‘Only one other that I know of. No book person is going to take a bullet, if you try and shoot one, chances are they’ll jump.’
   ‘It sounds a bit like ducking witches.’
   ‘It’s not ideal,’ said Harris gruffly, ‘I’m the first to admit that.’
   Within half an hour Raffles had worked out the combination and now turned his attention to the secondary locking mechanism. He was slowly drilling a hole above the combination knob and the quiet squeaking of the drill bit seemed inordinately loud to our heightened nerves. We were staring at him and silently urging him to go faster when a noise from the library’s heavy door made us turn. Harris and I leaped to either side as the unlocking wheel spun to draw the steel tabs from the slots in the iron frame, and the door swung slowly open. Raffles and Bunny, well used to being disturbed, silently gathered up their tools and hid beneath a table.
   ‘The manuscript will be released to the publishers first thing tomorrow morning,’ said Kaine as he and Volescamper strolled in. Tweed pointed his automatic at them and they jumped visibly. I pushed the door shut behind them and spun the locking mechanism before searching them.
   ‘What is the meaning of this?’ said Volescamper in an outraged voice. ‘Miss Next? Is that you?’
   ‘As large as life, Volescamper.’
   Yorrick Kaine had turned a deep shade of crimson.
   ‘Thieves!’ he spat. ‘How dare you!’
   ‘No,’ replied Harris, beckoning them farther into the room and signalling for Raffles to continue with his work. ‘We have only come to retrieve Cardenio—something that does not belong to either of you.’
   ‘Now look here, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ began Volescamper in an outraged fashion, ‘but this house is surrounded by SO-14 agents—there is no escape. And as for you, Miss Next, look here, I am deeply disappointed by your perfidy!’
   ‘What do you reckon?’ I said to Harris. ‘His indignation seems real.’
   ‘It does—but he has less to gain from this than Kaine.’
   ‘You’re right—my money’s on Kaine.’
   ‘What are you talking about?!’ demanded Kaine angrily. ‘The manuscript belongs to literature—how do you think you can sell something like this on the open market? You may think you can get away with it, but I will die before I allow you to remove the literary heritage that belongs to all of us!’
   ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I added, ‘Kaine is pretty convincing too.’
   ‘Remember, he’s a politician.’
   ‘Of course,’ I returned, snapping my fingers. ‘I’d forgotten. What if it’s neither?’
   I didn’t have time to answer as there was a crash from somewhere near the front of the house and the sound of an explosion. A low, guttural moan reached our ears followed by the terrified scream of a man in mortal terror. A shiver ran up my spine, and I could see that everyone else in the room had felt it too. Even the implacable Raffles paused for a moment before returning to work with just a little bit more urgency.
   ‘Cat!’ exclaimed Harris. ‘What’s going on?’ [23]
   ‘The Questing Beast?’ exclaimed Tweed. ‘The Glatisant? Summon King Pellinore immediately.’ [24]
   ‘The Questing Beast?’ I asked. ‘Is that bad?’
   ‘Bad?’ replied Harris. ‘It’s the worst. The Questing Beast was born in the oral tradition before books so every dark horror that sprang from the human imagination owes its existence to the ancient Glatisant. It has many names but its goal is always the same death and destruction. As soon as it comes through the door anyone still here will be stone cold dead.’
   ‘Through the vault door?’
   ‘There is no barrier yet created that can withstand the Questing Beast—except a Pellinore; they have hunted it for years!’
   Harris turned to Kaine and Volescamper.
   ‘But there’s one thing it does tell us. One of you is fictional. One of you has invoked the Questing Beast. I want to know who it is!’
   The two prisoners looked at Tweed in a confused manner. There was another low moan, the light machine-gun at the front door fell silent and a splintering of wood met our ears as the Questing Beast forced its way through the main entrance—and moved its odious form closer to the library.
   ‘Cat!’ yelled Tweed again ‘Where’s that King Pellinore I asked for?’ [25]
   ‘Keep trying, cat,’ muttered Tweed. ‘We’ve still got a few minutes. Next—have you any ideas?’
   I shook my head. Events were running ahead of me.
   There was a crunching sound as the Questing Beast made its way down the corridor amid screams of terror and sporadic rifle fire.
   ‘Raffles?’ yelled Tweed. ‘How long?’
   ‘Two minutes, old chum,’ replied the safe-cracker without pausing or looking up. He had finished drilling the hole, made a small cup out of clay, stuck it against the side of the safe and was now pouring in what looked like liquid nitrogen.
   The battle outside seemed to increase in ferocity with shouts, concussions from grenades, screams and the sound of automatic weaponry until, after an almighty crash that shook the ceiling lights and rattled books from their shelves, all was quiet.
   We looked at one another. Even Volescamper and Kaine were quiet. Then a gentle tap sounded on the other side of the steel door. There was a pause, then another.
   ‘Thank goodness!’ said Tweed in relief. ‘King Pellinore must have arrived and seen it off. Miss Next, open the door.’
   But I didn’t. Suspicious of loathsome beasts from the deepest recesses of the human imagination, I stayed my hand. It was as well that I did. The next blow was harder. The blow following that was even more violent; the vault door buckled slightly.
   ‘Blast!’ exclaimed Tweed. ‘Why is there never a Pellinore around when you need one? Raffles, we don’t have much time!’
   ‘Just a few minutes more…’ replied Raffles quietly, tapping the safe door with a hammer while Bunny pulled on the brass handle.
   Tweed looked at me as the library door buckled under another heavy blow; a large split opened in the steel and the locking wheel sheared off and dropped to the ground. It wouldn’t be long now.
   ‘Okay,’ said Tweed reluctantly, grabbing my elbow in anticipation of a jump, ‘that’s it. Raffles, Bunny, out of here!’
   ‘Just a few moments longer…’ replied the safe-cracker, who was used to tight deadlines and didn’t like to give up on a safe, no matter what the possible consequences.
   The steel door buckled as the Questing Beast charged it with a deafening crash; books fell off the shelves in a cloud of dust. Then, as the Questing Beast pulled itself back for another blow, I had the one thing that had eluded me for the past half hour. An idea. I pulled Tweed close to me and whispered in his ear
   ‘No!’ he said. ‘What if—?’
   I explained again, he smiled and gave me a nod and I began:
   ‘So one of you is fictional,’ I announced, looking at them both.
   ‘And we have to find out who it is,’ remarked Tweed, levelling his pistol in their direction.
   ‘Might it be Yorrick Kaine—’ I added, staring at Kaine who glared back at me, wondering what we were up to.
   ‘—failed right wing politician—’
   ‘—with a cheery enthusiasm for war—’
   ‘—and putting a lid on civil liberties.’
   Tweed and I bantered lines back and forth for as long as we dared, faster and faster, the blows from the Beast outside matching the blows from Raffles’ hammer within

