“Hmm,” he said, “looks like we have a lot of illegal narrative flexations in your series, doesn’t it?”
“I’m playing Thursday as Thursday wants me to.”
“We have only your word for that. There is also a possible charge of your understudy consorting with undesirables and, most seriously, your harboring an illegal alien from Vanity.”
He meant Sprockett.
“We call it Self-Publishing these days.”
“Immaterial. We’ll be taking the Metaphoric River route up-country via paddle steamer. I’ll have a car pick you up Friday morning at 0700. Are we agreed?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Excellent!”
He pressed a button on his desk.
“Miss Next, you must also understand that in matters of BookWorld politics like this, it is essential you do not speak of this to anyone, especially that busybody Bradshaw. Jurisfiction has a twisted vision of the good work we do at the council, and I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. Do you understand?”
If there was any lingering doubt that the CofG and Jurisfiction distrusted each other, it was dispelled. Neither wanted the other to know what it was asking me to do. The clerk came back in, and I was escorted from the building by the same two Men in Plaid who had brought me there.
In a very short time, I was deposited back at my front door, and the Roadmaster pulled silently away. Sprockett was waiting for me in the hall, his single eyebrow pointer clicking alternately between “Quizzical” and “Uncomfortable.”
But he knew what to do.
“Can I interest ma’am in a Ludlow Scorcher?”
I told him a cocktail would go down very well so long as he went easy on the parsley, and then I related what had just happened with Jobsworth. I decided not to mention the threats he’d made regarding Sprockett and Carmine, but I did mention that I would be going up-country on Friday—and also the dent and the streak of yellow paint on the Men in Plaid’s Buick Roadmaster.
“The fact that they haven’t tried to kill us again tends to indicate that they believe we have abandoned the investigation,” said Sprockett, handing me the cocktail. “Are you sure it was our yellow paint on the side of their Roadmaster?”
“What else is painted yellow in the BookWorld?”
As soon as I said it, I suddenly remembered something. I stood up and quickly walked to the garage at the bottom of the garden, Sprockett close behind.
“Ma’am?” he said as I swung up the double doors and started to poke amongst the book junk for what I was looking for. I found it easily enough: the back axle that had once been painted yellow. There was no sign of an ISBN, scrubbed or otherwise.
“It wasn’t from The Murders on the Hareng Rouge,” I said excitedly. “It’s from a TransGenre Taxi. I rode back from Poetry stuck onto the side of an ocean tanker, part of a book about the Bermuda Triangle. There was a taxi attached to Murders when it went down, piggybacking from one part of the BookWorld to another. The sabotage might not have been aimed at the book at all— it might have been aimed at whoever was in the cab!”
“Or both,” said Sprockett, annoyingly muddying the waters.
“Or both,” I agreed.
“Where is the rest of the cab?” asked Sprockett.
“Who knows? Either vaporized or embedded somewhere in the unread backwaters of Thriller. Here’s the deaclass="underline" You’re going to call the TransGenre Taxi offices and find out about any missing cabs, and I’m going to find out more about The Murders on the Hareng Rouge and Adrian Dorset.”
“But where, ma’am? If Captain Phantastic doesn’t know, it’s unknowable.”
“In the RealWorld, Sprockett. Cheers.”
I tried the Scorcher. It wasn’t too bad. A bit loamy for my taste, but otherwise good.
I went upstairs and packed a small tote bag. A few clothes and some spare underwear—I’d heard all the scare stories—then worried about taking my pistol or not, but eventually I did. After that I dithered over taking ammunition and decided to, but only one cartridge and of the armor-piercing variety. I argued to myself that I would be too scared to use it, so I wouldn’t. I gave Carmine some last-minute instructions in case of emergencies, ignored her protestations about “having to face more readers than she was happy with” and then ordered a cab. “If I have to press the Snooze Button,” said Mrs. Malaprop as I waited, “it’s on your conch séance, not mine.”
“Agreed.”
“Where to?” asked the cabbie when he pulled up ten minutes later.
“Norland Park,” I said, “ Sense and Sensibility. Any route you like.”
But at that moment someone else got into the cab by way of the opposite door. He was wearing a large floppy hat that partially obscured his features.
“Sorry,” I said, “cab taken.”
The other passenger lifted the brim of the hat so I could see his face. It was Whitby.
“It’s okay,” I said to the cabbie, and we moved off.
“Holy cow!” I said, turning to Whitby, “you’ve got a nerve. When were you going to tell me about setting fire to that busload of nuns? Two years I spent building myself up to a date, and then I find that you’re a homicidal maniac.”
“ Lots of people are homicidal maniacs,” he replied. “Throw a stick into Crime and you’ll hit six of them.”
“But we’re not in Crime, are we?”
He stared at me for a moment. “I’ve done lots of good in my life, Thursday—helped people to narrative independence, coached Generics through entrance exams, was EZ-Read’s Employee of the Month three months running, and I even helped little old ladies across the road—some when they actually wanted to go. Do I get credit for that? No. All you want to think about is the nuns.”
“Orphaned nuns,” I reminded him.
“Actually, it was the puppies who were orphaned,” he said petulantly. “Let’s stick to the facts here.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really. But I don’t think that one teensy-weensy incident with a small busload of nuns and puppies should taint a man’s life.”
“I think it does, Whitby. You might have told me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
He sighed. “You remember Dermot McGruber? EZ-Read’s rep over in HumDram?”
“Yes.”
“He wanted to impress a girl. But he’d done some seriously bad shit when he was a character in Crime.”
“The nuns?”
“Right. With a backstory like that hanging around his neck and guilt consuming his every moment, he couldn’t even begin to get a date. So I said I’d look after his backstory for the weekend so he could ask her out, guilt-free and with an easy heart.”
“That was generous of you.”
He shrugged. “He helped me out once when I over ordered some EZ-Read PlotHoleFiller. I owed him. A weekend of all-consuming guilt seemed easy enough. I could keep myself to myself, get totally hyphenated, and no one need ever know.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “He’s legged it.”
Whitby nodded as the cabbie changed down a gear and moved onto the Dickens Freeway.
“I don’t know where Dermot’s gone. In fact, I think he might have been planning this for a while. I feel such an idiot—and what’s more, I think he put Jurisfiction onto me. You won’t tell them, will you?”
“Not yet, but I will. You can’t set fire to people—nuns or otherwise—and expect to get away with it.”
“I know,” he said sadly. “It weighs heavily on my conscience. The yapping, oh, the yapping.”
I sat in silence for a moment. The thing about backstories is that once you’ve taken one on, they’re true and real, irrespective of who owned them before you. You could pass it on, of course, but it was understandably tricky. Who wants a busload of burning nuns and puppies on his conscience?
“So what do you want?” I asked.
“I just wanted to see you,” he said simply, “and hear your voice.”