The Woman Who Died a Lot Read online

  Gordon Von Squid, Tuesday Next: The Early Notions

  We had coffee in the living room. Tuesday went off to jot down an idea she’d had for a device to make yourself aware when sleeping so you’d enjoy it more, and Friday just wandered off. Joffy, Landen, Miles and I talked for a while until Joffy’s assistant called at the door to say that it was time for him to leave. He had to take the Gravitube to Dubai for a meeting in the morning.

  “It was good to see you,” I said, giving him a hug. “And you,” he replied. “My time is not my own these days. I’ll be back in Swindon for the smiting on Friday. If there’s anything you can do to help Tuesday find a way to make the anti-smite tower operational, I’d be grateful.”

  I hugged Miles, too, and they were soon gone, the five-car motorcade vanishing off into the darkness.

  “I wouldn’t have Joffy’s job for anything,” said Landen as we watched them go. “Trying to demand the question of existence from an all-knowing omniscient supreme being takes negotiating to a whole new level.”

  Once the outer gates had shut, the WingCo went to check on security arrangements. There was a high perimeter fence all the way around the house, with razor wire and proximity alarms linked to searchlights and sound cannon, and aside from the odd false alarm, the whole arrangement seemed to function quite well. Once the Wingco had checked that all was well, I walked through the quiet house and found Landen in the office, where he was trying to stay ahead of the paperwork generated by Tuesday’s many patent-licensing deals. We had a business manager and a team of lawyers, but Landen liked to read through most things so he knew what was going on.

  “ Hispano-Fiat is interested in bringing Tuesday’s microkinetic battery system to market in under six years,” said Landen.

  “I’m not surprised. Has she agreed to it?”

  “With the usual nonmilitary rider. Do you want some chocolate? I’ve got a bar hidden at the back of the fridge.”

  He didn’t need to ask twice. “I’ll go,” I said.

  I got up and went though to the kitchen, where the fridge door had been open, something that Friday tended to do these days. I also noticed that he had made himself a sandwich and left it half eaten on the kitchen table. I put it in a Tupperware box, found the bar of chocolate and walked back to the living room.

  “Did Joffy tell you what the ‘alternative plan’ to the Anti-Smite Shield was?” I asked.

  “He only mentioned there was one—no details. Who were you talking to?”

  “No one.”

  “And why do you have a cut above your eye?”

  I touched my hand to my eyebrow and regarded the blood on my fingertips with confusion. “I don’t know.”

  He looked at me for a moment, then put the papers down and went into the kitchen. I heard him say something to somebody, and then I heard a crash as some pots and pans fell to the floor, so I shuffled through to join him. I found him staring into the cupboard where we kept the tins. He turned around and looked at me, mildly confused.

  “What did I come in here for?” he asked.

  “You thought you heard me talking to someone.”

  He looked around. “I did?”

  “Yes. But then I heard you talking to someone.”

  The door swung shut, and it made us both jump.

  “A breeze?”

  Landen and I both quimped—our word for limping quickly— to the hall, expecting to see the front door open, but it was securely bolted.

  “Who were you shouting at?” asked Tuesday, popping her head out from the library.

  “Were we shouting?”

  “Sure—sort of like telling someone to get the effing hell out of the house.”

  Landen and I looked at one another.

  “It wasn’t us.” I said.

  “It sounded like you.”

  “Intruder!” said Tuesday, and she ran past us and up the hallway to the converted butler’s pantry that was now our security nerve center. By the time we’d caught up, she had finished a sweep of the perimeter and was now running a systems diagnostic.

  “Nothing has crossed the boundary,” she said, checking all the monitors. “Last exit point was Granddad.”

  “What’s going on?” said Friday, walking in from the stables.

  “Not sure. Been out on your motorbike?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You smell of hot exhaust.”

  “I do?” he said, sniffing at his clothes. “No, I’ve been in the garage.”

  “Then why do you have grass stuck to your trousers?” asked Tuesday.

  Friday looked at his knees—which did indeed have blades of grass and mud stuck to them.

  We all stared at one another stupidly. A mild sense of occasional confusion was not unusual, especially recently. Every now and then, a small tremor of uncertainty spread around the household like a rash.

  “I think we all need to take a breather,” announced Landen. “We can’t be jumping like idiots every time a mouse farts. We’re all safe and—”

  He stopped in midspeech as a worried expression crossed his face. I sighed inwardly. He’d be mentioning Jenny next.

  “I need to check that Jenny is okay.”

  “I’ll go,” I told him, and took the stairs to the first floor. I didn’t go to the room that we pretended was Jenny’s in order to spare Landen the torment of Aornis’ mindworm, but instead to the Wingco’s.

  I knocked quietly, as I could hear him talking, and when he bade me enter, I walked in.

  There was no one in the room except the Wingco and two empty chairs facing him. I knew who would be in one but wasn’t sure of the other. I nodded in the direction of the second empty chair.

  “It’s a blue monkey named Mr. Snuffles,” explained the Wingco, “an Imaginary Childhood Friend I’m interviewing. His owner has been given two weeks to live, and we’re trying to figure out a way to communicate once Mr. Snuffles moves into the Dark Reading Matter. Is there a problem?”

