Moving Pictures

desperately after her.
    “Hey!” he said, “Sorry! Excuse me? Miss?”
    She stopped, and waited impatiently as he caught up.
    “Well?” she said.
    She was a foot shorter than him and her shape was doubtful since most of her was covered in a ridiculously frilly dress, although the dress wasn’t as ludicrous as the big blond wig full of ringlets. And her face was white with make-up apart from her eyes, which were heavily ringed in black. The general effect was of a lampshade that hadn’t been getting much sleep lately.
    “Well?” she repeated, “Hurry up! They’re shooting again in five minutes!”
    “Er—”
    She unbent slightly. “No, don’t tell me,” she said. “You’ve just got here. It’s all new to you. You don’t know what to do. You’re hungry. You haven’t got any money. Right?”
    “Yes! How did you know ?”
    “Everyone starts like that. And now you want to break into the clicks, right?”
    “The clicks?”
    She rolled her eyes, deep within their black circles.
    “Moving pictures!”
    “Oh—” I do , he thought. I didn’t know it but I do. Yes. That’s why I came here. Why didn’t I think of that? “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s what I want to do. I want to, er, break in. And how does one do that?”
    “ One waits forever and ever. Until one is noticed.” The girl looked him up and down with unconcealed contempt.
    “Take up carpentry, why don’t you? Holy Wood always needs good wood butchers.”
    And then she spun around and was gone, lost in a crowd of busy people.
    “Er, thank you,” Victor called after her. “Thank you.” He raised his voice and added, “I hope your eyes get better!”
    He jingled the coins in his pocket.
    Well, carpentry was out. It sounded too much like hard work. He’d tried it once, and wood and him had soon reached an agreement—he wouldn’t touch it, and it wouldn’t split.
    Waiting forever and ever had its attractions, but you needed money to do it with.
    His fingers closed around a small, unexpected rectangle. He pulled it out and looked at it.
    Silverfish’s card.

    No. 1 Holy Wood turned out to be a couple of shacks inside a high fence. There was a queue at the gate. It was made up of trolls, dwarfs and humans. They looked as though they had been there for some time; in fact, some of them had such a naturally dispirited way of sagging while remaining upright that they might have been specially-evolved descendants of the original prehistoric queuers.
    At the gate was a large, heavy-set man, who was eyeing the queue with the smug look of minor power-wielders everywhere.
    “Excuse me—” Victor began.
    “Mister Silverfish ain’t hiring anymore people this morning,” said the man out of the corner of his mouth. “So scram.”
    “But he said that if ever I was in—”
    “Did I just say scram, friend?”
    “Yes, but—”
    The door in the fence opened a fraction. A small pale face poked out.
    “We need a troll and a coupla humans,” it said. “One day, usual rates.” The gate shut again.
    The man straightened up and cupped his scarred hands around his mouth.
    “Right, you horrible lot!” he shouted. “You heard the man!” He ran his eyes over the line with the practiced gaze of a stock breeder. “You, you and you,” he said, pointing.
    “Excuse me,” said Victor helpfully, “but I think that man over there was actually first in the—”
    He was shoved out of the way. The lucky three shuffled in. He thought he saw the glint of coins changing hands. Then the gatekeeper turned an angry red face toward him.
    “You,” he said, “get to the end of the queue. And stay there!”
    Victor stared at him. He stared at the gate. He looked at the long line of dispirited people.
    “Um, no,” he said. “I don’t think so. Thanks all the same.”
    “Then beat it!”
    Victor gave him a friendly smile. He walked to the end of the fence, and followed it. It turned, at the far end, into a narrow alley.
    Victor searched among the usual alley debris for a while until he found a piece of scrap paper. Then he rolled up his sleeves. And only then did he inspect the fence carefully until he found a couple of loose boards that, with a bit of effort, let him through.
    This brought him into an area stacked with lumber and piles of cloth. There was no one around.
    Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever