Terry Pratchett - Johnny 3 - Johnny and the Bomb

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Johnny and the Bomb
by Terry Prachett
Brought to you by Books2Bytes
I would like to thank the Meteorological Office, the Royal Mint and my
old friend Bernard Pearson - who, if he doesn't know something, always knows a
man who does - for their help in the research for this book. When historical
details are wrong, it's my fault for not listening. But who knows what really
happened in the other leg of the Trousers of Time?
After the Bombs
It was nine o'clock in the evening, in Blackbury High Street.
It was dark; with occasional light from the full moon behind streamers
of worn-out cloud. The wind was from the south-west and there had been another
thunderstorm, which freshened the air and made the cobbles slippery.
A policeman moved, very slowly and sedately, along the street.
Here and there, if someone was very close, they might have seen the
faintest line of light around a blacked-out window. From within came the quiet
sounds of people living their lives - the mufed notes of a piano as someone
practiced scales, over and over again, and the munnur and occasional burst of
laughter from the wireless.
Some of the shop windows had sandbags piled in front of them. A poster
outside one shop urged people to Dig For Victory, as if it were some kind of
turnip.
On the horizon, in the direction of Slate, the thin beams of
searchlights tried to pry bombers out of the clouds.
The policeman turned the corner, and walked up the next street, his
boots seeming very loud in the stillness.
The beat took him up as far as the Methodist chapel, and in theory would
then take him down Paradise Street, but it didn't do that tonight because
there was no Paradise Street any more. Not since last night.
There was a lorry parked by the chapel. Light leaked out from the
tarpaulin that covered the back.
He banged on it.
"You can't park that 'ere, gents," he said. "I fine you one mug of tea
and we shall say no more about it, eh?"
The tarpaulin was pushed back and a soldier jumped out. There was a
brief vision of the interior - a warm tent of orange light, with a few
soldiers sitting around a little stove, and the air thick with cigarette
smoke.The soldier grinned.
"Gi'us a mug and a wad for the sergeant," he said, to someone in the
lorry.A tin mug of scalding black tea and a brick-thick sandwich were handed
out. "Much obliged," said the policeman, taking them. He leaned against the
lorry."How's it going, then?" he said. "Haven't heard a bang."
"It's a 25-pounder," said the soldier. "Went right down through the
cellar floor. You lot took a real pounding last night, eh? Want a look?"
"Is it safe?"
"Course not," said the soldier cheerfully. "That's why we're here,
right? Come on." He pinched out his cigarette and put it behind his ear.
"I thought you lot'd be guarding it," said the policeman.
"It's two in the morning and it's been pissing down," said the soldier.
"Who's going to steal an unexploded bomb?"
"Yes, but. . ." The sergeant looked in the direction of the ruined
street.
There was the sound of bricks sliding.
"Someone is, by the sound of it," he said.
"What? We've got warning signs up!" said the soldier. "We only knocked
off for a brew-up! Oi!"
Their boots crunched on the rubble that had been strewn across the road.
"It is safe, isn't it?" said the sergeant.
"Not if someone drops a dirty great heap of bricks on it, no! Oi! You!"
The moon came out from behind the clouds. They could make out a figure
at the other end of what remained of the street, near the wall of the pickle
factory.
The sergeant skidded to a halt.
"Oh, no," he whispered. "It's Mrs. Tachyon."
The soldier stared at the small figure that was dragging some sort of
cart through the rubble.
"Who's she?"
"Let's just take it quietly, shall we?" said the policeman, grabbing his
arm. He shone his torch and set his face into a sort of mad friendly grin.
"That you, Mrs Tachyon?" he said. "It's me, Sergeant Bourke. Bit chilly
to be out at this time of night, eh? Got a nice warm cell back at the station,
yes? I daresay there could be a big hot mug of cocoa for you if you just come
along with me, how about that?"
