‘Why not?’ said a dancing dead.

‘It’s the middle of the night!’

‘Well? We don’t sleep!’

‘I mean, what would your . . . your descendants think if they could see you acting like this?’

‘Serve them right for not visiting us!’

‘We’re making carpets!’ shouted Mrs Liberty.

‘Cutting a rung,’ corrected one of the dead.

‘A rug,’ said the Alderman, slowing down a bit. ‘A rug. Cutting a rug. That’s what Mr Benbow who died in nineteen thirty-one, says it is called. Getting down and bogeying.’

‘It’s been like this all evening,’ said Mr Vicenti. He was sitting on the pavement. In fact, he was sitting about half a metre above the pavement. ‘We’ve found some very interesting stations. What exactly is a DJ?’

‘A disc jockey,’ said Johnny, giving up and sitting down. ‘He plays the discs and stuff’

‘Is it some kind of punishment?’

‘Quite a lot of people like to do it.’

‘How very strange. They are not mentally ill, or anything?’

The song finished. The dancers stopped twirling, but slowly and with great reluctance.

Mrs Liberty pushed her hat back. It had tipped over her eyes.

‘That was extremely enjoyable,’ she said. ‘Mr Fletcher! Be so good as to instruct the man on the wireless to play something more!’

Interested despite himself, Johnny padded over to the phone box. Mr Fletcher was actually kneeling down 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 wiz, 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 zink we’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. Haha.’

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 round and round in the sky?’

‘I don’t know. Frisbees?’

‘Mr Vicenti just remembers them. They go round and round 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.’