The truth is dead. Or, at least, after these short attacks upon it, lies seriously, perhaps fatally, wounded.

What follows are eight examples of stories sometimes described as “counterfactual” – that is, they take an event in history and consider how things might have turned out if one or two factors has been just that little bit different. There is a long and noble tradition of playing around with the facts in this way: the “winners” in history – the guys with the biggest swords, the nastiest guns and often the worst sense of humour – have, after all, always indulged their imaginations to a degree. The history they tell is sometimes true, but only from a certain point of view.

Collecting these tales has been a wonderful and enjoyable process, and as an author I can give them no higher compliment than to say that I wish I’d written every one of them myself. Including my own – which was actually written by the team of eager monkeys I keep locked in my cellar. (“No story? No banana!”)

The great thing about this type of story is that it’s simply a lot of fun wondering, What if…? Now, obviously, this is only interesting if you know which episode in history has been tampered with. Some of the stories in this anthology relate to very well-known moments, others to those less well known. There are explanations along the way to fill in some gaps – but if you need telling that the moon didn’t explode in the 1980s, then maybe this isn’t the book for you…

The stories appear in chronological order and span a couple of thousand years of human history. We start a good long time ago, in the desert with that most famous of carpenters: Jesus. Anthony McGowan’s story focuses on the period in Jesus’s life when he wandered through the desert for forty days and forty nights and was tested and tempted by the Devil.

Our next story – my own – takes us to nineteenth-century Europe. It centres on Napoleon, the short and apparently rather stroppy French emperor who ruled most of the Continent for a decade or so, having made his name as a military commander in the years before and during the French Revolution. After a series of defeats, Napoleon was forced to abdicate and was sent to live in exile on the island of Elba. But, as you will see when you read my story, he never stopped scheming about ways to make his comeback…

I can’t go into too much detail about our next two stories without giving the game away, but I will say that their choice of subject is very interesting and significant for subsequent history. The first of these, Mal Peet’s story, is set in pre-World War One Vienna. The Austrian capital was at that time an extraordinarily fertile place, both culturally and otherwise, full of people who were to have a major impact on the twentieth century. Mal has chosen to write about perhaps the most famous one of all…

The second, Linda Newbery’s tale, takes us onto the battlefields of France in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War. It is difficult to comprehend the number of men killed in the four-year conflict – an estimated eight million died and millions more were injured. Linda gives an insight into that bloody war and tells how the fate of one soldier was to change the course of history.

Next up is Philip Ardagh. His tale brings us ever closer to the real fascination of the counterfactual story as we discover how the history we take for granted could so easily have turned in a different direction. Taking inspiration from a genuine historical document – one that was written but, in the course of events, never used – Philip has chosen to retell the events of the 1969 moon landing.

The moon is also the subject of Matt Whyman’s story – although it has a very different role to play here, as you will see. An embittered stand-off between the United States of America and the Communist Soviet Union over the development of nuclear weapons, part of what was known as the cold war, had dominated global politics since 1945. By the 1980s there was a very real fear that the conflict would escalate into a nuclear Armageddon. If war did break out, the British would have only a four-minute warning – the estimated time it would take for a Russian missile to reach the UK – before the world ended.

As the close of the twentieth century approached, global paranoia turned in a different direction: what would happen to the world’s computers when the clock struck midnight on 31 December 1999? Eleanor Updale draws on those fears in her contribution. Stories like this show just how easily the foundations of our society could slip away.

And for our final tale what could be more appropriate than a good bleak end-of-the world conspiracy theory? (And, heaven help any future historians if this mischievous book is the only record of the last two thousand years to survive that end!) Frank Cottrell Boyce’s story exploits this idea with his tale about the Aztecs. Suppose the Europeans had not decimated the Aztec civilization back in the sixteenth century, but rather that those Aztecs had conquered Europe. And suppose still further that their first conquest had been the village of Glasgow…

The only other thing you need to know is that according to some interpretations of Aztec mythology, the world is due to end in 2012. (On 21 December, to be precise, in case you want to set a reminder on your phone.)

I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed collecting them.

That sandal was really bugging Jesus. Part of him knew it was insane to get annoyed by a mere sandal, given the fact he was alone in the wilderness, with nothing to eat but locusts – not the juicy ones, mind, but dry desert locusts; he’d have got more goodness out of that blasted sandal – and nothing to drink but dew, lapped up off the bare rock where it formed in the morning.

