Johnny and the Dead

Chapter 7

The Frank W. Arnold Civic Centre meeting room was about half full.

It smelled of chlorine from the swimming baths, and of dust, and floor polish, and wooden chairs. Occasionally people would wander in thinking the meeting was the AGM of the bowls club, and then try to wander out again, pushing on the bar on the door marked 'Pull' and then glaring at it as if only an idiot would put 'Pull' on a door you pulled. The speakers spent a lot of the time asking people at the back if they could hear, and then holding the microphone too close to the loudspeakers, and then someone tried to make the PA system work properly, and blew a fuse, and went to find the caretaker, pushing on the door for a while like a hamster trying to find the way out of its treadmill.

In fact, it was like every other public meet- ing Johnny had ever attended. Probably on Jupiter seven-legged aliens had meetings in icy halls smell- ing of chlorine, he thought, with the microphones howling, and creatures frantically TZaing'at doors clearly marked 'pnr'.

There were one or two of his teachers in the audience. That was amazing. You never really thought of them doing anything after school. You

never knew about people, like you never knew how; deep a pond was because all you saw was the top. And he recognized one or two people he'd seen in the cemetery walking their dogs or just sitting' on the seats. They looked out of place.

There were a couple of people from United Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings, and a man from the Council planning office, and the chairman of Blackbury Municipal Authority, who looked a lot like Mrs Liberty and turned out to be a Miss Liberty. (Johnny wondered if Mrs Liberty was her great-grandmother or something, but it would be hard to ask; you couldn't very well say, 'Hey, you look like this dead lady, are you related?')

They didn't look out of place. They looked as though they were used to platforms.

Johnny found he couldn't listen to them properly. The pock-pock from the squash court on the other side of the wall punctuated the sentences like a rain of full stops, and the rattling of the door bar was a semi-colon.

'—better. Future. For the young; people of our city—'

Most of the people in the audience were mid- dle aged. They listened to all the speakers very intently.

'—assure the good. People, of Blackbury; that. We. At United Consolidated; Holdings value. Pub- lic. Opinion most highly: and have no intention. Of—'

Words poured out. He could feel them filling up the hall.

And afterwards - he told himself, in the priv- acy of his own head — afterwards, the day after tomorrow, the cemetery would be shut, no matter what anyone said. It'd vanished into the past just like the old boot factory. And then the past would be rolled up and tucked away in old newspapers, just like the Pals. Unless someone did something.

Life was difficult enough already. Let someone else say something.

'—not even a particularly fine example. Of Edwardian funereal sculpture. With—'

The words would fill up the hall until they were higher than people's heads. They were smooth, soothing words. Soon they'd close over the top of all the trilbies and woolly hats, and everyone would be sitting there like sea anemones.

They'd come here with things to say, even if they didn't know how to say them.

The thing was to keep your head down.

But if you did keep your head down, you'd drown in other people's words.

'—fully taken into. Account; at every stage of the planning process—'

Johnny stood up, because it was that or drown- ing. He felt his head break through the tide of words, and he breathed in. And then out.

'Excuse me, please?' he said.

The White Swan in Cable Street, known for years as The Dirty Duck, was a traditional English pub, with a 'Nuke the Gook' video machine that Shakespeare himself might have played. It was crowded, and

noisy with electronic explosions and the jukebox.

In one corner, wedged between the video quiz game and the wall, in a black felt hat, nursing half a pint of Guinness, was mad old Mrs Tachyon.

Mad is a word used about people who've either got no senses or several more than most other people.

Mrs Tachyon was the only one who noticed the drop in temperature. She looked up, and grinned a one-toothed grin.

The patch of chilly air drifted across the crowded room until it came up against the jukebox. Frost steamed off it for a second.

The tune changed.

' "Roses are Blooming in Piccardy",' said Mrs Tachyon happily. 'Yes!'

She watched carefully as people clustered around the machine and started to thump it. Then they pulled the plug, which made no difference.

The barmaid screamed and dropped a tray of drinks when the games machine exploded and caught fire.

