I took a deep breath, picked up my suitcase and trundled the pushchair across the road. My pet dodo Pickwick followed with her unruly son Alan padding grumpily after her.
I rang Mum's doorbell and after about a minute a slightly overweight vicar with short brown hair and spectacles answered the door.
'Is that Doofus—?' he said when he saw me, suddenly breaking into a broad grin. 'By the GSD, it is Doofus!'
'Hi, Joffy. Long time no see.'
Joffy was my brother. He was a minister of the Global Standard Deity religion, and although we had had differences in the past, they were long forgotten. I was pleased to see him, and he me.
'Whoa!' he said. 'What's that?'
'That's Friday,' I explained. 'Your nephew.'
'Wow!' replied Joffy, undoing Friday's harness and lifting him out. 'Does his hair always stick up like that?'
'Probably leftovers from breakfast.'
Friday stared at Joffy for a moment, took his fingers out of his mouth, rubbed them on his face, put them in again and offered Joffy his polar bear, Poley.
'Kind of cute, isn't he?' said Joffy, jiggling Friday up and down and letting him tug at his nose. 'But a bit, well, sticky. Does he talk?'
'Not a lot. Thinks a great deal, though.'
'Like Mycroft. What happened to your head?'
'You mean my haircut?'
'So that's what it was!' murmured Joffy. 'I thought you'd had your ears lowered or something. Bit, er . . . bit extreme, isn't it?'
'I had to stand in for Joan of Arc. It's always tricky to find a replacement.'
'I can see why,' exclaimed Joffy, still staring incredulously at my pudding-bowl haircut. 'Why don't you just have the whole lot off and start again?'
'This is Hamlet,' I said, introducing him before he began to feel awkward, 'but he's here incognito so I'm telling everyone he's my cousin Eddie.'
'Joffy,' said Joffy, 'brother of Thursday.'
'Hamlet,' said Hamlet, 'Prince of Denmark.'
'Danish?' said Joffy with a start. 'I shouldn't spread that around if I were you.'
'Why?'
'Darling!' said my mother, appearing behind Joffy. 'You're back! Goodness! Your hair!'
'It's a Joan of Arc thing,' explained Joffy, 'very fashionable right now. Martyrs are big on the catwalk, y'know — remember the Edith Cavell/Tolpuddle look in last month's Femole?'
'He's talking rubbish again, isn't he?'
'Yes,' said Joffy and I in unison.
'Hello, Mum,' I said, giving her a hug, 'remember your grandson?"
She picked him up and remarked how much he had grown. It was unlikely in the extreme that he had shrunk but I smiled dutifully nonetheless. I tried to visit the real world as often as I could but hadn't been able to manage it for at least six months. When she had nearly fainted by hyperventilating with 'Ooohs' and 'Aaaahs' and Friday had stopped looking at her dubiously, she invited us indoors.
'You stay out here,' I said to Pickwick, 'and don't let Alan misbehave himself
It was too late. Alan, small size notwithstanding, had already terrorised Mordecai and the other dodos into submission. They all shivered in fright beneath the hydrangeas.
'Are you staying for long?' enquired my mother. 'Your room is just how you left it.'
This meant just how I left it when I was nineteen, but I thought it rude to say so. I explained that I'd like to stay at least until I got an apartment sorted out, introduced Hamlet and asked whether he could stay for a few days too.
'Of course! Lady Hamilton's in the spare room and that nice Mr Bismarck is in the attic, so he can have the boxroom.'
My mother grasped Hamlet's hand and shook it heartily.
'How are you, Mr Hamlet? Where did you say you were the prince of again?'
'Denmark.'
'Ah! No visitors after seven p.m. and breakfast stops at nine a.m. prompt. I do expect guests to make their own bed and if you need washing done you can put it in the wicker basket on the landing Pleased to meet you. I'm Mrs Next, Thursday's mother.'
'I have a mother,' replied Hamlet gloomily as he bowed politely and kissed my mother's hand. 'She shares my uncle's bed.'
'They should buy another one in that case,' my mother replied, practical as ever. 'They do a very good deal at IKEA, I'm told. Don't use it myself because I don't like all that self-assembly — I mean, what's the point of paying for something you have to build yourself? But it's popular with men for exactly that same reason. Do you like Battenberg?'
'Wittenberg?'
'No, no. Battenberg.'
'On the River Eder?' asked Hamlet, confused over my mother's conversational leap from self-assembly furniture to cake.
'No, silly, on a doily — covered with marzipan.'
Hamlet leaned closer to me.
'I think your mother may be insane — and I should know.'
'You'll get the hang of what she's talking about,' I said, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm.
We walked through the hall to the living room where, after managing to extract Friday's fingers from Mum's beads, we managed to sit down.
'So tell me all your news!' she exclaimed as my eyes flicked around the room, trying to take in all the many potential hazards for the two-year-old.
'Where do you want me to begin?' I asked, removing the vase of flowers from the top of the TV before Friday had a chance to pull them over on himself. 'I had a flurry of things to do before I left. Two days ago I was in Camelot trying to sort out some marital strife and the day before — sweetheart, don't touch that — I was negotiating a pay dispute with the Union of Orcs.'
'Goodness!' replied my mother. 'You must be simply dying for a cup of tea.'
'Please. The BookWorld might be the cat's pyjamas for characterisation and explosive narrative, but you can't get a decent cup of tea for all the bourbon in Hemingway.'
'I'll do it!' said Joffy. 'C'mon, Hamlet, tell me about yourself. Got a girlfriend?'
'Yes — but she's bonkers.'
'In a good way or a bad way?'
Hamlet shrugged.
'Neither — just bonkers. But her brother — hell's teeth! Talk about sprung-loaded . . . !'
Their conversation faded as they disappeared into the kitchen.
'Don't forget the Battenberg,' my mother called after them.
I opened my suitcase and took out a few rattly toys Mrs Bradshaw had given me. Melanie had looked after Friday a lot as she and Commander Bradshaw had no children of their own, what with Melanie being a mountain gorilla, so she had doted on Friday. It had its upsides — he always ate his greens and loved fruit — but I had my suspicions that they climbed on the furniture when I wasn't about, and once I found Friday trying to peel a banana with his feet.
'How's life treating you?' I asked.
'Better for seeing you. It's quite lonely with Mycroft and Polly away at the fourteenth annual Mad Scientists Conference. If it wasn't for Joffy and his partner Miles popping round every day, Bismarck and Emma, Mrs Beatty next door, Eradications Anonymous, my panel-beating class and that frightful Mrs Daniels, I'd be completely alone. Should Friday be in that cupboard?'
I turned, jumped up, grabbed Friday by the straps of his dungarees and gently took the two crystal wineglasses from his inquisitive grasp. I showed him his toys and sat him down in the middle of the room. He stayed put for about three seconds before tottering off in the direction of DH82, Mum's bone-idle Thylacine, who was asleep on a nearby chair.
DH82 yelped as Friday tugged playfully at his whiskers. The Thylacine then got up, yawned, and went to find his supper dish. Friday followed. And I followed Friday.
'—in the ear?' said Joffy as I walked into the kitchen. 'Does that work?'
'Apparently,' replied the prince, 'we found him stone dead in the orchard.'
I scooped up Friday, who was about to tuck into DH82's food, and took him back to the living room.
'Sorry,' I explained, 'he's into everything at the moment. Tell me about Swindon. Much changed?'
'Not really. The Christmas lights have improved tremendously, there's a Skyrail line straight through the Brunei Centre and Swindon now has twenty-six different supermarkets.'
'Can the residents eat that much?'
'We're giving it our best shot.'
Joffy walked back in with Hamlet and placed a tray of tea things in front of us.
'That small dodo of yours is a terror. Tried to peck me when I wasn't looking.'
'You probably startled him. How's Dad?'
Joffy, to whom this was a touchy subject, decided not to join us but play with Friday instead.
'C'mon, young lad,' he said, 'let's get drunk and shoot some pool.'
'Your father has been wanting to get hold of you for a while,' said my mother as soon as Joffy and Friday had gone. 'As you probably guessed he's been having trouble with Nelson again. He often comes home simply reeking of cordite, and I'm really not keen on him hanging around with that Emma Hamilton woman.'
My father was a sort of time-travelling knight errant. He used to be a member of SO-12, the agency charged with policing the timelines: the ChronoGuard. He resigned owing to differences over the way the historical timeline was managed and went rogue. The ChronoGuard decided that he was too dangerous and eradicated him by a well-timed knock at the door during the night of his conception; my aunt April was born instead.
'So Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar?' I asked, recalling Dad's previous problems in the timeline.
'Yes,' she replied, 'but I'm not sure he was meant to. That's why your father says he has to work so closely with Emma.'
