A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (45 page)

He cut me a slice and put it with the cheese in a sandwich, then made one for himself. There was a distant trumpet of a mammoth as it made heavy weather of the escarpment and I took a bite.

“It's farewell and so long, Thursday.”

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

“Doing what? Isn't that Major Tony
Fairwelle
and your old school chum
Sue Long
over there?”

I turned to where Landen was pointing. It
was
Tony and Sue, and they waved cheerily before walking across to say hello.

“Goodness!” said Tony when they had seated themselves. “Looks like the regimental get-together is early this year! Remember Sarah Nara, who lost an ear at Bilohirsk? I just met her in the car park; quite a
coincidence.
”

As he said the word my heart missed a beat. I rummaged in my jacket pocket for the entroposcope Mycroft had given me.

“What's the matter, Thurs?” asked Landen. “You're looking kind of . . . odd.”

“I'm checking for coincidences,” I muttered, shaking the jam jar of mixed lentils and rice. “It's not as stupid as it sounds.”

The two pulses had gathered in a sort of swirly pattern. Entropy was decreasing by the second.

“We're out of here,” I said to Landen, who looked at me quizzically. “Let's go. Leave the things.”

“What's the problem, Thurs?”

“I've just spotted my old croquet captain,
Alf Widdershaine.
This is
Sue Long
and Tony
Fairwelle;
they just saw
Sarah Nara
— see a pattern emerging?”

“Thursday—!” sighed Landen. “Aren't you being a little—”

“Want me to prove it? Excuse me!” I said, shouting to a passerby. “What's your name?”

“Bonnie,” she said. “Bonnie Voige. Why?”

“See?”

“Voige is
not
a rare name, Thurs. There are probably
hundreds
of them up here.”

“All right, smarty-pants,
you
try.”

“I will,” replied Landen indignantly, heaving himself to his feet. “Excuse me!”

A young woman stopped, and Landen asked her name.

“Violet,” she replied.

“You see?” said Landen. “There's nothing—”

“Violet
De'ath,
” continued the woman. I shook the entroposcope again—the lentils and rice had separated almost entirely.

I clapped my hands impatiently. Tony and Sue looked perturbed but got to their feet nonetheless.

“Everybody! Let's
go!
” I shouted.

“But the cheese—!”

“Bugger the cheese, Landen, trust me—
please!
”

They all grudgingly joined me, confused and annoyed at my strange behavior. Their minds changed when, following a short
whooshing
noise, a large and very heavy Hispano-Suiza motorcar landed on the freshly vacated picnic blanket with a teeth-jarring
thump
that shook the ground and knocked us to our knees. We were showered with soil, pebbles, and a grassy sod or two as the vast phaeton-bodied automobile sank itself into the soft earth, the fine bespoke body bursting at the seams as the massive chassis twisted with the impact. One of the spoked wheels broke free and whistled past my head as the heavy engine, torn from its rubber mounting blocks, ripped through the polished bonnet and landed at our feet with a heavy thud. There was silence for a moment as we all stood up, brushed ourselves off and checked for any damage. Landen had cut his
hand on a piece of twisted wing mirror, but apart from that— miraculously, it seemed—no one had been hurt. The huge motorcar had landed so perfectly on the picnic that the blanket, thermos, basket, food—everything, in fact—had disappeared from sight. In the deathly hush that followed, everyone in the small group was staring—not at the twisted wreck of the car, but at me, their mouths open. I stared back, then looked slowly upwards to where a large airship freighter was still flying, minus a couple of tons of freight, on to the north and—one presumes—a lengthy stop for an accident inquiry. I shook the entroposcope and the random clumping pattern returned.

“Danger's passed,” I announced.

“You haven't changed, Thursday Next!” said Sue angrily. “Whenever you're about, something dangerously
other
walks with you. There's a reason I didn't keep in contact after school, you know—
weirdbird!
Tony, we're leaving.”

Landen and I stood and watched them go. He put his arm round me.