   ‘Or perhaps it is Volescamper—’
   ‘—Lord of the old realm who wants—’
   ‘—to try and get—’
   ‘—back into power with the help—’
   ‘—of his friends in the Whig party?’
   ‘But the important thing is, in all this dialogue—’
   ‘—that has pitched back and forward between—’
   ‘—the two of us, a fictional person—’
   ‘—might have lost track of which one of us is talking.’
   ‘And do you know, in all the excitement, I kind of forgot myself!’
   There was another crash against the door. A splinter of steel flew off and zipped past my ear. The doors were almost breached, the next blow would bring the abomination within the room.
   ‘So you’re going to have to ask yourselves one simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?’
   ‘You are!’ yelled Volescamper, pointing—correctly—at me. Kaine, revealing his fictional roots by his inability to follow undedicated dialogue, pointed his finger—at Tweed.
   He corrected himself quickly but it was too late for the politician and he knew it. He scowled at the two of us, trembling with rage. His charming manner seemed to desert him as we sprang the trap; suaveness gave way to snarling, smooth politeness to clumsy threats.
   ‘Now listen,’ growled Kaine, trying to regain control of the situation, ‘you two are way in over your heads. Try to arrest me and I can make things very difficult for you—one Footnoterphone call from me and the pair of you will spend the next eternity on grammasite watch inside the OED’
   But Tweed was made of stern stuff, too.
   ‘I’ve closed bloopholes in Dracula and Biggles Flies East,’ he replied evenly, ‘I don’t frighten easily. Call off the Glatisant and put your hands on your head.’
   ‘Leave Cardenio here with me—if only until tomorrow,’ added Kaine, changing tack abruptly and forcing a smile. ‘In return I can give you anything you want. Power, cash—an earldom, Cornwall, character exchange into Hemingway—you name it, Kaine will provide!’
   ‘You have nothing of any value to bargain with, Mr Kaine,’ Tweed told him, his hand tightening on his pistol. ‘For the last time—’
   But Kaine had no intention of being taken, alive or otherwise. He cursed us both to a painful excursion in the twelfth circle of hell and melted from view as Tweed fired. The slug buried itself harmlessly in a complete set of bound Punch magazines. At the same time the steel doors burst open. But instead of a pestilential hell-beast conjured from the depths of mankind’s most depraved thoughts only an icy rush of air entered, bringing with it the lingering smell of death. The Questing Beast had vanished as quickly as its master, back to the oral tradition and any books unfortunate enough to feature it.
   ‘Cat!’ yelled Tweed as he reholstered his gun. ‘We’ve got a PageRunner. I need a bookhound ASAP!’ [26]
   Volescamper sat down on a handy chair and looked bewildered.
   ‘You mean…’ he stammered incredulously. ‘Look here, Kaine was—?’
   ‘Entirely fictional—yes,’ I replied, laying a hand on his shoulder.
   ‘You mean Cardenio didn’t belong to my grandfather’s library after all?’ he asked, his confusion giving way to sadness.
   ‘I’m sorry, Volescamper,’ I told him. ‘Kaine stole the manuscript. He used your library as a front.’
   ‘And if I were you,’ added Tweed in a less kindly aside, ‘I should just go upstairs and pretend you slept all through this. You never saw us, never heard us, you know nothing of what happened here.’
   ‘Bingo!’ cried Raffles as the handle on the safe turned, shattering the frozen lock inside and creaking open. Raffles handed me the manuscript before he and Bunny vanished back to their own book with only the thanks of Jurisfiction to show for the night’s efforts—a valuable commodity on their side of the law.
   I passed Cardenio to Tweed. He rested a reverential hand on the returned play and smiled a rare smile.
   ‘An undedicated dialogue trap, Next—quick thinking. Who knows, we might make a Jurisfiction agent of you yet!’
   ‘Well, thank—’
   ‘—Cat!’ bellowed Tweed again. ‘Where’s that blasted bookhound?’ [27]
   A large and sad-looking bloodhound appeared from nowhere, looked at us both lugubriously, made a sort of hopeless doggy-sigh and then started to sniff the books scattered on the floor in a professional manner. Tweed snapped a lead on the dog’s collar.
   ‘If I was the sort of person to apologise—’ he conceded, straining at the leash of the bookhound which had locked on to the scent of one of Kaine’s expletives, ‘—I would. Join me in the hunt for Kaine?’
   It was tempting but I remembered Dad’s prediction.
   ‘I have to save the world tomorrow,’ I announced, surprising myself by just how matter-of-fact I sounded. Tweed didn’t seem in the least surprised.
   ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Well, another time, then. On, sir, seek, away!’
   The bookhound gave an excited bark and leaped forward; Tweed hung grimly on to the leash and they both disappeared into fine mist and the smell of hot paper.
   ‘I suppose,’ said Lord Volescamper, interrupting the silence in a glum voice, ‘that this means I won’t be in Kaine’s government after all?’
   ‘Politics is overrated,’ I told him.
   ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he agreed, getting up. ‘Well, goodnight, Miss Next. I didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, is that right?’
   ‘Nothing at all.’
   Volescamper sighed and looked at the shattered remains of the interior of his house. He picked his way to the twisted steel door and turned to face me.
   ‘Always was a heavy sleeper. Look here, pop round for tea and scones one day, why don’t you?’
   ‘Thank you, sir. I shall. Goodnight.’
   Volescamper gave me a desultory wave and was soon out of sight. I smiled to myself at the revelation of Kaine’s fictional identity; I reckoned that not being a real person had to present a pretty good obstacle to being Prime Minister, but I couldn’t help wondering just how much power he did wield within the world of fiction—and whether I had heard the last of him—after all, the Whig party was still in existence, with or without their leader. Still, Tweed was a professional, and I had other things to deal with.
   I looked down the corridor, past the twisted doors. The front of Vole Towers was virtually destroyed; the ceiling had collapsed and rubble lay strewn around where the Glatisant had fought the very finest of SO-14. I picked my way through the twisted door and down the corridor where deep gouges had been scraped in the floor and walls by the leaden hide of the beast. The remaining SpecOps 14 operatives had all pulled back to regroup and I slipped out in the confusion. Nine good men fell to the Questing Beast that night. The officers would all be awarded the SpecOps Star for ‘Conspicuous bravery in the face of Other’.
   As I walked along the gravel drive away from what remained of Vole Towers I could see a white charger galloping towards me, the warrior on its back holding a sharpened lance while behind him a dog barked excitedly. I waved King Pellinore to a halt.
   ‘Ah!’ he said, raising his visor and peering down at me. ‘The Next girl! Seen the Questin’ Beast, what, what?’
   ‘You’ve missed it,’ I explained. ‘Sorry.’
   ‘Dem shame,’ announced Pellinore sadly, parking the lance in his stirrup. ‘Dem shame indeed, eh? I’ll find it, you know. It is the lot of the Pellinores, to go a-mollocking for the beastly beast. Come, sir—away!’
   He spurred his steed and galloped off across the parkland of Vole Towers, the horse’s hooves throwing great divots of grass high in the air, the large white dog running behind them, barking furiously
   I returned to my apartment after giving an anonymous tip-off to The Mole, suggesting that they confirm the ongoing existence of Cardenio. The fact that I still had the apartment verified once and for all that Landen hadn’t been returned. I had been a fool to think that Goliath would honour their part of the deal. I sat in the dark for a while but even fools need rest, so I went to sleep under the bed as a precaution, which was just as well—at 3 a.m. Goliath turned up, had a good look around and then left. I stayed hidden as a further precaution and was glad of this also because SpecOps turned up at 4 a.m. and did exactly the same. Confident now of no further interruptions, I crawled out from my hiding place and climbed into bed, sleeping heavily until ten the next morning.

