“Commander Herring called?” I said, suddenly getting it. “What about?”
“A naval antecedent,” she said urgently, “in evasion.”
She meant that a novel had met with an accident in Aviation.
“Why would he be calling me after I blew it so badly last time?”
“It sea reprised me, too. Here.”
She handed me a scrap of paper. Commander James “Red” Herring was overall leader of the BookWorld Policing Agency. He was in command not only of the Fiction Police known as Jurisfiction but also of Text Grand Central’s Metaphor Squad and at least eighteen other agencies. One of these was Book Traffic Control—and part of that was the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department, or JAID, a department I occasionally worked for. The overhead book traffic, despite its usefulness, was not without problems. Fiction alone could see up to two thousand book-movements a day, and the constant transportation of the novels across the fictional skies was not without mishap. I spent at least a day a week identifying sections that had fallen off books passing overhead, trying to get them returned—and, if possible, find out why they’d come unglued. Despite safety assurances, improved adhesives and updated safety procedures, books would keep on shedding bits. The loss of a pig out of Animal Farm was the most celebrated incident. It fell several thousand feet and landed inside a book of short stories by Graham Greene. Disaster was averted by a quick-thinking Jurisfiction agent who expertly sewed the pig into the narrative. It was Jurisfiction at its very best.
“Did Commander Herring say which book or why he was calling me?”
“A very spurious accident, Walsall he said. You’re to to me, Tim, at this address.”
I took the address and stared at it. Commander Herring’s calling me personally was something of a big deal. “Anything else?”
“Your new-ender study is waiting to be interviewed in the front room.”
This was good news. My book was first-person narrative, and if I wanted to have any sort of life outside my occasional readings—such as a date with Whitby or to have a secondary career—I needed someone to stand in for me.
I walked through to the front room. My potential understudy looked pleasant enough and had troubled to integrate herself into my body type and vague looks. She had a Thursday Next outfit on, too. She wanted this job badly.
“The written Thursday Next,” I said, shaking her hand.
“Carmine O’Kipper,” she replied with a nervous smile. “ID A4-5619-23. Pleased to be here.”
“You’re an A-4, Miss O’Kipper?”
“Call me Carmine. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all.”
An A-4 character was theoretically only three steps down from the Jane Eyres and Scout Finches. To be able to handle first person, you had to be an A-grade, but none of the other understudies had been higher than an A-9.
“You must be at least an A-2, yes?” she asked.
“Something like that,” I replied as we sat. “Do you know of the series?”
“I used to keep a scrapbook of the real Thursday Next.”
“If you’re here to catch a glimpse of her, it’s unlikely. She dropped in once soon after the remaking, but not since then.”
“I’m really just after the work, Miss Next.”
She handed me her CV. It wasn’t long, nor particularly impressive. She was from an original manuscript sitting abandoned in a drawer somewhere in the Outland. She would have handled loss, love, uncertainty and a corkingly good betrayal. It looked like it might have been a good gig. But after fifteen years and not a single reader, it was time to move on.
“So . . . why do you want to work in my series?”
“I’m eager to enter a new and stimulating phase of my career,” she said brightly, “and I need a challenging and engaging book in which I can learn from a true professional.”
It was the usual bullshit, and it didn’t wash.
“You could get a read anywhere,” I said, handing back the CV, “so why come to the speculative end of Fantasy?”
She bit her lip and stared at me.
“I’ve only ever been read by one person at a time,” she confessed. “I took a short third-person locum inside a Reader’s Digest version of Don Quixote as Dulcinea two weeks ago. I had a panic attack when the read levels went over twenty-six and went for the Snooze.”
I heard Mrs. Malaprop drop a teacup in the kitchen. I was shocked, too. The Snooze Button was reserved only for dire emergencies. Once it was utilized, a reverse throughput capacitor on the imaginotransference engines would cause the reader instantaneous yawning, drowsiness and then sleep. Quick, simple—and the readers suspected nothing.
“You hit Snooze?”
“I was stopped before I did.”
“I’m very relieved.”
“Me, too. Rocinante had to take over my part—played her rather well, actually.”
“Did the Don notice? Rocinante playing you, I mean?”
“No.”
Carmine was just what I was looking for. Overqualified understudies rarely stayed long, but what with her being severely readerphobic, the low ReadRates would suit her down to the ground. I was mildly concerned over her eagerness to hit Snooze. To discourage misuse, every time the button was pressed, one or more kittens were put to death somewhere in the BookWorld. It was rarely used.
“Okay,” I said, “you’re hired. One caveat: You don’t get the Snooze Button access codes. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Excellent. How much reading time do you have?”
“Aside from my own book, I’ve got eighty-seven pages.”
It was a lamentably small amount. A single quizzical reader hunting for obscure hidden meanings would have her in a stammering flat spin in a second.
“Get your coat and a notebook,” I said. “We’re going to go greet our new neighbors—and have a chat.”
3.