“Weirdbird?”
he asked.

“They used to call me that at school,” I told him. “It's the price for being different.”

“You got a bargain. I would have paid
double
that to be different. Come on, let's skedaddle.”

We slipped quietly away as a crowd gathered around the twisted automobile, the incident generating all manner of “ instant experts” who all had theories on why an airship should jettison a car. So to a background chorus of “needed more lift” and “golly, that was close” we crept away and sat in my car.

“That's not something you see very often,” murmured Landen after a pause. “What's going on?”

“I don't know, Land. There are a few too many coincidences around at present—I think someone's trying to kill me.”

“I love it when you're being weird, darling, but don't you
think you are taking this a little too far? Even if you
could
drop a car from a freighter, no one could hope to hit a picnic blanket from five thousand feet. Think about it, Thurs—it makes no sense at all. Who would
do
something like this anyway?”

“Hades,” I whispered.

“Hades is
dead,
Thursday. You killed him yourself. It was a coincidence, pure and simple. They mean nothing—you might as well rail against your dreams or bark at shadows on the wall.”

 

We drove in silence to the SpecOps building and my disciplinary hearing. I switched off the engine and Landen held my hand tightly.

“You'll be fine,” he assured me. “They'd be nuts to take any action against you. If things get bad, just remember what Flanker rhymes with.”

I smiled at the thought. He said he'd wait for me in the café across the road, kissed me again and limped off.

Contrary to popular belief, neanderthals are not stupid. Poor reading and writing skills are due to fundamental differences in visual acuity—in humans it is called dyslexia. Facial acuity in neanderthals, however, is highly developed—the same silence might have thirty or more different meanings depending on how you looked. “Neanderthal English” has a richness and meaning that is lost on the relatively facially blind human. Because of this highly developed facial grammar, neanderthals instinctively know when someone is lying—hence their total disinterest in plays, films or politicians. They like stories read out loud and speak of the weather a great deal—another area in which they are expert. They never throw anything away and love tools, especially power tools. Of the three cable channels allocated to neanderthals, two of them show nothing but woodworking programs.

GERHARD VON SQUID
,
Neanderthals: Back After a Short Absence

T
HURSDAY
N
EXT
?” inquired a tall man with a gravelly voice as soon as I stepped into the SpecOps building.

“Yes?”

He flashed a badge.

“Agent Walken, SO-5; this is my associate, James Dedmen.”

Dedmen tipped his hat politely and I shook their hands.

“Can we talk somewhere privately?” asked Walken.

I took them down the corridor and we found an empty interview room.

“I'm sorry about Phodder and Kannon,” I told them as soon as we had sat down.

“They were careless,” intoned Dedmen gravely. “Contact adhesive should always be used in a well-ventilated room—it says so on the tin.”

“We were wondering,” asked Walken in a slightly embarrassed manner, “whether you could fill us in on what they were up to; they both died before submitting a report.”

“What happened to their case notes?”

Dedmen and Walken exchanged looks.

“They were eaten by rabbits.”

“How could
that
happen?”

“Classified,” announced Dedmen. “We analyzed the remains but everything was pretty well digested—except these.”

He placed three small scraps of tattered and stained paper wrapped in cellophane on the desk. I leaned closer. I could just read out part of my name on the first one, the second was a fragment of a credit card statement, and the third had a single name on it that gave me a shiver:
Hades.

“Hades?” I queried. “Do you think he's still alive?”

“You killed him, Next—what do you think?”

I had seen him die up there on the roof at Thornfield and even found his charred remains when we searched the blackened ruins. But Hades had died before—or so he had made us believe.

“As sure as I can be. What does the credit card statement mean?”

“Again,” replied Walken, “we're not sure. The card was stolen. Most of these purchases are of women's clothes, shoes, hats, bags and so forth—we've got Dorothy Perkins and Camp
Hopson under twenty-four-hour observation. Does any of this ring any bells?”

I shook my head.

