The Woman Who Died a Lot: A Thursday Next Novel (36 page)

They disengaged, and Gavin turned to Landen with a scowl on his face. “What is your
problem,
man?”

“My problem? My problem is this: An unwashed lout with a foul mouth and an unhealthy porn obsession is snogging my daughter,
that’s
what.”

“And . . . ?”

I almost thumped him, but it was Tuesday who intervened.

“Oh, Dad!” she said. “Don’t be so hideously old-fashioned. Gavin is a
genius.
Do you know how lonely it is on this planet if you have an IQ of two-forty?”

“Yeah,” agreed Gavin, “so back off, dorkwad.”

“Steady, angelcake,” said Tuesday, laying an affectionate hand on Gavin’s cheek. “You will apologize to my parents. If you don’t, I will never speak to you again—genius or no genius.”

Gavin thought about it for a moment, then hung his head and mumbled, “Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Parke-Laine.”

We told him it would be okay but to mind his mouth, and Tuesday told us that she and “Gav” could probably sort out the U
_c
problem by morning. We gave them money for a cab, and they trotted off excitedly, Tuesday hanging on to Gavin’s hand and telling him how he would eventually meet her sister, Jenny.

“She’s really funny, you’ll like her.”

“Is she an . . . elder sister? The sort that takes a bath quite often and who never locks the door?”

“Not at all,” she said, giving him a thump. “She’s my younger sister.”

“Blast.”

“If he carries on as he is,” said Landen under his breath, “I may have to kill him myself.”

“Don’t even think about it. The world needs Gavin—or his intellect anyhow—and Tuesday seems to be fond of him in an unfathomable sort of way. Besides, if they
can
figure out how to make the shield work, Joffy in the cathedral and the felons up at Wroughton don’t get fried, Swindon gets to keep the hundred million pounds from Smite Solutions, and the library gets some funding. Best of all, I don’t have to transport a righteous man around all tomorrow morning. You know how tiresome those can be.”

“You’re right,” he said. “Children first.”

We stood there in silence for a while, contemplating the unusual turn of events and the mixed feelings they engendered. We were glad that Tuesday had a boyfriend, just disappointed it had to be Gavin.

“What now?” asked Landen.

“I need to get back to the office. Duffy and Spoons will be organizing a garage sale to try to fund the library service.”

Landen said he would drop me there on his way home. I could use my official car to get home, or call a taxi.

“We can drop into Image Ink on the way,” he added.

“Okay—but let’s not forget this time.”

34.

Thursday: Evening

John de Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine tell-all of 1209,
Bonkeing Kinges for Pleasure and Profite,
was the first true celebrity bio. Despite receiving rave reviews and a massive two-figure advance for a sequel, the book did not find favor with King John, Eleanor’s son, and de Hepburn was found dead the following winter, having apparently “Atempted to swim, with dire foolishness, the river Cherwell while disporting himself chained to an anvile.”

James Finisterre,
Genres in Classical Literature

I
spent the rest of the day at the library, trying to change the large quantity of salable equipment that Duffy and Spoons had earmarked into cash. The difficulty was not in finding a buyer— there was a lot of good stuff there—but persuading the banks to agree to a line of credit ahead of the sales. They wouldn’t be working tomorrow, because the financial center was to be evacuated as a precaution due to the upcoming smiting, so it was imperative that this was sorted before the end of the day. If it wasn’t, by the time the banks reopened on Monday morning, the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library Service would be bankrupt and closed, the rubber stamps would have fallen silent, and all chance of retrieving overdue books would be gone forever.

I’d called home several times to see how Friday was getting on at the timepark. Millon had gone with him to keep us advised of progress, but other than a call on a landline to say that Friday had donned a gravity suit and gone in, there was no news. If he had to go “deep slow” at the timepark to find the Manchild, he might not be out for hours.

