First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

“Listen, if Friday doesn’t retake his seat at the head of the ChronoGuard and use his astonishing skills to somehow save us, then everything that we’ve worked toward will be undone as soon as we hit Time Zero.”

“I think I get it. Then why is Friday not following his destined career?”

“I’ve no idea. We always had him down as dynamic and aggressively inquisitive when he was a child—what happened?”

I shrugged. “All kids are like that today. It’s a modern thing, caused by too much TV, video games and other instant-gratification bullshit. Either that—or kids are exactly the same and I’m getting crusty and intolerant in my old age. Listen, I’ll do what I can.”

Scintilla thanked me, and I joined Friday and Landen outside.

“I don’t want to work in the time industry, Mum. I’d only break some dumb rule and end up eradicated.”

“My eradication was pretty painless,” reflected Landen. “In fact, if your mother hadn’t told me about it, I never would have known it happened.”

“That doesn’t help, Dad,” grumbled Friday. “You were reactualized—what about Granddad? No one can say whether he exists or not—not even him.”

I rested my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t pull away this time.

“I know, Sweetpea. And if you don’t want to join, no one’s going to make you.”

He was quiet for a while, then said, “Do you have to call me Sweetpea? I’m sixteen.”

Landen and I looked at each other, and then we took the tram back home. True to his word, Bendix had slipped us back a few minutes to just before we went in, and as we rattled home in silence, we passed ourselves arriving.

“You know that yellow rod Bendix showed us?” said Friday, staring out the window.

“Yes?”

“It was a half second of snooker ball.”

15.

Home Again

Noting with dismay that most cross-religion bickering occurred only because all the major religions were convinced they were the right one and every other religion was the wrong one, the founders of the Global Standard Deity based their fledgling “portmanteau” faith on the premise that most religions want the same thing once all the shameless, manipulative power play had been subtracted: peace, stability, equality and justice—the same as the nonfaiths. As soon as they found that centralizing thread that unites all people and made a dialogue of sorts with a Being of Supreme Moral Authority mostly optional, the GSD flourished.

F riday went to his room in a huff as soon as we got in. Mrs. Berko-Boyler told us that the girls were fine and that she had folded all the washing, cleaned the kitchen, fed Pickwick and made us all cottage pie. This wasn’t unusual for her, and she scoffed at any sort of payment, then shuffled off home, muttering darkly about how if she’d killed her husband when she’d first thought of it, she’d be “out of prison by now.”

“Where’s Jenny?” I asked Landen, having just gone upstairs to check. “She’s not in her room.”

“She was just in the kitchen.”

The phone rang, and I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“It’s Millon,” came a soft voice, “and I’m sorry to call you at home.”

“Where are you?”

“Look out the window.”

I did as he asked and saw him wave from his usual spot between the compost heap and the laurels. Millon de Floss, it should be explained, was my official stalker. Even though I had long ago dropped to the bottom of the Z-class celebrity list, he had insisted on maintaining his benign stalkership because, as he explained it, “we all need a retirement hobby.” Since he had shown considerable fortitude during a sojourn into the Elan back in ’88, I now counted him as a family friend, something that he always denied, when asked. “Friendship,” he intoned soberly, “always damages the pest factor that is the essence of the bond between stalker and stalkee.” None of the kids were bothered by him at all, and his early-warning capabilities were actually very helpful—he’d spotted Felix8, after all. Not that stalking was his sole job, of course. Aside from fencing cheese to the east of Swindon, he edited Conspiracy Theorist magazine and worked on my official biography, something that was taking longer than we had both thought.

“So what’s the problem? You still up for the cheese buy this evening?” I asked him.

“Of course—but you’ve got visitors. A car on the street with two men in it and another man climbing over the back wall.”

I thanked him and put the phone down. I’d made a few enemies in the past, so Landen and I had some prearranged contingency measures.