Terry Pratchett - Johnny And The Dead

'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.