The Woman Who Died a Lot: A Thursday Next Novel (22 page)

Three other members walked in. They were all clutching their Letters of Destiny and didn’t look too happy. We waited another five minutes, but when no one else turned up, Jimmy-G called the meeting to order.

“I was hoping for more than fifteen,” he said, scanning the small group. “Perhaps we’ll see more as the weeks go past.” He cleared his throat and began.

“A fortnight ago the future was the undiscovered country. None of us knew what we would do or how we would do it. As part of the Union of Federated Timeworkers severance package, we now have a clear idea of what
might
have happened and what
will.
If anyone in here is in any doubt over the truth of these summarizations, I bring your attention to Gerald Speke, who received his papers three days ago. They predicted he would lose an arm to a gorilla in Swindon Zoo, and within six hours he had.”

There was some murmuring at this.

“His name was Bongo,” said Gerald, who was sitting at the back with a large bandage wrapped around his upper body. “But if I hadn’t received the Letter of Destiny, I never would have gone to the zoo to see if there
was
a gorilla.”

“That’s how it works,” said Jimmy-G. “the Letters of Destiny and the effect they have on you are now
included
in your Letter of Destiny. But we’re sorry for your loss nonetheless. I suggest we begin with introductions.”

He looked out over the gathering. No one moved. “I’ll start,” said Friday, standing up to face the group. “I would have been the sixth director general of the ChronoGuard. My first major feat was in the Armageddon Avoidance division, where I ensured our survival of HR-6984, but I have no idea how. After a long and apparently eventful career, I retire at eighty-two the most decorated ChronoGuard operative ever. Now it’s a bit different. I spend thirty-seven years in prison for murder. Three days after release, on the third of February, 2041, I’m beaten to death by persons unknown with a baseball bat up in the Old Town.”

There was a pause, and everyone clapped. Presumably not because they liked what they’d heard but for his honesty. I was just relieved he hadn’t mentioned that Gavin was his victim.

“My name’s Sharon deWitt,” said Shazza. “I would have had a dazzling career in the timestream. I’d be pioneering transPaleozoic jumps by age thirty and a full colonel by forty-two. I’d have retired third in command at the ChronoGuard with four citations for bravery and be
Flux
magazine’s Woman for all Time, then comfortably retired in fourteenth-century Florence at age eighty. The way things stand at the moment, I’m a receptionist for twenty years, marry a guy I don’t much like, have two kids who turn out so-so and then get hit by a Vauxhall KP-13 at age fifty-five, late one rainy night near the library. They never find the driver.”

There was more applause, and she sat down. There was a longer pause, so Jimmy-G stood up again.

“My name is Jimmy-G, and I would have worked alongside both Shazza and Friday. I would have been time-engine policy director from 2014 until 2032, when a gravity surge in the auxiliary Time Room dumped me in the forty-fifth century. I was stuck there for sixteen years and upon my return ran the enloopment facilities. These days I work in retail and have a happy if unexciting life with a good wife and a fine son. I don’t see him graduate, though, since I die in mysterious circumstances in 2040.”

He sat down again, and, heartened by his contribution, the remainder of the ex–potential timeworkers joined in. There was someone who would have worked as part of the Retrosnatch Squad who was unhappily not going to see his sixtieth year due to a car accident, and a youthful Bendix Scintilla, whose future self we had met a few years back when he was giving a ChronoGuard recruitment talk. He was eighteen and would now work in engineering until vanishing without trace in Kettering not long before his fifty-fifth birthday. Braxton’s son Gordon was also here, to give a much-needed positive take on the proceedings. He was slated to suffer a fatal time aggregation when his gravity suit leaked, first day at cadet school. Now he gets to be fifty-six. He wasn’t the only one. A girl named Lauren would have been fed alive to pterosaur infants next April during an assignment in the Cretaceous that went badly wrong, but now she succumbs to gruppling bongitiasis at age forty-four.

“Go, me!” she announced happily at the end of it. “I would have suffered a fatal time aggregation,” said another attendee, “twenty-two years from now. Now I die falling from the roof while attempting to adjust the TV aerial—on
exactly
the same day. Whoop-de-do.”

