'Thursday Next' (№4) - Something rotten

'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:

'. . . 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 . . . '

'No, I hadn't heard that one,' I mused as the second stalker placed a handkerchief on his bleeding lip.

'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—'

'—misdirection.'

'Bingo. He blames someone else.'

'But the Danish?'

'Shows how desperate he is, doesn't it? As a nation we've been blaming the Welsh and the French for far too long, and with the Russians out of the frame he's come up with Denmark as public enemy number one. He's using the Viking raids of AD 800 and the Danish Rule of England in the eleventh century as an excuse to whip up some misinformed xenophobia.'