  “Nothing. I said I’d peek in for Landen and see if Jenny was all right.”

  The Wingco looked momentarily confused. “For Landen?”

  “Yes.”

  There was an odd pause, I felt a draft on the side of my face, and the clock, which had been striking when I walked in, now read five past the hour.

  “Ah, yes,” said the Wingco, “tell Landen Jenny is fine.”

  He nodded toward one of the empty chairs. Jenny, as a figment of Landen’s imagination, was technically the same as an Imaginary Childhood Friend. And that being so, the Wingco was able to see her. He described her as “amusing and charming, but with a streak of melancholy.” It made the whole “Jenny is not real” issue a mite confusing, but if you considered that the only person who could see her wasn’t real either, it helped.

  I thanked the Wingco and left him to Mr. Snuffles.

  Aornis’ ability to alter memories was tiresome, and the mindworm she had given Landen gave me especial reason to despise her. Still, at least after looking at the security images at TJ-Maxx, we had something to work on. We’d find Aornis, no matter where she was hiding. And, being a mnemonomorph, she could be hiding just about anywhere.

  12.

  Tuesday: Library

  The SLS was the Special Library Service’s, the elite forces charged to protect the nation’s literary heritage, either in libraries or in transit. It had taken over many of SO-27’s duties when the latter was disbanded, and its commitment was never in question. All members had sworn to “take a bullet” in order to protect their charges, and an average of three a year did. The SLS was the most respected law-enforcement group in the nation, often featured in movies and on its own TV series. Recruitment was never an issue.

  Mobie Drake, Librarians—Heroes of the New Generation

  It was one of those crisp late-summer mornings, when a drop in the temperature gives the air a sharpness like frost on a beer glass, and the leaves, which had clung desperately to the trees throughout the summer, were now begin
ning to fall upon the ground. I’d missed all this in the BookWorld, for although we had mornings that matched the description, you didn’t really witness them—just the description. In fact, residents of the BookWorld would comment on a beautiful morning in that sort of odd metalanguage they often used: “What a beautifully described morning!”

  Friday was working the early shift for the rest of the week and so was gone by the time we came down, and Tuesday was, as usual, not keen to go school.

  “We’ve discussed this before,” I said in my mildly firm mum voice. “You’re going to have a normal childhood whether you like it or not.”

  She pulled a face. “I have some work to do on the defense shield.”

  “You’ll go to school, my girl—even if only for the morning. Just remember not to take the dopey teenage thing too far.”

  “No flashing?”

  “Right,” I said, “and especially not to Gavin Watkins.”

  She gave a loud harumph and, without another word, got up from the breakfast table and stomped upstairs to get ready for school.

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” asked Landen, sitting down at the table.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, staring after Tuesday. “Whatever we do, it’ll probably turn out to be wrong.”

  “Hurt yourself?” he asked.

  “Where?”

  “On your face. It looks like someone thumped you.”

  “I assure you no one did,” I replied, although I had noticed it myself, as well as several skinned knuckles and two broken fingernails that I had no memory of breaking.

  “And that bandage?” he asked, pointing to my wrapped hand.

  “Oh, that was a burn,” I replied hastily—on a saucepan.”

  I poured some more coffee. I hadn’t burned myself, of course. I had simply covered up the tattoo on the back of my hand that read JENNY IS A MINDWORM so that Landen didn’t see it and go off on a furious rant. What was confusing to me was that I was the one with the warning tattoo—it would have made more sense on Landen’s hand.

  “I’d better make sure Jenny is ready for school,” he said, rising.

  “She’s ready,” I said, “and . . . just doing her homework. I’ll ensure that Tuesday looks after her on the bus in.”

  I repeated the instructions to Tuesday in case Landen was within earshot, and Tuesday acted out her part by saying something to Jenny. I let Tuesday out of the security gate, made sure she was safe onto the school bus, then returned inside. The Wingco was in the kitchen when I got back.

  “Was that Imaginary Childhood Friend of any use?” I asked. “Mr. Snuffles? Not really,” admitted the Wingco. “The trouble with ICFs is that they are invented by children and so don’t have a large vocabulary or sophisticated worldview. It’s an ongoing problem—most of the time we talk about sibling rivalry, the price of sweeties and how repulsive spinach is. Still, I’ll keep at it. Oh, I managed to get some information.”

  “And?”

  “Tresco Supermax was tricky to begin with, but I said I was working for you and eventually got through to Records.”

  “And?”

  “Aornis never arrived. They raised the alarm when the prisoner was two hours overdue. The police were called, then SO-5, and that was it.”

  “Okay,” I said, pinning a large map of southern England on the kitchen wall and drawing a red circle around Swindon with a felt pen. “She left here at one-fifteen P.M. on the second July, 2002 and was being driven toward Cornwall, but she never made it. Have you called Land’s End International? She would have been flown out of there to Tresco.”

  “I’ve got the operations manager calling me back.”

  “Anything on Highsmith and Quinn, the guards?” I asked.