“What was the program you would be wanting to watch?” The attendee looked at his summary. “Er . . . a repeat of,
The
Very Best of ‘The Adrian Lush Show Repeats Again,’ Part 7
.
Serious
bummer.”

In this way those in the room told of their differing destinies, and we offered as many encouraging noises as we could, although the practical help this afforded was questionable. The last person to speak was Gavin Watkins.

“I might be unique in this room,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “in that according to my summary, I would not have been a distinguished member of the ChronoGuard. After an early career helping to map the twenty-fifth century, I see that my later career seems to consist mostly of disciplinary hearings and suspensions. Bored and in need of cash due to an expensive Precambrian tourism habit, I accept a hefty bribe in 2028 to undertake an illegal eradication.”

“What sort of bribe?” said someone.

“A Titian—
The Battle of Cadore.
”

“You
hate
Titian,” said someone else. “You’d have had nowhere to hang it.”

“I change my mind and grow to love him, apparently,” said Gavin, “and I guess I must have had somewhere to hang it . . .
moron.
”

“Okay, okay,” said Jimmy-G soothingly, “this won’t happen, and what’s more, it won’t happen twenty-four years from now. Go on, Gavin.”

“Right. Well, I was caught—we all were, of course—and spent two years in an enloopment facility before being released due to a technicality. Not a great career, but better than what I get now.
Friday Next will murder me in three days’ time!
”

There was a sharp intake of breath as he said it, and he glared at Friday.

“Why are you going to kill me, Friday? Because I insulted your mum and sister?”

Friday took a deep breath and stood up to face Gavin.

“I don’t know. I have no
real
motive. But you can stop me. Take a random Tube ride. You can be anywhere on the planet in under six hours. If I can’t find you, it won’t happen.”

“As soon as my destiny papers arrived, my parents put me on the Deep Drop to Sydney,” said Gavin. “I checked in under a false name to a crappy motel near Dame Edna International. I even hid in the cupboard. My summarization papers hadn’t changed—you were still due to kill me. So I came home. If I was going to be murdered, I’d rather it happened near family and friends.”

“Friends?” said Shazza.

“Family then. Body repatriations are pricey these days, and they always seem to go astray.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Friday.

“You will,” said Gavin, “and what’s more I know for a fact you won’t get away with it.”

“It’s Tuesday night,” returned Friday, “and I’ve got sixty-six hours to figure out a way to bend the eventline.”

“Maybe the eventline did bend,” said Shazza thoughtfully. “It’s possible that once you were in the hotel cupboard, your Letter of Destiny changed to say you survived. You probably then wondered why you had flown all that way to hide in a cupboard, but as soon as you returned, so did your death.”

Everyone fell silent at this. Shazza was right. It was entirely possible that the eventline was vibrating like a rubber band and that what was written on the Letters of Destiny right
now
was not what had been on them even ten seconds ago.

“Okay, then,” said Friday, “I need to find a way of
permanently
changing our destinies. Right now things don’t look very good.”

There was silence after this, and Jimmy-G thought it a good time to call the meeting to an end and to meet again the same place next week, unless the smiting went ahead, in which case he’d let everyone know. The small party dispersed without much talk; the proceedings had been pretty joyless. Gavin glared at us both as he filed out, and as Jimmy-G walked up to speak to us, I noted Mr. Chowdry pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he turned to leave.

“That was
seriously
strange,” said Friday as we walked back to the car. Shazza was with us, as she and Friday were going to have a drink together to see if any of their future spark could be preignited, and Jimmy-G was with us because his car was parked next to ours.

“Time-travel stuff generally is.”

“No,” said Friday, “I mean
murderously
seriously strange.”

“In what way?”

“Didn’t you notice?” he asked, and when I said I didn’t, he counted out the people at the group on his fingers. “Only three of us die seemingly natural deaths. I’m murdered in 2041, as are Shazza and Bendix, Miranda, Joddy and Sarah. The other six die in ‘unexplained’ deaths, all of them in 2040. Can you see a pattern?”