And then there was that whole heavy thing about what he was supposed to be doing with the rest of his life. Going up to people and telling them to throw down their nets or whatever and leave their families and follow him, because he – and this was the part that really made him cringe – HE WAS THE SON OF GOD. What sort of job was that?

And beyond that, he knew there was something much, much worse. A time of necessary pain and death. He could have looked into the future more carefully and truly seen what was coming, but he denied himself that knowledge. It was cheating.

So perhaps that’s why he was obsessing over the sandal. Because all the other things he could think about were way more depressing than a broken strap and a sole that flapped like a loose sail in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus poked at the strap. There was probably a special tool for fixing those things. A sandal spangler, or strap thribber, something like that. His father would have known. His father would have fixed the cursed object in five seconds flat. He’d have held it up to his eye, turned it round, figured out exactly what had to be done, and got those strong brown fingers of his working. Joseph had been good with stuff. Jesus the klutz, on the other hand, was always whacking his thumb with the hammer, or accidentally nailing his hand to a plank in the workshop.

A tear spilled from his eye, rolled down his nose and plopped into the sand at his feet as he thought about the old man, dying, worn out before his time.

And then a faint yet oddly penetrating voice reached Jesus through his thoughts.

“You, hey, wait.”

It was the first human voice he’d heard in all the forty days and forty nights of his desert fast.

He turned and gazed back down the rock-strewn slope. Squinting into the sun he saw a figure scrambling towards him. Sweat stung his eyes, and Jesus drew the dirty sleeve of his garment across his face. He thought about his mother, who had made the robe from a single piece of soft cloth, its seams so cunningly wrought as to be almost invisible.

“Hotter than hell here.”

The voice again. The man still toiled towards him. Even at this distance there was something bizarre about his appearance. His clothes were strange, following his contours in obscene dark unflowing detail. A Roman fashion? Or something from the East? Jesus blinked, and somehow – no doubt a trick played by fatigue, hunger, the relentless sun – the figure was there before him.

And what had appeared strange at a distance, now became bizarre, and frightening. And it wasn’t just the dark suit, or even the shining black patent leather shoes, or the unnatural white of the shirt, or the shimmering iridescent blue of the tie. For the man had no eyes. Or rather, where his eyes should have been were two mirrors fastened with a metal frame to the man’s face.

And in those mirrors Jesus saw himself. Saw the bones in his face where the flesh had shrunk, saw his own eyes deep in his skull, saw the hair filthy and matted. Saw, or thought he saw, a circle of thorns around his head and lines of blood like red tears.

“For a guy with a broken sandal, that’s some pace you set there. And while we’re on the subject, why don’t you let me get that for you?”

And on the feet of Jesus there were no longer the tattered worn sandals, but a soft enclosing mesh of some unknown white material, and an undulating sole that held his foot as gently as a cloud.

Jesus closed his eyes, knowing that in his delirium the time of temptation had come. He kicked off the outlandish shoes and sent them skittering away down the slope, where they turned to stones.

“Nike no good? You want Puma? Adidas?”

Jesus ignored him. In bare feet now, he continued to walk up the mountain, relieved, almost, that it had begun.

“OK, so you got me,” said the man, his short legs scuttling to keep up with the steady tread of Jesus. “No one ever said you weren’t smart. Look, it’s too hot for all this tearing about on mountains. It ain’t like we’re a couple of kids. Let’s sit down and talk about it in a civilized way. You know I’ve got to do this, so we may as well get it over with as soon and as painlessly as possible. Just give me ten minutes to hit you with my spiel, then you can tell me to get stuffed and we can get on with the rest of our… well, with the other things we have to do. You’re a busy guy; I’m a busy guy. Busy busy busy. The stuff I’ve got on, you wouldn’t believe. War, crime, murder – one damn thing after another.”

And Jesus felt suddenly the great sadness of everything, like the weight of death on his shoulders, and he wanted more than anything to sit and rest.

“Look, here’s good,” said the man, showing with his hand a flat rock. He pulled a red spotted handkerchief from his sleeve and dusted the rock. Then he sat and patted the space beside him, and Jesus sat also.

“Heck of a view,” the man said. “You can see clear to…” He waved vaguely, and Jesus saw his nails, perfect and clean and sharp. “Well, over there.”

The sun was lower in the sky and the desert was burning red. Shadows like long knives crawled over the land.

Then Jesus noticed that the bare rock on which he had sat was now black leather. He sank deeply into the softness. He tried to struggle up, but his weariness was too great, and the delicious enveloping comfort too welcoming. He thought that no one, not even Herod in his palace or Caesar in Rome, had ever known a seat like this.

