“A little too much gherkin in the Chicago Fizz.”
“He came all the way over here just to tell you that?”
“No—I’m going to the RealWorld to look for Thursday so we can get her to the peace talks on Friday.”
“In that case,” said Sprockett, “I’ d better lay out your things. Will madam be staying long?”
“Twelve hours.”
“I’ll pack you a toothbrush, a scrunchie and some clean socks.”
“I’ d be grateful.”
I spent the rest of the journey fretting about my trip to reality. It was only a twelve-hour trip—barely a flash in and out—but that wasn’t important. What was important was that I would meet Landen in person, and although the notion of that filled me with a tingly sensation of anticipation, his rejection of me when he found out I wasn’t his wife would be . . . well, not pleasant—for him and for me. I almost thought of not going. Bradshaw couldn’t exactly punish me for not doing something he hadn’t told me to do. But then there was the possibility that I might help to find Thursday, and that filled me with the same sense of purpose I’d felt when I lied to Lockheed and Captain Phantastic. I sighed inwardly. Life was easier when I was just a character in a book, going from Preface to Acknowledgments without a care in the world. Within another twenty minutes, the train steamed into Gaiman Junction, and we took the bus home.
“You’re back,” said Pickwick, who liked to open any conversation by pointing out the obvious.
“Yes indeed,” I replied. “What’s the news?”
“My water dish is empty.”
“That’s because you just trod in it.”
Pickwick looked at her foot. “I have a wet foot . . . and my water dish is empty.”
“Anything else?”
“I saw Carmine with that goblin again. Sitting in the niche d’amour at the bottom of the garden, they were.”
“As long as she doesn’t invite him over the threshold again, I’m not bothered.”
“You should be. Goblins. Nasty. Full of diseases.”
“That’s Carmine’s problem. I told you, I’m not bothered.”
Actually, I was. I had tried to give Carmine a dressing-down for her poor choice in men, but she’d just stared at me and retorted that yes, Horace might be a thief, but at least he hadn’t set fire to a busload of nuns.
“Any news of Whitby?” I asked.
“Being questioned in custardy,” replied Mrs. Malaprop, who had walked in with a clipboard full of reports that all needed my signature. “His pasta is catching up with him. How were things at Jurisfiction?”
I didn’t tell them what had happened as it was safer that way.
“Captain Phantastic mentioned you owed him a date,” I said to Pickwick.
“The Captain?” she said with a fond smile. “I’m amazed he remembers—it was a long time ago. We were both young and foolish, and I’d do anything for a dare. Ah, Frederic—so many cats, so little recipes.”
“Few recipes.”
“What?”
“So many cats, so few recipes,” I said, pleased that I had figured out who’d been talking earlier.
Pickwick looked at me disdainfully, muttered “amateur” and marched out.
“The investigation is still on,” I said to Mrs. Malaprop as soon as Pickwick had gone, “but keep it under your hat, will you?”
“Squirtainly, ma’am. I found this note pinned to the newel post.”
“Horace?”
“The goblin.”
I wasn’t particularly annoyed with Carmine for chasing after the goblin—as long as he wasn’t invited back in again—but I was very annoyed that she had gone AWOL. It meant that for the past ten minutes there’d been no one here to play Thursday. If word had gotten out, there might have been a panic from the other characters, and it was against at least nine regulations that I could think of.
“Do we report her as absinthe without leaf?” asked Mrs. Malaprop.
I scrunched up the note. Reporting her as missing would get Jurisfiction involved, and Carmine would probably be shipped off to spend the next decade in Roger Red Hat.
“No,” I said, “but let me know the moment she gets back so I can give her a ticking off.”
Sprockett knocked and entered, his eyebrow pointing firmly at the “Worried” mark.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but the Men in Plaid are back.”
“So soon? You better admit th—”
“Thursday Next?” said the first of the MiP as he walked in the door.
“Yes?”
“You’re coming with us,” said the second.
“I can’t leave the series,” I said. “My understudy is at lunch.”
“That’s not what the board says,” observed the first, pointing at Carmine’s status on the indicator board, which was now blinking an orange “at readiness” light, despite the fact that she was out looking for Horace. “Is she AWOL?”
“No,” I lied.
“Then she’s in?”
“Yes,” I lied again.
“Then you can come with us.”
I looked at Malaprop and Sprockett. They knew what needed to be done—find Carmine at the earliest opportunity.
The Man in Plaid who seemed to be in charge jerked a thumb in the direction of the front door, and we walked outside. Predictably, there was a Buick Roadmaster, but that wasn’t the end of the story. The left-hand mudguard was dented and streaked with yellow paint—the sort of yellow paint that taxis are finished in. This was the car that had forced us off the road and into the mimefield.
“Am I in some sort of trouble?”
“You are if you don’t come with us.”
17.
The Council of Genres
The Council of Genres is the administrative body that looks after all aspects of BookWorld regulation, from policy decisions in the main debating chamber to the day-to-day running of ordinary BookWorld affairs, supply of plot devices and even the word supply coming in from the Text Sea. It controls the Book Inspectorate, which governs which books are to be published and which to be demolished, and also manages Text Grand Central and Jurisfiction.
I sat between the Men in Plaid in the back, which was uncomfortable, as they seemed to have a plethora of weapons beneath their suits, all of which poked me painfully in the ribs.
“So,” I said brightly, doing what I hoped Thursday would do—showing no fear. “How long have you been in plaid?”
“It’s not plaid. It’s tartan.”
“Right,” said the second one, “tartan.”
And despite more questions of a similar nature, they declined to talk further. I hoped to goodness that Mrs. Malaprop and Sprockett managed to hunt down Carmine in time for the early-evening readers.
We drove past Political Thriller on the Ludlum Freeway and made our way towards the towering heights of the Great Library, and I guessed where we were headed. On the twenty-sixth floor would be the Council of Genres and Senator Jobsworth, the man from whom the Men in Plaid ultimately drew their authority. Like Bradshaw, he must have figured out a way in which a Thursday Next look-alike could be used.
The security was even tighter here, and the Roadmaster slowed to negotiate the concrete roadblocks and high antibookjump mesh. We were waved through with only a cursory glance and drove across a narrow bridge and into the Ungenred Zone. This was an area of independent, narrative-free space where the governing body of the BookWorld could exist free from influence and bias. Or at least that was the theory. I’d been a few times to the Council of Genres, but only with the real Thursday. Ordinary citizens didn’t come here unless strictly on business. If we wanted to pretend we had influence, we could take any grievances to our genre representatives, and they would intercede on our behalf—or so the theory went.