Emma, of course, was Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson's consort. It was she who had alerted my father to Nelson's eradication. One moment she had been married to Lord Nelson for over ten years, the next she was a bankrupt lush living in Calais. Must have been quite a shock. My mother leaned closer.
'Between the two of us I'm beginning to think Emma's a bit of a tram— Emma! How nice of you to join us!'
At the doorway was a tall, red-faced woman wearing a brocade dress that had seen better days. Despite the rigours of a lengthy and damaging acquaintance with the bottle, there were the remains of great beauty and charm about her. She must have been dazzling in her youth.
'Hello, Lady Hamilton,' I said, getting up to shake her hand, 'how's the husband?'
'Still dead.'
'Mine too.'
'Bummer.'
'Ah!' I exclaimed, wondering quite where Lady Hamilton picked up the word, although on reflection she probably knew a few worse. 'This is Hamlet.'
'Emma Hamilton,' she cooed, casting an eye in the direction of the unquestionably handsome Dane and giving him her hand, 'Lady.'
'Hamlet,' he replied, kissing her proffered hand, 'Prince.'
Her eyelashes fluttered momentarily.
'A prince? Of anywhere I'd know?'
'Denmark, as it happens.'
'My . . . late boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.'
'We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,' replied the prince with a great deal of charm, 'although I'm not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast — Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.'
'Haunted?'
'One that I know of. What did your late boyfriend do when he wasn't bombarding Danes?'
'Oh, nothing much,' she said offhandedly, 'fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe — it was quite de rigueur at the time.'
There was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself.
'Goodness!' she murmured. 'All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!'
'Right!' said my mother, jumping to her feet. 'That's it! I'm not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!'
Hamlet and Emma looked startled by her outburst but I managed to pull her aside and whispered:
'Mother! Don't be so judgemental — after all, they're both single, and Hamlet's interest in Emma might take her mind off someone else.'
'Someone . . . else?'
You could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly.
'My dears, why don't you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the niche d' amour in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.'
'A good time for a drink, perhaps?' asked Emma hopefully.
'Perhaps,' replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle.
Emma didn't reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of 'Not the French windows' and took him out by way of the kitchen.
'As I was saying,' said my mother as she sat down, 'Emma's a lovely girl. Cake?'
'Please.'
'Here,' she said, handing me the knife, 'help yourself'
'Tell me,' I began, as I cut the Battenberg carefully, 'did Landen come back?'
'That's your eradicated husband, isn't it?' she replied kindly. 'No, I'm afraid he didn't.' She smiled encouragingly. 'You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings — we're meeting tomorrow night.'
In common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every now and then from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who only existed in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen only because I'd told her. To anyone else, Landen's parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday's father was Landen, despite his non-existence, just as my brothers and I had been born despite my father not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes.
'I'll get him back,' I mumbled.
'Who?'
'Landen.'
Joffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn't see why adults couldn't give aeroplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour it. The usually torpid DH82 opened an eye, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds.
'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!' Friday cried indignantly.
'Yes, it was impressive, wasn't it?' I agreed. 'Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast — even for a marshmallow.'
'Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo consequat,' replied Friday with great indignation. 'Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!'
'Serves you right,' I told him. 'Here, have a cucumber sandwich.'
'What did my grandson say?' asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself.
'Oh, that's just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.'
'Lorem . . . what?'
'Lorem Ipsum. It's dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don't know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.'
'I see,' said my mother, not seeing at all.
'How are the cousins?' I asked.
'Wilbur and Orville both run MycroTech these days,' answered Joffy as he passed me a cup of tea. 'They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he's got them on a short leash now.'
Wilbur and Orville were my aunt and uncle's two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up.
'Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?'
'Quite a lot actually. Remember Mycroft's memory erasure machine?'
'Yes and no.'
'Well, they opened a chain of high-street erasure centres called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.'
'Lucrative, I should imagine.'
'Extremely lucrative — right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an if but a when.'
'Dare I ask what happened?'
'I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to "blow" by accident. A certain Mrs Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem-U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.'
'And—?'
'Well, she was accidentally uploaded with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of Name That Fruit! She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and address of one of the men whose exploits are now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.'
'I like a story with a happy ending,' put in my mother.
'In any event,' continued Joffy, 'Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon — if Goliath haven't pinched the idea first.'
'Ah!' I muttered, taking another bite of cake. 'And how is my least-favourite multinational?'
Joffy rolled his eyes.
'Up to no good as usual. They're attempting to switch to a faith-based corporate management system.'
'Becoming a . . . religion?'
'Announced only last month on the suggestion of their own corporate precog, Sister Bettina of Stroud. They aim to switch the corporate hierarchy to a multi-deity plan with their own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and official prayerbook. In the new Goliath, employees will not be paid with anything as unspiritual as money, but faith — in the form of coupons which can be exchanged for goods and services at any Goliath-owned store. Anyone holding Goliath shares will have these exchanged on favourable terms with these "Coupons" and everyone gets to worship the Goliath upper echelons.'
'And what do the "devotees" get in return?'
'Well, a warm sense of belonging, protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife — oh, and I think there's a T-shirt in it somewhere, too.'
'That sounds very Goliath-like.'
'Doesn't it just?' Joffy smiled. 'Worshipping in the hallowed halls of consumer-land. The more you spend, the closer to their "god" you become.'
'Hideous!' I exclaimed. 'Is there any good news?'
'Of course! The Swindon Mallets are going to beat the Reading Whackers to win the Superhoop this year.'
'You've got to be kidding!'
'Not at all. Swindon winning the 1988 Superhoop is the subject of the incomplete seventh Revealment of St Zvlkx. It goes like this: There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of . . . The rest is missing, but it's pretty unequivocal.'
St Zvlkx was Swindon's very own saint, and no child educated here could fail to know about him, including me. His Revealments had been the subject of much conjecture over the years, for good reason — they were uncannily accurate. Even so, I was sceptical — especially if it meant the Swindon Mallets winning the Superhoop. The city's team, despite a surprise appearance at the Superhoop finals a few years back and the undeniable talents of team captain Roger Kapok, were probably the worst side in the country.
'That's a bit of a long shot, isn't it? I mean, St Zvlkx vanished in, what — 1292?'
But Joffy and my mother didn't think it very funny.
'Yes,' said Joffy, 'but we can ask him to confirm it.'
'You can? How?'
'According to his sixth Revealment he's due for spontaneous resurrection at ten past nine the day after tomorrow.'
'But that's remarkable!'
'Remarkable but not unprecedented,' replied Joffy. 'Thirteenth-century seers have been popping up all over the place. Eighteen in the last six months. Zvlkx will be of interest to the faithful and us at the Friends, but the TV networks probably won't cover it. The ratings of Brother Velobius's second coming last week didn't even come close to beating Bonzo the Wonder Hound reruns on the other channel.'
I thought about this for a moment in silence.
'That's enough about Swindon,' said my mother, who had a nose for gossip — especially mine. 'What's been happening to you?'
'How long have you got? What I've been getting up to would fill several books.'
'Then . . . let's start with why you're back.'
So I explained about the pressures of being the head of Jurisfiction, and just how annoying books could be sometimes, and Friday, and Landen, and Yorrick Kaine's fictional roots. On hearing this Joffy jumped.
'Kaine is . . . fictional?'
I nodded.
'Why the interest? Last time I was here he was a washed-up ex-member of the Whig Party.'
'He's not now. Which book is he from?'
I shrugged.
'I wish I knew. Why? What's going on?'
Joffy and Mum exchanged nervous glances. When my mother gets interested in politics, it really means things are bad.
'Something is rotten in the state of England,' murmured my mother.
'And that something is the English Chancellor Yorrick Kaine,' added Joffy, 'but don't take our word for it. He's appearing on Toad News Network's Evade the Question Time here in Swindon at eight tonight. We'll go and see him for ourselves.'
I told them more about Jurisfiction and Joffy, in return, cheerfully reported that attendance at the Global Standard Deity church was up since he had accepted sponsorship from the Toast Marketing Board, a company that seemed to have doubled in size and influence since I was here last. They had spread their net beyond hot bread and now included jams, croissants and pastries in their portfolio of holdings. My mother, not to be outdone, told me she received a little bit of sponsorship money herself from Mr Rudyard's cakes, although she privately admitted that the Battenberg she had served up was actually her own. She then told me in great detail about her aged friends' medical operations, which I can't say I was overjoyed to hear about, and as she drew breath in between Mrs Stripling's appendectomy and Mr Walsh's 'plumbing' problems, a tall and imposing figure walked into the room. He was dressed in a fine morning coat of eighteenth-century vintage, wore an impressive moustache that would have put Commander Bradshaw's to shame, and had an impenousness and sense of purpose that reminded me of Emperor Zhark. 'Thursday,' announced my mother in a breathless tone, 'this is the Prussian Chancellor, Herr Otto Bismarck — your father and I are trying to sort out the Schleswig-Holstein question of 1863-4; he's gone to fetch Bismarck's opposite number from Denmark so they can talk. Otto . . . I mean, Herr Bismarck, this is my daughter, Thursday.'
