'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 all 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, well, 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  small tin, rather like a snuff box. He opened it. There was glowing dust inside.

     'What do you do with that?' said Teatime, all 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  wall there and it  goes twing,'  said Ernie.

     'Really? 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.'

     'All 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 fell sideways off his seat.

     There was  silence from behind, tinted with horror and possibly  just a little terrible admiration.

     'Wasn't he dull?' said Teatime, picking up the reins.

     Snow began to fall. It fell on the recumbent shape of  Ernie, and it also fell 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.

     Well, 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 all, said the first - or it may have  been the second, because, absolutely nothing  distinguished the  robes - is that there  is so much else we will control.

     Quite, said another. It is really amazing how they think. A sort of ... illogical 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  called  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 all 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 logically 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 totally  indistinguishable  robe popped  into existence  where  the stricken colleague had been.

     Yes, said the newcomer. Well, 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 gratefully.

     '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 killed me.'

     Ernie  felt inside  his overcoat  and  pulled out a small  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 all this, then, eh?' said  Ernie, taking  a pull.

     SORRY? THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF ME. I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION.

     'I said what'm  I going  to tell 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 . . .'

     All. 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 smaller 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 telling 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. . . well, 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. All through the house...

     ...one creature stirred. It was a mouse.

     And someone,  in the  face  of all  appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although,  because  it was  the festive season, they'd used a piece  of pork crackling. The smell of it  had been driving the mouse mad all  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.' All 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 . . .'