The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“Don’t worry, we won’t use Pickwick,” said Tuesday. “There are plenty of other dodos around, and so long as we get one that is pre-V4 with the old-style brain, we’ll be laughing.”

“Okay, then,” I said as the security gate’s buzzer sounded. “Keep me posted.”

It was Stig outside the gate, so I let him in. He had a cup of tea and talked obsessively about the weather for ten minutes, something that, along with tea and kicking balls about, was very neanderthal, leading some paleontologists to speculate that neanderthal behavior might have somehow crossed over to the English in the distant past.

Millon and Landen came in to listen too, and the reason for Stig’s visit was not long in coming.

“That Synthetic Thursday we retired,” he said. “We made . . . discoveries.”

“Such as?”

“She low-budget, no-frills model. Nothing designed to last— skeleton, musculature, endocrine system—low-quality engineering. All internal organs not required removed and body cavity stuffed with slow-release glucose compound that looks and smells like nougat. She burn brightly twenty-four hours, then downhill. Within three days she poisoned by own waste products.”

“Unpleasant.”

“They designed to be euthanized after only twenty-four.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Disposable models like these called Day Players. They used internally at Goliath when extra staff needed daily basis. If lot of extra photocopying needed, chit for a Day Player made to stationery store—extra pair of hands. Makes much more financial sense than a temping agency, and no security issues.”

“It’s the reason they can’t regulate body heat that well,” added Millon. “Within an office environment, they never needed to.”

“Are they not illegal?” asked Landen. “Synthetics were banned almost as soon as they were invented.”

“There’s a loophole,” said Millon. “So long as they never leave the island of Goliathopolis, they’re quite legal.”

“Why would they have Day Players look like me?”

“A company in-joke most likely,” suggested Millon. “My sources tell me that Day Players have transferable skill adaptations, so you don’t have to teach them everyone’s name again and where the photocopier paper is stored. The technology might have advanced since then to a full Cognitive Transfer System.”

“Say that again?”

He did, and we pondered over the possibility of what a Cognitive Transfer System might potentially mean. At its most complex, eternal life in a series of hosts, and at its least complex a way to carry out potentially fatal repairs inside nuclear reactors.

“Krantz,” said Landen softly, “was probably a Day Player himself. It would explain why he’s down here alive and not up in Goliathopolis dead.”

“When precisely did he die?” I asked.

“Sunday morning.”

I looked at Krantz’s Gravitube ticket, the one I’d found in the Formby Suite.

I thought it over for a moment.

“Okay, how about this: He activates his own Day Player at least an hour before he dies of an aneurysm, so he achieves full consciousness and memory download, then the Day Player catches the midday Gravitube to Clary-Lamarr with five unactivated Synthetics in Tupperware sarcophagi on his baggage manifest. He checks in to the hotel and then activates the first Thursday this morning.”

“How did he know he was going to have a brain aneurysm?” said Millon. “It’s not something you can predict, is it?”

“You have something there.”

“And why is he on holiday in Swindon with five—now four— ersatz Thursdays fresh-packed in Tupperware?”

“You have something there, too,” I conceded. “But what we do know is that somewhere in the city is a Day Player who’s been going for two and a half days out of a maximum three. He’ll probably be in pain and a bit panicky and will certainly be dead by midnight—but he’ll have the answers.”

We all exchanged glances.

“Here’s the plan,” said Landen. “I’ll search hotels, Stig can check out boardinghouses, and Millon can put his ear to the ground. No one could move that amount of Tupperware around the city without arousing suspicions.”