'Thursday Next' (№4) - Something rotten

Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, 18 July 1988

It was the following morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ring finger and the complete absence of a wedding band. Mum walked in wrapped in a dressing gown and with her hair in curlers, fed DH82, let Alan out of the broom cupboard where we had to keep him these days and pushed the delinquent dodo outside with a mop. He made an angry plinking noise, then attacked the boot-scraper.

'What's wrong, sweetheart?'

'It's Landen.'

'Who?'

'My husband. He was reactualised last night but only for about two hours.'

'My poor darling! That must be very awkward.'

'Awkward? Extremely. I climbed naked into bed with Mr and Mrs Parke-Laine.'

My mother went ashen and dropped a saucer.

'Did they recognise you?'

'I don't think so.'

'Thank the GSD for that!' she gasped, greatly relieved. Being embarrassed in public was something she cared to avoid more than anything else, and having a daughter climbing into bed with patrons of the Swindon Toast League was probably the biggest faux pas she could think of.

'Good morning, pet,' said Mycroft, shuffling into the kitchen and sitting down at the breakfast table. He was my extraordinarily brilliant inventor uncle, and apparently had just returned from the 1988 Mad Scientists Conference, or MadCon '88 as it was known.

'Uncle,' I said, probably with less enthusiasm than I should have mustered, 'how good to see you again!'

'And you, my dear,' he said kindly. 'Back for good?'

'I'm not sure,' I replied, thinking about Landen. 'Aunt Polly well?'

'In the very best of health. We've been to MadCon — I was given a lifetime achievement award for something but for the life of me I can't think what, or why.'

It was a typically Mycroft statement. Despite his undoubted brilliance, he never thought he was doing anything particularly clever or useful — he just liked to tinker with ideas. It was his Prose Portal invention which had got me inside books in the first place. He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago.

'Did Goliath ever bother you again?' I asked. 'After you came back, I mean?'

'They tried,' he replied softly, 'but they didn't get anything from me.'

'You wouldn't tell them anything?'

'No. It was better than that. I couldn't. You see, I can't remember a single thing about any of the inventions they wanted me to talk about.'

'How is that possible?'

'Well,' replied Mycroft, taking a sip of tea, 'I'm not sure, but logically speaking I must have invented a memory erasure device or something and used it selectively on myself and Polly — what we call the Big Blank. It's the only possible explanation.'

'So you can't remember how the Prose Portal actually works?'

'The what?'

'The Prose Portal. A device for entering fiction.'

'They were asking me about something like that, now you mention it. It would be very intriguing to try and redevelop it but Polly says I shouldn't. My lab is full of devices, the purpose of which I haven't the foggiest notion about. An ovinator, for example — it's clearly something to do with eggs, but what?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, perhaps it's all for the best. These days I only work for peaceful means. Intellect is worthless if it isn't for the betterment of us all.'

'I'll agree with you on that one. What work were you presenting to MadCon '88?'

'Theoretical Nextian mathematics, mostly,' replied Mycroft, warming to the subject dearest to his heart — his work. 'I told you all about Nextian geometry, didn't I?'

I nodded.

'Well, Nextian number theory is very closely related to that, and in its simplest form allows me to work backwards to discover the original sum from which the product is derived.'

'Eh?'

'Well, say you have the numbers twelve and sixteen. You multiply them together and get 192, yes? Now, in conventional maths if you were given the number 192 you would not know how that number was derived. It might just as easily have been three times sixty-four or six times thirty-two or even 194 minus two. But you couldn't tell just from looking at the number alone, now, could you?'

'I suppose not.'

'You suppose wrong,' said Mycroft with a smile. 'Nextian number theory works in an inverse fashion from ordinary maths — it allows you to discover the precise question from a stated answer.'

'And the practical applications of this?'

'Hundreds.' He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it over. I unfolded it and found a simple number written upon it: 2216091 -1, or two raised to the power of two hundred and sixteen thousand and ninety-one, minus one.

'It looks like a big number.'

'It's a medium—sized number,' he corrected.

'And?'

