One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (32 page)

“Okay,” I said as we moved steadily upwards, the cab’s altimeter winding around like a top, “how’s this for a scenario? Thursday is investigating something that requires her to stay out of sight. She hides out in Vanity, somewhere near Sargasso Plaza. The Mediocre Gatsby always hangs out there, waiting for fares. He takes her to Biography and the following day picks her up to go to the Council of Genres. He piggybacks
The Murders on the Hareng Rouge,
which is heading—ISBN already scrubbed—towards the Ungenred Zone to be scrapped. Somewhere above Aviation the rhetorical device is activated. The book explodes into a zillion fragments within a fraction of a second, taking with it Thursday, Mediocre, and the TransGenre Taxi. It’s just another book coming to grief that would be swiftly investigated, and then as swiftly dismissed as an accident.”

“Barmouth Blaster?” asked Sprockett, offering me a cocktail.

“Thank you.”

“So we were right—it wasn’t an attack on the book at all,” murmured Sprockett, adding the ice and lemon to the cocktail shaker along with half a can of Red Bull, a Mucinex and two onions. “It was a hit on the taxi—with Thursday Next inside. Which means that Mediocre must have been bribed to take the particular book—”

“But knew nothing of the reason. He was tricked into attending his own execution, as well as Thursday’s.”

We sat in silence for some minutes as we were towed ever upwards, thinking about what we had just uncovered. In the RealWorld such a convoluted method of murder would be faintly ridiculous, but in the BookWorld all murders happened this way.

“Your Barmouth Blaster, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“Why was Ms. Next murdered?”

There were at least seventy-two people who had tried to kill her over the years, and narrowing it down was going to be tricky. I decided to head for the most obvious.

“Without Thursday the Racy Novel peace talks might well fail. Who would benefit most from a genre war in the north of the island?”

“Men in Plaid,” said Sprockett.

“Hardly likely,” I replied. “They’re probably mopping up for someone else—or simply want to find Thursday—or are just being wicked for the hell of it.”

“You misunderstand me, madam,” he said politely. “I mean Men in Plaid—
behind us
!”

I turned and looked out the cab’s rear window. Sprockett was right. Far below was not one Buick Roadmaster but three. They would also have Technobabble™ Scramjamcious Gravitational Flux Throb-O-Tron Torque Converter drive systems and, knowing the Men in Plaid, ones considerably more advanced than ours and twice as nonsensical.

“How far to the gravopause?” I asked.

“We’re almost there.”

Despite the gravopause’s usefulness for getting about, one had to be careful. If you had the misfortune to move
above
this altitude and had insufficient thrust to escape, you could be caught in the dead center of the sphere forever. There was a small moon in the gravitational dead spot made from accreted book traffic that had accidentally fallen in and been unable to escape. From the dizzying heights we had now reached, I could actually see the moon above us, no bigger than a pea.

Within a half minute more, we had reached the gravopause. Sprockett cast off the towline, and we drifted onwards, safely in orbit. All that was required now was to coast along until we were above Biography and then dip the cab into a downwards trajectory and let gravity take over.

“Ma’am, would you wind me up?” said Sprockett. “I can see fun and games ahead, and I wouldn’t want to risk spring depletion at an inopportune moment.”

I leaned forward and wound him until his indicator was just below the red line. I felt his bronze outer casing flex with the increased tension.

“The Men in Plaid are gaining,” I said, looking behind us.

The three Roadmasters were in V formation about a half mile away and had just reached the gravopause. At the rate they were going, they would be upon us in under five minutes.

“I’m going to head for that cluster of book traffic,” announced Sprockett, opening the throttle and accelerating towards a loose gaggle of several hundred books that all appeared to be heading in the same direction. As we drew closer, I could see that they were mostly nonfiction and of considerable size. It was the renegade Oversize Books section, on their way to their new home.

They grew dramatically in size as we approached, and as we passed between
John Deere Tractors
and
Clarice Cliff Tableware,
they towered over us like skyscrapers.

“Hold tight,” said Sprockett, and he pulled the cab hard over and darted behind
Lighthouses of Maine.

“They’re still behind us!” I barked, peering out the rear windshield as the Monhegan Island Light Station flashed past on our left-hand side, foghorn blaring. “Or at least one is.”

“They only attack one at a time,” replied Sprockett, his eyebrow flicking past “Indignant” to “Peeved,” “and in that respect they’re very like baddies in seventies martial-arts movies. Hold tight.”

Sprockett skimmed past
Best of National Geographic
so close I could taste the hot dust of the Serengeti, then pulled up sharply in front of
Chronicle of Britain
. I felt myself pressed hard into my seat. My vision grew gray, then faded out entirely. My arms and head felt intolerably heavy, and a second later I was unconscious as Sprockett—his body designed to tolerate up to 17.6 Gs—pulled the cab into an almost vertical climb. I came around again as soon as he reached the top of the book, and he immediately plunged the cab into a near-vertical dive.

“Still behind us?”

They were. I could see the emotionless features of the Plaids as they edged closer. Sprockett corkscrewed around
Knitting Toy Animals for Pleasure and Profit
as the passenger in the Roadmaster leaned out the window and fired a shot, which flew wide to blow a ragged hole in
Knitting Toy Animals
as we sped on, and a blue knitted giraffe named Natalie began a long, slow fall to the Text Sea, sixteen miles below.

“These Men in Plaid are made of stern stuff,” said Sprockett, his eyebrow pointer clicking from “Peeved” to “Puzzled” to “Indignant,” then almost to “Severely Peeved” before settling on “Peeved” again. “Hold tight.”

