Johnny and the Bomb Read Online Free PDF Page B

there was something horribly unstoppable about Mrs. Tachyon.
    “Indeed? That’s what you think!” she said. “Call again tomorrow, baker, and we’ll take a crusty one! Poor old biddy, is it? That’s what you think! Millennium hand and shrimp? Free teeth and corsets? Maybe, for them as likes it, but not me, thank you so much. Wot, no bananas? I had a house, oh yes, but it’s all black men now. Hats.”
    “Are they treating you all right?” said Kasandra.
    “Don’t you worry! Right as rain and twice as ninepence. Hah! Tick tick bang! I’d like to see them try. There’s puddings. Of course, I remember when it was all fields, but would they listen?”
    Kasandra looked at Johnny.
    “I think she’s a bit…confused,” she said. “She doesn’t understand anything I’m saying.”
    “But we don’t understand anything she’s saying, either,” said Johnny, who felt confused all the time in any case.
    Mrs. Tachyon adjusted her headphones and started to boogie again.
    “I don’t believe this,” said Kasandra. “Excuse me.”
    She pulled the headphones off the woolly hat and listened to them.
    “The nurse was right,” she said. “There’s nothing at all.”
    Mrs. Tachyon bounced up and down happily.
    “One born every minute!” she chortled.
    Then she winked at Johnny. It was a bright, knowing wink, from Planet Tachyon to Planet Johnny.
    “We’ve brought you some grapes, Mrs. Tachyon,” he said.
    “That’s what you think.”
    “Grapes,” said Johnny firmly. He opened the bag, exposing the steaming greaseproof fish and chips paper inside. Her eyes widened. A scrawny hand shot out from under the covers, grabbed the bag, and disappeared under the blanket again.
    “Him and his coat,” she said.
    “Don’t mention it. Er. I’m keeping your cart safe. And Guilty is all right, although I don’t think he’s eaten anything apart from some chips and my hand.”
    “I blame Mr. Chamberlain,” said Mrs. Tachyon.
    A bell tinkled.
    “Oh dear that’s the end of visiting time my word don’t the hours just fly past what a shame,” said Kasandra, standing up quickly. “Nice to have met you Mrs. Tachyon sorry we have to be going come on Johnny.”
    “Lady Muck,” said Mrs. Tachyon.
    She nodded at Johnny.
    “What’s the word on the street, mister man?”
    Johnny tried to think like Mrs. Tachyon.
    “Er…‘No Parking’?” he suggested.
    “That’s what you think. Them’s bags of time, mister man. Mind me bike! Where your mind goes, the rest of you’s bound to follow. Here today and gone yesterday! Doing it’s the trick! Eh?”
    Johnny stared. It was as though he had been listening to a lot of static on the radio and then, just for a second, there was this one clear signal.
    The other Mrs. Tachyon came back.
    “He’s mixing sugar with the sand, Mr. McPhee!” she said. “That’s what you think.”
    “What did you have to go and give her them for?” Kasandra hissed as she strode out of the ward. “She needs a proper, healthy, balanced diet! Not hot chips! What did you give her them for?”
    “Well, I thought hot chips would be exactly what someone’d like who’d got used to cold chips. Anyway, she didn’t get any supper last night. Hey, there was something very odd about—”
    “She is very odd.”
    “You don’t like her much, do you?”
    “Well, she didn’t even say thank you.”
    “But I thought she was an unfortunate victim of a repressive political system,” said Johnny. “That’s what you said when we were coming here.”
    “Yes, all right, but courtesy doesn’t cost anything, actually. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    “Hello?” said someone behind them.
    “They’ve found out about the chips,” muttered Kasandra, as she and Johnny turned around.
    But it wasn’t a nurse bearing down on them, unless the hospital had a plainclothes division.
    It was a young woman in glasses and a worried hair-style. She also had boots that would have impressed Bigmac, and a