The Woman Who Died a Lot

  “No.”

  “I saw a few posters up in town about the smiting,” said Landen. “The city council doesn’t seem to be taking it very seriously. Are we sure it’s still on?”

  Joffy and Miles exchanged nervous glances.

  “It’s on, all right,” replied Miles. “When He announced the smiting to a state-registered Meek Person in a lonely gas station in the small hours, He had the Meek write it down so he wouldn’t forget and then went and told another Meek just in case. After that He reiterated His plans in the pips of a cucumber and burned them into the side of Haytor on Dartmoor.”

  “He’s kind of done with ambiguity, isn’t He?” I said.

  “Pretty much,” said Joffy. “Since His Revealment He’s kind of ditched the idea of subtle signs or obscure clues. Burning His intentions into granite is a lot more direct, and it certainly makes people take notice, although the Dartmoor Parks Authority was none too pleased. But there it was: Swindon will be hit with a Grade-III Smite on Friday at midday.”

  We all fell silent. It kind of sounded more ominous coming from Joffy, even if a Grade-III was not the worst. More to do with cleansing fire and none of the mass murder, lava and pillar-of-salt stuff.

  “Why Swindon anyway?” asked Friday. “In the National Sinful City Stakes, Swindon sits only fifty-seventh.”

  “The cleansings aren’t always just about sin,” said Joffy quietly. “Sometimes they’re about unimaginative architecture, poor restaurants or even an overly aggressive parking-fine regime. This time it’s none of those. I think He aims to hit Swindon because He knows it’s my hometown and wants to make a point.”

  “What sort of point?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s all very mysterious.”

  Joffy was my eldest and only surviving brother, and he was supreme head of the Church of the Global Standard Deity, a sort of homogeny of faiths that hoped to bring peace and prosperity, consensus, harmony, tolerance of diversity and social inclusion to all His creations. Joffy had decided many years before that the problem with religion wasn’t religion itself but its flagrant misuse as an absolutist argument against narrow tribal agendas. Joffy argued—as had many before him—that one religion would be a much better idea. But instead of going on a murderous ideological rampage to bend others to his will, he used arguments of such clarity and reasoned debate that even the most hardened nutjobs finally came over to his way of thinking. It had taken him and his network of fearless Unifiers only thirty years to accomplish, a staggering achievement that most would agree “could only possibly exist in fiction,” if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes.

  The other big plus of Global Religious Unification was for collective-bargaining powers. Before, dialogue with the Almighty was unclear and centered on unworthiness and mumbling inside large buildings, but following unification the GSD was in a strong position to ask clear and unambiguous questions of the Almighty, such as “What, precisely, is the point of all this?”

  Unfortunately, this angered His Mightiness, as theological unity was emphaticallynot part of His plan, and a series of cleansings took place around the globe—mostly as a warning to His creations that messing with the Big Guy’s Ultimate and Very Important and Unknowable Plan was not going to be tolerated.

  “We’re in talks with the Almighty to bring Him to the negotiating table,” said Joffy, “but we’re not prepared to talk until He agrees to stop incinerating the unrighteous in an all-consuming column of cleansing fire.”

  “Maybe He doesn’t have a plan and there is no answer,” said Landen. “Perhaps that’s why He appeared to all those different religious leaders with subtly different messages—in order to divide mankind and keep us from adopting a united front to demand an answer to the question of existence.”

  “Even if there is no answer to the riddle of existence and we are all random packets of replicating cell structure in a dying universe devoid of meaning,” added Miles, “we have a right to know that. Five thousand years of prayer, conflict, self-sacrifice and being tested daily must count for something.”

  “I always thought His plan for mankind was ‘Let’s just muddle through and see what happens,’ ” said Friday. “And historically speaking, it’s a sound one—it’s worked on thousands of occasions.”

  “There must be more to the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence than muddling through,” said Tuesday with disdain. “If that’s all it was, there’s no reason for the eternal quest for knowledge and every reason for celebrity biographies and daytime soaps.”

