Moving Pictures

dress. Detritus blinked. People didn’t usually tell him to shut up. A few worried fault-lines appeared on his brow. He turned and tried another loom, this time aimed at Victor.
    “Young Mr. Dibbler don’t like—”
    “Oh, go away,” snapped Victor, and wandered off after her.
    Detritus stood alone and screwed up his eyes in the effort of thought.
    Of course, people did occasionally say things like “Go away” and “Shut up” to him, but always with the tremor of terrified bravado in their voice, and so naturally he always riposted “Hur hur” and hit them. But no one had ever spoken to him as if his existence was the last thing in the world they could possibly be persuaded to worry about. His massive shoulders sagged. Perhaps all this hanging around Ruby was bad for him.
    Soll was standing over the artist who lettered the cards. He looked up as Victor and Ginger approached.
    “Right,” he said, “places, everyone. We’ll go straight on to the ballroom scene.” He looked pleased with himself.
    “Are the words all sorted out?” said Victor.
    “ No problem,” said Soll proudly. He glanced at the sun.
    “We’ve lost a lot of time,” he added, “so let’s not waste any more.”
    “Fancy you being able to get C.M.O.T. to give in like that,” said Victor.
    “He had no argument at all. He’s gone back to his office to sulk, I expect,” said Soll loftily. “OK, everyone, let’s all get—”
    The lettering artist tugged at his sleeve.
    “I was just wondering, Mr. Soll, what you wanted me to put in the big scene now Victor doesn’t mention ribs—”
    “Don’t worry me now, man!”
    “But if you could just give me an idea—”
    Soll firmly unhooked the man’s hand from his sleeve.
    “Frankly,” he said, “I don’t give a damn,” and he strode off toward the set.
    The artist was left alone. He picked up his paintbrush. His lips moved silently, shaping themselves around the words.
    Then he said, “Hmm. Nice one.”

    Banana N’Vectif, cunningest hunter in the great yellow plains of Klatch, held his breath as he tweezered the last piece into place. Rain drummed on the roof of his hut.
    There. That was it.
    He’d never done anything like this before, but he knew he was doing it right .
    He’d trapped everything from zebras to thargas in his time, and what had he got to show for it? But yesterday, when he’d taken a load of skins into N’kouf, he’d heard a trader say that if any man ever built a better mousetrap, then the world would beat a path to his door.
    He’d lain awake all night thinking about this. Then, in the first light of dawn, he scratched a few designs on the hut wall with a stick and got to work. He had taken the opportunity to look at a few mousetraps while he was in the town, and they were definitely less than perfect. They hadn’t been built by hunters.
    Now he picked up the twig and pushed it gently into the mechanism.
    Snap.
    Perfect.
    Now, all he had to do was take it into N’kouf and see if the merchant—
    The rain was very loud indeed. In fact, it sounded more like—
    When Banana woke up he was lying in the ruins of his hut and they were in a half-mile wide swathe of trodden mud.
    He looked muzzily at what remained of his home. He looked at the brown scar that stretched from horizon to horizon. He looked at the dark, muddy cloud just visible at one end of it.
    Then he looked down. The better mousetrap was now a rather nice two-dimensional design, squashed into the middle of an enormous footprint.
    He said, “I didn’t know it was that good.”

    According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles.
    Something that both Dibblers were agreed on was that, if they’d been in charge, no one would have been able to get away with such a low-grade war. It was a crime that people should have been allowed to stage a major turning-point in the history of the city without using thousands of people and camels and ditches and earthworks and siege-engines and trebuckets and horses and banners.
    “And in a bloody fog, too,” said Gaffer. “No thought about light levels.”
    He surveyed the proposed field of battle, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand. There would be eleven Handlemen working on this one,