The Woman Who Died a Lot

  I unpinned the phone from my shirt and dialed in one of the numbers that Synthetic Me had considerately left myself on speed dial.

  “Phoebe? It’s Thursday. I need a favor.”

  I outlined what I needed her to do and heard her sharp intake of breath. She knew she’d be tackling Goliath eventually but hadn’t thought it would be so soon.

  “Arresting a Top One Hundred is . . . problematical,” replied Phoebe. “Are you sure you’ve got something on him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Here’s the deal,” said Phoebe. “I’ll help you, but if it all goes squiffy, you take the flak.”

  “Deal.”

  My Synthetic had also thoughtfully left me some clothes, and as soon as I was dressed, I unlocked the door and peered outside. I was in a service area somewhere on the ground floor, so I grabbed my stick and limped out the door but then stopped abruptly as the service elevator opened at the far end of the corridor. It was Jack—with what looked like a body wrapped in a sofa slipcover across his shoulder. I reversed direction as soon as I saw him and limped as fast as I could back toward the storeroom. The first shot zipped past my head as I ducked inside, and I had only just thrown the lock when a second shot struck the door. After five more shots, not a single one of which penetrated the heavy wood, I heard the clatter of a dropped pistol and footsteps down the corridor. I opened the door to find I wasn’t the only one doing so. Heads were popping cautiously out of offices all the way down the corridor to see what was going on. I picked up the small pistol and traced the route Jack had taken in time to see him driving off in my Daimler, my driver lying on the ground, rubbing his jaw. Within a few seconds, I was joined by two Special Library Services troopers.

  “Where is he, ma’am?” asked the first.

  I told them he was in my Daimler but that he’d be dumping it in less than ten minutes. The trooper nodded and barked some instructions into his walkie-talkie.

  I retraced my steps and took the elevator back to the seventeenth.

  Duffy looked surprised when he saw me. “You’re okay?”

  I showed him the tattoo on the back of my hand and pulled off the bandage on my neck to show a dry wound with a single stitch.

  “It’s me,” I said, “really me. What did he tell you?”

  “That you had collapsed and he was taking you to the Lola Vavoom Discount Sofa Warehouse See Press for Details Memorial Hospital.”

  “Wrapped in a sofa cover?”

  “Yes, I thought it a bit strange.”

  “He actually gave me one here,” I said, pointing to my forehead. “Cancel my eleven-o’clock and push my eleven-thirty back half an hour. If Bunty can’t be moved, put her in my two-o’clock and bump who was going to be there until tomorrow. Yes?”

  Duffy had been writing frantically. “Right. But I don’t think the Blyton Fundamentalists will take kindly—”

  “Ahaa!” said a loud voice. “Chief Librarian!”

  I turned to see a middle-aged woman dressed in a tweed suit. She had a shock of gray hair poking from under a matching tweed hat, and a pair of silver pince-nez were attached to her lapel with a chain. She was also holding a large leather handbag and an umbrella, both of which could be lethal in the correct hands—and she looked like she had the correct hands.

  “I have been called away on sudden business,” I told her in the requisite tone. “I will speak to you in an hour.”

  “I shall not be ignored, Chief Librarian Next, “she replied. “My name is Mrs. Hilly, and I think—”

  “I have to be at the Adelphi. Good day.” And I walked away.

  But Mrs. Hilly wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and because I couldn’t move faster than she could, she was going to be difficult to get rid of.

  “I am coming with you,” she said, “to make my opinions known.”

  We were in the elevator by now.

  “Listen,” I said, “we will talk, but I need to be at the Adelphi five minutes ago, and I’ll be lucky to get a cab this time of day.”

  “Then it is a good job I happen to have a car parked outside,” she replied. “We’re very upset about the way Our Blyton’s work has been revised and cut, mangled and rewritten. We will not rest, Miss Next, until her works are exactly as the author intended, with all whiffs of xenophobia, sexism and class-ridden references returned.”