'Well, if I was to give you a short story of ten thousand words, instructed you to give a value for each letter and punctuation mark and then wrote them down, you'd get a number with sixty-five thousand or so digits. All you need to do then is to find a simpler way of expressing it. Using a branch of Nextian maths that I call FactorZip we can reduce any sized number to a short, notated style.'

I looked at the number in my hand again.

'So this is?'

'A FactorZipped Sleepy Hollow. I'm working on reducing all the books ever written to a number less than fifty digits long. Makes you think, eh? Instead of buying a newspaper every day you'd simply jot down today's number and pop it in your Nexpanding calculator to read it.'

'Ingenious!' I breathed.

'It's still early days but I hope one day to be able to predict a cause simply by looking at the event. And after that, trying to construct unknown questions from known answers.'

'Such as?'

'Well, the answer: "Good lord, no, quite the reverse!" I've always wanted to know the question to that.'

'Right,' I replied, still trying to figure out how you'd know by looking at the number nine that it had got there by being three squared or the square root of eighty-one.

'Isn't it just?' he said with a smile, thanking my mother for the bacon and eggs she had just put down in front of him.

Lady Hamilton's departure at 8.30 was really only sad for Hamlet. He went into a glowering mood and made up a long soliloquy about his heart that was aching fit to break and how cruel was the hand that fate had dealt him. He said that Emma was his one true love and her departure made his life bereft; a life that had little meaning and would be better ended — and so on and so forth until eventually Emma had to interrupt him and thank him but she really must go or else she'd be late for something she couldn't specify. So he then screamed abuse at her for five minutes, told her she was a whore and marched out, muttering something about being a chameleon. With him gone we could all get on with our goodbyes.

'Goodbye, Thursday,' said Emma, holding my hand, 'you've always been very kind to me. I hope you get your husband back. Would you permit me to afford you a small observation that I think might be of help?'

'Of course.'

'Don't let Smudger dominate the forward hoop positions. He works best in defence, especially if backed up by Biffo — and play offensively if you want to win.'

'Thank you,' I said slowly, 'you're very kind.'

I gave her a hug and my mother did too — a tad awkwardly as she had never fully divested herself of the suspicion that Emma had been carrying on with Dad. Then, a moment later, Emma vanished — which must be what it's like when Father arrives and stops the clock for other people.

'Well,' said my mother, wiping her hands on her pinafore, 'that's her gone. I'm glad she got her husband back.'

'Yes,' I agreed somewhat diffidently, and walked off to find Hamlet. He was outside, sitting on the bench in the rose garden, deep in thought.

'You okay?' I asked, sitting down next to him.

'Tell me truthfully, Miss Next. Do I dither?'

'Well — not really.'

'Truthfully now!'

'Perhaps ... a bit.'

Hamlet gave out a groan and buried his face in his hands.

'Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! A slave to this play with contradictions so legion that scholars write volumes attempting to explain me. One moment I love Ophelia, the next I treat her cruelly. I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. By all accounts my father was a war-hungry monster — was Claudius's act of assassination so bad after all? Did I really see a ghost of my father or was it Fortinbrass in disguise, trying to sow discord within Denmark? How long did I spend in England? How old am I? I've watched sixteen different film adaptations of Hamlet, two plays, read three comic books and listened to a wireless adaptation. Everything from Olivier to Gibson to Barrymore to William Shatner in Conscience of the King.'

'And?'

'Every single one of them is different.'

He looked around in quiet desperation for his skull, found it and then stared at it meditatively for a few moments before continuing:

'Do you have any idea the pressure I'm under being the world's leading dramatic enigma?'

'It must be intolerable.'

'It is. I'd feel worse if anyone else had figured me out — but they haven't. Do you know how many books there are about me?'

'Hundreds?'

'Thousands. And the slanders they write! The Oedipal thing is by far the most insulting. The goodnight kiss with Mum has got longer and longer. That Freud fellow will have a bloody nose if ever I meet him. My play is a complete and utter mess — four acts of talking and one of action. Why does anyone trouble to watch it?'

