'Ask her, then,' said the dog, smugly.

'I will!'

'Right!'

Exactly how, though? thought Victor, as they trudged out into the sunshine. Excuse me, miss, my dog says that you . . . no. I say, Ginger, I understand that you're going out and . . . no. Hey, Ginj, how come my dog saw . . . no.

Perhaps he should just start up a conversation and wait until it got around naturally to monstrosities from Beyond the Void.

But it would have to wait, because of the row that was going on.

It was over the third major part in Blown Away. Victor was of course the dashing but dangerous hero, Ginger was the only possible choice for the female lead, but the second male role ?the dull but dutiful one ? was causing trouble.

Victor had never seen anyone stamp their foot in anger before. He'd always thought it was something they did only in books. But Ginger was doing it.

'Because I'd look an idiot, that's why!' she was saying.

Soll, who was by now feeling like a lightning rod on a stormy day, waved his hand frantically.

'But he's ideal for the role!' he said. 'It calls for a solid character?'

'Solid? Of course he's solid! He's made of stone!' shouted Ginger. 'He might have a suit of chain mail and a false moustache but he's still a troll!'

Rock, looming monolithically over the pair of them, cleared his throat noisily.

'Excuse me,' he said, 'I hope we're not going to get elementalist about this?'

Now it was Ginger's turn to wave her hands. 'I like trolls,' she said. 'As trolls, that is. But you can't seriously mean me to do a romantic scene with a, a, a cliff face.'

'Now look here,' said Rock, his voice winding up like a pitcher's arm. 'What you're saying is, is OK for trolls to be shown bashing people with clubs, is not OK to show trolls have finer feelings like squashy humans?'

'She's not saying that at all,' said Soll desperately. 'She's not?'

'If you cut me, do I not bleed?' said Rock.

'No, you don't,' said Soll, 'but?'

'Ah, yes, but I would. If I had blood, I'd bleed all over the place.'

'And another thing,' said a dwarf, prodding Soll in the knee. 'It says in the script that she owns a mine full of happy, laughing, singing dwarfs, right?'

'Oh, yes,' said Soll, putting the troll problem on one side. 'What about it?'

'It's a bit stereotypical, isn't it?' said the dwarf. 'I mean, it's a bit dwarfs = miners. I don't see why we have to be type?cast like this all the time.'

'But most dwarfs are miners,' said Soll desperately.

'Well, OK, but they're not happy about it,' said another dwarf. 'And they don't sing the whole time.'

'That's right,' said a third dwarf. ' 'Cos of safety, see? You can bring the whole roof down on you, singing.'

'And there's no mines anywhere near Ankh-Morpork,' said possibly the first dwarf, although they all looked identical to Soll. 'Everyone knows that. It's on loam. We'd be a laughing stock, if our people saw us mining for jewels anywhere near Ankh-Morpork.'

'I wouldn't say I've got a cliff face,' rumbled Rock, who sometimes took a little time to digest things. 'Craggy, maybe. But not cliffy.'

'The fact is,' said one of the dwarfs, 'we don't see why humans get all the good roles and we get all the titchy bit parts.'

Soll gave the jolly little laugh of someone in a corner who hopes that a joke will lighten the atmosphere a bit.

'Ah,' he said, 'that's because you?'

'Yes?' said the dwarfs in unison.

'Um,' said Soll, and struck out quickly for a change of subject. 'You see, the whole point, as I understand it, is that Ginger will do absolutely anything to keep the mansion and the mine and='

'I hopes we can get on,' said Gaffer, 'only I've got to muck the imps out in an hour.'

'Oh, I see,' said Rock. 'I'm absolutely anything, am I?'

'You don't keep mines,' said one of the dwarfs. 'Mines keep you. You take the treasure out. You don't put it in. That's fundamental to the whole mine business.'

'Well, perhaps this mine is worked out,' said Soll quickly. 'Anyway, she?'

'Well, in that case, you don't keep it,' said another dwarf, in the expansive manner of one about to settle down to a good long explanation. 'You abandon it, propping and shoring where necessary, and sink another shaft on a line with the major seam?'

'Allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures,' said another dwarf.

'Of course, allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures, and then?'

'And general crustal shifting.'

'All right, and then?'

'Unless you're just cutting and filling, of course.'

'Granted, but?'

'I don't see', Rock began, 'that my face could be called?'

'SHUT UP!' screamed Soll. 'Everyone shut up! SHUT UP! The next person who doesn't shut up will never work in this town again! Understand? Do I make myself CLEAR? Right.' He coughed, and continued in a more normal voice: 'Very well. Now, I want it understood that this is a Breathtaking, Block?busting Romantic film about a woman's fight to save the?' he consulted his clipboard, and went on valiantly, '?everything she loves against the background of a World Gone Mad, and I don't want any more trouble from anyone.'

A dwarf tentatively raised his hand.

' 'Scuse me?'

'Yes?' said Soll.

'Why is it all Mr Dibbler's films are set against the background of a world gone mad?' said the dwarf.

Soll's eyes narrowed. 'Because Mr Dibbler', he growled, 'is a very observant man.'

Dibbler had been right. The new city was the old city distilled. Narrow alleys were narrower, tall buildings taller. Gargoyles were more fearsome, roofs more pointed. The towering Tower of Art in Unseen University was, here, even taller and more precariously towering even though it was at? the same time only one quarter the size; the Unseen University was more baroque and buttressed; the Patrician's Palace more pillar'd. Carpenters swarmed over a construction that, when it was finished, would make Ankh­Morpork look like a very indifferent copy of itself, except that the buildings in the original city were not, by and large, painted on canvas stretched over timber and didn't have the dirt carefully sprayed on. Ankh-Morpork's buildings had to get dirty all by themselves.

It looked far more like Ankh-Morpork than Ankh-Morpork ever had.

Ginger had been ushered off to the changing tents before Victor had a chance to speak to her, and then shooting started and it was too late.

Century of the Fruitbat (and now it said on the sign, in slightly smaller type: More Stars than There Are in the Heavens [21]) believed that a click should be made in less than ten times the time it took to watch. Blown Away was going to be different. There were battles. There were night scenes, the imps painting away furiously by torchlight. Dwarfs worked merrily in a mine never seen before or since, where fake gold nuggets the size of chickens had been stuck in the plaster walls. Since Soll demanded that their lips should be seen to move they sang a risque version of the 'Hihohiho' song, which had rather caught on among holy Wood's dwarf population.

21

49,873, according to Numbers Riktor's clockwork Celestial Enumerator.