We swept past the single induction rail of the Southern Bullet Route and dropped down into the Vale of Pewsey. We flew on in silence for a few minutes until Finisterre called air-traffic control for transit permission into the Salisbury Danger Area and orbited twice around Urchfont while we waited for clearance. I had trained on Salisbury Plain myself on tracked vehicles before being dispatched to the Crimea aged only eighteen. We had been briefed never to stray near the Sisterhood’s hundredacre enclave, and it was hard to claim you didn’t know if you did— the convent’s tower soared two hundred feet above the plains, and the main Venerating Chamber was the size of an airship hangar.

“We’re in,” said Finisterre, and we headed off toward the convent, which even now dominated the landscape, though we were still five miles away. We circled the tower once before coming into a neat landing near the entrance, and while Finisterre conducted the power-down checks, I stepped clumsily out and looked around.

I had never been here before; few had. The Salisbury Plain order of the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster was the hub from where all other orders received instructions and to where all funds were sent. The Lobsterhood had been the nation’s most populous religious order, with over a hundred convents across the land, and although the Global Standard Deity’s unifying action had subsumed many of those within the order, a few had held out, Salisbury among them. But all that defiance had come to nought the day that He had revealed Himself and confirmed that yes, the game was up, there was only One, and all the silly lobster stuff was indeed transparent nonsense, and cower in the presence of Him. The fact that it was a He after all caused a lot of problems with the feminists. But it might have been worse— He could have turned out to have been French, too.

“My name is Sister Megan,” said the greeter nun who had stepped ahead to receive us, “and you are fourteen seconds late. We cannot abide unpunctuality here in the Lobsterhood.”

“We had to orbit for clearance into the zone,” I explained. “My name is Thursday Next.”

Sister Megan gave a sharp cry and covered her mouth with her hand. I had to get used to this. Joffy’s efforts with the GSD had not always been welcomed, and indeed, before the Lord’s Revealment, over a billion people had wanted him shredded as a heretic.

“Causing trouble already?” asked Finisterre as the greeter nun ran back inside the lobster-shaped double doors.

“I think it’s the connection with my brother. There were many religious orders who found it difficult to accept that they had been idolizing clearly demonstrable falsehoods for hundreds of years.”

“Like the notion of the all-redeeming, ever-knowing and oftnipping ‘Big Lobster’?”