"Can't she read all them warning signs? Is she mental?" said the
soldier, under his breath. "She's right by the house with the bomb in the
cellar!"
"Yes. . . no . . . she's just different," said the sergeant. "Bit . . .
touched." He raised his voice. "You just stay where you are, love, and we'll
come and get you. Don't want you hurting yourself on all this junk, do we?"
"Here, has she been looting?" said the soldier. "She could get shot for
that, pinching stuff from bombed out houses!"
"No-one's going to shoot Mrs Tachyon," said the sergeant. "We know her,
see? She was in the cells the other night."
"What'd she done?"
"Nothing. We let her kip in a spare cell in the station if it's a nippy
night. I gave her a tanner and pair of ole boots what belong to me mum only
yesterday. Well, look at her. She's old enough to be your granny, poor old
biddy."
Mrs Tachyon stood and watched them owlishly as they walked, very
cautiously, towards her.
The soldier saw a wizened little woman wearing what looked like a party
dress with layers of other clothes on top, and a woolly hat with a bobble on
it. She was pushing a wire cart on wheels. It had a metal label on it.
"Tes-co," he said. "What's that?"
"Dunno where she gets half her stuff," muttered the sergeant.
The trolley seemed to be full of black bags. But there were other
things, which glittered in the moonlight.
"I know where she got that stuff," muttered the soldier. "That's been
pinched from the pickle factory!"
"Oh, half the town was in there this morning," said the sergeant. "A few
jars of gherkins won't hurt."
"Yeah, but you can't have this sort of thing. "Ere, you! Missus! You
just let me have a look at-"
He reached towards the trolley.
Some sort of demon, all teeth and glowing eyes, erupted from it and
clawed the skin off the back of his hand.
"Blast! "Ere, help me get hold of-"
But the sergeant had backed away.
"That's Guilty, that is," he said. "I should come away if I was you!"
Mrs Tachyon cackled.
"Thunderbirds Are Go!" she chortled. "Wot, no bananas? That's what you
think, my old dollypot!"
She hauled the trolley round and trotted off, dragging it behind her.
"Hey, don't go in there-"the soldier shouted.
The old woman hauled the trolley over a pile of bricks. A piece of wall
collapsed behind her.
The last brick hit something far below, which went boink.
The soldier and the policeman froze in mid-run.
The moon went behind a cloud again.
In the darkness, there was a ticking sound. It was far off, and a bit
mufed, but in that pool of silence both men heard it all the way up their
spines.
The sergeant's foot, which had been in the air, came down slowly.
"How long've you got if it starts to tick?" he whispered.
There was no-one there. The soldier was accelerating away.
The policeman ran after him and was halfway up the ruins of Paradise
Street before the world behind him suddenly became full of excitement.
It was nine o'clock in the evening, in Blackbury High Street.
In the window of the electrical shop, nine TVs showed the same picture.
Nine televisions projected their flickering screens at the empty air.
A newspaper blew along the deserted pavement until it wrapped around the
stalks in an ornamental flowerbed. The wind caught an empty lager tin and
bowled it across the pavement until it hit a drain.
The High Street was what Blackbury District Council called a Pedestrian
Precinct and Amenity Area, although no-one was quite sure what the amenities
were, or even what an amenity was. Perhaps it was the benches, cunningly
designed so that people wouldn't sit on them for too long and make the place
untidy. Or maybe it was the flowerbeds, which sprouted a regular crop of the
hardy perennial Crisp Packet. It couldn't have been the ornamental trees.
They'd looked quite big and leafy on the original drawings a few years ago,
but what with cutbacks and one thing and another, no-one had actually got
around to planting any.
The sodium lights made the night cold as ice.
The newspaper blew on again, and wrapped itself around a yellow litter
bin in the shape of a fat dog with its mouth open.
Something landed in an alleyway and groaned.
"Tick tick tick! Tickety Boo! Ow! National . . . Health . . . Service .
