Jasper Fforde - Something rotten

The gunmen stopped firing as soon as there was no target — but Bradshaw, his hunting instincts alerted, had already drawn a bead on the sheriff's killer and fired. There was an almighty detonation, a brief flash and a large cloud of smoke. The eraserhead hit home and the gunman disintegrated mid-stride into a brief chrysanthemum of text which scattered across the main street, the meaning of the words billowing out into a blue haze which hung near the ground for a moment or two before evaporating.

'What are you doing?' I asked, annoyed at his impetuosity.

'Him or us, Thursday,' replied Bradshaw grimly, pulling the lever down on his Martini-Henry to reload, 'him or us.'

'Did you see how much text he was composed of?' I replied angrily. 'He was almost a paragraph long. Only featured characters get that kind of description — somewhere there's going to be a book one character short!'

'But,' replied Bradshaw in an aggrieved tone, 'I didn't know that before I shot him, now, did I?'

I shook my head. Perhaps Bradshaw hadn't noticed the missing button, the sweat stains and the battered shoes, but I had. Erasure of a featured part meant more paperwork than I really wanted to deal with. From form F36/34 (discharge of an eraserhead) and form B9/32 (replacement of featured part) to the P13/36 (narrative damage assessment), I could be bogged down for two whole days. I had thought bureaucracy was bad in the real world, but here in the paper world it was everything.

'So what do we do?' asked Bradshaw. 'Ask politely for them to surrender?'

'I'm thinking,' I replied, pulling out my footnoterphone and pressing the button marked Cat. In fiction, the commonest form of communication was by footnote, but way out here . . .

'Blast!' I muttered again. 'No signal.'

'Nearest repeater station is in The Virginian ,' observed Bradshaw as he replaced the spent cartridge and closed the breech before peering outside. 'And we can't bookjump direct from pulp to classic.'

He was right. We had been crossing from book to book for almost six days, and although we could escape in an emergency, such a course of action would give the Minotaur more than enough time to escape. Things weren't good, but they weren't bad either — yet.

'Hey!' I yelled from the sheriff's office. 'We want to talk!'

'Is that a fact?' came a clear voice from outside. 'Mr Johnson says he's all done talkin’ — less you be in mind to offer amnesty.'

'We can talk about that!' I replied.

There was a beeping noise from my pocket.

'Blast,' I mumbled, consulting the Narrative Proximity Device. 'Bradshaw, we've got a story thread inbound from the east, two hundred and fifty yards and closing. Page seventy-four, line six.'

Bradshaw quickly opened his copy of Death at Double-X Ranch and ran a finger along the line:

'. . . McNeil rode into the town of Providence, Nebraska, with fifty cents in his pocket and murder on his mind . . .'

I peered cautiously out of the window. Sure enough, a cowboy on a bay horse was riding slowly into town. Strictly speaking it didn't matter if we changed the story a little as the novella had been read only sixteen times in the past ten years, but the code by which we worked was fairly unequivocal. 'Keep the story as the author intended!' was a phrase bashed into me early on during my training. I had broken it once and suffered the consequences — I didn't want to do it again.

'I need to speak to Mr Johnson,' I yelled, keeping an eye on McNeil, who was still some way distant.

'No one speaks to Mr Johnson less Mr Johnson says so,' replied the voice, 'but if you'll be offerin’ an amnesty, he'll take it and promise not to eat no more people.'

'Was that a double negative?' whispered Bradshaw with disdain. 'I do so hate them.'

'No deal unless I meet Mr Johnson first!' I yelled back.

'Then there's no deal!' came the reply.

I looked out again and saw three more gunmen appear. The Minotaur had clearly made a lot of friends during his stay in the Western genre.

'We need back-up,' I murmured.

Bradshaw clearly thought the same. He opened his TravelBook and pulled out something that looked a little like a flare gun. This was a textmarker, which could be used to signal to other Jurisfiction agents. The TravelBook was dimensionally ambivalent; the device was actually larger than the book that contained it.

'Jurisfiction know we're in Western Pulp; they just don't know where . I'll send them a signal.'

He dialled in the sort of textmark he was going to place using a knob on the back of the gun, then moved to the door, aimed the marker into the air and fired. There was a dull thud and the projectile soared into the sky. It exploded noiselessly high above us and for an instant I could see the text of the page in a light grey against the blue of the sky. The words were back to front, of course, and as I looked at Bradshaw's copy of Death at Double-X Ranch I noticed the written word 'ProVIDence' had been partially capitalised. Help would soon arrive — a show of force would deal with the gunman. The problem was, would the Minotaur make a run for it or fight it out to the end?

'Purty fireworks don't scare us, missy,' said the voice again. 'You comin' out, or do wes have to come in and get yer?'

I looked across at Bradshaw, who was smiling.

'What?'

'This is all quite a caper, don't you think?' said the commander, chuckling like a schoolboy who had just been caught scrumping apples. 'Much more fun than hunting elephant, wrestling lions to the ground and returning tribal knick-knacks stolen by unscrupulous foreigners.'

'I used to think so,' I said under my breath. Two years of assignments like these had been enjoyable and challenging, but not without their moments of terror, uncertainty and panic — and I had a two-year-old son who needed more attention than I could give him. The pressure of running Jurisfiction had been building for a long time now and I needed a break in the real world — a long one. I had felt it about six months before, just after the adventure that came to be known as The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco , but had shrugged it off. Now the feeling was back — and stronger.

A low, deep rumble began somewhere overhead. The windows rattled in their frames and dust fell from the rafters. A crack opened up in the plaster and a cup vibrated off the table to break on the floor. One of the windows shattered and a shadow fell across the street. The deep rumble grew in volume, drowned out the Narrative Proximity Device that was wailing plaintively, then became so loud it didn't seem like a sound at all — just a vibration that shook the sheriff's office so strongly my sight blurred. Then, as the clock fell from the wall and smashed into pieces, I realised what was going on.

'Oh . . . NO !' I howled with annoyance as the noise waned to a dull roar. 'Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!'

'Emperor Zhark?' queried Bradshaw.

'Who else would dare pilot a Zharkian Battle Cruiser into Western Pulp?'

We looked outside as the vast spaceship passed overhead, its vectored thrusters swivelling downward with a hot rush of concentrated power that blew up a gale of dust and debris and set the livery stables on fire. The huge bulk of the battle cruiser hovered for a moment as the landing gear unfolded, then made a delicate touchdown — right on top of McNeil and his horse, who were squashed to the thickness of a ha'penny.

My shoulders sagged as I watched my paperwork increase exponentially. The townsfolk ran around in panic and horses bolted as the A-7 gunmen fired pointlessly at the ship's armoured hull. Within a few moments the interstellar battle cruiser had disgorged a small army of foot-soldiers carrying the very latest Zharkian weaponry. I groaned. It was not unusual for the emperor to go overboard at moments like this. Undisputed villain of the eight 'Emperor Zhark' books, the most feared Tyrannical God-Emperor of the known Galaxy just didn't seem to comprehend the meaning of restraint.