  “This isn’t a library matter, Mrs. Hilly,” I explained. “It’s for the publishers to decide.”

  “They refuse to listen to us. They have even been so underhanded as to issue restraining orders. No, we are petitioning for Class II Protected Book Status.”

  This was a new angle. If a book was given Protected Status, it was taken into the care of the League of Libraries, and, crucially, no editorial changes would be allowed without express permission—the legislation was modeled on the same law that protected old buildings. In fact, it had even been drafted using the same text, only substituting the word “building” with “book.” It was a pleasingly economical approach to lawmaking but sadly left a few passages open to interpretation, such as how a “book might be considered derelict if it had no roof” and that “an owner might be prosecuted for allowing dry rot to develop.”

  “We need one Regional Library Authority behind us to endorse our petition,” she said. “We have chosen Wessex to stand up for what is right, good and fine in children’s literature.”

  We were outside by now, and I noticed that the taxi rank was indeed empty.

  “Well, we’ll talk later,” I said, then added after having a thought, “Is your car fast?”

  “Very.”

  She was right; it was a V8 Austin-Maserati, and it—and she—were very fast. Although the Swindon Adelphi was on the far side of the airshipfield, we were there in record time.

  “I hope I’m not frightening you,” she said as we drifted sideways around the Oxford Road roundabout, leaving two strips of hot rubber on the pavement and a cloud of thick tire smoke in our wake.

  “Actually, no,” I replied. “Your driving reminds me of someone I once knew.”

  We screeched to a halt outside the Swindon Adelphi, and I hurried inside after telling Mrs. Hilly that I would accept a lift back—and would hear all her grievances. I went to the eighteenth floor, where I knew the suites were located, and found Phoebe in the lobby area outside the elevators.

  “No armed backup?” I asked.

  “I was countermanded,” replied Phoebe. “Anyone in the Goliath Top One Hundred is Protocol 684: not to be approached without a signed warrant from the attorney general.”

  This was quite true—Goliath had taken over the running of the police years ago. Phoebe could be here only because she was SpecOps, who were independent.

  “I booked myself into Room 1802 down the hall,” she added, “so as to have deniability in case this all turns nasty. I’m not losing the best job I’m likely to get the day after I’m offered it.” “But you’re here.”

  “Yes,” she said with a sigh, “I’m here.”

  I thanked her, then asked which room Jack was booked into.

  “The Dyson Suite, under the name of ‘Jacque Chitt.’ What do we do?”

  “We go in. He said he was returning here, and he’s a Day player, so technically a chimera and can be destroyed on sight. But be warned: He’s a Mark VIII and can think and move three times as fast as us.”

  “What if he’s not a chimera?”

  “He is.”

  “Yes, okay, but what if he’s not? Killing a Goliath Top One Hundred would be a serious career downer.”

  “If he’s real, we don’t kill him.”

  “How can we tell?”

  “Leave that up to me. But if he is the real one, he’ll be in a coma, and we take him into custody and wait for him to wake up.”

  “ Ooo-kay,” said Phoebe doubtfully. “You can do the talking. I brought you this . . . and this.”

  She handed me a navy blue ballistic vest with LIBRARIAN written on the back in white letter
s. The other item was a revolver. I stared at it stupidly. I hadn’t used anything but an automatic in over two decades.

  “They never jam,” said Phoebe, pulling out her own weapon, a Webley Break-Top that looked as though her grandfather might have bequeathed it to her. “A dodgy Walther gave me this.” She pointed at the ragged remnants of her ear. “Ready?”

  “Ready—but help me off this chair. This vest is heavy.”

  Phoebe heaved me to my feet, and we paced down the corridor to the Dyson Suite. But before we could knock on the door, it was opened—by Jack Schitt himself, dressed in an Adelphi-monogrammed bathrobe. As soon as he saw that we were armed, he put his hands in the air, and we all stared at one another. I could feel my finger tight upon the trigger. If he’d twitched, I would have fired.

  But he didn’t.

  “Hello, Thursday,” he said. “How have you been?”

