Thursday Next in First Among Sequels

by Jasper Fforde

  Babel looked nervously around. “She came back furious. Said you’d fired her on false pretenses and she wanted to get some…serious payback.”

  “What sort of payback?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you’re lying to me!”

  “I swear on the life of the Great Panjan—”

  “I know where she is,” said the ersatz Thursday in a quiet voice. “What the hell. When she discovers I’ve talked to you, I’ll be dead anyway. She’s out…in the real world!”

  This was serious. Substitution and illegal pagerunning were one thing, but crossing over to the real world was quite another. I could legally erase her on sight, and the way I felt right now, I—

  My thoughts were interrupted because both Crowden and the understudy had looked anxiously toward the burned-out shell of the house. I suddenly had a very nasty thought, and my insides changed to lead. I could barely say the word, but I did:

  “Landen?”

  “Yes,” said the understudy in a soft voice. “She wanted to know what it was…to love.”

  I felt anger well up inside me. I pulled out my TravelBook and read as I walked toward the house. As I did so, the evening light brightened, the emergency vehicles faded back into fiction, and the house, which burned to a husk in The Eyre Affair, was suddenly perfect again as I moved back into the real world. My mouth felt dry after the jump, and I could feel a headache coming on. I broke into a panicky sweat and dumped my jacket and bag in the front garden but kept my pistol and slipped a spare eraserhead into my back pocket. I very quietly stepped up to the front door and silently slipped the key into the lock.

  The house was silent aside from the thumping of my heart, which in my heightened state of anxiety was almost deafening. I had planned to lie in wait for her, but a glance down at the hall table made me reappraise the situation. My house keys and distinctive grammasite key ring were already lying where I left them—but I still had mine in my hand. I felt powerfully thirsty, too, and was badly dehydrated—the most annoying side effect of my return to the Outland. I looked through to the kitchen and could see a pitcher of half-finished juice on the kitchen drainer. If I didn’t drink something soon, I’d pass out. On the other hand, Thursday1–4 was somewhere in the house, waiting for Landen or rummaging in our sock drawer or something. I silently crept along the downstairs hallway, checked the front room, then went through to the dining room beyond and from there to the kitchen. The only thing I noticed out of place was a book of family holiday snapshots open on the coffee table. I moved into the kitchen and was about to take a swig of juice straight from the pitcher when I heard a noise that turned my blood to ice. I dropped the pitcher, which shattered on the kitchen floor with a concussion that echoed around the house.

  Pickwick woke up in her basket and started plocking at everything in sight until she saw who it was and went back to sleep. I heard voices upstairs and the sound of footsteps padding across the bedroom floor. I held my pistol at arm’s length and walked slowly down the hall to the stairs. The sound that had made me drop the pitcher was Landen, but it was the sort of sound that only I ever heard him make—something that was for me and me alone.

  I rounded the newel post and looked up. Almost immediately Thursday1–4 stepped onto the landing, completely naked and holding her automatic. Fictional she might have been, but out here she was as deadly as any real person. We stared at each other for a moment, and she fired. I felt her shot whine past me and embed itself in the doorframe. At almost exactly the same time, I fired my pistol. There was a low thud, and the air wobbled as though momentarily seen through a milk bottle. She jumped back into the bedroom as the wide spread of the eraserhead hit harmlessly on the walls and stairs—the charge only affected anything textual. She’d know my weapon was a single shot, so I turned on my heels and ran back through the front room, breaking the pistol open to reload. The cartridge ejected with a soft thwup, and I yanked the spare out of my back pocket and pushed it into the breech. There was a detonation and another whine of a near miss as I jumped across the breakfast table and snapped the pistol shut with a flick of my wrist. I pulled the heavy oak kitchen table to shield me, and three shots smashed into the wood. I heard the sound of footsteps running away and rose to fire at her retreating form. The dull thud of the eraserhead echoed around the room, and there was a mild hiss as it struck its mark. I heard the front door open, I got up—slightly too quickly—and the room went squiffy. I staggered to the sink and drank from the running tap and then, still feeling light-headed but tolerably alert, stumbled up the hall to the open front door. There was a small scattering of fine text on the doorstep and more leading out into the front garden, where I saw her automatic lying on the garden path. I turned and yelled upstairs, “Stay where you are, Land!” and then followed the trail of text to the front gate, where there was a random sprinkling of letters. I cursed. There wasn’t enough here to be fatal—I’d probably just clipped her and caused a small part of her to unravel. It was no big deal. She could have another body part written exclusively for her down in the Well.

