One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (41 page)

“
Exactly,
” I replied. “Not civilians at all—but the romantically involved honored dead. The Farquitt Army was working against Racy Novel by taking a preemptive strike and eradicating any possible threat from Speedy Muffler’s allies in Comedy. With members of the peace envoy all assassinated in an apparent Muffler attack, there would be no opposition to the total and complete invasion of Racy Novel by the Farquitt Army and, with it, control of the vast stocks of metaphor beneath our feet.”

There was silence in the room. They all looked stunned. Barksdale was the first to speak.

“That explanation,” he said in admiration, “was of a complexity that would gather plaudits from even the most intractable of political thrillers. With all of us dead in an attack that could be blamed on Speedy Muffler, Red Herring would step into the top slot, direct his allies to annex Racy Novel, secure the metaphor and set himself up as supreme dictator of Fiction.”

“It’s a brilliant scheme,” murmured Zhark in admiration.

“I’ll
definitely
be using it on the Rambosians next week. The little devils. They love a good subjugation. Senator?”

“A plan of titanic proportions. If he weren’t going to be erased for treason, I’d offer him a job.”

Red Herring was starting to shake when he heard this. He tried to speak, but only a strangled squeak came out.

“Might I make an observation?” asked Sprockett.

“Go ahead,” replied Jobsworth, who was now in a generous mood.

“Mr. Herring is here with us now—how could he seize power if he was assassinated along with the rest of us?”

Barksdale’s and Zhark’s faces fell, and even Jobsworth’s smile dropped from his face. They looked at me.

“Simple,” I said, placing my hand on Herring’s shoulder. “This
isn’t
Red Herring. Figuring that out was the key to the whole thing.”

“That’s absurd,” remarked Jobsworth. “We were discussing the minutiae of the peace talks on the way in. He can’t be anything but.”

“I assure you,” said Faux Herring, who had finally managed to find his voice. “I’m
not
Red Herring.”

“He’s right,” I said. “This is Herring’s stunt double, Fallon Hairbag. He took Herring’s place when Red Herring made his escape in the boat’s tender.”

“You’re the mysterious passenger?” asked Zhark, and the Herring-that-wasn’t nodded unhappily.

“Mr. Herring promised me the pick of all the stunt work in the BookWorld if I did this for him. He said it was for a prank. That it would be funny.”

“I overheard Herring and his stunt double talking in the cabin—about ‘not doing the talks’—and my butler discovered knee and elbow pads as well as a gallon of fire retardant.”

“Whatever for?” asked Barksdale.

“Just in case I had to set myself on fire and leap out a window waving my arms,” replied Fallon wistfully. “It always pays to be prepared.”

“The switch was subtly done,” I said, “but when I met the replaced Herring later on, he was polite and asked me if I wanted a doughnut—the real Herring would never have been so accommodating.”

“I’ve heard enough,” announced Senator Jobsworth, rising to his feet. “Send word that the peace talks are postponed. I want an emergency meeting of everyone in the debating chamber this evening, a press conference at five and the WomFic and Farquitt senators in my office the minute we get back. Barnes?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Implement Emergency Snooze Protocol 7B on the whole Farquitt canon
immediately
. I want every Farquitt reader yawning and nodding off in under ten minutes. We need to not only close down their feedback but send Daphne Farquitt a clear message that we will not be trifled with.”

“What about the kittens?” asked Zhark in a shocked tone.

“It’s a feline-compliant executive order,” replied Jobsworth grandly. “No kittens will be harmed in the great Farquitt Snoozathon.”

While Barnes and the rest of the D-3s scurried off to do Jobsworth’s bidding, the senator and the others put their heads together. I told Fallon to go hide in his cabin until we got in, by which time he would doubtless be forgotten. He thanked me and gave me his card in case I needed someone to attempt to leap fourteen motorcycles in a double-decker bus or something, and Sprockett and I went and sat on the foredeck to watch the riverbank drift slowly past. Despite keeping a careful eye out for Herring, we saw only the upturned tender he had escaped in and figured that he was either making his escape to Farquitt or had been eaten by a crocodile who had mistaken him for fodder.

