First Among Sequels

27. Bound to the Outland

By the time the police arrived, I had regained control of myself. I picked up Thursday1-4’s clothes with a disdainful finger and thumb and deposited them in the laundry basket, in which I would take them out to burn them later that evening. I went through the pockets of her jacket but found only an empty wallet and a few coins. I knew I was going to have to admit to owning her automatic, so I had to hope they would take my previous exemplary conduct into account before citing me on any illegal-firearms charges. While I explained it all to the cops, Landen called Joffy’s partner, Miles, to get him to pick up the girls from school, and we eventually tracked Friday down at Mum’s, where he’d been discussing with his aunt the merits of the guitar riff on the second track of Hosing the Dolly.

“So let me get this straight,” said Detective Inspector Jamison an hour later, thumbing through his notes. “You were both upstairs…er, naked when you heard a noise. You, Mrs. Parke-Laine-Next, went downstairs to investigate with an illegally held Glock nine-millimeter. You saw this man whom you identified as ‘Felix8,’ an associate of the deceased Acheron Hades, whom you last met sixteen years ago. He was armed, and you fired at him once when he was standing at the door, once when he was running to the kitchen, then three times as he hid behind the kitchen table. He then made his escape from the house without firing a single shot. Is that correct?”

“Quite correct, Officer.”

“Hmm,” he said, and his sergeant whispered something in his ear and handed him a fax. Jamison looked at it, then at me. “You’re sure it was Felix8?”

“Yes-why?”

He placed the fax on the table and slid it across.

“The body of missing father of two Danny Chance was discovered in a shallow grave in the Savernake Forest three years ago. It was skeletal by then and only identifiable by his dental records.”

“That’s not possible,” I murmured, with good reason. Even if he hadn’t been in the house this afternoon, I’d certainly seen him yesterday.

“I know that Hades and Felix are tied up in all manner of weird shit, so I’m not going to insist you didn’t see him, but I thought you should know this.”

“Thank you, Officer,” I muttered, reading through the report, which was unequivocal; it even said the bones had been in the ground a good ten years. Aornis had been right-Cocytus had killed him like a stray dog.

Inspector Jamison turned to Landen. “Mr. Parke-Laine? May we speak to you now?”

They finally left at nine in the evening and we called Miles to bring the kids back. We’d been given the all-clear to tidy up, and to be honest it didn’t sound as though they were gong to make a big deal of it. It didn’t look as if they would even bother to prosecute; they knew about Felix8-everyone did. He, Hades and Aornis were as much a part of popular culture as Robin Hood. And that was it. They took the Glock nine-millimeter, privately told me that it was an honor to meet me and that I could expect their report to be lost before being passed to the prosecutor, and then they were gone.

“Darling?” said Landen as soon as the kids had been safely returned home.

“Yes?”

“Something’s bothering you.”

“You mean aside from having an amoral lunatic who died fifteen years ago try to kill us?”

“Yes. There’s something else on your mind.”

Damn. Found out. Lucky I had several things on my mind I could call upon.

“I went to visit Aornis.”

“You did? Why?”

“It was about Felix8. I should have told you: He was hanging around the house yesterday. Millon spotted him, and Spike nabbed him-but he escaped. I thought Aornis might have an idea why he’s suddenly emerged after all these years.”

“Did Aornis…say anything about us?” asked Landen. “Friday, Me, Tuesday, Jenny?”

“She asked how everyone was, but only in an ironic way. I don’t think she was concerned in the least-quite the opposite.”

“Did she say anything else?”

I turned to look at him, and he was gazing at me with such concern that I rested a hand on his cheek.

“Sweetheart-what’s the matter? She can’t harm us any longer.”

“No,” said Landen with a sigh, “she can’t. I just wondered if she said anything-anything at all. Even if you remembered it later.”

I frowned. Landen knew about Aornis’s powers because I’d told him, but his specific interest seemed somehow unwarranted.

