Johnny and the Bomb

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Let’s get somewhere more hidden,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Good idea,’ muttered Bigmac.

  A cinder path went around the back of the little church, to an area with dustbins and a heap of dead flowers. There was a small green door. It opened easily.

  ‘In those – in these days, they didn’t lock churches,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘But there’s silver candlesticks and stuff, isn’t there?’ said Bigmac. ‘Anyone could walk right in and nick ’em.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Johnny.

  They manhandled the trolley into a back room. It contained a tea urn on a trestle table, a pile of battered hymnbooks, and not much else except the smell of old embroidery, furniture polish and stale air, which is known as the odour of sanctity. There was no sign of any silver candlesticks anywhere—

  ‘Bigmac! Shut that cupboard!’ said Yo-less.

  ‘I was only looking.’

  Johnny stared at the sacks. All right, he thought. Let’s say they’re full of time. It’s a daft idea. After all, they’re quite small sacks—

  On the other hand, how much space does time take up?

  Perhaps it’s compressed … folded up …

  Mrs Tachyon collects time like other old ladies collect string?

  This is daft.

  But …

  There was a deep, rumbling sound. Guilty had sat up in the trolley and was purring happily.

  Johnny took a sack and held it carefully by the neck. It felt warm, and he was sure it moved slightly under his grip.

  ‘This probably won’t work,’ he said. ‘Should we hold on to the trolley?’ said Yo-less.

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know! Look, are you all sure? I really don’t know what I’m doing!’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve never really known what you’re doing, have you?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Yo-less. ‘So you’ve had a lot of practice.’

  Johnny shut his eyes and tried to think of … 1996.

  The thought crept into his mind from somewhere outside. It’s not a time, it’s a place.

  It’s a place where the model of a Space Shuttle on the ceiling hangs by a bit of red wool because you ran out of black thread.

  And the model’s got streaks of glue on it because you always get it wrong somewhere.

  It’s a place where your mum just smokes a lot and looks out of the window.

  It’s a place where your grandad watches TV all day.

  It’s where you want to be.

  His mind began to go fuzzy at the edges. He thought of Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper and the Mr Men lamp, until they were so close he could almost taste them. He could hear the place where Grandad had hung the wallpaper wrong so that there was an engine that was half Thomas and half James. It hung like a beacon in his head.

  He opened his eyes. The images were still around him; the others looked like ghosts. They were staring at him.

  He opened the bag, just a fraction.

  Wobbler swallowed.

  ‘Er …’ he said.

  He turned around. And then, just in case, he looked behind the table.

  ‘Er … guys? Johnny? Bigmac? Yo-less?’ He swallowed again, but sometimes you just had to face up to unpleasant facts, and so he bravely said:

  ‘Er … Kirsty?’

  No one answered. There was no one there to answer.

  He was all alone with the tea urn.

  ‘Hey, I was even holding on!’ he said. ‘Oi! I’m still here! Very funny, ha ha, now joke over, all right? Guys? Johnny? You’ve left me behind! All right? It worked, yes. Joke over, ha ha ha, all right? Please?’

  He opened the door and looked out into the shadowy yard.

  ‘I know you’re only doing this to wind me up, well, it hasn’t worked,’ he moaned.

  Then he went back and sat on a bench with his hands on his lap.

  After a while he fished out a grubby paper handkerchief and blew his nose. He was about to throw it away when he stopped and glared at it. It was probably the only paper handkerchief in the world.

  ‘I can see you peering out at me,’ he said, but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘You’re going to jump out any minute, I know. Well, it’s not working. ’Cos I’m not worried, see. Let’s all go home and get a burger, eh? Good idea, eh? Tell you what, I’ve got some money, I don’t mind buyin’ ’em, eh? Hey? Or we could go down the Chinese and get a takeaway—’

  He stopped, and looked exactly like someone who’d realized that it was going to be a long, long time before there were any beansprouts in this town. Or burgers, come to that. All there probably was to eat was meat and fish and stuff.

