Terry Pratchett - Johnny And The Dead

'Was he famous for anything?'

For a moment, Grandad's eyes left the TV screen and focused on the past instead.

'He ran a joke shop in Alma Street where the multi-storey car park is now. You could buy stink bombs and itchy-powder. And he used to do conjuring tricks at kids' parties when your mum was a girl.'

'Was he a famous man?'

'All the kids knew him. Only children's enter- tainer in these parts, see. They all knew his tricks. They used to shout out: "It's in your pocket!" And things like that. Alma Street. And Paradise Street, that was there, too. And Balaclava Ter- race. That's where I was born. Number Twelve,

Balaclava Terrace. All under the car park now. Oh, dear ... he's going to fall off that building ...'

'So he wasn't really famous. Not like really famous.'

'All the kids knew him. Prisoner of war in Germany, he was. But he escaped. And he mar- ried ... Ethel Plover, that's right. Never had any kids. Used to do conjuring tricks and escap- ing from things. Always escaping from things, he was.'

'He wore a carnation pinned to his coat,' said Johnny.

'That's right! Every day. Never saw him without one. Always very smart, he was. He used to be a conjuror. Haven't seen him around for years.'

'Grandad?'

'It's all changed around here now. I hardly see anywhere I recognize when I go into town these days. Someone told me they've pulled down the old boot factory.'

'You know that little transistor radio?' said Johnny.

'What little transistor radio?'

'The one you've got.'

'What about it?'

'You said it's too fiddly and not loud enough?'

'That's right.'

'Can I have it?'

'I thought you'd got one of those ghetto- blowers.'

'This is ... for some friends.'Johnny hesitated.

He was by nature an honest person, because apart from anything else, lying was always too complicated.

'They're quite old,' he added. 'And a bit shut in.'

'Oh, all right. You'll have to put some new batteries in — the old ones have gone all manky.'

'I've got some batteries.'

'You don't get proper wireless any more. We used to get oscillation when I was a boy. You never get it now. Hehe! There he goes - look, right through the ice—!'

Johnny went down to the cemetery before break- fast. The gates had been locked, but since there were holes all along the walls this didn't make a lot

of difference.

He'd bought a plastic bag for the radio and had sorted out some new batteries, after scraping out the chemical porridge that was all that was left of the old ones.

The cemetery was deserted. There wasn't a soul there, living or dead. But there was the silence, the big empty silence. If ears could make a noise, they'd sound like that silence.

Johnny tried to fill it.

'Um,' he said. 'Anyone there?'

A fox leapt up from behind one of the stones and scurried away into the undergrowth.

'Hello? It's me?'

The absence of the dead was scarier than see- ing them in the flesh - or at least, not in the flesh.

'I brought this radio. It's probably easier for you than newspapers. Um. I looked up radio in the encyclopedia and most of you ought to know what it is. Um. You twiddle the knobs and radio comes out. Um. So I'll just tuck it down behind Mr Vicenti's slab, all right? Then you can find out what's going on.'

He coughed.

'I ... I did some thinking last night, and ... and I thought maybe if people knew about all the ... famous ... people here, they'd be bound to leave it alone. I know it's not a very good idea,' he said, hopelessly, 'but it's the best I could come up with. I'm going to make a list of names. If you don't mind?'

He'd hoped Mr Vicenti would be about. He quite liked him. Perhaps it was because he hadn't been dead as long as the others. He seemed friendlier. Less stiff.

Johnny walked from gravestone to gravestone, noting down names. Some of the older stones were quite ornate, with fat cherubs on them. But one had a pair of football boots carved on it. He made a special note of the name:

STANLEY 'WRONG WAY' ROUNDWAY

1892-1936 The Last Whistle

He nearly missed the one under the trees. It had a flat stone in the grass, without even one of the ugly flower vases, and all it declared was that this

was the last resting place of Eric Grimm (1885- 1927)- No 'Just Resting', no 'Deeply Missed', not even 'Died', although probably he had. Johnny wrote the name down, anyway.

Mr Grimm waited until after Johnny had gone before he emerged, and glared after him.

It was later that morning.

There was a new library in the Civic Centre. It was so new it didn't even have librarians. It had Assistant Information Officers. And it had computers. Wobbler was banned from the computers because of an incident involving a library terminal, the telephone connection to the main computer, another telephone line to the computer at East Slate Air Base ten miles away, another telephone line to a much bigger computer under a mountain somewhere in America, and almost World War Three.

At least, that's what Wobbler said. The As- sistant Information Officers said it was because he got chocolate in the keyboard.

But he was allowed to use the microfiche readers. They couldn't think of a good reason to stop him.

'What're we looking for, anyway,' said Bigmac.

'Nearly everyone that died here used to get buried in that cemetery,' said Johnny. 'So if we can find someone famous who lived here, and then we can find them in the cemetery, then it's a famous place. There's a cemetery in London with Karl Marx in it. It's famous for him being dead in it.'

'Karl Marx?' said Bigmac. 'What was he famous for?'

'You're ignorant, you are,' said Wobbler. 'He was the one who played the harp.'

'No, Karl was the one who usedta talka lika dis,' said Yo-less.

'Actually, he was the one with the cigar,' said Wobbler.

'That's a very old joke,' said Johnny severely. 'The Marx Brothers. Hah, hah. Look, I've got the old newspaper files. The Blackbury Guardian. They go back nearly a hundred years. All we've got to do is look at the front pages. That's where famous people'd be.'

'And the back pages,' said Bigmac.

'Why the back pages?'

'Sports. Famous footballers and that.'

'Yeah, right. Hadn't thought of that. All right, then. Let's get started

'Yeah, but ...' said Bigmac.

'What?' said Johnny.

'So this Karl Marx, then,' said Bigmac. 'What films was he in?'

Johnny sighed. 'Listen, he wasn't in any films. He was ... he led the Russian Revolution.'

'No he didn't,' said Wobbler. 'He just wrote a book called, oh, something like It's About Time There Was a Revolution, and the Russians just fol- lowed the instructions. The actual leaders were a lot of people with names ending in ski.'

'Like Stalin,' said Yo-less.

'Right.'

'Stalin means Man Of Steel,' said Yo-less. 'I read where he didn't like his real name, so he changed it. It's Man of Steel in English.'

'What was his real name?'

'His secret identity, you mean,' said Yo-less.

'What are you talking about now?' said Bigmac.

'No, I get it. Man of Steel? Yo-less means he could leap Kremlins in a single bound,' said Johnny.

'Don't see why not,' said Wobbler. 'I always thought it was unfair, the way the Americans got Superman. They've got all the superheroes. I don't see why we couldn't have had Superman round here.'

They thought about it. Wobbler then spoke for them all.

'Mind you,' he said, 'round here he would have had trouble even being Clark Kent.'

They disappeared under the hoods again.

'What did you say the Alderman was called?' said Wobbler, after a while.

'Alderman Thomas Bowler,' said Johnny. 'Why?'

'It says he got the Council to build a memorial horse trough in the square in nineteen hundred and five,' said Wobbler. 'It came in useful very quickly too, it says here.'