31. Dream Topping

   ‘Ever since calories and “sugar intake” were discovered the realm of the pudding has suffered intensely. There was a day when one could honestly and innocently enjoy the sheer pleasure of a good sticky toffee pudding; when ice cream was nice cream and Bakewell tart really was baked well. Tastes change, though, and the world of the sweet has often been sour, having to go through some dramatic overhaulage in order to keep pace. Whilst a straightforward sausage and a common kedgeree maintain their hold on the nation’s culinary choices, the pudding has to stay on its toes to tantalise our taste buds. From low fat through to no fat, from sugar free through to taste free; what the next stage is we can only wait and see…’

CILLA BUBB. Don’t Desert Your Desserts


   I peered cautiously from the window as I ate my breakfast and could see a black SpecOps Packard on the street corner, doubtless waiting for me to make an appearance. Across the road from them was another car, this time the unmistakable deep blue of Goliath; Mr Cheese leaned against the bonnet, smoking. I switched on the telly and caught the news. The break-in at Vole Towers had been heavily censored but it was reported that an unknown ‘agency’ had gained entrance to the building, killed a number of SO-14 agents and made off with Cardenio. Lord Volescamper had been interviewed and maintained that he had been ‘sound asleep’ and knew nothing. Yorrick Kaine was reported as ‘missing’ and early exit polls from the day’s election had shown that Kaine and the Whigs had not lived up to expectations. Without Cardenio, the powerful Shakespeare lobby had returned their allegiances to the current administration, who had promised to postpone, with the help of the ChronoGuard, the eighteenth-century demolition of Shakespeare’s old Stratford home.
   I allowed myself a wry smile at Kaine’s dramatic fall but felt sorry for the officers who had had to face the Questing Beast. I walked through to the kitchen. Pickwick looked at me and then at her empty supper dish with an accusing air.
   ‘Sorry,’ I muttered as I poured her some dried fruit.
   ‘How’s the egg?’
   ‘Plock-plock,’ said Pickwick.
   ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘suit yourself. I only asked.’
   I made another cup of tea and sat down to have a think. Dad had said the world was going to end this evening but whether that was really going to happen or not, I had no idea. As for me, I was wanted by SpecOps and Goliath; I was going to have to either outwit them or lie very low for a long time. I spent most of the day pacing my apartment, trying to figure out the best course of action. I wrote out my account of what had happened and hid it behind the fridge, just in case. I expected Dad to turn up but the hours ticked by and everything carried on as normal. The Goliath and SpecOps vehicles were relieved by two others at midday, and as dusk drew on I became more desperate. I couldn’t stay trapped inside my own apartment for ever. Bowden and Joffy I could trust—and perhaps Miles, too. I elected to sneak out and use a public phone box to call Bowden, and was just about to open the door when someone pressed the intercom buzzer downstairs. I quickly ducked out of my apartment and started to run down the staircase. If I reached the bottom and made my way out through the service entrance I might be able to slip away. Then, disaster. One of the tenants was about to leave at that precise moment and opened the door for whoever it was. I heard a brusque voice.
   ‘Here for Miss Next—SpecOps.’
   I cursed Mrs Scroggins as she replied:
   ‘Fourth floor, second on the left!’
   The fire escape was out front in full view of SpecOps and Goliath, so I ran all the way back upstairs to my flat, only to find that in my hurry I had locked myself out. There was nowhere to hide except behind a potted rubber plant about seven sizes too small, so I pushed open the letterbox and hissed:
   ‘Pickwick!’
   She wandered out into the hall from the living room and stared at me, head cocked on one side.
   ‘Good. Now listen. I know that Landen said you were really bright and if you don’t do this I’m going to be looped and you’re going to be put in a zoo. Now, I need you to find my keys.’
   Pickwick stared at me dubiously, took two steps closer and then relaxed and plocked a bit.
   ‘Yes, yes, it’s me. All the marshmallows you can eat, Pickers, but I need my keys. My keys.’
   Pickwick obediently stood on one leg.
   ‘Shit,’ I muttered.
   ‘Ah, Next!’ said a voice behind me. I rested my head against the door and let the letterbox snap shut.
   ‘Hello, Cordelia,’ I said softly without turning round.
   ‘Well, you have been giving us the runaround, haven’t you?’
   I paused, turned and stood up. But Cordelia wasn’t with any other SpecOps types—she was with a man and his young daughter, the winners of her competition. Perhaps things were not quite as bad as I thought. I put my arm around her shoulder and walked her out of earshot.
   ‘Cordelia—’
   ‘Dilly.’
   ‘Dilly—’
   ‘Yes, Thurs?’
   ‘What’s the word over at SpecOps?’
   ‘Well, darling,’ answered Cordelia, ‘the order for your arrest is still only within SpecOps—Flanker is hoping you’ll give yourself up. Goliath are telling anyone who will listen that you stole some highly sensitive industrial secrets.’
   ‘It’s all bullshit, Cordelia.’
   ‘I know that, Thursday. But I’ve a job to do—are you going to meet my people now?’
   I agreed, and we returned to where the two of them were looking at a brochure for the Gravitube.
   ‘Thursday Next, this is David Graham and his daughter, Molly.’
   I shook hands with David; Molly stared at me dubiously from behind his leg, clutching a soft toy.
   ‘I’d invite you in for a coffee,’ I explained, ‘but I’ve locked myself out.’
   David rummaged in his pocket and produced a set of keys.
   ‘Are these yours? I found them on the path outside.’
   ‘I don’t think that’s very likely.’
   But they were my keys—a set I had lost a few days earlier. I unlocked the door.
   ‘Come on in. That’s Pickwick. Stay away from the windows; there are a few people I don’t want to meet outside.’
   They shut the door behind them. Molly, overcoming her initial shyness, stared at Pickwick, who stared back.
   ‘Plock,’ said Pickwick.
   ‘Dodo,’ said Molly.
   Pickwick grasped Molly by the cuff and led her into the kitchen to show off her egg.
   ‘What do you do, David?’ I asked as I looked out of the kitchen window. I needn’t have worried; the two cars and their occupants were in the same place.
   ‘I’m a fund-raiser,’ he replied. ‘I’ve wanted to meet you for some time.’
   ‘Why?’
   He shrugged.

