The Woman Who Died a Lot

“I’ll look forward to it.”

We exchanged farewells and walked off. I didn’t speak until we were heading back toward Clary-Lamarr.

“I hate that Phoebe Smalls.”

“Don’t be so cross, Thursday,” said Landen, stifling a smile. “She seemed rather nice. Kind of like you.”

“She’s nothing like me.”

But she was, of course. Just younger. Once we were back in the Skyrail car heading home, Landen passed me his cell phone and I called Braxton to accept the chief librarian job.

“Ballocks,” I said as soon as I had snapped the phone shut.

“Now what?”

“The Tesco/Tresco thing. Before my accident I would have made that connection instantly. I used to be sharper.”

“It’s the Dizuperadol. I said you should stick to just three patches.”

“I know. I hate the stuff, but without it I can barely function.”

Landen laid his hand affectionately on my thigh, and I let my head fall onto his shoulder. We sat like that for several minutes. I wasn’t going to tell him I had upped my patch dosage to four.

“Landen?”

“Yes?”

“Aornis give the mindworm to me, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Landen quietly, “damaging, annoying and potentially destructive of personality and family. And since those memories are as much part of her as you, there’s only one way we’re going to be able to get rid of them.” He patted the pocket where I knew he kept his pistol. “We’re going to deal with the Aornis situation once and for all.”

I looked into Landen’s eyes for a long time. He was deadly serious.

“Is the BookWorld the mindworm?”

“No, that’s real enough.”

“The whole Granny Next thing?”

“No.”

“I’m not me at all but someone else?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Look at your hand.”

So I did, and I was confused, and angry. And not for the first time today, apparently.

7. Monday: Tuesday

Although a “Divine-Induced Destructive Event” is highly tangible, the warnings of that same event remain tiresomely obscure. Even after the Almighty’s Revealment to his creations, the time and place of a pillar of all-cleansing fire is revealed only to a State-Registered Meek—usually in the form of a vision or some other inexplicable sign. Following a rash of false vision claims, the Lord agreed that a secret code word should be given so a genuine divine apparition could be differentiated from, say, a dream.

Charles Fang,

Mankind and the Modern Smite

We stepped off the Skyrail at Aldbourne and picked up our car from the station car park. It hummed quietly up to the house, and after we paused briefly to punch in our security number on the keypad, the gates swung open and we drove in.

We went straight into the garage and parked the car. The Wing Commander was standing at the door waiting for us.

“Password?” he asked.

We always felt happier arriving before darkness fell. Less risk that someone or something might slipp past security.

“My postilion has been struck by lightning,” recited Landen.

“No ring goes like a Ringo goes,” returned the Wing Commander.

The passwords over, the Wingco took our coats and led the way into the house.

“I trust the day went well?” he asked.

“Pretty good,” I replied as we walked into the kitchen. “You’re looking at the new head of the Wessex Library Service.”

“Congratulations,” said the Wingco. “What did you find out about Aornis?”

I handed him the names of the guards and the date and time at which she probably would have arrived at Land’s End International, the usual last stopping-off place before convicts were flown to the small cluster of islands twenty or so miles off Land’s End.

“See what you can find out—the time she arrived at Tresco Supermax, ideally. If she didn’t, we can work backward from there. Did you get the hotpot on?”

“It went on at five.”