. . " The interesting thing about worrying about things, thought Johnny
Maxwell, was the way there was always something new to worry about.
His friend Kirsty said it was because he was a natural worrier, but that
was because she didn't worry about anything. She got angry instead, and did
things about it, whatever it was. He really envied the way she decided what it
was and knew exactly what to do about it almost instantly. Currently she was
saving the planet most evenings, and foxes at weekends.
Johnny just worried. Usually they were the same old worries - school,
money, whether you could get AIDS from watching television, and so on. But
occasionally one would come out of nowhere like a Christmas Number One and
knock all the others down a whole division.
Right now, it was his mind.
"It's not exactly the same as being ill," said Yoless, who'd read all
the way through his mother's medical encyclopedia.
"It's not being ill at all. If lots of bad things have happened to you
it's healthy to be depressed," said Johnny. "That's sense, isn't it? What with
the business going down the drain, and Dad pushing off, and Mum just sitting
around smoking all the time and everything. I mean, going around smiling and
saying, "Oh, it's not so bad" - that would be mental."
"That's right," said Yoless, who'd read a bit about psychology as well.
"My Bran went mental," said Bigmac. "She- ow!"
"Sorry," said Yoless. "I wasn't looking where I put my foot but, fair's
fair, you weren't either."
"It's just dreams," said Johnny. "It's nothing mad."
Although, he had to admit, it was dreams during the day, too. Dreams so
real that they filled his eyes and ears.
The planes . . .
The bombs . . .
And the fossil fly. Why that? There'd be these nightmares, and in the
middle of it, there'd be the fly. It was a tiny one, in a piece of amber. He'd
saved up for it and done a science project on it. But it wasn't even
scary-looking. It was just a fly from millions of years ago. Why was that in a
nightmare?
Huh. School teachers? Why couldn't they be like they were supposed to be
and just chuck things at you if you weren't paying attention? Instead they all
seemed to have been worrying about him and sending notes home and getting him
to see a specialist, although the specialist wasn't too bad and at least it
got him out of Maths.
One of the notes had said he was "disturbed". Well, who wasn't
disturbed? He hadn't shown it to his mum. Things were bad enough as it was.
"You getting on all right at your grandad's?" said Yoless.
"It's not too bad. Grandad does the housework most of the time anyway.
He's good at fried bread. And Surprise. Surprise."
"What's that?"
"You know that stall on the market that sells tins that've got the
labels off?"
"Yes?"
"Well, he buys loads of those. And you've got to eat them once they're
opened."
"Yuk."
"Oh, pineapple and meatballs isn't too bad."
They walked on through the evening street.
The thing about all of us, Johnny thought, the sad thing is that we're
not very good. Actually that's not the worst part. The worst part is we're not
even much good at being not much good.
Take Yoless. When you looked at Yoless you might think he had
possibilities. He was black. Technically. But he never said "Yo", and only
said "check it out" in the supermarket, and the only person he ever called a
mother was his mother. Yoless said it was racial stereotyping to say all black
kids acted like that but, however you looked at it, Yoless had been born with
a defective cool. Trainspotters were cooler than Yoless. If you gave Yoless a
baseball cap he'd put it on the right way round. That's how, well, Yoless was.
Sometimes he actually wore a tie.
Now, Bigmac . . . Bigmac was good. He was good at Maths. Sort of. It
made the teachers wild. You could show Bigmac some sort of horrible equation
and he'd say "x=2.75" and he'd be right. But he never knew why. "It's just
what it is," he'd say. And that was no good. Knowing the answers wasn't what
Maths was about. Maths was about showing how you worked them out, even if you
got them wrong. Bigmac was also a skinhead. Bigmac and Bazza and Skazz were
the last three skinheads in Blackbury. At least, the last three who weren't
someone's dad. And he had LOVE and HAT on his knuckles, but only in Biro
because when he'd gone to get tattooed he fainted. And he bred tropical fish.