“Well,” said Sprockett, “that denouement went very well. Your first?”

“Did it show?”

“Not at all.”

I was glad of this. “I think Thursday might have been proud.”

“Yes,” agreed Sprockett, “I think she might.”

To finish off your Character Exchange Program break, Thomas Cook (BookWorld) Limited is offering tourists the option to choose how they would like to end their holidays. The “Chase” or “Scooby-Doo” endings remain popular, as do the “Death Scene” and “Reconciliation with Sworn Enemy.” Traditionalists may be disappointed, though. The ever-popular “Riding Off into the Sunset” option has recently had to be withdrawn owing to irreconcilable cliché issues.

Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion
(15th edition)

 

 

T
he trip back downriver was uneventful and over in only twelve words. By the time the
Metaphoric Queen
had docked, the senator for Farquitt had already denied that her genre had anything to do with Herring’s plan and expressed “great surprise” and “total outrage” that someone had “faked Romantic Troops” in order to attack the Fourteenth Clown. For its part, Comedy had mobilized its Second and Sixth Clown divisions to its borders and was demanding reparations from Farquitt, at the same time bringing pressure to bear on WomFic by threatening to withdraw all humor. Not to be outdone, Speedy Muffler had declared that the “presence of untapped metaphor” within his territory was “unproven and absurd,” and he had so far refused all offers of commercial extraction contracts, further commenting that individual senators were welcome to see him personally in his “love train.”

“Looks like it’s business as usual,” I said to Commander Bradshaw.

We were in the Jurisfiction offices at Norland Park, and I was having a lengthy debrief that same afternoon. I had entered the offices not as a bit player nor an apprentice but on my own merit. Emperor Zhark had awarded me a gift of some valuable jewelry that he said had been buried with his grandfather, Mr. Fainset doffed his cap in an agreeable manner, and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle had kindly offered to do my laundry. It felt like I was part of the family.

“So what are you going to do now?” asked Bradshaw, leaning back in his chair.

“I had a small mutiny in my series,” I explained. “My own fault, really—I was thinking of Thursday and not my books. It’ll need a lot of tact and diplomacy to win it back.”

Bradshaw smiled and thought for a minute. “The BookWorld is falling apart at the seams,” he said, waving his hand at the huge pile of paperwork in his in-tray. “We’ve got a major problem with e-books that we’d never envisioned. The Racy Novel-Farquitt affair will rumble on for years, and I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of Red Herring. Ten Duplex-6s have gone missing, and everyone has escaped from
The Great Escape.
”

“How is that possible?”

“There was a fourth tunnel we didn’t know about—Tom, Dick, Harry and
Keith
. There’s a serial killer still at large, not to mention several character assassins—and that pink gorilla running around inside
A Tale of Two Cities
is really beginning to piss me off.”

He took a sip of coffee and stared at me.

“I’m down to only seven agents. You’ve proved your capacity for this sort of work. I want you to join us here at Jurisfiction.”

“No, no,” I said quickly, “I’ve had quite enough, thank you. The idea that people actually do this because
they like it
strikes me as double insanity with added insanity. Besides, you’ve already got a Thursday—you just have to find her. That reminds me.” I dug Thursday’s shield from my pocket and pushed it across the desk.

Bradshaw picked it up and rubbed his thumb against the smooth metal. “Where did you get this?”

“The red-haired man. I think Thursday knew she was compromised before she set off on her last trip and wanted me to carry on her work.”

“So that’s why he was out of his book,” muttered Bradshaw. “I’ll see him pardoned at the earliest opportunity.”

Bradshaw looked at the badge, then at me.

“So how do you think this story’s going to end?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Are you sure you’re not her?”

“It’s a tricky one,” I replied after giving the matter some thought, “and there’s evidence to suppose that I am. I can do things only she can do, I can see some things that only she can see. Landen thought I was her, and although he now thinks I’m the written one, that might be part of a fevered delusion. His or mine, I’m not sure. It’s even possible I’ve been Owlcreeked.”

