One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (43 page)

“Thank heavens for that,” I said. “Let’s get down to business. Where is Thursday, and why didn’t you report her presence here to Jurisfiction?”

“We send so many conflicting and utterly bizarre plot lines out of the genre that everyone ignores us,” said Shifter Once Jenny sadly. “I think Jurisfiction set our messages to ‘auto-ignore.’”

“For good reason,” I replied. “You’re only marginally less troublesome than Conspiracy.”

“That’s why Thursday asked us to transmit all those ambiguities direct to you. We were hoping you’d get here sooner than this. We peppered you with as much confusion as we could, but you didn’t pick it up.”

If I’d been Thursday, I would have. Being confused over identity had been a mainstay of Psychological Thriller for years. I had a lot to learn.

“I’m new to this.”

“You’ll get the hang of it.”

“I hope not. Where is she?”

“In that antechamber.”

I turned and followed a short corridor to where there was a small room off the main mausoleum. It was obviously where the shape-changers usually lived, as there were posters of Faceache on the wall. They had given over the one bed to Thursday, who was lying on her back. The room was lit by a gas lantern, and by its flickering jet I could see that she was in a bad state. There was an ugly bruise on her face, and one eye was red with blood. She moved her head to look at me, and I saw her eyes glisten.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” said Thursday in a weak voice.

I placed my hand on her forehead. It was hot.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

She gave a faint smile and shrugged, but she winced when she did it.

“Landen?” she whispered.

“He’s fine. Kids, too.”

“Tell them—”

“Tell them yourself.”

I stood up. I had to get her to
Gray’s Anatomy
as soon as possible. There was an umbrella in a stand at the door, and I picked it up.

“Thursday? I’m going to fetch someone who can carry you out of here. My butler. I’ll be ten minutes.”

“You have a butler?” she managed.

“Yes,” I replied in a chirpy voice in order to hide my concern. “
Everyone
needs a butler.”

I
flew the Hovermatic home from
Gray’s Anatomy
two hours later, but Sprockett and I said nothing on the trip. I was quiet because I was thinking about Thursday, and what a close call it had been. She had a fractured skull, a broken femur and eight breaks to her left arm and hand. There were multiple lacerations, a loss of blood, fever and a concussion. Henry Gray himself took charge and whisked her into surgery almost the moment I arrived. Within ten minutes the waiting room was full of concerned well-wishers, Bradshaw and Zhark amongst them. I knew she was in good hands, so I’d quietly slipped away as soon as I heard she was out of danger.

I was quiet also because I had averted a war and saved many lives today, and that’s a peculiar feeling that’s difficult to describe. Sprockett was quiet, too—but only because I had inadvertently allowed his spring to run down, and he had shut off all functions except thought, and he was thinking mildly erotic thoughts about bevel gears and how nice it might be to have a flywheel fitted in order to give him a little more oomph in the mornings.

The first thing I saw when I got back to my house was Bowden, dressed up as me.

“This isn’t how it appears,” he said in the same tone of voice he’d used when I found him looking through my underwear drawer the year before. He told me then that he’d “heard a mouse,” but I didn’t believe him.

“How
should
it appear if you’re dressed up in my clothes?”

“Carmine’s goblin ran off with a goblinette, and she locked herself in the bathroom again. I’m standing in for her.
You
. I’ve just done a scene with myself. It was most odd.”

“How many readers we got?” I asked.

“Six.”

“You can handle it.”

“Oh!” said Bowden, in the manner of one who is pretending to be disappointed but is actually delighted. “If I must. But who will play me?”

“I will,” came a voice from the door. I turned to find Whitby Jett standing there.

“Whitby?”

“How’s my little Thursday?”

“She’s good. But . . . what about the nuns?”

“A misunderstanding,” he said. “I hadn’t set fire to any of them, as it turned out.”

I stepped forward and touched his chest. I could feel that the guilt had lifted. He’d managed to move the damaging backstory on.

“I’m going to mix some cocktails,” announced Sprockett, and he buzzed from the room.

“Make mine a Sidcup Sling, Sprocky old boy,” said Jett. “Bowden—where are my lines?”

“Here!” said Bowden, passing him a well-thumbed script.

“Whitby?”

“Yes, muffin?”

“Are you busy right now?”

“Only selling useless rubbish for EZ-Read. Why?”

“Nothing.” I smiled, but there
was
something. Whitby could play Landen beautifully.

He and Bowden both went off to play a scene in the SpecOps Building, leaving me to sit at the kitchen table trying to figure out if I could have found Thursday earlier. If I’d had more experience, probably.

Pickwick stuck her head around the door and looked relieved when she saw me.

“Thank goodness!” she said. “I can’t tell you what a disaster it’s been. They threatened to tape my beak shut if I didn’t join them. Your father was the ringleader—along with Carmine, of course. She’ll come to a sticky end, I can tell you.”

“She’ll be fine,” I said, feeling magnanimous. Carmine had problems, but so did we all. “Make the tea, will you?”

“Isn’t that why we have a butler?”

I stared at her and raised an eyebrow.

“So . . . milk and one sugar, right?”

And she waddled into the kitchen to try to figure out which object was the kettle.

“May I come in?”

It was the character who played my father. He was quite unlike his usual abrasive self and seemed almost painfully eager to be friendly.

“Hello, Thursday,” he said. “Is . . . that chair comfortable?”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said, almost embarrassed to see him like this. “I’m going to make some radical changes to your character. It’s very simple: Do the new scenes or you can have a transfer. Take it or leave it.”

He thought about it for a moment, mumbled something about how he would “look forward to seeing his new lines” and made some excuse before departing.