  ‘All right, fair enough, you can come out now …’

  A fly stirred on the windowsill, and started to bang itself absentmindedly on the glass.

  ‘Look, it’s not funny any m … more, all right?’

  There was a movement of air behind him, and a definite sensation that, where there had been no one, there was now someone.

  Wobbler turned around, a huge relieved grin on his face.

  ‘Ha, I bet you thought you’d got me going – what?’

  The Over-5Os’ Keep-Fit class was in full wheeze. The tutor had long ago given up expecting everyone to keep up, so she just pressed on in the hope that people would do what they could manage and, if possible, not actually die while on the premises.

  ‘And bend and bend and bend and – do the best you can, Miss Windex – step and step and – what?’

  She blinked.

  Johnny looked around.

  The keep-fit class, after ten minutes of aerobics, were not the most observant people. One or two of them actually made space for the newcomers.

  The tutor hesitated. She’d been brought up to believe in a healthy mind in a healthy body, and, since she was pretty sure she had a healthy body, it was not possible, she reasoned, that a group of people and an overloaded shopping trolley could have suddenly appeared at the back of the old church hall. They must have just come in, she reasoned. Admittedly, there was no actual door there, but people certainly didn’t just appear out of thin air.

  ‘Where are we?’ Kirsty hissed.

  ‘Same place,’ whispered Yo-less. ‘Different time!’

  Even some of the slower fitness fans had caught up by now. The whole class had stopped and turned around and were watching them with interest.

  ‘Well, say something!’ said Kirsty. ‘Everyone’s looking.’

  ‘Er … is this Pottery?’ said Johnny.

  ‘What?’ said the tutor.

  ‘We’re looking for Beginners’ Pottery,’ said Johnny. It was a wild stab, but every hall and hut and spare room in Blackbury seemed to have its time filled up with people doing weird hobbies or industriously learning Russian.

  A small light went on behind the tutor’s eyes. She grabbed at the familiar words like a singer snatching a microphone.

  ‘That’s Thursdays,’ she said. ‘In the Red Cross Hall.’

  ‘Oh. Is it? Tch. We’re always getting it wrong,’ said Johnny.

  ‘And after we’ve lugged all this clay up here, too,’ said Yo-less. ‘That’s a nuisance, isn’t it, Bigmac?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Bigmac. ‘They shot at me!’

  The tutor was staring from one to the other.

  ‘Er. Yes. Well, it can get pretty nasty in Beginners’ Pottery,’ said Johnny. ‘Come on, everyone.’

  They all grabbed hold of the trolley. Tracksuited figures limped politely out of the way as it squeaked its way across the floor, bumped down the step and landed in the damp yard outside.

  Johnny pushed the door shut behind them, and listened for a moment.

  ‘… well, then … bend and stretch and wheeze and bend …’

  He straightened up. It was amazing what you could get away with. Ten-legged aliens would be immediately accepted in Blackbury if they were bright enough to ask the way to the Post Office and complain about the weather. People had a way of just not seeing a
nything that common sense said they shouldn’t see.

  ‘I bet something’s gone wrong,’ said Bigmac.

  ‘Er …’ said Yo-less.

  ‘No, this has got to be the 1990s,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’s the only period in history when you wouldn’t be burned at the stake for wearing a green and purple tracksuit, isn’t it?’

  The bulk of the sports centre loomed opposite them. Five minutes ago, thought Johnny, five of my minutes ago, that was a street. Get your head round that.

  ‘Er …’ said Yo-less again.

  ‘They shot at me,’ said Bigmac. ‘A real bullet! I heard it hit the actual wall!’

  ‘Er …’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Oh, what’s the matter with you?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘Er … where’s Wobbler?’

  They looked around.

  ‘Oh, no …’ said Johnny.

  They were Wobblerless.

  ‘I ain’t going back!’ said Bigmac, backing away. ‘Not to get shot at!’

