‘But I don’t understand why you thought I was dead.’ Teena brought her orange juice through to Kitchen Number 2, where she pulled out a chair, its feet scraping on floor tiles, and joined Danny at the table. She always scraped chairs. He decided she did it on purpose, but couldn’t divine her motives. ‘Didn’t you notice my breathing?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t see you for the trolley you’d got me stuck to,’ he said pointedly.
‘Oh.’ She seemed embarrassed, moving her glass in small circles on the table, watching it rather than Danny. ‘About that; let me say …’
‘Besides,’ he butted in, ‘Doors said you were dead.’
Eyes narrowing, she watched the ceiling camera. ‘Doors?’
‘Yes, Miss Rama?’ He sounded nervous.
‘Scan Gary. What do you make of his health?’
Click. A blue light emanated from the camera, its cool warmth studying the boy’s upper half. Danny imagined his likeness appearing on a screen in a part of the building he never knew existed. The image would be a man-shaped grid of luminous green lines, and be rotated full circle and then on its head, like happened in car ads when they wanted to convince you a tin box was a high-tech miracle that would give your life total freedom.
The light clicked off.
Teena watched Doors’ camera, her gaze demanding his verdict.
‘Oh dear,’ said the computer.
‘What is it?’ she asked
‘Miss Rama, Mr Gary’s dead.’
Her gaze met the baffled boy’s. Was it true? he wondered. Was he dead and hadn’t even noticed? Surely even he’d spot a thing like that. He felt at himself, his hands patting at his upper half. He seemed to be alive but how could he tell? Perhaps he’d died back at the hospital, after the shop had crashed down on him, and ever since had been walking around dead. And, even now, hospital staff might be scouring the streets of Wheatley for the escaped corpse – after all, he had Ribena for blood. How could he be alive with Ribena for blood? Maybe Boggy Bill had had his revenge and Danny had been too thick to notice.
Teena said, ‘Doors, scan every home within a quarter-mile radius of this house. Tell me the occupants’ state of health.’
His scanner hummed while Danny and Teena waited. Danny still not understanding what was going on.
The humming stopped.
And Doors ventured, ‘Miss Rama? They’re all dead too. But what could have happened? Was it the Horrible Mr Meekly?’
‘Try the entire world,’ she instructed – Danny growing ever more confused.
Doors’ scanner hummed. Enigmatic, Teena sipped orange juice while waiting.
‘Miss Rama?’
‘Everyone’s dead, the entire population of the world, all gone; as though there’s been a terrible nuclear holocaust that no one’s told me about.’
The mystified Danny looked at her.
She explained, ‘Doors has little medical programming. It hasn’t a clue how to tell the living from the dead. As I keep telling everyone – and they never listen – you shouldn’t regard it as a person. It’s just a machine, like a calculator or food blender. Doors know what it knows, nothing more.’
‘So, what happened to you?’ asked Danny.
She shrugged. ‘I merely passed out, having underestimated the intoxicating effects of my pie. I woke shortly before your return, to find that someone …’ and she looked pointedly at the camera, ‘… had called an undertaker.’
‘Was that inappropriate. Miss Rama?’
‘Just slightly. Oh and, Doors?’
‘Yes, Miss Rama?’ He was starting to sound more than a little downcast. Danny felt sorry for him, imagining what new ‘improvements’ Teena might inflict on his programming with her screwdriver.
She scrutinized the penguin, its beak still embedded in the table. ‘You didn’t complete the Fighting Android and despatch it to confront Mr Meekly, as per my orders.’
‘No, Miss Rama,’ he said warily.
‘Well done. Doors.’
‘Thank you. Miss Rama.’
‘Wait, Mr Smeegle!’ the boy called, his footsteps trying to catch up with the undertaker. ‘I need a word.’
The wind whipping at him, Smeegle’s stride quickened, taking him up Moldern Crescent, toward his parked limousine. He was determined to avoid anyone connected with the madhouse he’d just left. In all his years in the trade, he’d never been treated in such a cavalier fashion, insulted, knocked unconscious; and then, upon revival, ordered to leave – by a talking door, of all things. At the next Guild meeting he’d be getting the address blacklisted. Let’s see how they liked it when they discovered they weren’t allowed to die.
The boy caught up with him, slightly out of breath, half running, half walking alongside him. ‘You have a free cosmetic surgery offer for your ten thousandth customer?’
Smeegle lengthened his stride, not looking at the boy, his own footsteps clacking hurriedly on paving. ‘That’s correct. But as Dr Ramalalanyrina’s corpse refuses to lie down, it seems an irrelevant point.’ He reached his car, gripping its cold handle and, clunk, pressed it down. ‘Besides, frankly, Mr …?’ For the first time he looked at the straggly-haired youth who confronted him.
‘Yates; Danny Yates.’
‘Frankly, Mr Yates.’ He pulled the car door open, the breeze flapping his tie around. ‘The Undertakers’ Guild takes a dim view of electrical high-jinks, especially since the incident with Mrs Shelley. I’ve no doubt they’ll be unanimous that, in Dr Ramalalanyrina’s case, the offer should be void.’
‘But if I found you another customer, right now, they’d be your ten thousandth?’
‘I suppose so.’ The boy was starting to intrigue him.
‘And they’d be eligible for breast implants?’
‘Of course.’ But would he never get to the point?
‘And you could get free publicity, maybe an article in the local paper.’ His hands gestured as though framing an imaginary headline: LOCAL UNDERTAKER PICTURED WITH HIS TEN THOUSANDTH SATISFIED CUSTOMER.
And for the first time all day, James Smeegle smiled. He was beginning to take to this young man. ‘Why, Mr Yates, are you telling me you are in fact dead?’
‘No. But I know someone who a computer might claim is.’