Twice during the afternoon, I had my hand on the red phone and the emergency hotline to Nancy at the World League of Librarians, but each time Duffy laid his hand on mine, telling me this was not anywhere near a serious enough emergency, leaving me wondering just what
was.
But he was right. By the time early evening had rolled around, I had negotiated a half-million-pound overdraft. We now had two whole days in which to figure out our financial problems.

I dropped down to the subbasement as soon as I was done to see how Finisterre and Phoebe Smalls were doing with the palimpsests.

“We’re working through the pages of
Brothels of Dorset on Sixpence a Day
one leaf at a time,” replied James, whose eyes were looking tired from comparing hundreds of pictures, “and we’ve managed to source where the manuscripts he reused might have come from—mostly mass-copied cookbooks and celebrity bios.”

Phoebe held up a scan of one of the palimpsests, the old writing running under the new.

“This was originally a page from the thirteenth-century bestseller
Parsnipe Cooking with Olive of Jamestown,
which was the first cookbook to have a production run of over two figures.”

James held up another example of lost and recovered writing.

“And this was originally from an edition of John de Hepburn’s scurrilous Eleanor of Aquitaine tell-all,
Bonkeing Kinges for Pleasure and Profite
.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “all very fascinating, “but anything
unusual
?”

“There’s only this,” said Phoebe, holding up a picture of a grubby page with the palimpsest highlighted behind it. “It’s not from the Venerable Keith’s
Evadum,
nor, as we suspected, an early treatise called
Dry rot & other cankers of the joiste
by Howard de Winforton. In fact, we can’t find out what it is.”

“But what does it
look
like?” I asked.

She thought for a moment. “It bears something of a similarity to the style and spelling idiosyncrasies of the Venerable Bede but strays far from his usual subject matter. Bede generally wrote boring ecclesiastical histories and translated biblical tracts, but this looks more like . . .
comedy.
”

“I didn’t know the Venerable Bede did comedy.”

“He didn’t. What’s stranger is that this comedy does not seem eighth-century in taste or style. Not so much wenching, farting and jokes with dead animals, but more gentle and lyrical—more in keeping with the storytelling tradition known collectively as ‘Homer.’”

“What are you saying?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve called Bowden in to have a look, as he’s more into Homeric verse than we are, so we should know more then. He might recognize it, or at least give us an indication of what might be going on.”

I told them to call me the instant they had something, then took a cab home, deep in thought about the week’s events and the possibilities that might face me on the following day. Friday had still to kill Gavin, but for no good reason that we could see, and his chance of avoiding going to prison was looking pretty faint. Tuesday still had to find the answer to U
_c
, something that would allow the smiting to make harmless impact on the Anti-smite Defense Shield. If she and Gavin
couldn’t
find the Unentanglement Constant in time, then twenty or so hardened felons were to get fried.
Unless
I could get a righteous man in place, in time—and then Joffy would get fried. I didn’t much care for any of my options.

***

As soon as I got home, I went and changed my patch for another one of the smiley-faced illegal varieties that Geraldine had scored for me. It was working better than a Dizuperadol, but I reduced the dose to a third of a patch rather than a half, as I was still a bit giggly at inappropriate moments.

“How are things?” asked Landen from the doorway of the bathroom.

“Pretty crappy,” I told him, outlining what I had to do tomorrow.

“You’d really fry Joffy?” he asked.

“
I’m
not frying anyone,” I said, looking upward, “and I’m hoping it won’t come to that. Gavin looks like he knows what’s he’s talking about.”

“Joffy has family to miss him,” said Landen quietly. “Billions look to him for guidance. He has good work still to do on the planet. Theological unification is just one step on a greater journey.”

“That’s true,” I murmured, pulling up my trousers once the patch was on, “but the murderers have family that’ll miss them too, won’t they?”

“No, actually, they won’t,” said Landen, following me down the upstairs corridor. “I checked, and they killed most of them. Some of them even killed other families that
reminded
them of their real families. What I’m saying is that Joffy is worth fifty of them.”

