Moving pictures

to have to pay any more rent than necessary. You just had to try and forget about everything but Now, and that was hard when you were also waiting every moment for that fading sensation . . .

It didn't come. Just after another half-hearted fight scene Dibbler announced that it was all finished.

'Aren't we going to do the ending?' said Ginger.

'You did that this morning,' said Soll.

'Oh.'

There was a chattering noise as the demons were let out of their box and sat swinging their little legs on the edge of the lid and passing a tiny cigarette from hand to hand. The extras queued up for their wages. The camel kicked the Vice-President in Charge of Camels. The handlemen wound the great reels of film out of the boxes and went away to whatever arcane cutting and gluing the handlemen got up to in the hours of darkness. Mrs Cosmopilite, Vice-President in Charge of Wardrobe, gathered up the costumes and toddled off, possibly to put them back on the beds.

A few acres of scrubby backlot stopped being the rolling dunes of the Great Nef and went back to being scrubby backlot again. Victor felt that much the same thing was happening to him.

In ones and twos, the makers of moving-picture magic departed, laughing and joking and arranging to meet at Borgle's later on.

Ginger and Victor were left alone in a widening circle of emptiness.

'I felt like this the first time the circus went away,' said Ginger.

'Mr Dibbler said we were going to do another one tomorrow,' said Victor. 'I'm sure he just makes them up as he goes along. Still, we got ten dollars each. Minus what we owe Gaspode,' he added conscientiously. He grinned foolishly at her. 'Cheer up,' he said. 'You're doing what you've always wanted to do.'

'Don't be stupid. I didn't even know about moving pictures a couple of months ago. There weren't any.'

They strolled aimlessly towards the town.

'What did you want to be?' he ventured.

She shrugged. 'I didn't know. I just knew I didn't want to be a milkmaid.'

There had been milkmaids at home. Victor tried to recollect anything about them. 'It always looked quite an interesting job to me, milkmaiding,' he said vaguely. 'Buttercups, you know. And fresh air.'

'It's cold and wet and just as you've finished the bloody cow kicks the bucket over. Don't tell me about milking. Or being a shepherdess. Or a goosegirl. I really hated our farm.'

'Oh.'

'And they expected me to marry my cousin when I was fifteen.'

'Is that allowed?'

'Oh, yes. Everyone marries their cousins where I come from.'

'Why?' said Victor.

'I suppose it saves having to worry about what to do on Saturday nights.'

'Oh.'

'Didn't you want to be anything?' said Ginger, putting a whole sentence-worth of disdain in a mere three letters.

'Not really,' said Victor. 'Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it's just another job. I bet even people like Cohen the Barbarian get up in the morning thinking, 'Oh, no, not another day of crushing the jewelled thrones of the world beneath my sandalled feet.''

'Is that what he does?' said Ginger, interested despite herself.