The Oversized Books were now moving in a more random fashion as they tried to avoid us, and Sprockett dived to get more speed, then pulled up and headed towards where
What Do People Do All Day?
and
ABC with Dewin the Dog
were about to collide, cover to cover. There was barely a ten-foot gap on either side as we flew between them, and the gap narrowed as we moved on. I barely had a chance to wave a cheery hello to a worried-looking Lowly Worm as the covers closed together a split second before we shot out the other side. The Roadmaster was less fortunate, and there was a tremendous detonation as the car was crushed between the two books, the worried shouts of Scarry’s folk mixing with Dewin the Dog’s furious barking.

“Do you see the others, ma’am?” asked Sprockett as he swerved hard to miss the Greatest Oversize Book of All Time but the abrupt sideways movement caused a ventral compressor stall on the Technobabble™ drive, and we went spiraling downwards out of control until Sprockett achieved an emergency relight.

“On the left!” I yelled as the second Roadmaster swept past, a shot from an eraserhead removing half the rear bumper and a fender. Sprockett jinked hard, spiraled up for a second, then shot past
Cooking for Fusspots
and
Helmut Newton Nudes.

“Rewind me again, ma’am, if you please,” said Sprockett, hauling sideways on the wheel to avoid the
Times Atlas
. The exertions on his frame had depleted his spring at a furious rate—I’d have to remain conscious, if only to rewind him.

“Watch out!”

It was too late. We had taken a hard left at
The Titanic Revisited
and were met by a group of Oversize Books that had bunched together tightly for self-protection. There was no time to avoid them and all we could see was a saber jet fragmenting in front of us as we loomed ever closer to
Lichtenstein Prints
. But just when I thought we were dead for sure, Sprocket pulled the wheel hard over and we entered
The Works of Thomas Gainsborough
through a small thermal-exhaust port near the preface.

I stared wide-eyed as Sprockett drove the cab through the paintings of Gainsborough at over a hundred miles per hour. We shot through early landscapes, dodged past
Cornard Wood
and then burst into portraiture at
John Plampin
, then twisted and turned past a dozen or so well-dressed dignitaries, who for their part looked as startled and horrified as we did. We went between the knees of Mr. Byam and at one point nearly knocked the hat off Mrs. Siddons. But still the Roadmaster stuck to us like glue, not able to fire at us with the constant movement but awaiting the opportunity with a certain calm detachment. We doubled back around
The Blue Boy
as Sprockett searched for the exit.

“Can you see a way out, ma’am?”

“There!” I said, having heard a lowing in the distance, “behind the third cow from the left in
The Watering Place.
”

We passed
The Harvest Wagon
for a second time as Sprockett lowered the nose and accelerated across the painted landscape, the Roadmaster still close behind. We turned sharp left as the Duchess of Devonshire loomed up in front of us, and there was a thump as we collided with something. The Roadmaster behind us had misjudged the turn and struck the duchess on the shins, the resulting explosion scattering metal fragments that hit the back of the cab with a metallic rattle.

In another second we were clear, none the worse for our rapid traverse aside from a brace of partridge that had jammed in the wipers and cracked the screen.

“What did they hit?” asked Sprockett.

“The Duchess of Devonshire—took off both legs.”

“She’ll be a half portrait from now on. Whoops.”

The third Roadmaster had appeared in front of us, and another eraserhead had taken the “taxi” light off the roof and blasted a hole into
Classic Bedford Single-Deckers
, releasing several Plaxton-bodied coaches to tumble out into the void.

“We’re causing too much damage,” I said, catching sight of the now-chaotic movement of the Oversize Books, some of them on fire, others locked in collision and one,
Detroit’s Muscle Cars
, falling to earth in a slow death spiral, the huge forces breaking apart the book and spilling 1972 Dodge Chargers across the BookWorld. “We need to leave the Oversize Books section.”

“Logically, it places us in grave danger, ma’am.”

“But we are endangering
others,
Sprockett.”

“I place our chances of survival in open orbit at less than 1.7 percent, ma’am.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, “we are causing more destruction and death than we are worth.”

His eyebrow pointer clicked to “Puzzled.” “I do not understand.”

“It’s the right thing to do, Sprockett. Not for us but for
them
.”

“Is this
compassion,
ma’am? The following of the correct course irrespective of the outcome?”

The Duplex-5s were never great at this sort of stuff.

“You should always place others before yourself.”

“Even if it means certain destruction?”

“Yes, Sprockett, that’s
exactly
what it means.”

He buzzed to himself for a moment in deep thought.

“Thank you for explaining it to me, ma’am,” he replied. “I think I understand now.”

He peeled away from the Oversize Books and headed off into clear air. The last Buick Roadmaster was close on our tail, and with no books to take cover behind, the end didn’t seem far off. I pulled out my pistol and attempted to load it, but all the cartridges had spilled out of my pockets and into the foot well, and with Sprockett’s constant bobbing and weaving they were proving almost impossible to pick up.

But just then the car stopped moving about and all was calm. I seized the opportunity to grab an armor-piercing round and flick it into my pistol.

“Sprockett?”

He wasn’t moving. I thought at first he might have run down or been hit, but then I noticed that his eyebrow pointer was stuck firmly on “Thinking.” He had committed his entire mainspring to his thought processes and had shut down all motor functions to enable him to think faster. When I looked at his spring-tension indicator, I could see it visibly moving—Sprockett was thinking, and thinking
hard
.

The Buick Roadmaster gained ground until it was no more than ten yards away. The Man in Plaid in the passenger seat leaned out the window, took careful aim and fired.