Terry Pratchett - Johnny and the Bomb

They weren't very clear. They might have been snatches of music. They might have been voices. They might have been a radio left on, but slightly off station and two rooms away, or the distant roar of a crowd.

Johnny met Kasandra outside the police station.

"You're lucky I've got some spare time," she said. "Come on."

Sergeant Comely was on the desk. He looked up as Johnny and Kasandra came in, then looked back at the book he was writing in, and then looked up again slowly.

"You?"

"Er, hello, Sergeant Comely," said Johnny.

"What is it this time? Seen any aliens lately?"

"We've come about Mrs Tachyon, Sergeant," said Kasandra.

"Oh yes?"

Kasandra turned to Johnny.

"Go on," she said. "Tell him."

"Er ... " said Johnny. "Well ... me and Wobbler and Yoless and Bigmac ... "

"Wobbler and Yoless and Bigmac and I," said Kasandra.

Sergeant Comely looked at her.

"All five of you?" he said.

"I was just correcting his grammar," said Kasandra.

"Do you do that a lot?" said the sergeant. He looked at Johnny. "Does she do that a lot?"

"All the time," said Johnny.

"Good grief. Well, go on. You, not her."

When Sergeant Comely had been merely PC Comely he'd visited Johnny's school to show everyone how nice the police were, and had accidentally locked himself into his own handcuffs. He was also a member of the Blackbury Morris Men. Johnny had actually seen him wearing bells around his knees and waving two hankies in the air. These were important things to remember at a time like this.

"Well ... we were proceeding along... " he began.

"And no jokes."

Twenty minutes later, they walked slowly down the steps of the police station.

"Well, that wasn't too bad," said Kasandra. "It's not as though you were arrested or anything. Have you really got her trolley?"

"Oh, yes."

"I liked the look on his face when you said you'd bring Guilty in. He went quite pale, I thought."

"What's next-of-kin mean? He said she'd got no next-of kin."

"Relatives," said Kasandra. "Basically, it means relatives."

"None at all?"

"That isn't unusual."

"Yes," said Johnny, "but generally there's a cousin in Australia you don't know about."

"Is there?"

"Well, apparently I've got a cousin in Australia, and I didn't know about her till last month, so it can't be that unusual."

"The state of Mrs Tachyon is a terrible Indictment on Society," said Kasandra.

"What's indictment mean?"

"It means it's wrong.,

"That she's got no relatives? I don't think you can get them from the Governm-"

"No, that she's got no home and just wanders around the place living on what she can find. Something ought to be done."

"Well, I suppose we could go and see her," said Johnny. "She's only in St Mark's."

"What good would that do?"

"Well, it might cheer her up a bit."

"Do you know, you start almost every sentence with "Well"?"

"Well-"

"Going hospital visiting won't do anything about the disgusting neglect of street people and the mentally ill, will it?"

"Probably not. She just might be a bit cheered up, I suppose.

Kasandra walked in silence for a moment.

"It's just that ... I've got a thing about hospitals, if you must know. They're full of sick people."

"We could take her something she likes. And she'd probably be glad to know that Guilty is okay."

"They smell bad, too," said Kasandra, not listening to him. "That horrible disinfectant smell."

"When you're up close to Mrs Tachyon you won't notice."

"You're just going on about it because you know I hate hospitals, aren't you?"

"I ... just think we ought to do it. Anyway, I thought you did things like this for your Duke of Edinburgh award or whatever it was."

"Yes, but there was some point in that."

"We could go towards the end of visiting time so we won't be there very long. That's what everyone else does."

"Oh, all right," said Kasandra.

"We'd better take her something, too. You have to."

"Like grapes, you mean?"

Johnny tried to picture Mrs Tachyon eating grapes. It didn't work. "I'll think about it."

The garage door swung back and forth, slowly.

Inside the garage there was:

A concrete floor. It was old and cracked and soaked in oil. Animal footprints crossed it, embedded in the concrete, suggesting that a dog had run across it when it was being laid. This happens in every patch of wet concrete, everywhere. There were also a couple of human footprints, fossilized in time, and now filled with black grease and dust. In other words, it was more or less like any piece of concrete. There was also:

A tool bench.

Most of a bicycle, upside down, and surrounded by tools and bits of bike in a haphazard manner which suggested that someone had mastered the art of taking a bike to bits without succeeding in the craft of putting it back together again.

A lawnmower entangled in a garden hosepipe, which is what always happens in garages, and isn't at all relevant.

A trolley, overflowing with plastic bags of all kinds, but most particularly six large black ones.

A small pile of jars of pickles, where Johnny had carefully stacked them last night.

The remains of some fish and chips. As far as Guilty was concerned, catfood only happened to other cats.

A pair of yellow eyes, watching intently from the shadows under the bench.

And that was all.

Bags of Time

To be honest about it, Johnny didn't much like hospitals either. Mostly, the people he'd gone to visit in them were not going to come out again. And no matter how they tried to cheer the place up with plants and pictures, it never looked friendly. After all, no-one was there because they wanted to be.

But Kirsty was good at finding out things and getting harassed people to give her answers, and it didn't take long to find Mrs Tachyon's ward.

"That's her, isn't it?" she said.

Kasandra pointed along the line of beds. One or two of them didn't have visitors around them, but there was no mistaking the one belonging to Mrs Tachyon.

She was sitting up in bed in a hospital nightgown and her woolly hat, over which she had a pair of hospital headphones.

Mrs Tachyon stared intently in front of her, and jigged happily among the pillows.

"She looks happy enough," said Kasandra. "What's she listening to?"

"I couldn't say for sure," said the nurse. "All I know is the headphones aren't plugged in. Are you relatives?"

"No. We're-" Kasandra began.

"It's a sort of project," said Johnny. "You know ... like weeding old people's gardens and that sort of thing."

The nurse gave him an odd look, but the magic 'project' word did its usual helpful stuff.

She sniffed. "Can I smell vinegar?" she said.

Kasandra glared at Johnny. He tried to look innocent.

"We've just brought some grapes," he said, showing her the bag.

Mrs Tachyon didn't look up as they dragged chairs over to her bed.

Johnny had never spoken to her in his life, except to say "sorry" when she rammed him with her trolley. He wasn't sure how to start now.

Kasandra leaned over and pulled one earphone aside.

"Hello, Mrs Tachyon!" she said

Mrs Tachyon stopped jigging. She turned a beady eye on Kasandra, and then on Johnny. She had a black eye, and her stained white hair looked frizzled at the front, but there was something horribly unstoppable about Mrs Tachyon.

"Indeed? That's what you think!" she said. "Call again tomorrow, baker, and we'll take a crusty one! Poor old biddy, is it? That's what you think! Millennium hand and shrimp? Free teeth and corsets? Maybe, for them as likes it, but not me, thank you so much. Wot, no bananas? I had a house, oh yes, but it's all black men now. Hats."

"Are they treating you all right?" said Kasandra.