“What’s going on?” asked Land, who had just gotten his leg and trousers on. I wrapped myself in a robe but couldn’t look at him and just sat at the dressing table, clenching and unclenching my fists to try to control the violent thoughts. Then I realized: After what she’d done, I could think about wringing her badly written neck as much as I wanted. I was a woman wronged. Dangerously violent thoughts were allowed. I’d get her for this, but I was in no hurry. She had nowhere to go. I knew exactly where I could find her.
“Nothing’s going on,” I said in a quiet voice. “Everything’s fine.”
27. Bound to the Outland
Although we never really saw eye to eye with the local police force when we were SpecOps, we always used to help them out if they got into a jam, and the young ones never forgot it. Hard not to, really, when some lunatic plucks you from the jaws of a werewolf or something. Because of this I was still granted favors in return. Not parking tickets, unfortunately-just the big stuff.
By the time the police arrived, I had regained control of myself. I picked up Thursday1-4’s clothes with a disdainful finger and thumb and deposited them in the laundry basket, in which I would take them out to burn them later that evening. I went through the pockets of her jacket but found only an empty wallet and a few coins. I knew I was going to have to admit to owning her automatic, so I had to hope they would take my previous exemplary conduct into account before citing me on any illegal-firearms charges. While I explained it all to the cops, Landen called Joffy’s partner, Miles, to get him to pick up the girls from school, and we eventually tracked Friday down at Mum’s, where he’d been discussing with his aunt the merits of the guitar riff on the second track of Hosing the Dolly.
“So let me get this straight,” said Detective Inspector Jamison an hour later, thumbing through his notes. “You were both upstairs…er, naked when you heard a noise. You, Mrs. Parke-Laine-Next, went downstairs to investigate with an illegally held Glock nine-millimeter. You saw this man whom you identified as ‘Felix8,’ an associate of the deceased Acheron Hades, whom you last met sixteen years ago. He was armed, and you fired at him once when he was standing at the door, once when he was running to the kitchen, then three times as he hid behind the kitchen table. He then made his escape from the house without firing a single shot. Is that correct?”
“Quite correct, Officer.”
“Hmm,” he said, and his sergeant whispered something in his ear and handed him a fax. Jamison looked at it, then at me. “You’re sure it was Felix8?”
“Yes-why?”
He placed the fax on the table and slid it across.
“The body of missing father of two Danny Chance was discovered in a shallow grave in the Savernake Forest three years ago. It was skeletal by then and only identifiable by his dental records.”
“That’s not possible,” I murmured, with good reason. Even if he hadn’t been in the house this afternoon, I’d certainly seen him yesterday.
“I know that Hades and Felix are tied up in all manner of weird shit, so I’m not going to insist you didn’t see him, but I thought you should know this.”
“Thank you, Officer,” I muttered, reading through the report, which was unequivocal; it even said the bones had been in the ground a good ten years. Aornis had been right-Cocytus had killed him like a stray dog.
Inspector Jamison turned to Landen. “Mr. Parke-Laine? May we speak to you now?”
They finally left at nine in the evening and we called Miles to bring the kids back. We’d been given the all-clear to tidy up, and to be honest it didn’t sound as though they were gong to make a big deal of it. It didn’t look as if they would even bother to prosecute; they knew about Felix8-everyone did. He, Hades and Aornis were as much a part of popular culture as Robin Hood. And that was it. They took the Glock nine-millimeter, privately told me that it was an honor to meet me and that I could expect their report to be lost before being passed to the prosecutor, and then they were gone.
“Darling?” said Landen as soon as the kids had been safely returned home.
“Yes?”
“Something’s bothering you.”
“You mean aside from having an amoral lunatic who died fifteen years ago try to kill us?”
“Yes. There’s something else on your mind.”
Damn. Found out. Lucky I had several things on my mind I could call upon.
“I went to visit Aornis.”
“You did? Why?”
“It was about Felix8. I should have told you: He was hanging around the house yesterday. Millon spotted him, and Spike nabbed him-but he escaped. I thought Aornis might have an idea why he’s suddenly emerged after all these years.”
“Did Aornis…say anything about us?” asked Landen. “Friday, Me, Tuesday, Jenny?”
“She asked how everyone was, but only in an ironic way. I don’t think she was concerned in the least-quite the opposite.”
“Did she say anything else?”
I turned to look at him, and he was gazing at me with such concern that I rested a hand on his cheek.
“Sweetheart-what’s the matter? She can’t harm us any longer.”
“No,” said Landen with a sigh, “she can’t. I just wondered if she said anything-anything at all. Even if you remembered it later.”
I frowned. Landen knew about Aornis’s powers because I’d told him, but his specific interest seemed somehow unwarranted.
“Yeah. She said that she was going to bust out with the help of someone ‘on the outside.’”
He took my hands in his and stared into my eyes. “Thursday-sweetheart-promise me something?”
I laughed at his dramatic earnestness but stopped when I saw he was serious.
“Two minds with but a single thought,” I told him, “two hearts that beat as one.”
“That was good. Who said that?”
“Mycroft.”
