First Among Sequels tn-5

by Jasper Fforde

  “I wonder what the old bore wants now? Anything else?”

  “No,” replied Thursday5, disappointed that I didn’t share her unbridled enthusiasm over an appearance at the CofG. I couldn’t. I’d been there so many times I just saw it as part of my duties, nothing more.

  I opened my desk drawer to take out a sheet of letterhead and noticed Thursday5’s assessment letter where I’d put it the night before. I thought for a moment and decided to give her one more chance. I left it where it was, pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote a letter to Wing Commander Scampton-Tappett, telling him to get out of Bananas for Edward, since Landen wasn’t currently working on it, and move instead to The Mews of Doom, which he was. I folded up the letter, placed it in an envelope and told Thursday5 to deliver it to Scampton-Tappett in person. I could have asked her to send it by courier, but twenty minutes’ peace and quiet had a great deal of appeal to it. Thursday5 nodded happily and vanished.

  I had just leaned back in my chair and was thinking about Felix8, the possible End of Time and the Austen Rover when a hearty bellow of “Stand to!” indicated the imminence of Bradshaw’s daily Jurisfiction briefing. I dutifully stood up and joined the other agents who had gathered in the center of the room.

  After the usual apologies for absence, Bradshaw climbed on to a table, tinkled a small bell and said, “Jurisfiction meeting number 43370 is now in session. But before all that we are to welcome a new agent to the fold: Colonel William Dobbin!”

  We all applauded as Colonel Dobbin gave a polite bow and remarked in a shy yet resolute manner that he would do his utmost to further the good work of Jurisfiction.

  “Jolly good,” intoned Bradshaw, eager to get on. “Item One: An active cell of bowdlerizers has been at work again, this time in Philip Larkin and ‘This Be the Verse.’ We’ve found several editions with the first line altered to read ‘They tuck you up, your mum and dad,’ which is a gross distortion of the original intent. Who wants to have a go at this?”

  “I will,” I said.

  “No. What about you, King Pellinore?”

  “Yes-yes what-what hey-hey?” said the white-whiskered knight in grubby armor.

  “You’ve had experience dealing with bowdlerizers in Larkin before-cracking the group that altered the first line of ‘Love Again’ to read: ‘Love again: thanking her at ten past three’ was great stuff-fancy tackling them again?”

  “What-what to go a mollocking for the bowlders?” replied Pellinore happily. “’Twill be achieved happily and in half the time.”

  “Anyone want to go with him?”

  “I’ll go.” I said.

  “Anyone else?”

  The Red Queen put up her hand.

  “Item Two: The Two Hundred Eighty-seventh Annual Book-World Conference is due in six months’ time, and the Council of Genres has insisted we need to have a security review after last year’s…problems.”

  There was a muttering from the assembled agents. BookCon was the sort of event that was too large and too varied to keep all factions happy, and the previous year’s decision to lift the restriction on Abstract Concepts attending as delegates opened the floodgates to a multitude of Literary Theories and Grammatical Conventions who spent most of the time pontificating loftily and causing trouble in the bar, where fights broke out at the drop of a participle. When Poststructuralism got into a fight with Classicism, they were all banned, something that upset the Subjunctives no end, who complained bitterly that if they had been fighting, they would have won.

  “Are the Abstracts allowed to attend this year?” asked Lady Cavendish.

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Bradshaw. “Not to invite them would be seen as discriminatory. Volunteers?”

  Six of us put up our hands, and Bradshaw diligently scribbled down our names.

  “Top-notch,” he said at last. “The first meeting will be next week. Now, Item Three, and this one is something of a corker: We’ve got a Major Narrative Flexation brewing in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Is it the Watson bullet-wound problem again?” asked Mr. Fainset.

  “No, it’s more serious than that. Sherlock Holmes…has been murdered!”

  There was a spontaneous cry of shock and outrage from the assembled agents. The Holmes series was a perennial favorite and thus of par tic ular concern-textual anomalies in unread or unpopular books were always lower priority, or ignored altogether. Bradshaw handed a stack of papers to Lady Cavendish, who distributed them.

