The Woman Who Died a Lot: A Thursday Next Novel (28 page)

“You don’t actually need a marquee,” said Miles, “but Goliath knows full well that not even the
supremely
sinful will wait to be scoured from the face of the earth by a flash of energy without at least a choice of drink and a sports channel to watch.”

Friday understood first.

“Are you telling me,” he said, “that Goliath aims to
divert
the smite by having a few immoral people collected together?”

“It’s precisely what they intend,” said Miles. “When He has decided to undertake a smiting, it is only ever for one reason—to rid the earth of sin and cleanse the land so the meek and righteous can walk free and unfettered by the dark shadows of the wayward. In technical terms what this means is that the pillar of all-consuming fire can be swayed from its course by a point source of concentrated sinfulness. A television tube works on the same principle, but instead of having a beam of photons shifted by an electromagnet, you have a pillar of fire moved ever so slightly by an unrepentant ax murderer.”

“A single ax murderer is going to shift an entire pillar of fire?”

“No, you’ll need more sinners than that—and we’re not talking simply immoral people or even questionable thought crimes such as blasphemy, apostasy or ox coveting. No, we’re talking about the big ones: murder, thievery and sadistic violence. And only in those who are evil beyond measure. The sort of people who are so twisted and degenerate they can
never
find redemption for their crimes.”

Miles spread a map of the local area out on the hood of his car. He had already drawn several circles and lines upon it, plus some simple geometry.

He pointed at his calculations. “Since smitings originate at one lakh feet, they need to deviate the groundburst by a little over four miles, or thirteen point two degrees of arc. That will probably require eighteen mass murderers, six stranglers, five poisoners, sixteen con men and eight career bank robbers.”

I stared at the screen again. “Does England even have that many?”

“I think we’re short on poisoners,” replied Miles, “but France has a few they’ll let Smite Solutions use, and I think the ‘Butcher of Naples’ is being imported from Italy to make up the shortfall of ax murderers. Since Goliath runs the prison service, there shouldn’t be a problem getting them all together.”

“Do they know they’re going to be vaporized in a sudden flash of God’s wrath?” asked Friday.

“I’d not think they’d take to it that kindly,” replied Miles. “No, my guess is they’re being brought here on the pretext of ‘outdoor rehabilitation’ or ‘fresh-air therapy’ or some nonsense like that.”

“But that’s . . .
murder,
” said Friday. “They’re in custody— doing time. They can’t be just used as smite bait.”

“I know,” said Miles, starting to pack his stuff up. “It’s wholly immoral, despite their crimes. Which really leaves us with only three options. One, Tuesday figures out the Unentanglement Constant between now and midday Friday and the Anti-Smite Shield functions as normal—the city council saves a hundred million pounds, and the searing heat of His unbridled frustration at His creation’s inability to stop its morally questionable behavior is transferred into a useful twenty-two point six megawatts of electricity.”

“And option two?”

“We let Smite Solutions do their thing, and fifty-three irredeemable felons are vaporized for cash.”

Friday and I exchanged glances. No one likes ax murders— not even their mothers,
if
they survived—but as Friday had pointed out, the sinful were in custody. It would be like killing POWs. Murder.

“The third option is that we nobble Smite Solutions’ plans and allow much of downtown Swindon be laid to waste.”

“It would be shame to lose the cathedral,” I said, “but it’s less than fifteen years old and we could always build another. With almost six billion followers of varying enthusiasm, the GSD has certainly got some cash. And Goliath can certainly afford to rebuild the Greed Tower.”

“That’s what we thought,” said Miles as he folded up the map. “And to be honest, we never liked the cathedral much anyway— too gloomy and no provision for a canteen or Wi-Fi.”

“How
do
you nobble Smite Solutions?” asked Friday as Miles placed the TV screen, remote control and maps in the trunk of his car.

“Simple,” he said. “With a strategically placed righteous man.”

“A righteous man?”

