Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett [34]
Well, Holy Wood was Holy Wood, and Ankh was Ankh, and Ankh was solid and proof, in Throat’s opinion, against any Holy Wood weirdness.
He splashed through the puddles, listening to the rain.
After a while he noticed, for the first time in his life, that it had a rhythm.
Funny. You could live in a city all your life, and you had to go away and come back again before you noticed the way the rain dripping off the gutters had a rhythm all its own: DUMdi-dum-dum, dumdi-dumdi-DUM-DUM…
A few minutes later Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs of the Night Watch were sharing a friendly roll-up in the shelter of a doorway and doing what the Night Watch was best at, which was keeping warm and dry and staying out of trouble.
They were the only witnesses to the manic figure which splashed down the dripping street, pirouetted through the puddles, grabbed a drainpipe to swing around the corner and, clicking its heels together merrily, disappeared from view.
Sgt. Colon handed the soggy dog-end back to his companion.
“Was that old Throat Dibbler?” he said after a while.
“Yeah,” said Nobby.
“He looked happy, didn’t he?”
“Must be off ’is nut, if you ask me,” said Nobby. “Singing in the rain like that.”
Whumm…whumm…
The Archchancellor, who had been updating his dragon stud book and enjoying a late night drink in front of the fire, looked up.
…whumm…whumm…whumm…
“Bigods!” he muttered, and wandered over to the big pot. It was actually wobbling from side to side, as if the building was shaking.
The Archchancellor watched, fascinated.
…whumm…whummwhummwhummWHUMM.
It wobbled to a standstill, and went silent.
“Odd,” said the Archchancellor. “Damned odd.”
Plib.
On the other side of the room, his brandy decanter shattered.
Ridcully the Brown took a deep breath.
“Bursaar!”
Victor was woken up by sandflies. The air was already warm. It was going to be another fine day.
He waded out into the shallows to wash and clear his head.
Let’s see…he still had his two dollars from yesterday, plus a handful of pennies. He could afford to stay a while, especially if he slept on the beach. And Borgle’s stoo, while only food in the technical sense, was cheap enough—although, come to think of it, eating there might involve embarrassing encounters with Ginger.
He took another step, and sank.
Victor hadn’t swum in the sea before. He surfaced, half-drowned, treading water furiously. The beach was only a few yards away.
He relaxed, gave himself time to get his breath back, and swam a leisurely crawl out beyond the breakers. The water was crystal clear. He could see the bottom shelving away sharply to—he surfaced for a quick breath—a dim blueness in which it was just possible, through the teeming shoals of fish, to see the outline of pale, rectangular rocks scattered on the sand.
He tried a dive, fighting his way down until his ears clanged. The largest lobster he had ever seen waved its feelers at him from a rocky spire and snapped away into the depths.
Victor bobbed up again, gasping, and struck out for the shore.
Well, if you couldn’t make it in moving pictures there was an opening here for a fisherman, that was certain.
A beachcomber would do all right, as well. There was enough wind-dried firewood piled up on the edge of the dunes to keep Ankh-Morpork’s fires supplied for years. No one in Holy Wood would dream of lighting a fire except for cooking or company.
And someone had been doing just that. As he waded ashore Victor realized that the wood further along the beach had been stacked not haphazardly but apparently by design, in neat piles. Further along, stones had been stacked into a crude fireplace.
It was clogged with sand. Maybe someone else had been living on the beach, waiting for their big chance in moving pictures.