Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

'What's it like?'

'It takes a long time to get funny and when it does everyone dies.'

'Okay,' I conceded, 'I'll try and keep Hamlet amused. How long do you need to unravel the play?'

Zhark winced and sucked in air through his teeth in the way heating engineers do when quoting on a new boiler.

'Well, that's the problem, Thursday. I'm not sure that we can do it all. If this had happened anywhere but the original we could have just deleted it. You know the trouble we had with King Lear? Well, I don't see that we're going to have any better luck with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.'

I sat down and put my head in my hands. No Hamlet. The loss was almost too vast to comprehend.

'How long have we got before Hamlet starts to change?' I asked without looking up.

'About five days, six at the outside,' replied Zhark quietly. 'After that the breakdown will accelerate. In two weeks' time the play as we know it will have ceased to exist.'

'There must be something we can do.'

'We've tried pretty much everything. We're stuffed – unless you've got a spare William Shakespeare up your sleeve.'

I sat up.

'What?'

'We're stuffed?'

'After that.'

'A spare William Shakespeare up your sleeve?'

'Yes. How will that help?'

'Well,' said Zhark thoughtfully, 'since no original manuscripts of either Hamlet or Wives exist, a freshly penned script by the author would thus become the original manuscript – and we can use those to reboot the storycode engines from scratch. It's quite simple, really.'

I smiled but Zhark looked at me with bewilderment.

'Thursday, Shakespeare died in 1616!'

I stood up and patted him on the arm.

'You get back to the office and make sure things don't get any worse. Leave the Shakespeare up to me. Now, has anyone figured out which book Yorrick Kaine is from?'

'We've got all available resources working on it,' replied Zhark, still a bit confused, 'but there are a lot of novels to go through. Can you give us any pointers?'

'Well, he's not very multi-dimensional so I shouldn't go looking into anything too literary. I'd start at Political Thrillers and work your way towards Spy.'

Zhark made a note.

'Good. Any other problems?'

'Yes,' replied the emperor, 'Simpkin is being a bit of a pest in The Tailor of Gloucester. Apparently the tailor let all his mice escape and now Simpkin won't let him have the cherry-coloured twist. If the mayor's coat isn't ready for Christmas there'll be hell to pay.'

'Get the mice to make the waistcoat. They're not doing anything.'

He sighed. 'Okay, I'll give it a whirl.' He looked at his watch. 'Well, better be off. I've got to annihilate the planet Thraal at four and I'm already late. Do you think I should use my trusty Zharkian Death Ray and fry them alive in a millisecond or nudge an asteroid into their orbit, thus unleashing at least six chapters of drama as they try to find an ingenious solution to defeat me?'

'The asteroid sounds a good bet.'

'I thought so too. Well, see you later.'