“Or woman. It doesn’t matter which. Find one of those, place him or her near the sinful, and
bingo
— the Lord cannot smite the righteous on a matter of principle, so Goliath can kiss our arse and the downtown gets a serious smiting instead.”

He looked at us both in turn. “You don’t know of any, do you? Righteous people, I mean. We’ve a got few penciled in, but it never hurts to have a few more in reserve.”

“I know some
self
-righteous ones,” I said.

“That’s not really the same thing at all.”

“What about you or Joffy?” I suggested. “I don’t know anyone more selfless than you two.”

“You’re very gracious,” said Miles, “but I killed two people when I was SO-14, and although Joffy is good and just and wise, I think he actually
enjoys
the possibility of having a round table with God to discuss the Ultimate Question of Existence.”

“The sin of pride?”

“Right. And he’ll hide chocolate in the back of the fridge so only he can find it—something that a truly righteous man would never do. Besides, the righteous man has to be good in
all
known dimensions, since the Almighty is pandimensional. If our righteous man put a cat in a wheelie-bin in Dimension FX-39, then His Great Omniscience would see it and
know.
And the problem with Joffy and me is that there are at least seventy-eight dimensions where our relationship is seen in the eyes of some to be a heinous sin almost as bad as murder.”

“You’re kidding? Why?”

“Not a clue. But there are some seriously weird dimensions out there. Did you hear that Henshaw
^F76+
had two heads?”

“Argued with himself, I heard.”

“Me, too.”

“Where do you usually find righteous men?” asked Friday.

“There are a few professionals about, but Smite Solutions is smart—they’ve booked them for other jobs at the same time as the smiting: helping a lady across the road, being with someone in a difficult moment, reminding someone of the path, that sort of thing. Trivial, one might think, and easily canceled for this job. Trouble is, righteous men would never back out on an agreed appearance—and you can’t offer them more money, because they won’t take it.”

“And if they did, they wouldn’t be righteous.”

“Exactly.”

I should have known there would be one or two snags.

“So, as you can see, we should have a few subs in case of mishaps, just in case. But they’re tricky to find, as they don’t draw attention to themselves and would never volunteer themselves as righteous because they would never see themselves as such. Plus, we have the usual problem of being swamped with volunteers, eager to promote themselves as righteous.”

“And all who can be instantly rejected for that very same reason.”

“Right.”

“Luckily for us, we’ve got a
seriously
righteous man lined up. He’s a real pip—not even a shred of malice, ego or selfishness. Even a whiff of him will be enough to divert the stream of destruction away from the sinful.”

“Don’t let Goliath find out,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile, “we’ve got him in a safe house where he is being looked after by semirighteous people— who are in turn being protected by people who are quite happy to be not righteous at all when it comes to protecting the main guy.”

He climbed into his car, slammed the door and wound down the window.

“Give my love to Landen and Tuesday, won’t you?” he said. “And although I don’t want to add any pressure, if Tuesday could find the value of U
_c
before midday on Friday, it would save a whole lot of uncertainty—and we can keep our righteous man in reserve for another time.”

“She’s doing her best,” I said, “but she
is
only sixteen. Most scientists don’t start achieving this level of success before they are old, gray, cantankerous, forgetful and smelly.”

“I know,” said Miles. “The planet’s lucky to have her. Cheerio!”

He started the engine, and we waved as he drove off.

“So, Mum,” said Friday, “the timepark?”

“The timepark.”

27.

Wednesday: Kemble Timepark

The C-90-F Reverse Fluxgate time engines, despite being shown to not work, still maintained a residual capacity to bend space-time and exhibit time-dilation phenomena. Physicists had argued long and hard over the apparent contradictions, and concluded that time travel
might
exist in an entangled intermediate state of working and not working, with no apparent contradiction. In that respect time is very like a tiresome soap star: wayward, petulant and unpredictable.