Bradshaw knew what I was talking about. “Owlcreeking” was a Biercian device in which a character could spend the last few seconds of his life in a long-drawn-out digression of what might have happened had he lived. I might be at this very moment spiraling out of control in Mediocre’s cab, Herring’s coup still ahead of me and perfect in its unrevealed complexity.

“Carmine might actually be the Thursday I think I am,” I added. “It’s even possible I’m suffering the hallucinatory aftershock of a recent rewriting. And while we’re pushing the plausibility envelope, the BookWorld might not be real at all, and maybe I’m simply an Acme carpet fitter with a vibrant imagination.”

I shuddered with the possibility that none of this might be happening at all.

“This is Fiction,” said Bradshaw in a calm voice, “and the truth is whatever you make it. You can interpret the situation in any way you want, and all versions could be real—and what’s more, depending on how you act now, any one of those scenarios could
become
real.”

I frowned. “I can be Thursday just by thinking I am?”

“More or less. We may require you to undergo a short narrative procedure known as a ‘Bobby Ewing,’ where you wake up in the next chapter and it’s all been a dream, but it’s pretty painless so long as you don’t mind any potential readers throwing up their hands in disgust.”

“I can be Thursday?” I said again.

He nodded. “All you have to do is
know
you are. And don’t deny that you’ve had some doubts over the past few days.”

It was tempting. I could be her and do Thursday things and never have to worry about falling ReadRates, keeping Bowden in line or dealing with Pickwick. I could even have Landen and the kids. I looked around at the Jurisfiction office. The Red Queen was hopping mad as usual, Mr. Fainset was attempting to figure out why Tracy Capulet had locked her sister in a cupboard, Lady Cavendish was drafting an indictment against Red Herring for “impersonating a red herring when you’re not one,” and Emperor Zhark was putting together an interim peace deal for the Northern Genres. It looked enjoyable, relevant and a good use of anyone’s time.

Commander Bradshaw smiled and pushed Thursday’s shield back across the table, where I stared at it. “What do you say?”

“I can be Thursday,” I said slowly. “I can work at Jurisfiction. But at a
fictional
Jurisfiction. I want to depict the real Thursday doing everything she really did. I want her series to feature the BookWorld and you and Miss Havisham and Zhark and all the rest of them.
That’s
where I’d like to be Thursday. That’s the Thursday I can be. A
fictional
one. I’d like to help you out, but I can’t.”

Bradshaw looked at me for a long time.

“I
reluctantly
respect your decision to stay with your books,” he said at last, “and I understand your wanting to tell it like it is. Naturally we’re very grateful for everything you’ve done, but even if Jobsworth and I sign off on a Textual Flexation Certificate to change your series, I must point out that you can’t truly be Thursday without Landen, and even if you get his permission, you still have to get Thursday’s approval before you even begin to
think
about trying to change your series. And as far as we know, she may already be . . . dead.”

He had trouble saying the final word and had to almost roll it around in his mouth before he could spit it out.

“She’s not dead,” I said firmly.

“I hope not, too. But without any leads—and we have none—it’s going to be an onerous task to find her. Here in Fiction we have over a quarter of a billion titles. That’s just one island in a BookWorld of two hundred and twenty-eight different and very distinct literary groupings. Most of those islands have fewer titles but some—like Nonfiction—have more. And then there are the foreign-language BookWorlds. Even if you are right—and I hope you are—Thursday could be anywhere from the Urdu translation of
Wuthering Heights
to the guarantee card on a 1965 Sunbeam Mixmaster.”

“But you’re still looking, right?”

“Of course. We rely on telemetry from our many unmanned probes that move throughout the BookWorld, all Textual Sieves have been set to pick her up if she makes a move, and Text Grand Central is keeping the waste gates on the imaginotransference engines on alert for a ‘Thursday Next’ word string. There’s always hope, but there’s a big BookWorld out there.”

“If she’s alive,” I said in a resolute tone, “I can find her.”

“If you do,” said Bradshaw with a smile, “you can change whatever you want in your book—even introduce the Toast Marketing Board.”

I started. “You heard about that?”

He smiled. “We hear about
everything
. Take the shield. Use her rights and privileges. You might need them. And if you change your mind and want to be her, call me.”