Then the lights fused.

A minute or two later, Mrs Tachyon was left in the dark, listening to the barman cursing some- where in a back room as fuses kept blowing.

It was quite pleasant, sitting in the warm glow of the melted machinery.

From the wreckage on the floor, the ghosts of two pints of beer detached themselves and floated across to the table.

'Cheers!' said Mrs Tachyon.

The chairman of the Council looked over her glasses.

'Questions at the end, please.'

Johnny wavered. But if he sat down, the words would close over his head again.

'When is the end, please?' he said.

Johnny felt everyone looking at him.

The chairman glanced at the other speakers. She had a habit, Johnny noticed, of closing her eyes when she started a sentence and opening them suddenly at the end, so that they'd leap out and surprise you.

'When [close] we've fully. Discussed. The situa- tion. And then I will call for [open!] questions.'

Johnny decided to swim for the shore.

'But I'll have to leave before the end,' he said. 'I have to be in bed by ten.'

There was a general murmur of approval from the audience. It was clear that most of them ap- proved of the idea of anyone under thirty being in bed by ten. It was almost true, anyway. He was generally in his room around ten, although there was no telling when the lights actually went off.

'Let the lad ask his question,' said a voice from near the front.

' He's doing a project,' said another voice. Johnny recognized Mr

Atterbury, sitting bolt upright. 'Oh ... very well. What was it, young man?' 'Um.'Johnny felt them all looking at him. 'Well, the thing is ... the thing I want to know is ... is there anything that anyone can say here,

tonight, that's going to make any difference?'

'That [close] hardly seems an appropriate sort of [open!] question,' said the chairman severely.

'Seems damned good to me,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Why doesn't the man from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings answer the boy? Just a sim- ple answer would do.'

The United man gave Johnny a frank, open smile.

'We shall, of course, take all views very deeply into consideration,' he said. 'And—'

'But there's a sign up saying that you're going to build anyway,' said Johnny. 'Only I don't think many people want the old cemetery built on. So you'll take the sign down, will you?'

'We have in fact bought the—'

'You paid fivepence,' said Johnny. 'I'll give you a pound.'

People started to laugh.

'I've got a question too,' said Yo-less, standing up.

The chairman, who had her mouth open, hesi- tated. Yo-less was beaming at her, defying her to tell him to sit down.

'We'll take the question from the other young man, the one in the shirt no, not you, the—' she began.

'The black one,' said Yo-less, helpfully. 'Why did the Council sell the cemetery in the first place?'

The chairman brightened up at this one.

'I [close] think we have covered that very fully [open!],' she said. 'The cost of upkeep—'

Bigmac nudged Johnny, pointed at a sheet of figures everyone had been given, and whispered in his ear.

'But I don't see how there's much upkeep in a cemetery,' said Yo-less. 'Sending someone in once or twice a year to cut the brambles down doesn't sound like much of a cost to me.'

'We'd do it for nothing,' said Johnny.

'Would we?' whispered Wobbler, who liked fresh air to be something that happened to other people, preferably a long way off

People were turning round in their seats.

The chairman gave a loud sigh, to make it clear that Johnny was being just too stupid but that she was putting up with him nevertheless.

"The fact, young man, as I have explained time and again, is that it is simply too expensive to maintain a cemetery that is—'

As he listened, red with embarrassment, Johnny remembered about the chance to have another go. He could just put up with it and shut up, and for ever after he'd wonder what would have happened, and then when he died that angel although, as things were going at the moment, angels were in short supply even after you were dead — would say, hey, would you have liked to have found out what happened? And he'd say yes, really, and the angel would send him back and maybe this was— He pulled himself together. 'No,' he said, 'it isn't simply too expensive.' The woman stopped in mid-sentence. 'How dare you interrupt me!' she snapped.

Johnny ploughed on. 'It says in your papers here that the cemetery makes a loss. But a cemetery can't make a loss. It's not like a business or something. It just is. My friend Bigmac here says what you're calling a loss is just the value of the land for building offices. It's the rates and taxes you'd get from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings. But the dead can't pay taxes so they're not worth anything.'

