A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (34 page)

There was a knock at the door. I told Victor I would be in directly and got unsteadily to my feet.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Room service!” replied a voice outside the door. “A Mr. Parke-Laine rang in some coffee for you!”

“Hang on!” I said as I tried to shoo Pickwick back into the bathroom; the hotel had strict rules about pets. Unusually for him he seemed slightly aggressive; if he had possessed any wings he would probably have flapped them angrily.

“This...is...no...time...to...be...a...pest!” I
grunted as I pushed the recalcitrant bird into the bathroom and locked the door.

I held my head for a moment as it thumped painfully, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and opened the door.
Big
mistake. There was a waiter there but he wasn't alone. As soon as the door was fully open two other men in dark suits entered and pressed me against the wall with a gun to my head.

“You're going to need another two cups if you want to join me for coffee,” I groaned.

“Very funny,” said the man dressed as the waiter.

“Goliath?”

“In one.”

He pulled back the hammer on the revolver.

“Gloves are off, Next. Schitt is an important man and we need to know where he is. National security and the Crimea depend upon it and one lousy officer's life isn't worth diddly shit when you look at the big picture.”

“I'll take you to him,” I gasped, trying to give myself some breathing space. “It's a little way out of town.”

The Goliath agent relaxed his grip and told me to get dressed. A few minutes later we were walking out of the hotel. My head was still sore and a dull pain thumped in my temples, but at least I was thinking more clearly. There was a small crowd ahead of me, and I was delighted to see it was the Mutlar family preparing to return to London. Daisy was arguing with her father and Mrs. Mutlar was shaking her head wearily.

“Gold digger!” I yelled.

Daisy and her father stopped arguing and looked at me as the Goliath men tried to steer me past.

“What did you say!?”

“You heard. I can't think who the bigger tart is, your daughter or your wife.”

It had the desired effect. Mr. Mutlar turned an odd shade of
crimson and threw a fist in my direction. I ducked and the blow struck one of the Goliath men fairly and squarely on the jaw. I bolted for the car park. A shot whistled over my shoulder; I jinked and stepped into the road as a big black military-style Ford motor car screeched to a halt.

“Get in!” shouted the driver. I didn't need to be asked twice. I jumped in and the Ford sped off as two bullet holes appeared in the rear windshield. The car screeched around the corner and was soon out of range.

“Thanks,” I murmured. “Any later and I might have been worm food. Can you drop me at SpecOps HQ?”

The driver didn't say anything; there was a glass partition between me and him and all of a sudden I had that out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire feeling.

“You can drop me anywhere,” I said. He didn't answer. I tried the door handles but they were locked. I thumped on the glass but he ignored me; we drove past the SpecOps building and headed off to the old town. He was driving fast too. Twice he went through a red light and once he cut up a bus; I was thrown against the door as he flew around a corner, just missing a brewer's dray.

“Here, stop this car!” I shouted, banging again on the glass partition. The driver simply accelerated, clipping another car as he took a corner a little too fast.

I pulled hard at the door handles and was about to use my heels against the window when the car abruptly screeched to a halt; I slid off the seat and collapsed in a heap in the footwell. The driver got out, opened the door for me and said:

“There you go, missy, didn't want you to be late. Colonel Phelps's orders.”

“Colonel Phelps?” I stammered. The driver smiled and saluted briskly as the penny dropped. Phelps had said he would send a car for me to appear at his talk, and he had.

I looked out of the door. We had pulled up outside Swindon Town Hall, and a vast crowd of people were staring at me.

“Hello, Thursday!” said a familiar voice.

“Lydia?” I asked, caught off guard by the sudden change of events.

And so it was. But she wasn't the only TV news reporter; there were six or seven of them with their cameras trained on me as I sat sprawled inelegantly in the footwell. I struggled to get out of the car.

“This is Lydia Startright of the Toad News Network,” said Lydia in her best reporter's voice, “here with Thursday Next, the SpecOps agent responsible for saving
Jane Eyre.
First let me congratulate you, Miss Next, on your successful reconstruction of the novel!”

“What do you mean?” I responded. “I loused it all up! I burned Thornfield to the ground and half-maimed poor Mr. Rochester!”

Miss Startright laughed.

“In a recent survey ninety-nine out of a hundred readers who expressed a preference said they were delighted with the new ending. Jane and Rochester married! Isn't that
wonderful
?”

“But the Brontë Federation—?”

“Charlotte didn't leave the book to them, Miss Next,” said a man dressed in a linen suit who had a large blue Charlotte Brontë rosette stuck incongruously to his lapel.

“The federation are a bunch of stuffed shirts. Allow me to introduce myself. Walter Branwell, chairman of the federation splinter group ‘Brontë for the People.' ”

He thrust out a hand for me to shake and grinned wildly as several people near by applauded. A battery of flashguns went off as a small girl handed me a bunch of flowers and another journalist asked me what sort of a person Rochester
really
was. The driver took my arm and guided me into the building.

