Free Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett Page A

more!”
    Interested despite himself, Johnny padded over to the phone booth. Mr. Fletcher was actually kneelingdown with his hands inside the telephone. A couple of other dead people were watching him. One of them was William Stickers, who didn’t look very happy. The other was an old man with a mass of white hair in that dandelion-clock style known as Mad Scientist Afro.
    “Oh, it’s you,” said William Stickers. “Call this a world, do you?”
    “Me?” said Johnny. “I don’t call it anything.”
    “Was that man on the radio making fun of me, do you think?”
    “Oh, no,” said Johnny, crossing his fingers.
    “Mr. Sticker iz annoyed because he telephoned Moscow,” said the white-haired man. “They said they’ve had enough revolutions to be going on viz, but vould like some soap.”
    “They’re nothing but dirty capitalists!” said William Stickers.
    “But at least they want to be clean capitalists,” said Mr. Fletcher. “Where shall we try next?”
    “Don’t you have to put money in?” said Johnny.
    Mr. Fletcher laughed.
    “I don’t sink ve’ve met,” said the white-haired man, extending a slightly transparent hand. “Solomon Einstein (1861–1932).”
    “Like Albert Einstein?” said Johnny.
    “He vas my distant cousin,” said Solomon Einstein.
    “Relatively speaking. Ha ha.”
    Johnny got the impression Mr. Einstein had said that line a million times and still wasn’t tired of it.
    “Who’re you ringing up?” said Johnny.
    “We’re just having a look at the world,” said Mr. Fletcher. “What are those things that go around and around in the sky?”
    “I don’t know. Frisbees?”
    “Mr. Vicenti just remembers them. They go around and around the world.”
    “Oh. You mean satellites?”
    “Whee!”
    “But how do you know how to—”
    “I can’t explain. Things are a lot simpler, I think. I can see it all laid out.”
    “All of what?”
    “All the cables, all the…the satellites…Not having a body makes them a lot easier to use, too.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “For one thing, you don’t have to stay in one place.”
    “But I thought you—”
    Mr. Fletcher vanished. He reappeared a few seconds later.
    “Amazing things,” he said. “My word, but we shall have fun.”
    “I don’t underst—”
    “Johnny?”
    It was Mr. Vicenti.
    Someone living had managed to get through to Mad Jim. The dead, with much laughter, were trying to dance to a country-and-western number.
    “What’s going on ?” said Johnny. “You said you couldn’t leave the cemetery!”
    “No one has explained this to you? They do not teach you in schools?”
    “Well, we don’t get lessons in dealing with ghos—Sorry. Sorry. With dead people, I mean.”
    “We’re not ghosts, Johnny. A ghost is a very sad thing. Oh, dear. It’s hard to explain things to the living. I was alive once, and I know what I’m talking about.”
    Dead Mr. Vicenti looked at Johnny’s blank face. “We’re…something else,” he said. “But now that you see us and hear us, you’re making us free. You’re giving us what we don’t have.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I can’t explain. But while you’re thinking of us, we’re free.”
    “My head doesn’t have to spin around and around, does it?”
    “That sounds like a good trick. Can you make it do that?”
    “No.”
    “Then it won’t.”
    “Only I’m a bit worried I’m dabblin’ with the occult.”
    It seemed silly to say it, to Mr. Vicenti in his pin-stripe trousers and little black tie and fresh ghostly carnation every day. Or Mrs. Liberty. Or the big bearded shape of William Stickers, who would have been Karl Marx if Karl Marx hadn’t been Karl Marx first.
    “Dear me, I hope you’re not dabbling with the occult,” said Mr. Vicenti. “Father Kearny (1891–1949) wouldn’t like that at all.”
    “Who’s Father Kearny?”
    “A few moments ago he was dancing with Mrs. Liberty. Oh dear. We do mix things up, don’t we?”
    “Send him