The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“What’s 3,598 multiplied by 9?”

“32,382,” I replied without pausing. “Do you want to hear about every single monarch of England before the First Republic? I can give you precise dates of when they ruled, the name of their consorts and an estimation of their weight with a twopoint-three-percent margin of error. Give me a piece of paper.”

Landen passed me a receipt from his pocket, and in a brief flurry of dexterity it was an elegant origami swan.

“I can do this, too.”

I picked up a glass vase and tossed it above my head. I closed my eyes, waited until I thought it should be coming back down and caught it in midair. I opened my eyes again.

“It’s like being Wonder Woman,” I said, “only without the stupid costume. Don’t look up.”

“Why not?” asked Landen, not unreasonably.

“There’s a ninja assassin hiding in the rafters. But don’t worry, there’s no danger to us. He’s been there for six weeks already—probably waiting for a Romanian who can’t keep his mouth shut.”

“You saw him?”

“I heard him. And one of his eyelashes just landed on your shoulder. Want to see me juggle?”

Landen and Stig stared at me. As my old memories filtered through to their new home, I could recall that no Synthetic Thursday had ever acted this way. From where I was standing, this one seemed not just as good as a human but better. I could have taken on Landen and Stig there and then if I’d wanted to. But so far as I could tell, I was still Thursday. And Thursdays don’t beat up their husbands and best friends.

“Would you excuse me one moment?” I said. “I have to find me.”

Without waiting for an answer, I ran out of the glassware department with Stig struggling to keep up. I raced out of the store, accelerated fast down the concourse and felt a surge of raw elation as my legs ran as they had never run before. I was stronger, smarter, fitter and faster—and if this one had never had children, my stomach was probably joyously flat, too. I skidded to a halt outside Booktastic and paused for a moment, hardly out of breath.

I was still thinking when Stig arrived a few moments later.

“You fast,” he said. “Really fast.”

“When I left here, I didn’t have my stick with me,” I said, “and I ran down the stairs. But I remember swearing over the lack of a handrail as I went in—and also slapped another patch on my arse in the loo. So I must have been the previous me then.”

“Booktastic big,” said Stig. “Why you enter?”

“Probably putting The Thursday Next Chronicles face-out— I’ve done it before.”

I ran up to Speculative Fiction on the third floor, again with Stig laboring behind. I found my way to the Next Chronicles, but found no one here, not even hidden behind the sofas. We started to search around the recesses of the bookshop, as the place was fairly labyrinthine; it wasn’t unusual to be lost in its twisting corridors, and once a Henry James fanatic had been locked in for the entire weekend.

“What’s going on?” asked Landen as he lumbered out of the elevator, panting.

“I remember now that she’s in the stockroom,” I said, pushing the door from its hinges. We found a pale figure of a woman in her underwear hidden behind a pallet of Colwyn Baye’s latest book. She looked terrible. One leg was thinner than the other and badly scarred, and her skin was a pasty shade the color of hospital inpatients. She was unconscious. I’d forgotten how tired and old I looked. Landen checked the unconscious me for vital signs.

“Alive?” asked Stig.

“Very much so—just unconscious.”

Landen slapped me around the face. First softly, then harder. This didn’t seem to have much effect, so he pinched me—twice. Nothing.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

“The upload takes less than half an hour,” I said, not knowing how I knew. “It’s a neural-bandwidth issue. And it’s almost complete.”

I was now getting the deep subconscious stuff. The memories of childhood, the time our hamster ate its young—I was only eight. Never forgot that. Then other stuff started to come in, too, stuff I thought I’d forgotten. Arguments with Anton, long before he died in the Crimea, and my mother crying for her husband, the first time he died. But through it all there was one thing that was strong in the front of my mind: This wasn’t me. It was subtly different in ways impossible to explain. It was wonderful, but disturbing, too.

“I know what we have to do,” I said quietly. “But first I have to prove to you that this was really me.”

I took out a pen and scribbled a note on the back of my old Skyrail ticket. I took a step forward and slipped it into Landen’s trouser pocket. I hugged him, placed my cheek to his and whispered in his ear.

“I love you. Now, do it.”