Dialogues of the Dead

DICK: But what …oh yes. It was the OED. All twenty volumes. What a crash they made! And it was this that …?

SERGIUS: Yes. Rye didn’t see an accident. She saw all the words in the language come flying off the shelves to send the great and the good of Mid-Yorkshire into undignified flight. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The path to communion with me must, she felt, lead through all these words, but how? So many, so very many …how to traverse such vast distances …she needed a chart to show her the path …and then it came to her …what if the OED was her chart …what if the limits of each volume were signposts …? A to Bazouki …BBC to Chalypsography … but how? And now she told herself, or imagined she heard me telling her, that messages to and from the dead require messengers, and for these messengers to be efficient, they must leave her living and come to me dead. These ideas were all swirling madly in her mind, and might still have come to nothing had she not driven out that fatal morning, and broken down, and saw you come bowling merrily along the road, Mr. Ainstable.

ANDREW: This is all beyond me. Is my van on the other side then, mate?

SERGIUS: Of course it is. Everything any of you need is over there. After your death, Mr. Ainstable, which she merely observed, she was almost convinced. After Mr. Pitman’s, which she contributed to but not necessarily fatally-he might after all have kept control of his bike and continued on his way home, cursing lady drivers-she felt sure that this was the path I had mapped out for her. And when you, dear lady, went on television, and practically invited her to prepare another Dialogue, everything seemed clear.

JAX: What a story! You say everything we need is on the other side. Computer terminals? Fax machines? Mobiles? That’s great! Come on, let’s not waste any more time. Let’s go!

STUFFER: Hold your horses. I want to know what she meant by scraping away at my poor old head. I mean, killing me were bad enough, that were adding insult to injury!