The man from United Amalagamated Consoli- dated Holdings opened his mouth

to say something, but the chairman stopped him.

'A democratically elected Council—' she began.

'I'd like to raise a few points concerning that,' said Mr Atterbury. 'There are certain things about this sale which I should like to see more clearly explained in a democratic way.'

'I've had a good look round the cemetery,' said Johnny, plunging on. 'I've been ... do- ing a project. I've walked round it a lot. It's full of stuff It doesn't matter that no-one in there is really famous. They were famous here. They lived and got on with things and died. They were people. It's wrong to think that the past is some- thing that's just gone. It's still there. It's just that you've gone past. If you drive through a town, it's still there in the rear-view mirror. Time is a road, but it doesn't roll up behind you. Things aren't over just because they're past. Do you see that?'

People told one another that it was getting chilly for the time of year. Little points of coldness drifted around the town.

Screen K at the Blackbury Odeon was showing a 24-hour, non-stop Halloween Special, but people kept coming out. It was too cold in there, they said. And it was creepy. Armpit, the manager, who was one of Wobbler's mortal enemies, and who looked like two men in one dinner jacket, said it was supposed to be creepy. They said not that creepy. There were voices that you didn't exactly hear, and they - well, you kept getting the impres- sion that people were sitting right beh— Well, let's go and get a burger. Somewhere brightly- lit.

Pretty soon there was hardly anyone in there at all except Mrs Tachyori, who'd bought a ticket because it was somewhere in the warm, and spent most of the time asleep.

'Elm Street? Elm Street? Wasn't there an Elm Street down by Beech Lane?'

'I don't think it was this one. I don't remember this sort of thing going on.'

She didn't mind the voices at all.

'Freddie. Now that's a NICE name.'

They were company, in a way.

'And that's a nice jumper.'

And a lot of people had left popcorn and things behind in their hurry to get out.

'But I don't think THAT'S very nice.'

The next film was Ghostbusters, followed by Wednesday of the Living Dead.

It seemed to Mrs Tachyon that the voices, whicl didn't exist anyway, had gone very quiet.

Everyone was staring at Johnny now.

'And ... and,' said Johnny, ' ... if we forget; about them, we're just a lot of people living in ... in buildings. We need them to tell us who we are. They built this city. They did all the daft human things that turn a lot of buildings into a place for people. It's wrong to throw all that away.'

The chairman shuffled the papers in front of her.

'Nevertheless [closeJ, we have to deal with the [open!] present day,' she said brusquely. 'The dead are no longer here and I am afraid they do not vote.'

'You're wrong. They are here and they have got a vote,' said Johnny. 'I've been working it out. In my head. It's called tradition. And they outvote us twenty to one.'

Everyone went quiet. Nearly as quiet as the unseen audience in Screen K.

Then Mr Atterbury started to clap. Someone else joined in -Johnny saw it was the nurse from Sunshine Acres. Pretty soon everyone was clapping, in a polite yet firm way.

Mr Atterbury stood up again.

'Mr Atterbury, sit down,' said the chairman. 'I am running this meeting, you know.'

'I am afraid this does not appear to be the case,' said Mr Atterbury. 'I'm

standing up and I'm going to speak. The boy is right. Too much has been

taken away, I do know that. You dug up the High Street. It had a lot of small shops. People lived there. Now it's all walkways and plastic signs and people are afraid of it at night. Afraid of the town where they live! I'd be ashamed of that, if I was you. And we had a coat of arms for the town, up on the Town Hall. Now we've got some kind of plastic logo thing. And you took the old allotments and built the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall and all the little shops went out of business. And they were beautiful, those allotments.'

'They were a mess!'

'Oh, yes. A beautiful mess. Home-made green- houses made of old window frames nailed together. Old men sitting out in front of their sheds in old chairs. Vegetables and dogs and children all over the place. I don't know where all those people went, do you? And then you knocked down a lot of houses and built the big tower block where no-one wants to live and named it after a crook.'

