they?' she pleaded.
'That's in the clicks,' said Victor. 'This is reality.,
'What's the difference?'
The Chair grabbed Victor's shoulder and spun him around.
e background, he could hear Gaspode saying, 'I expect I've saved the day, right?'
The brain normally echoes with the shouts of various inconsequential thoughts seeking attention. It takes a real emergency to get them to shut up. It was happening now. One clear thought that had been trying to make itself heard for a long time rang out in the silence.
Supposing there was somewhere where reality was a little thinner than usual? And supposing you did something there that weakened reality even more. Books wouldn't do it. Even ordinary theatre wouldn't do it, because in your heart you knew it was just people in funny clothes on a stage. But Holy Wood went straight from the eye into the brain. In your heart you thought it was real. The clicks would do it.
That was what was under Holy Wood Hill. The people of the old city had used the hole in reality for entertainment. And then the Things had found them.
And now people were doing it again. It was like learning to juggle lighted torches in a firework factory. And the Things had been waiting . . .
But why was it still happening? He'd stopped Ginger.
The film clicked on. There seemed to be a fog around the picture throwing box, blurring its outline.
He snatched at the spinning handle. It resisted for a moment, and then broke. He gently pushed Bezam off his chair, picked it up and hit the throwing box with it. The chair exploded into splinters. He opened the cage at the back and took out the salamanders, and still the film danced on the distant screen.
The building shook again.
You only get one chance, he thought, and then you die.
He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. Then he reached out for the flashing line of the film itself, and gripped it.