Only You Can Save Mankind Read online

  ALDERMAN THOMAS BOWLER

  1822-1906

  Pro Bono Publico

  There was a stone carving of – presumably – the Alderman himself, looking seriously into the distance as if he, too, was wondering what Pro Bono Publico meant.

  ‘I bet he’d be pretty angry,’ said Johnny.

  He hesitated for a moment, and then walked up the couple of broken steps to the metal door, and knocked on it. He never did know why he’d done that.

  ‘Here, you mustn’t!’ hissed Wobbler. ‘Supposing he comes lurchin’ out! Anyway,’ he said, lowering his voice a bit, ‘it’s wrong to try to talk to the dead. It can lead to satanic practices, it said on television.’

  ‘Don’t see why,’ said Johnny.

  He knocked again.

  And the door opened.

  Alderman Thomas Bowler blinked in the sunlight, and then glared at Johnny.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Johnny turned and ran for it.

  Wobbler caught him up halfway along North Drive. Wobbler wasn’t normally the athletic type, and his speed would have surprised quite a lot of people who knew him.

  ‘What happened? What happened?’ he panted.

  ‘Didn’t you see?’ said Johnny.

  ‘I didn’t see anything!’

  ‘The door opened!’

  ‘It never!’

  ‘It did!’

  Wobbler slowed down.

  ‘No, it didn’t,’ he muttered. ‘No one of ‘em can open. I’ve looked at ’em. They’ve all got padlocks on.’

  ‘To keep people out or keep people in?’ said Johnny.

  A look of panic crossed Wobbler’s face. Since he had a big face, this took some time. He started to run again.

  ‘You’re just trying to wind me up!’ he yelled. ‘I’m not going to hang around practising being satanic! I’m going home!’

  He turned the corner into East Way and sprinted towards the main gate.

  Johnny slowed down.

  He thought: padlocks.

  It was true, actually. He’d noticed it in the past.

  All the mausoleums had locks on them, to stop vandals getting in.

  And yet . . . and yet . . .

  If he shut his eyes he could see Alderman Thomas Bowler. Not one of the lurchin’ dead from out of Wobbler’s videos, but a huge fat man in a fur-trimmed robe and a gold chain and a hat with corners on.

  He stopped running and then, slowly, walked back the way he had come.

  There was a padlock on the door of the Alderman’s tomb. It had a rusty look.

  It was the talking to Wobbler that did it, Johnny decided. It had given him silly ideas.

  He knocked again, anyway.

  ‘Yes?’ said Alderman Thomas Bowler.

  ‘Er . . . hah . . . sorry . . .’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Are you dead?’

  The Alderman raised his eyes to the bronze letters over the door.

  ‘See what it says up there?’ he said.

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘Nineteen hundred and six, it says. It was a very good funeral, I understand. I didn’t attend, myself.’ The Alderman gave this some thought. ‘Rather, I did, but not in any position where I could observe events. I believe the vicar gave a very moving sermon. What was it you were wanting?’

  ‘Er . . .’ Johnny looked around desperately. ‘What . . . er . . . what does Pro Bono Publico mean?’

  ‘For the Public Good,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘Oh. Well . . . thank you.’ Johnny backed away. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Was that all?’

  ‘Er . . . yes.’

  The Alderman nodded sadly. ‘I didn’t think it’d be anything important,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a visitor since nineteen twenty-three. And then they’d got the name wrong. They weren’t even relatives. And they were American. Oh, well. Goodbye, then.’

  Johnny hesitated. I could turn around now, he thought, and go home.

  And if I turn around, I’ll never find out what happens next. I’ll go away and I‘ll never know why it happened now and what would have happened next. I’ll go away and grow up and get a job and get married and have children and become a grandad and retire and take up bowls and go into Sunshine Acres and watch daytime television until I die, and I’ll never know.

  And he thought: perhaps I did. Perhaps that all happened and then, just when I was dying, some kind of angel turned up and said would you like a wish? And I said, yes, I’d like to know what would have happened if I hadn’t run away, and the angel said, OK, you can go back. And here I am, back again. I can’t let myself down.

  The world waited.

  Johnny took a step forward.

  ‘You’re dead, right?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s one of those things one is pretty certain about.’

  ‘You don’t look dead. I mean, I thought . . . you know . . . coffins and things . . .’

  ‘Oh, there’s all that,’ said the Alderman, airily, ‘and then there’s this, too.’

  ‘You’re a ghost?’ Johnny was rather relieved. He could come to terms with a ghost.

  ‘I should hope I’ve got more pride than that,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘My friend Wobbler’ll be really amazed to meet you,’ said Johnny. A thought crossed his mind. ‘You’re no good at dancing, are you?’ he said.

  ‘I used to be able to waltz quite well,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘I meant . . . sort of . . . like this,’ said Johnny. He gave the best impression he could remember of Michael Jackson dancing. ‘Sort of with your feet,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘That looks grand,’ said Alderman Tom Bowler.

