Moving Pictures

they’ll say that?”
    “Trust me, Tommy.”
    “Well…all right. All right. But no elephants. I want to make that absolutely clear. No elephants.”

    “Looks weird to me,” said the Archchancellor. “Looks like a bunch of pottery elephants. Thought you said it was a machine?”
    “More…more of a device ,” said the Bursar uncertainly. He gave it a prod. Several of the pottery elephants wobbled.
    “Riktor the Tinkerer built it, I think. It was before my time.”
    It looked like a large, ornate pot, almost as high as a man of large pot height. Around its rim eight pottery elephants hung from little bronze chains; one of them swung backward and forward at the Bursar’s touch.
    The Archchancellor peered down inside.
    “It’s all levers and bellows,” he said, distastefully.
    The Bursar turned to the University housekeeper.
    “Well, now, Mrs. Whitlow,” he said, “what exactly happened?”
    Mrs. Whitlow, huge, pink and becorseted, patted her ginger wig and nudged the tiny maid who was hovering beside her like a tugboat.
    “Tell his lordship, Ksandra,” she ordered.
    Ksandra looked as though she was regretting the whole thing.
    “Well, sir, please, sir, I was dusting, you see—”
    “She hwas dusting,” said Mrs. Whitlow, helpfully. When Mrs. Whitlow was in the grip of acute class consciousness she could create aitches where nature never intended them to be.
    “—and then it started me’king a noise—”
    “Hit made hay hnoise,” said Mrs. Whitlow. “So she come and told me, your lordship, h’as hper my instructions.”
    “What kind of noise, Ksandra?” said the Bursar, as kindly as he could.
    “Please, sir, sort of—” she screwed up her eyes,
    “‘whumm…whumm…whumm…whumm…whummwhumm whumm WHUMM WHUMM —plib,’ sir.”
    “Plib,” said the Bursar, solemnly.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Hplib,” echoed Mrs. Whitlow.
    “That was when it spat at me, sir,” said Ksandra.
    “Hexpectorated,” corrected Mrs. Whitlow.
    “Apparently one of the elephants spat out a little lead pellet, Master,” said the Bursar. “That was the, er, the ‘plib.’”
    “Did it, bigods,” said the Archchancellor. “Can’t have pots going around gobbin’ all over people.”
    Mrs. Whitlow twitched.
    “What’d it go and do that for?” Ridcully added.
    “I really couldn’t say, Master. I thought perhaps you’d know. I believe Riktor was a lecturer here when you were a student. Mrs. Whitlow is very concerned,” he added, in tones that made it clear that when Mrs. Whitlow was concerned about something it would be an unwise Archchancellor who ignored her, “about staff being magically interfered with.”
    The Archchancellor tapped the pot with his knuckles. “What, old ‘Numbers’ Riktor? Same fella?”
    “Apparently, Archchancellor.”
    “Total madman. Thought you could measure everythin’. Not just lengths and weights and that kind of stuff, but everythin’. ‘If it exists,’ he said, ‘you ought to be able to measure it.’” Ridcully’s eyes misted with memory. “Made all kinds of weird widgets. Reckoned you could measure truth and beauty and dreams and stuff. So this is one of old Riktor’s toys, is it? Wonder what it measured?”
    “Ay think,” said Mrs. Whitlow, “that it should be put haway somewhere out of ’arm’s way, if it’s hall the hsame to you.”
    “Yes, yes, yes, of course,” said the Bursar hurriedly. Staff were hard to keep at Unseen University.
    “Get rid of it,” said the Archchancellor.
    The Bursar was horrified. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “We never throw things out. Besides, it is probably quite valuable.”
    “Hmm,” said Ridcully. “Valuable?”
    “Possibly an important historical artifact, Master.”
    “Shove it in my study, then. I said the place needs bright’nin’ up. It’ll be one of them conversation pieces, right? Got to go now. Got to see a man about trainin’ a gryphon. Good day, ladies—”
    “Er, Archchancellor, I wonder if you could just sign—” the Bursar began, but to a closing door.
    No one asked Ksandra which of the pottery elephants had spat the ball, and the direction wouldn’t have meant anything to them anyway.
    That afternoon a couple of porters moved the universe’s only working resograph 5 into the Archchancellor’s study.

    No one had found a way to add sound to moving pictures, but there was a sound that was particularly associated with Holy Wood. It was the sound of nails being hammered.
    Holy Wood