“That’s more like it,” the man said. “OK, look, like with any deal, any contract, there’s two sides to this. There’s what I have to offer, and what I want in return. I’m guessing there’s no point in me dangling all the usual stuff before you: the riches, the power, the kingdoms? But they’re on the table if you want them. I’m not saying you should take them for the kicks you’ll get, but, well, you know a guy like you with real power could do a lot of good. I mean, who would you rather have in charge of an empire, you or Caligula? Or, thinking ahead a little, my boys Genghis, Tamburlaine and Adolf? Irresponsible not to have a go, when you think about it. Like they say, all that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, and you’re just sitting there kinda doing nothing, bud. Well…?

“No, fine, didn’t think you’d bite on that one. Temporal power not your thing. I get it. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, blah blah blah. So, maybe a bit of the other. Man, you should see the babes I could fix you up with. Built like goddesses. Hey, some of them are goddesses! And I don’t just mean the chicks around now; I’m talking about every beauty that has ever lived or will ever live.

“No? Not girls. Boys, maybe? OK, keep your hair on. Don’t get your knickers in a twist; I was just asking. Live and let live, I say. Still nyet? Well, that’s what I reckoned. But you know how it is. I had to ask. If I didn’t follow the script, there’d be hell to pay.”

Through all this Jesus had remained impassive. Resisting temptation was his job, just as the role of the Father of Lies was to tempt.

“But that’s not all I’ve got here,” the man continued. “And we’re going multimedia with this one.”

He drew a rectangle with his finger in the air, and where he drew, a dark shape appeared, like a window into emptiness.

“I want you to watch this. Because the thing is, I know you’re a good guy. Hey, one of the best. No, the best. Your heart’s in the right place. No arguments there. You want things to work out well. You want the little people to be OK. I’ve read the book. Love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek, blessed are the cheesemakers, all that stuff. Who’s gonna argue with that? If you were thinking of starting up a religion, then that’s exactly the sort of material you’d want in there. But, well, the best-laid plans of mice and men, and… No, look, let’s just watch the movie. A picture’s worth a thousand words. Let me wind this on to the right place… yeah, here we go.”

Images appeared on the floating screen. There was music. There were voices. To Jesus it was all meaningless. Except that he could make out scenes of horror. Blood. The only meaning was blood. He closed his eyes.

“Oh, crap, I should have known you’d be a bit freaked by the technology. So why don’t I just talk you through what’s happening here? You know, like the extras on a DVD, when the director gives you his commentary. Except you don’t know. Anyway, with what I’m saying, and what you can see, you’ll get it. Get it? Cool.”

Jesus opened his eyes. The sun was below the horizon and the yellows and reds of the desert were turning grey and blue. It was a beautiful time. Cooler now than the terrible heat of the day, but warmer than the wretched cold of the desert night. He had tried to light fires, but that was not his skill, and so he had shivered and moaned like a fanatic through the cold black hours.

“Right, here we go. Your people, the people you pick, good men mostly. Except Ju— Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But things start going pear-shaped pretty soon after you quit the scene. First your guys go and upset the Romans – and believe me, that’s never a good idea. Hang on, let me…”

He fished down the side of the leather sofa until he hit on the remote control, but not before he’d also found – and discarded in frustration – a number of coins, a box of matches, a hairbrush and a fluff-covered object that might once have been a gummy bear.

“Right, let’s fast-forward until… here you go.”

The screen showed a Roman amphitheatre. A family – a mother and a father, a boy and a girl – kneeling in the sand. A lioness, hungry, wary, circled them. The parents prayed. The children hid their faces in the folds of their father’s garment. The lioness made her lunge, and carried away the small girl by the throat.

“Let’s pause there, shall we? There’s lots more of that sort of thing – thousands of these guys getting chomped or speared or burnt. And I know exactly what you’re gonna say. This is the Romans’ doing. Can’t blame the victims, can you? But you see, the thing is, these people – the men, the women, the little ones – they’re only there because of good old Jesus H. Christ. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I’d like on my conscience. I mean, just how many kids being eaten like that would it take for this whole enterprise you’re planning to start looking, well, counter-productive, eh?

“But let’s move on. Because, you see, it isn’t long before your guys start dishing it out as well as taking it. In fact, they pretty soon begin to dish out a lot more than they take. Dish it out in spades. I’m giving you one case here, to begin with. Check out this lady. Hypatia, they call her.”