   ‘Dunno. Interested to see the sort of person who can travel around in books, I guess.’
   ‘Ah,’ I replied absently, pausing to consider just how wholly unlikely it was that Cordelia’s guest had found my keys when other passing residents had missed them.
   ‘Can I ask you a question, Miss Next?’ asked David.
   ‘Call me Thursday. Hang on a minute.’
   I nipped into the living room to fetch the entroposcope and shook it as I walked back in.
   ‘Well, Thursday,’ continued David, ‘I was wondering—’
   ‘Shit!’ I exclaimed, looking at the swirling pattern within the rice and lentils. ‘It’s happening again!’
   ‘Your dodo says she’s hungry,’ observed Molly.
   ‘It’s a scam for a marshmallow. Cordelia, would you give Molly a marshmallow to feed to Pickwick? They’re on top of the fridge.’
   Cordelia put down her bag and reached up for the glass jar.
   ‘Sorry, David, you were saying?’
   ‘Here it is. How did—’
   But I wasn’t listening. There was someone sitting on the wall at the entrance to the apartment block. She was in her mid-twenties, dressed in slightly garish clothes and was reading a fashion magazine.
   ‘Aornis?’ I whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’
   The figure turned to look at me as I said the words and my scalp prickled. It was her, no doubt about it. She smiled, waved and pointed to her watch.
   ‘It’s her,’ I mumbled. ‘Goddamned sonofabitch—it’s her!’
   ‘—and that’s my question,’ concluded David.
   ‘I’m sorry, David, I wasn’t listening.’
   I shook the entroposcope but the pulses were no more patterned than before—whatever the danger was, we weren’t quite there yet.
   ‘You had a question, David?’
   ‘Yes,’ he said, slightly annoyed, ‘I was wondering—’
   ‘Look out!’ I shouted, but it was too late. The glass marshmallow jar had slipped from Cordelia’s grasp and fell heavily on the worktop—right on top of the small evidence bag full of the pink goo from beyond the end of the world. The jar didn’t break, but the bag did, and Cordelia, myself and David were sprayed in gooey slime. David got the worst of it—a huge gob went right in his face.
   ‘Ugh!’
   ‘Here,’ I said, handing him a Seven Wonders of Swindon tea towel, ‘use this.’
   ‘What is that gick?’ asked Cordelia, dabbing at her clothes with a damp cloth.
   ‘I wish I knew.’
   But David licked his lips and said:
   ‘I’ll tell you what this is. It’s Dream Topping.’
   ‘Dream Topping?’ I queried. ‘Are you sure?’
   ‘Yes. Strawberry flavour. Know it anywhere.’
   I put a finger in the goo and tasted it. No mistake, it was Dream Topping. If only forensics had looked at the big picture instead of staring at molecules, they might have figured it out for themselves. But it got me thinking.
   ‘Dream Topping,’ I wondered out loud, looking at my watch. There were eighty-seven minutes of life left on the planet. ‘How could the world turn to Dream Topping?’
   ‘It’s the sort of thing,’ piped up David, ‘that Mycroft might know.’
   ‘You,’ I said, pointing a finger at the pudding-covered individual, ‘are a genius.’
   What had Mycroft said? Tiny nanomachines barely bigger than a cell building food protein out of nothing more than garbage? Banoffee pie from landfills? Perhaps there was going to be an accident. After all, what stopped nanomachines from making banoffee pie once they had started? I looked out of the window. Aornis had gone.
   ‘Do you have a car?’ I asked.
   ‘Sure,’ said David.
   ‘You’re going to have to take me over to ConStuff. Dilly, I need your clothes.’
   Cordelia looked suspicious.
   ‘Why?’
   ‘I’ve got watchers. Three in, three out—they’ll think I’m you.’
   ‘No way on earth,’ replied Cordelia indignantly, ‘unless you agree to do all my interviews and press junkets.’
   ‘At my first appearance I’ll have my head lopped off by Goliath or SpecOps—or both.’
   ‘Perhaps that’s so,’ replied Cordelia slowly, ‘but I’d be a fool to pass on an opportunity as good as this. All the interviews and appearances I request for a year.’
   ‘Two months, Cordelia.’
   ‘Six.’
   ‘Three.’
   She sighed. ‘Okay. Three months—but you have to do The Thursday Next Workout Video and talk to Harry about The Eyre Affair film project.’
   ‘Deal.’
   So Cordelia and I switched clothes. It felt very odd to be wearing her large pink sweater, short black skirt and high heels.
   ‘Don’t forget the Peruvian love beads,’ said Cordelia, ‘and my gun. Here.’
   Molly and Pickwick were playing hide-and-seek in the living room but were soon rounded up.
   ‘Excuse me, Miss Flakk,’ said David in a slightly indignant tone. ‘You promised I could ask Miss Next a question.’
   Flakk pointed a finely manicured fingertip at him and narrowed her eyes. ‘Listen here, buster. You’re on SpecOps business right now—a bonus, I’d say. Any complaints?’
   ‘Er, no, I guess,’ stammered David.
   I led them outside, past the Goliath and SpecOps agents waiting for me. I made some expansive Cordelia-like moves and they barely gave us a second glance. We were soon in David’s hired Studebaker and I directed him across town as I switched back to my own clothes.
   ‘Thursday?’ asked David.
   ‘Yes?’ I replied, looking around to see if I could see Aornis and shaking the entroposcope. Entropy seemed to be holding at the ‘slightly odd’ mark.
   ‘Your father—how does he manage to stop the clock like he does?’
   ‘It’s a ChronoGuard thing,’ I told him. ‘Any activity in the timestream gives off ripples that are easily detected. Dad places us both in a sort of stasis—as soon as the Chronos pick up a disturbance, he’s already gone. Does that answer your question?’
   ‘I guess.’
   ‘Good. Okay, pull up over there. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
   They dropped me by the side of the road and I thanked them before running up the street. It was already quite dark and the streetlamps were on. It didn’t look as if the world was about to end in twenty-six minutes, but then I don’t suppose it ever does.

32. The End of Life as We Know It

   ‘After failing to get Landen back, dealing with armageddon didn’t really hold the same sort of excitement for me that it would later. They always say the first time you save the world is the hardest—personally I have always found it tricky, but this time… I don’t know. Perhaps Landen’s loss numbed my mind and immunised me against panic. Perhaps the distraction actually helped.’

THURSDAY NEXT—private diaries


   Consolidated Useful Stuff was situated in a large complex on the airfield at Stratton. There was a guardhouse but I had coincidence on my side—all three guards had been called away on some errand or other, and I was able to slip through unnoticed. I rubbed my arm, which had inexplicably twinged with pain, and followed the signs towards MycroTech Developments. I was just wondering how to get into the locked building when a voice made me jump.
   ‘Hello, Thursday!’
   It was Wilbur, Mycroft’s boring son.
   ‘No time to explain, Will—I need to get into the nanotechnology lab.’
   ‘Why?’ asked Wilbur, fumbling with his keys.
   ‘There’s going to be an accident.’
   ‘Absolutely impossible! he scoffed, throwing the doors open to reveal a mass of spinning red lights and the raucous sound of a klaxon.
   ‘Heavens!’ exclaimed Wilbur. ‘Do you think it’s meant to be doing that?’
   ‘Call someone.’
   ‘Right.’
   He picked up the phone. Predictably enough, it was dead. He tried another but they were all dead.
   ‘I’ll get help!’ he said, tugging at the doorknob, which came off in his hand. ‘What the—’
   ‘Entropy’s decreasing by the second, Will. Are you using Dream Topping in any of your nanomachines?’
   He led me to a cabinet where a tiny drop of pink goo was suspended in midair by powerful magnets.
   ‘There she is. The first of her kind. Still experimental, of course. There are a few problems with the discontinuation command string. Once it starts changing organic matter into Dream Topping, it won’t stop.’
   I looked at my watch and noticed that there were barely twelve minutes left.
   ‘What’s keeping it from working at the moment?’
   ‘The magnetic field keeps the nanodevice immobilised and the refrigeration system keeps it below its activation temperature of minus ten degrees… What was that?’
   The lights had flickered.
   ‘Power grid failure.’
   ‘No problem, Thursday—there are three back-up generators. They can’t all fail at the same time, that would be too much of a—’
   ‘Coincidence, yes, I know. But they will. And when they do that coincidence will be the biggest, the best—and the last.’
   ‘Thursday, that’s not possible!’
   ‘Anything is possible right now. We’re in the middle of an isolated high coincidental localised entropic field decreasement.’
   ‘We’re in a what?’
   ‘We’re in a pseudoscientific technobabble.’
   ‘Ah!’ replied Wilbur, having witnessed quite a few at MycroTech Developments. ‘One of those.’
   ‘What happens when the final back-up fails, Wilbur?’
   ‘The nanodevice will be expelled into the atmosphere,’ said Wilbur grimly. ‘It is programmed to make strawberry-flavoured pudding mix and will continue to do so as long as it has organic material to work with. You, me, that table over there… Then, when someone comes to let us out in the morning, the machine will get to work on the outside.’
   ‘How quickly?’
   ‘Well,’ said Wilbur, thinking hard, ‘the device will make replicas of itself to carry out the work even faster, so the more organic matenal is swallowed up, the faster the process becomes. The entire planet? I’d give it about a week.’
   ‘And nothing can stop it?’
   ‘Nothing I know of,’ he replied sadly. ‘The best way to stop this is to not allow it to start—sort of minimum entry requirement for man-made disasters, really.’
   ‘Aornis!’ I shouted at the top of my voice. ‘Where the hell are you?’
   There was no reply.
   ‘Aornis!’
   And then she answered. But it was from such an unexpected quarter that I cried out in fright. She spoke to me—from my memory. It was as though a barrier had been lifted in my mind. The day on the Skyrail platform. The moment I first set eyes on Aornis. I thought it had only been a glimpse, but it wasn’t. We had spoken together for several minutes as I waited for the shuttle. I cast my mind back and scanned the newly recovered memories as my palms grew sweaty. The answers had been there all along.
   ‘Hello, Thursday,’ said the young woman on the bench, dabbing her nose with a powder compact.
   I walked over to her.
   ‘You know my name?’
   ‘I know a lot more than that. My name is Aornis Hades—you killed my brother.’
   I tried not to let my surprise show.
   ‘Self-defence, Miss Hades. If I could have taken him alive, I would have.’
   ‘No member of the Hades family has been taken alive for over eighty-three generations.’
   I thought about the twin puncture, the Skyrail ticket, all the chance happenings to get me on the platform.
   ‘Are you manipulating coincidences, Hades?’
   ‘Of course!’ she replied as the shuttle hissed into the station. ‘You’re going to get on that shuttle and be shot accidentally by an SO-14 marksman. An ironic end, don’t you think? Shot by one of your own?’
   ‘What if I don’t get on the Skyrail? What if I take you in right here and now?’
   Aornis giggled.
   ‘Dear Acheron was a fine and worthy Hades despite the fact he killed his brother—something Mother was very cut up about—but he was never truly aufait with some of the family’s more diabolical attributes. You’ll get on that train, Thursday—because you won’t remember anything about this conversation.’
   ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I laughed, but Aornis returned to her powder compact and I had got on the train.
   ‘What is it? asked Wilbur, who had been staring at me as the memories of Aornis came flooding back.
   ‘Recovered memories,’ I replied grimly as the lights flickered. The first back-up generator had failed. I checked my watch. There were six minutes to go.
   ‘Thursday?’ murmured Wilbur, lower lip trembling. ‘I’m frightened.’
   ‘Me too, Will. Quiet a sec.’

