One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

“we’re in a bit of a pickle here in the BookWorld, what with Speedy Muffler and the whole Racy Novel debacle. Add to that the dwindling metaphor issue, the e-book accelerators using a disproportionate amount of Text Grand Central’s throughput capacity and all the other day-to-day whatnot we have to handle, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate that we need the real Thursday now more than ever. Do we agree?”

“We do.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “She was due to be the Jurisfiction delegate at the Racy Novel peace talks on Friday. I’ll have to send Emperor Zhark instead, and his negotiating skills are more along the lines of annihilate first, ask questions later, but without the ‘ask questions later’ part.”

“She may turn up.”

He shook his head. “I knew she was going undercover, but she said she’d check in two days ago without fail. She didn’t. That’s not like her. She might be stuck in a book somewhere, lost in a book somewhere—even held against her will. The possibilities are endless.”

“If she was lost, wouldn’t she have a TextMarker™ homing beacon on her?”

“True—but Textual Sieve coverage is patchy even in Fiction, and absent entirely across at least two-thirds of the BookWorld. We’ve sent unmanned probes into the most impenetrable tomes at Antiquarian and dispatched agents into almost every genre there is—nothing. The BookWorld is a big place. We’ve even considered that she might be in the DRM.”

I raised an eyebrow. If they were considering this, they really were desperate. The DRM was the Dark Reading Matter—the unseeable part of the BookWorld.

“It’s been almost t

wo weeks,” continued Bradshaw, “and I fear that something dreadful might have happened.”

“Dead?”

“Worse—retired back to the RealWorld.”

He stopped and stared at me. It wasn’t just Thursday’s absence from Jurisfiction that he was worried about; he had lost a good friend, too. Thursday trusted Commander Bradshaw implicitly. I thought I should do likewise.

“I sneak-peeked the Outland yesterday,” I said. “I realize it was wrong. But it seemed to me that Landen was missing her, too.”

Bradshaw raised an eyebrow. “Truthfully?”

“Yes, sir.”

He took a sip of the cocktail, set it down and strode about the compartment for some minutes.

“Look here,” he said, “desperate situations call for desperate measures. I want you to talk to Landen and see if you can find out anything. Perhaps locate her in time for the peace talks.”

“Talk to Landen? How can I do that?”

“By traveling to the RealWorld.”

My heart nearly missed a beat.

“You’re joking.”

“No joke, Miss Next. In fact, I’ll tell you a joke so you’ll know the difference. How many Sigmund Freuds does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“I’ve heard it.”

“You have? Blast. In any event, you look exactly like Thursday—the best cover in the world. And what could possibly go wrong?”

There was actually quite a lot, but before I could itemize the first sixteen, Bradshaw had moved on.

“Splendid. All transfictional travel has been strictly banned this past eighteen months, so you’ll be doing this covertly. If anyone finds out, I’ll deny everything. Most of all, you can’t tell anyone from the Council of Genres. If Jobsworth or Red Herring finds I’ve been breaking the transfictional travel embargo, they’ll want to send their own. And I can’t have that. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then that’s all agreed,” said Bradshaw, rising from his seat and handing me a signed authorization. “This will give you access to Norland Park to see Professor Plum on the pretext of adding e-book accelerators to your series. He’ll know why you’re there. I’ll also contact my deep-cover agents to offer you every assistance in the Outland. Any questions?”

I had several hundred, but didn’t know where to start. Bradshaw took my silence to mean I didn’t have any, and he shook me by the hand.