The screen showed a serene woman reading from a papyrus scroll.

“This is one clever lady, the most important philosopher of her time. Lives in a town called Alexandria, just when the Christians – that’s what your followers start calling themselves – are taking over as top dog. But she still has a soft spot for the old ways: Zeus, Athena, Apollo, that crowd. So along come a rabble of monks and zealots and fanatics and they do this…”

The image switched to show a mob attacking Hypatia, their faces contorted with rage and hatred. They tore her from her carriage, and as she pleaded for her life they sliced away her flesh with oyster shells, and then, her lips still moving, they burned what was left.

“Tut, and I say again, tut. And all because she liked to offer up a little incense to the wrong gods. But things really heat up from here. Let me zip through this.”

And there were more scenes of horror and persecution and war, each more terrible than the last. Christian armies converted pagans by the sword. Crusaders in clanking armour pillaged, raped and torched their way through the Jerusalem they had come to redeem. The great cities of Muslim Spain were left desolate. Everywhere: blood, fire and the burnt-out death of fire, and the bodies of children, and the cries of carrion birds circling.

“And the Jews, the Jews. You should see what they do to the Jews. Two thousand years of persecution. What kind of legacy is that for a nice Jewish boy like you?”

Jesus bowed his head and mumbled a prayer.

“But this is only the beginning. The really good stuff isn’t done by your guys to the other lot, pagans, unbelievers, whatever. No, the fun really gets going when the Christians start tearing each other apart. You know this as well as I do – real hatred is between brothers.”

More pictures of war followed. Massacres of Catholics by Protestants; of Protestants by Catholics.

The eyes of Jesus burned but he could not look away.

“I reckon we’ve seen enough of that, don’t you? Now there’s just one last thing I want to show you.”

The blank window filled with an image of the night, or so it first appeared. Millions of tiny lights glittered against a blue-black sky. And then the camera began to zoom in. The millions became thousands, and the thousands became hundreds. The dots of light took on a troubling complexity until just a few filled the screen. They were not stars, not these, and Jesus felt his stomach knot in revulsion.

“We’ve got a smell function here, if I can find the right button.” The nail tapping at the remote was now oddly hooked and thick and grimy.

A smell drifted through the desert. The smell of scorching fat and the acrid stink of burning hair.

And now just one figure, wreathed in flames, was visible. The woman’s rags had burnt away, and her skin was blackened and her face was in a place beyond pain. No, not beyond pain, but at the furthest reaches of pain, and the only place beyond it is death.

“Popcorn?”

The man held out a bucket. Jesus knocked it from his hand, scattering the popcorn over the ground, where it turned again to pebbles and grit. For a second, the cheerful, inquisitive, businesslike face of the figure changed, and not even the mirrors fastened to the man’s face could conceal the red fire in his eyes. And then the fire was hidden again.

“Yeah, sure, you got upset,” he said. “Only to be expected. Who’s the woman? You wanna know who she is? Does it matter? Pagan, heretic, witch, who cares? My point is, she’s burning – hell, they’re all burning – because of you. Because of what you teach. Because of what it makes men do. But you can stop it. Just walk away. Give it all the finger. The disciples, the water into wine shtick, the lepers, the woman who washes your feet with her hair, the guy you bring back from the dead, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the death on the tree, the whole lot. Say the word and it’s gone. Quite literally never happens. And when that goes, everything else goes too. No persecutions, no crusades, no burning babes like this one here. We’re all laughing.”

Jesus stared into the desert and saw an unexpected last brilliant flaming of red ochre before the darkness came.

“Let’s get it on paper, shall we? Not that I wouldn’t take your word, but it’s good to have these things on file. No need to read the small print; it’s just the usual stuff for the lawyers – you know what they’re like. Just sign here. In blood. No, only kidding. It’s not like we’re a couple of spindly goths hanging round a graveyard in Sheffield. Ink’s fine. Use this. Just click on the top there and it… you got it. Thaaaaat’s great. OK, OK. Give you a lift back into town? No? Suit yourself.”

And then Satan was gone, leaving Jesus alone on the bleak mountainside with the darkness upon him. And the screen was just the stars in the night sky, and the soft seat was a flat rock.

And Jesus thought about the smile on the face of Satan as he left and the truth came to him at last, and he allowed himself a glimpse of the future as it now stood. He saw what would become of the world. Saw that the evil was now greater. Saw that what had been small points of flame was now one great conflagration.