His shoulders sagged and he appeared to sob quietly to himself. I rested a hand on his shoulder.

'It is your complexity and philosophical soul-searching that we pay money to see — you are the quintessential tragic figure, questioning everything, dissecting all life's shames and betrayals. If all we wanted was action, we'd watch nothing but Chuck Norris movies. It is your journey to resolving your demons that makes the play the prevaricating tour de force that it is.'

'All four and a half hours of it?'

'Yes,' I said, wary of his feelings, 'all four and a half hours of it.'

He shook his head sadly.

'I wish I could agree with you but I need more answers, Horatio.'

'Thursday.'

'Yes, her too. More answers and a new facet to my character. Less talk, more action. So I have secured the services . . . of a conflict resolution consultant.'

This didn't sound good at all.

'Conflict resolution? Are you sure that's wise?'

'It might help me resolve matters with my uncle — and that twit Laertes.'

I thought for a moment. An all-action Hamlet might not be such a good idea, but since he had no play to return to it at least gave me a few days' breathing space. I decided not to intervene for the time being.

'When are you talking to him?'

He shrugged.

'Tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after. Conflict resolution advisers are pretty busy, you know.'

I breathed a sigh of relief. True to form, Hamlet was still dithering. But he had brightened up having come to a decision of sorts and continued in a more cheery tone:

'But that's enough about me. How goes it with you?'

I gave him a brief outline, beginning with Landen's re-eradication and ending with the importance of finding five good players to help Swindon win the Superhoop.

'Hmm,' he replied as soon as I had finished, 'I've got a plan for you. Want to hear it?'

'As long as it's not about where Biffo should play.'

He shook his head, looked around carefully and then lowered his voice.

'Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then — and this is the important bit — do nothing at all until you absolutely have to — and then make sure everyone dies.'

'Thanks,' I said at length, I'll remember that.'

'Plink!' said Alan, who had been padding grumpily around the garden.

'I think that bird is looking for trouble,' observed Hamlet.

Alan, who clearly didn't like Hamlet's attitude, decided to attack and made a lunge at Hamlet's shoe. It was a bad move. The Prince of Denmark leapt up, drew his sword and before I could stop him made a wild slash in Alan's direction. He was a skilled swordsman and did no more damage than to pluck the feathers off the top of Alan's head. The little dodo, who now had a bald patch, opened his eyes wide and looked around him with a mixture of horror and awe at the small feathers that were floating to the ground.

'Any more from you, my fine feathered friend,' announced Hamlet, replacing his sword, 'and you'll be in the curry!'

Pickwick, who had been watching from a safe corner near the compost heap, boldly strode out and stood defiantly between Alan and Hamlet. I'd never seen her acting brave before, but I suppose Alan was her son, even if he was a hooligan. Alan, either terrified or incensed, stood completely motionless, beak open.

'Telephone for you,' my mother called out. I walked into the house and picked up the receiver. It was Aubrey Jambe. He wanted me to speak to Alf Widdershaine to get him out of retirement, and also to know whether I had found any new players yet.

'I'm working on it,' I said, rummaging through the Yellow Pages under 'sports agents'. 'I'll call you back. Don't lose hope, Aubrey.'

He hurrumphed and rang off. I called Wilson Lonsdale & Partners, England's top sports agents, and was delighted to hear there were any number of world-class croquet players available; sadly the interest evaporated when I mentioned which team I represented.

'Swindon?' said one of Lonsdale's associates. 'I've just remembered — we don't have anyone on our books at all.'

'I thought you said you had?'

'It must have been a clerical error. Good day.'

The line went dead. I called several others and received a similar response from all of them. Goliath and Kaine were obviously covering all their bases.

Following that I called my old coach, Alf Widdershaine, and after a long chat managed to persuade him to go down to the stadium and do what he could. I called Jambe back to tell him the good news about Alf, although I thought it prudent to hide the lack of new players from him for the time being.

I thought about Landen's existence problem for a moment and then found the number of Julie Aseizer, the woman at Eradications Anonymous who had got her husband back. I called her and explained the situation.

