Джаспер Ффорде: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

“Peace talks still on schedule for Friday,” replied Pickwick, “as if that will do any good. Sometimes I think that Muffler nutjob wants nothing but a good scrap. By the way,” she added, “did you hear about Raphael’s Walrus ?”

“No.”

“Got their eviction papers this morning.”

This wasn’t surprising. Raphael’s Walrus was a book six doors down that hadn’t been read for a while. I didn’t know them well, but since we were located at the Speculative end of Fantasy, the real estate was valuable. We’d have a new neighbor almost the moment they left.

“I hope it’s not Sword and Sorcery,” said Pickwick with a shudder. “Goblins really drag down the neighborhood.”

“Goblins might say the same about dodos.”

“Impossible!” she retorted. “Dodos are cute and cuddly and lovable and . . . don’t steal stuff and spread disease.”

People often wondered why my written dodo was such a pain in the ass when the real Pickwick was so cute. The reason was simple: lack of choice. There are only three dodos in fiction. One was dangerously psychotic, the second was something big over in Natural History, which left only one: The dodo from Alice is the same bespectacled know-it-all in my series. Her name wasn’t actually Pickwick—it was Lorina Peabody III, but we called her Pickwick, and she didn’t much mind either way. She put down the paper, announced to the room that she would be taking her siesta and waddled off.

“Mrs. Malaprop,” I said once Pickwick had left, “are you still attending your therapy sessions?”

Mrs. Malaprop arched a highbrow. She knew well enough who had complained about her.

“Eggs tincture is too good for that burred,” she said in a crabby tone, “but isle do as Uri quest.”

The average working life of a Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals was barely fifty readings. The unrelenting comedic misuse of words eventually caused them to suffer postsyntax stress disorder, and once their speech became irreversibly abstruse, they were simply replaced. Most “retired” Mrs. Malaprops were released into the BookWorld, where they turned ferrule, but just recently rehoming charities were taking note of their plight. After they’d undergone intensive Holorime Bombardment Therapy to enable them to at least sound right even if they didn’t read right, people like me offered them a home and a job. Our Malaprop was an early model—Number 862, to be precise—and she was generally quite helpful if a little tricky to understand. There was talk of using Dogberry stem cells to cure her, but we didn’t hold our broth.

I stared at the diagnostics board that covered one wall of the kitchen. The number of readers on the Read-O-Meter was stuck firmly at zero, with thirty-two copies of my novels listed “bookmarked and pending.” Of these, eighteen were active/ resting between reads. The rest were probably lying under a stack of other unfinished books. I checked the RealWorld clock. It was 0842. Years ago I was read on the train, but that hadn’t happened for a while. Unreadfulness was a double-edged sword. More leisure time, but a distinct loss of purpose. I turned to Mrs. Malaprop.

“How are things looking in the series?”

She stared at her clipboard.

“Toll rubble. Twenty-six care actors Aaron leaf or training courses; all can be covered by eggs Hastings characters. Of the settings, only Hayworth House is clothes bee coarse of an invest station of grammasites.”

“Has Jurisfiction been informed?”

“We’re low prior Tory, so they said a towers.”

“How close is our nearest reader?”

“Nine teas heaven minutes’ read time away.”

It wasn’t going to be a problem. He or she wouldn’t pickup the book again until this evening, by which time the problem would have resolved itself.

“If the reading starts early for any reason,” I said, “we’ll use the front room of Thornfield Hall as a stand-in. Oh, and my father has a flea in his ear about something, so keep an eye on him in case he tries to do his own lines. I got a letter last week from Text Grand Central about illegal dialogue flexations.”

Mrs. Malaprop nodded and made a note. “Come harder hearing cold,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“Comma DeHare ring cooled.”

“I’m . . . still not getting this.”

Mrs. Malaprop thought hard, trying to place the correct words in the correct place to enable me to understand. It was painfully difficult for her, and if Sheridan had known the misery that using acyrologia in a comedic situation would bring, he would possibly have thought butter of it.

“Come hander hair-in culled!” she said again in an exasperated tone, sweating profusely and starting to shake with the effort.

“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?”