   And I thought back to my next meeting with Aornis. At Uffington, when she had posed as Violet De’ath. On this occasion we had been in company so she hadn’t said anything, but the next time, when I was in Osaka, she had sat next to me on the bench, just after the fortune-teller was struck by lightning.
   ‘Clever trick,’ she said, arranging her shopping bags so they wouldn’t fall over, ‘using the coincidence that way. Next time you won’t be so lucky—and while we’re on the subject, how did you get out of the jam on the Skyrail?’
   I really didn’t want to answer her questions.
   ‘What are you doing to me?’ I demanded instead. ‘What are you doing to my head?’
   ‘A simple recollection erasure, Thursday. My particular edge is that I am instantly forgettable—you will never capture me because you will forget that we ever met. I can erase your memory of me so instantaneously I am rendered invisible. I can walk where I please, steal what I wish—I can even murder in broad daylight.’
   ‘Very clever, Hades.’
   ‘Please, call me Aornis—I’d like us to be pals.’
   She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at her nails for a moment before asking:
   ‘I saw a beautiful cashmere sweater just now; it’s available in turquoise or emerald—which do you think would suit me better?’
   ‘I have no idea.’
   ‘I’ll get them both,’ she replied after a moment of reflection. ‘It’s on a stolen credit card, after all.’
   ‘Enjoy your game, Aornis. It won’t last for ever. I defeated your brother—I’ll do the same to you.’
   She laughed. ‘And how do you propose to do that? When you can’t recollect anything about our meetings at all? My dear, you won’t even remember this one—until I want you to!’
   And she gathered up her bags and walked off.
   The lights in the nanotechnology lab flickered again Wilbur and I looked at one another as the second back-up generator failed. He tried the phones again in desperation, but everything was still dead. Death by coincidence. What a way to go. But it was now, with only two minutes to go, that Aornis lifted the final barrier and I clearly remembered the last occasion she and I had faced one another. It had occurred not twenty minutes before at the ConStuff reception. It hadn’t been empty at all; Aornis had been there, waiting for me—ready to deliver the coup de grâce.
   ‘Well!’ she exclaimed as I walked in. ‘Figured this one out, did you?’
   ‘Damn you, Hades!’ I retorted, reaching for my pistol. She caught my wrist and pulled me into a painful half nelson with surprising speed.
   ‘Listen to me,’ she whispered in my ear while holding my arm locked tightly behind me. ‘There’s going to be an accident in the nanotechnology lab. Your uncle hoped to feed the world, when in fact he will be the father of its destruction. The irony is so heavy you could cut it with a knife!’
   ‘Wait’’ I said, but she pulled my arm up harder and I yelped.
   ‘I’m talking, Next. Never interrupt a Hades when they’re talking. You will die for what you have done to our family, but just to show I’m not a total fiend, I will allow you one last heroic gesture, something your pathetic self-righteous character seems to crave. At precisely six minutes before the accident, you will begin to remember all our little chats together.’
   I struggled but she held me tight.
   ‘You’ll remember this meeting last. So here’s my offer. Take your pistol and turn it upon yourself—and I’ll spare the planet.’
   ‘And if I don’t?’ I shouted. ‘You’ll die too!’
   She laughed again ‘No. I know you’ll do it. Despite the baby. Despite everything. You’re a good person, Next. A fine human being. It will be your downfall. I’m counting on it.’
   She leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
   ‘They’re wrong, you know, Thursday. Revenge is so sweet!’
   ‘Thursday?’ asked Wilbur. ‘Are you all right?’
   ‘No, not really,’ I muttered as I saw the clock tick into the final minute. Acheron was nothing compared to Aornis, in either his powers or his sense of humour. I’d messed with the Hades family and now I was paying the price.
   I pulled out Cordelia’s gun as the clock ticked into the last half-minute.
   ‘If Landen ever comes back, tell him I love him.’
   Twenty seconds.
   ‘If who ever comes back?’
   ‘Landen. You’ll know him when you see him. Tall, one leg, writes daft books and had a wife named Thursday who loved him beyond comprehension.’
   Ten seconds.
   ‘So long, Wilbur.’
   I closed my eyes and placed the gun to my temple.

33. The Dawn of Life As We Know It

   ‘Three billion years ago the atmosphere on earth had stabilised to what scientists referred to as A-II. The relentless hammering of the atmosphere had created the ozone layer, which in turn now stopped new oxygen from being produced. A new and totally different mechanism was needed to kick-start the young planet into the living green ball that we know and enjoy today.’