'Oh yes!' she said helpfully. 'My Ralph flickered on and off like a faulty light bulb until his uneradication held!'

I thanked her and put the receiver down, then checked my finger for a wedding ring. It still wasn't there.

I glanced into the garden and saw Hamlet walking on the lawn, deep in thought — with Alan following him at a safe distance. As I watched, Hamlet turned to him and glared. The small dodo went all sheepish and laid his head on the ground in supplication. Clearly, Hamlet wasn't just a fictional Prince of Denmark, but also something of an alpha dodo.

I smiled to myself and wandered into the living room, where I found Friday building a castle out of bricks with Pickwick helping. Of course, 'helping' in this context means 'watching'. I glanced at the clock. Time for work. Just when I could do with some relaxing brick-building therapy. Mum agreed to look after Friday and I gave him a kiss goodbye.

'Be good.'

'Arse.'

'What did you say?'

'Pikestaff.'

'If those are rude Old English words, St Zvlkx is in a lot of trouble — and so are you, my little fellow. Mum, sure you're okay?'

'Of course. We'll take him to the zoo.'

'Good. No, wait — we?'

'Bismarck and I.'

'Mum!?'

'What? Can't a more or less widowed woman have a bit of male company from time to time?'

'Well,' I stammered, feeling unnaturally shocked for some reason, 'I suppose there's no reason why not.'

'Good. Be off with you. After we've gone to the zoo we might drop in at the tearooms. And then the theatre.'

She had started to go all dreamy so I left, shocked not only that mother might be even considering some sort of a fling with Bismarck, but that Joffy might have been right.

27

Weird Shit on the M4

'George Formby was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904. He followed his father into the music hall business, adopted the ukulele as his trademark and by the time the war broke out he was a star of variety, pantomime and film. During the first years of the war, he and his wife Beryl toured extensively for ENSA, entertaining the troops as well as making a series of highly successful movies. When invasion of England was inevitable, many influential dignitaries and celebrities were shipped out to Canada. Moving underground with the English resistance and various stalwart regiments of the Local Defence Volunteers, Formby manned the outlawed "Wireless St George" and broadcast songs, jokes and messages to secret receivers across the country. The Formbys used their numerous contacts in the North to smuggle Allied airmen to neutral Wales and form resistance cells that harried the Nazi invaders. In post-war republican England he was made nonexecutive President for life.'

JOHN WILLIAMS — The Extraordinary Career of George Formby

I avoided the news crews who were waiting for me at the SpecOps building and parked up at the rear. Major Drabb was waiting for me as I walked into the entrance lobby. He saluted smartly but I detected a slight reticence about him this morning. I handed him another scrap of paper.

'Good morning, Major. Today's assignment is the Museum of the American Novel in Salisbury.'

'Very . . . good, Agent Next.'

'Problems, Major?'

'Well,' he said, biting his lip nervously, 'yesterday you had me searching the library of a famous Belgian and today the Museum of the American Novel. Shouldn't we be searching more . . . well, Danish facilities?'

I pulled him aside and lowered my voice.

'That's precisely what they would be expecting us to do. These Danes are clever people. You wouldn't expect them to hide their books somewhere as obvious as the Wessex Danish Library, now, would you?'

He smiled and tapped his nose.

'Very astute, Agent Next.'

Drabb saluted again, clicked his heels and was gone. I smiled to myself and pressed the elevator call button. As long as Drabb didn't report to Flanker I could keep this going all week.

Bowden was not alone. He was talking to the last person I would expect to see in a LiteraTec office: Spike.

'Yo, Thursday,' he said.

'Yo, Spike.'

He wasn't smiling. I feared it might be something to do with Cindy, but I was wrong.

'Our friends in SO-6 tell us there's some seriously weird shit going down on the M4,' he announced, 'and when someone says "weird shit" they call—'

'—you.'

'Bingo. But the weird shit merchant can't do it on his own, so he calls—'

'—me.'

'Bingo.'

There was another officer with them. He wore a dark suit typical of the upper SpecOps divisions, and he looked at his watch in an unsubtle manner.