  My shoulder bag was still where I’d left it in the front garden, and I rummaged inside for a spare eraserhead. I slipped the shiny cartridge into the barrel, then stopped. Something was wrong. I searched the bag more frantically, then all around the area nearby, but found only a light smattering of text. The wounded Thursday1–4 had been here—and taken my TravelBook. I looked around, closed the pistol and followed the small trail of letters to the garden gate, where they ended abruptly. I gazed out into the empty street. Nothing. She had jumped out, back to where she belonged—and with my TravelBook. My TravelBook.

  I wiped the sweat from my brow and muttered, “Shit-shit-shit-SHIT.”

  I turned and ran back to the house but then stopped as I suddenly had a series of terrible thoughts. Thursday1–4’s adventures ranged across several years, so she wasn’t particularly age-specific. Landen couldn’t know that it was not me but my fictional counterpart he’d just made love to. I didn’t bear him any malice—I mean, it wasn’t as if he’d slept with another woman or anything. But because he knew nothing about Jurisfiction and it was better for our relationship that he never knew, there was only one course of action I could take.

  “Hang on, Land!” I yelled upstairs. “I’m okay. Just stay where you are.”

  “Why?” he yelled back.

  “Just do as I ask, sweetheart.”

  I grabbed the dustpan and brush and hurriedly swept up the text that littered the front step and the path, and when I heard the distant wail of the police sirens, I went back indoors, took off all my clothes, stashed them behind the sofa and ran upstairs.

  “What’s going on?” asked Land, who had just gotten his leg and trousers on. I wrapped myself in a robe but couldn’t look at him and just sat at the dressing table, clenching and unclenching my fists to try to control the violent thoughts. Then I realized: After what she’d done, I could think about wringing her badly written neck as much as I wanted. I was a woman wronged. Dangerously violent thoughts were allowed. I’d get her for this, but I was in no hurry. She had nowhere to go. I knew exactly where I could find her.

  “Nothing’s going on,” I said in a quiet voice. “Everything’s fine.”

  27.

  Bound to the Outland

  Although we never really saw eye to eye with the local police force when we were SpecOps, we always used to help them out if they got into a jam, and the young ones never forgot it. Hard not to, really, when some lunatic plucks you from the jaws of a werewolf or something. Because of this I was still granted favors in return. Not parking tickets, unfortunately—just the big stuff.

  By the time the police arrived, I had regained control of myself. I picked up Thursday1–4’s clothes with a disdainful finger and thumb and deposited them in the laundry basket, in which I would take them out to burn them later that evening. I went through the pockets of her jacket but found only an empty wallet and a few coins. I knew I was go
ing to have to admit to owning her automatic, so I had to hope they would take my previous exemplary conduct into account before citing me on any illegal-firearms charges. While I explained it all to the cops, Landen called Joffy’s partner, Miles, to get him to pick up the girls from school, and we eventually tracked Friday down at Mum’s, where he’d been discussing with his aunt the merits of the guitar riff on the second track of Hosing the Dolly.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Detective Inspector Jamison an hour later, thumbing through his notes. “You were both upstairs…er, naked when you heard a noise. You, Mrs. Parke-Laine-Next, went downstairs to investigate with an illegally held Glock nine-millimeter. You saw this man whom you identified as ‘Felix8,’ an associate of the deceased Acheron Hades, whom you last met sixteen years ago. He was armed, and you fired at him once when he was standing at the door, once when he was running to the kitchen, then three times as he hid behind the kitchen table. He then made his escape from the house without firing a single shot. Is that correct?”

