Not all alone ...

The air sparkled. Glowing lines, blue as elec- tricity, thin as smoke, poured out of the clear sky. Where they touched the fingers of the danc- ing woman they stretched out and broke, then re-formed.

They crawled over the grass. They whirred through the air. The whole cemetery was alive with pale blue comets.

Alive ...

Mrs Tachyon's feet were off the ground.

Johnny looked at his own fingers. There was a blue glow crackling over his right hand, like St Elmo's Fire. It sparkled as he waved it towards the stars and felt his feet leave the gravel path.

' Ooowwwwwah!'

The lights spun him around and let him drift gently back down.

'Who are you?'

A line of fire screamed across the night and then exploded. Sparks flew out and traced lines in the air, which took on, as though it was outlined in neon, a familiar shape.

'Well, until tonight,' it said, blue fire sizzling in his beard, 'I thought I was William Stickers. Watch this!'

Blue glows arched over the gravestones again and clustered around the dark bulk of the bulldozer, flowing across it so that it glowed.

The engine started.

There was a clash of gears.

It moved forward. The railings clanged and cart- wheeled away. The brick wall crumbled.

Lights orbited around the bulldozed as it ploughed onward.

'Hey! Stop!'

Metal groaned. The engine note dropped to a dull, insistent throbbing.

The lights turned to look at Johnny. He could feel their attention.

'What are you doing'?'

A light burst into a glittering diagram of the Alderman.

'Isn't this what people wanted?' he said. 'We don't need it any more. So if anyone's going to do it, it should be us. That's only right.'

'But you said this was your place!' said Johnny.

Mrs Sylvia Liberty outlined herself in the air.

'We have left Nothing there,' she said, 'of any Importance.'

'Force of habit,' said William Stickers, 'is what has subjugated the working man for too long. I was right about that, anyway.'

'The_ disgusting bolshevik, although he needs a shave, is Quite correct,' said Mrs Liberty. And then she laughed. 'It seems to me we've spent Far too long moping around because of what we're not, without any Consideration of what we might be.'

'Chronologically gifted,' said Mr Einstein, crack- ling into existence.

'Dimensionally advantaged,' said Mr Fletcher, sparkling like a flashbulb.

'Bodily unencumbered,' said the Alderman.

'Into Extra Time,' said Stanley Roundway.

'Enhanced,' said Mr Vicenti.

'We had to find it out,' said Mr Fletcher. 'You have to find it out. You have to forget who you were. That's the first step. And stop being frightened of old ghosts. Then you've got room to find out what you are. What you can be.'

'So we're off,' said the Alderman.

'Where to?'

'We don't know. It iss going to be very inter- esting to find out,' said Solomon Einstein.

'But ... but ... we've saved the cemetery!' said Johnny. 'We had a meeting! And Bigmac ... and I spoke up and ... there's been things on the television and people have really been talking about this place! No-one's going to build any- thing on it! There's been birdwatchers here and

everything! Turn the machine off! We've saved the cemetery.'

'But we don't need it any more,' said the Alderman.

'We do!'

The dead looked at him.

'We do,' Johnny repeated. 'We ... need it to be there.'

The diesel engine chugged. The machine vi- brated. The dead, if that's what they still were, seemed to be thinking.

Then Solomon Einstein nodded.

'This iss of course very true,' he said, in his excited squeaky voice. 'It all balances, you see. The living have to remember, the dead have to forget. Conservation of energy.'

The bulldozer's engine stuttered into silence.

Mr Vicenti held up a hand. It glowed like a firework.

'We came back to say goodbye. And thank you,' he said.

'I hardly did anything.'

'You listened. You tried. You were there. You can get medals just for being there. People forget the people who were just there.'

'Yes. I know.'

'But, now ... we must be somewhere else.'

'No ... don't go yet,' said Johnny. 'I have to ask you—'

Mr Vicenti turned.

'Yes?'

'Urn ...'

'Yes?'

'Are there ... angels involved? You know? Or ... devils and things? A lot of people would like to know.'

'Oh, no. I don't think so. That sort of thing ... no. That's for the living. No.'

The Alderman rubbed his spectral hands. 'I rather think it's going to be a lot more interesting than that.'

The dead were walking away, some of them fading back into shining smoke as they moved.

Some were heading for the canal. There was a boat there. It looked vaguely like a gondola. A dark figure stood at one end, leaning on a pole that vanished into the water.

'This is my lift,' said William Stickers.

'It looks a bit ... spooky. No offence meant,' said Johnny.

'Well, I thought I'd give it a try. If I don't like it, I'll go somewhere else,' said William Stickers, stepping aboard. 'Off we go, comrade.'

RIGHT said the ferryman.

The boat moved away from the bank. The canal was only a few metres wide, but the boat seemed to be drifting off a long, long way...

Voices came back over the waters.

'You know, an outboard motor on this and it'd go like a bird.'

I LIKE IT THE WAY IT IS, MR STICKERS.

'What's the pay like?'

SHOCKING.

'I wouldn't stand for it, if I was you—'

'I'm not sure where he's going,' said the Alderman, 'but he's certainly going to reor- ganize things when he gets there. Bit of a traditional thinker, our William.'

There was a click and hum from further along the bank. Einstein and Fletcher were sitting proudly in some sort of - well, it looked partly like an electronic circuit diagram, and partly like a ma- chine, and partly like mathematics would look if it was solid. It glowed and fizzled.

'Good, isn't it,' said Mr Fletcher. 'You've heard of a train of thought?'

'This is a flight of the imagination,' said Solomon Einstein.

' We 're going to have a good look at some things.'

'That's right. Starting with everything.'

Mr Fletcher thumped the machine happily.

'Right! The sky's the limit, Mr Einstein!'

'Not even that, Mr Fletcher!'

The lines grew bright, drew together, became more like a diagram. And vanished. Just before they vanished, though, they seemed to be accelerating.

And then there were three.

'Did I see them waving?' said Mrs Liberty.

'And particling, I shouldn't wonder,' said the Alderman. 'Come, Sylvia. I feel a more down-to- earth mode of transport would be suitable for us.'

He took her hand. They ignored Johnny and stepped on to the black waters of the canal.

And sank, slowly, leaving a pearly sheen on the water which gradually faded away.

Then there was the sound of a motor starting up.

Out of the water, transparent as a bubble, the spirit of the dead Ford Capri rose gently towards the sky.

The Alderman wound down an invisible window.

'Mrs Liberty thinks we ought to tell you some- thing,' he said. 'But ... it's hard to explain, you know.'

'What is?' said Johnny.

'By the way, why are you wearing a pink sheet?'

'Urn—'

'I expect it's not important.'

'Yes.'

'Well—' The car turned slowly; Johnny could see the moon through it. 'You know those games where this ball runs up and bounces around and ends up in a slot at the bottom?'

'Pinball machines?'

'Is that what they're called now?'

'I think so.'

'Oh. Right.' The Alderman nodded. 'Well ... when you're bouncing around from pin to pin, it is probably very difficult to know that outside the game there's a room and outside the room there's a town and outside the town there's a country and outside the country there's a world and outside the world there's a billion trillion stars and that's only the start of it ... but it's there, d'you see? Once you know about it, you can stop worry- ing about the slot at the bottom. And you might bounce around a good deal longer.'