As for Wobbler . . . Wobbler wasn't even a nerd. He wanted to be a nerd
but they wouldn't let him join. He had a Nerd Pride badge and he messed around
with computers. What Wobbler wanted was to be a kid in milk-bottle-bottom
glasses and a deformed anorak, who could write amazing software and be a
millionaire by the time he was twenty, but he'd probably settle for just being
someone whose computer didn't keep smelling of burning plastic every time he
touched it.
And as for Johnny . . .
. . . if you go mad, do you know you've gone mad? If you don't, how do
you know you're not mad?
"It wasn't a bad film," Wobbler was saying. They'd been to Screen W at
the Blackbury Odeon. They generally went to see any film that promised to have
laser beams in it somewhere.
"But you can't travel in time without messing things up," said Yoless.
"That's the whole point," said Bigmac. "That's what you want to do. I
wouldn't mind joining the police if they were time police. You'd go back and
say, "Hey, are you Adolf Hitler?" and when he said, "Achtung, that's me, ja" .
. . Kablooeee! With the pump-action shotgun. End of problem."
"Yes, but supposing you accidentally shot your own grandfather," said
Yoless patiently.
"I wouldn't. He doesn't look a bit like Adolf Hitler."
"Anyway, you're not that good a shot," said Wobbler. "You got kicked out
of the Paintball Club, didn't you?"
"Only `cos they were jealous that they hadn't thought of a paintball
hand grenade before I showed them how."
"It was a tin of paint, Bigmac. A two-litre tin."
"Well, yeah, but in contex" it was a hand grenade."
"They said you might at least have loosened the lid a bit. Sean Stevens
needed stitches."
"I didn't mean actually shooting your actual grandfather," said Yoless,
loudly. "I mean messing things up so maybe you're not actually born or your
time machine never gets invented. Like in that film where the robot is sent
back to kill the mother of the boy who's going to beat the robots when he
grows up."
"Good one, that," said Bigmac, strafing the silent shops with an
invisible machine gun.
"But if he never got born how did they know he'd existed?" said Yoless.
"Didn't make any sense to me."
"How come you're such an expert?" said Wobbler.
"Well, I've got three shelves of Star Trek videos," said Yoless.
"Anorak alert!"
"Nerd!"
"Trainspotter!"
"Anyway," said Yoless, "if you changed things, maybe you'd end up not
going back in time, and there you would be, back in time, I mean, except you
never went in the first place, so you wouldn't be able to come back on account
of not having gone. Or, even if you could get back, you'd get back to another
time, like a sort of parallel dimension, because if the thing you changed
hadn't happened then you wouldn't have gone, so you could only come back to
somewhere you never went. And there you'd be - stuck."
They tried to work this out.
"Huh, you'd have to be mad even to understand time travel," said Wobbler
eventually.
"Job opportunity for you there, Johnny," said Bigmac.
"Bigmac," said Yoless, in a warning voice.
"It's all right," said Johnny. "The doctor said I just worry about
things too much."
"What kind of loony tests did you have?" said Bigmac. "Big needles and
electric shocks and that?"
"No, Bigmac," sighed Johnny. "They don't do that. They just ask you
questions."
"What, like "are you a loony?"
"It's be sound to go a long way back in time," said Wobbler. "Back to
the dinosaurs. No chance of killing your grandad then, unless he's really old.
Dinosaurs'd be all right."
"Great!" said Bigmac. "Then I could wipe `em out with my plasma rifle!
Oh, yes!"
"Yeah," said Wobbler, rolling his eyes. "That'd explain a lot. Why did
the dinosaurs die out sixty-five million years ago? Because Bigmac couldn't
get there any earlier."
"But you haven't got a plasma rifle," said Johnny.
"If Wobbler can have a time machine, then I can have a plasma rifle."
"Oh, all right."
"And a rocket launcher."
