The Woman Who Died a Lot

  “Has there been much panic over the figures?” I asked.

  “I’ve been listening on the radio, but not much. Anyone over forty isn’t worried because they’ll probably be dead anyway by 2041, and to anyone under twenty, thirty-seven years is a time too long to comprehend. The middle group is jittery but sanguine— after all, seventy-two percent is still a twenty-eight percent chance it won’t happen, and as we’ve seen before, wishful thinking and being easily distracted are powerful evolutionary survival tools. Ooooh, look,” he added, as his eyes had also been scanning the menu. “They’ve got a special on crispy duck.”

  “Have you talked to Friday about the new figures?” I asked. “After all, it’s those blasted Letters of Destiny that have caused our chances to drop.”

  “He says it all looks very dodgy, and not just from a mathematical point of view. I think he wants you to go with him to the old Kemble Timepark this afternoon.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “He said something about ‘inferring a narrative’ from the Destiny Aware letters, and no, I have no idea what it means either—but he seems very intent about it. He resigned his job this morning on the basis that he’ll be in custody from Friday morning anyway.”

  “Because he’s going to murder Gavin Watkins?”

  “Right. He thinks HR-6984 might have something to do with it, and how the potential future him was going to tackle the asteroid strike.”

  “Ah.”

  This was something that had been bothering Friday for a while. He knew vaguely from the various meetings he’d had with his future self over the years that he would have saved the world numerous times, but it was only when his summarization papers arrived that he knew HR-6984’s aversion would have been the first. His big test, so to speak—the apocalypse avoidance that made his name.

  “Were you right to bring along Mrs. Hilly?” asked Landen, indicating where Phoebe and Mrs. Hilly were having an animated conversation on whether Noddy could be viewed as a classic in the same way as Huckleberry Finn could be seen as a classic and, if so, whether it meant a Grade II Protected Book Status could be enforced.

  “I had no choice,” I said. “I needed a lift.”

  “Ah. Do you want to share a crispy duck with me?”

  “Yes, so long as you don’t hog all the hoisin.”

  I told him about Jack’s appearance that morning and what had happened, about Jack’s having a Day Player of his own, about the palimpsests in St. Zvlkx, that I’d be seeing Bunty Fairweather after lunch to see what Smite Solutions was all about and, most important of all, about Krantz and how he was actually helping us, not trying to do us harm.

  “Explain that again,” said Landen.

  “Jack told me Krantz was a traitor to Goliath, but since no one can blab due to an explosive brain implant, he instead brought five Day Players to Swindon in order to help me halt Goliath’s plan—whatever that happens to be.”

  “I get it,” said Landen. “So where are we on the whole Day Player tally?”

  “Krantz brought those five, and there have been two of me and one of him. Two left. Him, me—not sure.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, digesting what had happened. I took a sip of tea and asked Landen if there was any news of Tuesday.

  “She was sent home this morning for pulling Penny Smedley’s hair and using ‘inappropriate’ language to describe Mr. Biggs, the games master. I asked her specifically whether she had been flashing for cash again, and she said no in the sort of way that meant yes, then vanished into her laboratory.”

  “So no breakthrough in understanding the Unentanglement Constant Uc?”

  “None.”

  “Blast.”

  The meal arrived. Mrs. Hilly had gone for the Swindon/ Szechuan fusion menu and had steak and chips dim sum followed by hot Fanta in a teapot. She took a small bite and, in the silence occasioned upon the table by our eating, launched into a carefully prepared diatribe.

  “Enid Blyton was writing very much of her time,” began Mrs. Hilly, “a time of sandwiches, fizzy drinks, English supremacy, endless summers, cranberry jelly and a firmly entrenched and highly workable class system that was the envy of the world.”

  I stole a look at Phoebe, who shrugged.

