I went down to my cabin to wash my face but stopped at Cabin 12, next door to mine. The mysterious passenger’s escape from the steamer still made no sense, so I pushed open the door and went in.
The bed was made up, as I might have suspected—we weren’t due to return until tomorrow. I searched through the missing passenger’s baggage and found none of the shoulder or knee pads that Sprockett had described, although the fire retardant was still there, unopened. There was a change of clothes and nothing else. I was about to close the door when I remembered— the mysterious passenger had his luggage with him when we saw him rowing away.
A flurry of unpleasant thoughts went through my head, and I suddenly realized not only why the mysterious passenger would have knee pads, but who had attacked the Fourteenth Clown and what was going on in the Outland that made the whole thing possible. This was a complex plot of considerable dimension, and I was now certain who was behind it all. My first thought was to go and tell Jobsworth exactly what was happening, but I stopped as a far worse realization dawned upon me. The plan would work only if everyone on board the Metaphoric Queen were to be assassinated.
I grabbed a fire ax and ran up the companionway to the deck.
38.
Answers
Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity lies Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.
One of Jobsworth’s D-3 minions had been given the task of keeping an eye on the riveted box that contained the valuable plot-line gifts for Speedy Muffler, and he noticed me only when I was halfway across the foredeck, my intention already clear to those present. He dropped his copy of The Word and took a pace towards me. I caught him on the solar plexus with the ball of my hand, and he reeled over backwards. The foredeck would have been in plain view from the wheelhouse, and the captain pulled on the steam whistle and sent a deafening blast echoing across Racy Novel, temporarily quenching the sounds of the enthusiastic moans that echoed over the water.
The whistle also drowned out the sound of the padlock being smashed off, and I had the lid open and was looking at the contents when Zhark and Jobsworth arrived beside me. They stopped, too, and stared inside the box.
“Those aren’t plot lines,” said Jobsworth.
“No,” I replied, looking up the river to where I could just see Lady Chatterley’s Lover appear around the next bend, less than five hundred yards away, “and you need to stop the boat before we get to Racy Classics.”
“Captain!” yelled Jobsworth, who knew how to act properly when evidence presented itself. The captain opened the wheelhouse window and leaned out, cupping a hand to his ear.
“Turn the Queen about and get us downstream. If we go up, I want to be taking only Racy Pulp with us!”
The captain needed no further bidding, and he ordered the helm hard over to turn midriver.
I leaned in and examined the contents of the box. It was a classy job. There was a single glass jar that contained, as far as I could see, a lot of foam. This was attached to a funnel and a time switch, and wrapped around all this was a series of embarrassingly bad descriptions of sexual congress. Emperor Zhark moved closer and put on his glasses.
“By the seven-headed Zook of Zargon,” he breathed. “It’s full of antikern.”
“It’s full of what?”
“Kerning is the adjustment of the white spaces between the letters,” he explained, “in order to make the letters seem proportionally spaced. What this does is remove the white spaces entirely—within an instant this entire boat and everyone in it will implode into nothing more than an oily puddle of ink floating on the river.”
I pointed to the poorly written descriptions of sexual congress wrapped around the device.
“With a few telltale descriptions of a sexual nature to point the finger toward Speedy Muffler.”
“So it would appear. Blast!”
Emperor Zhark had been examining the device carefully.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“No blue wire. There’s usually a choice of wires to cut, and by long convention it’s always the blue one. Without that there’s no way we can know how to defuse it.”
I glanced at the timing device, which also by long convention was prominently featured—and had two and a half minutes to go.
“Can we throw it overboard?” asked Jobsworth.
“Not unless you want to see the entire Metaphoric River vanish in under a second.”
“We could abandon the steamer.”
“It’ll be a tight fit in the one tender remaining—and those high privet hedges along the riverbank won’t make for an easy escape.”
“I’ll take it in a boat with me.”
It was Drake Foden, adventurer.
“I don’t want any arguments,” he said. “This is my function. I’m the fodder.”
“I told you he was,” said Barksdale, jabbing Jobsworth on the shoulder with his index finger.
There was no time to do anything else, and at a single word from the captain the second tender was lowered over the side and the riveted box placed inside. Drake turned to me and took my hands in his.
“Good-bye, Thursday. I’m sorry we didn’t get to sleep together and perhaps have a few jokes and get into a couple of scrapes and thus make this farewell more poignant and mournful, which it isn’t.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’ll always regret not knowing you at all or even liking you very much. Perhaps next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“I know that. Drake?”
“Yes?”
“You have something stuck in your teeth.”
“Here?”
“Other side.”
“Thanks.”
And without another word, Drake clambered aboard, cast off the mooring and began to row quickly away from the steamer.
“Hey!” I yelled across the water. “Aren’t you glad it wasn’t a poison dart in your—”
But I didn’t get a chance to say any more. Drake, the tender and the iron box suddenly imploded with a sound like a cough going backwards, accompanied by a swift rush of air that sucked in to fill the void and made our ears pop. I’d never seen text destroyed so rapidly—even an eraserhead takes a half second to work.
“Slow ahead,” ordered Jobsworth, “and wire the delegation that we have been ‘unavoidably delayed.’”
He turned to me.
“Just what in Wheatley’s name is going on here, Next?”
My mind was still racing. There was the fate of the Fourteenth Clown to think of, and the broader implications of regional stability, pretty nurses, handsome doctors and fire retardant.
“Time is of the essence. Senator, I need you to do something without question.”
“And that is?”
“Shut down every single Feedback Loop north of Three Men in a Boat.”
“Are you mad?” he said. “That’s almost three hundred million books!”
“Mad? Perhaps. But if you don’t do what I ask, you’ll have a genre war on your hands so devastating it will turn your blood to ice.”
“My blood is already ice, Miss Next.”
The senator paused, then looked at Zhark, who nodded his agreement.
“Very well.”
Jobsworth instructed Barnes to get the message to Text Grand Central in any way he could—and to expedite, code puce.
“And you,” said Jobsworth, pointing a finger at me, “have some serious explaining to do.”
We convened in the bar almost immediately. Jobsworth was there with Herring, Barksdale, the captain and Emperor Zhark—as well as all of Jobsworth’s D-3s and Sprockett, who had divested himself of his bar-steward disguise and was once more in full butler regalia.