A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (166 page)

“Four genres bad, two genres good,” murmured Mr. Fainset.

“I'm sorry?”

“Nothing.”

“Good,” said Bradshaw, stroking his large white mustache. “Item Five: The entire works of Jane Austen are down in the maintenance bay for a refit. We've diverted all the Outlander readings through a book-club boxed set, and I want someone to patrol the series until the originals are back online. Volunteers?”

“I will,” I said.

“You're on cadet assessment, Thursday. Anyone else?”

Lady Margaret Cavendish put up her hand. Unusually for a resident of fiction, she had once been real. Originally a flamboyant seventeenth-century aristocratic socialite much keen on poetry, women's issues and self-publicity, our Lady Cavendish hailed from an unfair biography. Annoyed by the slurs committed, as so often to the defamed dead, she took flight to the bright lights of Jurisfiction, in which she seemed to excel, especially in the poetry form, which no one else much liked to handle.

“What would you have me do?” she asked.

“Nothing, really—just maintain a presence to make sure any mischievous character understudies think twice before they do their own dialogue or try to ‘improve' anything.”

Lady Cavendish shrugged and nodded her agreement.

“Item Six,” said Bradshaw, consulting his clipboard again, “Falling Outlander ReadRates.”

He looked at us all over his glasses. We all knew the problem but saw it more as a systemic difficulty rather than something we could deal with on a book-to-book policing basis.

“The Outlander Reading Index has dropped once again for the 1,782nd day running,” reported Bradshaw, “and although there are certain books that will always be read, we are finding that more and more minor classics and a lot of general fiction are going for long periods without even being opened. Because of this, Text Grand Central is worried that bored characters in lesser books might try to move to more popular novels for work, which will doubtless cause friction.”

We were all silent, and the inference wasn't lost on any of us: The fictional characters in the BookWorld could be a jittery bunch, and it didn't take much to set off a riot.

“I can't say any more at this point,” concluded Bradshaw, “as it's only a
potential
problem, but be aware of what's going on. The last thing we need right now is a band of disgruntled book-people besieging the Council of Genres demanding the right to be read. Okay, Item Seven: The MAWk-15H virus has once again resurfaced in Dickens, particularly in the death of Little Nell, which is now so uncomfortably saccharine that even our own dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell complained. I need someone to liaise with the BookWorld Communicable Textual Diseases Unit to deal with this. Volunteers?”

Foyle reluctantly put up his hand. Working for the BCTD on Bookviruses was never popular, as it required a lengthy quarantine on completion; most of Victorian melodrama was to some degree infected with MAWk-15H, and it was often blamed on Jurisfiction agents with poor hygiene.

“Item Eight: Jurisfiction recruitment. The percentage of recruits making it to full agent status is currently eight percent, down from twenty-two percent three years ago. I'm not saying that standards need to slip or anything, but Senator Jobsworth has threatened to force agents upon us if we can't recruit, and we don't want that.”

We all muttered our agreement. Just recently a few cadets had been making themselves conspicuous by their poor performance. None of us wanted to be understaffed, but then neither did we want the ser vice swamped with knuckleheads.

“So,” continued Bradshaw, “on the basis that poor training makes failed cadets, I want you all to think about giving them all a little more of your time.”

He put down his clipboard.

“That's it for now. Do the best you can, keep me informed as to progress and, as regards health and safety, we've had the welcome news that you can ignore safety practices to save time, but you
must
complete the paperwork. Good luck, and…let's be
careful
out there.”

Everyone started to talk among themselves, and after I told Thursday5 to wait at my desk, I threaded my way through the small gathering to speak to Bradshaw. I caught up with him as he was heading back to his desk.

“You want me to report on the Jane Austen refit?” I asked him. “Any par tic ular reason?”

Bradshaw was dressed as you might expect a colonial white hunter to dress: in a safari suit with shorts, pith helmet and a revolver in a leather holster. He didn't need to dress like that anymore, of course, but he was a man of habit.

“That was mostly misdirection,” he asserted. “I
do
want you to take a gander, but there's something else I'd like you to look at—something I don't want Senator Jobsworth to know about, or at least not yet.”

Senator Jobsworth was the head of the Council of Genres and a powerful man. Politics within Jurisfiction could be tricky at times, and I had to be particularly diplomatic as far as Jobsworth was concerned—I often had to cross swords with him in the debating chamber. As the only real person in fiction, my advice was often called for—but rarely welcomed.

“What do you want me to do?”

Bradshaw rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. “We've had a report of something that sounds
transfictional.
”

“Another one?”

It was the name given to something that had arrived from the real world—the Outland, as it was known. I was a transfictional, of course, but the term was more usually used to refer to something or somebody that had crossed over unexpectedly.

Bradshaw handed me a scrap of paper with the title of a book on it. “I feel happier with you handling it, because you're an Outlander. Appreciate a woman who's proper flesh and blood. By the way, how's Thursday5 doing?”

“She isn't,” I replied. “Her timidity will end up getting her killed. We had a run-in with a grammasite inside
Lord of the Flies
while dealing with the glasses problem, and she decided to give the Verbisoid the benefit of the doubt and a very large hug.”

“What type of Verbisoid? Intransitive?”

I shook my head sadly. “Nope.
Ditransitive.
”

Bradshaw whistled low. He hadn't been kidding over recruitment troubles or Senator Jobsworth's involvement. Even I knew there were at least three totally unsuitable candidates Jobsworth was pressuring us to “reappraise.”

“She's lucky to have a single verb left in her body,” said Bradshaw after a pause. “Give her the full three days before firing her, yes? It has to be by the book, in case she tries to sue us.”

