“No, not really. This is me being angry and you being gullible and sensitive when reacting negatively to my wild accusations.”
Tuesday could be very direct when angry—but also quite honest.
“I can think of three things at once, so school isn’t usually a problem,” she said as she calmed. “I’ve just got to fine-tune the algorithm to better predict the Madeupion Field. Do it right and we have over twenty gigawatts of free energy and a vexed deity. Get it wrong and we’ve got seven tons of the most expensive scrap on record.”
“Will you be able to get it finished by Friday?” I asked. “I’m not keen to see Swindon’s downtown disappear in a flash of blue wrath.”
“I’ll figure it out, Mum,” she said with a sigh. “You should have seen their faces. That mockup cost them sixty million to build, and it’s the tenth I’ve destroyed.”
“So you’re sure you’re okay?” I asked as a distinctive thupthup-thup sound heralded the arrival of a tiltrotor aircraft.
“I’ll be fine,” said Tuesday as the small craft appeared above the tree line and folded its rotor panels to landing configuration.
“That’ll be my ride.”
“Where are you going?”
“The Sisterhood is opening their library for scrutiny.”
“Oooh,” said Tuesday, “if you see a copy of Archimedes’ fifth issue of Practical Mechanical Theorems, the one where he outlines how to build a tumble dryer, I’d love a copy.”
17.
Tuesday: The Sisterhood
The first tiltrotor was designed in the early twenties as a novel method of using a ducted fan as a propulsion and lifting mechanism. It took thirty years for a powerful enough engine to be introduced, and even then the craft was not a serious proposition until the introduction of a light and powerful nuclear reactor. Of the craft’s benefits, vertical takeoff and ease of use is their two best, and reactor leaks and the ability to drop out of the sky unannounced their two least.
Jane’s Aviation Digest
The small craft had landed on the front lawn, and Landen was chatting to Finisterre about how the technology had progressed since tiltrotors were used in the Crimea as spotter aircraft, a role in which they had been less than successful. The joke at the time had been “How do you get to own a tiltrotor?” and the answer was “Buy an acre of land in the Crimea and wait.”
“We’d better be going if we’re to make our appointment,” said Finisterre as I arrived. “The Sisterhood can’t abide impunctuality. Will you be coming?”
He was talking to Landen, but I already knew that Landen wouldn’t ever get into one again. Although his initial leg injury had been caused by to a land mine, it was the evac on a medical tiltrotor that had necessitated the partial amputation—the craft had crashed due to a gearbox failure sixteen miles short of the military hospital in Sevastopol, and those jeep-ridden sixteen miles, said Landen, were the most excruciating he had ever known. Still, that was almost thirty years ago, and tiltrotor technology had grown by leaps and bounds since then—especially after Mycroft became involved, which explained why they are no longer used militarily. I kissed Landen, we exchanged passwords again, and I climbed aboard the small craft as Finisterre spooled up the reactor, and few minutes later we had left Aldbourne behind us, passed overhead Marlborough and were skimming low across the Downs.
“How’s your day going?” asked Finisterre.
“Interesting so far,” I replied, and he smiled knowingly. “Wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
“No indeed,” I replied.
We swept past the single induction rail of the Southern Bullet Route and dropped down into the Vale of Pewsey. We flew on in silence for a few minutes until Finisterre called air-traffic control for transit permission into the Salisbury Danger Area and orbited twice around Urchfont while we waited for clearance. I had trained on Salisbury Plain myself on tracked vehicles before being dispatched to the Crimea aged only eighteen. We had been briefed never to stray near the Sisterhood’s hundredacre enclave, and it was hard to claim you didn’t know if you did— the convent’s tower soared two hundred feet above the plains, and the main Venerating Chamber was the size of an airship hangar.
“We’re in,” said Finisterre, and we headed off toward the convent, which even now dominated the landscape, though we were still five miles away. We circled the tower once before coming into a neat landing near the entrance, and while Finisterre conducted the power-down checks, I stepped clumsily out and looked around.
I had never been here before; few had. The Salisbury Plain order of the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster was the hub from where all other orders received instructions and to where all funds were sent. The Lobsterhood had been the nation’s most populous religious order, with over a hundred convents across the land, and although the Global Standard Deity’s unifying action had subsumed many of those within the order, a few had held out, Salisbury among them. But all that defiance had come to nought the day that He had revealed Himself and confirmed that yes, the game was up, there was only One, and all the silly lobster stuff was indeed transparent nonsense, and cower in the presence of Him. The fact that it was a He after all caused a lot of problems with the feminists. But it might have been worse— He could have turned out to have been French, too.
“My name is Sister Megan,” said the greeter nun who had stepped ahead to receive us, “and you are fourteen seconds late. We cannot abide unpunctuality here in the Lobsterhood.”
“We had to orbit for clearance into the zone,” I explained. “My name is Thursday Next.”
Sister Megan gave a sharp cry and covered her mouth with her hand. I had to get used to this. Joffy’s efforts with the GSD had not always been welcomed
, and indeed, before the Lord’s Revealment, over a billion people had wanted him shredded as a heretic.
“Causing trouble already?” asked Finisterre as the greeter nun ran back inside the lobster-shaped double doors.
“I think it’s the connection with my brother. There were many religious orders who found it difficult to accept that they had been idolizing clearly demonstrable falsehoods for hundreds of years.”