“Ah! Well, here it is: Don’t let Aornis out.”
“Why should I want to do that?”
“Trust me, darling. Even if you forget your own name, remember this: Don’t let Aornis out.”
“Babes-”
But he rested his finger on my lips, and I was quiet. Aornis was the least of my worries. Without my TravelBook I was marooned in the Outland.
We had dinner late. Even Friday was vaguely impressed by the three bullet holes in the table. They were so close they almost looked like one.
When he saw them, he said, “Nice grouping, Mum.”
“Firearms are no joking matter, young man.”
“That’s our Thursday,” said Landen with a smile. “When she shoots up our furniture, she does as little damage as possible.”
I looked at them all and laughed. It was an emotional release, and tears sprang to my eyes. I helped myself to more salad and regarded Friday. There was still the possibility of his replacement by the-Friday-that-could-have-been hanging over him. The thing was, I couldn’t do anything about it. There’s never anywhere to hide from the ChronoGuard. But the other Friday had told me I had forty-eight hours until they might attempt such a thing, and that wasn’t up until midmorning the day after tomorrow.
“Fri,” I said, “have you thought any more about the time industry?”
“Lots,” he said, “and the answer’s still no.”
Landen and I exchanged looks.
“Have you ever wondered,” remarked Friday in a languid monotone from behind a curtain of oily hair, “how nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?”
I smiled. Dopey witticisms at least showed he was trying to be clever, even if for the greater part of the day he was asleep.
“Yes,” I replied, “and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.”
“I’m serious,” he said, mildly annoyed.
“Sorry!” I replied. “It’s just difficult to know what you’re thinking when I can’t see your face. I might as well converse to the side of a yak.”
He parted his hair so I could see his eyes. He l
ooked a lot like his father did at that age. Not that I knew him then, of course, but from photographs.
“Nostalgia used to have a minimum twenty years before it kicked in,” he said in all seriousness, “but now it’s getting shorter and shorter. By the late eighties, people were doing seventies stuff, but by the mid-nineties the eighties-revival thing was in full swing. It’s now 2002, and already people are talking about the nineties-soon nostalgia will catch up with the present and we won’t have any need for it.”
“Good thing, too, if you ask me,” I said. “I got rid of all my seventies rubbish as soon as I could and never regretted it for a second.”
There was an indignant plock from Pickwick.
“Present company excepted.”
“I think the seventies are underrated,” said Landen. “Admittedly, fashion wasn’t terrific, but there’s been no better decade for sitcoms.”
“Where’s Jenny?”
“I took her dinner up to her,” said Friday. “She said she needed to do her homework.”
I frowned as I thought of something, but Landen clapped his hands together and said, “Oh, yes! Did you hear that the British bobsled team has been disqualified for using the banned force ‘gravity’ to enhance performance?”
“No.”
“Apparently so. And it transpires that the illegal use of gravity to boost speed is endemic within most downhill winter sports.”
“I wondered why they managed to go so fast,” I replied thoughtfully.
Much later that night, when the lights were out, I was staring at the glow of the streetlamps on the ceiling and thinking about Thursday1-4 and what I’d do to her when I caught her. It wasn’t terribly pleasant.
“Land?” I whispered in the darkness.
“Yes?”
“That time we…made love today.”
“What about it?”
“I was just thinking-how did you rate it? Y’know, on a one-to-ten?”
“Truthfully?”
“Truthfully.”
“You won’t be pissed off at me?”
“Promise.”
There was a pause. I held my breath.
“We’ve had better. Much better. In fact, I thought you were pretty terrible.”
I hugged him. At least there was one piece of good news today.
28. The Discreet Charm of the Outland
The real charm of the Outland was the richness of detail and the texture. In the BookWorld a pig is generally just pink and goes oink. Because of this, most fictional pigs are simply a uniform flesh color without any of the tough bristles and innumerable scabs and skin abrasions, shit and dirt that makes a pig a pig. And it’s not just pigs. A carrot is simply a rod of orange. Sometimes living in the BookWorld is like living in Legoland.
The stupidity surplus had been beaten into second place by the news that the militant wing of the no-choice movement had been causing trouble in Manchester. Windows were broken, cars overturned, and there were at least a dozen arrests. With a nation driven by the concept of choice, a growing faction of citizens who thought life was simpler when options were limited had banded themselves together into what they called the “no-choicers” and demanded the choice to have no choice. Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste condemned the violence but explained that the choice of choice over “just better services” was something the previous administration had chosen and was thus itself a no-choice principle for the current administration. Alfredo Traficcone, MP, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, was quick to jump on the bandwagon, proclaiming that it was the inalienable right of all citizens to have the choice over whether they have choice or not. The no-choicers had suggested that there should be a referendum to settle the matter once and for all, something that the opposition “choice” faction had no option but to agree with. More sinisterly, the militant wing known only as NOPTION was keen to go further and demanded that there should be only one option on the ballot paper-the no-choice one.
It was eight-thirty, and the girls had already gone to school.
“Jenny didn’t eat her toast again,” I said, setting the plate with its uneaten contents next to the sink. “That girl hardly eats a thing.”
