The Woman Who Died a Lot

by Jasper Fforde

  “I think I might stand in front of him if you try,” said Tuesday.

  “And I think I might let you,” said Gavin, who was clearly eager to add “coward” to his long list of personal failings.

  “It won’t help,” I said. “Both your Letters of Destiny say this will happen.”

  “Agreed,” replied Friday. “So let’s talk out the problem. First, some evidence.”

  He opened a briefcase and produced a plastic wallet that contained some yellowed scraps of paper.

  “This is what the Manchild unearthed up at the Kemble Timepark yesterday. Despite the murders not happening for another thirty-six years, parts of the investigation records survive.”

  “You have records for things that haven’t happened yet?” asked Tuesday.

  “Certainly. There had to be something from which to compose the Letters of Destiny. But, annoyingly for us, the records were kept near the engines. The leaking flux has aged them almost three and a half thousand years.”

  He placed some of the aged documents on the table.

  “What we have offers compelling evidence for what we’ve suspected—that Gavin will definitely be behind the murders. We have the remains of witness statements, a security-camera image of the Vauxhall KP-16 that kills Shazza and a registration document with Gavin’s name on it. On the remains of the interview logs, we see that Gavin would have worked for the Goliath Corporation and as Laddernumber 2789—pretty high up.”

  “I’d never work for those losers,” said Gavin. “In the same way as I’d never own a Vauxhall.”

  “We all do things we never thought we’d do,” said Landen. “People change.”

  “Not me,” said Gavin cheerfully. “I’m a tosser for life— however long or short that might be.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “My guess is that the motive for the murders is nothing about the people concerned but everything to do with how long they live,” I said. “If Mr. Chowdry is correct and HR-6984 will strike us only because we are expecting it to, then evidence of life beyond 2041 will lower expectation to zero and we’ll survive. If Gavin killed these people at Goliath’s behest, then Goliath is plotting the destruction of the planet and everyone on it.”

  “Hang on,” said Landen, who was always the slowest when it came to this sort of thing. “Goliath wants the earth destroyed? For what possible reason? They’d be destroyed, too.”

  “The Goliath Corporation,” I said, “is trying to use the Dark Reading Matter as some sort of a lifeboat—a brave new world to be run by them and them alone. It won’t be ideal for mankind, but it will at last fulfill Goliath’s mission statement: to own everything and control everybody.”

  We all thought about this for a moment.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Friday. “I’ve got to kill Gavin to stop him from killing the others, so that they can all see they live beyond 2041, and thus avert a strike by a rogue asteroid that could be influenced by human expectation?”

  “That’s Expectation-Influenced Probability Theory in a nutshell,” said Tuesday.

  “Sodding hell,” said Friday.

  “What?”

  “I’m on a total, total, loser here. I kill Gavin, the murders won’t happen, the ChronoGuard operators will live long and healthy lives, and the probability of an asteroid strike will drop to almost zero.”

  “That’s a total loser?” said Tuesday. “Aside from the murder bit, you’ll be a hero. Listen, I’d kill Gavin if it meant saving seven billion lives.”

  “And that’s the shitty bit,” said Friday. “As soon as I pull this trigger, the eventline changes to include the shooting, and no one will ever know why I killed Gavin.”

  We stood in silence for a moment, trying to get our heads around this. We weren’t sure, but I think he was right—Shazza had suggested the same thing back during the support-group meeting. The Letters of Destiny might have changed several times during the past ten minutes.

  “You’ll never know why I did it,” he continued, “I’ll never know why I did it, and the seven billion or so lives I save will never know it either. I’m going to rot in a prison cell for the rest of my life still believing that my function is unfulfilled and having no idea why I killed Gavin.”

  “I’m not sure I buy that,” said Tuesday.

  “It has a precedent,” said Landen quietly. “Almost every single lone gunman who has assassinated a notable figure was never sure why he did it—and neither was anyone else. Maybe that’s what they all were—eventline crimes, for which there can never be any absolution, no matter how strong and noble the motive.”

