Moving Pictures

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, from every conceivable angle. One by one they held up their thumbs.

Gaffer rapped on the picture box in front of him.

‘Ready, lads?’ he said.

There was a chorus of squeaks.

‘Good lads,’ he said. ‘Get this one right and thee can have an extra lizard for thy tea.’

He grasped the handle with one hand and picked up a megaphone with the other.

‘Ready when you are, Mr Dibbler!’ he yelled.

C.M.O.T. nodded and was about to raise his hand when Soll’s arm shot out and grabbed it. The nephew was staring intently at the ranged ranks of horsemen.

‘Just one moment,’ he said levelly, and then cupped his hands and raised his voice to a shout. ‘Hey, you there! Fifteenth knight along! Yes, you! Would you mind unfurling your banner, please? Thank you. Could you please report to Mrs Cosmopilite for a new one. Thank you.’

Soll turned to his uncle, his eyebrows raised.

‘It’s … it’s a heraldic device,’ said Dibbler quickly.

‘Crossed spare ribs on a bed of lettuce?’ said Soll.

‘Very keen on their food, those old knights—’

‘And I liked the motto,’ said Soll. ‘ “Every (k)night is Gormay Night At Harga’s House of Ribs.” If we had sound, I wonder what his battle cry would have been?’

‘You’re my own flesh and blood,’ said Dibbler, shaking his head. ‘How can you do this to me?’

‘Because I’m your own flesh and blood,’ said Soll.

Dibbler brightened. Of course, when you looked at it like that, it didn’t seem so bad.

***

This is Holy Wood. To pass the time quickly, you just film the clock hands moving fast …

In Unseen University, the resograph is already recording seven plibs a minute.

And, towards the end of the afternoon, they burned Ankh-Morpork.

The real city had been burned down many times in its long history — out of revenge, or carelessness, or spite, or even just for the insurance. Most of the big stone buildings that actually made it a city, as opposed simply to a load of hovels all in one place, survived them intact and many people[22] considered that a good fire every hundred years or so was essential to the health of the city since it helped to keep down the rats, roaches, fleas and, of course, people not rich enough to live in stone houses.

The famous Fire during the Civil War had been noteworthy simply because it was started by both sides at the same time in order to stop the city falling into enemy hands.

It had not otherwise, according to the history books, been very impressive. The Ankh had been particularly high that summer, and most of the city had been too damp to burn.

This time it was a lot better.