“Yeah. She said that she was going to bust out with the help of someone ‘on the outside.’”

He took my hands in his and stared into my eyes. “Thursday-sweetheart-promise me something?”

I laughed at his dramatic earnestness but stopped when I saw he was serious.

“Two minds with but a single thought,” I told him, “two hearts that beat as one.”

“That was good. Who said that?”

“Mycroft.”

“Ah! Well, here it is: Don’t let Aornis out.”

“Why should I want to do that?”

“Trust me, darling. Even if you forget your own name, remember this: Don’t let Aornis out.”

“Babes-”

But he rested his finger on my lips, and I was quiet. Aornis was the least of my worries. Without my TravelBook I was marooned in the Outland.

We had dinner late. Even Friday was vaguely impressed by the three bullet holes in the table. They were so close they almost looked like one.

When he saw them, he said, “Nice grouping, Mum.”

“Firearms are no joking matter, young man.”

“That’s our Thursday,” said Landen with a smile. “When she shoots up our furniture, she does as little damage as possible.”

I looked at them all and laughed. It was an emotional release, and tears sprang to my eyes. I helped myself to more salad and regarded Friday. There was still the possibility of his replacement by the-Friday-that-could-have-been hanging over him. The thing was, I couldn’t do anything about it. There’s never anywhere to hide from the ChronoGuard. But the other Friday had told me I had forty-eight hours until they might attempt such a thing, and that wasn’t up until midmorning the day after tomorrow.

“Fri,” I said, “have you thought any more about the time industry?”

“Lots,” he said, “and the answer’s still no.”

Landen and I exchanged looks.

“Have you ever wondered,” remarked Friday in a languid monotone from behind a curtain of oily hair, “how nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?”

I smiled. Dopey witticisms at least showed he was trying to be clever, even if for the greater part of the day he was asleep.

“Yes,” I replied, “and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.”

“I’m serious,” he said, mildly annoyed.

“Sorry!” I replied. “It’s just difficult to know what you’re thinking when I can’t see your face. I might as well converse to the side of a yak.”

He parted his hair so I could see his eyes. He looked a lot like his father did at that age. Not that I knew him then, of course, but from photographs.

“Nostalgia used to have a minimum twenty years before it kicked in,” he said in all seriousness, “but now it’s getting shorter and shorter. By the late eighties, people were doing seventies stuff, but by the mid-nineties the eighties-revival thing was in full swing. It’s now 2002, and already people are talking about the nineties-soon nostalgia will catch up with the present and we won’t have any need for it.”

“Good thing, too, if you ask me,” I said. “I got rid of all my seventies rubbish as soon as I could and never regretted it for a second.”

There was an indignant plock from Pickwick.

“Present company excepted.”

“I think the seventies are underrated,” said Landen. “Admittedly, fashion wasn’t terrific, but there’s been no better decade for sitcoms.”

“Where’s Jenny?”

“I took her dinner up to her,” said Friday. “She said she needed to do her homework.”

I frowned as I thought of something, but Landen clapped his hands together and said, “Oh, yes! Did you hear that the British bobsled team has been disqualified for using the banned force ‘gravity’ to enhance performance?”

“No.”

“Apparently so. And it transpires that the illegal use of gravity to boost speed is endemic within most downhill winter sports.”

“I wondered why they managed to go so fast,” I replied thoughtfully.

Much later that night, when the lights were out, I was staring at the glow of the streetlamps on the ceiling and thinking about Thursday1-4 and what I’d do to her when I caught her. It wasn’t terribly pleasant.

“Land?” I whispered in the darkness.

“Yes?”

“That time we…made love today.”

“What about it?”

“I was just thinking-how did you rate it? Y’know, on a one-to-ten?”

“Truthfully?”

“Truthfully.”

“You won’t be pissed off at me?”

“Promise.”

There was a pause. I held my breath.

“We’ve had better. Much better. In fact, I thought you were pretty terrible.”

I hugged him. At least there was one piece of good news today.