Moving Pictures

accident, admittedly, but it has survived them. The cheerful and irrecoverably venal spirit of the city has been proof against anything…
    Until now.

    Boom .
    The explosion removed the windows, the door and most of the chimney.
    It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of alchemists. The neighbors preferred explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you.
    Explosions were part of the scenery, such as was left.
    And this one was pretty good, even by the standards of local connoisseurs. There was a deep red heart to the billowing black smoke which you didn’t often see. The bits of semi-molten brickwork were more molten than usual. It was, they considered, quite impressive.
    Boom .
    A minute or two after the explosion a figure lurched out of the ragged hole where the door had been. It had no hair, and what clothes it still had were on fire.
    It staggered up to the small crowd that was admiring the devastation and by chance laid a sooty hand on a hot-meat-pie-and-sausage-in-a-bun salesman called Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, who had an almost magical ability to turn up wherever a sale might be made.
    “Looking,” it said, in a dreamy, stunned voice, “f’r a word. Tip of my tongue.”
    “Blister?” volunteered Throat.
    He recovered his commercial senses. “After an experience like that,” he added, proffering a pastry case full of so much reclaimed organic debris that it was very nearly sapient, “what you need is to get a hot meat pie inside you—”
    “Nonono. ’S not blister. ’S what you say when you’ve discovered something. You goes running out into the street shoutin’,” said the smouldering figure urgently. “’S’pecial word,” it added, its brow creasing under the soot.
    The crowd, reluctantly satisfied that there were going to be no more explosions, gathered around. This might be nearly as good.
    “Yeah, that’s right,” said an elderly man, filling his pipe.
    “You runs out shouting ‘Fire! Fire!’” He looked triumphant.
    “’S not that…”
    “Or ‘Help!’ or—”
    “No, he’s right,” said a woman with a basket of fish on her head. “There’s a special word. It’s foreign.”
    “Right, right,” said her neighbor. “Special foreign word for people who’ve discovered something. It was invented by some foreign bugger in his bath—”
    “Well,” said the pipe man, lighting it off the alchemist’s smouldering hat, “ I for one don’t see why people in this city need to go around shouting heathen lingo just ’cos they’ve had a bath. Anyway, look at him. He ain’t had a bath. He needs a bath, yes, but he ain’t had one. What’s he want to go around shouting foreign lingo for? We’ve got perfectly satisfactory words for shoutin’.”
    “Like what?” said Cut-me-own-Throat.
    The pipe-smoker hesitated. “Well,” he said, “like…‘I’ve discovered something’…or…‘Hooray’…”
    “No, I’m thinking about the bugger over Tsort way, or somewhere. He was in his bath and he had this idea for something, and he ran out down the street yelling.”
    “Yelling what?”
    “Dunno. P’raps ‘Give me a towel!’”
    “Bet he’d be yellin’ all right if he tried that sort of thing around here,” said Throat cheerfully. “Now, ladies and gents, I have here some sausage in a bun that’d make your—”
    “Eureka,” said the soot-colored one, swaying back and forth.
    “What about it?” said Throat.
    “No, that’s the word. Eureka.” A worried grin spread across the black features. “It means ‘I have it.’”
    “Have what?” said Throat.
    “ It . At least, I had it. Octo-cellulose. Amazing stuff. Had it in my hand. But I held it too close to the fire,” said the figure, in the perplexed tones of the nearly concussed. “V’ry important fact. Mus’ make a note of it. Don’t let it get hot . V’ry important. Mus’ write down v’ry important fact.”
    He tottered back into the smoking ruins.
    Dibbler watched him go.
    “Wonder what that was all about?” he said. Then he shrugged and raised his voice to a shout. “Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So fresh the pig h’an’t noticed they’re gone!”

    The glittering, swirling idea from the hill had watched all this. The alchemist didn’t even know it was there. All he knew was that he was being unusually inventive today.
    Now it had spotted the pie merchant’s mind.
    It knew that kind of mind. It