The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

It was a dramatic disclosure and presumably, given His omniscience, would already be known to Him.

“You’re threatening to switch allegiances?” I asked incredulously.

“Nothing’s off the table,” he replied. “We thought Diana the Huntress might make a solid alternative. Strong, a good looker and more feminist in her views. Smiting would be off the agenda, and we might tip the current gender imbalance away from the malecentric.”

It was a radical notion, and not one that I thought God would accept without some degree of anger, especially as it flagrantly contravened Article One. I suggested this, but Joffy was well ahead of me.

“According to Expectation-Influenced Probability, if we stop believing in Him, He will cease to exist. It’s a last resort, of course, so He has to know we are serious, and my sacrifice would do it.”

“I’m

not sure I follow.”

“Me neither, but He’s big on self-sacrifice, martyrdom and extreme signs of loyalty. Put it this way,” added Joffy. “I’ve run out of ideas, and this seems the best bet.”

“Joffy . . . ?”

He guessed what I was thinking of.

“I know I’m asking you to do a lot,” he said, “but I can’t have Smite Solutions use the sinful as a smite magnet. You’re going to have to do your best work with this righteous man. We asked you to do it for a reason. Well,” he added with an air of finality, “I guess this is good-bye.”

“The hell it is,” I responded. “I’ll figure something out.”

He laughed, told me he loved me, that I was a good sister, none better, and that Miles would call me nearer the time to tell me where to find the righteous man—but that if I positioned myself near Chiseldon from eleven onward, it might help.

I said I would, and he hung up.

I snapped the phone shut and looked at Landen.

“He’s serious, isn’t he?”

I nodded and called Phoebe. Chiseldon was about ten minutes’ drive from the Wroughton airfield, and I’d doubtless have to fight every step of the way. Goliath would be taking no chances.

“Hey,” I said, “it’s Thursday. Do you have access to a sniper rifle?”

“Of course. What Swindon girl doesn’t?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Oh—right. Well, I need someone to cover my back.” “Is it illegal?”

“Quite possibly.”

“Might I have to kill someone?”

“I’m hoping not,” I said, “but can’t guarantee it.”

There was a pause, and I could sense her reticence. The last time I’d asked her for help, we had—technically speaking at least—sexually assaulted a Goliath Top One Hundred at gunpoint, a consequence of which Judith Trask had been murdered.

“It will involve causing a serious amount of grief for Goliath,” I said, “not to mention humiliation and a potential hundred million-pound loss.”

“Ah!” said Phoebe in a happier tone. “I’m in.”

I told her where to position herself, but after that there was little to do except wait, so once I’d checked that Gavin and Tuesday were working on Uc— they were, I was relieved to find—I made myself a coffee out of habit, then realized I couldn’t drink it, so I smelled it instead. I was amused, in an abstract kind of way, to discover that I could not tell only which country the coffee came from but also the probable region and year of cultivation. I then tuned the wireless to Toad-AM and listened to Lydia Startright’s live broadcast from just outside the Smite Zone. Little seemed to have changed— Lupton Cornball of Goliath came on air to reiterate the lie that the murderers were all willing adherents to their own destruction—and after that I listened to a spokesperson for the GSD, who confirmed that Joffy would indeed be in the cathedral at the Time of Smite and that a last-minute reprieve of the smiting had been turned down due to issues regarding infallibility.

I paced around the kitchen for the next hour and a half, interrupted variously by either Millon, who was still cramming for his hermiting certificate and who wanted testing on logical positivism, or the Wingco, who despite Tuesday’s expectations had been receiving sporadic images all morning from the Dark Reading Matter through Daphne the dodo’s buffer, which was still transmitting sporadically.