  ‘He wouldn’t have wandered off again, would he?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘He must still be there!’

  ‘Look, get a grip, will you?’ said Kirsty. ‘You said the church doesn’t get hit! He’s OK.’

  ‘Yes … but he’s OK in 1941!’

  ‘S’posing something goes wrong?’ said Bigmac. ‘He didn’t come back this time, s’posing we go back and all get stuck? I’ll get shot!’

  ‘You think you’ve got problems?’ said Yo-less. ‘I’d have to learn to play the banjo.’

  ‘Will you all stop panicking and think for a moment?’ said Kirsty. ‘This is time travel. He’s always going to be there, whenever we go back! Of course we ought to go and get him! But we don’t have to rush.’

  Of course, it was true. He’d always be there, thought Johnny. They could go back in ten years time and he’d still be there. Just like something on a tape – you could play it, and fast forward, and rewind, and it would always be there. And later that night, the bombs would land in Paradise Street – and that night would always be there. For ever. Every second, always there. Like little fossils.

  Kirsty hauled the trolley away and pushed it down the steps towards the pavement.

  ‘His mum ’n dad’ll worry,’ said Yo-less, uncertainly.

  ‘No, they won’t,’ said Kirsty. ‘Because we can bring him back to right here.’

  ‘Really? Why can’t we see us doing it, then?’ said Yo-less. ‘You mean any minute we’re just going to pop up with Wobbler and say “hi, us, here’s Wobbler, see you later”?’

  ‘Oh, good grief,’ said Kirsty. ‘I can’t think about that. You can’t think about time travel with a logical mind.’

  Yo-less turned and looked at Johnny’s face.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘He’s off again …’

  Everything’s there waiting, Johnny thought. That’s the thing about time. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to build a time machine. We could all die out and evolution could start again with moles or something, it could take millions of years, but sooner or later someone will find out how to do it. It might not even be a machine. It might just be a way of understanding what time is, like everyone was scared of lightning and then one day someone said, look, you can store it in little bottles and then it was just electricity. But it wouldn’t actually matter, because once you’d worked out how to use it, everything would be there. If someone ever finds a way of travelling in time, ever, in the entire history of the universe, then they could be here today.

  And then he thought of the bombers, nosing through the clouds over the houses and the footballers and all those clean doorsteps …

  ‘Uh?’ he said.

  ‘You all right?’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Let’s get a drink, at least,’ said Kirsty, shoving the trolley firmly towards the town centre.

  And then she stopped.

  Johnny hadn’t often seen her shocked. Kirsty normally dealt with the terrible and the unexpected by getting angry with it. But now she stopped, and went pale.

  ‘Oh, no …’ she said.

  The road from the old church led down the hill towards traffic lights at the bottom.

  An overloaded shopping trolley, with a boy and a girl clinging to it, was hurtling down the other road.

  As they watched, it heeled over like a yacht tacking against the wind, turned a full ninety degrees, and plunged into the car park of the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall.

  A long black car followed it.

  He’d forgotten all about the car. Maybe there were secret societies. Maybe there were men in black in long black cars who said things like, ‘The truth is out there’ and came and found you if you got your hand trapped in the occult.

  Johnny could see a map in his head. But it was a map of time.

  They’d moved in time at his house. But Yo-less was right, you probably could move in time like a train on a track, so you flipped over onto another track just a little bit further along. You moved in space, really.

  And he’d done it again, when he thought they were going to die at the traffic lights. And the black car had vanished … because it didn’t exist in this time. He definitely hadn’t seen it when he’d looked behind him.

  They’d come back to a time when it existed.

  The car pulled to a halt outside the mall.

  A feeling of absolute certainty stole over Johnny. He knew the answer. Later on, with any luck, he’d find out what the question was, but right now he was sure of the answer.

  Forget about secret societies. Forget about time police. Policemen had to have nice logical minds, and to deal with time you needed a mind like Mrs Tachyon.