'I didn't even live here in those days,' said the chairman. 'Besides, it's generally agreed that the Joshua N'Clement block was a ... misplaced idea.'

'A bad idea, you mean.'

'Yes, if you must put it like that.'

' So mistakes can be made, can they?'

'Nevertheless, the plain fact is that we have to build for the future—'

'I'm very glad to hear you say that, madam chairman, because I'm sure you'll agree that the most successful buildings have got very deep foundations.'

There was another round of applause. The people on the platform looked at one another.

'I feel I have no alternative but to close the meeting,' said the chairman stiffly. 'This was sup- posed to be an informative occasion.'

'I think it has been,' said Mr Atterbury.

'But you can't close the meeting,' said Johnny.

'Indeed, I can!'

'You can't,' said Johnny, 'because this is a public hall, and we're all public, and no-one's done any- thing wrong.'

'Then we shall leave, and there will really be no point in the meeting!' said the chairman. She swept up her papers and stalked across the plat- form, down the steps and across the hall. The rest of the platform party, with one or two helpless glances at the audience, followed her.

She led the way to the door. Johnny offered up a silent prayer.

Someone, somewhere, heard it.

She pushed when she should have pulled. The rattling was the only noise, and it grew frantic as she began to lose her temper. Finally, one of the men from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings yanked the bar and the door jolted open.

Johnny risked looking behind him. He couldn't see anyone who looked dead.

A week ago that would have sounded really odd.

It didn't sound much better now.

'I thought I felt a draught,' he said. 'Just now?'

'They've left the windows open at the back,' said Yo-less.

They're not here, Johnny thought. I'm going to have to do this by myself. Oh, well ...

'Are we going to get into trouble?' said Wobbler. 'This was supposed to be a public meeting.'

'Well, we're public, aren't we?' said Johnny.

'Are we?'

'Why not?'

Everyone sat for a while looking at the empty platform. Then Mr Atterbury got up and limped up the steps.

' Shall we have a meeting?' he said.

Cold air swirled out of the cinema.

'Well, THAT was an education.'

'Some of those tricks must have been done with mirrors, if you want MY opinion.'

'What shall we do now?'

'We should be getting back.'

'Back where?'

'Back to the cemetery, of course.'

'Madam, the night is young!'

'That's right! We've only just started enjoying ourselves.'

'Yes! Anyway, you're a long time dead, that's what I always say.'

'I want to get out there and enjoy life. I never enjoyed it much when I WAS alive.'

'Thomas Bowler! That's no way for a respectable man to behave!'

The crowd queuing outside the burger bar drew closer together as the chilly wind drove past.

'Thomas Bowler? Do you know ... I never really enjoyed being Thomas Bowler.'

The audience in the Frank W. Arnold Civic Cen- tre looked a bit sheepish, like a class after the teacher has stormed out. Democracy only work very well if people are told how to do it.

Someone raised a hand.

'Can we actually stop it happening?' she said. 'It all sounded very ... official.'

'Officially, I don't think we can,' said MH Atterbury. 'There was a proper sale. United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings could get unpleasant.'

'There's plenty of other sites,' said someone else. 'There's the old jam works in Slate Road, and all that area where the old goods yard used to be.'

'And we could give them their money back.'

'We could give them double their money back,' said Johnny.

There was more laughter at this.

'It seems to me,' said Mr Atterbury, 'that a company like United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings has to take notice of people. The boot factory never took any notice of people, I do know that. It didn't have to. It made boots. That was all there was to it. But no-one's quite certain about what UACH does, so they have to be nice about it.' He rubbed his chin. 'Big companies like that don't like fuss. And they don't like being laughed at. If there was another site ... and if they thought we were serious ... and if we threaten to offer

them, yes, double their money back ...'

'And then we ought to do something about the High Street,' said someone.

'And get some decent playgrounds and things again, instead of all these Amenities all over the place.'

'And blow up Joshua N'Clement and get some proper houses built—'

'Yo!' said Bigmac.

'Here here,' said Yo-less.