A time machine, thought Johnny. That would be something. You could get
your life exactly as you wanted it. If something nasty turned up, you could
just go back and make sure that it didn't. You could go wherever you wanted
and nothing bad would ever have to happen.
Around him, the boys" conversation, as their conversations did, took on
its own peculiar style.
"Anyway, no-one's proved the dinosaurs did die out."
"Oh, yeah, right, sure, they're still around, are they?"
"I mean p'raps they only come out at night, or are camouflaged or
something. . . "
"A brick-finished stegosaurus? A bright red Number 9 brontosaurus?"
"Hey, neat idea. They'd go round pretending to be a bus, right, and
people could get on - but they wouldn't get off again. Oooo-Eee-Oooo . . . "
"Nah. False noses. False noses and beards. Then just
when people aren't expecting it - UNK! Nothing on the pavement but a
pair of shoes and a really big bloke in a mac, shuffling away . . . "
Paradise Street, thought Johnny. Paradise Street was on his mind a lot,
these days. Especially at night.
I bet if you asked the people there if time travel was a good idea
they'd say yes. I mean, no one knows what happened to the dinosaurs, but we
know what happened to Paradise Street.
I wish I could go back to Paradise Street.
Something hissed.
They looked around. There was an alleyway between the charity clothes
shop and the video library. The hissing came from there, except now it had
changed into a snarl.
It wasn't at all pleasant. It went right into his ears and right through
Johnny's modern brain and right down into the memories built into his very
bones. When an early ape had cautiously got down out of its tree and wobbled
awkwardly along the ground, trying out this new "standing upright" idea all
the younger apes were talking about, this was exactly the kind of snarl it
hated to hear.
It said to every muscle in the body: run away and climb something. And
possibly throw down some coconuts, too.
"There's something in the alley," said Wobbler, looking around in case
there were any trees handy.
"A werewolf?" said Bigmac.
Wobbler stopped. "Why should it be a werewolf?" he said.
"I saw this film, Curse of the Revenge of the Werewolf," said Bigmac,
"and someone heard a snarl like that and went into a dark alley, and next
thing, he was lying there with all his special effects spilling out on the
pavement."
"Huh," quavered Wobbler. "There's no such things as werewolves."
"You go and tell it, then."
Johnny stepped forward.
There was a shopping trolley lying on its side just inside the alley,
but that wasn't unusual. Herds of shopping trolleys roamed the streets of
Blackbury. While he'd never seen one actually moving, he sometimes suspected
that they trundled off as soon as his back was turned.
Bulging carrier bags and black plastic dustbin liners lay around it, and
there was a number of jars. One of them had broken open, and there was a smell
of vinegar.
One of the bundles was wearing trainers.
You didn't see that very often.
A terrible monster pulled itself over the top of the trolley and spat at
Johnny.
It was white, but with bits of brown and black as well. It was scrawny.
It had three and a half legs but only one ear. Its face was a mask of
absolute, determined evil. Its teeth were jagged and yellow, its breath as
nasty as a pepper spray.
Johnny knew it well. So did practically everyone else in Blackbury.
"Hello, Guilty," he said, taking care to keep his hands by his sides.
If Guilty was here, and the shopping trolley was here...
He looked down at the bundle with the trainers.
"I think something's happened to Mrs Tachyon," he said.
The others hurried up.
It only looked like a bundle, because Mrs Tachyon tended to wear
everything she owned, all at once. This was a woolly hat, about twelve jerseys
and a pink ra- skirt, then bare pipe cleaner legs down to several pairs of
football socks and the huge trainers.
"Is that blood?" said Wobbler.
"Ur," said Bigmac. "Yuk."
"I think she's alive," said Johnny. "I'm sure I heard a groan."
"Er . . . I know first aid," said Yoless, uncertainly. "Kiss of life and
stuff."
"Kiss of life? Mrs Tachyon? Yuk," said Bigmac.