  “Everything was a lot simpler in those days,” continued Mrs. Hilly, “and the twisted and corrupting morals we see in modern life are but an aberration that we Blytonians aim to put right. By returning the books to their original and unsullied state before the heinous hand of political correctness trampled their true and guiding spirit, we will build a new England. One that smells of freshly baked bread and echoes with the sprightly call of rosy-cheeked farmers’ wives dispensing fresh milk from churns to children dressed in corduroy and summer dresses.”

  She was in full flow by now. We had all stopped eating and were staring at her. I think she mistook our shock as agreement, and so she carried on with even more gusto.

  “To deny modern children the historical context of an age in which most foreigners were untrustworthy and women were useful only for the kitchen denies them a realistic window into a bygone era that we should be promoting as an ideal to be cherished rather than a past to be improved and airbrushed.”

  She stopped and smiled, then began to distribute leaflets that defined in more detail her Blyton-based political ideology.

  It was true that Blyton books had been extensively revised over the years to move with shifting opinions, and it was also true that her books had been unfairly marked out as being a lot more offensive than they were—probably due to a certain degree of intellectual snobbery and a fundamental misunderstanding over why they were written. The argument had raged for decades on either side and culminated in the so-called Noddy Riots of 1990, when the warring factions clashed on the streets of Canterbury, inflicting almost 6 million pounds’ worth of damage and leaving six dead—not even the Marlowe/Shakespeare riots of 1967 had been that fierce.

  “Let me get this totally straight,” I said. “You don’t want to just stop any more changes—you want to return the books to their prerevisionist state and use them as a template for your view of a new and better England?”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she replied, beaming happily. “A woman’s place is definitely in the home, England functioned better when the working class knew their place, and foreigners are incorrigibly suspect. What do you think ‘Fundamentalist’ means in ‘Blyton Fundamentalist’? In fact,” she went on, now in something of a lather, “we aim to reinterpret and enhance the texts to more subtly export our own ultra-English worldview and have even written a series of commentaries as to what Our Blyton truly meant when she penned her great works. It is our intention to run the nation upon this new and radicalized Word of Blyton—we will insist that England is returned to a world of perpetual summers, simplistic politics, the expulsion of anyone who looks even vaguely foreign, and we will make the sacred words ‘gosh,’ ‘crikey’ and ‘wizzo’ a compulsory part of the English lexicon.”

  Landen leaned toward me and whispered in my ear. “What’s Chinese for ‘Fetch me a straitjacket’?”

  “Ssh. Well,” I began, “here’s my view as head of the Wessex All-You-Can-eat at Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library Service: Enid Blyton’s work is a force for good in children’s literature because of its simple readability and exciting basic concepts of adventure, independence and the incontrovertible notion that adults are pretty useless and good only for supplying meals and calling the police. Yes, the books should be revised and modernized to more fully embrace modern society, and yes, they have shortcomings, but the essential truth about Blyton is that the books get children into the habit of reading—and reading is a habit worth having. I utterly reject your proposals and your politics, and what’s more, I think you’re dangerously insane.”

  The smiled dropped from Mrs. Hilly’s face.

  “Modern life is not perfect,” I went on, “but at least it attempts to reflect the tolerance of dive
rsity and social inclusiveness that much of fifties England lacked. I will battle your every attempt to malign the books to suit your own twisted ideology.”

  There was silence. We all stared at Mrs. Hilly to see what she would say, and I saw Phoebe’s hand move toward her pistol. When it came to fundamentalism, stakes were high.

  “It’s like that, is it?” said Mrs. Hilly, standing up.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “The chief librarian’s role is nonpolitical,” she warned me. “We will petition Commander Hicks to have you removed at the soonest opportunity.”

  “You may try,” I replied coolly, “but his negative views on literary extremism are well known.”

  We stared at one another for a few seconds.

  “Then we have no more to say,” she ennounced in a haughty tone of voice. “You haven’t heard the last of me. Good day.”

  And she threw her napkin on the table.

  “You haven’t finished your dim sum,” said Landen.