  “So religion could trump science after all,” said Miles with a smile. “That’ll be one for the books.”

  “Mind you,” added my father, “at least you forced His hand into revealing His existence.”

  “Thatwas unexpected,” admitted Joff y. “A nd very welcome— the billion or so former atheists now on board really boosted the membership and bargaining powers.”

  “Didn’t Dawkins shoot himself when he found out?”

  “Yes,” replied Miles sadly, “a great shame. He would have been excellent GSD bishop material. Single-minded, a good orator and eyebrows that were pretty much perfect.”

  “So why destroy Swindon just to annoy you?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound like a very responsible use of resources.”

  “I think it’s probably more to do with setting the tone of our first meeting. We’ve been trying to get Him to the negotiating table to thrash out our grievances, and I think He just wants to show who’s boss and to set the ambience for the meeting—like when criminal overlords have their hideouts in hollowed-out volcanoes. Highly impractical and the heating bills astronomical, but good for the overall ambience.”

  “And when might this meeting take place?” asked Tuesday.

  “A fortnight, perhaps,” said Miles. “Winged messengers can be pretty vague.”

  “Would you put in a good word for Polly?” asked my father. “Her sciatica is acting up again.”

  “I’ll be honest with you,” said Joffy. “The agenda has one point two billion items on it, and it’ll be most likely lunch before we even get around to item one: ‘What, precisely, is the point of all this?’

  We all thought about this for a moment.

  “Tuesday,” added Joffy in a quiet voice, “just how close are we to success with the Anti-Smite Defense Shield?”

  Everyone looked at Tuesday. This, we knew, was pretty much the reason Joffy and Miles were here—to see whether she could overcome the many technological hurdles in time to avert Swindon’s partial destruction.

  Tuesday pulled a face. “We’re having a few . . . teething troubles,” she said, “but it’s mostly of a mathematical nature. I simply need to find the upper and lower limits of the constant Uc.”

  “Is there an easier way for you to explain it?” asked Miles. “It’s kind of important. If we can’t get the defense shield up, we’re going to have to reluctantly agree to a backup plan.”

  “Okay,” said Tuesday. Like many scientists, she had become obsessed with the science itself and not its intended purpose. She took a deep breath, got up and with a felt pen drew a schematic of an anti-smite tower on the wall.

  “Field research has indicated that a Wrath-Inflicted Deity Groundburst is a five-or six-second burst of high-energy particles concentrated on a circular pattern with a blast radius of about half a mile. The high-energy particles arrive so fast and with such force that there is no material we know of that can withstand the bombardment. A defense shield made of tungsten, steel, concrete—useless. Which is why we must meet energy with mass.”

  “We get that bit,” said Joffy, since all this had been repeated on Toad News Network Science Channel quite a lot over the past year, “but how does your system actually work?”

  Tuesday smiled. “I got the idea from a ninja movie.”

  I looked at Landen. “Have you been letting Tuesday watch ninja movies?”

  “One or two,” he replied sheepishly. “After she did her homework.”

&
nbsp; “Hmph,” I replied.

  “In the movie,” continued Tuesday enthusiastically, “there was a ninja who could move so fast he could run though a rainstorm without getting wet. And I got to thinking that if a ninja could do that, thenconversely he could just as easily move though the same rainstorm and get absolutely sodden—and if there were several ninjas, they might be able to stop all the raindrops from actually reaching the ground.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, “I’m getting the analogy.”

  “Right. So what I have to do is to meet each charged particle with the ultradense nucleus of a lead-187 atom. The particle is halted and drained off as thermal energy to be turned to electrical energy using a steam turbine. Part of this energy is used to power the shield, and the rest is fed back into the national grid. The feed-in tariff is so good these days that we hope to be able to recoup all our production costs within about twenty-three smitings. Joffy, do you think you can convince the Almighty to schedule His cleansings to coincide with peak demands of power? Everyone pops on the kettle at halftime during the SuperHoop.”

