First Among Sequels

29. Time Out of Joint

How was work?” asked Landen when I walked in the door.

“Quite good fun,” I replied. “The floor-covering business is definitely looking up. How are things with you?”

“Good, too-lots of work done.”

“On The Mews of Doom?” I asked, still hopeful about Scampton-Tappett and remembering that I had sent a note down to Bananas for Edward for him to swap books. He’d cost me a thousand book-guineas, and I was sure as hell going to get my money’s worth.

“No. I’ve been working on Spike’s weird-shit self-help book: Collecting the Undead.”

Damn and blast again.

I recalled a news item I had overheard on the tram home.

“Hey, do you know what Redmond van de Poste’s Address to the Nation is all about?”

“Rumor says it’s going to be about the stupidity surplus. Apparently his top advisers have come up with a plan that will deal with the excess in a manner that won’t damage economic interests and might actually generate new business opportunities.”

“He’ll top the ratings with that one-I only hope he doesn’t generate more stupidity. You know how stupidity tends to breed off itself. How are the girls?”

“They’re fine. I’m just playing Scrabble with Tuesday. Is it cheating for her to use Nextian Geometry to bridge two triple-word scores with a word of only six letters?”

“I suppose. Where’s Jenny?”

“She’s made a camp in the attic.”

“Again?”

Something niggled in my head once more. Something I was meant to do. “Land?”

“Yuh?”

“Nothing. I’ll get it.”

There was someone at the door, and whoever it was had knocked, rather than rung, which is always mildly ominous. I opened the door, and it was Friday, or at least it was the clean-cut, nongrunty version. He wasn’t alone either-he had two of his ChronoGuard friends with him, and they all looked a bit serious. Despite the dapper light blue ChronoGuard uniforms, they all looked too young to get drunk or vote, let alone do something as awesomely responsible as surf the timestream. It was like letting a twelve-year-old do your epidural.

“Hello, Sweetpea!” I said. “Are these your friends?”

“They’re colleagues,” said Friday in a pointed fashion. “We’re here on official business.”

“Goodness!” I said, attempting not to patronize him with motherly pride and failing spectacularly. “Would you all like a glass of milk and a cookie or something?”

But Friday, it seemed, wasn’t in much of a mood for milk-or a cookie.

“Not now, Mum. There’s only forty-eight hours of time left, and we still haven’t invented time travel.”

“Maybe you can’t,” I replied. “Maybe it’s impossible.”

“We used the technology to get here,” said Friday with impeccable logic, “so the possibility still exists, no matter how slight. We’ve got every available agent strung out across the timestream doing a fingertip search of all potential areas of discovery. Now, where is he?”

“Your father?”

“No, him. Friday-the other me.”

“Don’t you know? Isn’t this all ancient history?”

“Time is not as it should be. If it were, we’d have solved it all by now. So where is he?”

“Are you here to replace him?”

“No, we just want to talk.”

“He’s out practicing with his band.”

“He is not. Would it surprise you to learn that there was no band called the Gobshites?”

“Oh, no!” I said with a shudder. “He didn’t call it the Wankers after all, did he?”

“No, no, Mum-there is no band.”

“He’s definitely doing his band thing,” I assured him, inviting them in and picking the telephone off the hall table. “I’ll call Toby’s dad. They use their garage for practice. It’s the perfect venue-both Toby’s parents are partially deaf.”

“Then there’s not much point in phoning them, now, is there?” said the cockier of Friday’s friends.

“What’s your name?”

“Nigel,” said the one who had spoken, a bit sheepishly.

“No one likes a smart-ass, Nigel.”

I stared at him, and he looked away, pretending to find some fluff on his uniform.

“Hi, is that Toby’s dad?” I said as the phone connected. “It’s Friday’s mum here… No, I’m not like that-it only happens in the book. My question is: Are the boys jamming in your garage?”

I looked at Friday and his friends.

“Not for at least three months? I didn’t know that. Thank you. Good night.”

I put the phone down.

“So where is he?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” replied the other Friday, “and since he’s a free radical whose movements are entirely in de pen dent of the SHE, we have no way of knowing where or when he is. The feckless, dopey, teenage act was a good one and had us all fooled-you especially.”

I narrowed my eyes. This was a surprising development. “What are you saying?”

“We’ve had some new information, and we think Friday might be actually causing the nondiscovery of the technology-conspiring with his future self to overthrow the ChronoGuard!”

“Sounds like a trumped-up bullshit charge for you to replace him,” I said, beginning to get annoyed.

“I’m serious, Mum. Friday is a dangerous historical fundamentalist who will do what ever it takes to achieve his own narrow agenda-to keep time as it was originally meant to run. If we don’t stop him, then the whole of history will roll up and there’ll be nothing left of any of us!”

“If he’s so dangerous,” I said slowly, “then why haven’t you eradicated him?”

Friday took a deep breath. “Mum? Like…duh. He’s a younger version of me and the future director-general. If we get rid of him, we get rid of ourselves. He’s clever, I’ll grant him that. But if he can stop time travel from being discovered, then he knows how it was invented in the first place. We need to speak to him. Now-where is he?”

“I don’t rat out my son, son,” I said in a mildly confusing way.

“I’m your son, Mum.”

“And I wouldn’t rat you out either, Sweetpea.”

Friday took a step forward and raised his voice a notch. “Mum, this is important. If you have any idea where he is, then you’re going to have to tell us-and don’t call me Sweetpea in front of my friends.”

“I don’t know where he is-Sweetpea-and if you want to talk to me in that tone of voice, you’ll go to your room.”

“This is beyond room, Mother.”

“Mum. It’s Mum. Friday always calls me Mum.”

“I’m Friday, Mum-your Friday.”

“No,” I said, “you’re another Friday-someone he might become. And do you know, I think I prefer the one who can barely talk and thinks soap is a type of TV show?”

Friday glared at me angrily. “You’ve got ten hours to hand him over. Harboring a time terrorist is a serious offense, and the punishment unspeakably unpleasant.”

I wasn’t fazed by his threats.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

“Of course!”

“Then, by definition, so does he. Why don’t you take your SO-12 buddies and go play in the timestream until dinner?”

Friday made a harrumph noise, turned on his heels and departed, with his friends following quickly behind.

I closed the door and walked through to the hall where Landen was leaning on the newel post staring at me. He’d been listening to every word.

“Pumpkin, just what the hell’s going on?”

“I’m not sure myself, darling, but I’m beginning to think that Friday’s been making monkeys out of the pair of us.”

“Which Friday?”

“The hairy one that grunts a lot. He’s not a dozy slacker after all-he’s working undercover as some sort of historical fundamentalist. We need some answers, and I think I know where to find them. Friday may have tricked his parents, the SHE and half the ChronoGuard, but there’s one person no teenage boy ever managed to fool.”

“And that is?”

“His younger sister.”

“I can’t believe it took you so long to figure out,” said Tuesday, who agreed to spill the beans on her brother for the bargain price of a new bicycle, a thirty-pound gift card to MathWorld and lasagna three nights in a row. “He didn’t stomp on Barney Plotz either-he forged the letters and the phone call. He needed the time to conduct what he called his…investigations. I don’t know what they were, but he was at the public library a lot-and over at Gran’s.”

“Gran’s? Why Gran’s? He likes his food.”

“I don’t know,” said Tuesday, thinking long and hard about it. “He said it was something to do with Mycroft and a chronuption of staggering proportions.”

“That boy,” I muttered grimly, “has got some serious explaining to do.”