Moving pictures

'So he can bring it back.'

'What I don't understand,' said Gaspode, as Victor picked up the stick and hurled it away, Laddie racing along underneath it, 'is how come we're descended from wolves. I mean, your average wolf, he's a bright bugger, know what I mean? Chock full of cunnin' an' like that. We're talking grey paws racing over the trackless tundra, is what I'm getting at.'

Gaspode looked wistfully at the distant mountains. 'And suddenly a handful of generations later we've got Percy the Pup here with a cold nose, bright eyes, glossy coat and the brains of a stunned herring.'

'And you,' said Victor. Laddie whirled back in a storm of sand and dropped the damp stick in front of him. Victor picked it up and threw it again. Laddie bounded off, yapping himself sick with excitement.

'Well, yeah,' said Gaspode, ambling along in a bowlegged swagger. 'Only I can look after myself. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. You think Dopey the Mutt there would last five minutes in Ankh- Morpork? He set one paw in some o' the streets, he's three sets of fur gloves an' Crispy Fried No. 27 at the nearest Klatchian all-night carryout.'

Victor threw the stick again.

'Tell me,' he said, 'who was the famous Gaspode you're named after?'

'You never heard of him?'

'No.'

'He was dead famous.'

'He was a dog?'

'Yeah. It was years and years ago. There was this ole bloke in Ankh who snuffed it, and he belonged to one of them religions where they bury you after you're dead, an', they did, and he had this ole dog-'

'-called Gaspode-?'

'Yeah, and this ole dog had been his only companion and after they buried the man he lay down on his grave and howled and howled for a couple of weeks. Growled at everybody who came near. An' then died.'

Victor paused in the act of throwing the stick again.

'That's very sad,' he said. He threw. Laddie tore along underneath it, and disappeared into a stand of scrubby trees on the hillside.

'Yeah. Everyone says it demonstrates a dog's innocent and undyin' love for 'is master,' said Gaspode, spitting the words out as if they were ashes.

'You don't believe that, then?'

'Not really. I b'lieve any bloody dog will stay still an' howl when you've just lowered the gravestone on his tail,' said Gaspode.

There was a ferocious barking.

'Don't worry about it. He's probably found a threatening rock or something,' said Gaspode.

He'd found Ginger.

The Librarian knuckled purposefully through the maze of Unseen University's library and descended the steps towards the maximumsecurity shelves.

Nearly all the books in the Library were, being magical, considerably more dangerous than ordinary books; most of them were chained to the bookcases to stop them flapping around.

But the lower levels . . .

. . . there they kept the rogue books, the books whose behaviour or mere contents demanded a whole shelf, a whole room to themselves.