Moving pictures

'Woof?' it said.

Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler looked around momentarily for something to throw, realized that this would be out of character, and turned back to the imprisoned Silverfish.

'You know,' he said sincerely, 'it's really lucky for me that I met you.'

Lunch in a tavern had cost Victor the dollar plus a couple of pence. It was a bowl of soup. Everything cost a lot, said the soup-seller, because it all had to be brought a long way.

There weren't any farms around Holy Wood. Anyway, who'd grow things when they could be making movies?

Then he reported to Gaffer for his screen test.

This consisted of standing still for a minute while the handleman watched him owlishly over the top of a picture box. After the minute had passed Gaffer said, 'Right. You're a natural, kid.'

'But I didn't do anything,' said Victor. 'You just told me not to move.'

'Yeah. Quite right. That's what we need. People who know how to stand still,' said Gaffer. 'None of this fancy acting like in the theatre.'

'But you haven't told me what the demons do in the box,' said Victor.

'They do this,' said Gaffer, unclicking a couple of latches. A row of tiny malevolent eyes glared out at Victor.

'These six demons here', he said, pointing cautiously to avoid the claws, 'look out through the little hole in the front of the box and paint pictures of what they see. There has to be six of them, OK? Two to paint and four to blow on it to get it dry. On account of the next picture coming down, see. That's because every time this handle here. is turned, the strip of transparent membrane is wound down one notch for the next picture.' He turned the handle. It went clickaclicka, and the imps gibbered.

'What did they do that for?' said Victor.

'Ah,' said Gaffer, 'that's because the handle also drives this little wheel with whips on. It's the only way to get them to work fast enough. He's a lazy little devil, your average imp. It's all feedback, anyway. The faster you turn the handle, the faster the film goes by, the faster they have to paint. You got to get the speed just right. Very important job, handlemanning.'

'But isn't it all rather, well, cruel?'

Gaffer looked surprised. 'Oh, no. Not really. I gets a rest every half an hour. Guild of Handlemen regulations.'

He walked further along the bench, where another box

stood with its back panel open. This time a cageful of sluggishlooking lizards blinked mournfully at Victor.

'We ain't very happy with this,' said Gaffer, 'but it's the best we can do. Your basic salamander, see, will lie in the desert all day, absorbing light, and when it's frightened it excretes the light again. Self-defence mechanism, it's called. So as the film goes past and the shutter here clicks backwards and forwards, their light goes out through the film and these lenses here and on to the screen. Basically very simple.'

'How do you make them frightened?' said Victor.

'You see this handle?'

'Oh.'

Victor prodded the picture box thoughtfully.

'Well, all right,' he said. 'So you get lots of little pictures. And you wind them fast. So we ought to see a blur, but we don't.'

'Ah,' said Gaffer, tapping the side of his nose. 'Handlemen's Guild secret, that is. Handed down from initiate to initiate,' he added importantly.

Victor gave him a sharp look. 'I thought people'd only been making movies for a few months,'