“My pleasure,” said Mr. Meakle. “Where can we drop you?”
I asked for Swindon, and he relayed the instructions through the phone.
“I know I speak for the president when we say how fortunate it is to see you back,” he added. “NSA officials and SO-5 will be briefed to protect you from Goliath. Can I schedule a meeting with the president anytime soon? We are eager to receive the secret plans as soon as we can, and we hope that the security arrangements are to your satisfaction.”
I told him I’d meet with them tomorrow. Meakle nodded solemnly and returned to his work.
I sat back in my seat and ran the events of the afternoon through my head. I had just gotten to the bit where Spike had rescued me from the Stiltonista when I began to feel very peculiar. I started to have odd thoughts, then couldn’t figure out why I’d thought of them. The world would soften around the edges, and I could feel myself almost lose consciousness. I thought for a moment I might be dying, as I could feel my conscious mind nearly close down. Before I knew it, I had closed my eyes and an overwhelming darkness stole over me. I might indeed have died, but I didn’t, and I slept quite soundly until Mr. Meakle woke me when we arrived back at Clary-LaMarr.
26.
Family
Places to Visit #7: Poetry Island. Although this is at first glance a wild and powerful place, by turns beautiful, wayward, passionate and thought provoking, any visit longer than a few hours will start to have an exaggerating effect on the senses. Upbeat poems will tend to have you laughing uncontrollably, while somber poems will have you questioning your own worth in a most hideously self-obsessed manner. Early explorers of Poetry spent weeks acclimatizing in Walter de la Mare and Longfellow before daring to explore the Romantics.
“Where did you get to?” asked Landen as soon as I tapped on the back door to be let in. “I was thinking you’d gone missing again.”
“I brought down the Stiltonista, was arrested for crimes against humanity, found out where the other Thursdays are buried, was almost kidnapped by Goliath and was then rescued by the attorney general.”
“Is that all?”
“No. I found out what ghosts are. They’re childhood memories. Oh, and the president wants to see me tomorrow to discuss the Anti-Smite Strategic Defense Shield—I think it’s what the whole ‘secret plans’ deal is all about.”
“Are you sure you’re not Thursday?”
“Positive. Hey, listen: Jack Schitt’s real name is Adrian Dorset. How weird is that?”
“Not weird at all. You and I have known for years. Jack Schitt is a daft pseudonym—not to mention actionable.”
“Perhaps so—but he wrote The Murders on the Hareng Rouge, the book I was asking you about.”
“And the significance of this is . . . ?”
“I don’t know, but the RealWorld’s kind of wild with all this strange stuff going on, although it’s a good thing this isn’t Fiction—it wouldn’t really make any sense.”
I was becoming quite animated by now—randomness has an intoxicating effect on the preordained.
“By the way,” I added, “do you want thirty grand?”
Landen raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You earned thirty thousand pounds this afternoon . . . as well?”
“From a Vole.”
“What the . . . ? No, I don’t want to know. But yes, we could do with the cash, so long as it’s not illegally earned.”
“Here you go,” I said, handing him the crumpled check.
I’d have to make good on my side of the bargain, but I felt sure I could drop some Toast Marketing Board references into the series without much problem.
“Oh, and if you see anyone who looks like NSA or SpecOps watching the house, don’t be alarmed. The president is protecting us—I don’t think Goliath is too keen on me right now.”
“Were they ever?”
“Not really. But I know what they’re up to, and it’s particularly unpleasant. In fact, I shouldn’t really hang around. I’ll only make things dangerous for you.”
“Until we prove you’re not my wife,” he said, “you’re staying.”
It seemed like a generous sentiment, so I accepted gracefully.
“Listen,” he said, “just in case I’m wrong and you really are written, you should know something.”
“Yes?”
“You know I said I didn’t know where she was?”
I nodded.
“That’s not strictly true. I didn’t know whether I could trust you. You see, when Thursday went to the BookWorld, she always came and went via her office at Acme Carpets. Bowden is the manager over there, and when she went missing, I asked him to go and look for her.”
“She wasn’t in her office?”
“No— and the door was locked from the inside.”
He let this information sink in. She had gone to the BookWorld four weeks ago—and not returned.
“So,” he said, “if you’re not her, it’s where you need to be looking. If you are her, it’s where you need to go to find out what has happened to you.”
I stared at him and bit my lip. Thursday was definitely somewhere in the BookWorld. Lost, alone, perhaps hurt—who knows? But at least I had somewhere to start. My mission, such as it was, was at least a partial success.
“Well, then,” said Landen, clapping his hands together, “you’d better meet Tuesday.”
So I sat down at the kitchen table and felt all goose-bumpy and hot. I’d been less nervous facing down Potblack, but this was different. Landen and the children were everything I’d ever wanted. Potblack was just a jumped-up cheesemonger.
Tuesday wandered shyly into the room and stared at me intently.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m not your mother.”
“You look like her. Dad says that you might be Mum but you don’t know it.”
“That’s possible, too,” I said, “and I’d like to be.”
“Could she be?” asked Tuesday of Landen.
“It’s possible, but we won’t know until later.”
“Oh, well,” said Tuesday, sitting next to me at the kitchen table. “Do you want to see what I’m working on?”
“Sure.”
So she opened her exercise book and showed me a sketch of an idea she’d been having.
“This is a sundial that works in the overcast—or even indoors. This is a method of sending power wirelessly using music, and what do you make of this?” She showed me several pages of complex mathematical notation.
“Looks important.”
“It’s an algorithm that can predict the movement of cats with ninety-seven percent accuracy,” she explained with a smile. “I’m presenting it to Nuffield College the day after tomorrow. Do you want to come?”
Over the next few minutes, she explained her work, which was far-ranging in its originality and depth. My inventor uncle Mycroft was dead now, and his intellect had crossed to Tuesday. If at age twelve she was working out the complex mathematics required to accurately predict random events, her work when she was an adult would be awe inspiring. She spoke to me of her latest project: a plausible method to crack one of the most intractable problems in modern physics, that of attempting to instill a sense of urgency in teenagers. After that she explained how she was designing daylight fireworks, which would sparkle darkness in the light, and then finally mentioned the possibility of using beamed electron fields as a kind of impermeable barrier with such diverse applications as enabling people to go underwater without need for an Aqua Lung or to protect one from rockfalls or even for use as an umbrella. “Especially useful” remarked Tuesday, “for an electron-field umbrella wouldn’t poke anyone in the eye and never needs shaking.”