  And with an almighty harrumph! that rattled the windows and is still spoken of down at the Happy Wok, she was gone. “That was a shame,” said Phoebe.

  “I don’t think it was a shame at all,” I said. “Perverting the texts for their own political ends. I’ve a mind to make the Blyton Fundamentalists a Banned Association Within Library Boundaries, along with the paramilitary arm of the Anti-Farquitt Brigade and those idiots who like to dress as Zharkian storm troopers.”

  “No,” said Phoebe, “I mean it was a shame because I was hoping for another go in her Austin-Maserati. I haven’t had so much fun since I took my brother’s Reliant-Bugatti Veyrobin for a burn up the M4—great fun, although that single wheel at the front wobbles something dreadful when you hit a hundred eighty mph.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been more stable with the single wheel at the back?” I asked.

  “One of the planet’s greatest mysteries,” replied Phoebe. “Mind you,” she added, “I’d be wary of outlawing any group, especially Blyton Fundamentalists. The Make England a Jolly Sight More Blyton Than Blyton movement has several million members, and some of the regional library authorities are sympathetic to their view.”

  “Do you want that hoisin?” Landen asked me.

  “No, you have it.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Duffy, and I walked out of the restaurant, as etiquette dictated. They’d found my Daimler—or what was left of it anyhow. It had been dumped outside a disused factory unit in Blunsdon and set on fire.

  “They discovered two bodies inside,” he said, “burned beyond recognition and smelling of hot nougat.”

  It explained why Jack had been back in his own body so quickly. I thanked him, then called Stig to tell him to get his neanderthal butt over to the Daimler as soon as possible. They’d be very obviously Synthetics, and I needed him to take possession before the police made them vanish as soon as they were cool enough to touch.

  “News?” asked Phoebe when I got back in.

  I told her what had happened, and she pulled a face.

  “I knew Goliath was tricky,” she said, “but not quite how tricky.”

  “They’re tricky squared,” I said, looking at my watch. “Can we drop you back in town?”

  Landen dropped Phoebe at the Adelphi to pick up her car, and we drove back into town in silence. I was relieved that this time I needed no help in forgetting to visit the tattooist—Landen forgot, too.

  25.

  Wednesday: Smite Solutions

  Early attempts to discharge the stupidity surplus were of a “theoretical” nature, where dumb and idiotic parliamentary bills were enacted with little or no chance of being implemented due to their self-apparent uselessness. Annoyingly, some were embraced by a citizenry who turned out to be “dumber than expected.” The Longitude Self-Determination Bill was one example: It allowed individual regions to secede from cartographic convention and publish maps with their own meridian for local use. Sadly, this also permitted regions to insist on their own time zones as well.

  The Commonsense Party Stupidity Surplus Policy Explained

  Duffy looked at me nervously as I limped into the office. He had already replaced the sofa slipcover, and you wouldn’t have known that only this morning an unlicensed nonevolutionary life-form had been dispatched in a violent manner.

  “The only person I want to see is Bunty Fairweather,” I said as I walked in, “and put the banning of the Blyton Fundamentalists on the agenda for the board of governors’ next meeting.”

  Duffy coughed politely. “There is no board of governors, Chief Librarian.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “No—you wield absolute librarying power here in Wessex.”

  “In that case: I ban Blyton Fundamentalists from all Wessex Library property.”

  “Are you totally sure that’s wise?” asked Duffy. “They’re a powerful lobby.”

  I glared at him before sitting down at my desk.

  “Very good,” said Duffy with obvious approval of my stance. “Shall I send Mrs. Fairweather in straightaway or wait a couple of minutes?”

  “Straightaway.”

  Bunty Fairweather was a tall woman, for whom the words “willowy” and “pale” might have been invented. Although we hadn’t spoken for over a decade, I knew her quite well, when she was on the SpecOps Complaints Committee. It was a job in which she could have been difficult and vindictive, but she always played fair.

  “Hello, Thursday,” she said brightly as we shook hands and I offered her a seat. “Congratulations on your appointment. Fed up with the carpet business?”