  “It’s in ‘The Final Problem.’ You can read it yourself, but essentially Sherlock travels to Switzerland to deal with Professor Moriarty. After the usual Holmesian escapades, Watson follows Sherlock to the Reichenbach Falls, where he discovers that Holmes has apparently fallen to his death-and the book ends twenty-nine pages before it was meant to.”

  There was a shocked silence as everyone took this in. We hadn’t had a textual anomaly of this size since Lucy Pevensie refused to get into the wardrobe at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

  “But The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes was the fourth volume,” observed Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, looking up from her ironing. “With Sherlock dead at the Reichenbach, it would render the remaining five volumes of stories narratively unsustainable.”

  “Partly right,” replied Bradshaw. “The Hound of the Baskervilles was written after Memoirs but is set earlier-I think we can keep hold of that one. But yes, the remaining four in the series will start to spontaneously unravel unless we do something about it. And we will, I assure you-erasure is not an option.”

  This was not as easy as it sounded despite Bradshaw’s rhetoric, and we all knew it. The entire Sherlock Holmes series was closed books, unavailable to enter until someone had actually booksplored his or her way in-and the Holmes canon had continuously resisted exploration. Gomez was the first Jurisfiction booksplorer to try by way of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, but he mistakenly became involved in the narrative and was shot dead by Lord Roxton. Harris Tweed tried it next and was nearly trampled by a herd of angry Stegosauri.

  “I want everyone in on this problem. The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire will be keeping a careful eye on the narrative corruption of the series up at Text Grand Central, and I want Beatrice, Benedict, Zhark and Tiggy-Winkle to try to find a way of using the other books in the Conan Doyle oeuvre-I suggest the Professor Challenger stories. Fainset and Foyle, I want you to explore the possibility of communication with anyone inside the Holmes series-they may not even know they have a problem.”

  “They’re well outside the footnoterphone network,” said Mr. Fainset. “Any suggestions?”

  “I’m relying on Foyle’s ingenuity. If anyone sees Hamlet or Peter and Jane before I do, send them immediately to me. Any questions?”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked, wondering why I had been left out of everything important so far.

  “I’ll speak to you later. Okay, that’s it. Good luck, and…let’s be careful out there.”

  The collected agents instantly started chattering. We hadn’t had anything like this for years, which made it seem even more stupid that Bradshaw wasn’t including me on the assignment. I caught up with him as he sat at his desk.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “You need me on this.”

  “Hello, my dear! Not like you to nearly miss a session-problems in the Outland?”

  “I was up at Goliath.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How do things look?”

  I explained at length what I had seen, ending with the observation that it wasn’t likely they’d perfect a transfictional machine anytime soon, if at all-but we needed to keep our eyes on them.

  Bradshaw nodded sagely, and I reiterated my feeling that I was being somehow “left out” of the Holmes inquiry.

  “How’s Friday? Still a bed slug?”

  “Yes-but nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Have you told Landen about us yet?”

  “I’m building up to it. Bradshaw, you’re flannel
ing-why aren’t I on the Holmes case?”

  He gestured for me to sit and lowered his voice. “I had a call from Senator Jobsworth this morning. He’s keen to reinstate a certain cadet that we recently…had to let go.”

  I knew the cadet he was referring to. There was a sound reason for her rejection-she’d been euphemistically entitled “unsuitable.” Not in the way that my nice-but-a-bit-dopey cadet was unsuitable, but unsuitable as in obnoxious. She’d gone through five tutors in as many days. Even Emperor Zhark said that he’d preferred to be eaten alive by the Snurgg of Epsilon-7 than spend another five minutes in her company.

  “Why has Jobsworth requested her? There are at least ten we rejected that are six times better.”

  “Because we’re light on agents in contemporary fiction, and the CofG thinks she checks all the genre boxes.”