  The Wingco consulted his notes.

  “Quinn died six months ago in a car accident when she ran a red light into the path of a bus. Highsmith quit the prison service after losing Aornis. They were chosen for Aornis duty as they were both completely deaf.”

  “They think she used speech to manipulate memories?”

  “Apparently.”

  “They know nothing about her,” I said with a sigh.

  The Wingco handed me a Post-it with Highsmith’s address on it, and I thanked him.

  “Someone named John Duffy called,” he added.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s your personal assistant at the library and wanted to know when you would be starting work. Apparently they have a lot of ‘pressing issues.’”

  “So do I.”

  We took the car into Swindon and spoke to Highsmith, who was tidying up his allotment now that it was the end of the growing season. Only his speech gave us any clue to his disability—he’d been deaf for so long he had adapted almost perfectly. He was keen to assist us, especially when I told him I could get him Joffy’s autograph, but he was of little help.

  “The last thing I remember was leaving Swindon with Aornis in the back of the van.”

  “By motorway, to Land’s End?”

  “Right. I think I remember turning off the M4 and onto the M5, but I couldn’t swear to it. Next thing I know, I’m sitting on a bench at Carlisle railway station five days later with forty thousand pounds in cash, eight kilos of bootleg Camembert in the car and a wife waiting for me in Wrexham.”

  “You explained all this to SO-5?”

  “Many times. Quinn was the same, only she ‘came to’ a day sooner then me, upside down in a Mercedes she’d bought for cash two hours previously. There was an iguana on the backseat, and the trunk was full of rabbits.”

  I exchanged looks with Landen. One of Aornis’ little memory tricks was to make you think you were someone you weren’t, then send you off to cause mayhem on a five-day nonrecall bender. We thanked Highsmith, who told us that on the plus side he now had a very lovely wife and two-year-old daughter— and when no one claimed the cheese, he was allowed to keep it.

  “That was a waste of a morning,” said Landen, once we had dropped into Yo! Toast for a coffee and a bowl of crusty toastettes.

  “Perhaps,” I mused, thinking of the tattoo on my hand. I needed to ask Swindon’s lone tattooist at Image Ink if she knew why I’d had it done on me rather than Landen, but I wanted to do it on my own—he didn’t need to have a panic.

  “I’m going to walk up to the library,” I said, “to have a look at my new office.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, no,” I said hurriedly. “I’d like to do this on my own. I won’t be long. New password?”

  “How about me saying, ‘Nothing should disturb . . .’ and then you finish it by saying, ‘. . . that condor moment’?”

  “Condor moment. Very random. Got it.”

  We agreed to meet in Shabitat in an hour as they were having a closing-down sale, and I walked out of the Brunel Centre. I looped up and around Commercial Road and then, once I was halfway up, remembered that I was supposed to be visiting the tattooist. I was closer to the library by now, so I elected to visit her on my way back and arrived outside the library ten minutes later, my leg feeling sore and tired. It was just over a mile, and this was the first time I’d done a walk that long. Before the accident I could have run it in a couple of minutes.

  The Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library was a large, glassy and very angular building sixteen stories high, at the corner of Emlyn and Commercial. Libraries had always been a priority for the Commonsense Party along with training, educational standards, national exercise programs and preschool assistance for mothers, and the sleek and brightly colored building was only two years old.

  I announced myself to the receptionist, who went into a frantic lather, dialed a number with shaky hands and announced “She’s here!” breathlessly down the line. While we waited, she simply stared at me, transfixed.

  “Nice building,” I said by way of conversation.

  “Yes it is isn’t it? Gosh we love it here and we’re so glad it’s you finally we might be
able to get something done around here especially sorting out the budget ha-ha-ha you’ll speak to the council won’t you I have a daughter I need to pay through school she has only one leg and can’t—”

  And she fainted clean away, having failed to take a breath.

  “She does that a lot,” said a voice behind me. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  I turned to see a slightly built man who had the upright manner of someone in the military and was perfectly presented in a neat pinstripe suit.

  “Welcome to the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso’s Drinks Not Included Library Service,” he said, “I’m John Duffy, your personal assistant. Everyone calls me Duffy.”

  I knew him by sight and reputation, although we’d never met. He was a decorated ex–Special Library Services operative, invalided out after a riot gun had exploded in the Guildford Wicks Aircraft Supplies Try Us First Library. It was during a demonstration by Shakespeare followers, incensed that the town council had downgraded Will from “Poet Saint” to “Eternal Bard.” The explosion sent a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera slamming into Duffy’s face with such force that it blinded him in one eye and transferred the text of the book permanently into his cheek and forehead. It made him look a bit severe but at least gave him something to read while shaving.

  “Your reputation precedes you,” I said. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”

  He nodded politely. “May I show you around?”

  “Thank you,” I replied, gazing about at the magnificently bizarre building, an odd mix of randomly shaped modernism with large voids, oddly shaped glass panels, bright colors and soaring internal verticals. “It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

  “Designed by Will Alsop just before he went sane,” replied Duffy. “We were very lucky. I understand you know Colonel Wexler, who heads up the SLS?”