Moving pictures

Soll looked hopefully at Victor.

'I'm almost certain sharks didn't fight in the Civil War,' said Victor.

'You sure?'

'I'm sure people would have noticed,' said Victor.

'They'd have got trampled by the elephants,' muttered Soll.

'Yeah,' said Dibbler, sadly. 'It was just a thought. Don't know why I said it, really.'

He stared at nothing for a while, and then shook his head briskly.

A shark, Victor thought. All the little golden fishes of your own thoughts are swimming away happily, and then the water moves and this great shark of a thought comes in from outside. As if someone's doing our thinking for us.

'You just don't know how to behave,' Victor told Gaspode, when they were alone. 'I could hear you grumbling under the chair the whole time.'

'I might not know how to behave, but at least I don't go mooning around over some girl who's letting dretful Creatures of the Night into the world,' said Gaspode.

'I should hope not,' said Victor, and then, 'What do you mean?'

'Aha! Now he listens! Your girlfriend?'

'She's not my girlfriend!'

'Would?be girlfriend,' said Gaspode, 'is goin' out every night and tryin' to open that door in the hill. She tried it again last night, after you'd gone. I saw her. I stopped her,' he added, defiantly. 'Not that I expect any credit, of course. There's some dretful in there, an' she's lettin' it out. No wonder she's always late and tired in the mornings, what with spendin' the whole night diggin'.'

'How do you know they're dreadful?'said Victor weakly.

'Put it like this,' said Gaspode. 'If something's shoved in a cave under a hill behind great big doors, it's not 'cos people want it to come out every night to wash the dishes, is it? 'Corse,' he added charitably, 'I'm not sayin' she knows she's doing it. Prob'ly they've got a grip of her weak an' feeble cat?lovin' female mind and are twisting it to their evil will.'

'You do talk a lot of crap sometimes,' said Victor, but he didn't sound very convincing even to himself.

'Ask her, then,' said the dog, smugly.

'I will!'

'Right!'

Exactly how, though? thought Victor, as they trudged out into the sunshine. Excuse me, miss, my dog says that you . . . no. I say, Ginger, I understand that you're going out and . . . no. Hey, Ginj, how come my dog saw . . . no.

Perhaps he should just start up a conversation and wait until it got around naturally to monstrosities from Beyond the Void.

But it would have to wait, because of the row that was going on.

It was over the third major part in Blown Away. Victor was of course the dashing but dangerous hero, Ginger was the only possible choice for the female lead, but the second male role ?the dull but dutiful one ? was causing trouble.

Victor had never seen anyone stamp their foot in anger before. He'd always thought it was something they did only in books. But Ginger was doing it.

'Because I'd look an idiot, that's why!' she was saying.

Soll, who was by now feeling like a lightning rod on a stormy day, waved his hand frantically.