“It won’t come to that, Sweetpea. I’ll defend your right to be smelly and uncommunicative…with my life.”

We hugged and I said good-bye, then did the same to Tuesday, who was reading in bed, giggling over the risible imperfections of the Special Theory of Relativity. She knew I was going somewhere serious, so she got out of bed to give me an extra hug just in case. I hugged her back, tucked her in, told her not to make Einstein look too much of a clot in case it made her look cocky. I then went to say good-bye to Jenny and can remember doing so, although for some reason Friday and Tuesday picked that moment to argue about the brightness of the hall light. After sorting them out, I went downstairs to Landen.

“Land,” I said, unsure of what to say, since I rarely got emergency call-outs for carpet laying, and to pretend I did now would be such an obvious lie, “you do know I love you?”

“More than you realize, sweetheart.”

“And you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I’ve got to go and—”

“Do some emergency carpet laying?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Wish me luck.”

We hugged, I put on my jacket and left the house, hailing a cab to take me to the Clary-LaMarr Travelport. When I was safely on the bullet train to Saknussemm, I took out my cell phone and keyed in a number. I stared out at the dark Wessex countryside that zipped past so fast the few streetlamps I could see were almost orange streaks. The cell was picked up, and I paused, heart thumping, before speaking.

“My name’s Thursday Next. I’d like to speak to John Henry Goliath. You’re going to have to wake him. It’s a matter of some importance.”

The Austen Rover Roving

The basis for the Austen Rover, I learned much later, was a bus that the Goliath Corporation had bought in 1952 to transport its employees to the coast on “works days out,” a lamentable lapse in Goliath’s otherwise fine record of rampant worker exploitation. The error was discovered after eight years and the day trips discontinued. True to form, Goliath docked the wages of all who attended and charged them for the trip—with back-dated interest.

T he Austen Rover has two separate systems,” explained Dr. Anne Wirthlass, “the transfictional propulsion unit and the book-navigation protocol. The former we have worked out—the latter is something you need to update us on.”

It was almost noon of the following day, and I was being brought up to speed on the Rover’s complexities by the brilliant Dr. Wirthlass, who had thanked me profusely for changing my mind so close to the time before they were to fire themselves off into the unknown.

“It was the least I could do,” I replied, keeping the real reason to myself.