  Tears had welled up in my eyes at this stage, and both Tuesday and I rushed to give Friday a hug.

  “Oh, stop,” said Gavin. “what about me getting a hug? I’m the one about to die.” He paused at the thought of it. “Boy, oh, boy,” he said to himself. “Mother and daughter, hugging me and pressing their breasts upon me, together.”

  “You’re disgusting,” said Tuesday.

  “Ah yes,” he admitted, “but at least I’m consistent. Can you say the same for the rest of the serial liars who deign to call themselves civilized?”

  We ignored him. This had been the future Friday’s plan all along. The last-ditch effort to save the planet. The Destiny Aware letters as part of the union agreement, the faith that his young self would figure it out and have the selflessness to give up his freedom to help those he had sworn to protect. And it meant that Friday had the one thing he’d been wishing for: a function. All he had to do was kill Gavin.

  So we said our good-byes, and Tuesday gave Gavin another one of those long kisses that was just a little bit too uncomfortable to behold, and I gave Gavin a hug in which he pulled me a little too close for comfort, and even Landen shook his hand and said that Gavin had his thanks.

  “There’s still a teensy-weeny problem,” said Friday. “Motive.”

  “Aren’t his future crimes the reason you kill him?” I said.

  “Seems a bit cold-blooded,” replied Friday. “Besides, once the eventline has changed, they’ll be no motive at all, and I’m not sure the eventline can tolerate stuff like that. It has to fit together at least a little bit.”

  “I know why,” said Gavin. “Because you think I’m a shit and it’s possible I might have gotten your sister pregnant.”

  There was a sudden icy silence.

  “Tuesday?” I said in my extra-stern voice. “You had sex with Gavin?”

  “Might have,” she said in an offhand manner.

  “Tell me you used protection?”

  “Well, Mum,” she said, staring at her hands absently, “we were kind of caught up in the moment.”

  “And it was a terrific moment,” mused Gavin, rolling his eyes. “ Hubba-hubba.”

  And we set to squabbling after that, mostly about young people not being responsible, and that “being dead in under an hour” is no excuse for anything, and that Gavin should jolly well be more careful because he won’t be around after today, and then Tuesday said that she wanted something to remember him by and if that was a child with superior intellect and his nose— which was quite good, as it happened—then she jolly well would, and besides she was sixteen, and lots of people she knew got pregnant at sixteen, and didn’t we want her to have a normal life and be a normal person and do dumb teenage things so she was a real person and so on and so forth until Landen yelled:

  “STOP!”

  And we did.

  “Have you seen the time?”

  “Shit,” said Gavin, staring at the homemade atomic clock on Tuesday’s wall. “I’m not dead. How did that happen?”

  He was right. It was 14 02 and twenty-six seconds. Destiny had not been fulfilled. We all looked at one another, confused.

  “What happens now?” asked Gavin. “Shoot me dead and apologize to destiny for being late?”

  “No,” replied Friday. “It hasn’t happened because it wasn’t meant to happen—and if we don’t fix this ri
ght now, it will never happen, and Gavin will murder those agents in the future, and Goliath will succeed in coercing HR-6984 into our path.”

  It was Landen who broke the empty confused silence.

  “I’ve an idea,” he said. “What if everything we know right now is entirely consistent with the eventline? Gavin is killed and Friday goes to prison and the ChronoGuard serial killer is still active thirty-seven years from now? That the Letters of Destiny will happen exactly as stated?”

  “Great Scott,” said Friday, looking at us all with a shocked expression. “Gavin and I have been set up. I was being tricked into killing him: I kill Gavin, I go to prison, the ChronoGuard members are still murdered, and the whole plan carries on as normal. They relied on me to fulfill my destiny and to do it without question. The whole thing makes total sense. Even if I had killed Gavin, nothing would have changed—because that slimy piece of shit over there is the wrong Gavin!”