“He wouldn’t agree with that sentiment.”

“No, but if you were to ‘accidentally’ drive the righteous man to the wrong airfield or were delayed or took a wrong turning or something, no one would ever think bad of you for it.”

“Don’t imagine I haven’t thought of it,” I said with a deep sigh as we walked into the kitchen, “but Miles made me promise. Maybe Joffy is the price we have to pay in order to find the answer as to the meaning and purpose of existence.”

“It’ll be a waste of a good Joffy. I don’t think God has any more idea than you or I about what’s going on.”

Landen had made this point before. He called it the “Nihilist Deity Viewpoint by Proxy” approach. We walked into the kitchen, and I filled the kettle.

“Perhaps He is just a part of the riddle of existence. Perhaps we all are.”

“Tea or coffee?”

“Tea. Think of it this way: A single brain cell has no intelligence, but in company it can do extraordinary things. Perhaps the entirety of existence is the true, unifying intelligence that drives what occurs—for a reason that is quite beyond our understanding, or even to a higher plane where the concept of understanding is laughably redundant.”

It was an interesting concept. Mycroft had often theorized that the whole of existence was so large and hideously complex that it must be sentient. And if this were so, then it must have a truly warped sense of humor and have an abiding love of math and hydrogen—and a deep loathing for order.

We stood in the kitchen for a few minutes in silence.

“Any word from Millon or Friday?” I asked.

“On their way back. It didn’t sound as if they had much luck. Our math geniuses are hard at work. There was a panic earlier when Tuesday took Gavin to meet Jenny, then found she wasn’t there. I made up some story about her being off at a sleepover.”

It was one of our standard excuses.

“She does a lot of sleepovers.”

“I know. Damn that Aornis.”

I looked down at my tattoo, then noticed that I had a Band-Aid on the back of my hand—a new one, next to the tattoo. I frowned, then lifted up the corner of the Band-Aid, read part of the words beneath and stuck it down again. I looked at the clock. It was just past six.

“Landen,” I said quietly, “we should have a family meeting, here in the kitchen at
exactly
eight o’clock—and bring the cordless drill and some screws.”

“Why?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can tell me.”

“No, I can’t say because . . . I don’t know.”

35.

Thursday: Aornis

The Hades family when I knew them comprised, in order of age: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, Lethe and the only girl, Aornis. Once described by Vlad the Impaler as “unspeakably repellent,” the family drew strength from deviancy and committing every sort of horror that they could. Some with panache, some with halfhearted seriousness. In time I was to defeat three of them.

Thursday Next,
A Life in SpecOps

F
riday got back at seven, very tired and none the wiser. He had met the Manchild again, who had confirmed that there
had
been sixteen letters, but with no idea who the sixteenth might have been. He was simply told to dump them in a mailbox at the correct time, which he had done. The only thing he did mention was that two of the envelopes might have been opened and then resealed—but for what reason, again, he had no idea.

Millon had gone down to his hermitage to practice thinking deep thoughts and cram for his upcoming hermiting exam, and Gavin had nipped out, to the Swindon Best Deals for Used Cars at Fish Brothers University to speak to a professor of mathematics, who, while an “oaf with so little knowledge it saddens me,” could nonetheless offer a few pointers regarding knot theory, which might open a potentially exciting new line of inquiry to the U
_c
.

At a quarter to eight, I had just finished a call from Phoebe when Landen walked into the kitchen with the cordless drill and some screws, and I told him what she had said: that Bowden had been up to the library and identified the mystery palimpsest as being a lost work of Homer’s entitled
Margites
and that it was probably translated by the Venerable Bede, which was not only one coup but two. Phoebe was working under the theory that this lost epic poem of Homer’s had accidentally found its way into St. Zvlkx’s recycling pile along with mostly eleventh-to thirteenth-century dross and that the book had then been spread around Zvlkx’s mass-copied publications—and Jack Schitt had been going around hunting them down to be destroyed.