the train heading back towards Fantasy and home, “as to inquire about our next move?”
“Placating an angry Carmine, I should imagine—I’ve been away a lot these past few days. After that we’ll have to recover anything Horace has stolen again, put up with petulant huffing and tutting from Pickwick—and my dopey father will be complaining about something, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I was referring to Racy Novel, ma’am. Should you call Commander Bradshaw again?”
I’d asked myself the same question on the way back from Biography. I’d spoken to him briefly while on board the World Hotel Review. He had expressed surprise and alarm about the Men in Plaid and had also checked out Mediocre’s address and reported back to us no sign of metaphor—in bridges or otherwise. Unwisely, I had told him we were going on to Biography, and now I didn’t know if I could trust him or not.
“He might have tipped off the Men in Plaid,” I said after airing my thoughts, “or he simply might be having his footnoterphone messages read in transit.”
It wasn’t hard, apparently. All you needed do was to sit in the footnoterphone ducts and read the messages as they flitted past.
“Even if he is on the level,” I added, “it’s not like we have any answers or evidence—just a geologist out to grass and a rough sketch of the strata beneath the northern part of Fiction.”
Sprockett nodded agreement.
“But,” I added, “we know that Thursday would have been working to avert war at the peace talks. If she was silenced, the attacks by the Men in Plaid would seem to implicate the Council of Genres, but the CofG want to avoid a war, not start one. It was Senator Jobsworth himself who wanted me to go to the peace talks tomorrow. The only person we know who seems to actually welcome war is Speedy Muffler.”
“Would he have access to Duplex-6 automatons that could be made to look like Men in Plaid?” asked Sprockett.
“Duplex will sell to anyone with the cash, but the Council’s strict sales embargoes are hard to circumvent. Not impossible, but hard.”
“What about Red Herring, ma’am?”
“I’m not sure. Is Red Herring a red herring? Or is it the fact that we’re meant to think Red Herring is a red herring that is actually the red herring?”
“Or perhaps the fact you’re meant to think Red Herring isn’t a red herring is what makes Red Herring a red herring after all.”
“We’re talking serious metaherrings here. Oh, crap, I’m lost again. Who’s talking now?”
“It’s you,” said Sprockett.
“Right.”
“Whatever is going on,” I said, “it’s big. Really big. If it’s big enough to risk killing Thursday Next, destroying a book and subverting the Men in Plaid from their usual duties of frightening the citizenry to the more specific duty of frightening individual citizens, then there is no limit to what they might do. We need to keep our eyes open at all times.”
We took a cab from Le Guin Central and, deep in thought, walked up to the house. I had my hand on the butt of my pistol, just in case. I needn’t have worried. Men in Plaid were never seen without their Buick Roadmasters, and the driveway was empty. I opened the front door and found a dozen members of the cast sitting around the kitchen table.
“Hello,” I said, somewhat surprised. “Have we got a cast meeting scheduled for this evening?”
“We have now,” replied Carmine.
My eyes flicked from face to face, and they seemed very serious. Most of the major players were there—my father, Bowden, Hades, Jack Schitt, Braxton, Rochester, Paige Turner, Joffy, Stig, Victor Analogy, my mother and even Bertha Rochester, although she had been put in a straitjacket in the event she tried to bite anyone.
“What’s going on?”
“You’ve been acting a bit irresponsibly recently,” said Carmine, “running around the BookWorld, pretending to be her. You’ve been neglecting your duties. I’ve been covering for you far more than is written in my contract, and only yesterday you were shouting at us all.”
“I’ve had things on my mind,” I replied by way of excuse, “important things.”
“So you say. To the casual outside observer, you’re simply getting delusions of adequacy. Play a strong character for too long and it tends to have an unhinging effect.”
“And today,” said Bowden in an annoying “I told you so” sort of voice, “you were threatening to tell the Outland all about the BookWorld. There’s a good reason the real Thursday never put that part of the story in her books, you know.”
“I admit I might have gone too far on that point,” I conceded, but I could see they didn’t believe me.
“None of us are happy,” said my father, “and we feel you might be leading the series into disrepute. If the book gets punished for your transgressions, then every one of us has to suffer. Punish one, punish all. You know how it works.”
I did, far too well. To keep books in line, the entire cast is often disciplined for the misdeeds of one. It generated a certain degree of conformity within the cast—and a lot of ill feeling.