  “He’s wrong, of course,” I said quite matter-of-factly, but people like Jobsworth are politicians and have a different set of rules. “I can see his point, though. The question is, what are you going to do about it? She’s exhausted all the agents licensed to take apprentices.”

  Bradshaw said nothing and stared at me. In an instant I understood.

  “Oh, no,” I said, “not me. Not in a thousand years. Besides, I’ve already got a cadet on assessment.”

  “Then get rid of her. You told me yourself that her timidity would get her killed.”

  “It will-but I feel kind of responsible. Besides, I’ve already got a full caseload. The Mrs. Danvers that went berserk in The God of Small Things still needs investigating, the Minotaur tried to kill me-not to mention about thirty or so cold cases, some of which are potentially solvable-especially the Drood case. I think it’s possible Dickens was…murdered.”

  “In the Outland? And for what reason?”

  “To silence Edwin Drood-or someone else in the book.”

  I wasn’t sure about this, of course, and any evidence was already over a hundred years old, but I would do anything not to get stuck with this apprentice. Sadly, Bradshaw wasn’t taking no for an answer or softening to my pleas.

  “Don’t make me order you, old girl. It will embarrass us both. Besides, if you fail her-as I’m sure you shall-then we really have run out of tutors, and I can tell Jobsworth we did everything in our power.”

  I groaned. “How about I take her next week? That way I can come to grips with the Holmes death thing.”

  “Senator Jobsworth was most insistent,” added Bradshaw. “He’s been on the footnoterphone three times this morning already.”

  I knew what he meant. When Jobsworth got his teeth into something, he rarely let go. The relationship between us was decidedly chilly, and we were at best only cordial. The crazy thing was, we both wanted the best for the BookWorld-we just had different methods of trying to achieve it.

  “Very well,” I said finally. “I’ll give her a day-or a morning, if she lasts that.”

  “Good lass!” exclaimed Bradshaw happily. “Appreciate a woman who knows when she’s being coerced. I’ll get her to meet you outside Norland.”

  “Is that all?” I asked somewhat crossly.

  “No. It seems someone’s made an ass of themselves over at Resource Management regarding maintenance schedules, and we’ve got a-Well, see for yourself.”

  He handed me a report, and I flicked through the pages with a rising sense of despair. It was always the same. Someone at admin screws up and we have to pick up the pieces.

  “The Piano Squad has been on the go for eight hours straight,” he added, “so I’d like you to step in and relieve them for a rest period. Take your cadets with you. Should be a useful training session.”

  My heart sank.

  “I’ve got to appear at the CofG later this afternoon,” I explained, “and if I’ve a second cadet to nursemaid-”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” interrupted Bradshaw. “It’ll be a doddle-a walk in the park. How much trouble can anyone get into with pianos?”

  22. Next

  TransGenre Taxis was one of several BookWorld taxi companies and the only firm that could boast an accident rate that was vaguely acceptable. Taxis were a good way to get around the BookWorld if you weren’t that good at jumping or had lots of luggage, but in comparison to the instantaneous bookjump they were like snails. They didn’t so much jump as creep. Getting all the way across the BookWorld-from Philosophy to Poetry, for instance-could take as long as an hour.

  You’re kidding me?” I said into my mobilefootnoterphone twenty minutes later. I was outside the main entrance to Norland Park as the sun began its downward slope from midday heat into the rare beauty of an Austen literary afternoon. The warm rural environment was rich with the sounds of the plow horse’s bridles jingling in the fields, the bees buzzing merrily in the hedgerows and young ladies atwitter with gossip regarding the genteel ensnarement of monied husbands.

  “Well,” I added crossly, “just send it as soon as you can.”

  I snapped the phone shut.

  “Problems?” asked Thursday5, who had been making daisy chains while sitting cross-legged on the warm grass.

  “Those twits at TransGenre Taxis,” I replied. “More excuses. They claim there are long backups due to a traffic accident inside The Great Gatsby and our cab will be at least an hour.”