DR LUCIANO SPAGBOG. How I Think Life Began on Earth


   ‘No need for that,’ said my father, gently taking the gun from my hand and laying it on the table. I don’t know whether he purposely arrived late to increase the drama, but there he was. He hadn’t frozen time—I think he was done with that. Whenever he had appeared in the past he had always been smiles and cheeriness, but today he was different. And he looked, for the first time ever, old. Perhaps eighty—maybe more.
   He thrust his hand inside the nanodevice container as the final generator failed. The small blob of nanotechnology fell on his hand and the emergency lights flickered on, bathing us all in a dim green glow.
   ‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘How long have I got?’
   ‘It has to warm up first,’ replied Wilbur glumly. ‘Three minutes?’
   ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Sweetpea, but self-sacrifice is not the answer.’
   ‘It was all I had left, Dad. Me alone or me and three billion souls.’
   ‘You don’t get to make that decision, Thursday, but I do. You’ve got a lot of good work to do, and your son, too. Me, I’m just glad that it all ends before I become so enfeebled as to be useless.’
   ‘Dad!’
   I felt the tears start to roll down my cheeks.
   ‘It all seems so clear to me now!’ he said, smiling as he cupped his hand so none of the all-consuming Dream Topping would fall to the ground. ‘After several million years of existence I finally realised my purpose. Will you tell your mother there was absolutely nothing between me and Emma Hamilton?’
   ‘Oh, Dad! Don’t, please!’
   ‘And tell Joffy I forgive him for breaking the windows of the greenhouse.’
   I hugged him tightly.
   ‘I’ll miss you. And your mother, of course, and Escher, Louis Armstrong, the Nolan Sisters—which reminds me, did you get any tickets?’
   ‘Third row, but… but… I don’t suppose you’ll need them now.’
   ‘You never know,’ he murmured. ‘Leave my ticket at the box office, will you?’
   ‘Dad, there must be something we can do for you, surely?’
   ‘No, my darling, I’m going to be out of here pretty soon. The Great Leap Forward. The thing is, I wonder where to? Was there anything in the Dream Topping that shouldn’t have been there?’
   ‘Chlorophyll.’
   He smiled and sniffed the carnation in his buttonhole. ‘Yes, I thought as much. It’s all very simple, really—and quite ingenious. Chlorophyll is the key… Ow!’
   I looked at his hand. His flesh was starting to swirl as the wayward nanodevice thawed enough to start work, devouring, changing and replicating with ever-increasing speed.
   I looked at him, wanting to ask a hundred questions but not knowing where to start.
   ‘I’m going three billion years into the past, Thursday, to a planet with only the possibility of life. A planet waiting for a miraculous event, something that has not happened, as far as we know, anywhere else in the universe. In a word, photosynthesis. An oxidising atmosphere, Sweetpea—the ideal way to start an embryonic biosphere.’
   He laughed.
   ‘It’s funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? All life on earth descended from the organic compounds and proteins contained within Dream Topping.’
   ‘And the carnation. And you.’
   He smiled at me.
   ‘Me. Yes. I thought this might be the ending, the Big One—but in fact it’s really only just the beginning. And I’m it. Makes me feel all sort of… well, humble.’
   He touched my face with his good hand and kissed me on the cheek.
   ‘Don’t cry, Thursday. It’s how it happens. It’s how it has always happened, always will happen. Take my chronograph; I’m not going to need it any more.’
   I unstrapped the heavy watch from his good wrist as the smell of strawberries filled the room. It was Dad’s hand. It had almost completely changed to pudding. It was time for him to go and he knew it.
   ‘It was Aornis, wasn’t it?’
   I nodded.
   ‘Worst of the lot—not counting Phlegethon. You know what we used to say about her? Evil rich, cash poor. She has her Achilles’ heel, same as the rest of the family. Goodbye, Thursday, I never could have wished for a finer daughter.’
   I composed myself. I didn’t want his last memory of me to be of a snivelling wretch. I wanted him to see I could be as strong as he was. I pursed my lips and wiped the tears from my eyes.
   ‘Goodbye, Dad.’
   He winked at me.
   ‘Well, time waits for no man, as we say.’
   He smiled again and started to fold and collapse and spiral into a single dot, much like water escaping down a plughole. I could feel myself tugged into the event, so I took a step back as my father vanished into himself with a very quiet plop as he travelled into the deep past. A final gravitational tug dislodged one of my shirt buttons; the wayward pearl fastener sailed through the air and was caught in the small rippling vortex. It vanished from sight and the air rocked for a moment before settling down to that usual state we refer to as normality.
   My father had gone.
   The lights flickered back on as entropy returned to normal. Aornis’s boldly audacious plan for revenge had backfired badly. She had, perversely enough, actually given us all life. And after all that talk about irony. She’d probably be kicking herself all the way to Top Shop. Dad was right. It is funny the way things turn out.
   I sat through the Nolan Sisters’ concert that evening with an empty seat beside me, glancing at the door to see whether he would arrive. I hardly even heard the music—I was thinking instead of a lonely foreshore on a planet devoid of any life, a person who had once been my father sloughing away to his component parts. Then I thought of the resultant proteins, now much replicated and evolved, working on the atmosphere. They released oxygen and combined hydrogen with carbon dioxide to form simple food molecules. Within a few hundred million years the atmosphere would be full of free oxygen; aerobic life could begin—and a couple of billion years after that something slimy would start wriggling onto land. It was an inauspicious start but now there was a sort of family pride attached to it. He wasn’t just my father but everyone’s father. As the Nolans performed ‘Goodbye Nothing To Say’, I sat in quiet introspection, regretting, as children always do upon the death of a parent, all the things we never said and never did. But my biggest regret was far more mundane—since his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard, I never knew, nor ever asked him, his name.

34. The Well of Lost Plots

   ‘Character Exchange Programme: If a character from one book looks suspiciously like another from the same author, chances are they are. There is a certain degree of economy that runs through the book world and personages from one book are often asked to stand in for others. Sometimes a single character may play another in the same book, which lends a comedic tone to the proceedings if they have to talk to themselves. Margot Metroland once told me that playing the same person over and over and over again was as tiresome as “an actress condemned to the same part in a provincial repertory theatre for eternity with no holiday”. After a spate of illegal PageRunning (q.v.) by bored and disgruntled bookpeople, the Character Exchange Programme was set up to allow a change of scenery. In any year there are close to ten thousand exchanges, few of which result in any major plot or dialogue infringements. The reader rarely suspects anything at all.’

UA OF W CAT. The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library (glossary)