“None of us live beyond February 2041,” said Shazza in a quiet voice.

“Right,” said Friday. “I’m the last to die—three days
before
HR-6984 is scheduled to strike the earth. No one lives long enough to be killed by the meteorite that’s hurtling our way.”

“Does that mean the HR-6984 will
definitely
happen?” asked Shazza.

“It means we can’t prove it
won’t,
” said Friday, “since none of us live beyond it.”

“Why would anyone want to murder someone just before everyone is about to die anyway?” asked Jimmy-G. “It raises vindictiveness to a whole new level.”

They all looked at one another in a confused and dejected manner. It must be like having an itch and not being able to scratch it. Nevertheless, I thought I should be a mother rather than a colleague, so I said the first thing that came into my head. “Fish and chips, anyone?”

21.

Wednesday: Library

The Hotel Bellvue was squeezed disagreeably between the M4, the Swindon tannery and the city’s main electrical substation, hence the name it was popularly known by: the Substation. It was the last place one would book a room, even if hygiene weren’t an issue, and it seemed to exist only to give other hotels a benchmark for failure. Indeed, the Substation had managed to wrestle
Clip-Joint
magazine’s coveted Five-Bedbug rating from its only competitor in the southeast: the equally grimy Bastardos, in Reading.

Josh Candle,
Ten Places Not to Visit in Wessex

“G
ood morning,” said Duffy as I walked into the office. “Did the car find you okay?”

“Eventually.”

“If you want a different pickup address, we’d appreciate it if you would give us more notice. It helps the Special Library Services to ensure that your route is safe.”

“I understand,” I said, “and I’m sorry. I was called to the Substation Hotel this morning. It was . . . um . . . family business.”

I wasn’t going to tell him we’d discovered Krantz—or what remained of him.

“Mrs. Duffy and I spent our honeymoon there. The hum and crackle of the electrical substation was . . . restful.”

“It sounds very romantic.”

“When we want to rekindle that flame,” continued Duffy, “we leave an orbital sander running in the basement. Hums just like a five-hundred-KVA transformer. If we want to hear the crackle of morning dew on the insulators, we have Gizmo play with a cellophane wrapper.”

“I’m so hoping Gizmo is a dog.”

“A pug.”

“Duffy?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Do people usually attack the chief librarian as he or she is driven in?”

I was alluding to an incident when someone fired two shots at our vehicle as we pulled off the Magic Roundabout. The vehicle was bulletproofed, but even so.

“Usually, ma’am. The 720 percent increase in library loans caused by the government’s New Book Duty has caused a three-day delay on library-book availability. When the citizens can’t get the books they want, they often vent their fury at the person in charge.”

This was, sadly, all too true—and not just about simple loans. Only a month previously, an all-new 007 book was written by that author with a beard whose name I can never remember. James Bond Fundamentalists argued that this was “a grave and heinous affront to the oeuvre” and warned that if the library stocked it, they would sit outside in silent protest, stroking white cats and thinking fiendish thoughts. And if that had no effect, they would riot. They did, and two people, six cats and three Diana Rigg impersonators lost their lives.

“Do you want to see the Goliath representative first, or shall I make him wait for an hour to show your utter contempt for him and his company?”

This would be Lupton Cornball, whom I had met yesterday at the Finis.

“I’ll see him first.”

The phone rang. I reached out, but Duffy beat me to it. “Hello?” he said. “Office of the chief librarian.” He listened for a moment than looked at me. “I’ll ask.”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Detective Smalls wants to talk to you. She’s on the way up.”

“Smalls? Okay, her first, then Goliath. Oh, and I’d like to talk to Councilor Bunty Fairweather. She’s in charge of fiscal planning and smite-avoidance policy. They’ve an alternative Anti-Smite plan cooking, and I want to find out what it is.” 

“She’s your two-o’clock. Shall I push her up to your eleven-thirty?”

“Is that straight after Goliath?” I asked, glancing at the clock. “No, Mrs. Jolly Hilly, the insane Enid Blyton fundamentalist is after Goliath. Bunty is after them.”