  “Can’t we just jump straight to wherever it is we’re going?” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Where are we going?”

  “The Piano Squad. But we’re waiting for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “We’re waiting,” I said, unsure of how to break the news, “for a cadet who is under reappraisal.”

  “Another cadet?” repeated Thursday5, who seemed vaguely miffed at first but soon recovered. “If only I’d known, I could have baked a welcome cake.”

  “I don’t think she’s a cake sort of person,” I murmured, as a noise like the scrunching of cellophane heralded her arrival. She appeared looking somewhat out of breath, and we all three stared at one another for some moments in silence until both cadets said at precisely the same time:

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “Listen,” I said to them both, “I know this is an awkward situation-and a little weird, too, if you want to know my opinion, and if either of you doesn’t like it, you can just go straight back to your respective books.”

  My latest apprentice glared at me, then at Thursday5, then at me again before saying with a forced smile, “In that case I should probably introduce myself and say what an incredible honor it is to be apprenticed to the great Thursday Next.”

  “Why don’t you save your breath-and your sarcasm?” I retorted. I liked a challenge, but this was probably one or two challenges too far. For this, of course, was the other Thursday Next, the one from the first four books in the series-the violent ones full of death and gratuitous sex.

  “Well, whoop-de-do,” she said quietly, looking at us both. “If this is how the day starts, it can only get better.”

  Thursday5 and I stared at the newcomer with a curious kind of fascination. Unlike Thursday5, who always dressed in fair-trade cotton and woolens, this Thursday preferred aggressive black leather. Leather trousers, jacket and a greatcoat that swept to the floor. So much, in fact, that she squeaked when she walked. Her hair was the same length as ours but was pulled back into a ponytail more sharply, and her eyes were hidden by small dark glasses. Attached to her belt were two automatic pistols with the butts facing in so she could cross-draw-heaven knows why. Aside from this and despite being featured in books that were set between 1985 and 1988, she looked exactly as I did-even to the flecks of gray hair that I still pretended I didn’t care about.

  But she wasn’t me. She was less like me, in fact, than the talking-to-flowers version, if such a thing was possible. I’d read the books and although she attempted to do things for the right reason, her methods could best be described as dubious and her motivations suspect. Thursday5 was mostly thought with very little action; Thursday1-4 was mostly
action with very little thought. The series had sacrificed characterization for plot, and humor for action and pace. All atmosphere had evaporated, and the books were a parade of violent set pieces interspersed with romantic interludes, and when I say “romantic,” I’m stretching the term. Most famous was her torrid affair with Edward Rochester and the stand-up catfight with Jane Eyre. I had thought it couldn’t get any worse until Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be a ninja assassin and Bertha Rochester was abducted by aliens. And all that was just in the first book. It got more far-fetched after that. By book four it felt as though the first draft had been torn apart by wolves and then stuck back together at random before publication.

  I took a deep breath, inwardly cursed Commander Bradshaw and said, “Thursday…meet Thursday.”

  “Hello!” said Thursday5 brightly, offering a hand in reconciliation. “So pleased to meet you, and happy birthday-for yesterday.”

  Thursday looked at Thursday’s outstretched hand and raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ve had the misfortune to read The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco,” she said in an unfriendly tone. “If you took the ‘Samuel Pepys’ out of the title, it would be a lot more honest. A bigger crock of shit I’ve yet to find. I kept on waiting for the shoot-outs to begin, and there weren’t any-just a load of hugging, vitamins and people saying they love one another.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with hugging,” retorted Thursday5 defensively. “Perhaps if you were to try…?”

  She put out her arms but was met with the curt response, “Lay your muesli-smelling paws on me and I’ll break your nose.”

  “Well!” said Thursday5 in an indignant huff. “I’m almost sorry I wished you a happy birthday-and I’m very glad I didn’t bake you a cake.”

  “I’m devastated.”

  “Listen,” I said before this descended into blows, “I’m not going to ask you to get along, I’m telling you to get along. Okay?”