  “I’m not sure the Lord takes account of sporting events when deciding on a bit of smiting.”

  “And the shield has to work first,” added Landen.

  “Yes, there is that,” replied Tuesday thoughtfully. “Anyway, the problem is being able to predict the position of each charged particle in the column of all-cleansing fire and then have a lead-187 nucleus ready and waiting precisely for it underneath. To put it into practical terms, it would be like attempting to predict where in Hertfordshire an acorn would fall and have another acorn waiting underneath it.”

  “I should imagine that’s almost impossible.”

  She smiled. “Predicting random events is possible if you examine the effect a subatomic particle named the Madeupion has on the arrow of time near the event. For a trillionth-trillionth of a second before the event, cause and effect entangle. And if in the short period we can unentangle the effect from cause, we can see an event before it has happened—and do something about it.”

  She wrote an equation on the wall and rapped her knuckles against it.

  “And that’s the problem. Attempting to find an upper and a lower limit for my Madeupion Unentanglement Constant, or Uc. Too high and we’re not seeing far enough back, too low and we get to see the event after it’s happened. I’ve brought the limits down to between six point three and six point eight quintillionths of a second, but it’s still too large. To the fleeting existence of a Madeupion, the Uc is like the Jurassic—only without the dinosaurs.”

  Tuesday stared at her scribbles on the wall for a while.

  “It’s just that math isn’t my strong point,” she said with a sigh, “and we’re not actually sure the Madeupion exists. It just seems a good theory to explain déjà vu, intuition and the ability of ninjas to dodge bullets. Ninjas are far more important to science than anyone realizes. If we could capture one to study, I think most of science’s biggest puzzles might be resolved.”

  “So where does that leave us?” asked Joffy.

  “We might crack the Uc problem in ten minutes,” replied Tuesday, “or it may never be cracked.”

  We all fell silent for a few moments.

  “Pudding anyone?” I said brightly. “Tuesday, would you do the plates?”

  10.

  Monday: The Wingco

  The book from which the Wingco hailed was a typical tale of wartime derring-do. He and his crew hide themselves when England falls in 1942 and then, after a series of adventures, steal a bomber at Coventry and head toward London to bomb the occupying force’s high command. But the book was abandoned as they start their first run from Putney Bridge, so they never got to find out if they were victorious or not. “It’s frustrating,” the Wingco said when asked, “to not know whether one’s purpose is fulfilled. You humans must get it all the time.”

  Thursday Next, Private Journals

  "Can I ask a personal question?” asked Miles to the Wing Commander once we all had started on the trifle, which was excellent.

  “Of course,” said the Wingco affably, “ask away.”

  “Are you really fictional?”

  My career in the BookWorld had not been common knowledge until the attempted assassination, and after that there didn’t seem a lot of point in hiding it. I think most of the family knew anyway— Landen in particular—and while the BookWorld was truly bizarre as only fiction can be, the inclusion of evidence in the guise of the Wing Commander changed my experiences from being the product of an overactive imagination to something quite remarkable.

  “Mind, body and socks,” replied the Wingco cheerfully, “and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Because I never disrobe in my book, my mind and body are truly at one with my socks—look.”

  He pulled up his trouser leg to reveal two inches of gray RAF-issue sock that merged seamlessly into his skin. The sock was actually part of him.

  “That’s kind of weird,” said Miles.

  “It’s a lot more convenient than dressing every morning. My clothes never need washing or pressing either. Permanent trouser creases for all eternity. Levi’s would love to learn the secret of that.”

  “Do you have organs and stuff?” asked Tuesday now that the Wingco seemed to be in the answering vein. “I mean, are you actually alive?”

  “I’m as real as my author made me or the readers want me to be. I don’t have blood or tissue or organs or anything, nor do I age or feel pain. I can’t reproduce, but out here I do have free will and a form of autonomy, so in that respect very much alive.”

  “Can you die?” asked Joffy.