Bismarck clicked his heels and kissed my hand in an icily polite manner.
'Fräulein Next, the pleasure is all mine,' he intoned in a heavy German accent.
My mother's curious and usually long-dead house guests should have surprised me, but they didn't. Not any more. Not since Alexander the Great turned up when I was nine. Nice enough fellow — but shocking table manners.
'So, how are you enjoying 1988, Herr Bismarck?'
'I am especially taken with the concept of dry cleaning,' replied the Prussian, 'and I see big things ahead for the gasoline engine.' He turned back to my mother. 'But I am most eager to speak to the Danish prime minister. Where might he be?'
'I think we're having a teensy-weensy bit of trouble locating him,' replied my mother, waving the cake knife. 'Would you care for a slice of Battenberg instead?'
'Ah!' replied Bismarck, his demeanour softening. He stepped delicately over DH82 to sit next to my mother. 'The finest Battenberg I have ever tasted!'
'Oh, Herr B,' flustered my mother, 'you do flatter me so!'
She made 'shooing' motions at us out of vision of Bismarck and, obedient children that we are, we withdrew from the living room.
'Well!' said Joffy as we shut the door. 'How about that? Mum's after a bit of Teutonic slap and tickle!'
I raised an eyebrow and stared at him.
'I hardly think so, Joff. Dad doesn't turn up that often and intelligent male company can be hard to find.'
Joffy chuckled.
'Just good friends, eh? Okay. Here's the deal: I'll bet you a tenner Mum and the Iron Chancellor are doing the wild thing by this time next week.'
'Done.'
We shook hands and, with Emma, Hamlet, Bismarck and my mother thus engaged, I asked Joffy to look after Friday so I could slip out of the house to get some air.
I turned left and wandered up Marlborough Road, looking about at the changes that two years' absence had wrought. I had walked this way to school for almost eight years, and every wall and tree and house was as familiar to me as an old friend. A new hotel had gone up on Piper's Way and a few shops in the Old Town had either changed hands or been updated. It all felt very familiar, and I wondered whether the feeling of wanting to belong somewhere would stay with me, or fade, like my fondness for Caversham Heights, the book in which I had made my home these past few years.
I walked down Bath Road, took a right and found myself in the street where Landen and I had lived, before he was eradicated. I had returned home one afternoon to find his mother and father in residence. Since they hadn't known who I was and considered — not unreasonably — that I was dangerously insane, I decided to play it safe today and just walk past slowly on the other side of the street.
Nothing looked very different. A tub of withered Tickia orologica was still on the porch next to an old pogo stick and the curtains in the windows were certainly his mother's. I walked on, then retraced my steps, my resolve to get him back mixed with a certain fatalism, a feeling that perhaps ultimately I wouldn't and I should prepare myself. After all, he had died when he was two years old, and I had no memories of how it had been, only of how things might have turned out had he lived.
I shrugged my shoulders and chastised myself on the morbidity of my own thoughts, then walked towards the Goliath Twilight Homes where my gran was staying these days.
Granny Next was in her room watching a nature documentary called Walking with Ducks when I was shown in by the nurse. Gran was wearing a blue gingham nightie, had wispy grey hair and looked all of her no years. She had got it into her head that she couldn't shuffle off this mortal coil until she had read the ten most boring books, but since 'boring' was about as impossible to quantify as 'not boring' it was difficult to know how to help.
'Shhh!' she muttered as soon as I walked in. 'This programme's fascinating!' She was staring at the TV screen earnestly. 'Just think,' she went on, 'by analysing the bones of the extinct duck Anas platyrhynchos they can actually figure out how it walked.'
I stared at the small screen, where an odd animated bird waddled strangely in a backward direction as the narrator explained just how they had managed to deduce such a thing.
'How could they know that just by looking at a few old bones?' I asked doubtfully, having learned long ago that an 'expert' was usually anything but.
'Scoff not, young Thursday,' replied Gran, 'a panel of expert avian palaeontologists have even deduced that a duck's call might have sounded something like this: "Quock, quock".'
'"Quock?" Hardly seems likely.'
'Perhaps you're right,' she replied, switching off the TV and tossing the remote aside. 'What do experts know?'
Like me, Gran was able to jump inside fiction. I wasn't sure how either of us did it but I was very glad that she could — it was she who helped me to not forget my husband, something at one time I was in clear and real danger of doing thanks to Aornis, the mnemonomorph, of course. But Gran had left me about a year ago, announcing that I could fend for myself and she wouldn't waste any more time labouring for me hand and foot, which was a bit of cheek really, as I generally looked after her. But no matter. She was my gran and I loved her a great deal.
'Goodness!' I said, looking at her soft and wrinkled skin, which put me oddly in mind of a baby echidna I had once seen in National Geographic.
'What?' she asked sharply.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing? You were thinking of how old I was looking, weren't you?'
It was hard to deny it. Every time I saw her I felt she couldn't look any older, but the next time, with startling regularity, she did.
'When did you get back?'
'This morning.'
'And how are you finding things?'
I brought her up to date with current events. She made 'tut-tutting' noises when I told her about Hamlet and Lady Hamilton, then even louder 'tut-tut' noises when I mentioned my mother and Bismarck.
'Risky business, that.'
'Mum and Bismarck?'
'Emma and Hamlet.'
'He's fictional and she's historical — what could be wrong about that?'
'I was thinking,' she said slowly, raising an eyebrow, 'about what would happen if Ophelia found out.'
I hadn't thought of that, and she was right. Hamlet could be difficult but Ophelia was impossible.
'I always thought the reason Sir John Falstaff retired from policing Elizabethan drama was to get away from Ophelia's sometimes unreasonable demands,' I mused, 'such as having petting animals and a goodly supply of mineral water and fresh sushi on hand at Elsinore whenever she was working. Do you think I should insist Hamlet return to Hamlet?'
'Perhaps not right away,' said Gran, coughing into her hanky. 'Let him see what the real world is like. Might do him good to realise it needn't take five acts to make up one's mind.'
She started coughing again so I called the nurse, who told me I should probably leave her. I kissed her goodbye and walked out of the rest home deep in thought, trying to work up a strategy for the next few days. I dreaded to think what my overdraft was like and if I was to catch Kaine I'd be better off inside SpecOps than outside. There were no two ways about it: I needed my old job back. I'd attempt that tomorrow and take it from there. Kaine certainly needed dealing with, and I'd play it by ear at the TV studios tonight. I'd probably have to find a speech therapist for Friday to try to wean him off the Lorem Ipsum, and then, of course, there was Landen. How could I even begin to get someone returned to the here-and-now after they were deleted from the there-and-then by a chroirupt official from the supposedly incorruptible ChronoGuard?
I was jolted from my thoughts as I approached Mum's house. There appeared to be someone partially hidden from view in the alleyway opposite. I nipped into the nearest front garden, ran between the houses, across two back gardens, and then stood on a dustbin to peek cautiously over a high wall. I was right. There was someone watching my mother's house. He was dressed too warmly for summer and was half hidden in the buddleia. My foot slipped on the dustbin and I made a noise. The lurker looked round, saw me and took flight. I jumped over the wall and gave chase. It was easier than I thought. He wasn't terribly fit and I caught up with him as he tried rather pathetically to climb a wall. Pulling the man down, I upset his small duffel bag and out poured an array of battered notebooks, a camera, a small pair of binoculars and several copies of the SpecOps 27 gazette, much annotated in red pen. 'Ow, ow, ow, get off!' he said. 'You're hurting!' I twisted his arm round and he dropped to his knees. I was just patting his pockets for a weapon when another man, dressed not unlike the first, came charging out from behind an abandoned car, holding aloft a tree branch. I spun, dodged the blow and, as the second man's momentum carried him on, I pushed him hard with my foot and he slammed head first into a wall and collapsed unconscious.
The first man was unarmed so I made sure his unconscious friend was also unarmed — and wasn't going to choke on his blood or teeth or something.
'I know you're not SpecOps,' I observed, 'because you're both way too crap. Goliath?'
The first man got slowly to his feet. He was looking curiously at me, rubbing his arm where I had twisted it. He was a large man but not an unkindly looking one. He had short dark hair and a large mole on his chin. I had broken his spectacles; he didn't look Goliath but I had been wrong before.
'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Next. I've been waiting for you for a long, long time.'
'I've been away.'
'Since January 1986. I've waited nearly two and a half years to see you.'
'And why would you do a thing like that?'