  ‘Yes, and you have to have a glittery glove on one hand—’

  ‘That’s important, is it?’

  ‘Yes, and you have to say “Ow!”’

  ‘I should think anyone would, dancing like that,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘No, I mean like “Oooowwwwwwweeeeeah!”, with . . .’

  Johnny stopped. He realized that he was getting a bit carried away.

  ‘But, look,’ he said, stopping at the end of a groove in the gravel. ‘I don’t see how you can be dead and walking and talking at the same time . . .’

  ‘That’s probably all because of relativity,’ said the Alderman. He moonwalked stiffly across the path. ‘Like this, was it? Ouch!’

  ‘A bit,’ said Johnny, kindly. ‘Um. What do you mean about relativity?’

  ‘Einstein explains all that quite well,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘What, Albert Einstein?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He was a famous scientist. He . . . invented the speed of light and things.’

  ‘Did he? I meant Solomon Einstein. He was a famous taxidermist in Cable Street. Stuffing dead animals, you know. I think he invented some kind of machine for making glass eyes. Got knocked down by a motor car in nineteen thirty-two. But a very keen thinker, all the same.’

  ‘I never knew that,’ said Johnny. He looked around.

  It was getting darker.

  ‘I think I’d better be getting home,’ he said; and began to back away.

  ‘I think I’m getting the hang of this,’ said the Alderman, moonwalking back across the path.

  ‘I’ll . . . er . . . I’ll see you again. Perhaps,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Call any time you like,’ said the Alderman, as Johnny walked away as quickly yet politely as possible. ‘I’m always in.’

  ‘Always in,’ he added. ‘That’s something you learn to be good at, when you’re dead. Er. Eeeeyooowh, was it?’

  About the Author

  Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld® series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. After falling out wi
th his keyboard he now talks to his computer. Occasionally, these days, it answers back.

  BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT

  The Discworld® Series

  1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC

  2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

  3. EQUAL RITES

  4. MORT

  5. SOURCERY

  6. WYRD SISTERS

  7. PYRAMIDS

  8. GUARDS! GUARDS!

  9. ERIC

  (illustrated by Josh Kirby)

  10. MOVING PICTURES

  11. REAPER MAN

  12. WITCHES ABROAD

  13. SMALL GODS

  14. LORDS AND LADIES

  15. MEN AT ARMS

  16. SOUL MUSIC

  17. INTERESTING TIMES

  18. MASKERADE

  19. FEET OF CLAY

  20. HOGFATHER

  21. JINGO

  22. THE LAST CONTINENT

  23. CARPE JUGULUM

  24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT

  25. THE TRUTH

  26. THIEF OF TIME

  27. THE LAST HERO

  (illustrated by Josh Kirby)

  28. THE AMAZING MAURICE &

  HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for young adults)

  29. NIGHT WATCH

  30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for young adults)

  31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT

  32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for young adults)

  33. GOING POSTAL

  34. THUD!

  35. WINTERSMITH (for young adults)

  36. MAKING MONEY

  37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS

  38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for young adults)

  39. SNUFF

  40. RAISING STEAM

  Other books about Discworld

  THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD

  THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE

  THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH

  TURTLE RECALL: THE DISCWORLD COMPANION . . . SO FAR

  (with Stephen Briggs)

  NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK

  (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)

  THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO

  (with Paul Kidby)

  THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK

  (with Bernard Pearson)

  THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK

  (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson)

  WHERE’S MY COW?

  (illustrated by Melvyn Grant)

  THE ART OF DISCWORLD

  (with Paul Kidby)

  THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD

  (compiled by Stephen Briggs)

  THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD

  (with Jacqueline Simpson)

  THE WORLD OF POO

  (with the Discworld Emporium)

  THE COMPLEAT ANKH-MORPORK

  (with the Discworld Emporium)

  THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK

  (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

  THE DISCWORLD MAPP

  (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

  A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP

  (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)

  DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby)

  A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on www.terrypratchett.co.uk

  Shorter Writing

  A BLINK OF THE SCREEN

  Non-Discworld books

  THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

  STRATA

  THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)

  GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman)

  THE LONG EARTH (with Stephen Baxter)

  THE LONG WAR (with Stephen Baxter)

  Non-Discworld novels for young adults

  THE CARPET PEOPLE

  TRUCKERS

  DIGGERS

  WINGS

  ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND

  JOHNNY AND THE DEAD

  JOHNNY AND THE BOMB

  NATION

  DODGER

  DODGER’S GUIDE TO LONDON

  ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 407 042749

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2014

  Text copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1992

  Cover illustrations copyright © Paul Kidby, 2013

  Extract from JOHNNY AND THE DEAD copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1993

  Chapter head decorations copyright © www.hen.uk.com, 2004

  First Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, 1992

  The right of Terry Pratchett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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