Everyone went quiet. Nearly as quiet as the unseen audience in Screen K.

Then Mr Atterbury started to clap. Someone else joined in -Johnny saw it was the nurse from Sunshine Acres. Pretty soon everyone was clapping, in a polite yet firm way.

Mr Atterbury stood up again.

'Mr Atterbury, sit down,' said the chairman. 'I am running this meeting, you know.'

'I am afraid this does not appear to be the case,' said Mr Atterbury. 'I'm

standing up and I'm going to speak. The boy is right. Too much has been

taken away, I do know that. You dug up the High Street. It had a lot of small shops. People lived there. Now it's all walkways and plastic signs and people are afraid of it at night. Afraid of the town where they live! I'd be ashamed of that, if I was you. And we had a coat of arms for the town, up on the Town Hall. Now we've got some kind of plastic logo thing. And you took the old allotments and built the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall and all the little shops went out of business. And they were beautiful, those allotments.'

'They were a mess!'

'Oh, yes. A beautiful mess. Home-made green- houses made of old window frames nailed together. Old men sitting out in front of their sheds in old chairs. Vegetables and dogs and children all over the place. I don't know where all those people went, do you? And then you knocked down a lot of houses and built the big tower block where no-one wants to live and named it after a crook.'

'I didn't even live here in those days,' said the chairman. 'Besides, it's generally agreed that the Joshua N'Clement block was a ... misplaced idea.'

'A bad idea, you mean.'

'Yes, if you must put it like that.'

' So mistakes can be made, can they?'

'Nevertheless, the plain fact is that we have to build for the future—'

'I'm very glad to hear you say that, madam chairman, because I'm sure you'll agree that the most successful buildings have got very deep foundations.'

There was another round of applause. The people on the platform looked at one another.

'I feel I have no alternative but to close the meeting,' said the chairman stiffly. 'This was sup- posed to be an informative occasion.'

'I think it has been,' said Mr Atterbury.

'But you can't close the meeting,' said Johnny.

'Indeed, I can!'

'You can't,' said Johnny, 'because this is a public hall, and we're all public, and no-one's done any- thing wrong.'

'Then we shall leave, and there will really be no point in the meeting!' said the chairman. She swept up her papers and stalked across the plat- form, down the steps and across the hall. The rest of the platform party, with one or two helpless glances at the audience, followed her.

She led the way to the door. Johnny offered up a silent prayer.

Someone, somewhere, heard it.

She pushed when she should have pulled. The rattling was the only noise, and it grew frantic as she began to lose her temper. Finally, one of the men from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings yanked the bar and the door jolted open.

Johnny risked looking behind him. He couldn't see anyone who looked dead.

A week ago that would have sounded really odd.

It didn't sound much better now.

'I thought I felt a draught,' he said. 'Just now?'

'They've left the windows open at the back,' said Yo-less.

They're not here, Johnny thought. I'm going to have to do this by myself. Oh, well ...

'Are we going to get into trouble?' said Wobbler. 'This was supposed to be a public meeting.'

'Well, we're public, aren't we?' said Johnny.

'Are we?'

'Why not?'

Everyone sat for a while looking at the empty platform. Then Mr Atterbury got up and limped up the steps.

' Shall we have a meeting?' he said.

Cold air swirled out of the cinema.

'Well, THAT was an education.'

'Some of those tricks must have been done with mirrors, if you want MY opinion.'

'What shall we do now?'

'We should be getting back.'

'Back where?'

'Back to the cemetery, of course.'

'Madam, the night is young!'

'That's right! We've only just started enjoying ourselves.'

'Yes! Anyway, you're a long time dead, that's what I always say.'

'I want to get out there and enjoy life. I never enjoyed it much when I WAS alive.'

'Thomas Bowler! That's no way for a respectable man to behave!'

The crowd queuing outside the burger bar drew closer together as the chilly wind drove past.

'Thomas Bowler? Do you know ... I never really enjoyed being Thomas Bowler.'

The audience in the Frank W. Arnold Civic Cen- tre looked a bit sheepish, like a class after the teacher has stormed out. Democracy only work very well if people are told how to do it.

Someone raised a hand.

'Can we actually stop it happening?' she said. 'It all sounded very ... official.'

'Officially, I don't think we can,' said MH Atterbury. 'There was a proper sale. United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings could get unpleasant.'

'There's plenty of other sites,' said someone else. 'There's the old jam works in Slate Road, and all that area where the old goods yard used to be.'

'And we could give them their money back.'

'We could give them double their money back,' said Johnny.

There was more laughter at this.

'It seems to me,' said Mr Atterbury, 'that a company like United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings has to take notice of people. The boot factory never took any notice of people, I do know that. It didn't have to. It made boots. That was all there was to it. But no-one's quite certain about what UACH does, so they have to be nice about it.' He rubbed his chin. 'Big companies like that don't like fuss. And they don't like being laughed at. If there was another site ... and if they thought we were serious ... and if we threaten to offer

them, yes, double their money back ...'

'And then we ought to do something about the High Street,' said someone.

'And get some decent playgrounds and things again, instead of all these Amenities all over the place.'

'And blow up Joshua N'Clement and get some proper houses built—'

'Yo!' said Bigmac.

'Here here,' said Yo-less.

Mr Atterbury waved his hands calmly.

'One thing at a time,' he said. 'Let's rebuild Blackbury first. We can see about Jerusalem tomorrow.'

'And we ought to find a name for ourselves!'

'The Blackbury Preservation Society?'

'Sounds like something you put in ajar.'

'All right, the Blackbury Conservation Society.'

'Still sounds like jam to me.'

'The Blackbury Pals,' said Johnny.

Mr Atterbury hesitated.

'It's a good name,' he said eventually, while lots of people in the hall started asking one another who the Blackbury Pals were. 'But ... no. Not

now. But they were officially the Blackbury Volunteers. That's a good name.'

'But that doesn't say what we're going to do, does it?'

'If we start off not knowing what we're going to do, we could do anything,' said Johnny. 'Einstein said that,' he added, proudly.

'What, Albert Einstein?' said Yo-less.

'No, Solomon Einstein,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Hah! Know about him too, do you?'

'Er ... yes.'

'I remember him. He used to keep a taxidermist and fishing tackle shop in Cable Street when I was a lad. He was always saying that sort of thing. A bit of a philosopher, was Solomon Einstein.'

'And all he did was stuff things?' said Yo-less.

'And think,' said Johnny.

'Well, that kind of cogitation runs in the family, you might say,' said Mr Atterbury. 'Besides, you've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger.'

'Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to think about what you were doing,' said Wobbler.