'Because,' said the man, producing an identity badge from his pocket and handing it over, 'I am your officially sanctioned stalker.'
I looked at the badge. It was true enough, he was allocated to me. All 100 per cent legit, and I didn't have a say in it. The whole stalker thing was licensed by SpecOps 33, the Entertainments Facilitation Department, which had drawn up specific rules with the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers as to who was allowed to stalk who. It helped to regulate a historically dark business and also graded stalkers according to skill and perseverance. My stalker was an impressive Grade I, the sort who are permitted to stalk the really big celebrities. And that made me suspicious.
'A Grade I?' I queried. 'Should I be flattered? I don't suppose I'm anything above a Grade 8.'
'Not nearly that high,' agreed my stalker, 'more like a Grade 12. But I've got a hunch you're going to get bigger. I latched on to Lola Vavoom in the sixties when she was just a bit part in The Streets of Wootton Bassett and stalked her for nineteen years, man and boy. I only gave her up to move on to Buck Stallion. When she heard she sent me a glass tankard with "Thank you for a great stalk, Lola" etched on it. Have you ever met her?'
'Once, Mr . . .' I looked at the pass before handing it back. '. . . de Floss. Interesting name. Any relation to Candice?'
'The author? In my dreams,' replied the stalker, rolling his eyes. 'But since I'd like us to be friends, do please call me Millon.'
'Millon it is, then.'
And we shook hands. The man on the ground moaned and sat up, rubbing his head.
'Who's your friend?'
'He's not my friend,' said Millon, 'he's my stalker. And a pain in the arse he is too.'
'Wait — you're a stalker and you have a stalker?'
'Of course!' Millon laughed. 'Ever since I published my autobiography, A Stalk on the Wild Side, I've become a bit of a celebrity myself. I even have a sponsorship deal with Compass Rose™ duffel coats. It is my celebrity status that enables Adam here to stalk me. Come to think of it, he's a Grade 3 stalker so it's possible he's got a stalker of his own — haven't you heard the poem?'
Before I could stop him he started to recite:
'Miss Next, this is Adam Gnusense. Adam, Miss Next.'
He waved weakly at me, looked at the bloodied handkerchief and sighed mournfully. I felt rather remorseful all of a sudden.
'Sorry to have hit you, Mr Gnusense,' I said apologetically, 'I didn't know what either of you was up to.'
'Occupational hazard, Miss Next.'
'Hey, Adam,' said Millon, suddenly sounding enthusiastic, 'do you have your own stalker yet?'
'Somewhere,' said Gnusense, looking around, 'a Grade 34 loser. The sad bastard was rummaging through my bins last night. Passe or what!'
'Kids — tsk,' said Millon. 'It might have been de rigueur in the sixties but the modern stalker is much more subtle. Long vigils, copious notes, timed entry and exits, telephoto lenses.'
'We live in sad times,' agreed Adam, shaking his head sadly. 'Must be off. I said I'd keep a close eye on Adrian Lush for a friend.'
He stood up and shambled slowly away down the alley, stumbling on discarded beer cans.
'Not a great talker is old Adam,' said Millon in a whisper, 'but sticks to his target like a limpet. You wouldn't catch him rummaging through dustbins — unless he was giving a masterclass for a few of the young pups, of course. Tell me, Miss Next, where have you been for the past two and a half years? It's been a bit dull here — after the first eighteen months of you not showing up, I'd reduced my stalking to only three nights a week.'
'You'd never believe me.'
'You'd be surprised what I can believe. Aside from stalking I've just finished my first book: A Short History of the Special Operations Network. I'm also editor of Conspiracy Theorist magazine. In between pieces on the very tangible link between Goliath and Yorrick Kaine and the existence of a mysterious beast known only as "Guinzilla", we've run several articles devoted entirely to you and that Jane Eyre thing. We'd love to do a piece on your uncle Mycroft's work, too. Even though we know almost nothing, the conspiracy network is alive with healthy half-truths, lies and supposition. Did he really build an LCD cloaking device for cars?'
'Sort of.'
'And translating carbon paper?'
'He called it rossetionery.'
'And what about the ovinator? Conspiracy Theorist devotes several pages of unsubstantiated rumours to this one invention alone.'
'I don't know. Some sort of machine for cooking eggs, perhaps? Is there anything you don't know about my family?'
'Not a lot. I'm thinking of writing a biography of you. How about: Thursday Next — A Biography?'
'The title? Way too imaginative.'
'So I have your permission?'
'No, but if you can put a dossier together on Yorrick Kaine I'll tell you all about Aornis Hades.'
'Acheron's little sister? It's a deal! Are you sure I can't write your biography? I've already made a start.'
'Positive — if you find anything, knock on my door.'
'I can't. There's a blanket restraining order on all members of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers. We're not allowed within a hundred yards of your place of residence.'
I sighed.
'All right, just wave when I come out.'
De Floss readily agreed to that plan and I left him rearranging his notebook, binoculars and camera and starting to make copious notes on his first encounter with me. I couldn't get rid of the poor deluded fool but a stalker just might — might — be an ally.
3
'How did Kaine rise so quickly to power?' I asked incredulously as Joffy and I queued patiently outside Swindon's Toad News Network studios that evening. 'When I was here last Kaine and the Whig Party were all but washed up after the Cardenio debacle.'
Joffy looked grim and nodded towards a large crowd of uniformed Kaine followers who were waiting in silence for their glorious leader.
'Things haven't been good back here, Thurs. Kaine regained his seat after Samuel Pring was assassinated. The Whigs formed an alliance with the Liberals and elected Kaine as their leader. He has some sort of magnetism, and the numbers that attend his rallies increase all the time. His 'British Unification' stance has had much support — mostly among stupid people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.'
'War with Wales?'
'He hasn't said as such but a leopard doesn't change its spots. He won by a landslide after the previous government collapsed over the "cash for llamas" scandal. As soon as he was in power he proclaimed himself Chancellor. His Unreform Act last year restricted the vote to people with property.'
'How did he get Parliament to agree to that?' I muttered, aghast at the thought of it.
'We're not sure,' said Joffy sadly. 'Sometimes Parliament does the funniest things. But he's not happy just being Chancellor. He's arguing that committees and accountants only slow things down and if people really want trains to run on time and shopping trolleys to run straight, it can only be done by one man wielding unquestionable executive power — a dictator.'
'So what's stopping him?'
'The President,' replied Joffy quietly. 'Formby has told Kaine that if he pushes for a dictatorial election he will stand against him, and Yorrick knows full well that Formby would win — he's as popular now as he ever was.'
I thought for a moment.
'How old is President Formby?'
'That's the problem. He was eighty-four last May.'
We fell silent for a moment, and shuffled with the queue up to the stage door, had our identities checked by two ugly men from SO-6 and were then ushered in. We took our seats at the back and waited patiently for the show to begin. It seemed hard to believe that Kaine had managed to inveigle his way to the top of English politics but, I reflected, anything can happen to a fictional character — a trait that Yorrick obviously exploited to the full.
'See that nasty-looking man on the edge of the stage?' asked Joffy.
'Yes,' I replied, following the line of Joffy's finger to a stocky man with short hair and no visible neck.
'Colonel Fawsten Gayle, Kaine's head of security. Not a man to trifle with. It's rumoured he was expelled from school for nailing his head to a park bench for a bet.'
Standing next to Gayle was a cadaverous man with pinched features and small round spectacles. He was holding a battered red briefcase and was dressed in a rumpled sports jacket and corduroy trousers.
'Who's that?'
'Ernst Stricknene. Kaine's personal adviser.'
I stared at them both for a while and noticed that, despite being barely two feet from one another, they didn't exchange a single word or look. Things in the Kaine camp were far from settled. If I could get close I'd just grab Yorrick and jump him straight to one of Jurisfiction's many prison books and that would be that. It looked as though I had got back home just in time.
I consulted the complimentary copy of The New Oppressor I had found on my seat.
'Why is Kaine blaming the nation's woes on the Danish?' I asked.
'Because economically we're in a serious mess after losing to Russia in the Crimean War. They didn't just get Tunbndge Wells as war reparations but a huge chunk of cash, too. The country is near bankruptcy, Kaine wants to stay in power, so—'
I rang Mum's doorbell and after about a minute a slightly overweight vicar with short brown hair and spectacles answered the door.
'Is that Doofus—?' he said when he saw me, suddenly breaking into a broad grin. 'By the GSD, it is Doofus!'
'Hi, Joffy. Long time no see.'
Joffy was my brother. He was a minister of the Global Standard Deity religion, and although we had had differences in the past, they were long forgotten. I was pleased to see him, and he me.
'Whoa!' he said. 'What's that?'
'That's Friday,' I explained. 'Your nephew.'
