The Woman Who Died a Lot

37. Friday: The Righteous Man

As I headed toward Chiseldon, I could see that the hillsides surrounding Swindon were filled with spectators, eager to see the smiting firsthand, as no broadcast images could ever do justice to the terrifying beauty of a pillar of fire descending from on high. Many people had tried to describe it adequately, but usually without success. My favorite description was this: “The sort of spectacle that married the bold elegance of a solar eclipse with the visceral thrills of bare-knuckle croquet.”

Chiseldon is a small village on the Swindon-Marlborough Road comprising a few houses, a gas station, a shop, and a railway station. There had been a basic-training camp for Crimean conscripts nearby, to which I had myself been assigned before moving to the plain for vehicle training. The camp reverted to farmland once the conflict had ended, but the iron gates were still present, along with a large bronze statue of Colonel “Trigger” Dellalio, now covered with ivy and graffiti.

I stopped at the deserted gas station and climbed out of the car to have a look around. I walked to the road and glanced up and down the dead-straight highway. There was traffic, but it was all heading into town, presumably latecomers wanting to indulge in what had been sniffily dubbed “Smite tourism.” Even though there was an hour to go, the clouds had begun to heap high above the Swindon Financial Center. The Smite Solutions “honeypot” of hardened criminals would theoretically attract the pillar of fire as it descended in a sinuous curve, similar to the twisting nature of a waterspout.

I checked my watch again and nodded to Phoebe, who was parked in the entranceway to the abandoned Chiseldon camp three hundred yards off. The clock ticked by until it was eleven, then eleven-fifteen. The traffic died down, as presumably everyone was in place to watch the spectacle, and even the staff in the gas station closed up the shop to go watch. Within a few minutes, I was completely alone.

As I stood there, I noticed a large Pontiac driving along the road in a slower-than-normal fashion. It pulled in to the gas station’s forecourt and stopped, just the other side of the pumps. I walked cautiously toward it and soon noticed that the engine was still running and that the windows were tinted.

I knocked on the window. After a pause the window wound down. There was a tanned man with a military-style haircut sitting in the driving seat, and through the window there came the faint waft of gun oil, coffee and body odor. There were four of them. They were armed, and they were bored.

“Yes?” said the driver.

“You know who I am and why I’m here,” I said softly, “and I want you to turn the car around and leave.”

He looked at me curiously and gave a slight smile. “And why would I do something like that?”

“Because I don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to be dead.”

The smile dropped from his face.

“I don’t respond well to threats,” he said. “There are four of us, Miss Next. How many of us do you think you can take down before you’re dead?”

I stared at him, then at his front-seat passenger, who had his hand beneath a newspaper on his lap, presumably hiding a weapon of some sort.

“I can take two of you down for certain, three possibly. But it needn’t come to that. You’re not Goliath. You’re mercenaries. So aside from the cash, you’ve got no real reason to show any loyalty.”

“We think a lot of you, Miss Next,” replied the driver, “and we don’t actually want to hurt anyone. It’s messy, the paperwork is a headache and the lawsuits frequent, and the clients don’t like it. Our instructions are clear: Hold the righteous man in custody until after midday. But if anyone stands in our way, we are required to take whatever action is deemed appropriate. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly. Now just go home and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

He shook his head, and I heard two faint clicks from the backseat as safeties were released.

“We can’t do that. We have reputations to consider. Do you know how oversubscribed the menacing business is these days? Gigs are hard to come by, and one failure can lose you clients as easy as blinking and, what’s worse, slash the daily rate in half.”

And that was when I heard a mild squeak on the adjacent railway line. It was a faint noise but one that unmistakably heralded an approaching train from the south at a distance of five hundred yards. I could sense the speed it was going, too, and given that it was slowing at a progressive rate, my Day Player mind calculated I had a little over thirty-one seconds to get rid of these idiots before the 11:36 from Marlborough pulled into Chiseldon station. The righteous man was arriving by train. “Reputation, huh?” I said. “Ever heard of the Special Library Services?”

They had. Everyone had. Ex-SLS could get a job in security anywhere in the world. Half of President-for-Life Vera Lynn’s bodyguard had been SLS at one time. The driver looked momentarily worried, and there were some mumblings between the two in the backseat.

“The SLS has no interest in righteous men,” said the driver, “or people like you.”

“Wrong,” I said. “I’m the chief librarian of Wessex. The SLS cares very much what happens to me, and right now you’re surrounded by a half dozen SLS. Make a wrong move and you’ll have more holes in you than a lump of Emmentaler.” The driver and the front-seat passenger looked around. They couldn’t see the SLS, of course, for the simple reason that they weren’t there. I wasn’t here on library business and had no right to ask the SLS to risk their lives. It rattled the mercenaries in the car, though.

“Bullshit,” said the driver at last.

“Okay,” I said. “Watch.”

I pointed at one of the many lamp standards that were dotted around the periphery of the forecourt. I had to just hope that Phoebe had seen the car pull in and had positioned herself well.

She had. The lamp fitting on the standard exploded into fragments from a carefully placed shot. I’d told her to bring a sniper rifle.

“So,” I said as the train heaved into sight along the tracks, “you’re going to leave now, aren’t you?”

The driver didn’t answer and instead drove out of the forecourt a lot faster than he’d come in and was soon lost to view. I gave a cheery wave to wherever Phoebe might have been hidden, then walked across to the station and pushed open the gate to the platform.

The train pulled in, paused briefly, then pulled away again. I thought for a moment that I had been mistaken, as no one had alighted, but as the carriages moved out, they revealed a middleaged man standing on the platform opposite the single-track line. He had a beard, a kindly face and was wearing a brown suit and carrying a small suitcase.

