Moving Pictures

‘I just remember the dream. There was this voice telling me that I must wake the — the sleeping man?’

Victor thought of the armoured figure on the slab.

‘Did you get a good look at it?’ he said. ‘What was it like?’

‘I don’t know about tonight,’ said Ginger cautiously. ‘But in my dreams it’s always looked a bit like my Uncle Oswald.’

Victor thought of a sword taller than he was. You couldn’t parry a slash from something like that, it’d cut through anything. Somehow it was hard to think of anything looking like an Oswald with a sword like that.

‘Why’s he remind you of your Uncle Oswald?’ he said.

‘Because my Uncle Oswald lay quite still like that. Mind you, I only ever saw him once. And that was at his funeral.’

Victor opened his mouth — and there were distant, blurred voices. A few stones moved. A voice, a little closer now, trilled, ‘Hallo, little children. This way, little children.’

‘That’s Rock!’ said Ginger.

‘I’d know that voice anywhere,’ said Victor. ‘Hey! Rock! It’s me! Victor!’

There was a worried pause. Then Rock’s voice bellowed: ‘It’s my friend Victor!’

‘That mean we can’t eat him?’

‘No-one is to eat my friend Victor! We dig him out with speed!’

There was the sound of crunching. Then another troll’s voice complained, ‘They call this limestone? I call it tasteless.’

There was some more scrabbling. A third voice said, ‘Don’t see why we can’t eat him. Who’d know?’

‘You uncivilized troll,’ scolded Rock. ‘What you thinking of? You eat people, everyone laugh at you, say, “He very defective troll, do not know how to behave in polite society” and stop paying you three dollar a day and send you back to mountains.’

Victor gave what he hoped would sound like a light chuckle.

‘They’re a lot of laughs, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘Heaps,’ said Ginger.

‘Of course, all that stuff about eating people is just bravado. They hardly ever do it. You shouldn’t worry about it.’

‘I’m not. I’m worried because I walk around all the time when I’m asleep and I don’t know why. You make it sound as if I was going to wake up that sleeping creature. It’s a horrible thought. Something’s inside my head.’

There was a crash as more rocks were pulled aside.

‘That’s the odd thing,’ said Victor. ‘When people are, er, possessed, the, er, possessing thing doesn’t usually care much about them or anyone else. I mean, it wouldn’t have just tied me up. It would have hit me over the head with something.’

He reached for her hand in the dark.

‘That thing on the slab,’ he said.

‘What about it?’

‘I’ve seen it before. It’s in the book I found. There’s dozens of pictures of it, and they must have thought it was very important to keep it behind the gate. That’s what the pictograms say, I think. Gate … man. The man behind the gate. The prisoner. You see, I’m sure the reason why all the priests or whoever they were had to go and chant there every day was—’

A slab by his head was pulled aside and weak daylight poured through. It was very closely followed by Laddie, who tried to lick Victor’s face and bark at the same time.

‘Yes, yes! Well done, Laddie,’ said Victor, trying to fight him off. ‘Good dog. Good boy, Laddie.’

‘Good boy Laddie! Good boy Laddie!’

The bark brought several small shards of stone down from the ceiling.

‘Aha!’ said Rock. Several other troll heads appeared behind him as Victor and Ginger stared out of the hole.

‘They not little children,’ muttered the one who had been complaining about the eating ban. ‘They look stringy.’

‘I tell you before,’ said Rock menacingly, ‘no eating people. It cause no end of trouble.’

‘Why not just one leg? Then everyone’ll be—’

Rock picked up a half-ton slab in one hand, weighed it thoughtfully, and then hit the other troll so hard with it that it broke.

‘I tell you before,’ he told the recumbent figure, ‘it trolls like you getting us a bad name. How can we take rightful place in brotherhood of sapient species with defective trolls like you letting side down aller time?’

He reached through the hole and pulled Victor out bodily.

‘Thanks, Rock. Er. There’s Ginger in there, too.’

Rock gave him a crafty nudge that bruised a couple of ribs.

‘So I see,’ he said. ‘And she wearing very pretty silk neggleliggle. You find nice place to indulge in bit of “What is the health of your parent?”^{44} and the Disc move for you, yeah?’ The other trolls grinned.

‘Uh, yes, I suppose—’ Victor began.

‘That’s not true at all!’ snapped Ginger, as she was helped through the hole. ‘We weren’t—’

‘Yes, it is!’ said Victor, making furious signals with his hands and eyebrows. ‘It’s absolutely true! You’re absolutely right, Rock!’

‘Yeah,’ said one of the trolls behind Rock. ‘I seen them on the clicks. He kissing her and carrying her off the whole time.’

‘Now listen,’ Ginger began.

‘And now we get out of here fast,’ said Rock. ‘This whole ceiling looking very defective to me. Could go at any time.’

Victor glanced up. Several of the blocks were dipping ominously.