'Wow!' replied Joffy, undoing Friday's harness and lifting him out. 'Does his hair always stick up like that?'
'Probably leftovers from breakfast.'
Friday stared at Joffy for a moment, took his fingers out of his mouth, rubbed them on his face, put them in again and offered Joffy his polar bear, Poley.
'Kind of cute, isn't he?' said Joffy, jiggling Friday up and down and letting him tug at his nose. 'But a bit, well, sticky. Does he talk?'
'Not a lot. Thinks a great deal, though.'
'Like Mycroft. What happened to your head?'
'You mean my haircut?'
'So that's what it was!' murmured Joffy. 'I thought you'd had your ears lowered or something. Bit, er . . . bit extreme, isn't it?'
'I had to stand in for Joan of Arc. It's always tricky to find a replacement.'
'I can see why,' exclaimed Joffy, still staring incredulously at my pudding-bowl haircut. 'Why don't you just have the whole lot off and start again?'
'This is Hamlet,' I said, introducing him before he began to feel awkward, 'but he's here incognito so I'm telling everyone he's my cousin Eddie.'
'Joffy,' said Joffy, 'brother of Thursday.'
'Hamlet,' said Hamlet, 'Prince of Denmark.'
'Danish?' said Joffy with a start. 'I shouldn't spread that around if I were you.'
'Why?'
'Darling!' said my mother, appearing behind Joffy. 'You're back! Goodness! Your hair!'
'It's a Joan of Arc thing,' explained Joffy, 'very fashionable right now. Martyrs are big on the catwalk, y'know — remember the Edith Cavell/Tolpuddle look in last month's Femole?'
'He's talking rubbish again, isn't he?'
'Yes,' said Joffy and I in unison.
'Hello, Mum,' I said, giving her a hug, 'remember your grandson?"
She picked him up and remarked how much he had grown. It was unlikely in the extreme that he had shrunk but I smiled dutifully nonetheless. I tried to visit the real world as often as I could but hadn't been able to manage it for at least six months. When she had nearly fainted by hyperventilating with 'Ooohs' and 'Aaaahs' and Friday had stopped looking at her dubiously, she invited us indoors.
'You stay out here,' I said to Pickwick, 'and don't let Alan misbehave himself
It was too late. Alan, small size notwithstanding, had already terrorised Mordecai and the other dodos into submission. They all shivered in fright beneath the hydrangeas.
'Are you staying for long?' enquired my mother. 'Your room is just how you left it.'
This meant just how I left it when I was nineteen, but I thought it rude to say so. I explained that I'd like to stay at least until I got an apartment sorted out, introduced Hamlet and asked whether he could stay for a few days too.
'Of course! Lady Hamilton's in the spare room and that nice Mr Bismarck is in the attic, so he can have the boxroom.'
My mother grasped Hamlet's hand and shook it heartily.
'How are you, Mr Hamlet? Where did you say you were the prince of again?'
'Denmark.'
'Ah! No visitors after seven p.m. and breakfast stops at nine a.m. prompt. I do expect guests to make their own bed and if you need washing done you can put it in the wicker basket on the landing Pleased to meet you. I'm Mrs Next, Thursday's mother.'
'I have a mother,' replied Hamlet gloomily as he bowed politely and kissed my mother's hand. 'She shares my uncle's bed.'
'They should buy another one in that case,' my mother replied, practical as ever. 'They do a very good deal at IKEA, I'm told. Don't use it myself because I don't like all that self-assembly — I mean, what's the point of paying for something you have to build yourself? But it's popular with men for exactly that same reason. Do you like Battenberg?'
'Wittenberg?'
'No, no. Battenberg.'
'On the River Eder?' asked Hamlet, confused over my mother's conversational leap from self-assembly furniture to cake.
'No, silly, on a doily — covered with marzipan.'
Hamlet leaned closer to me.
'I think your mother may be insane — and I should know.'
'You'll get the hang of what she's talking about,' I said, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm.
We walked through the hall to the living room where, after managing to extract Friday's fingers from Mum's beads, we managed to sit down.
'So tell me all your news!' she exclaimed as my eyes flicked around the room, trying to take in all the many potential hazards for the two-year-old.
'Where do you want me to begin?' I asked, removing the vase of flowers from the top of the TV before Friday had a chance to pull them over on himself. 'I had a flurry of things to do before I left. Two days ago I was in Camelot trying to sort out some marital strife and the day before — sweetheart, don't touch that — I was negotiating a pay dispute with the Union of Orcs.'
'Goodness!' replied my mother. 'You must be simply dying for a cup of tea.'
'Please. The BookWorld might be the cat's pyjamas for characterisation and explosive narrative, but you can't get a decent cup of tea for all the bourbon in Hemingway.'
'I'll do it!' said Joffy. 'C'mon, Hamlet, tell me about yourself. Got a girlfriend?'
'Yes — but she's bonkers.'
'In a good way or a bad way?'
Hamlet shrugged.
'Neither — just bonkers. But her brother — hell's teeth! Talk about sprung-loaded . . . !'
Their conversation faded as they disappeared into the kitchen.
'Don't forget the Battenberg,' my mother called after them.
I opened my suitcase and took out a few rattly toys Mrs Bradshaw had given me. Melanie had looked after Friday a lot as she and Commander Bradshaw had no children of their own, what with Melanie being a mountain gorilla, so she had doted on Friday. It had its upsides — he always ate his greens and loved fruit — but I had my suspicions that they climbed on the furniture when I wasn't about, and once I found Friday trying to peel a banana with his feet.
'How's life treating you?' I asked.
'Better for seeing you. It's quite lonely with Mycroft and Polly away at the fourteenth annual Mad Scientists Conference. If it wasn't for Joffy and his partner Miles popping round every day, Bismarck and Emma, Mrs Beatty next door, Eradications Anonymous, my panel-beating class and that frightful Mrs Daniels, I'd be completely alone. Should Friday be in that cupboard?'
I turned, jumped up, grabbed Friday by the straps of his dungarees and gently took the two crystal wineglasses from his inquisitive grasp. I showed him his toys and sat him down in the middle of the room. He stayed put for about three seconds before tottering off in the direction of DH82, Mum's bone-idle Thylacine, who was asleep on a nearby chair.
DH82 yelped as Friday tugged playfully at his whiskers. The Thylacine then got up, yawned, and went to find his supper dish. Friday followed. And I followed Friday.
'—in the ear?' said Joffy as I walked into the kitchen. 'Does that work?'
'Apparently,' replied the prince, 'we found him stone dead in the orchard.'
I scooped up Friday, who was about to tuck into DH82's food, and took him back to the living room.
'Sorry,' I explained, 'he's into everything at the moment. Tell me about Swindon. Much changed?'
'Not really. The Christmas lights have improved tremendously, there's a Skyrail line straight through the Brunei Centre and Swindon now has twenty-six different supermarkets.'
'Can the residents eat that much?'
'We're giving it our best shot.'
Joffy walked back in with Hamlet and placed a tray of tea things in front of us.
'That small dodo of yours is a terror. Tried to peck me when I wasn't looking.'
'You probably startled him. How's Dad?'
Joffy, to whom this was a touchy subject, decided not to join us but play with Friday instead.
'C'mon, young lad,' he said, 'let's get drunk and shoot some pool.'
'Your father has been wanting to get hold of you for a while,' said my mother as soon as Joffy and Friday had gone. 'As you probably guessed he's been having trouble with Nelson again. He often comes home simply reeking of cordite, and I'm really not keen on him hanging around with that Emma Hamilton woman.'
My father was a sort of time-travelling knight errant. He used to be a member of SO-12, the agency charged with policing the timelines: the ChronoGuard. He resigned owing to differences over the way the historical timeline was managed and went rogue. The ChronoGuard decided that he was too dangerous and eradicated him by a well-timed knock at the door during the night of his conception; my aunt April was born instead.
'So Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar?' I asked, recalling Dad's previous problems in the timeline.
'Yes,' she replied, 'but I'm not sure he was meant to. That's why your father says he has to work so closely with Emma.'
Emma, of course, was Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson's consort. It was she who had alerted my father to Nelson's eradication. One moment she had been married to Lord Nelson for over ten years, the next she was a bankrupt lush living in Calais. Must have been quite a shock. My mother leaned closer.
'Between the two of us I'm beginning to think Emma's a bit of a tram— Emma! How nice of you to join us!'
At the doorway was a tall, red-faced woman wearing a brocade dress that had seen better days. Despite the rigours of a lengthy and damaging acquaintance with the bottle, there were the remains of great beauty and charm about her. She must have been dazzling in her youth.
'Hello, Lady Hamilton,' I said, getting up to shake her hand, 'how's the husband?'
'Still dead.'
'Mine too.'
'Bummer.'
