Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

' . . . but do they listen! Not them. Bet if I had a glossy coat an' ran aroun' yappin' they'd listen all right . . . '

Dibbler opened his mouth to speak, and then frowned and raised a hand.

'Where's that muttering coming from?' he said.

' . . . prob'ly saved the whole world for 'em, by rights I'd get a statchoo put up to me nose but no, oh no, not for you Mr Gaspode, on account of you not bein' the right kinda person, so . . . '

The whine stopped. The crowd shuffled aside, revealing a small bowlegged grey dog, which looked up impassively at Dibbler.

'Bark?' it said, innocently.

Events always moved fast in Holy Wood, but the work on Blown Away sped forward like a comet. The other Fruitbat clicks were halted. So were most of the others in the town, because Dibbler was hiring actors and handlemen at twice what anyone else would pay.

And a sort of Ankh-Morpork rose among the dunes. It would have been cheaper, Soll complained, to have risked the wrath of the wizards, sneaked some filming in Ankh-Morpork itself, and then slipped someone a fistful of dollars to put a match to the place.

Dibbler disagreed.

'Apart from anything else,' he declared, 'it wouldn't look right.'

'But it's the real Ankh-Morpork, Uncle,' said Soll. 'It's got to look exactly right. How can it not look right?'

'Ankh-Morpork doesn't look all that genuine, you know,' said Dibbler thoughtfully.

'Of course it's bloody genuine!' snapped Soll, the bonds of .kinship stretching to snapping point. 'It's really there! It's really itself! You can't make it any more genuine! It's as genuine as it can get!'

Dibbler took his cigar out of his mouth.

'No, it isn't,' he said. 'You'll see.'

Ginger turned up around lunchtime, looking so pale that even Dibbler didn't shout at her. She kept glaring at Gaspode, who tried to stay out of her way.

Dibbler was preoccupied, anyway. He was in his office, explaining The Plot.

It was basically quite simple, running on the familiar lines of Boy Meets Girl, Girl Meets Another Boy, Boy Loses Girl, except that on this occasion there was a civil war in the middle of it . . .

de trotted up to Ginger and pushed his nose against her leg.

The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.

Ginger blinked. The glow faded from her eyes. She looked down, her expression of horror turning to astonishment and then, when she saw Gaspode leering up at her, back to a more mundane horror.

' 'Allo,' Gaspode said, ingratiatingly.

She backed away, bringing her hands up protectively. Sand dribbled between her fingers. Her eyes flickered towards it in bewilderment, and then back to Gaspode.

'Gods, that's horrible,' she said. 'What's going on? Why am I here?' Her hands flew to her mouth. 'Oh no,' she whispered, 'not again!'

She stared at him for a moment, glared up at the doorway, then turned, hitched up her nightdress, and hurried back to town through the morning mists.

Gaspode struggled after her, aware of anger in the air, desperately trying to put as much space as possible between the door and himself.

Sunnink dreadful in there, he thought. Prob'ly tentacled fings that rips your face off. I mean, when you finds mysterious doors in old hills, stands to reason wot comes out ain't going to be pleased to see you. Evil creatures wot Man shouldn't wot of, and here's one dog wot don't want to wot of them either. Why couldn't she . . .

He grumbled on towards the town.

Behind him the door moved the tiniest fraction of an inch.

Holy Wood was awake long before Victor, and the hammering from Century of the Fruitbat echoed around the sky. Waggonloads of timber were queuing up to enter the archway. He was buffeted and pushed aside by a hurrying stream of plasterers and carpenters. Inside, crowds of workmen scurried around the arguing figures of Silverfish and C.M.O.T. Dibbler.