The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“And house prices are tumbling,” said another. “If I wanted to sell, I’d have to accept half of what I paid for it.”

“And what did you pay for it?” I asked. “Just out of interest.”

“A hundred pounds. They’re dirt cheap because no one wants to live here.”

“We get occasional Backflashes, too,” said the fourth.

“And what did you pay for it?” I asked. “Just out of interest.”

“A hundred pounds. They’re dirt cheap because no one wants to live here.”

“We get occasional Backflashes, too,” said the fourth, “but we only know that from external observers. Ooh, look,” he added, pointing to a woman standing two hundred yards away who was waving a red flag. “Lori says we’ve just had one.”

Most of their problems could be solved simply by moving away. None of the protesters were the original residents, who had all been compensated generously and wisely moved out or taken up agritemporal farming. We listened to them for just long enough to get their respect, but not so long that our ears started bleeding.

“Does anyone know who posted these?” asked Friday, holding up the fifteen envelopes when there was a lull in the conversation.

“Let me see,” said the one who seemed to be in charge. He examined the postmarks and passed them to a second man, who looked at them, nodded, then passed them back.

“That would have been the Manchild,” he said, nodding toward the disused facility. “He made a rare appearance to post them.”

“Do you know why?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

“George!” said the first. “You can’t encourage people to go . . . in there.”

There followed an argument in which the more moderate members of the group thought it insane that anyone would go any closer than the thousand yards we were at present and some other members who thought we should do as we wanted, then a third part of the group who didn’t know what they wanted but just liked to argue.

“Hang on,” said another, who had just noticed that Lori two hundred yards away was now frantically waving a yellow flag. “Gravity wave coming our way.”

And we hurriedly moved to the other side of the road as the wave moved past, bending the shadows cast by the fence as it went and drawing dirt and debris from the road closer to the fence.

“You don’t want to meet the Manchild,” said one protester, whose name was Ken. “He’s—”

“Everyone should know what has happened here,” interrupted another. “If you see him, take a picture so we can use his suffering to advance our own agenda—No, hang on, what I meant was so we can get him the help he deserves.”

The arguing continued with increased vitriol until Friday said, “I would have become the sixth director general of ChronoGuard.”

The protesters all fell silent and looked at one another nervously. When the leader spoke again, it was in a quiet, respectful tone.

“You’re going to need gravity suits.”

28.

Wednesday: The Manchild

The D-H 87-B Mobile Localized Temporal Field Generator, colloquially known as a “gravity suit,” was developed and built by Dover-Percival Aerospace, one of the main contractors for ancillary equipment to the time industry. The first suits were introduced in 1938 but were prone to leaks and malfunctions. They could function only at a limit of Dilation .32 and had a limited range due to their clockwork mechanism. Later suits greatly improved upon this, and the D-H114 of 1978 was the last improvement upon the line and could increase the variable-mass substrate to a staggering .88 of the infinite.

Norman Scrunge, Time Industry Historian

They kept the gravity suits in the abandoned school, and we were measured precisely for size, as an ill-fitting suit could give you “old feet,” which was not recommended. After we were weighed, had our density checked and then our center of balance ascertained by being made to lie on a tilting bed, we were helped into the hardshell suits after first having to remove anything of greater than bone density from our pockets. I’d worn a gravity suit once before, but a long time ago. It was when Dad was still at the ChronoGuard, before the regrettable Sarah Wade stretching incident brought the SO-12 Bring a Child to Work Days to a rapid end.

The suits looked old and worn on the outside but almost brand new on the inside, which was at least some comfort. Friday pointed out that the suits had been built in 1992 and had long surpassed their four-thousand-year design limit, but I simply shrugged. The dilation level inside the facility was a life-frittering D=.31, and if we didn’t wear gravity suits, we’d be lucky to get out within ten months. Once the suits were sealed and tested for leaks, the helmets were latched in place and the power-supply and life-support units placed on our backs.

“Comfortable?” yelled the protester named George.

“Not at all!” I yelled back. “Bloody heavy, in fact—I can hardly move.”