And then, not knowing whether to go up to the mountain top, where still a little light might be found, or down into the endless black of the valley, he cast himself onto the stony ground.

And Jesus wept.

In the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris there are some extraordinary machines from across the ages of scientific invention. Here hangs Foucault’s famous Pendulum, whose gentle swings disclose the rotation of the earth, and here also sits another of his great inventions: a multiple contraption comprising a large wooden table under which rests an enormous pair of bellows. On top of the table there are various clamps and tubes of brass construction. There is a tuning fork, a series of seven small round mirrors on spindles, and a small lens able to spin freely and at great speed. There is something a bee-keeper would recognize as a smoke generator. With this unlikely assortment of instruments, in 1862 Foucault determined the speed of light to within 0.6 per cent of its currently accepted value. Next to the machine is a larger but at first glance similar-looking apparatus. On the whole it seems a clumsy, unsophisticated ancestor of Foucault’s cunning device, waiting in vain to evolve into something that actually works; but in fact its true function remains a mystery to this day.

A small brass plaque bears the name of its creator, an illustrious predecessor of Foucault’s: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

I watch him beating carpets, and it breaks my heart. I stand at our thin window and look down into the courtyard and watch him beating Frau Metzner’s carpets and it just breaks my heart. He’s hung them on a rope he’s stretched between the back-entry gate and a hook set into the wall. He’s hitting them with an English cricket bat that he got from God knows where. Every whack brings forth a cloud of dust and he steps back out of it, coughing. He shouldn’t have to be doing it. He’s an artist. And he isn’t strong.

The two Metzner brats are watching Addie from the corner of the yard, giggling at him. Their stupid little dog yaps every time the bat bangs against the carpet. Their mother will pay Addie a measly fifty groschen for his morning’s work, and without saying anything he’ll go and buy bread and sausage and a paper twist of tea, even though he needs paints. He’s painting autumn landscapes now because he’s almost run out of green.

The living room is also Addie’s studio. He paints at the little table, on old door panels usually, canvas when we can afford it, propped against the wall. It’s bad for his back, working like that. And the light from the small window isn’t good enough. It suffocates his colours, he says. Suffocation is a word Addie uses a lot. It’s one of the bees in his bonnet. He has lots of bees in his bonnet. It’s a hive.

“This isn’t a living room,” he’ll cry. “It’s a dying room! It’s crushing me!”

It’s very small, it’s true. And it’s the kitchen as well. When there’s washing drying by the fire there’s hardly room to move. But it’s all we can afford.

“I need space,” he says. “Space! Room to breathe! To create!”

That’s why he paints landscapes, I think. Big open spaces he can go into. It’s terrible for him that he has to paint them so small.

I used to ask him to paint me. I liked the idea of posing for him, of his eyes fixed on me. He has wonderful eyes, Addie. I once told him that he could be a stage hypnotist, like Mesmer. He smiled at that, and said, “Well, if I don’t make it as an artist perhaps I’ll give it a go.” He did try to paint me, once. I wore my blue dress and sat in the chair holding a book. After a long time I said, “Can I see?” And instead he let out this terrible groan and slashed black paint all over the picture.

He’ll never marry me. I’d like to be the mother of his children, but I know I won’t.

Just when things were getting really desperate, Addie came home with money. Eleven whole schillings! And a bag containing a meat pie, potatoes and cabbage and five tubes of paint. Also a bottle of Riesling, which worried me a little because drink doesn’t agree with him. He was in a strange mood. Happy, because of the money and the paint, but also agitated. The work had come through his friend Werner the carter. Werner’s usual man had been taken sick, so he’d asked Addie to help him with a job. Which was clearing the house of a widow who had died, on Lindaustrasse. A Jewish lady.

I peeled the potatoes and chopped the cabbage while Addie sat on the chair and brooded. His silences have a darkness to them, so after a while I managed to get him talking about the job.

He said, “Werner had the keys to the house and when we went in I couldn’t believe my eyes. The hallway, the hallway, was bigger than this flat. The damned old Jewish bourgeoise had more room to park her umbrellas than we have to live in. Can you imagine that? Then there were two more floors and an attic and a cellar. She’d lived alone in all that space for more than fifteen years. The attic had windows that were full of light. Sucked in light. She’d kept a servant up there. I thought, I would die for such a space to paint in.”

I said, “Light the lamp, Addie.”

