The Truth

dollars!”
    “A hundred dollars,” said William wearily. “You do realize, don’t you, that this is in the public interest?”
    The crew craned their necks.
    “Don’t see anyone watching,” said Coffin Henry.
    William stepped forward, quite accidentally knocking over his tea.
    “Come on, then,” he said.

    Mr. Tulip was beginning to worry now. This was unusual. In the area of worry, he had tended to be the cause rather than the recipient. But Mr. Pin was not acting right, and since Mr. Pin was the man who did the thinking, this was a matter of some concern. Mr. Tulip was good at thinking in split seconds, and when it came to art appreciation he could easily think in centuries, but he was not happy over middle distances. He needed Mr. Pin for that.
    But Mr. Pin was talking to himself, and kept staring at shadows.
    “We’ll be heading off now?” said Mr. Tulip, in the hope of directing matters. “We’ve got the —ing payment with a —ing big bonus, no —ing point in hanging around?”
    He was also worried about the way Mr. Pin had acted with the —ing lawyer. It wasn’t like him to point a weapon at someone and then not use it. The New Firm didn’t go round threatening people. They were the threat. All that —ing stuff about “letting you live for today”…that was amateur stuff.
    “I said, are we heading—?”
    “What do you think happens to people when they die, Tulip?”
    Mr. Tulip was taken aback.
    “What kind of —ing question is that? You know what happens!”
    “Do I?”
    “Certainly. Remember when we had to leave that guy in that —ing barn and it was a week before we got to bury him properly? Remember how his—”
    “I don’t mean bodies!”
    “Ah. Religion stuff, then?”
    “Yes!”
    “I never worry about that —ing stuff.”
    “Never?”
    “Never —ing give it a thought. I’ve got my potato.”
    Then Mr. Tulip found that he’d walked a few feet alone, because Mr. Pin had stopped dead.
    “Potato?”
    “Oh, yeah. Keep it on a string round my neck.” Mr. Tulip tapped his huge chest.
    “And that’s religious?”
    “Well, yeah. When you die, if you’ve got your potato, everything will be okay.”
    “What religion is that?”
    “Dunno. Never ran across it outside our village. I was only a kid. I mean, it’s like gods, right? When you’re a kid, they say ‘That’s God, that is.’ Then you grow up and you find there’s —ing millions of ’em. Same with religion.”
    “And it’s all okay if you have a potato when you die?”
    “Yep. You’re allowed to come back and have another life.”
    “Evenif…” Mr. Pinswallowed, for he was in territory that had never before existed on his internal atlas, “…even if you’ve done things that people might think were bad?”
    “Like chopping up people and —ing shovin’ ’em off cliffs?”
    “Yeah, that kind of thing…”
    Mr. Tulip sniffed, causing his nose to flash. “We-ell, it’s okay so long as you’re really —ing sorry about it.”
    Mr. Pin was amazed, and a little suspicious. But he could feel things…catching up. There were faces in the darkness and voices on the cusp of hearing. He dared not turn his head now, in case he saw anything behind him.
    You could buy a sack of potatoes for a dollar.
    “It works ?” he said.
    “Sure. Back home people’d been doing it for hundreds of —ing years. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t —ing work, would they?”
    “Where was that?”
    Mr. Tulip tried to concentrate on this question, but there were many scabs in his memory.
    “There was…forests,” he said. “And…bright candles,” he muttered. “An’…secrets,” he added, staring into nothing.
    “And potatoes?”
    Mr. Tulip came back to the here and now.
    “Yeah, them,” he said. “Always lots of —ing potatoes. If you’ve got your potato, it will be all right.”
    “But…I thought you had to pray in deserts, and go to a temple every day, and sing songs, and give stuff to the poor…?”
    “Oh, you can do all that too, sure,” said Mr. Tulip. “Just so long as you’ve got your —ing potato.”
    “And you come back alive?” said Mr. Pin, still trying to find the small print.
    “Sure. No point in coming back dead. Who’d notice the —ing difference?”
    Mr. Pin opened his mouth to reply, and Mr. Tulip saw his expression change.
    “Someone’s got their hand on my shoulder!” he hissed.
    “You feeling all right, Mr. Pin?”
    “You can’t see