I assured him I would and moved back to my desk, where Thursday5 was sitting on the floor in the lotus position. I had a quick rummage through my case notes, which were now stacked high on my desk. In a rash moment I'd volunteered to look at Jurisfiction “cold cases,” thinking that there would only be three or four. As it turned out, there were over a hundred infractions of sorts, ranging from random plot fluctuations in the
Gormenghast
trilogy to the inexplicable and untimely death of Charles Dickens, who had once lived long enough to finish
Edwin Drood.
I did as much as I had time for, which wasn't a lot.

“Right,” I said, pulling on my jacket and grabbing my bag, “we're off. Stick close to me and do
exactly
as I say—even if that means killing grammasites. It's them or us.”

“Them or us,” repeated Thursday5 halfheartedly, slinging her felt handbag over her shoulder in exactly the same way as I did. I stopped for a moment and stared at my desk. It had been rearranged.

“Thursday?” I said testily. “Have you been doing feng shui on my desk again?”

“It was more of a
harmonization,
really,” she replied somewhat sheepishly.

“Well, don't.”

“Why not?”

“Just…just
don't.
”

W
e stepped outside the colonnaded entrance of Norland Park and basked in the warmth of the sunshine. The story had long ago departed with the Dashwood family to Devon, and this corner of
Sense and Sensibility
was quiet and unused. To one side a saddled horse was leaning languidly against a tree with a hound sitting on the ground quite near it. Birds sang in the branches, and clouds moved slowly across the heavens. Each cloud was identical, of course, and the sun didn't track across the sky as it did back home, and, come to think of it, the birdsong was on a twenty-second loop. It was what we called “narrative economics,” the bare amount of description necessary to create a scene. The Book-World was like that—mostly ordered, and without the rich texture that nature's randomness brings to the real world.

We sat in silence for a few minutes to wait for my taxi. I was thinking about the mostly bald Pickwick, Friday's ChronoGuard pre sen ta tion, Felix8's return and my perfidy to Landen. Thursday5 had no such worries—she was reading the astrology section of the BookWorld's premier newspaper,
The Word.

After a while she said, “It's my birthday today.”

“I know.”

“You do? How?”

“Never mind.”

“Listen to what it says in the horoscopes: ‘If it is your birthday, there may be an increased amount of mail. Expect gifts, friendly salutations from people and the occasional surprise. Possibility of cake.' That's so weird—I wonder if any of it will come true?”

“I've no idea. Have you noticed the amount of Mrs. Danvers you see wandering around these days?”

I mentioned this because a pair of them had been seen at Norland Park that morning. They were becoming a familiar sight in fiction, hanging around popular books out of sight of the reader, looking furtive and glaring malevolently at anyone who asked what they were up to. The excess of Mrs. Danvers in the Book-World was easily explained. Generics, or characters-in-waiting, are created blank, without any personality or gender, and are then billeted in novels until called up for training in character schools. From there they are sent either to populate the books being built or to replace characters who are due for retirement or replacement. The problem is, generics have a chameleonic habit of assimilating themselves to a strong leading character, and when six thousand impressionable generics were lodged inside
Rebecca,
all but eight became Mrs. Danvers, the creepy house keeper of Manderley. Since creepy house keepers are not much in demand these days, they were mostly used as expendable drones for the Mispeling Vyrus Farst Respons Groop or, more sinisterly, for riot control and any other civic disturbances. At Jurisfiction we were concerned that they were becoming another layer of policing, answerable only to the Council of Genres, something that was stridently denied.

“Mrs. Danvers?” repeated Thursday5, studying a pullout guide to reading tea leaves. “I've got one or two in my books, but I think they're meant to be there.”

“Tell me,” I said by way of conversation, “is there any aspect of the BookWorld that you'd like to learn about as part of your time with me?”

“Well,” she said after a pause, “I'd like to have a go and see what it's like inside a story during a recitation in the oral tradition—I've heard it's really kind of
buzzing.
”

She was right. It was like sweaty live improv theater—anything could happen.

“No way,” I said, “and if I hear that you've been anywhere near OralTrad, you'll be confined to
The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco.
It's not like books where everything's laid out and orderly. The oral tradition is
dynamic
like you've no idea. Change anything in there and you will, quite literally, give the narrator an aneurysm.”

“A
what
?”

“A brain hemorrhage. The same can be said of Poetry. You don't want to go hacking around in there without a clear head on your shoulders.”

“Why?”

“It's like a big emotion magnifier. All feelings are exacerbated to a dangerous level. You can find things out about yourself that you never knew—or never wanted to know. We have a saying: ‘You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.' It's like being able to see yourself when drunk.”

“Aha,” she said in a quiet voice.

There was a pause.

“You've never been drunk, have you?”

She shook her head. “Do you think I should try it?”

“It's overrated.”

I had a thought. “Have you ever been up to the Council of Genres?”

“No.”

“A lamentable omission. That's where we'll go first.”

I pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone and called TransGenre Taxis to see where my cab had gone. The reason for a taxi was not altogether obvious to Thursday5, who, like most residents of the BookWorld, could bookjump to any novel previously visited with an ease I found annoying. My
intra
fictional bookjumping was twenty times better than my
trans
fictional jumps, but even then a bit ropey. I needed to read a full paragraph to get in, and if I didn't have the right section in my TravelBook, then I had to walk via the Great Library or get a taxi—as long as one was available.

“Wouldn't it be quicker just to bookjump?” asked Thursday5 with annoying directness.

“You young things are always in a hurry, aren't you?” I replied. “Besides, it's more dignified to walk—and the view is generally better. However,” I added with a sense of deflated ego, “in the absence of an available cab, we shall.”

I pulled out my TravelBook, turned to the correct page and jumped from
Sense and Sensibility
to the Great Library.