  “Is he real?” asked Phoebe.

  “Easy way to tell,” I replied. “Day Players are budget humans— anything not required for a simple twenty-four-hour existence is eliminated. He won’t have an alimentary canal or genitals.”

  “Show us,” said Phoebe.

  “I’m sorry?” said Jack.

  “Open the bathrobe,” I said, “and slowly. Phoebe—you look. I’m covering him for any tricky business.”

  He stared at us both and very gently complied.

  “Well,” said Phoebe, “that looks a lot like a penis to me.”

  I looked then.

  “Yes,” I conceded, “I think you’re right. His Day Player, who just killed my Day Player, must have just killed himself—and Jack is back.”

  “You’re making no sense,” said Jack. “Can I cover myself up now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on?” came a voice, and a woman’s face hove into view behind Jack. She was also wearing a bathrobe and covered a bare shoulder when she saw us.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them!” yelled Phoebe, and the woman wearily complied, as if this sort of thing happened to her a lot, which I knew for a fact it did.

  “Is that you, Thursday?” she said.

  “Hello, Flossie,” I replied. “Anyone else in the suite?”

  “No. And why are you calling him Jack?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I told Schitt to step back, and while I kept the two of them covered, Phoebe checked the rest of the suite. It was quite large, so this took more than just a cursory glance.

  “Day Players on the mainland?” said Jack with a creditable pretense of shock and outrage in his voice. “How irresponsible do you think we are?”

  “How long have you been back inside this body?” I asked. “Five minutes?”

  “We’ve been together all morning,” said Flossie, “and I can assure you that the only body he’s been inside during that time is—”

  “Thank you, yes, I get the picture, Miss Buxton.”

  “Nothing here,” said Phoebe as she returned. “Just a suitcase and a Gravitube ticket from Karachi. Hey, Thursday, the suites here are huge. There’s even a snooker room, and the minibar has fourteen different types of water.”

  “Are you sure? No coffin-size Tupperware?”

  “Well, let me go and look again,” she said sarcastically. “I just might have missed one of them.”

  She looked at me with an annoyed glare, and I felt a bit . . . well, stupid.

  “Mr Schitt,” Phoebe added, turning to Jack, “we’re extremely sorry for this intrusion upon your leisure time. We had a miscommunication but had to act on short notice—hence our lack of preparedness.”

  “Polite of you, Officer . . . ?”

  “Detective Judith Trask—Swindon PD.”

  Phoebe could lie well when she wanted to.

  “Polite of you, Officer Trask. But I feel that Thursday owes me the bigger apology.”

  “I apologize unreservedly,” I said through clenched teeth. Jack was good—real good. He’d have had a Plan B and most probably a Plan C, too.

  “Then we’ll say no more,” he declared, staring intently at me without blinking. “But heed my words: My sources tell me that you were designated NUT-4 in a recent appraisal—‘prone to strange and sustained delusional outbursts.’ If that is the case, then threatening a Goliath executive and making ridiculous claims about Day Players while demanding to see my genitals at gunpoint wouldn’t go down very well in an official complaint, now, would it?”

  “In that,” I said slowly, “I think we are in complete agreement.”

  “If anyone but you had done this, I would use my full powers to ensure that the perpetrator was ruined personally and financially, not to mention enmeshed in suicidally wearisome litigation for the rest of her natural life. But I have Protocol 451 to consider and more important matters to deal with, such as an alternative plan to save Swindon due to your daughter’s failings.”

  He paused to let this sink in.

  “So we’ll just forget this ever happened. Am I not magnanimous?”

  I glared at him hotly and opened my mouth in order to make things worse. Luckily, Phoebe was there first, told Jack that we would most definitely leave him well alone, that we were terribly sorry for disturbing him, that he was truly magnanimous, and then she took me by the arm. The door slammed shut behind us, and we quickly beat a retreat to the elevators.

  “Damn,” I muttered as we walked back down the corridor to the elevators, “he’s got it all sorted out.”