'Ah!' I exclaimed, wondering quite where Lady Hamilton picked up the word, although on reflection she probably knew a few worse. 'This is Hamlet.'
'Emma Hamilton,' she cooed, casting an eye in the direction of the unquestionably handsome Dane and giving him her hand, 'Lady.'
'Hamlet,' he replied, kissing her proffered hand, 'Prince.'
Her eyelashes fluttered momentarily.
'A prince? Of anywhere I'd know?'
'Denmark, as it happens.'
'My . . . late boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.'
'We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,' replied the prince with a great deal of charm, 'although I'm not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast — Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.'
'Haunted?'
'One that I know of. What did your late boyfriend do when he wasn't bombarding Danes?'
'Oh, nothing much,' she said offhandedly, 'fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe — it was quite de rigueur at the time.'
There was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself.
'Goodness!' she murmured. 'All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!'
'Right!' said my mother, jumping to her feet. 'That's it! I'm not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!'
Hamlet and Emma looked startled by her outburst but I managed to pull her aside and whispered:
'Mother! Don't be so judgemental — after all, they're both single, and Hamlet's interest in Emma might take her mind off someone else.'
'Someone . . . else?'
You could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly.
'My dears, why don't you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the niche d' amour in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.'
'A good time for a drink, perhaps?' asked Emma hopefully.
'Perhaps,' replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle.
Emma didn't reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of 'Not the French windows' and took him out by way of the kitchen.
'As I was saying,' said my mother as she sat down, 'Emma's a lovely girl. Cake?'
'Please.'
'Here,' she said, handing me the knife, 'help yourself'
'Tell me,' I began, as I cut the Battenberg carefully, 'did Landen come back?'
'That's your eradicated husband, isn't it?' she replied kindly. 'No, I'm afraid he didn't.' She smiled encouragingly. 'You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings — we're meeting tomorrow night.'
In common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every now and then from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who only existed in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen only because I'd told her. To anyone else, Landen's parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday's father was Landen, despite his non-existence, just as my brothers and I had been born despite my father not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes.
'I'll get him back,' I mumbled.
'Who?'
'Landen.'
Joffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn't see why adults couldn't give aeroplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour it. The usually torpid DH82 opened an eye, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds.
'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!' Friday cried indignantly.
'Yes, it was impressive, wasn't it?' I agreed. 'Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast — even for a marshmallow.'
'Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo consequat,' replied Friday with great indignation. 'Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!'
'Serves you right,' I told him. 'Here, have a cucumber sandwich.'
'What did my grandson say?' asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself.
'Oh, that's just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.'
'Lorem . . . what?'
'Lorem Ipsum. It's dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don't know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.'
'I see,' said my mother, not seeing at all.
'How are the cousins?' I asked.
'Wilbur and Orville both run MycroTech these days,' answered Joffy as he passed me a cup of tea. 'They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he's got them on a short leash now.'
Wilbur and Orville were my aunt and uncle's two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up.
'Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?'
'Quite a lot actually. Remember Mycroft's memory erasure machine?'
'Yes and no.'
'Well, they opened a chain of high-street erasure centres called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.'
'Lucrative, I should imagine.'
'Extremely lucrative — right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an if but a when.'
'Dare I ask what happened?'
'I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to "blow" by accident. A certain Mrs Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem-U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.'
'And—?'
'Well, she was accidentally uploaded with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of Name That Fruit! She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and address of one of the men whose exploits are now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.'
'I like a story with a happy ending,' put in my mother.
'In any event,' continued Joffy, 'Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon — if Goliath haven't pinched the idea first.'
'Ah!' I muttered, taking another bite of cake. 'And how is my least-favourite multinational?'
Joffy rolled his eyes.
'Up to no good as usual. They're attempting to switch to a faith-based corporate management system.'
'Becoming a . . . religion?'
'Announced only last month on the suggestion of their own corporate precog, Sister Bettina of Stroud. They aim to switch the corporate hierarchy to a multi-deity plan with their own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and official prayerbook. In the new Goliath, employees will not be paid with anything as unspiritual as money, but faith — in the form of coupons which can be exchanged for goods and services at any Goliath-owned store. Anyone holding Goliath shares will have these exchanged on favourable terms with these "Coupons" and everyone gets to worship the Goliath upper echelons.'
'And what do the "devotees" get in return?'
'Well, a warm sense of belonging, protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife — oh, and I think there's a T-shirt in it somewhere, too.'
'That sounds very Goliath-like.'
'Doesn't it just?' Joffy smiled. 'Worshipping in the hallowed halls of consumer-land. The more you spend, the closer to their "god" you become.'
'Hideous!' I exclaimed. 'Is there any good news?'
'Of course! The Swindon Mallets are going to beat the Reading Whackers to win the Superhoop this year.'
'You've got to be kidding!'
'Not at all. Swindon winning the 1988 Superhoop is the subject of the incomplete seventh Revealment of St Zvlkx. It goes like this: There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of . . . The rest is missing, but it's pretty unequivocal.'
St Zvlkx was Swindon's very own saint, and no child educated here could fail to know about him, including me. His Revealments had been the subject of much conjecture over the years, for good reason — they were uncannily accurate. Even so, I was sceptical — especially if it meant the Swindon Mallets winning the Superhoop. The city's team, despite a surprise appearance at the Superhoop finals a few years back and the undeniable talents of team captain Roger Kapok, were probably the worst side in the country.
'That's a bit of a long shot, isn't it? I mean, St Zvlkx vanished in, what — 1292?'
But Joffy and my mother didn't think it very funny.
'Yes,' said Joffy, 'but we can ask him to confirm it.'
'You can? How?'
'According to his sixth Revealment he's due for spontaneous resurrection at ten past nine the day after tomorrow.'
'But that's remarkable!'
'Remarkable but not unprecedented,' replied Joffy. 'Thirteenth-century seers have been popping up all over the place. Eighteen in the last six months. Zvlkx will be of interest to the faithful and us at the Friends, but the TV networks probably won't cover it. The ratings of Brother Velobius's second coming last week didn't even come close to beating Bonzo the Wonder Hound reruns on the other channel.'
I thought about this for a moment in silence.
'That's enough about Swindon,' said my mother, who had a nose for gossip — especially mine. 'What's been happening to you?'
'How long have you got? What I've been getting up to would fill several books.'
'Then . . . let's start with why you're back.'
So I explained about the pressures of being the head of Jurisfiction, and just how annoying books could be sometimes, and Friday, and Landen, and Yorrick Kaine's fictional roots. On hearing this Joffy jumped.
'Kaine is . . . fictional?'
I nodded.
'Why the interest? Last time I was here he was a washed-up ex-member of the Whig Party.'
'He's not now. Which book is he from?'
I shrugged.
'I wish I knew. Why? What's going on?'
Joffy and Mum exchanged nervous glances. When my mother gets interested in politics, it really means things are bad.
'Something is rotten in the state of England,' murmured my mother.
'And that something is the English Chancellor Yorrick Kaine,' added Joffy, 'but don't take our word for it. He's appearing on Toad News Network's Evade the Question Time here in Swindon at eight tonight. We'll go and see him for ourselves.'
I told them more about Jurisfiction and Joffy, in return, cheerfully reported that attendance at the Global Standard Deity church was up since he had accepted sponsorship from the Toast Marketing Board, a company that seemed to have doubled in size and influence since I was here last. They had spread their net beyond hot bread and now included jams, croissants and pastries in their portfolio of holdings. My mother, not to be outdone, told me she received a little bit of sponsorship money herself from Mr Rudyard's cakes, although she privately admitted that the Battenberg she had served up was actually her own. She then told me in great detail about her aged friends' medical operations, which I can't say I was overjoyed to hear about, and as she drew breath in between Mrs Stripling's appendectomy and Mr Walsh's 'plumbing' problems, a tall and imposing figure walked into the room. He was dressed in a fine morning coat of eighteenth-century vintage, wore an impressive moustache that would have put Commander Bradshaw's to shame, and had an impenousness and sense of purpose that reminded me of Emperor Zhark. 'Thursday,' announced my mother in a breathless tone, 'this is the Prussian Chancellor, Herr Otto Bismarck — your father and I are trying to sort out the Schleswig-Holstein question of 1863-4; he's gone to fetch Bismarck's opposite number from Denmark so they can talk. Otto . . . I mean, Herr Bismarck, this is my daughter, Thursday.'
Bismarck clicked his heels and kissed my hand in an icily polite manner.
'Fräulein Next, the pleasure is all mine,' he intoned in a heavy German accent.
My mother's curious and usually long-dead house guests should have surprised me, but they didn't. Not any more. Not since Alexander the Great turned up when I was nine. Nice enough fellow — but shocking table manners.