Scarlett O’Kipper
Outland tourism was banned long ago, and even full members of Jurisfiction—the BookWorld’s policing elite—were no longer permitted to cross over to the RealWorld. The reasons were many and hotly debated, but this much was agreed: Reality was a pit of vipers for the unwary. Forget to breathe, miscalculate gravity or support the wrong god or football team and they’d be sending you home in a zinc coffin.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (17th edition)
After taking a pager off the counter so Mrs. Malaprop could reach me in case a reader turned up unexpectedly, we stepped out of the main gate and walked down the street. The remade Geographic BookWorld was as its name suggested—geographic—and the neighborhoods were laid out like those in an Outland housing estate. A single road ran down between the books, with sidewalks, grass verges, syntax hydrants and trees. To the left and right were compounds that contained entire novels with all their settings. In one was a half-scale Kilimanjaro, and in another a bamboo plantation. In a third an electrical storm at full tilt.
“We’re right on the edge of Fantasy,” I explained. “Straight ahead is Human Drama, and to your right is Comedy. I’ll give you Wednesdays off, but I expect you to be on standby most of the time.”
“The more first-person time I can put in,” replied Carmine, “the better. Is there anything to do around here when I’m off-duty, by the way?”
“If Fantasy is your thing,” I said, “plenty. Moving cross-genre is not recommended, as the border guards can get jumpy, and it will never do to be caught in another genre just when you’re needed. Oh, and don’t do anything that my dodo might disapprove of.”
“Such as what?”
“The list is long. Here we are.”
We had arrived on the top of a low rise where there was a convenient park bench. From this vantage point, we could see most of Fiction Island.
“That’s an impressive sight,” said Carmine.
There was no aerial haze in the BookWorld, and because the island was mildly dished where it snuggled against the interior of the s
phere, we could see all the way to the disputed border between Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction in the far north of the island, and beyond that the unexplored Dismal Woods.
“That’s the Metaphoric River,” I explained, pointing out the sinuous bends of the waterway whose many backwaters, bayous, streams and rivulets brought narrative ambiguity and unnecessarily lengthy words to the millions of books that had made their home in the river’s massive delta. “To the east of Racy Novel is Outdated Religious Dogma.”
“Shouldn’t that be in Nonfiction?” asked Carmine.
“It’s a contentious issue. It was removed from Theology on the grounds that the theories had become ‘untenable in a modern context’ and ‘were making us look medieval.’”
“And that island off the coast of Dogma?” she asked, pointing to a craggy island partially obscured by cloud.
“The smaller of the two is Sick Notes, and the larger is Lies, Self-Delusion and Excuses You Can Use to Justify Poor Behavior. South of Dogma is Horror, then Fantasy, with Adventure and Science Fiction dominating the south coast.”
“I’ll never remember all that.”
I handed her my much-thumbed copy of Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion. “Use this,” I said, showing her the foldout map section and train timetables. “I’ve got the new edition on order.”
Whilst we had been sitting there, the recently evicted book had been unbolted by a team of Worker Danvers.
“ Raphael’s Walrus has been unread for over two years,” I explained, “so it’s off to the narrative doldrums of the suburbs. Not necessarily permanent, of course—a resurgence of interest could bring it back into the more desirable neighborhoods in an instant.”
“How come your series is still here?” she asked, then put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, was that indelicate of me?”
“No, most people ask that. The Text Grand Central Mapping Committee keeps us here out of respect.”
“For you?”
“No—for the real Thursday Next.”
A smattering of soil and pebbles descended to earth as Raphael’s Walrus rose into the air, the self-sealing throughput and feedback conduits giving off faint puffs of word vapor as they snapped shut. This was how the new Geographic BookWorld worked. Books arrived, books left, and the boundaries of the various genres snaked forwards and backwards about the land, reflecting the month-to-month popularity of the various genres. The Crime genre was always relatively large, as were Comedy, Fantasy and Science Fiction. Horror had gotten a boost recently with the burgeoning Urban Vampires sector, while some of the lesser-known genres had shrunk to almost nothing. Squid Action/Adventure was deleted quite recently, and Sci-Fi Horse Detective looked surely set to follow.
But the vacated area was not empty for long. As we watched, the first of many prefabricated sections of the new book arrived, fresh from the construction hangars in the Well of Lost Plots. The contractors quickly surveyed the site, pegged out strings and then signaled to large transporter slipcases that were hovering just out of sight. Within a few minutes, handling ropes were dropped as the sections moved into a hover thirty feet or so above, and the same small army of Worker Danvers, cheering and grunting, maneuvered the sections into position, and then riveted them in place with pneumatic hammers. The first setting to be completed was a semiruined castle, then a mountain range, then a forest—with each tree, rabbit, unicorn and elf carefully unpacked from crates. Other sections soon followed, and within forty minutes the entire novel had been hauled in piecemeal from the overhead, riveted down and attached to the telemetry lines and throughput conduits.
“It’s a good idea to be neighborly,” I said. “You never know when you might need to borrow a cupful of irony. Besides, you might find this interesting.”