'Time is of the essence, Agent Stoker.'

'What's the job?' I asked.

'Yes,' returned Spike, whose somewhat laid-back attitude to life-and-death situations took a little getting used to, 'what is the job?'

The suited agent looked impassively at us both.

'Classified,' he announced, 'but I am authorised to tell you this:Unless we get |||||||| back in under |||||||| — ||||| hours then ||||||| will seize ultimate executive |||| and you can ||||| goodbye to any semblance of |||||||.'

'Sounds pretty ****ing serious,' said Spike, turning back to me. 'Are you in?'

'I'm in.'

We were driven without explanation to the roundabout at Junction 16 of the M4 motorway. SO-6 were National Security, which made for some interesting conflicts of interest. The department that protected Formby also protected Kaine. And for the most part the SO-6 agents looking after Formby worked against Kaine's SO-6 operatives, who were more than keen to see him gone. SpecOps factions always fought, but rarely from within the same department. Kaine had a lot to answer for.

In any case, I didn't like them and neither did Spike, and whatever it was they wanted it would have to be pretty weird. No one calls Spike until every avenue has been explored. He is the last line of defence before rationality starts to crumble.

We pulled on to the verge, where two large black Bentley limousines were waiting for us. Parked next to them were six standard police cars, the occupants looking bored and waiting for orders. Something pretty big was going down.

'Who's she?' demanded a tall agent with a humourless demeanour as soon as we stepped from the car.

'Thursday Next,' I replied, 'SO-27.'

'Literary Detectives?' he sneered.

'She's good enough for me,' said Spike. 'If I don't get my own people you can do your own weird shit.'

The SO-6 agent looked at the pair of us in turn.

'ID.'

I showed him my badge. He took it, looked at it for a moment, then passed it back.

'My name is Colonel Parks,' said the agent, 'I'm head of Presidential Security. This is Dowding, my second-in-command.'

Spike and I exchanged looks. The President. This really was serious.

Dowding, a laconic figure in a dark suit, nodded his greeting as Parks continued:

'Firstly I must point out to you both that this is a matter of great national importance and I am asking for your advice only because we are desperate. We find ourselves in a head-of-state deficit condition by virtue of a happenstance of a high other-worldliness possibility situation — and we hoped you might be able to reverse-engineer us out of it.'

'Cut the waffle,' said Spike, 'what's going on?'

Parks's shoulders slumped and he took off his dark glasses.

'We've lost the President.'

My heart missed a beat. This was bad news. Really bad news. The way I saw it, the President wasn't due to die until next Monday, after Kaine and Goliath had been neutered. Missing or dying early allowed Kaine to gain power and start the Third World War a week before he was meant to — and that was certainly not in the game plan.

Spike thought for a moment and then said:

'Bummer.'

'Quite.'

'Where?'

Parks stretched his arm towards the busy traffic speeding past on the motorway.

'Somewhere out there.'

'How long ago?'

'Twelve hours. Chancellor Kaine has got wind of it and he's pushing for a parliamentary vote to establish himself dictator at six o'clock this evening. That gives us less than eight hours.'

Spike nodded thoughtfully.

'Show me where you last saw him.'

Parks snapped his fingers and a black Bentley drew up alongside. We climbed in and the limo joined the M4 in a westerly direction, the police cars dropping in behind to create a rolling roadblock. Within a few miles our lane of the busy thoroughfare was deserted and quiet. As we drove on, Parks explained what had happened. President Formby was being driven from London to Bath along the M4, and somewhere between Junctions 16 and 17 — where we now were — he vanished.

The Bentley glided to a halt on the empty asphalt.

'The President's car was the centre vehicle in a three-car motorcade,' explained Parks as we got out. 'Saundby's car was behind, I was with Dowding in front, and Mallory was driving the President. At this precise point I looked behind and noticed that Mallory was indicating to turn off. I saw them move on to the hard shoulder and we pulled over immediately.'

Spike sniffed the air.

'And then what happened?'