“Then tell us about your meeting with Phodder.”

I told them as much as I could about our short meeting while they made copious notes.

“So they wanted to know if anything odd had happened to you recently?” asked Walken. “Had it?”

I told them about the Skyrail and the Hispano-Suiza and they made even more notes. Finally, after asking me several times whether there was anything more I could add, they got up and Walken handed me his card.

“If you discover anything at all—?”

“No problem,” I replied. “I hope you catch them.”

They grunted in reply and left.

 

I sighed, got up and walked back into the lobby to await Flanker and SO-1. I watched the busy station around me and then suddenly felt very hot as the room started to swim. The sides of my vision started to fade and if I hadn't put my head between my knees I would have passed out there and then. The buzz from the room became a dull rumble and I closed my eyes, temples thumping. I stayed there for several moments until the nausea lessened. I opened my eyes and stared at the flecks of mica in the concrete floor.

“Lost something, Next?” came Flanker's familiar voice.

I very gently raised my head. He was reading some notes and spoke without looking at me.

“I'm running late—someone's misappropriated an entire cheese seizure. Fifteen minutes, interview room three—be there.”

He strode off without waiting for a reply and I stared at the floor again. Somehow Flanker and SpecOps seemed insignificant
given that this time next year I could be a mother. Landen had enough money for us both and it wasn't as though I needed to actually resign—I could go on the SpecOps reservist list and do the odd job when necessary. I was just starting to ponder on whether I was really cut out for motherhood when I felt a hand on my shoulder and someone pushed a glass of water into my line of vision. I gratefully took the glass and drank half of it before looking up at my rescuer. It was a neanderthal dressed in a neat double-breasted suit with an SO-13 badge clipped to its top pocket.

“Hello, Mr. Stiggins,” I said, recognizing him.

“Hello, Ms. Next—the nausea will pass.”

There was a shudder and the world whirled backwards in time a couple of seconds so suddenly it made me jump. Stiggins spoke again but this time made less sense:

“Helto, our m Ms. Next—the nauplea will knoass.”

“What the hell—” I muttered as the lobby snapped backwards again and the mauve-painted walls switched to green. I looked at Stiggins, who said:

“Hatto, is our am Mss Next—bue nauplea will kno you.”

The people in the lobby were now wearing hats. Stiggins jumped back again and said:

“Thato is our ame Miss Next—bue howplea kno you?”

My feet felt strange as the world rippled again and I looked down and saw that I was wearing trainers instead of boots. It was clear now that time was flexing slightly, and I expected my father to appear, but he didn't. Stiggins flicked back to the beginning of his sentence yet again and said, this time in a voice I could make out clearly:

“That is our name, Miss Next, but how know you?”

“Did you feel anything odd just then?”

“No. Drink the water. You are very pale.”

I had another sip, leaned back and took a deep breath.

“This wall used to be mauve,” I mused as Stiggins looked at me.

“How you know our name, Miss Next?”

“You turned up at my wedding party,” I told him. “You said you had a job for me.”

He stared at me for almost half a minute through his deep-set eyes. His large nose sniffed the air occasionally. Neanderthals thought a great deal about what they said before they said it—if they said anything at all.

“You speak the truth,” he said at last. It was almost impossible to lie to a neanderthal, and I wasn't going to try. “We are to represent you on this case, Miss Next.”

I sighed. Flanker was taking no chances; I had nothing against neanderthals, but they wouldn't have been my first choice to defend me, particularly against an attack on one of their own.

“If you have a problem you should tell us,” said Stiggins, eyeing me carefully.

“I have no problem with you representing me.”

“Your face does not match your words. You think we have been placed here to hurt your case. It is our belief too. But as to whether it
will
hurt your case, we shall see. Are you well enough to walk?”

I said I was, and we went and sat down in the interview room. Stiggins opened his case and drew out a buff file. It was a large-print version made out in underlined capitals. He brought out a wooden ruler and placed it across the page to help him read.