'So, how are you enjoying 1988, Herr Bismarck?'
'I am especially taken with the concept of dry cleaning,' replied the Prussian, 'and I see big things ahead for the gasoline engine.' He turned back to my mother. 'But I am most eager to speak to the Danish prime minister. Where might he be?'
'I think we're having a teensy-weensy bit of trouble locating him,' replied my mother, waving the cake knife. 'Would you care for a slice of Battenberg instead?'
'Ah!' replied Bismarck, his demeanour softening. He stepped delicately over DH82 to sit next to my mother. 'The finest Battenberg I have ever tasted!'
'Oh, Herr B,' flustered my mother, 'you do flatter me so!'
She made 'shooing' motions at us out of vision of Bismarck and, obedient children that we are, we withdrew from the living room.
'Well!' said Joffy as we shut the door. 'How about that? Mum's after a bit of Teutonic slap and tickle!'
I raised an eyebrow and stared at him.
'I hardly think so, Joff. Dad doesn't turn up that often and intelligent male company can be hard to find.'
Joffy chuckled.
'Just good friends, eh? Okay. Here's the deal: I'll bet you a tenner Mum and the Iron Chancellor are doing the wild thing by this time next week.'
'Done.'
We shook hands and, with Emma, Hamlet, Bismarck and my mother thus engaged, I asked Joffy to look after Friday so I could slip out of the house to get some air.
I turned left and wandered up Marlborough Road, looking about at the changes that two years' absence had wrought. I had walked this way to school for almost eight years, and every wall and tree and house was as familiar to me as an old friend. A new hotel had gone up on Piper's Way and a few shops in the Old Town had either changed hands or been updated. It all felt very familiar, and I wondered whether the feeling of wanting to belong somewhere would stay with me, or fade, like my fondness for Caversham Heights, the book in which I had made my home these past few years.
I walked down Bath Road, took a right and found myself in the street where Landen and I had lived, before he was eradicated. I had returned home one afternoon to find his mother and father in residence. Since they hadn't known who I was and considered — not unreasonably — that I was dangerously insane, I decided to play it safe today and just walk past slowly on the other side of the street.
Nothing looked very different. A tub of withered Tickia orologica was still on the porch next to an old pogo stick and the curtains in the windows were certainly his mother's. I walked on, then retraced my steps, my resolve to get him back mixed with a certain fatalism, a feeling that perhaps ultimately I wouldn't and I should prepare myself. After all, he had died when he was two years old, and I had no memories of how it had been, only of how things might have turned out had he lived.
I shrugged my shoulders and chastised myself on the morbidity of my own thoughts, then walked towards the Goliath Twilight Homes where my gran was staying these days.
Granny Next was in her room watching a nature documentary called Walking with Ducks when I was shown in by the nurse. Gran was wearing a blue gingham nightie, had wispy grey hair and looked all of her no years. She had got it into her head that she couldn't shuffle off this mortal coil until she had read the ten most boring books, but since 'boring' was about as impossible to quantify as 'not boring' it was difficult to know how to help.
'Shhh!' she muttered as soon as I walked in. 'This programme's fascinating!' She was staring at the TV screen earnestly. 'Just think,' she went on, 'by analysing the bones of the extinct duck Anas platyrhynchos they can actually figure out how it walked.'
I stared at the small screen, where an odd animated bird waddled strangely in a backward direction as the narrator explained just how they had managed to deduce such a thing.
'How could they know that just by looking at a few old bones?' I asked doubtfully, having learned long ago that an 'expert' was usually anything but.
'Scoff not, young Thursday,' replied Gran, 'a panel of expert avian palaeontologists have even deduced that a duck's call might have sounded something like this: "Quock, quock".'
'"Quock?" Hardly seems likely.'
'Perhaps you're right,' she replied, switching off the TV and tossing the remote aside. 'What do experts know?'
Like me, Gran was able to jump inside fiction. I wasn't sure how either of us did it but I was very glad that she could — it was she who helped me to not forget my husband, something at one time I was in clear and real danger of doing thanks to Aornis, the mnemonomorph, of course. But Gran had left me about a year ago, announcing that I could fend for myself and she wouldn't waste any more time labouring for me hand and foot, which was a bit of cheek really, as I generally looked after her. But no matter. She was my gran and I loved her a great deal.
'Goodness!' I said, looking at her soft and wrinkled skin, which put me oddly in mind of a baby echidna I had once seen in National Geographic.
'What?' she asked sharply.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing? You were thinking of how old I was looking, weren't you?'
It was hard to deny it. Every time I saw her I felt she couldn't look any older, but the next time, with startling regularity, she did.
'When did you get back?'
'This morning.'
'And how are you finding things?'
I brought her up to date with current events. She made 'tut-tutting' noises when I told her about Hamlet and Lady Hamilton, then even louder 'tut-tut' noises when I mentioned my mother and Bismarck.
'Risky business, that.'
'Mum and Bismarck?'
'Emma and Hamlet.'
'He's fictional and she's historical — what could be wrong about that?'
'I was thinking,' she said slowly, raising an eyebrow, 'about what would happen if Ophelia found out.'
I hadn't thought of that, and she was right. Hamlet could be difficult but Ophelia was impossible.
'I always thought the reason Sir John Falstaff retired from policing Elizabethan drama was to get away from Ophelia's sometimes unreasonable demands,' I mused, 'such as having petting animals and a goodly supply of mineral water and fresh sushi on hand at Elsinore whenever she was working. Do you think I should insist Hamlet return to Hamlet?'
'Perhaps not right away,' said Gran, coughing into her hanky. 'Let him see what the real world is like. Might do him good to realise it needn't take five acts to make up one's mind.'
She started coughing again so I called the nurse, who told me I should probably leave her. I kissed her goodbye and walked out of the rest home deep in thought, trying to work up a strategy for the next few days. I dreaded to think what my overdraft was like and if I was to catch Kaine I'd be better off inside SpecOps than outside. There were no two ways about it: I needed my old job back. I'd attempt that tomorrow and take it from there. Kaine certainly needed dealing with, and I'd play it by ear at the TV studios tonight. I'd probably have to find a speech therapist for Friday to try to wean him off the Lorem Ipsum, and then, of course, there was Landen. How could I even begin to get someone returned to the here-and-now after they were deleted from the there-and-then by a chroirupt official from the supposedly incorruptible ChronoGuard?
I was jolted from my thoughts as I approached Mum's house. There appeared to be someone partially hidden from view in the alleyway opposite. I nipped into the nearest front garden, ran between the houses, across two back gardens, and then stood on a dustbin to peek cautiously over a high wall. I was right. There was someone watching my mother's house. He was dressed too warmly for summer and was half hidden in the buddleia. My foot slipped on the dustbin and I made a noise. The lurker looked round, saw me and took flight. I jumped over the wall and gave chase. It was easier than I thought. He wasn't terribly fit and I caught up with him as he tried rather pathetically to climb a wall. Pulling the man down, I upset his small duffel bag and out poured an array of battered notebooks, a camera, a small pair of binoculars and several copies of the SpecOps 27 gazette, much annotated in red pen. 'Ow, ow, ow, get off!' he said. 'You're hurting!' I twisted his arm round and he dropped to his knees. I was just patting his pockets for a weapon when another man, dressed not unlike the first, came charging out from behind an abandoned car, holding aloft a tree branch. I spun, dodged the blow and, as the second man's momentum carried him on, I pushed him hard with my foot and he slammed head first into a wall and collapsed unconscious.
The first man was unarmed so I made sure his unconscious friend was also unarmed — and wasn't going to choke on his blood or teeth or something.
'I know you're not SpecOps,' I observed, 'because you're both way too crap. Goliath?'
The first man got slowly to his feet. He was looking curiously at me, rubbing his arm where I had twisted it. He was a large man but not an unkindly looking one. He had short dark hair and a large mole on his chin. I had broken his spectacles; he didn't look Goliath but I had been wrong before.
'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Next. I've been waiting for you for a long, long time.'
'I've been away.'
'Since January 1986. I've waited nearly two and a half years to see you.'
'And why would you do a thing like that?'
'Because,' said the man, producing an identity badge from his pocket and handing it over, 'I am your officially sanctioned stalker.'
I looked at the badge. It was true enough, he was allocated to me. All 100 per cent legit, and I didn't have a say in it. The whole stalker thing was licensed by SpecOps 33, the Entertainments Facilitation Department, which had drawn up specific rules with the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers as to who was allowed to stalk who. It helped to regulate a historically dark business and also graded stalkers according to skill and perseverance. My stalker was an impressive Grade I, the sort who are permitted to stalk the really big celebrities. And that made me suspicious.
'A Grade I?' I queried. 'Should I be flattered? I don't suppose I'm anything above a Grade 8.'
