“When the last of the nine copies of this book have gone,” pointed out the cricket, “we can finally come off duty and be reassigned. I’m studying for the lead in Charlotte’s Web.”
“Do you know of any other books that require stunt crickets?” asked Bruises hopefully. “I’ve been practicing the very dangerous and not-at-all-foolhardy leap over seventeen motorcycles in a double-decker bus.”
“Isn’t it meant to be the other way around?”
“I told you it seemed a bit rum,” said the cricket as Bruises’ shoulders sagged. “But never mind all that,” he added, returning his attention to me. “I suppose you’re here about…the thing?”
“We are, sir. Where is it?”
The cricket pointed with three of his legs at a pile of half-finished toys in the corner and, thus rendered lopsided, fell over. His stunt double laughed until the cricket glared at him dangerously.
“It appeared unannounced three days ago-quite ruined my entrance.”
“I thought you’d never been read?”
“Rehearsals, dahling. I do like to keep the thespian juices fresh-and Bruises here likes to practice his celebrated ‘falling from the wall after being struck by a mallet’ stunt-and then the leg twitching and death throes, which he does so well.”
Bruises said nothing and studied the tips of his antennae modestly.
I cautiously approached the area of the room the cricket had indicated. Half hidden behind a marionette with no head and a hobby horse in need of sanding was a dull metallic sphere about the size of a grapefruit. It had several aerials sticking out of the top and an array of lenses protruding from the front. I leaned closer and sniffed at it cautiously. I could smell the odor of corrosion and see the fine pits on the heat-streaked surface. This wasn’t an errant space probe from the Sci-ficanon; it was too well described for that. Bradshaw had been right-it was trans-fictional.
“Where do you think it’s from?” asked the cricket. “We get scraps of other books blowing in from time to time when there’s a WordStorm, but nothing serious. Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream sheltered here for a while during the textphoon of ’32 and picked up a thing or two from Lamp-Wick, but only the odd verb or two otherwise. Is it important?”
“Not really,” I replied. It was a lie, of course-but I didn’t want a panic. This was anything but unimportant. I gently rotated the probe and read the engraved metal plate on the back. There was a serial number and a name that I recognized only too well-the Goliath Corporation. My least favorite multinational and a thorn in my side for many years. I was annoyed and heartened all at the same time. Annoyed that they had developed a machine for hurling probes inside fiction, but heartened that this was all they had managed to achieve. As I peered closer at the inert metallic ball, there was a warning chirp from my bag. I quickly dug out a small instrument and tossed it to Thursday5.
“A reader?” she said with surprise. “In here?”
“So it seems. How far away?”
She flipped the device open and stared at the flickering needle blankly. Technology was another point she wasn’t that strong on. “We’re clear. The reader is…er, two paragraphs ahead of us.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked at the instrument again. It was a Narrative Proximity Device, designed to ensure that our intrafictional perambulations couldn’t be seen by readers in the Outland. One of the odd things about the BookWorld was that when characters weren’t being read, they generally relaxed and talked, rehearsed, drank coffee, watched cricket or played mah-jongg. But as soon as a reading loomed, they all leaped into place and did their thing. They could sense the reading approaching out of long experience, but we couldn’t-hence the Narrative Proximity Device. Being caught up in a reading wasn’t particularly desirable for a Jurisfiction agent, as it generally caused a certain degree of confusion in the reader. I was spotted once myself-and once is once too often.
“I think so,” replied Thursday, staring at the meter again. “No, wait-yes.”
“A positive echo means the reader is ahead of us, a negative means…?”
“Bother,” she muttered. “Paragraphs behind and coming this way-Ma’am, I think we’re about to be read.”
“Is it a fast reader?”
She consulted the meter once more. If the reader was fast-a fan on a reread or a bored student-then we’d be fine. A slow reader searching every word for hidden meaning and subtle nuance and we might have to jump out until whoever it was had passed.
“Looks like a 41.3.”
This was faster than the maximum throughput of the book, which was pegged at about sixteen words per second. It was a speed-reader, as likely as not reading every fifth word and skimming over the top of the prose like a stone skipping on water.
“They’ll never see us. Press yourself against the wall until the reading moves through.”
“Are you sure?” asked Thursday5, who had done her basic training with the old Jurisfiction adage “Better dead than read” ringing in her ears.
“You should know what a reading looks like if you’re to be an asset to Jurisfiction. Besides,” I added, “overcaution is for losers.”
I was being unnecessarily strict. We could quite easily have jumped out or even hopped back a few pages and followed the narrative behind the reading, but cadets need to sail close to the wind a few times. Both the crickets were in something of a tizzy at the prospect of their first-ever reading and tried to run in several directions at once before vanishing off to their places.
“Stand still,” I said as we pressed ourselves against the least-well-described part of the wall and looked again at the NPD. The needle was rising rapidly and counting off the words to what we termed “Read Zero”-the actual time and place, the comprehension singularity, where the story was actually being read.
There was a distant hum and a rumble as the reading approached. Then came a light buzz in the air like static and an increased heightening of the senses as the reader took up the descriptive power of the book and translated it into his or her own unique interpretation of the events-channeled from here through the massive imaginotransference Storycode Engines back at Text Grand Central and into the reader’s imagination. It was a technology of almost incalculable complexity, which I had yet to fully understand. But the beauty of the whole process was that the reader in the Outland never suspected there was any sort of process at all-the act of reading was to most people, myself included, as natural as breathing.
Geppetto’s woodworking tools started to jiggle on the workbench, and a few of the wood shavings started to drift across the floor, gaining more detail as they moved. I frowned. Something wasn’t right. I had expected the room to gain a small amount of increased reality as the reader’s imagination bathed it in the power of his or her own past experiences and interpretations, but as the trembling and warmth increased, I noticed that this small section of Collodi’s eighteenth-century allegorical tale was being raised into an unprecedented level of descriptive power. The walls, which up until then had been a blank wash of color, suddenly gained texture, a myriad of subtle hues and even areas of damp. The window frames peeled and dusted up, the floor moved and undulated until it was covered in flagstones that even I, as an Outlander, would not be able to distinguish from real ones. As Pinocchio slept on, the reading suddenly swelled like a breaking ocean roller and crossed the room in front of us, a crest of heightened reality that moved through us and imparted a warm feeling of well-being. But more than that, a rare thing in fiction, a delicate potpourri of smells. Freshly cut wood, cooking, spice, damp-and Pinocchio’s scorched legs, which I recognized were carved from cherry. There was more, too-a strange jumble of faces, a young girl laughing and a derelict castle in the moonlight. The smells grew stronger, to the point where I could taste them in my mouth, the dust and grime in the room seemingly accentuated until there was a faint hiss and a ploof sound and the enhanced feelings dropped away in an instant. Everything once more returned to the limited reality we had experienced when we arrived-the bare description necessary for the room to be Geppetto’s workshop. I nudged Thursday5, who opened her eyes and looked around with relief.