But he didn’t. He swigged some wine and pulled a face, swallowing it. The room grew darker.

He said, “All the quality stuff had already gone, of course. The furniture and everything. There were pale patches on the walls where paintings had been. I wondered if they’d been any good. Probably not. People like that, what do they know about art? Anyway, we filled the cart with what looked like dreck to me, but Werner was pleased enough. We drove it all to a dealer Werner does business with. Another Jew.”

Addie has a bit of a thing about Jews. A bee.

“The old rogue offered Werner thirty schillings for the lot. Werner laughed in his face. Then they argued the toss back and forth for what felt like an hour, the Yid waving his arms about and moaning that Werner was taking the food from his children’s mouths and so on. In the end he coughed up forty-two schillings like he was parting with a pound of his flesh. Werner gave me twenty, which was bloody decent of him, I thought.”

“He’s a good man,” I said.

Addie nodded. Then he stood up. “I’m going down to the baths,” he said. “I feel dirty.”

Addie has a thing about hygiene, too.

“Oi, Brett – shift yourself!”

The voice seemed to float towards him from a distance. Brett’s eyes flickered open; it took a moment to remember where he was, why he was slumped against a hot window. The coach. He was on the coach. His mouth was open; he might even have been dribbling. The driver was slowing; they were entering a small town, a cluster of buildings around a brick church.

Joel already had his coat on, rucksack on his lap. “You were snoring!”

“Liar!”

“Wish I had earplugs.”

Brett blinked himself properly awake as the coach pulled into a car park. Mr Wade, head of history, was standing up front beside the driver’s seat, holding the mike.

“OK, this is Messines. We’ll spend an hour and a half here. We’re having a tour of the church – remember I told you the crypt was used as an aid post in the war? Then you can look at the museum. Back on the coach by four, everyone – and don’t forget it’s a church. No loud voices, no running, no inappropriate behaviour. Trudi, no chewing. Get rid of it.” He pointed to the bin bag by the exit.

Brett shrugged on his jacket and shouldered his rucksack, glancing up at the clumped-together church with its odd-shaped tower. The other places had been more like it: trenches, tunnels, that huge bomb crater. Mr Wade had told them to imagine themselves as young soldiers about to go over the top, and yeah, he really could. But this…

“Fierce fighting took place around here from the autumn of 1914 and all through the war,” Mr Wade was saying. “And see Messines Ridge there? Not a spectacular height, but it gave the Germans a commanding position. We’ll get a better view from the bell tower.”

Brett clumped down the steps behind Trudi. He wasn’t about to get excited at the thought of tramping round some dismal old church.

I missed the moment that the moon exploded. Like so many people, I was fast asleep when it happened. According to my friend Maisie, whose neighbour works a night shift, it looked just like a mothball fragmenting into the void.

The morning after, I discovered my father staring out of the kitchen window. He was barely blinking. On the radio a news report claimed that America was demanding some explanation from the Soviets. At a time when the world lived in fear of a nuclear strike from one side or the other, it seemed like an act of madness for Russia to launch a lunar attack. My father didn’t appear to be listening, however, and at first I didn’t realize the enormity of what was being broadcast. It was only when I sneezed on account of my hay fever that he noticed me.

“Sleep well, cupcake?” he asked.

“Sure,” I told him, looking around. “Where’s Mum?”

As he pressed his lips into a smile, I noticed his eyes shine over. “She’ll be back later,” he said after a moment. “I promised her I’d tell you that.”

There are countless monuments to the memory of US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with hundreds in the United States alone. The best known must be the Apollo 11 Memorial in Washington DC, and the Armstrong–Aldrin statue at the Kennedy Space Center. There are, of course, no graves in Arlington National Cemetery, where one would have expected such all-American heroes to be laid to rest. There were no grand funerals. No coffins draped with star-spangled banners or soldiers with heads bowed.

The silver-haired man had visited many of these monuments over the years, but it was to the one in Wapakoneta, Ohio, that he always returned. It is an enormous statue of an astronaut, at least double life-size but looking even larger up on its high plinth. It’s of Wapakoneta’s most famous son, Neil Armstrong: one of only two people ever to have walked on the surface of the Moon. The lifeless Armstrong stands proudly in his spacesuit, his goldfish-bowl-like helmet tucked under his arm, looking up with sightless stone eyes to the stars, where he sought adventure and remains for ever. This is the people of Wapakoneta claiming their own.