'Not nearly that high,' agreed my stalker, 'more like a Grade 12. But I've got a hunch you're going to get bigger. I latched on to Lola Vavoom in the sixties when she was just a bit part in The Streets of Wootton Bassett and stalked her for nineteen years, man and boy. I only gave her up to move on to Buck Stallion. When she heard she sent me a glass tankard with "Thank you for a great stalk, Lola" etched on it. Have you ever met her?'
'Once, Mr . . .' I looked at the pass before handing it back. '. . . de Floss. Interesting name. Any relation to Candice?'
'The author? In my dreams,' replied the stalker, rolling his eyes. 'But since I'd like us to be friends, do please call me Millon.'
'Millon it is, then.'
And we shook hands. The man on the ground moaned and sat up, rubbing his head.
'Who's your friend?'
'He's not my friend,' said Millon, 'he's my stalker. And a pain in the arse he is too.'
'Wait — you're a stalker and you have a stalker?'
'Of course!' Millon laughed. 'Ever since I published my autobiography, A Stalk on the Wild Side, I've become a bit of a celebrity myself. I even have a sponsorship deal with Compass Rose™ duffel coats. It is my celebrity status that enables Adam here to stalk me. Come to think of it, he's a Grade 3 stalker so it's possible he's got a stalker of his own — haven't you heard the poem?'
Before I could stop him he started to recite:
'No, I hadn't heard that one,' I mused as the second stalker placed a handkerchief on his bleeding lip.
'. . . And so the tabloids do but say,
that stalkers on other stalkers prey,
and these have smaller stalkers to stalk ’em
and so proceed, ad infinitum . . . '
'Miss Next, this is Adam Gnusense. Adam, Miss Next.'
He waved weakly at me, looked at the bloodied handkerchief and sighed mournfully. I felt rather remorseful all of a sudden.
'Sorry to have hit you, Mr Gnusense,' I said apologetically, 'I didn't know what either of you was up to.'
'Occupational hazard, Miss Next.'
'Hey, Adam,' said Millon, suddenly sounding enthusiastic, 'do you have your own stalker yet?'
'Somewhere,' said Gnusense, looking around, 'a Grade 34 loser. The sad bastard was rummaging through my bins last night. Passe or what!'
'Kids — tsk,' said Millon. 'It might have been de rigueur in the sixties but the modern stalker is much more subtle. Long vigils, copious notes, timed entry and exits, telephoto lenses.'
'We live in sad times,' agreed Adam, shaking his head sadly. 'Must be off. I said I'd keep a close eye on Adrian Lush for a friend.'
He stood up and shambled slowly away down the alley, stumbling on discarded beer cans.
'Not a great talker is old Adam,' said Millon in a whisper, 'but sticks to his target like a limpet. You wouldn't catch him rummaging through dustbins — unless he was giving a masterclass for a few of the young pups, of course. Tell me, Miss Next, where have you been for the past two and a half years? It's been a bit dull here — after the first eighteen months of you not showing up, I'd reduced my stalking to only three nights a week.'
'You'd never believe me.'
'You'd be surprised what I can believe. Aside from stalking I've just finished my first book: A Short History of the Special Operations Network. I'm also editor of Conspiracy Theorist magazine. In between pieces on the very tangible link between Goliath and Yorrick Kaine and the existence of a mysterious beast known only as "Guinzilla", we've run several articles devoted entirely to you and that Jane Eyre thing. We'd love to do a piece on your uncle Mycroft's work, too. Even though we know almost nothing, the conspiracy network is alive with healthy half-truths, lies and supposition. Did he really build an LCD cloaking device for cars?'
'Sort of.'
'And translating carbon paper?'
'He called it rossetionery.'
'And what about the ovinator? Conspiracy Theorist devotes several pages of unsubstantiated rumours to this one invention alone.'
'I don't know. Some sort of machine for cooking eggs, perhaps? Is there anything you don't know about my family?'
'Not a lot. I'm thinking of writing a biography of you. How about: Thursday Next — A Biography?'
'The title? Way too imaginative.'
'So I have your permission?'
'No, but if you can put a dossier together on Yorrick Kaine I'll tell you all about Aornis Hades.'
'Acheron's little sister? It's a deal! Are you sure I can't write your biography? I've already made a start.'
'Positive — if you find anything, knock on my door.'
'I can't. There's a blanket restraining order on all members of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers. We're not allowed within a hundred yards of your place of residence.'
I sighed.
'All right, just wave when I come out.'
De Floss readily agreed to that plan and I left him rearranging his notebook, binoculars and camera and starting to make copious notes on his first encounter with me. I couldn't get rid of the poor deluded fool but a stalker just might — might — be an ally.
3
Evade the Question Time
PERFIDIOUS DANES 'HISTORICALLY OUR ENEMY', CLAIMS INSANE HISTORIAN
'Quite frankly, I was yim-pim-pim appalled,' said England's leading mad history scholar yesterday. 'The eighth-century Danish attack on our flibble-flobble sceptred isle is a story of invasion, subjugation, plunder and exploitation that would remain bleep-bleep-baaaaa unequalled until we tried it ourselves many years later.' The confused and barely coherent historian's work has been authenticated by another equally feeble-minded academic, who told us yesterday: 'The Danish invasion began in 786 when the Danes set up a kingdom in East Anglia. They didn't even use their own names either. They preferred to do their brutal work cowardly hiding beneath the pseudonyms of Angles, Bruts, and Flynns.' Further research has shown that the Danes stayed for over four hundred years and were only driven home by the crusading help of our new close friends the French.
Article in the New Oppressor, the official mouthpiece of the Whig Party
'How did Kaine rise so quickly to power?' I asked incredulously as Joffy and I queued patiently outside Swindon's Toad News Network studios that evening. 'When I was here last Kaine and the Whig Party were all but washed up after the Cardenio debacle.'
Joffy looked grim and nodded towards a large crowd of uniformed Kaine followers who were waiting in silence for their glorious leader.
'Things haven't been good back here, Thurs. Kaine regained his seat after Samuel Pring was assassinated. The Whigs formed an alliance with the Liberals and elected Kaine as their leader. He has some sort of magnetism, and the numbers that attend his rallies increase all the time. His 'British Unification' stance has had much support — mostly among stupid people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.'
'War with Wales?'
'He hasn't said as such but a leopard doesn't change its spots. He won by a landslide after the previous government collapsed over the "cash for llamas" scandal. As soon as he was in power he proclaimed himself Chancellor. His Unreform Act last year restricted the vote to people with property.'
'How did he get Parliament to agree to that?' I muttered, aghast at the thought of it.
'We're not sure,' said Joffy sadly. 'Sometimes Parliament does the funniest things. But he's not happy just being Chancellor. He's arguing that committees and accountants only slow things down and if people really want trains to run on time and shopping trolleys to run straight, it can only be done by one man wielding unquestionable executive power — a dictator.'
'So what's stopping him?'
'The President,' replied Joffy quietly. 'Formby has told Kaine that if he pushes for a dictatorial election he will stand against him, and Yorrick knows full well that Formby would win — he's as popular now as he ever was.'
I thought for a moment.
'How old is President Formby?'
'That's the problem. He was eighty-four last May.'
We fell silent for a moment, and shuffled with the queue up to the stage door, had our identities checked by two ugly men from SO-6 and were then ushered in. We took our seats at the back and waited patiently for the show to begin. It seemed hard to believe that Kaine had managed to inveigle his way to the top of English politics but, I reflected, anything can happen to a fictional character — a trait that Yorrick obviously exploited to the full.
'See that nasty-looking man on the edge of the stage?' asked Joffy.
'Yes,' I replied, following the line of Joffy's finger to a stocky man with short hair and no visible neck.
'Colonel Fawsten Gayle, Kaine's head of security. Not a man to trifle with. It's rumoured he was expelled from school for nailing his head to a park bench for a bet.'
Standing next to Gayle was a cadaverous man with pinched features and small round spectacles. He was holding a battered red briefcase and was dressed in a rumpled sports jacket and corduroy trousers.
'Who's that?'
'Ernst Stricknene. Kaine's personal adviser.'
I stared at them both for a while and noticed that, despite being barely two feet from one another, they didn't exchange a single word or look. Things in the Kaine camp were far from settled. If I could get close I'd just grab Yorrick and jump him straight to one of Jurisfiction's many prison books and that would be that. It looked as though I had got back home just in time.
I consulted the complimentary copy of The New Oppressor I had found on my seat.
'Why is Kaine blaming the nation's woes on the Danish?' I asked.
'Because economically we're in a serious mess after losing to Russia in the Crimean War. They didn't just get Tunbndge Wells as war reparations but a huge chunk of cash, too. The country is near bankruptcy, Kaine wants to stay in power, so—'