Grey clouds swirled in the Archchancellor's magic mirror. Many wizards had them, but not many ever bothered to use them. They were quirky and unreliable. They weren't even much good for shaving in.
Ridcully was surprisingly adept at using one.
'Stalkin',' he offered as a brief explanation. 'Couldn't be having with all that crawlin' around in damp bracken for hours, bigods. Help yourself to a drink, man. And one for me.'
The clouds flickered.
'Can't seem to see anything else,' he said. 'Odd, that. Just fog, flashing away.
The Archchancellor coughed. It was beginning to dawn on the Bursar that, against all expectation, the Archchancellor was quite bright.
'Ever seen one of these shadow moving puppet play picture things?' Ridcully asked.
'The servants go,' said the Bursar. This, Ridcully decided, meant 'no'.
'I think we should have a look,' he said.
'Very well, Archchancellor,' said the Bursar, meekly.
An inviolable rule about buildings for the showing of moving pictures, applicable throughout the multiverse, is that the ghastliness of the architecture around the back is inversely proportional to the gloriousness of the architecture in the front. At the front: pillars, arches, gold leaf, lights. At the back: weird ducts, mysterious prolapses of pipework, blank walls, fetid alleys.
And the window to the lavatories.
'There's no reason at all why we should have to do this,' moaned the Dean, as the wizards struggled in the darkness.
'Shut up and keep pushing,' muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes, from the other side of the window.
'We should have changed something into money,' said the Dean. 'Just a quick illusion. Where's the harm in that?'
'It's called watering the currency,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'You can get thrown into the scorpion pit for stuff' like that. Where am I putting my feet? Where am I putting my feet?'
'You're fine,' said a wizard. 'Right, Dean. Up you come.'
'Oh, dear,' moaned the Dean, as he was dragged through the narrow window into the unmentionable gloom beyond. 'No good will come of this.'
'Just watch where you're putting your feet. Now see what you've done? Didn't I tell you to watch where you were putting your feet? Anyway, come on.'
The wizards skulked, or in the Dean's case, squelched furtively through the backstage area and into the darkened, bustling auditorium, where Windle Poons was keeping some seats free by the simple expedient of waving his stick at anyone who came near them. They sidled in, tripping over one another's legs, and sat down.
They stared at the shadowy grey rectangle at the other end of the hall.
After a while the Chair said, 'Can't see what people see in it, myself.'
'Has anyone done 'Deformed Rabbit'?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'It hasn't started yet,' hissed the Dean.
'I'm hungry,' complained Poons. 'I'm an old man, mm, and I'm hungry.'
'Do you know what he did?' said the Chair. 'Do you know what the old fool did? When a young lady with a torch was showing us to our seats he pinched her on the . . . the fundament!'
Poons sniggered. 'Hubba-hubba! Does your mother know you're out?' he cackled.
Вы читаете Moving pictures