In July 2009, on the fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing, the man took yet another pilgrimage to Wapakoneta, quietly and anonymously, away from the bigger crowds of officials and dignitaries gathered in Washington and Houston, Texas. He stood in front of the Armstrong statue. Armstrong had not grown old as he had. The commander stays thirty-eight years old for eternity. He, on the other hand, was now seventy-eight. His military bearing was still evident, but his back no longer as rod straight as he’d have liked. Age has a nasty way of sneaking up on one like that. He looked at his shoes and saw that the leather was scuffed at the toes. He wished he’d thought to bring a newer pair – not that anyone would give him or his shoes a second glance.

It was early evening when he arrived, and the dying sun created a beautiful light in the wide Ohio sky, casting long, low shadows. He felt the faintest of breezes ruffle his hair, its usual silver made orangey-gold by the sun’s final fading rays. The cuffs of his light blue shirt were worn, though not actually frayed.

A child laughed and began to circle the outer perimeter of the roped-off area around the statue’s base, chased by a girl the man took to be his elder sister. The boy was clutching a toy space rocket while she had cotton candy on a stick. She happily chewed on the pink spun floss as she roared after him.

The inscription at the base of the Apollo 11 Memorial in Washington DC reads: Their deeds and their sacrifice were for all mankind. The inscription on the Armstrong–Aldrin statue at Cape Kennedy states: These brave men died not for their country but for humanity. Both are quotes from President Nixon’s address to the world, viewed by billions back in 1969.

Here in Wapakoneta, however, the words carved into the stone simply read:

There is no specific date given for his death because no one is exactly sure when the last of the oxygen ran out. The calculations have been made and debated a thousand times, but no one can say with absolute certainty which side of midnight he and Buzz died, so it is not writ in stone.

At their own request Armstrong and Aldrin ended all contact with Mission Control for their final minutes or hours. With the eyes and ears of all the world upon them, they were granted the one thing that their controllers back here on Earth could afford them: the dignity of a private passing.

Standing before the Wapakoneta statue, the silver-haired man reflected on how technology had changed beyond recognition in the intervening forty years. He remembered how the row after row of screens at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston had seemed the very pinnacle of what computers could achieve. The safest pair of hands one could hope to be in. Now his washing machine contained more technological know-how than all of Mission Control’s computers back then put together.

People from all over the world have visited Wapakoneta over the years and left flowers, cards and messages at the foot of the plinth. Many have run their fingers across Armstrong’s name. These literally touching tributes have smoothed the once crisply carved letters’ edges: a form of human-made erosion. They will be worn away long before his and Aldrin’s footprints on the windless Moon. The two astronauts have become the icons and inspiration to adventurers and explorers in all walks of life. On that day in July 2009, there were more small personal tributes carpeting the ground than ever, along with official tributes from organizations, “personalities” and nations. The silver-haired man found himself leaning over the red rope and scanning the cards for familiar names.

Now he turned and walked back towards his car. Seeing him coming, the overweight driver had struggled out of his seat and opened his door for him. The man climbed in. There would be services throughout the US that weekend to remember the only two human beings ever to have walked on ground not belonging to their native planet, their having paid the ultimate price for that privilege.

The events of 1969 were for ever etched into the silver-haired man’s memory. When he closed his eyes in the back of that car – as the last vestiges of warmth disappeared with the sun – the images were still acid-burnt into his retina, barely faded with time. He could remember everything so clearly. There was a cavernous void in the pit of his stomach.

He was not one of those who had huddled around a tiny television set at home or at a friend’s or relative’s, as was the experience of so many back then. He had sat alone, waiting like no other.

It’s going to take me ages to type this. I’m using Gran’s old manual typewriter. I’m not used to having to hit keys so hard, and it took me a long time to work out how to load up the ribbon. I’ve got ink all over my hands. But I want to type it. I don’t want the people of the future to have to decipher my handwriting. And, anyway, we’ve only got a few pencils left now, and pencil writing smudges and fades. I want this to last. I want to set down what has happened – at least as much as we can work out here. Because one day someone might find this and it might explain the things they can’t understand…

Monkey8 was the last in line. She was the only girl, the smallest and the most excited in her Ten. The others had all played the game on real courts before; she had only played on the school court and in the alleyways and covered walkways of her home. They were trotting in now, under the shadow of the great arch of the New Court. She paused, took a breath, tried to steady herself. Then she too ran into the arena. The sound: the cheers of the crowd that broke over her like a wave; the colours: the wet red of the playing surface, the gold around the spectators’ necks; the shadows: the black circle in the heart of the scoring hoop, the deep, concealing shade of the stands – everything was louder, sharper, brighter, than anything she had seen before. It was so beautiful she felt she could barely move. She wanted to stand and look at it for ever.