  “Quite correct, Officer.”

  “Hmm,” he said, and his sergeant whispered something in his ear and handed him a fax. Jamison looked at it, then at me. “You’re sure it was Felix8?”

  “Yes—why?”

  He placed the fax on the table and slid it across.

  “The body of missing father of two Danny Chance was discovered in a shallow grave in the Savernake Forest three years ago. It was skeletal by then and only identifiable by his dental records.”

  “That’s not possible,” I murmured, with good reason. Even if he hadn’t been in the house this afternoon, I’d certainly seen him yesterday.

  “I know that Hades and Felix are tied up in all manner of weird shit, so I’m not going to insist you didn’t see him, but I thought you should know this.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” I muttered, reading through the report, which was unequivocal; it even said the bones had been in the ground a good ten years. Aornis had been right—Cocytus had killed him like a stray dog.

  Inspector Jamison turned to Landen. “Mr. Parke-Laine? May we speak to you now?”

  They finally left at nine in the evening and we called Miles to bring the kids back. We’d been given the all-clear to tidy up, and to be honest it didn’t sound as though they were gong to make a big deal of it. It didn’t look as if they would even bother to prosecute; they knew about Felix8—everyone did. He, Hades and Aornis were as much a part of popular culture as Robin Hood. And that was it. They took the Glock nine-millimeter, privately told me that it was an honor to meet me and that I could expect their report to be lost before being passed to the prosecutor, and then they were gone.

  “Darling?” said Landen as soon as the kids had been safely returned home.

  “Yes?”

  “Something’s bothering you.”

  “You mean aside from having an amoral lunatic who died fifteen years ago try to kill us?”

  “Yes. There’s something else on your mind.”

  Damn. Found out. Lucky I had several things on my mind I could call upon.

  “I went to visit Aornis.”

  “You did? Why?”

  “It was about Felix8. I should have told you: He was hanging around the house yesterday. Millon spotted him, and Spike nabbed him—but he escaped. I thought Aornis might have an idea why he’s suddenly emerged after all these years.”

  “Did Aornis…say anything about us?” asked Landen. “Friday, Me, Tuesday, Jenny?”

  “She asked how everyone was, but only in an ironic way. I don’t think she was concerned in the least—quite the opposite.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  I turned to look at him, and he was gazing at me with such concern that I rested a hand on his cheek.

  “Sweetheart—what’s the matter? She can’t harm us any longer.”

  “No,” said Landen with a sigh, “she can’t. I just wondered if she said anything—anything at all. Even if you remembered it later.”

  I frowned. Landen knew about Aornis’s powers because I’d told him, but his specific interest seemed somehow unwarranted.

  “Yeah. She said that she was going to bust out with the help of someone ‘on the outside.’”

  He took my hands in his and stared into my eyes. “Thursday—sweetheart—promise me something?”

  I laughed at his dramatic earnestness but stopped when I saw he was serious.

  “Two minds with but a single thought,” I told him, “two hearts that beat as one.”

  “That was good. Who said that?”

  “Mycroft.”

  “Ah! Well, here it is: Don’t let Aornis out.”

  “Why should I want to do that?”

  “Trust me, darling. Even if you forget your own name, remember this: Don’t let Aornis out.”

  “Babes—”

  But he rested his finger on my lips, and I was quiet. Aornis was the least of my worries. Without my TravelBook I was marooned in the Outland.

  We had dinner late. Even Friday was vaguely impressed by the three bullet holes in the table. They were so close they almost looked like one.

  When he saw them, he said, “Nice grouping, Mum.”

  “Firearms are no joking matter, young man.”

  “That’s our Thursday,” said Landen with a smile. “When she shoots up our furniture, she does as little damage as possible.”

  I looked at them all and laughed. It was an emotional release, and tears sprang to my eyes. I helped myself to more salad and regarded Friday. There was still the possibility of his replacement by the-Friday-that-could-have-been hanging over him. The thing was, I couldn’t do anything about it. There’s never anywhere to hide from the ChronoGuard. But the other Friday had told me I had forty-eight hours until they might attempt such a thing, and that wasn’t up until midmorning the day after tomorrow.