  “You’ve got nothing,” said Phoebe. “In fact, you’ve got less than nothing. So until you have, we’re going to do exactly as he says. Who was Flossie, by the way?”

  “Flossie Buxton,” I told her. “We were good friends at school. Ver y different career paths. Who’s Judith Trask?”

  “The first name that popped into my head,” she said with a shrug.

  “I always use ‘Linda Cosgrove’ when I’m in a sticky spot,” I said, thinking things over. “Jack’s Day Player must have died already—or maybe Flossie was a Day Player. Perhaps we should have checked her, too.”

  I stopped walking, but Phoebe took my arm again and steered me firmly toward the elevators. She pressed the call button and stared at me.

  “Your friend Miss Buxton would doubtless say anything Jack asked her to. I think we were lucky to get away with our jobs.”

  “If you want to be a Thursday,” I told her, “being fired is very much an occupational hazard.”

  “I heard that. I also heard a rumor that Goliath had SpecOps disbanded simply to get rid of you. And if that is the case, then your being fired had huge and very negative repercussions for law enforcement in general.”

  I’d heard the rumor, too.

  “That was never proved,” I said. “Besides—ballocks to them. I do what I do.”

  “I’ve noticed. Asking to see a top Goliath executive’s whatnot. I ask you.”

  She shook her head at my audacity and then started to giggle. I joined her at that point, and we were so helpless with laughter that we dismissed the first lift and caught the second.

  Suitably composed, I told Phoebe what had been going on as we descended to the lobby, and the admission from Jack’s Day Player that they were stealing and destroying palimpsests because of something vaguely to do with asteroid HR-6984— and that it was something I put them up to.

  “Really? Any idea what?”

  “None at all. Lunch? I’m meeting Landen at the Happy Wok at one, and it’s only in Wanborough. I’ve got a Blyton Fundamentalist stuck to me like glue, so she’ll probably come, too.”

  “Mrs. Hilly?”

  “Met her?”

  “She’s been leaving messages on my phone. The Blyton Modernists apparently took umbrage at Mrs. Hilly’s demand that females in the books should be seen doing more cooking and cleaning, and they threatened to ‘rough her up.’”

  “Then you’ve got something to talk about.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  We walked out of the Adelphi, an
d Mrs. Hilly pulled up in her Austin-Maserati. I introduced them to each other.

  “Can I leave my car here and drive yours?” asked Phoebe with an eager gleam in her eye.

  We made it to the Happy Wok in record time. Phoebe’s driving was as fast as Mrs. Hilly’s but a little less terrifying.

  24.

  Wednesday: Blyton

  The Office for Ultimate Risk is one of the many departments within the Ministry of National Statistics. Although it was originally an “experimental” department, the statisticians at Ultimate Risk proved their worth by predicting the entire results of of three football World Cups in succession, a finding that led to the discontinuation of football as a game and the results being calculated instead. The Asteroid Strike Likelihood Committee is based within the department and takes thousands of factors into account when calculating the risk factor.

  Dr. S. A. Orbiter, The Earthcrossers

  “Have you seen the news?” asked Landen when we were all seated about twenty minutes later, the three of us smelling of hot exhaust and burned rubber. I read the news story he had indicated on page four, sandwiched between an article suggesting which obscure illness would be most fashionable in the spring and the best way to achieve the neanderthal look then very much in vogue. It was about HR-6984: The Asteroid Strike Likelihood Committee had recalculated the possibility of a cataclysmic impact as up from 34 percent to 68 percent, which was the first time it had gone above a fifty-fifty chance in ninety years.

  “Was this to do with the ChronoGuard Destiny Aware meeting last night?” I asked. “I saw Mr. Chowdry of the ASLC.”

  “It seems so.”

  “But none of the ex–potential employees were stated as actually dying with the strike,” I said, “only before it—accident, murder, but none by the strike itself.”

  “Good job, too. If a single one had been killed by the asteroid, then the likelihood would have jumped even higher— perhaps to as much as ninety-eight percent.”