“Colonel Phelps is waiting for you, Miss Next,” murmured the man in an affable tone. The crowds parted as I was led into a large hall that was filled to capacity. I blinked stupidly and looked around. There was an excited buzz, and as I walked down the main aisle I could hear people whispering my name. There was an improvised press box in the old orchestra pit in which a sea of pressmen from all the major networks were seated. The meeting at Swindon had become the focus of the grassroots feeling about the war; what was said here would be highly significant. I made my way to the stage, where two tables had been set up. The two sides to the argument were clearly delineated. Colonel Phelps was sitting beneath a large English flag; his table was heavily festooned with bunting and several pot plants, flip-over pads and stacks of leaflets for ready distribution. With him were mostly uniformed members of the armed forces who had seen service on the peninsula. All of them were willing to speak vociferously about the importance of the Crimea. One of the soldiers was even carrying the new plasma rifle.

At the other end of the stage was the “anti” table. This too was liberally populated by veterans, but none of them wore uniforms. I recognized the two students from the airship park and my brother Joffy, who smiled and mouthed “Wotcha, Doofus!” at me. The crowd hushed; they had heard I was going to attend and had been awaiting my arrival.

The cameras followed me as I approached the steps to the stage and walked calmly up. Phelps rose to meet me, but I walked on and sat down at the “anti” table, taking the seat that one of the students had given up for me. Phelps was appalled; he went bright red, but checked himself when he saw that the cameras were watching his every move.

Lydia Startright had followed me onto the stage. She was there to adjudicate the meeting; it was she and Colonel Phelps
who had insisted on waiting for me. Startright was glad they had; Phelps was not.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced Lydia grandly, “the negotiating table is empty at Budapest and the offensive lies waiting to happen. As a million troops face each other across no-man's-land, we ask the question: What price the Crimea?”

Phelps got up to speak but I beat him to it.

“I know it's an old joke,” I began, “but a simple anagram of ‘Crimea' is ‘A Crime.'” I paused. “That's the way I see it and I would defy anyone to say that it isn't. Even Colonel Phelps over there would agree with me that it's high time the Crimea was put to bed permanently.”

Colonel Phelps nodded.

“Where the Colonel and I differ is my belief that Russia has the better claim to the territory.”

It was a controversial remark; Phelps's supporters were well primed, and it took ten minutes to restore order. Startright quieted them all down and finally managed to get me to finish my point.

“There was a good chance for all this nonsense to end barely two months ago. England and Russia were around the table, discussing terms for a complete withdrawal of all English troops.”

There was a hush. Phelps had leaned back in his chair and was watching me carefully.

“But then along came the plasma rifle. Code name: Stonk.”

I looked down for a moment.

“This Stonk was the key, the secret to a new offensive and the possible restart of the war that has—thank God—been relatively free of actual fighting these past eight years. But there's a problem. The offensive has been built on air; despite all that has been said and done, the plasma rifle is a phony—
Stonk does not work!
”

There was an excited murmuring in the chamber. Phelps
stared at me sullenly, eyebrow twitching. He whispered something to a brigadier who was sitting next to him.

“The English troops are waiting for a new weapon that will
not
turn up. The Goliath Corporation have been playing the English government for a bunch of fools; despite a billion-pound investment, the plasma rifle is about as much use in the Crimea as a broom handle.”

I sat down. The significance of this was not lost on anyone either there or watching the program live; the English minister for war was at that moment reaching for his phone. He wanted to speak to the Russians before they did anything rash—like attack.

Back at the hall in Swindon, Colonel Phelps had stood up.

“Large claims from someone who is tragically ill informed,” he intoned patronizingly. “We have all seen the destructive power of Stonk and its effectiveness is hardly the reason for this talk.”

“Prove it,” I responded. “I see you have a plasma rifle with you. Lead us outside to the park and show us. You can try it on me, if you so wish.”

Phelps paused, and in that pause he lost the argument—and the war. He looked at the soldier carrying the weapon, who looked back at him nervously.

Phelps and his people left the stage to barracking from the crowd. He had been hoping to give his carefully rehearsed hour-long lecture over the memory of the lost brethren and the value of comradeship; he never spoke in public again.

Within four hours a ceasefire had been called for the first time in 131 years. Within four weeks the politicians were around the table in Budapest. Within four months every single English soldier was out of the peninsula. As for the Goliath Corporation,
they were soon called to account over their deceit. They expressed wholly unconvincing ignorance of the whole affair and laid the blame entirely on Jack Schitt. I had hoped the Corporation would be chastized further, but at least it got Goliath off my back.