“Why you hit Kaylieu, the Skyrail operator?”

“I thought he had a gun.”

“Why would you think that?”

I stared into Mr. Stiggins's unblinking brown eyes. If I lied he would know. If I told him the truth he might feel it his duty
to tell SO-1 that I had been involved in my father's work. With the world due to end and the trust in my father implicit, it was a sticky moment, to say the least.

“
They
will ask you, Miss Next. Your evasion will not be appreciated.”

“I'll have to take that chance.”

Stiggins tilted his head to one side and regarded me for a moment.

“They know about your father, Miss Next. We advise you to be careful.”

I didn't say anything, but to Stiggins I probably spoke volumes. Half the thal language is about body movements. It's possible to conjugate verbs with facial muscles; dancing is conversation.

We didn't have a chance to say anything else as the door opened and Flanker and two other agents trooped in.

“You know my name,” he told me. “These are Agents King and Nosmo.”

The two officers stared at me unnervingly.

“This is a preliminary interview,” announced Flanker, who now fixed me with a steely gaze. “There will be time enough for a full inquiry—if we so decide. Anything you say and do can affect the outcome of the hearing. It's really up to you, Next.”

He wasn't kidding. SO-1 were not within the law—they
made
the law. If they really meant business I wouldn't be here at all— I'd be spirited away to SpecOps Grand Central, wherever the hell that was. It was at times like this that I suddenly realized quite why my father had rebelled against SpecOps in the first place.

Flanker placed two tapes into the recorder and idented it with the date, time and all our names. Once done, he asked in a voice made more menacing by its softness: “You know why you are here?”

“For hitting a Skyrail operator?”

“Striking a neanderthal is hardly a crime worthy of SO-1's valuable time, Miss Next. In fact, technically speaking, it's not a crime at all.”

“What then?”

“When did you last see your father?”

The other SpecOps agents leaned forward imperceptibly to hear my answer. I wasn't going to make it easy for them.

“I don't have a father, Flanker—you know that. He was eradicated by your buddies in the ChronoGuard seventeen years ago.”

“Don't play me for a fool, Next,” warned Flanker. “This is not something I care to joke about.
Despite
Colonel Next's non-actualization he continues to be a thorn in our side. Again: When did you last see your father?”

“At my wedding.”

Flanker frowned and looked at his notes.

“You married? When?”

I told him, and he squiggled a note in the margin.

“And what did he say when he turned up at your wedding?”

“Congratulations.”

He stared at me for a few moments, then changed tack.

“This incident with the Skyrail operator,” he began. “You were convinced that he had a
soap
gun hidden about his person. According to a witness you thumped him on the chin, handcuffed and searched him. They said you seemed very surprised when you didn't find anything.”

I shrugged and remained silent.

“We don't give a sod about the thal, Next. Your father's deputizing you is something we could overlook—replacing you out-of-time is something we most definitely will
not.
Is this what happened?”

“Is that the charge? Is that why I'm here?”

“Answer the question.”

“No sir.”

“You're lying. He brought you back early but your father's control of the timestream is not that good. Mr. Kaylieu decided
not
to threaten the Skyrail that morning. You were
sideslipped,
Next. Joggled slightly in the timestream. Things happened the same way but not
exactly
in the same order. Not a big one either—barely a Class IX. Sideslips are an occupational hazard in ChronoGuard work.”

“That's preposterous,” I scoffed. Stiggins would know I was lying, but perhaps I could fool Flanker.

“I don't think you understand, Miss Next. This is more important than just you or your father. Two days ago we lost all communications beyond the 12th December. We know there is industrial action, but even the freelancers we've sent upstream haven't reported back. We think it's
the Big One.
If your father was willing to risk using you, we reckon he thinks so too. Despite our animosity for your father, he knows his business—if he didn't we'd have had him years from now.
What's going on?
”

“I just thought he had a gun,” I repeated.

Flanker stared at me silently for a few moments.