The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“Really?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Damn! I was hoping six months of silent contemplation would suddenly imbue me with sagelike intelligence, but all I seem to be able to manage is a strange fungal growth on my shins caused by the damp and lukewarm aphorisms that would scarcely do good favor to the back of a matchbox.”

“I don’t really get the whole intellect-through-isolation thing,” I said. “I’m not sure anyone can claim to understand the human condition until he’s talked two people out of a fight, smoothed over a best friend’s marital breakup or dealt effectively with a teenager’s huffy silence.”

“I’d include an appreciation of Tex Avery cartoons in that list,” added Millon sadly, “along with Gaudí, David Lean’s later movies and a minimum of one evening with Emo Philips. But the hermit elders are traditionalists. The City&Guilds Higher Hermiting Certificate is based mostly around Horace, the Old Testament, Descartes and Marx.”

“Groucho or Karl?”

“Harpo. I think it reflects the ‘silent’ aspect.”

“Ah. Couldn’t you just smear yourself with mud and excrement and mumble Latin to yourself in a corner?”

“What, now?”

“No, no—during the exam.”

Millon shook his head. “Everyone tries that old chestnut. Instant disqualification.” He nodded toward the far paddock. “What’s Tuesday up to?”

“Another Anti-Smite Shield test.”

“Will this one work?”

“Hope springs eternal.”

We watched as the observers were shepherded into the concrete viewing bunker while Tuesday made some trifling adjustments to the defense shield. It was identical to the full-size versions dotted around the country—a large copper-domed head like a mushroom atop a lattice tower. Above the test rig was the smite simulator, a single electrode twenty feet higher than the copper dome, suspended from three towers. This was charged to several trillion volts and would discharge on cue in an attempt to simulate the sort of high-power groundburst that was the Almighty’s favored attempt at cleansing.

As we watched, Tuesday walked to the concrete bunker herself, and a few moments later the domed copper hat of the shield began to rotate slowly. It moved faster and faster until small crackles of electricity started to fire off around the edges and a bluish field began to form in a soft, undulating canopy that reached beyond the tower and to the ground, like a large umbrella.

“Fingers in ears,” I said, and a second or two later a blue flash of lightning descended from the simulator, followed a millisecond later by a loud crack. For a moment I thought the shield had held, but then the spinning copper dome disintegrated into thousands of fragments, some of which were thrown hundreds of feet in the air. Millon and I ducked behind the golf buggy as the worthless shrapnel fell to the ground around us.

“She’ll be disappointed,” I said.

“Always expect a kick in the teeth,” said Millon, “so that when you get a slap in the chops, it seems like a triumph.”

“Listen,” I said, “what do you know about a Goliath employee named Jacob Krantz?”

Before his days as a hermit, Millon de Floss had been editor of Conspiracy Theorist magazine, a position that necessitated he keep a somewhat lower profile these days, as some of his wackier “exclusives” had turned out to be far truer than expected— much to the displeasure of Goliath, who was implicated in almost every conspiracy you cared to invent.

“Krantz?” said Millon. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Does he have a Laddernumber?”

“It’s 673.”

“Wow.”

“Wow indeed. He might be working in the Synthetic Human Division.”

“According to Goliath, there is no Synthetic Human Division. Let me make a few calls.”

He disappeared back into his hermitage, and I watched as the observers trailed out of the bunker to stare sadly at the remains of the defense shield. They had all been driven away by the time I got down there, and I found Tuesday in the bunker, trying to make sense of the vast amount of telemetry generated by the test.

“I’m sorry, Sweetpea,” I said. “It must be a huge disappointment.”

She turned to glower at me. “If you hadn’t sent me to school this morning to prove I was a real teenager, then I might have made this bloody thing work.”

“Really?”