Moving Pictures

Sword of Passione . Yeah. A Tumultuous Saga of—of Desire an’ Raw, Raw, Raw wossname in the Primal Heat of a Tortured Continent! Romance! Glamour! In three Searing Reels! Thrill to the Death Fight with Ravening Monsters! Scream as a thousand elephants—”
    “It’s only one reel,” muttered Silverfish testily.
    “Shoot some more this afternoon!” crowed Dibbler, his eyes revolving. “You just need more fights and monsters!”
    “And there’s certainly no elephants,” snapped Silverfish.
    Rock put up a craggy arm.
    “Yes?” demanded Silverfish.
    “If you’ve got some gray paint an’ stuff to make the ears out of, I’m sure me an’ Morry could—”
    “ No one’s ever done a three-reeler,” said Gaffer reflectively. “Could be really tricky. I mean, it’d be nearly ten minutes long.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose if I was to make the spools bigger—”
    Silverfish knew he was cornered.
    “Now look here ,” he began.
    Victor stared down at the girl. Everyone else was ignoring them.
    “Er,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced?”
    “You didn’t seem to let that stop you,” she said.
    “I wouldn’t normally do something like that. I must have been…ill. Or something.”
    “Oh, good. And that makes me feel a lot better, does it?”
    “Shall we sit in the shade? It’s very hot out here.”
    “Your eyes went all…smouldery.”
    “Did they?”
    “They looked really odd.”
    “I felt really odd.”
    “I know. It’s this place. It gets to you. D’you know,” she said, sitting down on the sand, “there’s all kind of rules for the imps and things, they mustn’t be worn out, what kind of food they get, stuff like that. No one cares about us, though. Even the trolls get better treatment.”
    “It’s the way they go around being seven foot tall and weighing 1,000 pounds all the time, I expect,” said Victor.
    “My name’s Theda Withel, but my friends call me Ginger,” she said.
    “My name’s Victor Tugelbend. Er. But my friends call me Victor,” said Victor.
    “This is your first click, is it?”
    “How can you tell?”
    “You looked as though you were enjoying it.”
    “Well, it’s better than working, isn’t it?”
    “You wait until you’ve been in it as long as I have,” she said bitterly.
    “How long’s that?”
    “Nearly since the start. Five weeks.”
    “Gosh. It’s all happened so fast .”
    “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened,” said Ginger flatly.
    “I suppose so…er, are we allowed to go and eat?” said Victor.
    “No. They’ll be shouting for us again any minute,” said Ginger.
    Victor nodded. He had, on the whole, got through life quite happily by doing what he pleased in a firm yet easygoing sort of way, and he didn’t see why he should stop that even in Holy Wood.
    “Then they’ll have to shout,” he said. “I want something to eat and a cool drink. Maybe I’ve just caught a bit too much sun.”
    Ginger looked uncertain. “Well, there’s the commissary, but—”
    “Good. You can show me the way.”
    “They fire people just like that—”
    “What, before the third reel?”
    “They say ‘There’s plenty more people who’re dying to break into moving pictures,’ you see—”
    “Good. That means they’ll have all afternoon to find two of them who look just like us.” He strolled past Morry, who was also trying to keep in the shade of a rock.
    “If anyone wants us,” he said, “we’ll be having some lunch.”
    “What, right now?” said the troll.
    “Yes,” said Victor firmly, and strode on.
    Behind him he could see Dibbler and Silverfish locked in heated discussion, with occasional interruptions from the handleman, who spoke in the leisurely tones of one who knows he’s going to get paid six dollars today regardless.
    “—we’ll call it an epic. People will talk about it for ages.”
    “Yes, they’ll say we went bankrupt!”
    “Look, I know where I can get some colored woodcuts done at practically cost—”
    “—I was finking, maybe if I got some string and tied the moving picture box onto wheels, so it can be moved around—”
    “People’ll say, that Silverfish, there’s a moving-picture-smith with the guts to give the people what they want, they’ll say. A man to roll back the wossname of the medium—”
    “—maybe if I was to make a sort of pole and swivel arrangement, we could bring the picture box right up close to—”
    “What? You think