Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

There was another feeling of sticky coldness. He surfaced again.

'I can bite your leg if you like,' said Gaspode.

'I, er, I-' Victor began.

'I can bite it quite hard,' Gaspode added. 'Just say the word.'

'No, er-'

'Something's boding, just like I said. Bode, bode, bode. Laddie's tried barkin' until he's hoarse and no-one's listenin'. So I fort I'd try the old cold nose technique. Never fails.'

Victor looked around him. The rest of the audience were staring at the screen as if they were prepared to remain in their seats for . . . for . . .

. . . forever.

When he lifted up his arms from his seat, sparks crackled from his fingers, and there was a greasy feel to the air that even student wizards soon learned to associate with a vast accumulation of magical potential. And there was fog in the pit. It was ridiculous, but there it was, covering the floor like a pale silver tide.

He shook Ginger's shoulder. He waved a hand in front of her eyes. He shouted in her ear.

Then he tried the Patrician, and Dibbler. They yielded to pressure but swayed gently back into position again.

'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.

In the 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.

It snapped. The box jerked backwards. Film went on unreeling in glittering coils which lunged at him briefly and then slithered down to the floor.