Mr Atterbury waved his hands calmly.

'One thing at a time,' he said. 'Let's rebuild Blackbury first. We can see about Jerusalem tomorrow.'

'And we ought to find a name for ourselves!'

'The Blackbury Preservation Society?'

'Sounds like something you put in ajar.'

'All right, the Blackbury Conservation Society.'

'Still sounds like jam to me.'

'The Blackbury Pals,' said Johnny.

Mr Atterbury hesitated.

'It's a good name,' he said eventually, while lots of people in the hall started asking one another who the Blackbury Pals were. 'But ... no. Not

now. But they were officially the Blackbury Volunteers. That's a good name.'

'But that doesn't say what we're going to do, does it?'

'If we start off not knowing what we're going to do, we could do anything,' said Johnny. 'Einstein said that,' he added, proudly.

'What, Albert Einstein?' said Yo-less.

'No, Solomon Einstein,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Hah! Know about him too, do you?'

'Er ... yes.'

'I remember him. He used to keep a taxidermist and fishing tackle shop in Cable Street when I was a lad. He was always saying that sort of thing. A bit of a philosopher, was Solomon Einstein.'

'And all he did was stuff things?' said Yo-less.

'And think,' said Johnny.

'Well, that kind of cogitation runs in the family, you might say,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Besides, you've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger.'

'Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to think about what you were doing,' said Wobbler.

'Blackbury Volunteers it is, then,' said Mr Atterbury.

Frost formed on the receiver of the public phone in The White Swan.

'Ready, Mr Einstein?'

'Let's go, Mr Fletcher!'

The telephone clicked, and was silent. The air warmed up again.

Thirty seconds later, the air grew cold in the little wooden hut twenty miles away that housed the controls of Blackbury University's radio telescope.

'It works!'

'Off course. Off all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit. Gravity is easy-peasy by comparison.'

'When did you think of that?'

'It came to me ven I was working on a particularly large trout.'

'Really? Well ... let's see what we can do ...'

Mr Fletcher looked around the little room. It was currently occupied only by Adrian 'Nozzer' Miller, who'd wanted to be an astronomer because he thought it was all to do with staving up late looking through telescopes, and hadn't bargained on it being basically about adding columns of figures in a little shed in the middle of a windy field.

The figures the telescope was producing were all that was left of an exploding star twenty million years ago. A billion small rubbery things on two planets who had been getting on with life in a quiet sort of way had been totally destroyed, but they were certainly helping Adrian get his Ph.D. and, who knows, they might have thought it all worthwhile if anyone had asked them.

He looked up as the telescope motors ground into action. Lights flickered on the control panel.

He stared at the main switches, and then reached out for them. They were so cold they hurt.

'Ow!'

The big dish turned towards the moon, which was just over Blackbury.

There was a clattering from the printer beside him, and the endless stream of paper it was pro- ducing now read:

OIOIOIOOIOIOIOIOOOIOOOOIOOOOIIOOIIOOIOIO

HEREGOESNOTHINGGGGoooooooooi 1101111 WELLIMB^CKboooioooi ...

Mr Fletcher had just bounced off the moon.

'Vot was it like?'

'I didn't have time to see much, but I don't think I'd like to live there. It worked, though. The sky's the limit, Mr Einstein!'

'Exactly, Mr Fletcher! By the vay, where did that young man go?'

'I think he had to rush off somewhere.'

'Oh. Well... we should go and tell the others, don't you think?'

It was a quiet night in Blackbury Central police station. Sergeant Comely had time to sit back and watch the little lights on the radio.

He'd never really been happy about the ra- dio, even when he was younger. It was the bane of his life. He suffered from education, and he'd never been able to remember all that 'Foxtrot Tango Piper' business - at least when he was, e.g., pelting down the street at 2 a.m. in pur- suit of miscreants. He'd end up sending messages about 'Photograph Teapot Psychological'. It had definitely blighted his promotion chances.

He especially hated radio on nights like this, when he was in charge. He hadn't joined the police to be good at technology.

