One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (17 page)

“Completely sure.”

I thanked Captain Phantastic for his time, promised to bring some buns next time and walked out of his office, deep in thought.

“You were in there a while,” said the frog-footman as he escorted me from the building.

“The Captain likes to talk,” I said. “‘Hannibal said this, me and Dumbo did that, Horton’s my best friend, I was Celeste’s first choice but she took Babar on the rebound’—you know what it’s like.”

“After Madame Bovary,” said the frog-footman, rolling his eyes, “the Captain is the worst name-dropper I’ve ever been ignored by.”

I went and found Sprockett in the local Stubbs. He had got chatting to a Mystical Meg Fortune-Telling Automaton and discovered that they were distantly related.

“I’ve got you a fortune card, ma’am,” said Sprockett. “Archie was a great-great-uncle to us both, and Meg’s father-in-law is Gort.”

“Nice chap?”

“So long as you don’t get him annoyed.”

I looked at the small card he had given me. It read, “Avoid eating oysters if there is no paycheck in the month,” which is one of those generic pieces of wisdom that Mechanical Mystics often hand out, along with “Every chapter a new beginning” and “What has a clause at the end of the pause?”

Sprockett hailed a cab, and we were soon trundling off in the direction of Fantasy.

“Did all go as planned, ma’am?” he asked as we made our way back out of the genre on the Dickens Freeway.

I paused. It was better if Sprockett didn’t know that the investigation was covertly still running. Better for me, and better for him. Despite being a cog-based life-form, he could still suffer at the hands of inquisitors, and he needed deniability. If I was going to go down, I’d go down on my own.

In ten minutes I had told him everything. He nodded sagely, his gears whirring as he took it all in. Once I was done, he suggested that we not tell anyone, as Carmine might tell the goblin and Pickwick was apt to blurt things out randomly to strangers. Mrs. Malaprop we didn’t have to worry about—no one would be able to understand her. Besides, she probably already knew.

“The less people who know, the better.”

“Fewer. The
fewer
people who know, the better.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“That’s what
who
meant?”

“Wait—who’s speaking now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You
must
know.”

“Damn. It must be me—you wouldn’t say ‘damn,’ would you?”

“I might.”

We both paused for a moment, waiting for either a speech marker or a descriptive line. It was one of those things that happened every now and again in BookWorld—akin to an empty, pregnant silence in the middle of an Outland dinner party.

“So,” said Sprockett once we had sorted ourselves out, “what’s the plan?”

“I don’t know our next move,” I said, “but until I do, we do nothing—which is excellent cover for what we should be doing—nothing.”

“An inspired plan,” said Sprockett.

The taxi slowed down and stopped as the traffic ground to a halt. The cabbie made some inquiries and found that a truckload of “their” had collided with a trailer containing “there” going in the opposite direction and had spread there contents across the road.

“Their will be a few hiccups after that,” said the cabbie, and I agreed. Homophone mishaps often seeped out into the RealWorld and infected the Outlanders, causing theire to be all manner of confusion.

“I know a shortcut through Comedy,” said the cabbie, who was, purely as an irrelevant aside, an anteater named Ralph. “It shouldn’t be too onerous—the risibility is currently at thirty yards and the mirthrate down to 1.9.”

“What about puns?”

“Always about, but they’re not funny, so the chance of unbridled hysteria is low.”

Trips through Comedy were usually avoided, as the giggling could be painful and sometimes fatal, but the comedy in Comedy had been muted of late. I told him to go ahead, and we pulled out of the traffic and drove off in the opposite direction.

“What kind of man sets fire to a busload of nuns?” I asked, Whitby still annoyingly on my mind.

“I cannot answer that, ma’am, but I suspect one who is neither kind nor considerate.”

There was a pause.

“May I ask a question regarding the subject of empathy, something I am at a loss to understand?”

“Of course.”

“Since I have set neither a nun nor a puppy on fire nor gleefully pushed an old lady downstairs, does that make me kind and compassionate?”

“Not really,” I replied. “It makes you normal, and respectful of accepted social rules.”

“But not compassionate?”

“To be compassionate you have to demonstrate it in some sort of act that shows you care for someone.”

“Care for someone? Care as in how a butler cares for someone?”

“More than that.”

“I’m not sure I can envisage any greater care than that which a butler can offer.”

And he sat and buzzed to himself in such deep thought that I had to give him two extra winds, much to the cabbie’s sniffy disapproval.

We entered Comedy a few miles farther on by way of the Thurber Freeway, then took a funny turn at Bad Joke and bumped along a back road of compacted mother-in-law oneliners. We passed the Knock-Knock? Quarry, where we were held up for a few minutes while they did some blasting, then continued on past Limericks, Amusing Anecdotes and Talking-Horse Gags to the empty wilderness known as the Burlesque Depression. The huge influx of stand-up comedians in the RealWorld had overjoked the stocks of natural glee, and the stony comedic landscape was now almost barren. As an emergency measure, unfunny comedy sneakily branded “alternative” was now flooding the RealWorld until the natural stock of jokes had replenished itself. The lack of comedy in Comedy was no laughing matter.

