Moving Pictures

wheezing noise from under the bed. Gaspode emerged, in a cloud of old-rugness, and had an early morning scratch.
    “Wha—” he began, and then saw the troll. “Bark, bark,” he corrected himself.
    “Oh. A little dog. I like little dogs,” said Detritus.
    “Woof.”
    “Raw,” the troll added. But he couldn’t get the right amount of statutory nastiness into his voice. Visions of Ruby in her feather boa and three acres of red velvet kept undulating across his mind.
    Gaspode scratched his ear vigorously.
    “Woof,” he said quietly. “In tones of low menace,” he added, after Detritus had gone.

    The slope of the hill was already alive with people when Victor arrived. A couple of tents had been erected. Someone was holding a camel. Several cages of demons gibbered in the shade of a thorn tree.
    In the middle of all this were Dibbler and Silverfish, arguing. Dibbler had his arm around Silverfish’s shoulder.
    “A dead giveaway, is that,” said a voice from the level of Victor’s knees. “It means some poor bugger is about to be taken to the cleaners.”
    “It’ll be a step up for you, Tom!” Dibbler was saying. “I mean, how many people in Holy Wood can call themselves Vice-President in Charge of Executive Affairs?”
    “Yes, but it’s my company!” Silverfish wailed.
    “Right! Right!” said Dibbler. “That’s what a name like Vice-President of Executive Affairs means .”
    “It does?”
    “Have I ever lied to you?”
    Silverfish’s brow furrowed. “Well,” he said, “yesterday you said—”
    “I mean metaphorically ,” said Dibbler quickly.
    “Oh. Well. Metaphorically? I suppose not—”
    “There you are, then. Now, where’s that artist?” Dibbler spun around, giving the impression that Silverfish had just been switched off.
    A man scurried up with a folder under his arm.
    “Yessir, Mr. Dibbler?”
    Throat pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket.
    “I want the posters ready by tonight, understand?” he warned. “Here. This is the name of the click.”
    “Shadowe of the Dessert,” the artist read. His brow furrowed. He had been educated beyond the needs of Holy Wood. “It’s about food?” he said.
    But Dibbler wasn’t listening. He was advancing on Victor.
    “Victor!” he said. “Baby!”
    “It’s got him,” said Gaspode quietly. “Got him worse than anyone, I reckon.”
    “What has? How can you tell?” Victor hissed.
    “Partly a’cos of subtle signs what you don’t seem to be abler recognize,” said Gaspode, “and partly because he’s actin’ like a complete twerp, really.”
    “Great to see you!” Dibbler enthused, his eyes glowing manically.
    He put his arm around Victor’s shoulder and half walked, half dragged him toward the tents.
    “This is going to be a great picture!” he said.
    “Oh, good,” said Victor weakly.
    “You play this bandit chieftain,” said Dibbler, “only a nice guy, too, kind to women and so forth, and you raid this village and you carry off this slave girl only when you look into her eyes, see, you fall for her, and then there’s this raid and hundreds of men on elephants come charging—”
    “Camels,” said a skinny youth behind Dibbler. “It’s camels.”
    “I ordered elephants!”
    “You got camels.”
    “Camels, elephants,” said Dibbler dismissively. “We’re talking exotic here, OK? And—”
    “And we’ve only got one,” said the youth.
    “One what?”
    “Camel. We could only find one camel,” said the youth.
    “But I’ve got dozens of guys with bedsheets on their heads waiting for camels!” shouted Dibbler, waving his hands in the air. “Lots of camels, right?”
    “We only got one camel ’cos there’s only one camel in Holy Wood and that’s only ’cos a guy from Klatch rode all the way here on it,” said the youth.
    “You should have sent away for more!” snapped Dibbler.
    “Mr. Silverfish said I wasn’t to.”
    Dibbler growled.
    “Maybe if it moves around a lot it’ll look like more than one camel,” said the youth optimistically.
    “Why not ride the camel past the picture box, and then get the handleman to stop the demons, and lead it back and put a different rider on it, then start up the box again and ride it past again?” said Victor. “Would that work?”
    Dibbler looked at him open-mouthed.
    “What did I tell you?” he said, to the sky in general. “The lad is a genius! That way we can get a hundred camels for the price of one, right?”
    “It means the