The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“Is the BookWorld the mindworm?”

“No, that’s real enough.”

“The whole Granny Next thing?”

“No.”

“I’m not me at all but someone else?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Look at your hand.”

So I did, and I was confused, and angry. And not for the first time today, apparently.

7.

Monday: Tuesday

Although a “Divine-Induced Destructive Event” is highly tangible, the warnings of that same event remain tiresomely obscure. Even after the Almighty’s Revealment to his creations, the time and place of a pillar of all-cleansing fire is revealed only to a State-Registered Meek—usually in the form of a vision or some other inexplicable sign. Following a rash of false vision claims, the Lord agreed that a secret code word should be given so a genuine divine apparition could be differentiated from, say, a dream.

Charles Fang, Mankind and the Modern Smite

We stepped off the Skyrail at Aldbourne and picked up our car from the station car park. It hummed quietly up to the house, and after we paused briefly to punch in our security number on the keypad, the gates swung open and we drove in.

We went straight into the garage and parked the car. The Wing Commander was standing at the door waiting for us.

“Password?” he asked.

We always felt happier arriving before darkness fell. Less risk that someone or something might slipp past security.

“My postilion has been struck by lightning,” recited Landen.

“No ring goes like a Ringo goes,” returned the Wing Commander.

The passwords over, the Wingco took our coats and led the way into the house.

“I trust the day went well?” he asked.

“Pretty good,” I replied as we walked into the kitchen. “You’re looking at the new head of the Wessex Library Service.”

“Congratulations,” said the Wingco. “What did you find out about Aornis?”

I handed him the names of the guards and the date and time at which she probably would have arrived at Land’s End International, the usual last stopping-off place before convicts were flown to the small cluster of islands twenty or so miles off Land’s End.

“See what you can find out—the time she arrived at Tresco Supermax, ideally. If she didn’t, we can work backward from there. Did you get the hotpot on?”

“It went on at five.”

The Wing Commander’s place in the household had been of huge benefit over the past couple of years, the last few months especially. His full name was Wing Commander Cornelius Scampton-Tappett, and he was a stereotypical wartime RAF officer. Very English, very stiff-upper-lip, and very young—barely twenty-five, but with the demeanor of one who had seen and experienced much, and all of it harrowing. He was utterly steadfast, fearless and loyal. He sported a large walrus mustache and wore the blue uniform of an RAF officer, except when he went out, at which time he wore an Irvin flying jacket. His four greatest laments were that he no longer had a bomber of any description, nor the spiffing chaps to fly it, that he would as like as not never take tea with Vera Lynn now that she was president, and that the war wasn’t still on. It hadn’t been, in fact, for over fifty years, a

nd if Scampton-Tappet’s appearance, eternal youth and general demeanor caused a few raised eyebrows, it was because he was entirely fictional. I had bought him in a BookWorld salvage yard to pep up one of Landen’s books. That didn’t really work out for a number of reasons, so he now acted as family bodyguard and general assistant—as well as conducting vital research and development work for the BookWorld.

“How’s Jenny?” I asked.

“Unchanged since this morning,” he replied, glancing at Landen, “but she ate some lunch, so I think the flu is easing.” “I’ll go and see her,” I said.