  “There’s another Gavin Watkins?” asked Landen.

  “Probably dozens. But there’s only one other who would have been ChronoGuard, and he’s the sixteenth man. All they had to do was swap over the Letters of Destiny.”

  He held up a copy of Gavin’s summary.

  “This isn’t you. You’re not going to die, and I’m not going to kill you.”

  Gavin looked triumphant “I told you I’d never buy a Vauxhall.”

  “Exactly. But killing you would have fulfilled my destiny. All that remained after that is for Goliath to train up the other Gavin Watkins. Brainwash him, pay him off, coerce him— whatever it takes—to murder all those ChronoGuard. My future self was leaving provision to save everyone, and the future Goliath was doing all they could to thwart me. And they almost succeeded.”

  There was a pause.

  “Okay,” I said, “just supposing all this does make sense, where is the other Gavin Watkins? And how can you kill him three minutes ago?”

  “Given the timescale,” said Friday, “only one possible place.”

  “Liddington,” I murmured.

  “Right,” said Friday, “all that ‘Swindon Time Zone’ nonsense means that only Liddington is running on Swindon time—and that’s seven minutes behind Greenwich. I’ve got”— he looked at his watch—“three minutes and eight seconds to find him. And you know what? I will. It’s my destiny—and his. Tuesday? We need an address.”

  He ran out the door, and I ran with him, and within a minute we were on the road back into town. Tuesday rang me with an address as we drove past the signs declaiming cartographic independence on the edge of the village, and I gave Friday the directions. A few moments later, we screeched to a halt before an ordinary-looking house. Friday jumped out, ran up the garden path and opened the front door with myself close behind. We found a young man of no more than eighteen, standing in the hallway reading his mail. There was a suitcase on the floor; it looked as though he had just returned from a trip.

  “Gavin Watkins?” said Friday, glancing at his watch. I checked, too. There was one minute and twenty-six seconds to go.

  “Yes?”

  “My name’s Friday Next, and I’m going to kill you.”

  “Ah,” said Liddington-Gavin, showing us his freshly opened Letter of Destiny, “I’ve just been reading about you. Why has that woman only got one arm?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  Friday explained what he had to do and why he had to do it as the other Gavin Watkins listened quietly. Friday told him about the murders that Gavin would commit and that Friday was sacrificing his own freedom but saving the murdered ChronoGuard, 7 billion people and an agreeably pleasant yet somewhat taken-for-granted blue planet. When he had stopped, there was a pause. Gavin looked at Friday, then at the gun he was pointing at him, then at the clock.

  “But you can’t and won’t,” he said with a smile, waving his life summary at us. “According to this I marry your sister and have three children with her. We go on to do great works together—seriously good science—and I become one of the greatest mathematicians of my generation. I don’t die now—I die in my sleep aged ninety-four in 2082.”

  “Sure you do,” said Friday. “Good at math are you?”

  Gavin frowned. “Actually, no.”

  Friday first pointed at the letter, then indicated the pistol. “You’ve got the wrong destiny. You actually turn out to be a murderous thug, a lackey of Goliath and complicit in the destruction of the planet.”

  Gavin looked at the summary again. “This isn’t me?”

  Friday shook his head.

  Gavin’s lower lip trembled as the realization of his impending fate sank in.

  “You can’t kill me for something I haven’t yet done!” he said, his voice rising.

  “But I will,” replied Friday, his voice now with a mild tremor. “It is my function.”

  He spoke to me next, but without taking his eye off Gavin.

  “As soon as I pull this trigger, the eventline will change, Mum. The whole future will be remapped. I won’t know why I did this. You won’t know why I did this.”