Landen and I were married the same day as peace was declared in the Crimea. Landen told me it was to save on the fee for bell-ringers. I looked around nervously when the vicar got to the bit about “Speak now or forever hold their peace” but there was no one there. I met with the Brontë Federation and they soon got used to the idea of the new ending, especially when they realized that they were the only people who objected. I was sorry about Rochester's wounds and the burning down of his house, but I was very glad that he and Jane, after over a hundred years of dissatisfaction, finally found the true peace and happiness that they both so richly deserved.

THURSDAY NEXT
—
A Life in SpecOps

T
HE RECEPTION
turned out to be bigger than we thought and by ten o'clock it had spilled out into Landen's garden. Boswell had got a little drunk so I popped him in a cab and sent him to the Finis. Paige Turner had been getting along well with the saxophonist—no one had seen either of them for at least an hour. Landen and I were enjoying a quiet moment to ourselves. I squeezed his hand, and asked:

“Would you
really
have married Daisy if Briggs hadn't intervened?”

“I've got those answers you wanted, Sweetpea!”

“Dad?”

He was attired in the full dress uniform of a colonel in the ChronoGuard.

“I've been thinking about what you said and I made a few enquiries.”

“I'm sorry, Dad, I've got no idea what you're talking about.”

“You remember, we spoke about two minutes ago?”

“No.”

He frowned and looked at us both in turn, then at his watch.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “I must be early. Damn these chronographs!”

He tapped the dial and left quickly without saying another word.

“Your father?” asked Landen. “I thought you said he was on the run?”

“He was. He is. He will be. You know.”

“Sweetpea!” said my father again. “Surprised to see me?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Congratulations to the two of you!”

I glanced around at the party still in full swing. Time was
not
standing still. It wouldn't be long before the ChronoGuard tracked him down.

“To hell with SO-12, Thursday!” said he, divining my thoughts and taking a glass from a passing waiter. “I wanted to meet my son-in-law.”

He turned to Landen, grasped his hand and sized him up carefully.

“How are you, my boy? Have you had a vasectomy?”

“Well, no,” replied Landen, vaguely embarrassed.

“How about a heavy tackle playing rugby?”

“No.”

“Kick from a horse in the nether regions?”

“No.”

“What about a cricket ball in the goolies?”

“
No!
”

“Good. Then we might get some grandchildren out of this fiasco. It's high time little Thursday here was popping out some sprogs instead of dashing around like some wild mountain piglet—” He paused. “You're both looking at me very oddly.”

“You were here not a minute ago.”

He frowned, raised an eyebrow and looked about furtively.

“If it
was
me, and if I
know
me, I'd be hiding somewhere close by. Oh yes, look! Look there!”

He pointed to a corner of the garden where a figure was hiding in the shadows behind the potting shed. He narrowed his eyes and thought through the most logical train of events.

“Let's see. I must have offered to do you a favor, done it and come back but a little out of time; not uncommon in my line of work.”

“What favor would I have asked you to do?” I ventured, still confused but more than willing to play along.

“I don't know,” said my father. “A burning question that has been much discussed over the years but has, so far, remained unanswered.”

I thought for a moment.

“How about the authorship of the Shakespeare plays?”

He smiled. “Good point. I'll see what I can do.”

He finished his drink.

“Well, congratulations again to the two of you; I must be off. Time waits for no man, as we say.”

He smiled, wished us every happiness for the future, and departed.

“Can you explain just
what
is going on?” asked Landen,
thoroughly confused, not so much by the events themselves as by the order in which they were happening.

“Not really.”

“Have I gone, Sweetpea?” asked my father, who had returned from his hiding place behind the shed.

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, I found out what you wanted to know. I went to London in 1610 and found that Shakespeare was only an actor with a potentially embarrassing sideline as a purveyor of bagged commodities in Stratford. No wonder he kept it quiet— wouldn't you?”

This was interesting indeed.

“So who wrote them? Marlowe? Bacon?”

“No; there was a bit of a problem. You see, no one had even
heard
of the plays, much less written them.”

I didn't understand.

“What are you saying? There aren't any?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. They don't exist. They were never written. Not by him, not by anyone.”

“I'm sorry,” said Landen, unwilling to take much more of this, “but we saw
Richard III
only six weeks ago.”

“Of course,” said my father. “Time is out of joint
big time.
Obviously something had to be done. I took a copy of the complete works back with me and gave them to the actor Shakespeare in 1592 to distribute on a given timetable. Does that answer your question?”

I was still confused.

“So it
wasn't
Shakespeare who wrote the plays.”

“Decidedly not!” he agreed. “Nor Marlowe, Oxford, De Vere, Bacon or any of the others.”

“But that's not possible!” exclaimed Landen.

“On the contrary,” replied my father. “Given the huge
timescale of the cosmos, impossible things are commonplace. When you've lived as long as I have you'll know that absolutely
anything
is possible. Time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”

“
You
put that in?” I asked, always assuming he was quoting from
Hamlet
and not the other way round.