Yoless looked very worried. What seemed simple when you did it in a nice
warm hall with the instructor watching seemed a lot more complicated in an
alleyway, especially with all the woolly jumpers involved. Whoever invented
first aid hadn't had Mrs Tachyon in mind.
Yoless knelt down gingerly. He patted Mrs Tachyon vaguely, and something
fell out of one of her many pockets. It was fish and chips, wrapped in a piece
of newspaper.
"She's always eating chips," said Bigmac. "My brother says she picks
thrown-away papers out of the bin to see if there's any chips still in 'em.
Yuk." "Er . . . " said Yoless desperately, as he tried to find a way of
administering first aid without actually touching anything.
Finally Johnny came to his rescue and said, "I know how to dial 999."
Yoless sagged with relief. "Yes, yes, that's right," he said. "I'm
pretty sure you mustn't move people, on account of breaking bones."
"Or the crust," said Wobbler.
Mrs Tachyon
Mrs Tachyon had always been there, as long as Johnny could remember. She
was a bag lady before people knew what bag ladies were, although strictly
speaking she was a trolley woman.
It wasn't a normal supermarket trolley, either. It looked bigger, the
wires looked thicker. And it hurt like mad when Mrs Tachyon pushed it into the
small of your back, which she did quite a lot. It wasn't that she did it out
of nastiness well, it probably wasn't - but other people just didn't exist on
Planet Tachyon.
Fortunately, one wheel squeaked. And if you didn't get accustomed to
moving away quickly when you heard the squee . . . squee . . . squee coming,
the monologue was another warning.
Mrs Tachyon talked all the time. You could never be quite certain who
she was talking to.
" . . . I sez, that's what you sez, is it? That's what you think. An' I
could get both hands in yer mouth and still wind wool, I sez. Oh, yes. Tell
Sid! Yer so skinny yer can close one eye and yer'd look like a needle, I sez.
Oh, yes. They done me out of it! Tell that to the boys in khaki! That's a
pelter or I don't know what is!"
But quite often it was just a mumble, with occasional triumphant shouts
of "I told 'em!" and "That's what you think!".
The trolley with its squeaky wheel could turn up behind you at any hour
of the day or night. No one knew when to expect it. Nor did anyone know what
was in all those bags. Mrs Tachyon tended to rummage a lot, in bins and
things. So no one wanted to find out.
Sometimes she'd disappear for weeks on end. No one knew where she went.
Then, just when everyone was beginning to relax, there'd be the squee . . .
squee . . . squee behind them and the stabbing pain in the small of the back.
Mrs Tachyon picked things out of the gutter. That was probably how she'd
acquired Guilty, with his fur like carpet underlay, broken teeth, and
boomerang shaped backbone. When Guilty walked, which wasn't often since he
preferred to ride in the trolley, he tended to go around in circles. When he
ran, usually because he was trying to fight something, the fact that he only
had one and a half legs in front meant that sooner or later his back legs
would overtake him, and by then he was always in such a rage that he'd bite
his own tail.
Even DSS, the rabid dog owned by Syd the Crusty, which once ate a police
Alsatian, would run away at the sight of Guilty spinning towards him,
frantically biting himself.
The ambulance drove off, blue light flashing.
Guilty watched Johnny from the trolley, going cross-eyed with hatred.
"The ambulance man said she looked as if she'd been hit by something,"
said Wobbler, who was also watching the cat. It was never a good idea to take
your eye off Guilty.
"What're we going to do with all this stuff?" said Johnny.
"Yeah, can't leave it," said Bigmac. "That'd be littering.
"But it's her stuff," said Johnny.
"Don't look at me," said Bigmac. "Some of those bags squelch."
"And there's the cat," said Johnny.
"Yeah, we ought to kill the cat," said Bigmac. "It took all the skin off
my hand last week."
Johnny cautiously pulled the trolley upright. Guilty clung to it,
hissing.
"He likes you," said Bigmac.
"How can you tell?"
