The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

    Anyway, he'd rebuilt the bike; resprayed it. Spent three months' unemployment benefit on oil and aerosols. Now it shone, and got him round from district to district. The district gate-police didn't like him wheeling it through, but it wasn't illegal. The government hadn't bothered making bikes illegal, just stopped production altogether, including spare parts. Cycling had imperceptibly died out.

    You had to be careful, travelling from district to district. In some, the unemployed threw stones and worse. In others, it was said, they strung up strangers from lamp-posts, as government spies. Though that was probably a rumour spread by the gate-police. He'd never suffered more than the odd, half-hearted stone, even in the beginning. Now, they all knew his bike, gathered round to get the news.

    But he'd travelled far that morning, further than ever before, because of the row with his father.

    'Your constant moaning makes me sick,' the old man had said, putting on his worker's cap with the numbered brass badge. 'I keep you - you get free sport, free contraceptives, free drugs and a twenty-channel telly. You lie in bed till tea-time. At your age…'

    'You had a job,' shouted Martin. 'In 1981, at the age of sixteen, you were given a job, which you still have.'

    'Some job. Two hours a day. Four times in two hours a bloody bell rings and I check a load of dials and write the numbers in a book that nobody needs and nobody reads. Call that a job for a trained electrician?'

    'You have a reason to get up in the morning -mates at work.'

    'Mates? I see the fore-shift when I clock on, and the back-shift when I clock off. My nearest mate is ten minutes' walk away. Where you going?'

    'Out. On my bike.'

    'You think you're so bloody clever wi' that bike. And your bloody wanderings. Why can't you stay where you were born, like everybody else?'

    "Cos I'm not like everybody else. And they're not going to make me.'

    'You want to button your lip, talking like that. Or they'll hear you.'

    'Or you'll tell them.' Then Martin saw the look on his father's face and was sorry. The old man would never do a thing like that. Not like some fathers…

    He was still staring at the card offering the vacancy when a blond kid came out and spat on the pavement with a lot of feeling.

    'Been havin' a go?' asked Martin mildly.

    'It's a con,' said the kid. 'They set you an intelligence test that would sink the Prime Minister.' He was no slouch or lout, either. Still held himself upright; switched-on blue eyes. Another lost sixth-former. 'Waste of time!'

    'I don't know…' said Martin. In school, he'd been rather sharp on intelligence tests.

    'Suit yourself,' said the blond kid, and walked away.

    Martin still hesitated. Then it started to rain, spattering his thin jeans. That settled it. The grey afternoon looked so pointless that even failing an intelligence test sounded a big thrill. Sometimes they gave you coffee…

    He walked in; the woman sitting knitting looked up, bored, plump and ginger. Pale blue eyes swam behind her spectacles like timid tropical fish.

    'What's the vacancy?'

    'Oh…just a general vacancy. Want to apply?'

    He shrugged. 'Why not?' She passed him a ballpoint and a many-paged green intelligence test.

    'Ready?' She clicked a stopwatch into action, and put it on the desk in front of her, as if she'd done it a million times before. 'Forty minutes.' He sighed with satisfaction as his ballpoint sliced into the test. It was like biting a ham sandwich, like coming home.

    An hour later, she was pushing back agitated wisps of ginger hair and speaking into the office intercom, her voice a squeak of excitement, a near-mad glint in her blue tropical-fish eyes.

    'Mr Boston - I've just tested a young man - a very high score - a very high score indeed. Highest score in months.'

    'Contain yourself, Miss Feather. What is the score?' It was a deliberately dull voice that not only killed her excitement dead as a falling pigeon, but made her pull down her plaid skirt, already well below her knees.

    'Four hundred and ninety-eight, Mr Boston.' 'Might be worth giving him a PA 52. Yes, try him with a PA 52. We've nothing better to do this afternoon.'

    PA 52 was twice as thick as the other one. As Martin took it, a little warm shiver trickled down his spine. Gratitude? To them? For what? Not rejecting him outright, like the blond kid? He smashed down the gratitude with a heavy metal fist; they'd only fail him further on. They were just playing with him. They had no job; there were no jobs. Still, he might as well get something out of his moment of triumph. 'Could I have a cup of coffee? Before I start?' 'Oh, I think we could manage a cup of coffee. You start, and I'll put it by your elbow when it's ready.' She clucked around him like she was an old mother hen, and he the only egg she'd ever laid. Smoothly, with a sense of ascending power, he began to cut through PA 52.