“Hello,” he called across cheerily. “You must be Joffy’s sister.”

“Thursday,” I said, and beckoned him to the crossing point so I could take his case and escort him to the car. I learned that his name was Tim and that he had managed to fit this job in only because there had been a late cancellation.

“All requests are treated equally,” he explained. “No one person is more important than another. What’s the job?”

“See that?” I said, pointing to the sky, where the clouds were swirling in a circular pattern above the city. “There’s going to be a smiting, and a group of sinful men have been gathered in order to attract the pillar of fire away from the town.”

“There must be a lot of them,” he said, being something of an expert. “That’s almost four miles off.”

“Twenty convicts, I believe.”

“Poor things,” he said. “They must be terribly frightened.”

“I don’t think they know anything about it. All we need is to place you near them to shift the smiting back to the city.”

“No problemo,” replied Tim cheerfully. “Goodness! A Sportina. I haven’t ridden in one of these for years.”

I started the engine and took the back road to Wroughton Airfield. The time was 11:42, and the sky darkened as a circular void began to open in the center of the swirling mass. There’d be some hail most likely, then a ripple of thunder.

We sped along the back roads to avoid Wroughton town, and although I was a Day Player and more able to think clearly under stress, I could feel my heart beat faster and an odd sense of nervousness that was positioned not in my stomach but wholly in the mind. I was driving faster than was necessary in the narrow lanes while at the same time keeping a careful lookout for the distinctive glint of a rifle barrel. We were vulnerable in the open countryside, and I’d be a fool to think that the mercenaries were the only people employed to stop me. The righteous man, for his part, just chatted amiably about things in general. If he felt any danger, he didn’t show it.

I looked in the rearview mirror for perhaps the umpteenth time and noted with relief that Phoebe’s red Mini was now behind us at a distance of perhaps two hundred yards. The relief was short-lived, however, as a car pulled out of a side road and blocked her way. I put my foot down, and we picked up more speed, then turned a corner—to be greeted by the sight of two cars parked end to end, blocking the road. Since the smiting was intended to be here, there was an exclusion zone around the airfield. Smite Solutions might not care two hoots about the sinful, but they certainly cared about civilian collateral damage—it would be bad for business.

I didn’t pause nor lift my foot off the throttle, and we thumped our way through the roadblock, sending the two cars flying into the ditch. This was the reason I’d brought the Sportina, after all. We carried on, this time with cars in pursuit and with the harsh ring of bullet hits striking—but not puncturing— the heavy steel of the Sportina. The manufacturers of the car had worked not only to a longevity criterion but to a military one—all Griffin motorcars could withstand a standard-velocity round from fifty yards.

“Should we stop and see what they want?” asked the righteous man. “Those gentlemen seem very upset about something.”

“They’ve been paid money to kill us,” I said, negotiating a tight corner. “I don’t think talking is high on their agenda—or skill base.”

“Oh, dear,” said the righteous man, “how frightfully disagreeable. But I forgive them. Probably the result of an unhappy childhood.”

The cars behind had been gaining on us, then abruptly stopped as we passed a pole with an amber flag attached to it. I wasn’t sure why this was so until we passed a red flag a few hundred yards on, and the reason they’d stopped became apparent. We were now in the Smite Zone of complete destruction, and there was less then thirteen minutes to go. As far as any of the guards were concerned, we were dead meat, and they were, too, if they followed us in. I didn’t stop, took a left through a gate, bumped across a field and then found a particularly dilapidated section of the perimeter fence and drove through it, the broken wire clawing long scratches in the car’s finish.

The large marquee that contained the sinful was in the center of the deserted runway, and we pulled up outside the tent with nine minutes to go. The sky had darkened more by now, and the brightest part of it was the circular hole in the clouds through which a beam of sunlight was shining vertically downwards illuminating the center of Swindon as a graphic precursor of what was to happen next.

“Do I have to do anything?” asked Tim.

I told him he just had to be himself, then jumped out of the car to make sure I hadn’t been hoodwinked. I hadn’t. Through a gap in the tent, I could see a group of dangerous-looking men, all in their own clear plastic cells watching TV and seemingly unaware of the fate that until recently had been about to befall them. There was a sudden shower of hail, and I looked up. The hole in the clouds had widened, and the clouds around it were beginning to rotate faster.

Despite the success of my mission, my heart sank. Most of the financial district of Swindon would be annihilated, and the cathedral, and, worst of all, Joffy.

“So long, Joff,” I said under my breath. It didn’t seem right, but I was at least glad, if such is the right word, that family had helped him be the agent of his chosen end and that somehow the GSD would benefit from his sacrifice.

I felt a lump in my throat, but no tears came. I was a Synthetic, and tear ducts in Day Players don’t reflect emotion.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” said Tim, who had climbed out of the car and was staring at the strange cloud formation. We could see the air suddenly soften with another localized hail shower, and a bolt of lightning plunged to earth somewhere near the M4. Another minute ticked by, and all I could think of was Joffy. The stuff we’d done, the stuff we’d never do.

“You’re going to lose someone, aren’t you?” asked the righteous man, who had been watching me.

“Yes,” I said, “but I won’t be able to weep for him until I’m back in my own body.”

“I’m not sure I under—”

“Hang on,” I said, for I’d just noticed a distant smudge in the low horizon. It was an aircraft of some description, and it seemed to be moving toward us at a good speed. As it grew closer, I heard the distinctive thup-thup-thup of a tiltrotor, and I suddenly grew suspicious that perhaps this was not quite the end of it. The small craft orbited twice, then touched down not fifty feet from us. The engines continued running, and the passenger door opened. I could tell by the labored way in which the passenger clambered out that this was no copy, no Day Player, but an original—in all his obnoxious glory.

It was Jack Schitt.