Almost from nowhere a car shot past us at speed and, as it did so, swerved violently. The cabbie attempted to avoid a collision and spun the wheel hard to the left. He overcorrected, slewed sideways and hit the fence at the side of the road. There was a crunch as splintered wood flew everywhere, the windscreen crazed, and the taxi thumped down the short embankment, ran across some rough ground and came to rest with a clatter and a hiss against a tree.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Sprockett nodded, even though I could see he had a crack in his porcelain face. The cabbie looked a bit shocked and was about to open his door when I placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait. Don’t anyone move. . . . I think we’ve driven into a mimefield.”

S
prockett and the cabbie looked outside. Surrounding the car were five hundred or so mimes, all dressed uniformly in tight black slacks, a stripy top, white greasepaint and a large hat with a flower stuck in the crown. They were miming in the most terrifying fashion, their hideous faces contorted with exaggerated expressions, their bodies moving in a frighteningly sinuous movement that defied written description. The cabbie panicked and started the engine. It burst into life, and he popped the car into reverse.

“Hold it,” I said, looking out the rear window. “You can’t go backwards—there’s a mime stuck inside a pretend glass cube just behind you. Wait—he’s out. No, hang on, there’s another, bigger pretend glass cube outside the smaller one.”

The cabbie started to sob.

“Calm down,” I said. “Panic is the mind killer. We can get out of this alive if we keep our heads straight. Turn the engine off.”

We glanced around as the mimes, now curious, moved closer. I almost cried out as one peered into the car while doing a routine with a balloon that was heavy, then light, then immovable.

“What are they doing?” asked the cabbie, his voice tremulous with rising fear. “I don’t understand.”

Comedy was one of those genres that while appearing quite jolly was actually highly dangerous. In order to generate new jokes, the custodians of the genre had tried to use nonwritten and nonverbal comedy as a growing medium. Mimes had no real home in a written or spoken canon, but some of their movements and actions could cross-pollinate with others that did. Slapstick was used for the same effect, as was as a well-timed look, a comical pause and silly expressions, voices and walks.

“Don’t move,” said Sprockett. “Mimes don’t generally attack unless they are threatened.”

“How do you threaten a mime?”

“By sighing during a performance, looking away, rolling your eyes—that sort of thing. Mimes hate being ignored or having their performance interrupted. In that respect they’re almost as touchy as poets.”

We did as I suggested and watched as the mimes continued their strange movements, and we laughed and applauded at the right moments. Some of the mimes appeared hardly to move at all and adopted poses like statues, and others seemed to be walking against the wind. There was also a lot of going in and out of doors that weren’t there, canoeing and pretending to walk up and down stairs. It was all
very
mystifying. Mind you, I was worried just how long we could laugh and applaud. Every moment we paused, they became dangerously aggressive once more.

After another five minutes of this odd posturing, the cabbie couldn’t take it anymore. He flung open his door and made a run for it. We watched with growing horror as the unfortunate taxi driver was suddenly copied in his every movement and expression. Two mimes walked close behind him, while another engaged in some curiously expressive banter. Within half a minute, it was all over, and the cabbie’s tattered clothes were all that remained upon the ground.

I looked at Sprockett, whose eyebrow flicked up to “Doubtful,” which meant he was out of ideas. Now that they had been blooded, the mood of the mimes seemed to have changed. A minute ago their features had been ridiculously smiley, but now they wore doleful expressions of exaggerated sadness. They also seemed to be approaching the car. Once they got in, it would be all over. Or at least it would be for me.

“Lean forward.”

“Might I inquire as to why, ma’am?”

“I’m going to press your emergency spring release,” I said.

“You’ll be nothing but an inert box of cogs to them—they’ll not touch you. Someone will chance across you in a few months, and you can be rewound. You can tell them what happened.”

He looked at me and buzzed for a moment. “Would that be a compassionate act on your behalf, ma’am?”

“I suppose so. Only one of us need die.”

Sprockett thought about this for a moment. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I may have to politely decline your offer. A butler never leaves his position and is loyal until death.”

I made a grab for the access panel on the back of his left shoulder, but he caught my hand with surprising speed.

“In this matter, ma’am,” he said firmly, “my cogs are made up.”

I relented, and Sprockett let go of my arm as several mimes improvised a trampoline routine on the back bumper.

“Okay,” I said as a sudden thought struck me, “here’s the plan: I need you to act like a robot.”

“How do I do that?”

“You tell me.
You’re
the robot, after all.”

“Agreed. But the whole point of the Duplex series is that we
act
human in order to function more seamlessly with our masters. ‘More human than the dumbest human’ is the Duplex Corporation’s motto. I don’t know the first thing about actually
being
a robot.”

“You’re going to have to give it your best shot.”

Sprockett raised his eyebrow as a shower of broken glass erupted from the rear window. The mimes had become markedly more aggressive when we weren’t laughing and applauding hard enough during a not-very-amusing routine where they pretend to sculpt a statue out of clay.

“Very well,” said Sprockett. He opened the car door and stepped out. His gait was sporadic and clumsy, and at the end of each movement there seemed to be a slight “spring” to his actions that gave the impression of increased mass. The effect upon the mimes was instantaneous and dramatic. They all took a step back and gazed in wide-eyed astonishment as Sprockett lumbered from the car with me close behind. A few of them dropped to their knees, and others fell into paroxysms of exaggerated crying.