Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

'I demand to know what everyone's talking about!' he snapped.

'We don't see why senior wizards shouldn't be allowed to watch moving pictures!' bellowed the Chair.

'Jolly good thing, too!' snapped Poons. 'Everyone likes to look at a pretty woman.'

'No-one mentioned anything about any pretty women. We were far more interested in examining popular phenomenons,' said the Chair.

'Call it what you like, mm?' cackled Windle Poons.

'If people see wizards strolling out of the gate and going into a common moving-picture pit they'll lose all respect for the profession,' said the Dean. 'It's not even as if it's proper magic. It's just trickery.'

'Y'know,' said one of the lesser wizards, thoughtfully, 'I've always wondered exactly what these wretched clicks are. Some kind of puppet show, are they? Are these people acting on a stage? Or a shadow play?'

'See?' said the Chair. 'We're supposed to be wise, and we don't even know.'

They all looked at the Dean.

'Yes, but who wants to see a lot of young women dancing around in tights?' he said, hopelessly.

Ponder Stibbons, luckiest post-graduate wizard in the history of the University, sauntered happily towards the secret entrance over the wall. His otherwise uncrowded mind was pleasantly awash with thoughts of beer and maybe a visit to the clicks and maybe a Klatchian extra-hot curry to round off the evening, and then-

It was the second worst moment in his life.

They were all there. All the senior staff. Even the Dean. Even old Poons in his wheelchair. All standing there in the shadows, looking at him very sternly. Paranoia exploded its dark fireworks in the dustbin of his mind. They were all waiting just for him.

He froze.

The Dean spoke.

'Oh. Oh. Oh. Er. Ah. Um. Um,' he began, and then seemed to catch up with his tongue. 'Oh. What's this? Forward this minute, that man!'

Ponder hesitated. Then he ran for it.

After a while the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, 'That was young Stibbons, wasn't it? Has he gone?'

'I think so.'

'He's bound to say something to someone.'

'No he won't,' said the Dean.

'Do you think he saw where we'd taken out the bricks?'

'No, I was standing in front of the holes,' said the Chair.

'Come on, then. Where were we?'

'Look, I really think this is most unwise,' said the Dean.

'Just shut up, old chap, and hold this brick.'

'Very well, but tell me this; how do you propose to get the wheelchair over?'

They looked at Poons' wheelchair.

There are wheelchairs which are lightweight and built to let their owners function fully and independently in modern society. To the thing inhabited by Poons, they were as gazelles to a hippopotamus. Poona was well aware of his function in modern society, and as far as he was concerned it was to be pushed everywhere and generally pandered to.

It was wide and long and steered by means of a little front wheel and a long cast-iron handle. Cast iron, in fact, featured largely in its construction. Bits of baroque ironwork adorned its frame, which seemed to have been made of iron drainpipes welded together. The rear wheels did not in fact have blades affixed to them, but looked as though these were optional extras. There were various dread levers which only Poons knew the purpose of. There was a huge oilskin hood that could be erected in a matter of hours to protect its occupant from showers, storms and, probably, meteor strikes and falling buildings. By way of fight relief, the front handle was adorned with a selection of trumpets, hooters and whistles, with which Poons was wont to announce his progress around the passages and quadrangles of the University. For the fact was that although the wheelchair needed all the efforts of one strong man to get it moving it had, once actually locomotive, a sort of ponderous unstoppability; it may have had brakes, but Windle Poons had never bothered to find out. Staff and students alike knew that the only hope of survival, if they heard a honk or a blast at close range, was to flatten themselves against the nearest wall while the dreaded conveyance rattled by.