Then the phones started to ring. There was the manager of the Odeon. Sergeant Comely couldn't quite make out what he was saying.

'Yes, yes, all right, Halloween Spectacular,' he said. 'What do you mean, it's all gone cold? What

do you want me to do? Arrest a cinema for being cold? I'm a police officer, not a central heating specialist! I don't repair video machines, either!'

The phone rang again as soon as he put it down, but this time one of the young constables answered it.

'It's someone from the university,' he said, put- ting his hand over the mouthpiece. 'He says a strange alien force has invaded the radio telescope. You know, that big satellite dish thing over towards Slate?'

Sergeant Comely sighed. 'Canyou get a descrip- tion?' he said.

'I saw a film about this, Sarge,' said another policeman. 'These aliens landed and replaced everyone in the town with giant vegetables.'

'Really? Round here it'd be days before anyone noticed,' said the sergeant.

The constable put the phone down.

'He just said it was like a strange alien force,' he said. 'Very cold, too.'

'Oh, a cold strange alien force,' said Sergeant Comely.

'And it was invisible, too.'

'Right. Would he recognize it if he didn't see it again?'

The young policemen looked puzzled. I'm too good for this, the sergeant thought.

'All right,' he said. 'So we know the following. Strange invisible aliens have invaded Blackbury. They dropped in at The Dirty Duck, where they blew up the Space Invaders machine, which makes

sense. And then they went to the pictures. Well, that makes sense too. It's probably years before new films get as far as Alfred Centuri ...'

The phone rang again. The constable answered it.

'And what, we ask ourselves, is their next course of action?'

'It's the manager of Pizza Surprise, Sarge,' said the constable. 'He says—'

'Right!' said the sergeant. 'That's right! They drop in for a Number Three with Extra Pepperoni! It probably looks like a friend of theirs.'

'Wouldn't do any harm to go and chat to him,' said the constable. It had been a long time since dinner. 'You know, just to show a bit of—'

'/'// go,' said Sergeant Comely, picking up his hat. 'But if I come back as a giant cucumber, there's going to be trouble.'

'No anchovies on mine, Sarge,' said the con- stable, as Sergeant Comely stepped out into the night.

There was something strange in the air. Sergeant Comely had lived in Blackbury all his life, and it had never felt like this. There was an electrical tingle to things, and the air tasted of tin.

It suddenly struck him.

What if it were real? Just because they made silly films about aliens and things didn't actually mean, did it, that it couldn't ever happen? He watched them on late night television. They always picked small towns to land near.

He shook his head. Nah ...

William Stickers walked through him.

'You know, you really shouldn't have done that, William,' said the Alderman, as Sergeant Comely hurried away.

'He's nothing but a symbol of the oppression of the proletariat,' said William Stickers.

'You've got to have policemen,' said Mrs Liberty. 'Otherwise people would simply do as they liked.'

'Well, we can't have that, can we?' said Mr Vicenti.

The Alderman looked around at the brightly lit street as they strolled along it. There weren't many living people around, but there were quite a lot of dead ones, looking in shop windows or, in the case of some of the older ones, looking at shop windows and wondering what they were.

' I certainly don't remember all these shopkeepers from my time,' he said. 'They must have moved in recently. Mr Boots and Mr Mothercare and Mr Spudjulicay.'

'Whom?' said Mrs Liberty.

The Alderman pointed to the sign on the other side of the street.

'Spud-u-like,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Hmm.'

'Is that how you pronounce it?' said the Alderman. 'I thought perhaps he was French. My word. And electric light all over the place. And no horse -. . . manure in the streets at all.'

'Really!' snapped Mrs Liberty. 'Please remember you are in company with a Lady.'

'That's why he said manure,' said William Stickers, happily.

'And the food!' said the Alderman. 'Hindoo and Chinese! Chicken from Kentucky! And what did you say the stuff was that the clothes are made of?'

'Plastic, I think,' said Mr Vicenti.

'Very colourful and long-lasting,' said Mrs Liberty. 'And many of the girls wear bloomers, too. Extremely practical and emancipated.'

