I was stunned for a moment and had to recover my thoughts before I rang the doorbell again. There was another pause that seemed to last an hour but I suspect was only fractionally longer – thirteen seconds, tops – and the door opened again.

'Well,' said Landen, 'if it isn't Thursday Next.'

'And Friday,' I replied, 'your son.'

'My son,' replied Landen, deliberately not looking at him, 'right.'

'What's the matter?' I asked, tears starting to well up again in my eyes, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see me!'

He let out a long breath and rubbed his forehead.

'It's difficult—'

'What's difficult? How can anything be difficult?'

'Well,' he began, 'you disappear from my life two and a half years ago, I haven't seen hide nor hair of you. Not a postcard, not a letter, not a phone call, nothing. And then you just turn up on my doorstep as though nothing has happened and I should be pleased to see you!'

I sort of breathed a sigh of relief. Sort of. Somehow I always imagined Landen being uneradicated as just a simple sort of meeting each other after a long absence. I hadn't ever thought that Landen wouldn't know he had been eradicated. When he was gone no one had known he had ever existed, and now he was back no one knew he had gone. Not even him.

'Ever heard of an eradication?' I asked.

He shook his head.

I took a deep breath.

'Well, two and a half years ago a chronupt member of SO-12 had you killed at the age of two in an accident. It was a blackmail attempt by a Goliath Corporation member called Brik Schitt-Hawse.'

'I remember him.'

'Right. And he wanted me to get his half-brother out of The Raven where Bowden and I had trapped him.'

'I remember that, too.'

'O-kay. So all of a sudden you didn't exist. Everything we had done together hadn't happened. I tried to get you back by going with my father to your accident in 1947, was thwarted and chose to live inside fiction while little Friday was born and return when I was ready. Which is now. End of story.'

We stared at each other for another long moment that might also have been an hour but was probably only twenty seconds, I moved Friday to the other hip again and then finally he said:

'The trouble is, Thursday, that things are different now. You vanished from my life. Gone. I've had to carry on.'

'What do you mean?' I asked, suddenly feeling very uneasy.

'Well, the thing is,' he went on slowly, 'I didn't think you were coming back. So I married Daisy Mutlar.'

25
Practical Difficulties Regarding Uneradications

DANISH PERSON SOUGHT