He smiled.

“A small personal vanity that I'm sure will be forgiven, Thursday. Besides: Who's to know?”

My father stared at his empty glass, looked around in vain for a waiter, then said:

“Lavoisier will have locked onto me by now. He swore he'd catch me and he's good. He should be; we were partners for almost seven centuries. Just one more thing: how did the Duke of Wellington die?”

I remembered he had asked me this once before.

“As I said, Dad, he died in his bed in 1852.”

Father smiled and rubbed his hands.

“That's
excellent
news indeed! How about Nelson?”

“Shot by a French sniper at Trafalgar.”

“Really? Well, some you win. Listen: good luck, the pair of you. A boy or a girl would be fine; one of each would be better.”

He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“I don't know when I am going to be back, so listen carefully. Never buy a blue car or a paddling pool, stay away from oysters and circular saws, and don't be near Oxford in June 2016. Got it?”

“Yes, but!—”

“Well, pip pip, time waits for no man!”

He hugged me again, shook Landen's hand and then disappeared into the crowd before we could ask him anything more.

“Don't even
try
to figure it out,” I said to Landen, placing a finger to his lips. “This is one area of SpecOps that it's really better not to think about.”

“But if!—”

“Landen!—” I said more severely. “No!—”

Bowden and Victor were at the party too. Bowden was happy for me and had come easily to the realization that I wouldn't be joining him in Ohio, as either wife or assistant. He had been offered the job officially but had turned it down; he said there was too much fun to be had at the Swindon Litera Tecs and he would reconsider it in the spring; Finisterre had taken his place. But at present, something else was preying on his mind. Helping himself to a stiff drink, he approached Victor, who was talking animatedly to an elderly woman he had befriended.

“What ho, Cable!” Victor murmured, introducing his newfound friend before agreeing to have a quiet word with him.

“Good result, eh? Balls to the Brontë Federation; I'm with Thursday. I think the new ending is a wiz!” He paused and looked at Bowden. “You've got a face longer than a Dickens novel. What's the problem? Worried about Felix8?”

“No, sir; I know they'll find him eventually. It's just that I
accidentally
mixed up the dust covers on the book that Jack Schitt went into.”

“You mean he's not with his beloved rifles?”

“No, sir. I took the liberty of slipping
this
book into the dust cover of
The Plasma Rifle in War.
”

He handed over the book that had made its way into the Prose Portal. Victor looked at the spine and laughed. It was a copy of
The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

“Have a look at page twenty-six,” said Bowden. “There's something funny going on in ‘The Raven.' ”

Victor opened the book and scanned the page. He read the first verse out loud:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

o'er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next—

This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising,

Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text.

“Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of text—

or I swear I'll wring your neck!”

Victor shut the book with a snap.

“The last line doesn't rhyme very well, does it?”

“What do you expect?” replied Bowden. “He's Goliath, not a poet.”

“But I read ‘The Raven' only yesterday,” added Victor in a confused tone. “It wasn't like this then!”

“No, no,” explained Bowden. “Jack Schitt is only in
this
copy—if we had put him in an original manuscript then who knows what he might have done.”

“Con-g'rat-ula'tions!” exclaimed Mycroft as he walked up to us. Polly was with him and looked radiant in a new hat.

“We're Bo'th
Very
Hap-py For You!” added Polly.

“Have you been working on the bookworms again?” I asked.

“Doe's It Sh'ow?” asked Mycroft. “Mu'st Dash!”

And they were off.

“Bookworms?” asked Landen.

“It's not what you think.”

“Mademoiselle Next?”

There were two of them. They were dressed in sharp suits and displayed SpecOps-12 badges that I hadn't seen before.

“Yes?”

“Préfet Lavoisier, ChronoGendarmerie.
Oé¹ est votre pé¨re?
”

“You've just missed him.”

He cursed out loud.

“Colonel Next est un homme tré¨s dangereux, mademoiselle. Il est important de lui parler concernant ses activités de trafic de temps.”

“He's my father, Lavoisier.”

Lavoisier stared at me, trying to figure out whether anything he could say or do would make me help him. He sighed and gave up.

“Si vous changez votre avis, contactez-moi par les petites annonces du
Grenouille.
Je lis toujours les archives.”

“I shouldn't count on it, Lavoisier.”

He mulled this over for a moment, thought of something to say, decided against it and smiled instead. He saluted briskly, told me in perfect English to enjoy my day, and walked away. But his younger partner also had something to say:

“A piece of advice to you,” he muttered slightly self-consciously. “If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try and dissuade him.”

He smiled and followed his partner in their quest for my father.

“What was that son thing about?” asked Landen.

“I don't know. He looked kind of familiar, though, didn't he?”

“Kinda.”

“Where were we?”