Terry Pratchett - Johnny and the Bomb

... new.

"Well, let's have a look at them, at least. That can't hurt."

Kasandra was like that. When all else failed, she tried being reasonable.

The big black car sped up the motorway. There were two motorcyclists in front and two more behind, and another car trailing behind them containing some serious men in suits who listened to little radios a lot and wouldn't even trust their mothers.

Sir John sat by himself in the back of the black car, with his hands crossed on his silver-topped walking stick and his chin on his hands.

There were two screens in front of him, which showed him various facts and figures to do with his companies around the world, beamed down to him from a satellite, which he also owned. There were also two fax machines and three telephones.

Sir John sat and stared at them.

Then he reached over and pressed the button that operated the driver's intercom.

He'd never liked Hickson much. The man had a red neck. On the other hand, he was the only person there was to talk to right now.

"Do you believe it's possible to travel in time, Hickson?"

"Couldn't say, sir," said the chauffeur, without turning his head.

"It's been done, you know."

"If you say so, sir."

"Time's been changed."

"Yes, sir."

"Of course, you wouldn't know about it, because you were in the time that it changed into."

"Good thing for me then, sir."

"Did you know that when you change time you get two futures heading off side by side?"

"Must have missed that in school, sir."

"Like a pair of trousers."

"Definitely something to think about, Sir John

Sir John stared at the back of the man's neck. It really was very red, and had unpleasant little patches of hair on it. He hadn't hired the man, of course. He had people who had people who had people who did things like that. It had never occurred to them to employ a chauffeur with an interest in something else besides what the car in front was doing.

"Take the next left turn," he snapped.

"We're still twenty miles from Blackbury, sir."

"Do what you're told! Right now!"

The car skidded, spun half around, and headed up the off-ramp with smoke coming from its tires.

"Turn left!"

"But there's traffic coming, Sir John!"

"If they haven't got good brakes they shouldn't be on the road! Good! You see? Turn right!"

"That's just a lane! I'll lose my job, Sir John!"

Sir John!" sighed.

"Hickson, I'd like to lose all our little helpers. If you can get me to Blackbury by myself I will personally give you a million pounds. I'm serious."

The chauffeur glanced at his mirror.

"Why didn't you say, sir? Hold on to something, sir!"

As the car plunged down between high hedges, all three of the telephones started to ring.

Sir John stared at them for a while. Then he pressed the button that wound down the nearest window and, one by one, threw them out.

The fax machine followed.

After some effort he managed to detach the two screens, and they went out too, exploding very satisfactorily when they hit the ground.

He felt a lot better for that.

Men in Black

The bus rumbled along the road towards Johnny's house.

"There's no sense in getting excited about Mrs Tachyon," said Kasandra. "If she's really been a bag lady here for years and years, then there's a whole range of perfectly acceptable explanations without having to resort to far-fetched ones."

"What's an acceptable explanation?" said Johnny. He was still wrapped up in the puzzle of the newspaper.

"She's an alien, possibly."

"That's acceptable?"

"Or she could be an Atlantean. From Atlantis. You know? The continent that sank under the sea thousands of years ago. The inhabitants were said to be very long-lived."

"They could breathe underwater?"

"Don't be silly. They sailed away just before it sank, and built Stonehenge and the Pyramids and so on. They were scientifically very advanced, actually."

Johnny looked at her with his mouth open. You expected this sort of thing from Bigmac and the others, but not from KiKasandra, who was already doing A-levels at fourteen years old.

"I didn't know that," he said.

"It was hushed up by the government."

"Ali." Kasandra was good at knowing things that were hushed up by the government, especially considering that they had been, well, hushed up. They were always slightly occult. When giant footprints had appeared around the town centre during some snow last year there had been two theories. There was KiKasandra's, which was that it was Bigfoot, and Johnny's, which was that it was a combination of Bigmac and two "Giant Rubber Feet, A Wow at Parties!!!!" from the joke Emporium in Penny Street. KiKasandra"s theory had the backing of so many official sources in the books she'd read that it practically outweighed Johnny's, which was merely based on watching him do it.

Johnny thought about the Atlanteans, who'd all be two metres tall in Greek togas and golden hair, leaving the sinking continent in their amazing golden ships. And on the deck of one of them, Mrs Tachyon, ferociously wheeling her trolley.

Or you could imagine Attila the Hun's barbarians galloping across the plain and, in the middle of the line of horsemen, Mrs Tachyon on her trolley. Off her trolley, too.

"What happens", said Kasandra, "is that if you see a UFO or a yeti or something like that, you get a visit from the Men in Black. They drive around in big black cars and menace people who've seen strange things. They say they're working for the government but they're really working for the secret society that runs everything."

"How d'you know all this?"

"Everyone knows. It's a well-known fact. I've been waiting for something like this, ever since the mysterious rain of fish we had in September," said Kasandra.

"You mean, when there was that gas leak under the tropical fish shop?"

"Yes, we were told it was a leak under the tropical fish shop," said Kasandra darkly.

"What? Of course it was the gas leak! They found the shopkeeper's wig in the telephone wires in the High Street! Everyone had guppies in their gutters!"

"The two might have been coincidentally connected," said Kasandra reluctantly.

"And you still believe that those crop circles last year weren't made by Bigmac even though he swears they were?"

"All right, perhaps some of them might have been made by Bigmac, but who made the first ones, eh?"

"Bazza and Skazz, of course. They read about 'em in the paper and decided we should have some, too."

"They didn't necessarily make all of them."

Johnny sighed. As if life wasn't complicated enough, people had to set out to make it worse. It had been difficult enough before he'd heard about spontaneous combustion. You could be sitting peacefully in your chair, minding your own business, and next minute, whoosh, you were just a pair of shoes with smoke coming out. He'd taken to keeping a bucket of water in his bedroom for some weeks after reading about that.

And then there were all these programs about aliens swooping down on people and taking them away for serious medical examinations in their flying saucers. If you were captured and taken away by aliens, but then they messed around with your brain so you forgot about them and they had time travel, so they could put you back exactly where you were before they'd taken you away ... how would you know? It was a bit of a worry.

Kasandra seemed to think all this sort of thing was interesting, instead of some kind of a nuisance.

"Kasandra," he said.

"Yes? What?"

"I wish you'd go back to Kirsty."

"Horrible name. Sounds like someone who makes scones.

" ... I didn't mind Kimberly ... "

"Hah! I now realize that was a name with "trainee hairdresser" written all over it."