  “But we know why right now,” I said. “Better to have discovered your purpose even for the most fleeting of moments than never having one at all. In an odd kind of way, I’m proud of you. It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  “You’re better than this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that this is a blunt way to change the eventline. I’m thinking perhaps you can do this better. Somehow where you won’t have the burden of guilt for the rest of your life. Sure you save a planet, but killing someone in cold blood isn’t what your future self would have wanted. And besides . . .”

  “Besides what?”

  “You’re a Next. And we don’t murder people. Not even for future crimes.”

  “Mum, I have to kill him to be certain!”

  He was confused now, and I shouldn’t have raised any doubts, but I couldn’t see my son become a murderer. It was too late. We were out of time. I saw a tear well up in Friday’s eye, and as Gavin’s clock clicked over to 14 02 and four seconds, Friday pulled the trigger.

  40.

  Monday: End

  When the Asteroid Strike Likelihood Index was solely mathematically derived, there was a 73 percent chance that HR-6984 would strike the earth. Once the six Letters of Destiny were received in 2004 from the now-defunct ChronoGuard, the likelihood dropped to 1.3 percent, where it has remained ever since. Of the sixteen ex-ChronoGuard listed in the summaries, seven survived beyond 2041, some by as much as twenty-six years.

  Dr A. Chowdry, Asteroid Collision Risk Calculation

  So there we were, my husband, Landen, and I, sitting in the comfort of a Skyrail car, gliding effortlessly above the North Wessex countryside, heading back from Swindon. We’d just listened to the judge remand Friday into custody, “irrespective of his previous good character and his family’s high standing in the community.” Our lawyer had suggested he might do two years if we could plea the charge down to accidental wounding from grievous bodily harm, plus another six years for firearms offenses. He’d be out in three, with good behavior. It might have been worse. Any gunshot wound is potentially fatal, and if Gavin had died, Friday could have been in for life. He’d take the plea and do the time: After all, three years in the pokey was exactly as Friday’s Letter of Destiny had predicted.

  So that’s pretty much how it all turnedout. A week that began with Landen and I taking a trip into Swindon and ended with a pillar of fire cleansing the world of an evil it could well do without, and my daughter Tuesday with a husband and soul mate, and the knowledge they would both live a long and eventful life and have three kids. We also knew from his summary that Gavin remained constant and true despite his tiresomely vulgar demeanor. We’d probably get to like him in our own way, so long as we never invited him to dinner with other people present. Or if we did, we’d make sure they were fully briefed and supplied with earplugs.

  “I still don’t kno
w why he came to shoot the other Gavin by mistake,” said Landen, “or even how he knew there was another Gavin.”

  “Friday doesn’t know either. A moment of inexplicable madness. So let’s just move on.”

  My cell phone rang. It was John Duffy. He spoke a few words, and I thanked him and snapped the mobile shut.

  “News from the hospital: Gavin in Liddington lost his leg above the knee. The bullet did too much damage as it passed through for him to keep it.”

  “Poor bastard,” said Landen. “Do I have to start this foundation for people with missing limbs? I’ve never really had a problem losing mine.”

  “Yes,” I said sarcastically, “you never complained. Not once. One-legged Gavin will run it when he’s well enough. His Letter of Destiny says so.”

  “I’m glad someone found a function out of this fiasco.”

  “Friday will find his,” I said, laying my hand on Landen’s. “He’ll just not be able to start looking for another two years.”

  “I have the oddest feeling he might already have done so,” said Landen. “Something about all those Letters of Destiny just doesn’t ring true. If your could send your younger self a message revealing you how it would all turn out, would you?”

  “Not in a million years.”

  “No,” said Landen, “neither would I. But I have an idea that the shadowy potential future Friday might still have some surprises in store for us—kind of looking after his younger self, y’know?”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  The Skyrail car sped over the M4 as it headed toward Aldbourne and home.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Landen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you be really annoyed if I did some . . . exploration in my spare time?”

  “What, like in Tierra del Fuego? Someone said there might be an undiscovered continent somewhere around the theoretical South Pole.”