We walked up the drive and across the drawbridge into the courtyard. Notices were posted everywhere that contained useful directions such as THIS WAY TO THE DENOUEMENT or NO BOOTS TO BE WORN IN THE BACKSTORY and even DO NOT FEED THE AMBIGUITY. The contractors were making last-minute adjustments. Six were arranging the clouds, two were wiring the punctuation to the main distribution board, three were trying to round up a glottal stop that wasn’t meant to be there, and two others had just slit a barrage balloon full of atmosphere. The ambience escaped like a swarm of tiny midges and settled upon the fabric of the book, adding texture and style.
“Hello!” I said to the cast, who were standing around looking bewildered, their heads stuffed unrealistically full of Best Newcomer prizes and a permanent place in every reader’s heart. They were about to be published and read for the first time. They would be confused, apprehensive and in need of guidance. I was so glad I wasn’t them.
“My name’s Thursday Next, and I just dropped in to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
“This is indeed an honor, Miss Next,” said the king, “and welcome to Castle of Skeddan Jiarg. We’ve heard of your exploits in the BookWorld, and I would like to say on behalf of all of us—”
“I’m not that one,” I replied, before it all got embarrassing. I had denied I was the real Thursday Next more times than I would care to remember. Sometimes I went through an entire week doing little else.
“I’m the written Thursday Next,” I explained.
“Ah,” said one of several wizards who seemed to be milling around. “So you’re not Jurisfiction, then?”
“I got as far as a training day,” I replied, which was still a proud boast, even if I had been rejected for active service. It was annoying but understandable. Few make the grade to be a member of Fiction’s policing elite. I wasn’t tough enough, but it wasn’t my fault. I was written to be softer and kinder—the Thursday who Thursday herself thought she wanted to be. In any event, it made me too empathetic to get things done in the dangerously dynamic landscape of the BookWorld.
They all returned my greeting, but I could see they had lost interest. I asked them if I could show Carmine around, and they had no objections, so we wandered into the grand hall, which was all lime-washed walls, flaming torches, hammerhead beams and flagstones. Some of the smaller props were only cardboard cutouts, and I noted that a bowl of fruit was no more than a Post-it note with “bowl of fruit” written on it.
“Why only a Post-it?” asked Carmine. “Why not a real bowl of fruit?”
“For economic reasons,” I replied. “Every novel has only as much description as is necessary. In years past, each book was carefully crafted to an infinitely fine degree, but that was in the days of limited reader sophistication. Today, with the plethora of experience through increased media exposure, most books are finished by the readers themselves.”
“The Feedback Loop?”
“Precisely. As soon as the readers get going, the Feedback Loop will start backwashing some of their interpretations into the book itself. Not that long ago, books could be stripped bare by overreading, but since the invention of the loop, not only do books suffer little internal wear but readers often add detail by their own interpretations. Was that a goblin?”
I had just seen a small creature with pixie ears and sharp teeth staring at us from behind a chair.
“Looks like it.”
I sighed. Pickwick would have something new to complain about.
“What is Thursday like?” asked Carmine.
I got asked this a lot. “You’ve heard the stories?”
She nodded. Most people had. For over fifteen years, Thursday Next had worked at Jurisfiction, tirelessly patrolling the BookWorld like a narrative knight-errant, bringing peace and justice to the very edge of acceptable prose. She was head and shoulders above the other agents—giants like Commander Bradshaw, Emperor Zhark, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle or even the Drunk Vicar.
“Did she really take Hamlet into the RealWorld?” asked Carmine, excited by my mentor’s audaciousness.
“Among others.”
“And defeat Yorrick Kaine?”
“That, too.”
“What about the Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco? Did they really have t
o delete two weeks of his diary to make everything okay?”
“That was the least of her worries. Even Thursday had occasional failures—it’s inevitable if you’re at the top of your game. Mind you,” I added, unconsciously defending my famous namesake, “if Samuel Pepys hadn’t set Deb up in a pied-à-terre in the backstory of Sons and Lovers with Iago coming in for halfcosts on alternate weekdays, it would never have escalated into the disaster it became. They could have lost the entire diaries and, as a consequence, anything in Nonfiction that used the journal as a primary source. It was only by changing the historical record to include a ‘Great Fire of London’ that never actually happened that Thursday managed to pull anything from the debacle. History wouldn’t speak to the council for months, but Sir Christopher Wren was delighted.”
We walked back out into the courtyard. The king and queen invited us around for a “pre-reading party” that evening, and I responded by inviting them around for tea and cakes the following day. Thus suitably introduced, we made our way out to the street again.
“So how do you want me to play you?” asked Carmine.
“You’re not playing me, you’re playing her. There’s a big difference. Although I’ve been Thursday for so long that sometimes I think I am her, I’m not. I’m just the written her. But in answer to your question, I try to play her dignified. I took over from the other written Thursday—long story, don’t ask—soon after the Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco was deleted—even longer story, still don’t ask—and the previous Thursday played her a little disrespectfully, so I’m trying to redress that.”
“I heard that the violent and gratuitous-sex Thursday had a lot more readers.”
I glared at Carmine, but she simply stared back at me with big innocent eyes. She was making a statement of fact, not criticism.
“We’ll get the readers back somehow,” I replied, although I wasn’t wholly convinced.
“Can I meet the real Thursday?” asked Carmine in a hopeful tone of voice. “For research purposes, naturally.”
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