Moving Pictures

that amount of energy. You’d have to be a pretty good wizard to make a loaf that’d last in this world for more than a tiny part of a second. But that’s not what magic is really about, you see,” he added quickly, “because this world is—”
    “Who cares?” said Ginger. “Holy Wood’s really doing things for ordinary people. Silver screen magic.”
    “What’s come over you? Last night—”
    “That was then,” said Ginger impatiently. “Don’t you see? We could be going somewhere. We could be becoming someone . Because of Holy Wood. The world is our—”
    “Lobster,” said Victor.
    She waved a hand irritably. “Any shellfish you like,” she said. “I was thinking of oysters, actually.”
    “Were you? I was thinking of lobsters.”

    “Bur saar !”
    I shouldn’t have to run around like this at my age, thought the Bursar, scurrying down the corridor in answer to the Archchancellor’s bellow. Why’s he so interested in the damn thing, anyway? Wretched pot!
    “Coming, Master,” he trilled.
    The Archchancellor’s desk was covered with ancient documents.
    When a wizard died, all his papers were stored in one of the outlying reaches of the Library. Shelf after shelf of quietly moldering documents, the haunt of mysterious beetles and dry rot, stretched away into an unguessable distance. Everyone kept telling everyone that there was a wealth of material here for researchers, if only someone could find the time to do it.
    The Bursar was annoyed. He couldn’t find the Librarian anywhere. The ape never seemed to be around these days. He’d had to scrabble among the stuff himself .
    “I think this is the last, Archchancellor,” he said, tipping an avalanche of dusty paperwork onto the desk. Ridcully flailed at a cloud of moths.
    “Paper, paper, paper,” he muttered. “How many damn bits of paper in his stuff, eh?”
    “Er…23,813, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar. “He kept a record.”
    “Look at this,” said the Archchancellor. “‘Star Enumerator’…‘Rev Counter for Use in Ecclesiastical Areas’…‘Swamp Meter’…Swamp meter! The man was mad!”
    “He had a very tidy mind,” said the Bursar.
    “Same thing.”
    “Is it, er, really important, Archchancellor?” the Bursar ventured.
    “Damn thing shot pellets at me,” said Ridcully. “Twice!”
    “I’m sure it wasn’t, er, intended—”
    “I want to see how it was made, man! Just think of the sportin’ possibilities!”
    The Bursar tried to think of the possibilities.
    “I’m sure Riktor didn’t intend to make any kind of offensive device,” he ventured, hopelessly.
    “Who gives a damn what he intended? Where is the thing now?”
    “I had a couple of servants put sandbags around it.”
    “Good idea. It’s—”
    …whumm…whumm…
    It was a muffled sound from the corridor. The two wizards exchanged a meaningful glance.
    …whumm… whumm WHUMM.
    The Bursar held his breath.
    Plib
    Plib.
    Plib .
    The Archchancellor peered at the hourglass on the mantelpiece. “It’s doin’ it every five minutes now,” he said.
    “And it’s up to three shots,” said the Bursar. “I’ll have to order some more sandbags.”
    He flicked through a heap of paper. A word caught his eye.
    Reality.
    He glanced at the handwriting that flowed across the page. It had a very small, cramped, deliberate look. Someone had told him that this was because Numbers Riktor had been an anal retentive. The Bursar didn’t know what that meant, and hoped never to find out.
    Another word was: Measurement. His gaze drifted upward, and took in the underlined title: Some Notes on the Objective Measurement of Reality .
    Over the page was a diagram. The Bursar stared at it.
    “Found anything?” said the Archchancellor, without looking up.
    The Bursar shoved the paper up the sleeve of his robe.
    “Nothing important,” he said.

    Down below, the surf boomed on the beach. (…and below the surface, the lobsters walked backward along the deep, drowned streets…)
    Victor threw another piece of driftwood onto the fire. It burned blue with salt.
    “I don’t understand her,” he said. “Yesterday she was quite normal, today it’s all gone to her head.”
    “Bitches!” said Gaspode, sympathetically.
    “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Victor. “She’s just aloof.”
    “Loofs!” said Gaspode.
    “That’s what intelligence does for your sex life,” said Don’t-call-me-Mr-Thumpy. “Rabbits never have that sort of trouble. Go,