  But there was someone else who’d know where they’d be today, wasn’t there …

  Because … supposing we didn’t go back? Supposing … maybe we went back and did things wrong?

  He started to run.

  Johnny dodged across the road. A car hooted at him.

  Across in the car park, a man in black, with black sunglasses and a peaked black hat, got out of the car and hurried into the mall.

  Johnny leapt over the low wall into the car park and weaved between shoppers and their trolleys …

  … and panted to a halt in front of the car.

  It had stopped right in front of the entrance, where no one was ever allowed to park.

  In the bright sunlight it looked even blacker than Johnny remembered. Its engine ticked occasionally as it cooled down. On the hood was a silver ornament.

  It looked very much like a hamburger.

  If he squinted, Johnny could just make out a figure in the rear seat, a mere shadow behind the darkness of the glass.

  He ran around and snatched at the handle of the back door, yanking it open.

  ‘All right! I know you’re in there! Who are you, really?’

  Most of the figure was in deep shade, but there was a pair of hands visible, resting on a black cane with a silver tip.

  Then the figure moved. It unfolded slowly, and became a large man in a coat that was half coat, half cloak. He emerged carefully, making sure both feet were firmly on the ground before easing the rest of his body out of the car.

  He was quite tall, tall enough so that he was big rather than fat. He wore a large black hat and had a short, silvery beard.

  He smiled at Johnny, and nodded at the others as they hurried up.

  ‘Who am I?’ he said. ‘Well, now … why don’t you guess? You were always good at this sort of thing.’

  Johnny looked at him, and then at the car, and then back up the hill to where the old church was just visible.

  ‘I think …’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ said the old man. ‘Yes? Go on?’

  ‘I think that … I mean, I don’t know … but I know I’m going to know … I mean, I think I know why you’ve come to find us …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Johnny swallowed. ‘But we were—’ he began.

  The old man patted him on the shoulder.
r />   ‘Call me Sir John,’ he said.

  Chapter 8

  Trousers of Time

  There were differences in the mall. One big difference, certainly. The burger bar had changed. There were different-shaped paper hats, and the colour scheme was blue and white instead of red and yellow.

  The old man led the way.

  ‘Who is he?’ hissed Kirsty.

  ‘You’ll laugh if I tell you! This is time travel! I’m still trying to work out the rules!’

  Sir John sat down heavily in a seat, motioned them to sit down as well, and then did the second-worst thing anyone could do in a fast-food restaurant.

  He snapped his fingers at a waitress.

  All the staff were watching them anxiously.

  ‘Young lady,’ said Sir John, wheezing slightly, ‘these people will have whatever they want. I will have a glass of water. Thank you.’

  ‘Yes, Sir John,’ said the waitress, and hurried away.

  ‘You’re not s’posed to do that,’ said Bigmac hoarsely. ‘You’re s’posed to queue up.’

  ‘No, you’re supposed to queue up,’ said Sir John. ‘I don’t have to.’

  ‘Have you always been called Sir John?’ said Johnny.

  The man winked at him.

  ‘You know, don’t you,’ he said. ‘You’ve worked it out. You’re right. Names are easily changed, especially in wartime. I thought it might be better. I got the knighthood in 1964 for services to making huge amounts of money.’

  The waitress hurried back with the water, and then produced a notebook and looked expectantly at them all with the bright, brittle smile of someone who is expecting to be sacked at any moment.

  ‘I’ll have … well, I’ll have everything,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Me too,’ said Bigmac.

  ‘Cheeseburger?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Chilli beanburger,’ said Kirsty. ‘And I want to know what’s going on, OK?’

  Sir John beamed at her in a slightly distracting way. Then he nodded at the waitress.

  ‘Make me one with everything,’ he said, slowly and carefully, as if quoting something he’d heard a long time ago, ‘because I want to become a Muslim.’

  ‘A Buddhist,’ said Yo-less, without thinking. ‘You always muck up the punchl—’ Then his mouth dropped open.

  ‘Do I?’ said Wobbler.