   I slept over at Joffy’s place. I say slept but that wasn’t entirely accurate. I just stared at the elegantly moulded ceiling and thought of Landen. At dawn I crept quietly out of the vicarage, borrowed Joffy’s Brough Superior motorcycle and rode into Swindon as the sun crept over the horizon. The bright rays of a new day usually filled me with hope but that morning I could think only of unfinished business and an uncertain future. I rode through the empty streets, past Coate and up the Marlborough road towards my mother’s house. She had to know about Dad however painful the news might be, and I hoped she would take solace, as I did, in his final selfless act. I would go to the station and hand myself into Flanker afterwards. There was a good chance that SO-5 would believe my account of what happened with Aornis but I suspected that convincing SO-1 of Lavoisier’s chronuption might take a lot more. Goliath and the two Schitts were a worry but I was sure I would be able to think of something to keep them off my back. Still, the world hadn’t ended yesterday which was a big plus—and Flanker couldn’t exactly charge me with ‘failing to save the planet his way’, no matter how much he might want to.
   As I approached the junction outside Mum’s house I noticed a suspiciously Goliath-looking car parked across the street, so I rode on and did a wide circuit, abandoning the motorcycle two blocks away and treading noiselessly down the back alleys. I skirted around another large dark-blue Goliath motor-car, climbed over the fence into Mum’s garden and crept past the vegetable patch to the kitchen door. It was locked so I pushed open the large dodo-flap and crawled inside. I was just about to switch on the lights when I felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against my cheek—I started and almost cried out.
   ‘Lights stay off,’ growled a husky woman’s voice, ‘and don’t make any sudden moves.’
   I dutifully froze. A hand snaked into my jacket and removed Cordelia’s automatic.
   DH-82 was fast asleep in his basket, the idea of being a fierce guard-Tastiger had obviously not entered his head.
   ‘Let me see you,’ said the voice again. I turned and looked into the eyes of a woman who had departed more rapidly into middle age than years alone might allow. I noticed that her gun arm wavered slightly, she had a slightly florid appearance and her hair had been clumsily brushed and pulled into a bun. But for all that it was clear she had once been beautiful; her eyes were bright and cheerful, her mouth delicate and refined, her bearing resolute.
   ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
   ‘This is my mother’s house.’
   ‘Ah!’ she said, giving a slight smile and raising an eyebrow. ‘You must be Thursday.’
   She returned her pistol to a holster that was strapped to her thigh beneath several layers of her large brocade dress and started to rummage in the cupboards.
   ‘Do you know where your mother keeps the booze?’
   ‘Suppose you tell me who you are?’ I demanded, my eyes alighting on the knife block as I searched for a weapon—just in case.
   The woman didn’t give me an answer, or at least, not to the question I’d asked.
   ‘Your father told me Lavoisier eradicated your husband.’
   I halted my surreptitious creep towards the carving knives.
   ‘You know my father?’ I asked in some surprise.
   ‘I do so hate that term eradicated,’ she announced grimly, searching in vain amongst the tinned fruit for anything resembling alcohol. ‘It’s murder, Thursday—nothing less. They killed my husband, too—even if it did take three attempts.’
   ‘Who?’
   ‘Lavoisier and the French revisionists.’
   She thumped her fist on the kitchen top as if to punctuate her anger and turned to face me.
   ‘You have memories of your husband, I suppose?’
   ‘Yes.’
   ‘Me too,’ she sighed. ‘I wish to heaven I hadn’t, but I have. Memories of things that might have happened. Knowledge of the loss. It’s the worst part of it.’
   She opened another cupboard door revealing still more tinned fruit.
   ‘I understand your husband was barely two years old—mine was forty-seven. You might think that makes it better but it doesn’t. The petition for his divorce was granted and we were married the summer following Trafalgar. Nine years of glorious life as Lady Nelson—then I wake up one morning in Calais, a drunken, debt-ridden wretch and with the revelation that my one true love died a decade ago, shot by a sniper’s bullet on the quarter-deck of the Victory.’
   ‘I know who you are,’ I murmured, ‘you’re Emma Hamilton.’
   ‘I was Emma Hamilton,’ she replied sadly. ‘Now I’m a broke out-of-timer with a dismal reputation, no husband and a thirst the size of the Gobi.’
   ‘But you still have your daughter?’
   ‘Yes,’ she groaned, ‘but I never told her I was her mother.’
   ‘Try the end cupboard.’
   She moved down the counter, rummaged some more and found a bottle of cooking sherry. She poured a generous helping into one of my mother’s teacups. I looked at the saddened woman and wondered if I’d end up the same way.
   ‘We’ll sort out Lavoisier eventually,’ muttered Lady Hamilton sadly, downing the cooking sherry. ‘You can be sure of that.’
   ‘We?’
   She looked at me and poured another generous—even by my mother’s definition—cup of sherry.
   ‘Me—and your father, of course.’
   I sighed. She obviously hadn’t heard the news.
   ‘That’s what I came to talk to my mother about.’
   ‘What did you come to talk to me about?’
   It was my mother. She had just walked in wearing a quilted dressing gown and her hair sticking out in all directions. For someone usually so suspicious of Emma Hamilton, she seemed quite cordial and even wished her ‘Good morning’—although she swiftly removed the sherry from the counter and replaced it in the cupboard.
   ‘You early bird!’ she cooed. ‘Do you have time to take DH-82 to the vet’s this morning? His boil needs lancing again.’
   ‘I’m kind of busy, Mum.’

   ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sensing the seriousness in my voice. ‘Was that business at Vole Towers anything to do with you?’
   ‘Sort of. I came over to tell you—’
   ‘—Yes?’
   ‘That Dad has—Dad is—Dad was—’
   Mum looked at me quizzically as my father, large as life, strode into the kitchen.
   ‘—is making me feel very confused.’
   ‘Hello, Sweetpea!’ said my father, looking considerably younger than the last time I saw him. ‘Have you been introduced to Lady Hamilton?’
   ‘We had a drink together,’ I said uncertainly. ‘But—You’re—you’re—alive!’
   He stroked his chin and replied: ‘Should I be something else?’
   I thought for a moment and furtively shook my cuff down to hide his chronograph on my wrist.
   ‘No—I mean, that is to say—’
   But he had twigged me already.
   ‘—don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!’
   He stood next to Mum and placed an arm round her waist. It was the first time I had seen them together for nearly seventeen years.
   ‘But—’
   ‘You mustn’t be so linear,’ said my father. ‘Although I try to visit only in your chronological order, sometimes it’s not possible.’
   He paused.
   ‘Did I suffer much pain?’
   ‘No—none at all,’ I lied.
   ‘It’s funny,’ he said as he filled the kettle, ‘I can recall everything up until final curtain-minus-ten, but after that it’s all a bit fuzzy—I can vaguely see a rugged coastline and the sunset on a calm ocean, but other than that, nothing. I’ve seen and done a lot in my time, but my entry and exit will always remain a mystery. It’s better that way. Stops me getting cold feet and trying to change them.’
   He spooned some coffee into the cafetiere. I was glad to see that I had only witnessed Dad’s death and not the end of his life—as the two, I learned, are barely related at all.
   ‘How are things, by the way?’ he asked.
   ‘Well,’ I began, unsure of where to start, ‘the world didn’t end yesterday.’
   He looked at the low winter sun that was shining through the kitchen windows.
   ‘So I see. Good job too. An armageddon right now might have been awkward—have you had any breakfast?’
   ‘Awkward? Global destruction would be awkward?’
   ‘Decidedly so. Tiresome almost,’ replied my father thoughtfully. ‘The end of the world could really louse up my plans to get both your husbands back, and you wouldn’t like that, now, would you? Tell me, did you manage to get me a ticket to the Nolans’ concert last night?’
   I thought quickly.
   ‘Er—no, Dad—sorry. They’d all sold out.’
   There was another pause. Mum nudged her husband, who looked at her oddly. It looked as if she wanted him to say something.
   ‘Thursday,’ she began when it became obvious that Dad wasn’t going to take her cue, ‘your father and I think you should take some leave until our first grandchild is born. Somewhere safe. Somewhere other.’
   ‘Oh yes!’ added Dad with a start. ‘With Goliath, Aornis and Lavoisier after you, the herenow is not exactly the best place to be.’
   ‘I can look after myself.
   ‘I thought I could too,’ grumbled Lady Hamilton, gazing longingly at the cupboard where the cooking sherry was hidden.
   ‘I will get Landen back,’ I replied resolutely.
   ‘Perhaps now you might be physically up to it—but what happens in six months’ time? You need a break, Thursday, and you need to take it now. Of course, you must fight—but fight with a level playing field.’
   ‘Mum?’
   ‘It makes sense, darling.’
   I rubbed my head and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. It did seem to be a good idea.
   ‘What have you in mind?’
   Mum and Dad exchanged looks.
   ‘I could downstream you to the sixteenth century or something but good medical care would be hard to come by. Upstreaming is too risky—and besides, SO-12 would soon find you. No, if you’re going to go anywhere, it will have to be sideways.’
   He came and sat down next to me.
   ‘Henshaw at SO-3 owes me a favour. Between the two of us we could slip you sideways into a world where Landen doesn’t drown aged two.’
   ‘You could?’ I replied, suddenly perking up.
   ‘Sure. But steady on. It’s not so simple. A lot will be… different.’
   My euphoria was short lived. A prickle rose on my scalp.
   ‘How different?’
   ‘Very different. You won’t be in SO-27. In fact, there won’t be any SpecOps at all. The Second World War will finish in 1945 and the Crimean conflict won’t last much beyond 1854.’
   ‘I see. No Crimean war? Does that mean Anton will still be alive?’
   ‘It does.’
   ‘Then let’s do it, Dad.’
   He laid a hand on mine and squeezed it.
   ‘There’s more. It’s your decision and you have to know precisely what is involved. Everything will be gone. All the work you’ve ever done, all the work you will do. There will be no dodos or Neanderthals, no Willspeak machines, no Gravitube—’
   ‘No Gravitube? How do people get around?’
   ‘In things called jetliners. Large passenger aircraft that can fly seven miles high at three-quarters of the speed of sound—some even faster.’
   It was plainly a ridiculous idea and I told him.
   ‘I know it’s far-fetched, Sweetpea, but you’ll never know any different—the Gravitube will seem as impossible there as jetliners do here.’
   ‘What about mammoths?’
   ‘No—but there will be ducks.’
   ‘Goliath?’
   ‘Under a different name.’
   I was quiet for a moment.
   ‘Will there be Jane Eyre?’
   ‘Yes,’ sighed my father. ‘Yes, there will always be Jane Eyre.’
   ‘And Turner? Will he still paint The Fighting Temeraire?’
   ‘Yes, and Carravaggggio will be there too, although his name will be spelt more sensibly.’
   ‘Then what are we waiting for?’
   My father was silent for a moment.