Then she saw the ball. It was already in play, spinning towards the ring. And then she was moving too. The ball bounced off at a crazy angle and everything about her was connected to it. Her brain was calculating its trajectory; her eye was following its flight; her feet were moving into the space without her having to think about it. Even though her eyes were on the ball, she was also aware that Jaguar3 of her own team was going for it with his left elbow, and somehow she knew that he had spotted her and would pass it to her. She stopped and turned, ready to take the ball with her right hip and pass it forward. She braced herself for the hurt and said a prayer to her guardian, the Nocturnal Monkey.

All this took less time than it took for the hard rubber ball to fall ten feet. Jaguar3 jumped, offering his chest to the rocketing ball. But instead of twisting and sending it to her, he yelped and fell, as though shot. He lay on the ground, clutching his chest in agony while the ball bounced once, twice, three… too many times. They had lost the ball. It belonged to the other Ten now.

Jaguar3’s brother went to help him up while the other players – from both teams – just stood and laughed at him. The spectators laughed too. Monkey8 tried to join in but her eye was fixed on the great bruise that was already blooming on Jaguar3’s chest. Mungo had told her that the ball they used on the New Court was harder than the school one and that the red surface was faster than the wooden floor. She had shouted at him and said he was only trying to scare her. Obviously he was right. She wondered if he was right about the other things too.

Then the ball was in play again and she was no longer thinking thoughts, only moves. They were going for the scoring hoop again; their scorer was beautifully placed. She thought about running over and scratching him but the ball was quicker than she was. He jumped for it, and the next thing she knew, it was curving perfectly through the centre of the scoring hoop. He threw up his arms in delight, but instead of cheers a loud booing filled the stadium. It sounded like some monster coming nearer. The scorer had kicked the ball with his foot. He probably hadn’t meant to; sometimes it just happened. But he knew he’d done it now. He kneeled down and bowed his head and allowed his team captain to strike him on the back with his great wooden club. The crowd loved that.

Lord Tekokiztakitl himself threw the ball back into play – in the Final it would be the king. The ball went high into the air, where the gods could decide who should have it.

The gods decided on Monkey8. Now that it was coming to her, she was not afraid. She leaped high; she broadened her chest. The ball struck like a fist but she controlled it. She knew where Jaguar3 was. She knew the others were not watching him because he was dishonoured, so she flipped it to him. He flung his hip at the ball and it curved back into the air. She knew where it would go and was there waiting when it arrived. She caught it with her knee. She bounced it three times, killing its spin. They were coming at her; their captain had his club raised.

It was too late. She pulled back her leg and kneed the ball confidently through the middle of the stone scoring hoop. Then, for honour only, she trapped it on her chest as it dropped through the other side, softly as fruit.

The cheer she won then made the earlier cheers sound like mutters. Lord Tekokiztakitl stood up, so everyone else stood up. He took his gold ornaments from around his neck and she ran to receive them. Because he had done it, others did it, and she walked around the pitch allowing people to drape her with gold.

She was the first girl ever to score on a New Court. Surely they must let her play in the finals.

Philip Ardagh

Roald Dahl Funny Prize winner Philip Ardagh has written over 100 books, both fiction and non-fiction, including Grubtown Tales, Henry’s House and the Eddie Dickens adventures, which have been translated into over 30 languages. He collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney on the ex-Beatle’s first children’s book, High in the Clouds, and writes for radio and TV, as well as being a regular reviewer of children’s books for the Guardian.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

This collection first published 2010 by Walker Books Ltd

87 Vauxhall Walk, London, SE11 5HJ

Anthology © 2010 Marcus Sedgwick

Introduction © 2010 Marcus Sedgwick

“Jesus Wept” © 2010 Anthony McGowan

“The Burning Glass” © 2010 Marcus Sedgwick

“Vienna, 1912” © 2010 Mal Peet

“The Blue-Eyed Boy” © 2010 Linda Newbery

“Eclipsed” © 2010 Matt Whyman

“One Giant Leap” © 2010 Philip Ardagh

“The Y2K Bug” © 2010 Eleanor Updale

“At the Ball Game” © 2010 Frank Cottrell Boyce

The moral rights of the contributors has been asserted

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4063-3944-4 (ePub)

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