  “I was attracted back to the literary world by the bright lights and good pay. You’ve done well for yourself. Last time we met, you were adjudicating complaints against the department.”

  “I’ve been at the council for almost eight years,” replied Bunty jovially. “After my SpecOps liaison work, they thought I’d be best placed to deal with the mildly odder aspects of council work. At present I’m negotiating with the Swindon Meridian Society to try to stop them from insisting on implementing a citywide Swindon Time Zone.”

  “I heard about that.”

  This particularly fatuous idea had been in the news a lot recently and would require people to set their watches seven minutes back when going into Swindon, then seven minutes forward when they came out. Luckily, the chief sponsors of the bill all lived in Liddington just outside Swindon, so they were given their own time zone in order to shut them up.

  “It would cause chaos at Clary-Lamarr,” said Bunty, “and set a dangerous precedent around the nation. So what can I do for you? There’s a limit to what we can discuss ahead of the budget meeting tomorrow. You do know I’m on the Swindon City Council’s Fiscal Planning Committee?”

  “Yes— but I wanted to talk about Smite Solutions.”

  She nodded her head approvingly. “Good,” she replied, “for there is much to discuss. I am also head of the city’s Smite Avoidance Team. It is my responsibility to ensure that people and property are safe from the mysterious yet destructive ways of our Creator.”

  “Do you want some coffee?”

  “No thanks. The nation had been hoping the Anti-Smite Defense Shield would offer some kind of defense by now, but I understand there have been a few overruns.”

  “She said it would take eight,” I replied defensively. “It’s only been three so far.”

  “No one’s blaming your daughter, Thursday. We have to work with what we’ve got.”

  “It’s possible she may crack the software issue in time,” I said. “The only stumbling block is finding a value for the Madeupion Unentanglement Constant.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Something about acorns in Hertfordshire,” I said, thinking hard.

  “Well, if she manages it, then so much the better—Swindon would be a fine place for the defense shield to have its first success. But we can’t leave it to chance. Now, Swindon’s strike will be the tenth around the globe
, and the previous nine have given the Smite Solutions® Inc. valuable experience in what to expect.”

  I rubbed my leg. “Do you mind if I walk around?” I said. “I get the most excruciating pins and needles if I sit still for too long.”

  “Not at all,” said Bunty from where she was perched on the sofa as I paced around the office.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “Smite Solutions is a company?”

  “One backed by one of the preeminent tech companies in the world.”

  “The Goliath Corporation?”

  “Who else?”

  “Go on.”

  Bunty cleared her throat and launched into the subject using her best presentation voice. “The nature of a smiting is pedantically identical on every occasion,” she said. “A groundburst of a circular nature precisely fifteen hundred ancient cubits or half a mile in diameter and centered on the biggest place of worship within the target area.”

  “The cathedral?”

  “No—the Bank of Goliath’s fifty-seven-story Greed Tower.”

  I looked out the widow to where we could easily see the glassy tower, framed between the traditional wonky spire of the cathedral and the Skylon.

  She passed me a map with a circle drawn around the area of potential destruction.

  “As you can see, the Absolute Zone of Smite takes in three of the skyscrapers in the financial center, most of the cathedral, part of the croquet stadium, a four hundred-yard section of railway track, two complete neighborhoods, the sports center, six shops, a launderette and a motorcycle dealership.”

  “But the SpecOps Building and the library are well outside the zone, yes?”

  “Absolutely. Not even the Brunel Centre will be touched.”

  I’d never seen a smiting, but apparently it was quite a show. Everyone would be watching it from a nearby hill. The parting of the clouds is an impressive precursor to the main event—a pillar of pulsating orange light the color of a setting sun, with sparkly bits firing off inside the column of fire. It’s especially spectacular if it’s raining: The water vaporizes with faint popping noises like Bubble Wrap, and you can get up to nine rainbows at once—all in different directions.