“She’s been leaving messages on my phone. The Blyton Modernists apparently took umbrage at Mrs. Hilly’s demand that females in the books should be seen doing more cooking and cleaning, and they threatened to ‘rough her up.’”
“Then you’ve got something to talk about.”
“Gee, thanks.”
We walked out of the Adelphi, an
d Mrs. Hilly pulled up in her Austin-Maserati. I introduced them to each other.
“Can I leave my car here and drive yours?” asked Phoebe with an eager gleam in her eye.
We made it to the Happy Wok in record time. Phoebe’s driving was as fast as Mrs. Hilly’s but a little less terrifying.
24.
Wednesday: Blyton
The Office for Ultimate Risk is one of the many departments within the Ministry of National Statistics. Although it was originally an “experimental” department, the statisticians at Ultimate Risk proved their worth by predicting the entire results of of three football World Cups in succession, a finding that led to the discontinuation of football as a game and the results being calculated instead. The Asteroid Strike Likelihood Committee is based within the department and takes thousands of factors into account when calculating the risk factor.
Dr. S. A. Orbiter, The Earthcrossers
“Have you seen the news?” asked Landen when we were all seated about twenty minutes later, the three of us smelling of hot exhaust and burned rubber. I read the news story he had indicated on page four, sandwiched between an article suggesting which obscure illness would be most fashionable in the spring and the best way to achieve the neanderthal look then very much in vogue. It was about HR-6984: The Asteroid Strike Likelihood Committee had recalculated the possibility of a cataclysmic impact as up from 34 percent to 68 percent, which was the first time it had gone above a fifty-fifty chance in ninety years.
“Was this to do with the ChronoGuard Destiny Aware meeting last night?” I asked. “I saw Mr. Chowdry of the ASLC.”
“It seems so.”
“But none of the ex–potential employees were stated as actually dying with the strike,” I said, “only before it—accident, murder, but none by the strike itself.”
“Good job, too. If a single one had been killed by the asteroid, then the likelihood would have jumped even higher— perhaps to as much as ninety-eight percent.”
“Has there been much panic over the figures?” I asked.
“I’ve been listening on the radio, but not much. Anyone over forty isn’t worried because they’ll probably be dead anyway by 2041, and to anyone under twenty, thirty-seven years is a time too long to comprehend. The middle group is jittery but sanguine— after all, seventy-two percent is still a twenty-eight percent chance it won’t happen, and as we’ve seen before, wishful thinking and being easily distracted are powerful evolutionary survival tools. Ooooh, look,” he added, as his eyes had also been scanning the menu. “They’ve got a special on crispy duck.”
“Have you talked to Friday about the new figures?” I asked. “After all, it’s those blasted Letters of Destiny that have caused our chances to drop.”
“He says it all looks very dodgy, and not just from a mathematical point of view. I think he wants you to go with him to the old Kemble Timepark this afternoon.”
“Any idea why?”
“He said something about ‘inferring a narrative’ from the Destiny Aware letters, and no, I have no idea what it means either—but he seems very intent about it. He resigned his job this morning on the basis that he’ll be in custody from Friday morning anyway.”
“Because he’s going to murder Gavin Watkins?”
“Right. He thinks HR-6984 might have something to do with it, and how the potential future him was going to tackle the asteroid strike.”
“Ah.”
This was something that had been bothering Friday for a while. He knew vaguely from the various meetings he’d had with his future self over the years that he would have saved the world numerous times, but it was only when his summarization papers arrived that he knew HR-6984’s aversion would have been the first. His big test, so to speak—the apocalypse avoidance that made his name.
“Were you right to bring along Mrs. Hilly?” asked Landen, indicating where Phoebe and Mrs. Hilly were having an animated conversation on whether Noddy could be viewed as a classic in the same way as Huckleberry Finn could be seen as a classic and, if so, whether it meant a Grade II Protected Book Status could be enforced.
“I had no choice,” I said. “I needed a lift.”
“Ah. Do you want to share a crispy duck with me?”
“Yes, so long as you don’t hog all the hoisin.”