First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

“Of course!”

“Then, by definition, so does he. Why don’t you take your SO-12 buddies and go play in the timestream until dinner?”

Friday made a harrumph noise, turned on his heels and departed, with his friends following quickly behind.

I closed the door and walked through to the hall where Landen was leaning on the newel post staring at me. He’d been listening to every word.

“Pumpkin, just what the hell’s going on?”

“I’m not sure myself, darling, but I’m beginning to think that Friday’s been making monkeys out of the pair of us.”

“Which Friday?”

“The hairy one that grunts a lot. He’s not a dozy slacker after all—he’s working undercover as some sort of historical fundamentalist. We need some answers, and I think I know where to find them. Friday may have tricked his parents, the SHE and half the ChronoGuard, but there’s one person no teenage boy ever managed to fool.”

“And that is?”

“His younger sister.”

“I can’t believe it took you so long to figure out,” said Tuesday, who agreed to spill the beans on her brother for the bargain price of a new bicycle, a thirty-pound gift card to MathWorld and lasagna three nights in a row. “He didn?

??t stomp on Barney Plotz either—he forged the letters and the phone call. He needed the time to conduct what he called his…investigations. I don’t know what they were, but he was at the public library a lot—and over at Gran’s.”

“Gran’s? Why Gran’s? He likes his food.”

“I don’t know,” said Tuesday, thinking long and hard about it. “He said it was something to do with Mycroft and a chronuption of staggering proportions.”

“That boy,” I muttered grimly, “has got some serious explaining to do.”

30.

Now Is the Winter

One of the biggest wastes of money in recent years was the Anti-Smite shield, designed to protect mankind (or Britain, at the very least) from an overzealous deity eager to cleanse the population of sin. Funded initially by Chancellor Yorrick Kaine, the project was halted after his ignominious fall from grace. Canceled but not forgotten, the network of transmission towers still lies dotted about the country, a silent testament to Kaine’s erratic and somewhat costly administration.

M y mother answered the door when we knocked, and she seemed vaguely surprised to see us all. Landen and I were there as concerned parents, of course, and Tuesday was there as she was the only one who might be able to understand Mycroft’s work, if that was what was required.

“Is it Sunday lunchtime already?” asked my mother.

“No, Mother. Is Friday here?”

“Friday? Goodness me, no! I haven’t seen him for over—”

“It’s all right, Gran,” came a familiar voice from the living-room door. “There’s no more call for subterfuge.”

“It was Friday—our Friday, the grunty, smelly one, who up until an hour ago was someone we thought wouldn’t know what “subterfuge” meant, let alone be able to pronounce it. He had changed. There seemed to be a much more upright bearing about him. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t dragging his feet when he walked, and he actually looked at us when he spoke. Despite this, he still seemed like a sad-teenager cliché: spots, long unkempt hair, and with clothes so baggy you could dress three people out of the material and still have enough to make some curtains.

“Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

I fixed him with my best “Son, you are in so much trouble” look. “You’d be amazed what I can understand.”

“Okay,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “You’ve heard that the ChronoGuard is using time-travel technology now in the almost certain knowledge that it’s invented in the future?”

“I get the principle,” I replied somewhat guardedly, as I still had no idea how you could use something that had yet to be invented.