"You've still got both eyes."
"You could take it along to the RSPCA in the morning," said Yoless.
"I suppose so," said Johnny, "but what about the trolley? We can't just
leave it here."
"Yeah, let's push it off the top of the multistorey," said Bigmac.
Johnny prodded a bag. It moved a bit, and then flowed back, with an
unpleasant oozing noise.
"Y'know, my brother said Mrs Tachyon killed her husband years ago and
then went mental and they never found his body," said Bigmac.
They looked at the bags.
"None of them is big enough for a dead body," said Yoless, who wasn't
allowed to watch horror movies.
"Not a whole one, no," said Bigmac.
Yoless took a step back.
"I heard she stuck his head in the oven," said Wobbler. "Very messy."
"Messy?" said Yoless.
"It was a microwave oven. Get it? If you put a-"
"Shut up," said Yoless.
"I heard she's really, really rich," said Bigmac.
"Stinking rich," said Wobbler.
"Look, I'll just . . . I'll just put in it in my grandad's garage," said
Johnny.
"I don't see why we have to do it," said Yoless. "There's supposed to be
Care in the Community or something."
"He doesn't keep much in there now. And then in the morning . . . "
Oh, well. The morning was another day.
"And while you've got it you could have a rummage to see if there's any
money," said Bigmac.
Johnny glanced at Guilty, who snarled.
"No, I like a hand with all its fingers on," he said. "You lot come with
me. I'd feel a right clod pushing this by myself."
The fourth wheel squeaked and bounced as he pushed the trolley down the
street.
"Looks heavy," said Yoless.
There was a snigger from beside him.
"Well, they say Mr Tachyon was a very big man-"
"Just shut up, Bigmac."
It's me, he thought, as the procession went down the street. It's like
on the Lottery, only it's the opposite. There's this big finger in the sky and
it comes through your window and flicks you on the ear and says "It's YOU -
har har har". And you get up and think you're going to have a normal day and
suddenly you're in charge of a trolley with one squeaky wheel and an insane
cat. "Here," said Wobbler. "These fish and chips are still warm."
"What?" said Johnny. "You picked up her actual fish and chips?"
Wobbler backed away. "Well, yeah, why not, shame to let them go to
waste-"
"They might have got her spit on 'em," said Bigmac. "Yuk."
"They haven't even been unwrapped, actually," said Wobbler, but he did
stop unwrapping them.
"Put them in the trolley, Wobbler," said Johnny.
"Dunno who wraps fish and chips in newspaper round here," said Wobbler,
tossing the package onto the pile in the trolley. "Hong Kong Henry doesn't.
Where'd she get them?"
Sir John was normally awakened at half past eight every morning by a
butler who brought him his breakfast, another butler who brought him his
clothes, a third butler whose job it was to feed Adolf and Stalin if
necessary, and a fourth butler who was basically a spare.
At nine o'clock his secretary came and read him his appointments for
today.When he did so this morning, though, he found him still staring at his
plate with a strange expression. Adolf and Stalin swam contentedly in the tank
by his desk.
"Five different kinds of pill, some biscuits made of cardboard and a
glass of orange juice with all the excitement removed," said Sir John. "Mat's
the point of being the richest man in the world -I am still the richest man in
the world, aren't I?"
"Yes, Sir John."
"Well, what's the point if it all boils down to pills for breakfast?" He
drummed his fingers on the table. "Well . . . I've had enough, d'y'hear? Tell
Hickson to get the car out."
"Which car, Sir John."
"The Bentley."
"Mich Bentley, Sir John."
"Oh, one I haven't used lately. He can choose. And find Blackbury on the
map. We own a burger bar there, don't we?"
"Er . . . I think so, Sir John." Wasn't that the one where you
personally chose the site? You said you just knew it would be a good one. Er .