'And many of them are extremely handsome,' said William Stickers.

'And everyone's taller and I haven't seen anyone on crutches,' said the Alderman.

'It wasn't always like this,' said Mr Vicenti. 'The nineteen thirties were rather gloomy.'

'Yes, but now..." The Alderman spread his arms and turned around. 'Shops full of cinematography televisions! Bright colours everywhere! Tall people with their own teeth! An age of miracles and wonders!'

'The people don't look very happy,' said Mr Vicenti.

'That's just a trick of the light,' said the Alderman.

It was almost midnight. The dead met in the aban- doned arcades of the shopping mall. The grilles were up and locked, but that doesn't matter when you're dead.

'Well, that was fun,' said the Alderman.

'I have to agree,' said Mrs Sylvia Liberty. 'I

haven't enjoyed myself so much since I was alive. It's a shame we have to go back.'

The Alderman crossed his arms.

'Go back?' he said.

'Now, then, Thomas,' said Mrs Liberty, but in a rather softer voice than she'd used earlier that evening, 'I don't want to sound like Eric Grimm, but you know the rules. We have to return. A day will come.'

'I'm not going back. I've really enjoyed myself. I'm not going back!'

'Me neither,' said William Stickers. 'Down with tyranny!'

'We must be ready for Judgement Day,' said Mrs Liberty. 'You never can tell. It could be tomorrow. Supposing it happened, and we missed it?'

'Hah!' said William Stickers.

'More than eighty years I've been sitting there,' said Alderman Bowler.

'You know, I wasn't expect- ing that. I thought things went dark for a moment

and then there was a man handing out harps.'

'For shame!'

'Well, isn't that what you expected?' he demanded.

'Not me,' said William Stickers. 'Belief in the survival of what is laughably called the soul after death is a primitive superstition which has no place in a dynamic socialist society!'

They looked at him.

'You don't tzink,' said Solomon Einstein, care- fully, 'that it is worth reconsidering your opinions in the light of experimental evidence?'

'Don't think you can get round me just because you're accidentally right! Just because I happen to find myself still ... basically here,' said William Stickers, 'does not invalidate the general theory!'

Mrs Liberty banged her phantom umbrella on the floor.

'I won't say it hasn't been enjoyable,' she said, 'but the rules are that we must be back in our places at dawn. Supposing we stayed away too long and forgot who we were? Supposing tomorrow was Judgement Day?'

Thomas Bowler sighed.

'Well, supposing it is?' he said. 'You know what I'd say? I'd say: I did the best I could for eighty-four years. And no-one ever told me that afterwards I'd still be this fat old man who gets out of breath. Why do I get out of breath? I don't breathe. I passed away, and next thing I knew I was sitting in a marble hut like a man waiting an extremely long time for an appointment with the doctor. For nearly ninety years! I'd say: you call this justice? Why are we waiting? A day will come. We all ... arrive knowing it, but no-one says when!

'Just when I was beginning to enjoy life,' he said. 'I wish this night would never end.'

Mr Fletcher nudged Solomon Einstein.

'Shall we tell them?' he said.

'Tell us what?' said William Stickers.

'Veil, you see—' Einstein began.

'Times have changed,' said Mr Fletcher. 'All that stuff about being home at dawn and not hearing the cock crow and stufflike that. That was all very well

once upon a time, when people thought the Earth was flat. But no-one believes that now—'

'Er—' One of the dead raised a hand.

'Oh, yes,' said Mr Fletcher. 'Thank you, Mr Ronald Newton (1878-1934), former chairman of the Blackbury Flat Earth Society. I know you have Views. But the point I'm trying to make is—'

'—dawn is a place as well as a time,' said Einstein, spreading his hands.

'What on earth do you mean?' said Mrs Liberty.

'On Earth, and around earth,' said Einstein, getting excited. 'One night and one day, forever chasing one another.'

'There is a night that never comes to an end,' said Mr Fletcher. 'All you need is speed ...'

'Relatively speaking,' said Einstein.