“Leave it outside Friday’s door,” said Landen. “He can have it for lunch when he gets up-if he gets up.”
The front doorbell had rung, and I checked on who it might be through the front-room windows before opening the door to reveal…Friday. The other Friday.
“Hello!” I said cheerily. “Would you like to come in?”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” he replied. “I just wondered whether you’d thought about my offer of replacement yesterday. Hi, Dad!”
Landen had joined us at the door. “Hello, son.”
“This,” I said by way of introduction, “is the Friday I was telling you about-the one we were supposed to have.”
“At your ser vice,” said Friday politely. “And your answer? I’m sorry to push you on this, but time travel has still to be invented and we have to look very carefully at our options.”
Landen and I glanced at each other. We’d already made up our mind.
“The answer’s no, Sweetpea. We’re going to keep our Friday.”
Friday’s face fell, and he glared at us. “This is so typical of you. Here I am a respected member of the ChronoGuard, and you’re still treating me like I’m a kid!”
“Friday!”
“How stupid can you both be? The history of the world hangs in the balance, and all you can do is worry about your lazy shitbag of a son.”
“You talk like that to your mother and you can go to your room.”
“He is in his room, Land.”
“Right. Well…you know what I mean.”
Friday snorted, glared at us both, told me that I really shouldn’t call him “Sweetpea” anymore and walked off, slamming the garden gate behind him.
I turned to Landen. “Are we doing the right thing?”
“Friday told us to dissuade him from joining the ChronoGuard, and that’s what we’re doing.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to remember.
“He did? When?”
“At our wedding bash? When Lavoisier turned up looking for your father?”
“Shit,” I said, suddenly remembering. Lavoisier was my least favorite ChronoGuard operative, and on that occasion he had a partner with him-a lad of about twenty-five who’d looked vaguely familiar. We figured it out several years later. It was Friday himself, and his advice to us was unequivocal: “If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try to dissuade him.” Perhaps it wasn’t just a complaint-perhaps it had been…a warning.
Landen placed a hand on my waist and said, “I think we should follow his best advice and see where it leaves us.”
“And the End of Time?”
“Didn’t your father say that the world was always five minutes from total annihilation? Besides, it’s not until Friday evening. It’ll work itself out.”
I took the tram into work and was so deep in thought I missed my stop and had to walk back from MycroTech. Without my TravelBook I was effectively stuck in the real world, but instead of feeling a sense of profound loss as I had expected, I felt something more akin to relief. In my final day as the LBOCS, I had scotched any chance of book interactivity or the preemptive strike on Speedy Muffler and the ramshackle Racy Novel, and the only worrying loose end was dealing with slutty bitchface Thursday1-4. That was if she hadn’t been erased on sight for making an unauthorized trip to the Outland. Well, I could always hope. Jurisfiction had gotten on without me for centuries and would doubtless continue to do so. There was another big plus point, too: I wasn’t lying to Landen quite as much. Okay, I still did a bit of SpecOps work, but at least this way I could downgrade my fibs from “outrageous” to a more manageable “whopping.” All of a sudden, I felt really quite happy-and I didn’t often feel that way. If there hadn’t been a major problem with Acme’s overdraft and the potential for a devastating
chronoclasm in two and a half days, everything might be just perfect.
“You look happy,” said Bowden as I walked into the office at Acme.
“Aren’t I always?”
“No,” he said, “hardly at all.”
“Well, this is the new me. Have you noticed how much the birds are singing this morning?”
“They always sing like that.”
“Then…the sky is always that blue, yes?”
“Yes. May I ask what’s brought on this sudden change?”
“The BookWorld. I’ve stopped going there. It’s over.”
“Well,” said Bowden, “that’s excellent news!”
“It is, isn’t it? More time for Landen and the kids.”
“No,” said Bowden, choosing his words carefully, “I mean excellent news for Acme-we might finally get rid of the backlog.”
“Of undercover SpecOps work?”
“Of carpets.”
“You mean you can make a profit selling carpets?” I asked, having never really given it a great deal of thought.
“Have you seen the order books? They’re full. More work than we can handle. Everyone needs floor coverings, Thurs-and if you can give some of your time to get these orders filled, then we won’t need the extra cash from your illegal-cheese activities.”
He handed me a clipboard.
“All these customers need to be contacted and given the best deal we can.”
“Which is?”
“Just smile, chat, take the measurements, and I’ll do the rest.”
“Then you go.”
“No, the big selling point for Acme is that Thursday Next-the Z-4 celebrity Thursday Next-comes and talks to you about your floor-covering needs. That’s how we keep our heads above water. That’s how we can support all these ex-SpecOps employees.”
“C’mon,” I said doubtfully, “ex-celebrities don’t do retail.”
“After the disaster of the Eyre Affair movie, Lola Vavoom started a chain of builders’ merchants.”
“She did, didn’t she?”
I took the clipboard and stared at the list. It was long. Business was good. But Bowden’s attention was suddenly elsewhere.
First Among Sequels tn-5 Page 23