. . but today you've got appointments to see the chairman of-"
"Cancel 'em all. I'm going to Blackbury. Don't tell 'em I'm coming. Call
it . . . a lightning inspection. The secret of success in business is to pay
attention to the little details, am I right? People get underdone burgers or
the fries turn out to be too soggy and before you know where you are the
entire business is down around your ears."
Er . . . if you say so, Sir John."
"Right. I'll be ready in twenty minutes."
"Er . . . you could, perhaps, leave it until tomorrow? Only the
committee did ask that-"
"No!" The old mars slapped the table. "It's got to be today! Today's
when it all happens, you see. Mrs Tachyon. The trolley. Johnny and the rest of
them. It's got to be today. Otherwise . . . " He pushed away the dull yet
healthy breakfast. "Otherwise it's this for the rest of my life."
The secretary was used to Sir John's moods, and tried to lighten things
a little.
"Blackbury . . . " he said. "That's where you were evacuated during the
war, wasn't it? And you were the only person to escape when one of the streets
got bombed?"
"Me and two goldfish called Adolf and Stalin. That's right. That's where
it all started," said Sir John, getting up and going over to the window. "Go
on, jump to it."
The secretary didn't go straightaway. One of his jobs was to keep an eye
on Sir John. The old boy was acting a bit odd, people had said. He'd taken to
reading very old newspapers and books with words like "Time" and "Physics" in
the title, and sometimes he even wrote angry letters to very important
scientists. When you're the richest man in the world, people watch you very
closely.
"Adolf and Stalin," said Sir John. To the whole world in general. "Of
course, these two are only their descendants. It turned out that Adolf was
female. Or was it Stalin?"
Outside the window, the gardens stretched all the way to some rolling
hills that Sir John's landscape gardener had imported specially.
"Blackbury," said Sir John staring at them. "That's where it all
started. The whole thing. There was a boy called Johnny Maxwell. And Mrs
Tachyon. And a cat, I think."
He turned.
"Are you still here?"
"Sorry, Sir John, said the secretary, backing out and shutting the door
behind him.
"That's where it all started," said Sir John. "And that's where it's all
going to end."
Johnny always enjoyed those first few moments in the morning before the
day leapt out at him. His head was peacefully full of flowers, clouds, kittens
His hand still hurt.
Horrible bits of last night rushed out from hiding and bounced and
gibbered in front of him.
There was a shopping trolley full of unspeakable bags in the garage.
There was also a spray of milk across the wall and ceiling where Guilty had
showed what he thought of people who tried to give him an unprovoked meal.
Johnny had had to use the biggest Elastoplast in the medicine tin afterwards.
He got up, dressed, and went downstairs. His mother wouldn't be up yet
and his grandad was definitely in the front room watching Saturday morning TV.
Johnny opened the garage door and stepped back hurriedly, in case a ball
of maddened fur came spinning out.
Nothing happened.
The dreadful trolley stood in the middle of the floor. There was no sign
of Guilty.
It was, Johnny thought, just like those scenes in films where you know
the monster is in the room somewhere . . .
He jumped sideways, just in case Guilty was about to drop out of the
ceiling.
It was bad enough seeing the wretched cat. Not seeing it was worse.
He scurried out and shut the door quickly, then went back into the
house.He probably ought to tell someone official. The trolley belonged to Mrs
Tachyon (actually, it probably belonged to Mr Tesco or Mr Safeway) so it might
be stealing if he kept it.
As he went back inside, the phone rang. There were two ways he could
tell. Firstly, the phone rang. Then his grandfather shouted "Phone!", because
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JohnnyandtheBombbyTerryPrachettBroughttoyoubyBooks2BytesIwouldliketothanktheMeteorologicalOffice,theRoyalMintandmyoldfriendBernardPearson-who,ifhedoesn'tknowsomething,alwaysknowsamanwhodoes-fortheirhelpintheresearchforthisbook.Whenhistoricaldetailsarewrong,it'smyfaultfornotlistening.Butwhoknowswhatr...

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