Pickwick came back in. “The tea is in the jar marked ‘tea,’ right?”

“Right.”

The doorbell rang. It was Emperor Zhark.

“Good evening, Your Mercilessness,” I said, opening the door wide. “Come on in and have a cocktail. My man does a Gooseberry Flip so strong it will make your toes swell.”

“That’s a figure of speech, right?”

“Not at all. Your toes really do swell—to the size of apples.”

“I won’t, thank you. I’m actually here on business. Do you have an automaton living here, name of Sprockett?”

I think my heart might almost have stopped.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“I am ready, sir.”

It was Sprockett. He had his overcoat on and had packed his oils and a spare knee joint, just in case.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you can’t take him away. He has a job with me. I’ll sign any papers you want.”

“Ma’am,” said Sprockett, “I am no longer in your employ. If you recall, you gave me glowing references and relieved me of my duties. Emperor, may we go?”

The emperor moved to the door, but I wasn’t done.

“Emperor,” I said, “I don’t wish to appear above my station, but I do feel that a simple work-permit violation could be overlooked on this occasion.”

Zhark told Sprockett to get into his car and turned back to me.

“Miss Next,” he said in a firm voice, “your butler might be the perfect Thursday’s Friday, but he is far too dangerous to allow to remain at liberty. All those laws of robotics you’ve heard of are pretty much baloney. Good evening, Miss Next, and I’m sorry.”

And he turned in a sweep of black velvet and strode up to his waiting limousine, leaving me shaking with frustration until I had a thought.

“Wait!”

I ran up to the limousine’s window.

“This crime,” I said, “did it have anything to do with nuns?”

“And puppies,” said Zhark with a shudder. “Frightful business.”

“You stay right here. Don’t move. Understand?”

I think Emperor Zhark started to respect me just then. Not just as a Thursday but as a person. Either that or he was used to taking orders from angry women.

Whitby and Bowden were in the SpecOps office, talking about Hades. I’d found Carmine looking in the fridge for something to eat, and she did a mid-read changeover with Whitby. I took him by the hand and pushed him into an adjoining room. I’ll admit it. I was angry.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

“A scene with Bowden. You told me to.”

“Not
that
. I’m talking about Sprockett and the incident with the nuns. What were you doing?”

He shrugged. “Listen, muffin, he approached
me
. Said he’d take on my backstory so you’d be happy. What am I going to do? Turn him down? I want you and me to be happy, pumpkin, and we’ll always be thankful to it for such a selfless act.”

“Not ‘it’—
him
.”

I stared at him and shook my head, and he knew then that however much I liked him, I couldn’t let it happen this way, and neither could he. He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, and I could feel my eyes fill with tears.

“Listen, Whitby, you’ll find a way of getting rid of it.”

“Yes,” he said, “and when I do—”

“You’ll know where to find me.”

He smiled a wan smile and walked out the door. I wiped my eyes and went and sat down in the kitchen to stare at the wall.

“Here,” said Pickwick, panting with the exertion, “your tea.”

She pushed it across the table with her beak, and I picked it up.

“Oh,” I said, “it’s gone cold.”

“It was supposed to be hot?”

“No, actually, this is good. Thank you, Pickers.”

“That’s a relief. What’s for dinner? I’m starving after all that tea making. It really takes it out of you.”

“Mrs. Malaprop suggested a macarena cheese,” came a voice from the doorway. I turned to see Sprockett standing tall and as straight as a poker, every bit the perfect butler.

I ran across and gave him a hug. He was hard and cold, and although he was outwardly emotionless, deep within him I could hear his cogs speed up as I squeezed.

“Madam,
please,
” he said, faintly embarrassed.

“Thank you, Sprockett,” I said. “For everything.”

The automaton inclined his head politely, but my eyes were fixed on his eyebrow to see what it would do. I wanted to see what loyal friendship meant to him—whether a man of cogs, dials, chains and sprockets could
really
feel as humans feel.

But I was to be disappointed. He pressed a white-gloved finger to his eyebrow, blocking any movement. All I could see in his face was blank molded porcelain, two lenses for eyes and a slot through which he spoke.

“May I ask a question, ma’am?”

“Of course.”

“Was it a compassionate act to take over Whitby’s backstory to enable you to be together?”

“Yes.”

“I believe I have learned something of value here today, ma’am. But what made Whitby retake the backstory?”

“He knew it was the right thing to do.”

Sprockett buzzed briefly to himself. “Does that sort of thing happen out there in the RealWorld, or is it just in books?”

I thought for a moment. Of the untidy chaos I had seen in the RealWorld; of not knowing what was going to happen; of not knowing what, if anything, had relevance. The RealWorld was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor. I thought then of the narrative order here in the BookWorld, our resolved plot lines and the observance of natural justice we took for granted.

“Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world,” I said,

“but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld
hope
their own world to be—it isn’t a mirror, it’s an aspiration.”

“Humans,” said Sprockett, “are the most gloriously bizarre creatures.”

“Yes,” I said with a smile. “They certainly are.”

First, my thanks to Carolyn Mays and Josh Kendall and all the team at Hodder and Viking for their steadfast support and understanding during the final stages of the book, where events of a daughtering nature conspired to render the manuscript past the ideal delivery time.

My thanks to Dr. John Wooten for his valuable contributions to the understanding of Nextian Physics, and for being at the end of an e-mail if I had a query with regard to the best way to mangle physics while still looking vaguely correct.

The illustrations were drawn by Bill Mudron and Dylan Meconis of Portland, Oregon, and they have, as usual, surpassed themselves in their depiction of the Nextian Universe. Bill can be found at
www.excelsiorstudios.net
and Dylan at
www.dylanmeconis.com
.