Norman Scrunge,
Time Industry Historian

K
emble was situated about twelve miles to the northwest of Swindon. The 720-acre site had been home to the Main Temporal Transport Device ever since the service was inaugurated in 1932 and had seen six different engines built on its land. The last ones built here had been the C-90-Fs, which had been used for only three years until decommissioning. Since then they had remained empty and abandoned. The engines were silent, and the massive seven-story containment domes dominated the surroundings. The interior of the base was designated a no-go zone, but trespassing wasn’t a problem. The hazardous nature of the timepark was well known, even to idiots with mischief on their minds.

“So,” I said as soon as we had made our way back on to the A419 and were heading north, “why am I missing the Wingco’s pizza evening to take a trip to visit the Kemble Timepark?”

“Here,” Friday said, handing me a folder. “Shazza and I have been doing some research. We set up a bulletin board for anyone else who was now Destiny Aware to make contact. Do you know how many people have done so?”

“First things first: How are you getting along with Shazza?”

Friday thought for a moment. “Not
brilliantly,
but we’re working on it. Trying to prekindle a spark that will make us inseparable soul mates in two decades’ time is proving a bit tricky. I think she’s a whiny foul-mouth with a victim mentality, while she thinks I’m an arrogant middle-class ponce with an attitude so patronizing she would throttle me if it weren’t illegal. We tried sex to see if that would cement the relationship, but it didn’t help: She told me she’d ‘had better,’ and I told her that yelling out the titles of Tom Hanks movies was . . . well,
distracting.
”

“So not going too well?”

“No. And with less than forty-eight hours before I’m arrested, it’s not likely to improve.”

“That might not happen. Besides, people have different needs at eighteen than at forty. And if those needs diverge, it can cause serious conflict. Probably accounts for breakups. Your father and I didn’t hook up properly until ten years after first going out. If we’d stayed together, we might not have survived. As it is, we’re still very—”

“Mum, I’m going to stop you before you start getting all smushy about Dad.”

“All right,” I said with a smile, “have it your own way. Do you want me to tell you how much I love you all, too?”

“
Definitely
not. Look at the folder.”

“Okay. What were you saying?”

“I said that Shazza and I had set up a bulletin board for anyone else who had received a career summary from the Union of Federated Timeworkers. Do you know how many people have gotten in contact?”

“A thousand?” I suggested.

“One,” replied Friday, “and he only missed the meeting because his car had a flat—he lived over in Bedwyn, on the other side of the Savernake.”

“That’s unusual,” I said. “The ChronoGuard must have employed several thousand from around here alone. What does it mean?”

“It means that only those timeworkers who were living in the Wessex area have received Letters of Destiny—more specifically, only those in the Swindon branch of the timeworkers union. But this is what’s strange: It’s a shitty thing to do. If I were my future self, I wouldn’t send myself a Letter of Destiny. So then I got to thinking that maybe there was another reason I did it.”

I looked at the folder he had given me. There were copies of all the letters. Two each per ex–potential worker—one of how it might have turned out and one of how it will. There were copies of the envelopes, too, and several maps, clippings and news reports about the disbanding of the ChronoGuard—it was big news when it happened two years before.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Let me explain the scenario. You’re head of the ChronoGuard and entering your seventy-sixth year, one year from retirement. You can gaze happily back upon a long career maintaining the Standard History Eventline. You’ve defended its manipulation by the unscrupulous and altered it to protect the citizens from mischief, asteroid collision and innumerable other menaces. You are happy that you have done what you could to keep the world safe, knowing that when you hand over the ropes to next chief, the department is in good shape.”

“Okay, I can see that.”

“Good. So this is what happens: Everything, but
everything
you’ve worked for is to be undone. Time travel is suddenly not possible, and due to the demands of a failure in the Retro-Deficit Engineering principle, all the time engines have to be switched off. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were going to happen in 2062, the time of your retirement—but it’s not. The switch-off will be retrospective from 2002. This is a worry, because the most dangerous event of all, the one that made your career, is slated for February of 2041.”