First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

“No, no, Mum—there is no band.”

“He’s definitely doing his band thing,” I assured him, inviting them in and picking the telephone off the hall table. “I’ll call Toby’s dad. They use their garage for practice. It’s the perfect venue—both Toby’s parents are partially deaf.”

“Then there’s not much point in phoning them, now, is there?” said the cockier of Friday’s friends.

“What’s your name?”

“Nigel,” said the one who had spoken, a bit sheepishly.

“No one likes a smart-ass, Nigel.”

I stared at him, and he looked away, pretending to find some fluff on his uniform.

“Hi, is that Toby’s dad?” I said as the phone connected. “It’s Friday’s mum here…. No, I’m not like that—it only happens in the book. My question is: Are the boys jamming in your garage?”

I looked at Friday and his friends.

“Not for at least three months? I didn’t know that. Thank you. Good night.”

I put the phone down.

“So where is he?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” replied the other Friday, “and since he’s a free radical whose movements are entirely independent of the SHE, we have no way of knowing where or when he is. The feckless, dopey, teenage act was a good one and had us all fooled—you especially.”

I narrowed my eyes. This was a surprising development. “What are you saying?”

“We’ve had some new information, and we think Friday might be actually causing the nondiscovery of the technology—conspiring with his future self to overthrow the ChronoGuard!”

“Sounds like a trumped-up bullshit charge for you to replace him,” I said, beginning to get annoyed.

“I’m serious, Mum. Friday is a dangerous historical fundamentalist who will do whatever it takes to achieve his own narrow agenda—to keep time as it was originally meant to run. If we don’t stop him, then the whole of history will roll up and there’ll be nothing left of any of us!”

“If he’s so dangerous,” I said slowly, “then why haven’t you eradicated him?”

Friday took a deep breath. “Mum? Like…duh. He’s a younger version of me and the future director-general. If we get rid of him, we get rid of ourselves. He’s clever, I’ll grant him that. But if he can stop time travel from being discovered, then he knows how it was invented in the first place. We need to speak to him. Now—where is he?”

“I don’t rat out my son, son,” I said in a mildly confusing way.

“I’m your son, Mum.”

“And I wouldn’t rat you out either, Sweetpea.”

Friday took a step forward and raised his voice a notch. “Mum, this is important. If you have any idea where he is, then you’re going to have to tell us—and don’t call me Sweetpea in front of my friends.”

“I don’t know where he is—Sweetpea—and if you want to talk to me in that tone of voice, you’ll go to your room.”

“This is beyond room, Mother.”

“Mum. It’s Mum. Friday always calls me Mum.”

“I’m Friday, Mum—your Friday.”

“No,” I said, “you’re another Friday—someone he might become. And do you know, I think I prefer the one who can barely talk and thinks soap is a type of TV show?”

Friday glared at me angrily. “You’ve got ten hours to hand him over. Harboring a time terrorist is a serious offense, and the punishment unspeakably unpleasant.”

I wasn’t fazed by his threats.