One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

Senator Jobsworth

Dark Reading Matter: the hypothetical last resting place of books never published, ideas never penned and poems held only in the heart by poets who died without passing them on. Theoretical bibliologists have proved that the Background Story Radiation was appreciably more than the apparent quantity of STORY in the BookWorld. No one had any idea where it might be or how you could reach it. DRM’s existence remained theoretical, at best.

Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (4th edition)

The senator was sitting behind his desk as I was ushered into his office. Several men and women dressed in the uniform of almost every military conflict there was were in attendance, as well as a couple of high-ranking generals, Colonel Barksdale and Commander Herring, the chief of staff.

“Would you excuse us?” said the senator, and everyone except Red Herring and Colonel Barksdale filed out, looking at me suspiciously as they did so. I stood in front of Jobsworth’s desk while he finished what he was doing. I didn’t know which book he had come from, but wagging tongues suggested he was an illegal immigrant from Quackery, a subgenre within Lies & Self-Delusion, just off the north coast. I don’t think anyone ever raised it with him, or if they did, no answer was forthcoming. It didn’t really much matter, since Jobsworth had been the overall leader of the Council of Genres for as long as it had been in existence, and his unassailable position as head of the council looked set to continue far into the future. He had the ear, apparently, of the Great Panjandrum himself, who could fix almost everything when he had a mind to.

“They say she’s dead, you know,” said Jobsworth, striding to the large window in his office that looked out over the BookWorld, the islands of the various categories of books patches of verdant green against the dark slatey gray of the Text Sea. “Killed in the Outland, killed in the BookWorld—who knows? What do you think?”

“I have no opinion on the matter, sir. I just play her in the series.”

“You must have some idea.”

I looked across at the chief of staff, who was gazing at me intently. “No.”

Jobsworth stared at me for a long while, then grunted and looked outside his office again. Yet this time he wasn’t looking at the larger BookWorld, but rather at the island of Fiction below him. The Ungenred Zone was on the west coast about halfway up. Crime was just to the north, but the areas I knew best—Adventure, Fantasy and Sci-Fi—were situated in the southeast, out of sight. It was Herring who spoke next.

“Ever been up-country?”

“I’ve been to Crime.”

“Farther. Towards Racy Novel.”

“No.”

“So there is a good chance they haven’t seen you up there? Or even know about you?”

I suddenly had a very unpleasant feeling and turned back to Jobsworth. “What is it you want me to do, Senator?”

“A small favor. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important. And if you do this for us, I’m sure it will be to your benefit if you reapply to join Jurisfiction.”

I was right. If that was the carrot, I could be in for some serious stick.

“It’s nothing too onerous,” added Colonel Barksdale, who had so many campaign medals on his chest that he was probably bulletproof. “It simply requires you to take Thursday’s place at the peace talks on Friday.”

I was momentarily at a loss for words. I should have tried to extricate myself, but I had paused too long.

“Splendid,” said Jobsworth, crossing to a scale model of the island that was built upon a large oak table. “Let me give you some background.”

“Would you excuse me?” said Herring. “I have to revise the upcoming Linguistic Hygiene Bill if we’re to have any chance of rejecting it.”

“Thank you, Red.”

Herring wished me good day, thanked me for my selfless adherence to duty and walked from the room. Jobsworth beckoned me closer to the large model of the island, where the topography was perfectly realized in miniature, including the individual genres along with their borders, railway networks, major rivers and capital novels. He swept his hand in the direction of the Northern Genres.

“You’ve heard about Speedy Muffler’s threats and the peace talks on Friday?”

I said that I had.

“Speedy Muffler claims to have developed a dirty bomb,” announced Jobsworth with a grimace, “a loosely bound collection of badly described scenes of a sexual nature. The detonation of such a bomb could cause untold damage, flinging wholly gratuitous sex scenes as far as Mrs. Dalloway.”

“But has he really?” I asked, since the possession of the bomb was only conjecture, much like Comedy’s claim to be experimenting with a fifty-megaton-yield deep satire device.

“Do you know,” said Jobsworth, “it doesn’t matter. Feminism and Dogma are taking the threat seriously and are massing armies on the border ready to take preemptive action ahead of the peace talks. And we can’t have that.”

“Invasion?” I said. “What would Feminism and Dogma do with Racy Novel?”