Terry Pratchett - Johnny and the Bomb

"Did he say what year?"

Johnny met Kristy's gaze. "No," he said. "But I know what year."

They climbed out of the hollow and pushed their way through the bushes.

A scrubby field stretched away below them. There were some allotment gardens at the bottom end of the field, and then a river, and then the town of Blackbury.

It was definitely Blackbury. There was the familiar rubber boot factory chimney. There were a few other tall chimneys as well. He'd never seen those before. The man with the dog was watching them from some way off. So was the dog. Neither of them seemed particularly Jurassic, although the dog looked somewhat suspicious.

"Wha..?" said Wobbler. "Here, what's been happening? What have you done?"

"I told you we'd travelled in time," said Kirsty. "Weren't you listening?"

"I thought it was just some trick! I thought you were just messing about!" He gave Johnny a very worried look. "This is just messing about, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Wobbler relaxed.

"It's messing about with time travel," said Johnny.

Wobbler looked scared again.

"Sorry. But that's Blackbury all right. It's just smaller. I think we're where the mall is going to be."

"How do we get back?" said Yoless.

"It just sort of happens, I think."

"You're just doing it with hallucinations, aren't you," said Wobbler, never a boy to let go of hope. "It's probably the smell from the trolley. We'll come round in a minute and have a headache and it'll all be all right."

"It just sort of happens?" said Yoless. He was using his careful voice again, the voice that said there was something nasty on his mind. "How do you get back?

"There's a flash, and there you are," said Kirsty.

"And you're back where you left?"

"Of course not. Only if you didn't move. Otherwise you go back to wherever where you are now is going to be then."

There was silence while they all worked this out.

"You mean," said Bigmac, "that if you walk a couple of metres, you'll be a couple of metres away from where you started when you get back?"

"Yes."

"Even if there's been something built there?" said Yoless.

"Yes ... no ... I don't know."

"So," said Yoless, still speaking very slowly, "if there's a lot of concrete, what happens?

They all looked at Kirsty. She looked at Johnny.

"I don't know," he said. "Probably you kind of ... get lumped together."

"Yuk," said Bigmac.

There was a wail from Wobbler. Sometimes, when it involved something horrible, his mind worked very fast.

"I don't want to end up with just my arms sticking out of a concrete wall!"

"Oh, I don't think it's happen like that," said Yoless.

Wobbler relaxed, but not much. "How would it happen, then?" he said.

"What I think would happen is, see, all the atoms in your body, right, and all the atoms in the wall would be trying to be in the same place at the same time and they'd all smash together suddenly and-"

"And what?" said Kirsty.

"-and ... er ... bang, goodnight, Europe," said Yoless. "You can't argue with nuclear physics, sorry."

"My arms wouldn't end up sticking out of a wall?" said Wobbler, who hadn't quite caught up.

"No," said Yoless.

"Not a wall near here, anyway," said Bigmac, grinning.

"Don't wind him up," said Yoless severely. "This is serious. It could happen to any of us. We dropped when we landed, right? Does that mean that if we suddenly go back now we'll be sticking out of the floor of the mall, causing an instant atomic explosion?"

"They make enough fuss when you drop a Coke tin," said Johnny.

"Where's Wobbler gone?" said Kirsty.

Wobbler was a disappearing shape, heading for the allotments. He shouted something.

"What'd he say?" she said.

"He said "I'm off home!" said Johnny.

"Yeah, but," said Bigmac, " ... where he's running now ... if we're where the mall is ... will be ... then over there's the shopping estate. That field he's running across." He squinted. "That's where Currys is going to be."

"How will we know we're about to go back?" said Yoless.

"There's a sort of flicker for a moment," said Johnny.

"Then ... zap. Er ... what'll happen if he comes out where there's a fridge or something? Is that as bad as a concrete wall?"

"I don't know much about fridge atoms," said Yoless. "They might not be as bad as concrete atoms. But I shouldn't think anyone around here would need new wallpaper ever again."

"Wow! An atomic Wobbler!" said Bigmac.

"Let's get the trolley and go after him," said Johnny.

"We don't need it. Leave it here," said Kirsty.

"No. It's Mrs Tachyon's."

"There's just one thing I don't understand," said Yoless, as they hauled the trolley across the field.

"There's millions of things I don't understand," said Johnny.

"What? What? What are you going on about now?"

"Televisions. Algebra. How skinless sausages hold together. Chinese," said Johnny. "I don't understand any of them."

"The trolley's got no works," said Yoless. "There's no time machinery."

"Maybe the time is in the bags," said Johnny.

"Oh, right! Bags of time? You can't just shove time in a bag!"

"Maybe Mrs Tachyon didn't know that. She's always picking up odds and ends of stuff"

"You can't pick up time, actually. Time's what you pick things up in," said Kirsty.

"My granny saves string," said Bigmac, in the manner of someone who wants to make a contribution.

"Really? Well, you can't pick up the odd half=hour and knot it on to another ten minutes you've got spare, in case you haven't noticed," said Kirsty. "Honestly, don't they teach you any physics at your school? Fridge atoms was bad enough! What on earth's a fridge atom?'

"The smallest possible particle of fridge,' said Yoless.

Perhaps you could save time, Johnny thought rebelliously. You could waste it, it could run through your fingers and you could put a stitch in it. Of course, perhaps that was only a manner of speaking and it all depended on how you looked at it, but Mrs Tachyon looked at things in a corkscrew kind of way.

He remembered touching a bag. Had time leaked out? Something had hissed through his fingers.

"You can't have the smallest possible particle of fridge! It'd just be iron atoms and so on!"

"A fridge molecule, then. One atom of everything you need to make a fridge," said Yo-less.

"You couldn't ha- well, all right, you could have one atom of everything you need to make a fridge but that wouldn't make it a fridge molecule because-" She rolled her eyes. "What am I saying? You've got me thinking like that now!"

The rest of the universe said that time wasn't an object, it was just Nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once, and Mrs Tachyon had said: that's what you think ...

The path across the field led through the allotments. They looked like allotments everywhere, with the occasional old man who looked exactly like the old men who worked on allotments. They wore the special old man's allotment trousers.

One by one, they stopped digging as the trolley bumped along the path. They turned and watched in a silent allotment way.

"It's probably Yoless's coat they're looking at," Kirsty hissed. "Purple, green and yellow. It's plastic, right? Plastic hasn't been around for long. Of course, it might be Bigmac's Heavy Mental T-shirt."

They're planting beans and hoeing potatoes, thought Johnny. And tonight there's going to be a crop of great big bomb craters ...

"I can't see the by-pass," said Bigmac. "And there's no TV tower on Blackdown."

"There's all those extra factory chimneys, though," said Yoless. "I don't remember any of those. And where's the traffic noise?"

It's May 21, 1941, thought Johnny. I know it.

There was a very narrow stone bridge over the river. Johnny stopped in the middle of it and looked back the way they'd come. A couple of the allotment men were still watching them. Beyond them was the sloping field they'd arrived in. It wasn't particularly pretty. It had that slightly grey tint that fields get when they're right next to a town and know that it's only a matter of time before they're under concrete.