“I’m not really sure. I feel like I’m following in Thursday’s footsteps, only several hundred yards behind, and—hello, that’s odd.”
I looked around. Jenny, who’d been with us just a second ago, was nowhere to be seen. I twisted this way and that to see where she’d gone, and as I was doing so, a black van screeched to a halt in front of me. Within a few moments, the sliding door had opened and I’d been bundled inside in a less-than-polite manner, a sack put over my head. With another screech of tires, the van set off, and to make matters worse, I was then immediately sat upon by someone who smelled strongly of Gorgonzola.
23.
The Stiltonista
The most cost-effective way to tour the BookWorld is by bus. A BookWorld Rover is the preferred method, giving you unlimited travel for a month. Delays might be expected at the borders between islands, but for the discerning tourist eager to see the BookWorld at a leisurely pace, the Rover ticket is ideal. Next page: working your passage on a scrawl trawler. Not for the fainthearted.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (5th edition)
Any attempt to describe the journey would have been futile, as the varying degrees of gravitational flux that I encountered during the trip were unpleasantly distracting. Suffice it to say that all the lurches, bumps, swerves and twists made me feel quite peculiar, and I wondered how anyone could undertake journeys on a regular basis and not only become ambivalent but actually enjoy them. Fortunately, this journey ended after not too long, and once the van came to a stop and I was rather impolitely hauled from the back and placed on a chair, the sack was pulled off.
I was in a deserted warehouse. There were puddles of water on the floor and holes in the ceiling—which probably accounted for the puddles on the floor. The windows were broken, and green streaks of algae had formed on the walls. In several places brambles had started to grow, and the odd pile of rubble and twisted metal sat in heaps. I wasn’t alone. Aside from the four men who had brought me in the van, there was a Rolls-Royce motorcar and three other men. Two of them seemed to be bodyguards, and the third was undoubtedly the leader. He was dressed in a mohair suit and greatcoat, and his features were drawn and sunken—he looked like a skull that someone had thrown some skin at.
“I am Keitel Potblack,” he said in the tone of someone who felt I should know who he was and not fail to be impressed, “head of the Wiltshire Stiltonista. Your failure to remain properly dead is becoming something of an inconvenience.”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. This guy dealt in cheese, and he was acting as though he were a Bond villain.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t kid,” said Mr. Potblack.
“Oh,” I said, “right.”
I looked at him, then at the men standing next to him, one of whom was carrying a spade. “Going gardening?”
They exchanged glances, as though this were the sort of comment they expected.
>
“It’s up to you. Now, are you the real Thursday or just another copy?”
“I’m not her,” I said, “so if you can take me home, I’d be really grateful.”
“If you’re not her,” said Potblack, “I have no further need of you.”
“Good. If you could tell your driver to go easy a bit on the way back, that would be—”
“Mr. Blue? Would you do the honors?”
The man with the spade walked towards me, and all of a sudden I realized that if he was digging anything over today, it would be me.
“You want to talk?” I said, the ease with which I stayed calm surprising even me. “Then let’s talk.”
“So you are Thursday?”
“Yes,” I replied, which was no lie—I was a Thursday.
The man with the spade walked back to his position to the left of his boss. I noticed as he did that one edge of the spade had been sharpened.
“Okay,” said Potblack, who seemed annoyed that I wasn’t more frightened than I was. Perhaps if I’d known who he was, I would have been. But this was Thursday’s life, not mine.
“In the past,” began Potblack in a slow, deliberate speech, “we may have had an ‘understanding’ over who deals what cheese where. Perhaps you think I was being too harsh when I started dealing in really strong cheeses, but I am a businessman. The stronger the cheese, the more people will pay. Business is good, and we want to keep it that way. If the government lifts the cheese ban as threatened, then it could be very bad business for all of us. The last thing we want is legal cheese.”
I vaguely knew what he was talking about, but not the details. I’d heard that cheese in the Outland was subject to a swingingly large amount of duty, but it seemed the government, in an attempt to control the burgeoning illegal-cheese market, had tried cheese prohibition. Judging from Potblack’s jewelry, car and ability to supply, the ban didn’t seem to be working.
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “It’s not like I have the ear of the president, now, is it?”