  “Fri,” I said, “have you thought any more about the time industry?”

  “Lots,” he said, “and the answer’s still no.”

  Landen and I exchanged looks.

  “Have you ever wondered,” remarked Friday in a languid monotone from behind a curtain of oily hair, “how nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?”

  I smiled. Dopey witticisms at least showed he was trying to be clever, even if for the greater part of the day he was asleep.

  “Yes,” I replied, “and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, mildly annoyed.

  “Sorry!” I replied. “It’s just difficult to know what you’re thinking when I can’t see your face. I might as well converse to the side of a yak.”

  He parted his hair so I could see his eyes. He looked a lot like his father did at that age. Not that I knew him then, of course, but from photographs.

  “Nostalgia used to have a minimum twenty years before it kicked in,” he said in all seriousness, “but now it’s getting shorter and shorter. By the late eighties, people were doing seventies stuff, but by the mid-nineties the eighties-revival thing was in full swing. It’s now 2002, and already people are talking about the nineties—soon nostalgia will catch up with the present and we won’t have any need for it.”

  “Good thing, too, if you ask me,” I said. “I got rid of all my seventies rubbish as soon as I could and never regretted it for a second.”

  There was an indignant plock from Pickwick.

  “Present company excepted.”

  “I think the seventies are underrated,” said Landen. “Admittedly, fashion wasn’t terrific, but there’s been no better decade for sitcoms.”

  “Where’s Jenny?”

  “I took her dinner up to her,” said Friday. “She said she needed to do her homework.”

  I frowned as I thought of something, but Landen clapped his hands together and said, “Oh, yes! Did you hear that the British bobsled team has been disqualified for using the banned force ‘gravity’ to enhance performance?”

  “No.”

&
nbsp; “Apparently so. And it transpires that the illegal use of gravity to boost speed is endemic within most downhill winter sports.”

  “I wondered why they managed to go so fast,” I replied thoughtfully.

  Much later that night, when the lights were out, I was staring at the glow of the streetlamps on the ceiling and thinking about Thursday1–4 and what I’d do to her when I caught her. It wasn’t terribly pleasant.

  “Land?” I whispered in the darkness.

  “Yes?”

  “That time we…made love today.”

  “What about it?”

  “I was just thinking—how did you rate it? Y’know, on a one-to-ten?”

  “Truthfully?”

  “Truthfully.”

  “You won’t be pissed off at me?”

  “Promise.”

  There was a pause. I held my breath.

  “We’ve had better. Much better. In fact, I thought you were pretty terrible.”

  I hugged him. At least there was one piece of good news today.

  28.

  The Discreet Charm

  of the Outland

  The real charm of the Outland was the richness of detail and the texture. In the BookWorld a pig is generally just pink and goes oink. Because of this, most fictional pigs are simply a uniform flesh color without any of the tough bristles and innumerable scabs and skin abrasions, shit and dirt that makes a pig a pig. And it’s not just pigs. A carrot is simply a rod of orange. Sometimes living in the BookWorld is like living in Legoland.

  The stupidity surplus had been beaten into second place by the news that the militant wing of the no-choice movement had been causing trouble in Manchester. Windows were broken, cars overturned, and there were at least a dozen arrests. With a nation driven by the concept of choice, a growing faction of citizens who thought life was simpler when options were limited had banded themselves together into what they called the “no-choicers” and demanded the choice to have no choice. Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste condemned the violence but explained that the choice of choice over “just better services” was something the previous administration had chosen and was thus itself a no-choice principle for the current administration. Alfredo Traficcone, MP, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, was quick to jump on the bandwagon, proclaiming that it was the inalienable right of all citizens to have the choice over whether they have choice or not. The no-choicers had suggested that there should be a referendum to settle the matter once and for all, something that the opposition “choice” faction had no option but to agree with. More sinisterly, the militant wing known only as NOPTION was keen to go further and demanded that there should be only one option on the ballot paper—the no-choice one.