   ‘There’s a catch.’
   ‘What sort of catch?’
   He sighed.
   ‘Landen will be back but you and he won’t have met. Landen won’t even know you.’
   ‘But I’ll know him. I can introduce myself can’t I?’
   ‘Thursday, you’re not part of this. You’re outside of it. You’ll still be carrying Landen’s child but you won’t know the sideslip has ever happened. You will remember nothing about your old life. If you want to go sideways to see him then you’ll have to have a new past and a new present. Perversely enough, to be able to see him, you cannot have any recollection of him—nor he of you.’
   ‘That’s some catch,’ I observed.
   ‘It’s the second best there is,’ Dad agreed.
   I thought for a moment.
   ‘So I won’t be in love with him?’
   ‘I’m afraid not. You might have a small residual memory—feelings that you can’t explain for someone you’ve never met.’
   ‘Will I be confused?’
   ‘Yes.’
   He looked at me with an earnest expression. They all did. Even Lady Hamilton, who had been moving quietly towards the sherry, stopped and was staring at me. It was clear that making myself scarce was something I had to do But having zero recollection of Landen? I didn’t really have to think very hard.
   ‘No, Dad. Thanks, but no thanks.’
   ‘I don’t think you understand,’ he intoned, using his paternal go-to-your-room-young-lady voice. ‘In a year’s time you can come back and everything will be as right as—’
   ‘No. I’m not losing any more of Landen than I have already.’
   I had an idea.
   ‘Besides, I do have somewhere I can go.’
   ‘Where?’ enquired my father. ‘Where could you possibly go that Lavoisier couldn’t find you? Backward, forward, sideways, otherways—there isn’t anywhere else!’
   I smiled.
   ‘You’re wrong, Dad. There is somewhere. A place where no one will ever find me—not even you.’
   ‘Sweetpea—!’ he implored. ‘It is imperative that you take this seriously! Where will you go?’
   I replied slowly, ‘I’ll just lose myself in a good book.’
   Despite their pleading I bade farewell to Mum, Dad and Lady Hamilton, crept out of the house and sped to my apartment on Joffy’s motorbike I parked outside the front door in clear defiance of the Goliath and SpecOps agents who were still waiting for me. I ambled slowly in, it would take them twenty minutes or more to report to base and then get up the stairs and break down the door—and I really only needed to pack a few things. I still had my memories of Landen and they would sustain me until I got him back. Because I would get him back—but I needed time to rest and recuperate and bring our child into the world with the minimum of fuss, bother and interruptions. I packed four tins of Moggilicious cat food, two packets of Mintolas, a large jar of Marmite and two dozen AA batteries into a large holdall along with a few changes of clothing, a picture of my family and the copy of Jane Eyre with the bullet lodged in the cover. I placed a sleepy and confused Pickwick and her egg into the holdall and zipped up the bag so that only her head stuck out. I then sat and waited on a chair in front of the door with a copy of Great Expectations on my lap. I wasn’t a natural book-jumper and without my travel book I was going to need the fear of capture to help catapult me through the boundaries of fiction.
   I started to read at the first knock on the door and continued through the volley of shouts for me to open up, past the muffled thuds and the sound of splintered wood until finally, as the door fell in, I melted into the dingy interior of Great Expectations and Satis House.
   Miss Havisham was slightly shocked when I explained what I needed, and even more shocked at the sight of Pickwick, but she consented to my request and cleared it with the Bellman—on the proviso that I’d continue with my training. I was hurriedly inducted into the Character Exchange Programme and given a secondary part in an unpublished book deep within the Well of Lost Plots—the woman I was replacing had for some time wanted to take a course in Drama at the Reading Academy of Dramatic Arts, so it suited her equally well. As I wandered down to Sub-basement six, Exchange Programme docket in hand made out to someone named Briggs, I felt more relaxed than I had for weeks. I found the correct book sandwiched between the first draft of an adventure in the Tasman seas and a vague notion of a comedy set in Bomber Command. I picked up the book, took it to one of the reading tables and quietly read myself into my new home.
   I found myself on the banks of a reservoir somewhere in the Home Counties. It was summer and the air smelt warm and sweet after the wintry conditions back home. I was standing on a wooden jetty in front of a large and seemingly derelict flying boat, which rocked gently in the breeze, tugging on the mooring ropes. A woman had just stepped out of a door in the high-sided hull; she was holding a suitcase.
   ‘Hello!’ she shouted, running up and offering me a hand. ‘I’m Mary. You must be Thursday. My goodness! What’s that?’
   ‘A dodo. Her name’s Pickwick.’
   ‘I thought they were extinct.’
   ‘Not where I come from. Is this where I’m going to live?’ I was pointing at the shabby flying boat dubiously.
   ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ smiled Mary proudly. ‘Isn’t she just the most beautiful thing ever? Short Sunderland, built in 1943 but last flew in ‘54. I’m mid-way converting her to a houseboat but don’t feel shy if you want to help out. Just keep the bilges pumped out and if you can run the number three engine once a month I’d be very grateful.’
   ‘Er—okay,’ I stammered.
   ‘Good. I’ve left a rough précis of the story taped to the fridge but don’t worry too much—since we’re not published you can do pretty much what you want. Any problems, ask Captain Nemo who lives on the Nautilus two boats down, and don’t worry, Jack might seem gruff to begin with but he has a heart of gold and if he asks you to drive his Austin Allegro, make sure you depress the clutch fully before changing gear. Did the Bellman supply you with all the necessary paperwork and fake IDs?’
   I patted my pocket and she handed me a scrap of paper and a bunch of keys.
   ‘Good. This is my Footnoterphone number in case of emergencies, these are the keys to the flying boat and my BMW. If someone named Arnold calls, tell him he had his chance and he blew it. Any questions?’
   ‘I don’t think so.’
   She smiled.
   ‘Then we’re done. You’ll like it here. It’s pretty odd. I’ll see you in about a year. So long!’
   She gave a cheery wave and walked off up the dusty track. I looked across the lake at the faraway dinghies, then watched a pair of swans beating their wings furiously and pedalling the water to take off. I sat down on a rickety wooden seat and let Pickwick out of the bag. It wasn’t home but it looked pleasant enough. Landen’s reactualisation was in the uncharted future, along with Aornis’s and Goliath’s come-uppance—but all in good time. I would miss Mum, Dad, Joffy, Bowden, Victor and maybe even Cordelia. But it wasn’t all bad news—at least this way I wouldn’t have to do The Thursday Next Workout Video.
   As my father said, it’s funny the way things turn out.