  “Erasure or deletion has always been a very real danger for a character, and even more so for me. I may look fairly robust to you, but I’m on the BookWorld’s ‘Critically Endangered’ list.”

  “How so?” asked Miles.

  “Because I’m only in single-copy manuscript form. If the manuscript were to be destroyed by a house fire, mold or snails, myself and my flight crew: Septic, Jammy, Snuffy and all the others—would simply vanish.”

  “You must go somewhere,” said Joffy thoughtfully. “I’m not convinced the spirit can be simply extinguished.”

  “I agree—and that’s really what I’m here for,” said the Wingco, segueing seamlessly into his favorite subject, “to conduct research work into the existence of the Dark Reading Matter.”

  “Dark what?” asked Miles.

  “Since the observable BookWorld makes up less than twenty percent of the theoretical quantity of Reading Matter,” he explained, “the boffins back in the BookWorld think there is an unknown region of story that we call Dark Reading Matter. I’ll go there when my book finally rots away to nothing. But what I’ll find, no one knows—it’s a one-way trip.”

  “We have a similar concept,” remarked Joffy.

  “So where is your manuscript?” Miles asked the Wingco.

  “I wish we knew.”

  “It might be stuck in an attic somewhere,” I added, since we’d looked for it on several occasions, “or at the back of a desk drawer, fallen down behind a filing cabinet—who knows? All we’d need is ten minutes with a photocopier and the Wingco would merely be ‘Vulnerable.’ A limited print run of ten and he’d be on Vanity Island and ‘At Little Risk of Endangerment.’”

  “What if you’re landfill?” asked Tuesday. “Anaerobic digestion could take years.”

  “Would you make some coffee, please, Friday?” I said quickly, in order to change the subject. The Wingco had thought of that, too, and the landfill theory was good and bad news. Good in that he could last for a century or more with little ill effects and perfectly safe—but bad in that the inevitable breakdown of the manuscript would be painfully protracted as the story fell apart word for word. I’d seen it happen, and it wasn’t pretty.

  “Back in 1996 I headed up Jurisfiction’s Manuscript Retrieval Squad,” I said. “I spent almost a year doing little but tracking down Critically Endangered manuscri
pts. Did I tell you about how I found what came to known as the ‘Hemingway Hoard’?”

  “Many times,” said Tuesday, getting up to help Friday with the things.

  I thought I wouldn’t bore anyone else, so we changed the subject to my mother and my Aunt Polly, who seemed to get even less and less dignified as they worked their way through their eighth decade together.

  “She doesn’t listen to me at all,” said Dad sullenly. “You know those personal-injury traveling booths where dumb people who feign accidents go to grub for cash?”

  Joffy said that he did.

  “They had one up at the Brunel Centre. A display with a table and some chairs. Your mother pretended to fall over it, then claimed she’d broken her hip and told them she wanted to make a claim—against them.”

  “How did it work out?”

  “There were three other personal-injury lawyers there, and they all started fighting to represent her. I had to call the police when it came to blows. During the melee she crept away giggling and said that watching personal-injury lawyers punching one another had an inexplicable joy to it.”

  “At least it keeps her from playing dominoes at the day center.”

  “She’s always been feisty,” said Dad with a warm smile. “Do you remember that trip we took to the Atlas Mountains when your mother tried to smuggle a live goat across the border, wrapped up in a carpet?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Joffy?”

  “No.”

  “Damn,” said my father. “All those memories, and none of them shared.”

  11.

  Monday: Evening

  The sound cannon was one of Tuesday’s notable inventions, a device that used a low-frequency/high-amplitude resampling of Van Halen’s “Eruption” that could cause momentary unconsciousness. The device had not actually been designed as an intruder deterrent but was one of Tuesday’s attempts to adapt hard rock for domestic use in the kitchen. She had been attempting to use Led Zeppelin’s “I Can’t Quit You Baby” to whisk egg whites when she overmodulated the bass and punched a two-foot-wide hole in the fridge.