through just where there’s a pile of rubble by the old dead tree, although you wouldn’t
see it unless you looked closely. But I’ve never seen how you do it … ‘
‘ ere, I can’t take you lot through,’ said Ernie. ‘Lifts is one thing, but not taking people
through- ‘
Teatime sighed. ‘And we were getting on so wel . Listen, Ernie … Ern … you wil take
us through or, and I say this with very considerable regret, I wil have to kil you. You
seem a nice man. Conscientious. A very serious overcoat and sensible boots.’
‘But if’n I take you through-‘
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ said Teatime. ‘You’l lose your job. Whereas if
you don’t, you’l die. So if you look at it like that, we’re actual y doing you a favour. Oh,
do say yes.’
‘Er . . .’ Ernie’s brain felt twisted up. The lad was definitely what Ernie thought of as a
toff, and he seemed nice and friendly, but it didn’t al add up. The tone and the content
didn’t match.
‘Besides,’ said Teatime, ‘if you’ve been coerced, it’s not your fault, is it? No one can
blame you. No one could blame anyone who’d been coerced at knife point.’
‘Oh, wel , I s’pose, if we’re talking coerced…’ Ernie muttered. Going along with things
seemed to be the only way.
The horse stopped and stood waiting with the patient look of an animal that probably
knows the route better than the driver.
Ernie fumbled in his overcoat pocket and took out a smal tin, rather like a snuff box.
He opened it. There was glowing dust inside.
‘What do you do with that?’ said Teatime, al interest.
‘Oh, you just takes a pinch and throws it in the air and it goes twing and it opens the
soft place,’ said Ernie.
‘SO … you don’t need any special training or anything?’
‘Er… you just chucks it at the wal there and it goes twing,’ said Ernie.
‘Real y? May I try?’
Teatime took the tin from his unresisting hand and threw a pinch of dust into the air
in front of the horse. It hovered for a moment and then produced a narrow, glittering
arch in the air. It sparkled and went…
… twing.
‘Aw,’ said a voice behind them. ‘Innat nice, eh, our Davey?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Al pretty sparkles…’
‘And then you just drive forward?’ said Teatime.
‘That’s right,’ said Ernie. ‘Quick, mind. It only stays open for a little while.’
Teatime pocketed the little tin. ‘Thank you very much, Ernie. Very much indeed.’
His other hand lashed out. There was a glint of metal. The carter blinked, and then
fel sideways off his seat.
There was silence from behind, tinted with horror and possibly just a little terrible
admiration.
‘Wasn’t he dul ?’ said Teatime, picking up the reins.
Snow began to fal . It fel on the recumbent shape of Ernie, and it also fel through
several hooded grey robes that hung in the air.
There appeared to be nothing inside them. You could believe they were there merely
to make a certain point in space.
Wel , said one, we are frankly impressed.
Indeed, said another. We would never have thought of doing it this way.
He is certainly a resourceful human, said a third.
The beauty of it al , said the first – or it may have been the second, because,
absolutely nothing distinguished the robes – is that there is so much else we wil
control.
Quite, said another. It is real y amazing how they think. A sort of … il ogical logic.
Children, said another. Who would have thought it? But today the children, tomorrow
the world.
Give me a child until he is seven and he’s mine for life, said another.
There was a dreadful pause.
The consensus beings that cal ed themselves the Auditors did not believe in
anything, except possibly immortality. And the way to be immortal, they knew, was to
avoid living. Most of al they did not believe in personality. To be a personality was to
be a creature with a beginning and an end. And since they reasoned that in an infinite
universe any life was by comparison unimaginably short, they died instantly. There
was a flaw in their logic, of course, but by the time they found this out it was always too
late. In the meantime,
they scrupulously avoided any comment, action or experience that set them apart …
You said ‘me’, said one.
Ah. Yes. But, you see, we were quoting, said the other one hurriedly. Some religious
person said that. About educating children. And so would logical y say ‘me’. But I
wouldn’t use that term of myself, of – damn!
The robe vanished in a little puff of smoke.
Let that be a lesson to us, said one of the survivors, as another and total y
indistinguishable robe popped into existence where the stricken col eague had been.
Yes, said the newcomer. Wel , it certainly appears-
It stopped. A dark shape was approaching through the snow.
It’s him, it said.
They faded hurriedly – not simply vanishing, but spreading out and thinning until they
were just lost in the background.
The dark figure stopped by the dead carter and reached down.
COULD I GIVE YOU A HAND?
Ernie looked up grateful y.
‘Cor, yeah,’ he said. He got to his feet, swaying a little. ‘Here, your fingers’re cold,
mister!’
SORRY.
‘What’d he go and do that for? I did what he said. He could’ve kil ed me.’
Ernie felt inside his overcoat and pul ed out a smal and, at this point, strangely
transparent silver flask.
‘I always keep a nip on me these cold nights,’ he said. ‘Keeps me spirits up.’
YES INDEED. Death looked around briefly and sniffed the air.
‘How’m I going to explain al this, then, eh?’ said Ernie, taking a pul .
SORRY? THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF ME. I WASN’T PAYING ATTENTION.
‘I said what’m I going to tel people? Letting some blokes ride off with my cart neat as you like … That’s gonna be the sack for sure, I’m gonna be in big trouble . . .’
Al . WELL. THERE AT LEAST I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS, ERNEST. AND, THEN
AGAIN, I HAVE SOME BAD NEWS.
Ernie listened. Once or twice he looked at the corpse at his feet. He looked smal er
from the outside. He was bright enough not to argue. Some things are fairly obvious
when it’s a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe tel ing you them.
‘So I’m dead, then,’ he concluded.
CORRECT.
‘Er … The priest said that … you know. after you’re dead . . . it’s like going through a
door and on one side of it there’s … He. . . wel , a terrible place … ?’
Death looked at his worried, fading face.
THROUGH A DOOR…
‘That’s what he said . .
I EXPECT IT DEPENDS ON THE DIRECTION YOU’RE WALKING IN.
When the street was empty again, except for the fleshy abode of the late Ernie, the
grey shapes came back into focus.
Honestly, he gets worse and worse, said one.
He was looking for us, said another. Did you notice? He suspects something. He
gets so … concerned about things.
Yes … but the beauty of this plan, said a third, is that he can’t interfere.
He can go everywhere, said one.
No, said another. Not quite everywhere.
And, with ineffable smugness, they faded into the foreground.
It started to snow quite heavily.
It was the night before Hogswatch. Al through the house…
…one creature stirred. It was a mouse.
And someone, in the face of al appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although,
because it was the festive season, they’d used a piece of pork crackling. The smel of it
had been driving the mouse mad al day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to
risk it.
The mouse didn’t know it was a trap. Mice aren’t good at passing on information.
Young mice aren’t taken up to famous trap sites and told, ‘This is where your Uncle
Arthur passed away.’ Al it knew was that, what the hey, here was something to eat.
On a wooden board with some wire round it.
A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind.
Or, rather, passed through it.
The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought,
‘Oops . . .’
Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the
wainscoting.
‘Squeak?’ it asked.
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.
And that was it, more or less.
Afterwards, the Death of Rats looked around with interest. In the nature of things his
very important job tended to take him to brickyards and dark cel ars and the inside of
cats and al the little dank holes where rats and mice final y found out if there was a