Moving Pictures

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.
    “I call that disgusting,” he said. He pulled out his money bag and counted out five dollars. “How would you like to work for me, Detritus?”
    Detritus touched his jutting brow respectfully.
    “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler,” he said.
    “Just step this way.”
    Dibbler strolled back up to the head of the queue. The man at the door thrust out an arm to bar his way.
    “Where d’you think you’re going, pal?” he said.
    “I have an appointment with Mr. Silverfish,” said Dibbler.
    “And he knows about this, does he?” said the guard, in tones that suggested that he personally would not believe it even if he saw it written on the sky.
    “Not yet,” said Dibbler.
    “Well, my friend, in that case you can just get yourself to—”
    “Detritus?”
    “Yes, Mr. Dibbler?”
    “Hit this man.”
    “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler.”
    Detritus’s arm whirled around in a 180 degree arc with oblivion on the end of it. The guard was lifted off his feet and smashed through the door, coming to a stop in its wreckage twenty feet away. There was a cheer from the queue.
    Dibbler looked approvingly at the troll. Detritus was wearing nothing except a ragged loincloth which covered whatever it was that trolls felt it necessary to conceal.
    “Very good, Detritus.”
    “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler.”
    “But we shall have to see about getting you a suit,” said Dibbler. “Now, please guard the gate. Don’t let anyone in.”
    “Right you are, Mr. Dibbler.”
    Two minutes later a small gray dog trotted through the troll’s short and bandy legs and hopped over the remains of the gate, but Detritus didn’t do anything about this because everyone knew dogs weren’t anyone.

    “Mr. Silverfish?” said Dibbler.
    Silverfish, who had been cautiously crossing the studio with a box of fresh film stock, hesitated at the sight of a skinny figure bearing down on him like a long-lost weasel. Dibbler’s expression was the expression worn by something long and sleek and white as it swims over the reef and into the warm shallow waters of the kiddies’ paddling area.
    “Yes?” said Silverfish. “Who’re you? How did you get—”
    “Dibbler’s the name,” said Dibbler. “But I’d like you to call me Throat.”
    He clasped Silverfish’s unresisting hand and then placed his other hand on the man’s shoulder and stepped forward, pumping the first hand vigorously. The effect was of acute affability, and it meant that if Silverfish backed away he would dislocate his own elbow.
    “And I’d just like you to know,” Dibbler went on, “that we’re all incredibly impressed at what you boys are doing here.”
    Silverfish watched his own hand being strenuously made friends with, and grinned uncertainly.
    “You are?” he ventured.
    “All this—,” Dibbler released Silverfish’s shoulder just long enough to expansively indicate the energetic chaos around them. “Fantastic!” he said. “Marvellous! And that last thing of yours, what was it called now—?”
    “High Jinks at the Store,” said Silverfish. “That’s the one where the thief steals the sausages and the shop-keeper chases