The Peacock Cloak

in their hands. They came straight at him and he tried to run but he just couldn’t manage it with all that beer in him.
    “Steady! Steady!” they told him, laughing as he wriggled and squirmed in the grip of two of them.
    There was a law man over the other side of the street and he was laughing too. And even Johnny gave a rueful smile, because of course he knew these blokes were government men and were only doing their job.
    “You don’t need me to tell you who we are do you, son?” asked the chief of them, a great neckless barrel of a man.
    “No you don’t, mate,” Johnny said. “I know who you are. You’re the press gang and it looks like you’ve got me fair and square.”
    “That’s right, mate,” said their leader. “We’re the press gang all right, and my name’s Bobby Grab.”
    He put on his special electric glasses and reached out his fat hand so that Johnny could give him his government card.
    “Johnny,” Bobby Grab read out, “Johnny Jones. Works in the blanket factory for two hundred crowns a week. Well this is your lucky day, Johnny Jones, because in this job we’ve got lined up for you, they’ll pay you twice that.”
    “Oh,” said Johnny, very surprised, “so what service is that?”
    “The Welfare, mate. They’ve had a bit of a recruitment problem lately for some reason, so they’ve had to get us on the job. Which means you’re pressed mate. Five years national service in Welfare. Could be the making of you.”
    Johnny’s face was white.
    “The Welfare? You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t want to be in Welfare!”
    “Why not mate? Why on Earth not? The money’s good and you’d be doing important work. Protecting children, protecting innocent little ones. What could be better work than that?”
    “But… But look what happened to that Welfare today… I was there… They… We…”
    At this Bobby Grab’s face grew dark.
    “What are you saying Johnny boy? Are you saying that David Simpson didn’t deserve what he got? I find that hard to believe, I must say, after what happened to that poor little Jenny Sue.”
    “No, mate, of course not.”
    “Would that little girl have had to suffer if he’d done his job?”
    “No, mate.”
    “You sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure.”
    “I should hope you are. Otherwise what were you doing there, as I could see on your card, helping out at Lavender Grove this afternoon? What were you doing there if that was a man who didn’t deserve it?”
    “I’m not saying that.”
    “Well I’m relieved to hear it, mate.”
    “But… I might not be any good at the job. That’s what I mean. I might not know what to do,”
    The gangman laughed indulgently.
    “You’re forgetting something, mate. You’re forgetting what always happens when a little child dies like Jenny Sue. First the Public Accuser does the Naming and sees that the Price is paid. But what comes next, eh? What comes next?”
    “Um… I… er…”
    “Then comes the Healer, doesn’t he?” the gangman reminded him, as if he was talking to a child. “The Healer comes in, dressed in white, just as Accuser comes dressed in black. And Healer looks into it all doesn’t he? And he listens to those who know about these things, and he makes new rules to ensure that it will never ever happen again. You must know that, mate! He does it every time!”
    Johnny nodded yes, he supposed so. Truth be told, you didn’t pay so much attention to these things after the Naming and the Price were done. And it wasn’t on Screen much either.
    “Trust me, my lad, that’s how it works,” said Bobby Grab, indulgently pinching Johnny’s cheek between a fat finger and a fat thumb, as if he was a kind old uncle and Johnny was a little boy.
    Bobby turned his neckless head to look at his men.
    “I’m right boys, aren’t I?” he asked.
    “Spot on, boss, spot on.”
    “So what I’m saying,” the gangman went on, “what I’m saying is that by the time you start work as a Welfare Officer, Healer will have come, and he’ll tell you just what to do, and then all you’ll have to do is do what he says and you’ll be fine. Beats working in a blanket factory every time if you ask my opinion. And it’s not as if you’ve got the build for our sort of work.”
    He beamed round at the big men around him. All the gangmen laughed.
    “Just listen to the Healer, Johnny, and you’ll be fine,” advised Bobby Grab, and he nodded to his men to let Johnny go.
    “Take the week off,” he