Moving pictures

Gaffer gave Victor another jaundiced look.

'String,' he said gloomily. 'It all works by string. You'd be amazed how things'd fall to bits around here,' he said, 'if it weren't for me and my ball of string.'

There was a sudden commotion from the box round his neck. He thumped it with the flat of his hand.

'You lot can cut that out,' he said. He nodded at Victor.

'They gets fractious if their routine is upset,' he said.

'What's in the box?' said Victor.

Gaffer winked at Silverfish. 'I bet you'd like to know,' he said.

Victor remembered the caged things he'd seen in the shed.

'They sound like common demons,' he said cautiously.

Gaffer gave him an approving look, such as might be given to a stupid dog who had just done a rather clever trick.

'Yeah, that's right,' he conceded.

'But how do you stop them escaping?' said Victor.

Gaffer leered. 'Amazin' stuff, string,' he said.

Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was one of those rare people with the ability to think in straight lines.

Most people think in curves and zig-zags. For example, they start from a thought like: I wonder how I can become very rich, and then proceed along an uncertain course which includes thoughts like: I wonder what's for supper, and: I wonder who I know who can lend me five dollars?

Whereas Throat was one of those people who could identify the thought at the other end of the process, in this case I am now very rich, draw a line between the two, and then think his way along it, slowly and patiently, until he got to the other end.

Not that it worked. There was always, he found, some small but vital flaw in the process. It generally involved a strange reluctance on the part of people to buy what he had to sell.

But his life savings were now resting in a leather bag inside his jerkin. He'd been in Holy Wood for a day. He'd looked at its ramshackle organization, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn't a problem. There was always room at the top.

A day's enquiries and careful observation had led him to Interesting and Instructive Kinematography. Now he stood on the far side of the street, watching carefully.

He watched the queue. He watched the man on the gate. He reached a decision.

He strolled along the queue. He had brains. He knew he had brains. What he needed now was muscle. Somewhere here there was bound to-

'Aft'noon, Mister Dibbler.'

That flat head, those rangy arms, that curling lower lip, that croaking voice that bespoke an IQ the size of a walnut. It added up to-

'It's me. Detritus,' said Detritus. 'Fancy seein' you here, eh?'

He gave Dibbler a grin like a crack appearing in a vital bridge support.

'Hallo, Detritus. You working in films?' said Dibbler.

'Not exactly working,' said Detritus, bashfully.

Dibbler looked quietly at the troll, whose chipped fists were generally the final word in any street fight.