The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

I told him he just had to be himself, then jumped out of the car to make sure I hadn’t been hoodwinked. I hadn’t. Through a gap in the tent, I could see a group of dangerous-looking men, all in their own clear plastic cells watching TV and seemingly unaware of the fate that until recently had been about to befall them. There was a sudden shower of hail, and I looked up. The hole in the clouds had widened, and the clouds around it were beginning to rotate faster.

Despite the success of my mission, my heart sank. Most of the financial district of Swindon would be annihilated, and the cathedral, and, worst of all, Joffy.

“So long, Joff,” I said under my breath. It didn’t seem right, but I was at least glad, if such is the right word, that family had helped him be the agent of his chosen end and that somehow the GSD would benefit from his sacrifice.

I felt a lump in my throat, but no tears came. I was a Synthetic, and tear ducts in Day Players don’t reflect emotion.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” said Tim, who had climbed out of the car and was staring at the strange cloud formation. We could see the air suddenly soften with another localized hail shower, and a bolt of lightning plunged to earth somewhere near the M4. Another minute ticked by, and all I could think of was Joffy. The stuff we’d done, the stuff we’d never do.

“You’re going to lose someone, aren’t you?” asked the righteous man, who had been watching me.

“Yes,” I said, “but I won’t be able to weep for him until I’m back in my own body.”

“I’m not sure I under—”

“Hang on,” I said, for I’d just noticed a distant smudge in the low horizon. It was an aircraft of some description, and it seemed to be moving toward us at a good speed. As it grew closer, I heard the distinctive thup-thup-thup of a tiltrotor, and I suddenly grew suspicious that perhaps this was not quite the end of it. The small craft orbited twice, then touched down not fifty feet from us. The engines continued running, and the passenger door opened. I could tell by the labored way in which the passenger clambered out that this was no copy, no Day Player, but an original—in all his obnoxious glory.

It was Jack Schitt.

38.

Friday: The Smiting

Of the six smites (to date) since the Oswestry event in 2002, the scientific community has gathered much relevant data, allowing leading smite researchers to conclude that past unexplained phenomena around the planet might actually have been divine. It is now believed that the unexplained and violent Tunguska event of 1908 was likely a “practice smite,” undertaken by a deity who thought no one would be watching in an empty region of the planet.

Charles Fang, Mankind and the Modern Smite

“Well, well,” said Jack as he walked up, “so Joffy found a righteous man after all? And there we were, making sure they were all either fully booked, dead or defiled. Goes to show: The unworthy can always trust the righteous to louse things up.”

Jack Schitt made a move to his coat, and I pulled out my pistol, only to see my forearm explode as a high-velocity round passed straight through it. The hand, with the gun still in it, went cartwheeling off past the righteous man. It didn’t hurt, and the Day Player’s military self-sealing design parameters had the blood flow stopped in less than two seconds. In an instant I went for my second pistol but stopped when I saw Jack pointing his weapon at the righteous man.

“Thanks for that,” I said in as sarcastic manner as I could, the somewhat distant relationship I had with my disposable body still surprising me.

“My pleasure,” said Jack with a smile. “Always useful to have a sniper covering your back, isn’t it? Crabbe,” he said, addressing his henchman, “would you?”

The Goliath agent I had last seen at the Lobsterhood divested me of my ankle Beretta and my dagger, then handcuffed me by my ankle to one of the marquee poles. He took my left hand and placed my pistol in it, then held my arm tight in the direction of the righteous man, who looked impassively at us both. I tried to move my arm, but I think Crabbe was a Day Player, too, and his two arms were more than a match for my one.

“Smite minus six minutes,” said Crabbe.

Jack lowered his weapon and walked up to me with a supercilious grin.

“It’s over, Thursday. The unrighteous will be destroyed, and you with them.”

“I’m a Day Player,” I told him, “as you well know.”

“Indeed.” He held the cell phone he’d been carrying to his ear. “Are you in place? Good.”

He turned back to me. “I have one of my people in your house at the moment with a weapon pressed against the head of the real you. This is what’s going to happen: The righteous man will be killed in order that the sinful may continue to attract the pillar of fire away from Swindon. I could kill the righteous man myself, but I thought, Hey! Wouldn’t it be more fun if it were Thursday?”

“Go to hell.”

“Undoubtably. Two choices. Option A: You kill the righteous man and we let the the Sleeping Thursday live. Or Option B: I kill the righteous man myself, and the real you is no more. Either way he’s dead, but using Option A you get to survive. What will it be?”

“Do you get some kind of weird kick out of all this?” I asked.

Jack Schitt smiled. “I do, actually. Like having Judith Trask killed. Unnecessary, but with a certain virtuosity in the baseness of the act, don’t you think?”

“So,” I said, “what you didn’t understand about ‘Go to hell’?” He laughed again.