'We lost sight of the car. We thought it had gone over the embankment but when we got there — nothing. Not a bramble out of place. The car just vanished.'

We walked to the edge and looked down the slope. The motorway was carried above the surrounding countryside on an earth embankment; there was a steep slope that led down about fifteen feet through ragged vegetation to a fence. Beyond this was a field, a concrete bridge over a drainage ditch and beyond that, about half a mile distant, a row of white houses.

'Nothing just vanishes,' said Spike at last. 'There is always a reason. Usually a simple one, sometimes a weird one — but always a reason. Dowding, what's your story?'

'Pretty much the same. His car started to pull over, then just, well, vanished from sight.'

'Vanished?'

'More like melted, really,' said a confused Dowding.

Spike rubbed his chin thoughtfully and bent down to pick up a handful of roadside detritus. Small granules of toughened glass, shards of metal and wires from the lining of a car tyre. He shivered.

'What is it?' asked Parks.

'I think President Formby's gone . . . deadside.'

'Then where's the body? In fact, where's the car?'

'There are three types of dead,' said Spike, counting on his fingers. 'Dead, undead, and semi-dead. Dead are what we call in the trade "spiritually bereft" — the life force is extinct. Those are the lucky ones. Undead are the "spiritually challenged" that I seem to spend most of my time dealing with. Vampires, zombies, bogles and what have you.'

'And the semi-dead?'

'Spiritually ambiguous. Those that are moving on from one state to another or are in a spiritual limbo — what you and I generally refer to as ghosts.'

Parks laughed out loud and Spike raised an eyebrow, the only outward sign of indignation I had ever seen him make.

'I didn't ask you along to listen to some garbage about ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, Officer Stoker.'

'Don't forget "things that go bump in the night",' countered Spike. 'You won't believe how bad a thing can bump if you don't deal with it quick.'

'Whatever. As far as I can see there is one state of dead and that's "not living". Now, do you have anything useful to add to this investigation or not?'

Spike didn't answer. He stared hard at Parks for a moment and then scrambled down the embankment towards a withered tree. It had leafless branches that looked incongruous among the summer greenery, and the plastic bags that had caught in its branches moved lazily in the breeze. Parks and I looked at one another then slid down the bank to join him. We found Spike examining the short grass with great interest.

'If you have a theory you should tell us,' said Parks, leaning against the tree. 'I'm getting a bit bored with all this New Age mumbo-jumbo.'

'We all visit the realm of the semi-dead at some point,' continued Spike, picking at the ground with his fingers like a chimp checking a partner for fleas, 'but for most of us it is only a millisecond as we pass from one realm to the next. Blink and you'll miss it. But there are others. Others who loiter around in the world of the semi-dead for years. The "spiritually ambiguous" who don't know they are dead, or, in the case of the President, are there by accident.'

'And—?' asked Parks, who was becoming less keen on Spike with each second that passed. Spike carried on rummaging in the dirt so the SO-6 agent shrugged resignedly and started to walk back up the embankment.

'He didn't stop for a leak at Membury or Chieveley services, did he?' announced Spike in a loud voice. 'I wonder if he even went at Reading.'

Parks stopped and his attitude changed abruptly. He slid clumsily back down the embankment and rejoined us.

'How did you know that?'

Spike looked around at the empty fields.

'There is a motorway services here.'

'There was going to be one,' I corrected, 'but after Kington St— I mean, Leigh Delamere was built it wasn't considered necessary.'

'It's here all right,' replied Spike, just occluded from our view. This is what happened: the President needs a leak and tells Mallory to pull over at the next services. Mallory is tired and his mind is open to those things usually hidden from our sight. He sees what he thinks are the services and pulls over. For a fraction of a second the two worlds touch — the presidential Bentley moves across — and then part again. I'm afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that President Formby has accidentally entered a gateway to the underworld — a living person adrift in the abode of the dead.'

There was deathly quiet.

'That is the most insanely moronic story I have ever been forced to listen to,' announced Parks, not wanting to lose sight of reality for even one second. 'If I listened to a gaggle of lunatics for a month I'd not hear a crazier notion.'