He looked at me for a moment. “It’s very good of you to warn me, but that’s not how I see it.”
“You think it’s someone else?”
“I think the fodder is you, Thursday.”
“No it’s not.”
“What are you if you’re not the fodder?”
“I’m the impostor.”
“You . . . could be the impostor and the fodder.”
“The unions would never allow it.”
“They might.”
“Look,” I said, “we could argue this all day, but here’s the thing: You graduated only this morning with a minimal backstory. I’ve been working the BookWorld for over three years—who’s most likely to cop it in the next few hours?”
“You might just think you’ve been working the BookWorld for three years. It could be your backstory.”
“Okay,” I said, beginning to get angry, “we’ll both go out there and see who gets eaten by a crocodile or gets a poison dart in the eye. Then we’ll know.”
“Deal.”
The rest of the peace delegation had joined us on deck, and they were staring silently towards the Middle Station. As we drew closer, we could see that the houses had been recently burned, for wisps of smoke hung in the air with the faint smell of scorched custard. We waited for the steamer to drift towards the jetty, until it touched with a faint bump. The crew made the steamer fast before jumping back onto the boat, and we watched and waited as the steamer slowly swung around in the current. There was not a single sign of life anywhere in the station.
“Well,” said Colonel Barksdale after a few minutes, “I’ve seen enough—doubtless skirmishers from Racy Novel causing trouble. Let’s steam on deeper into the genre and start getting some face time with this lunatic.”
“We’re not going anywhere until we load some coal,” said the captain.
I stepped off the steamer and onto the rickety old jetty, Drake at my side. We walked slowly into the town. Drake looked about anxiously, but not, I realized, about the deserted Middle Station.
“You’ll keep an eye out for crocodiles, won’t you?” I asked.
“As long as you watch my back for poison darts.”
We came across the first body near the mailbox on the corner. There was an ugly wound in the middle of his chest, and the small letters and words that made up his existence had been caught by the breeze and blown into the fishing nets set up to dry. We looked around and noticed more bodies and the detritus of conflict: discarded rubber chickens, feather dusters, strings of silk flags, spinning bow ties and custard-pie shrapnel that somehow seemed sadder and less funny than usual.
“Is this a garrison town?” I asked.
“No,” replied the adventurer.
“Then what’s a lance corporal of the Fourteenth Motorized Clown doing up here?”
The corpse was indeed a member of Comedy’s frontline troops. He had orange hair, a bulbous red nose, and he was wearing camouflage battle dress, along with a pair of size-twenty-eight shoes. Not much good for marching and a hangover from their days as an Alpine regiment.
Drake placed his hand on the clown’s bright re
d nose.
“Still warm,” he said, “probably been dead less than an hour. Any thoughts?”
“I don’t know,” I said, picking up a nurse’s hat from the ground. A little farther on, a stethoscope was lying broken in the dust. “But it wasn’t just clowns who died here today.”
We walked some more and came across a dozen or so other bodies. All clowns, all dead and none meant to be here. Bawdy Romp was within Racy Novel’s control and officially a demilitarized zone.
“This doesn’t make sense,” said Drake. “Comedy never had any beef with Racy Novel. Quite the reverse—they actually got on very well. Without Racy Novel, Comedy would be very poor indeed—especially for the stand-ups.”