“Gatsby.”
“He’s anything but mediocre, my girl.”
And both he and Zhark laughed in a patronizing sort of way.
“Seriously,” I said hotly, “Thursday was attacked, and the reason—”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fascinating,” said Jobsworth, “but it’s going to have to wait. We enter the subgenre Racy Classics in five minutes and meet with the other delegates in forty-five. We have much work to do. If you really want to be helpful, make me a cup of tea or go find Herring.”
“But—”
“GO!”
I mumbled an apology and backed out the door, cursing my own weakness.
“That could have gone better,” said Sprockett. “I’ll try to find Herring for you.”
And with a mild buzz, he disappeared. I walked down to the lower deck feeling hot and frustrated. I didn’t like to be talked to that way, but this could indeed wait. I’d leave it until Jobsworth had a quieter moment and then tell him—or perhaps speak to Speedy Muffler’s people in private and see if my suspicions were correct. Perhaps it was better not to talk to Jobsworth.
I went down to my cabin to wash my face but stopped at Cabin 12, next door to mine. The mysterious passenger’s escape from the steamer still made no sense, so I pushed open the door and went in.
The bed was made up, as I might have suspected—we weren’t due to return until tomorrow. I searched through the missing passenger’s baggage and found none of the shoulder or knee pads that Sprockett had described, although the fire retardant was still there, unopened. There was a change of clothes and nothing else. I was about to close the door when I remembered—the mysterious passenger had his luggage with him when we saw him rowing away.
A flurry of unpleasant thoughts went through my head, and I suddenly realized not only why the mysterious passenger would have knee pads, but who had attacked the Fourteenth Clown and what was going on in the Outland that made the whole thing possible. This was a complex plot of considerable dimension, and I was now certain who was behind it all. My first thought was to go and tell Jobsworth exactly what was happening, but I stopped as a far worse realization dawned upon me. The plan would work only if everyone on board the Metaphoric Queen were to be assassinated.
I grabbed a fire ax and ran up the companionway to the deck.
38.
Answers
Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity lies Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (2nd edition)
One of Jobsworth’s D-3 minions had been given the task of keeping an eye on the riveted box that contained the valuable plot-line gifts for Speedy Muffler, and he noticed me only when I was halfway across the foredeck, my intention already clear to those present. He dropped his copy of The Word and took a pace towards me. I caught him on the solar plexus with the ball of my hand, and he reeled over backwards. The foredeck would have been in plain view from the wheelhouse, and the captain pulled on the steam whistle and sent a deafening blast echoing across Racy Novel, temporarily quenching the sounds of the enthusiastic moans that echoed over the water.
The whistle also drowned out the sound of the padlock being smashed off, and I had the lid open and was looking at the contents when Zhark and Jobsworth arrived beside me. They stopped, too, and stared inside the box.
“Those aren’t plot lines,” said Jobsworth.
“No,” I replied, looking up the river to where I could just see Lady Chatterley’s Lover appear around the next bend, less than five hundred yards away, “and you need to stop the boat before we get to Racy Classics.”
“Captain!” yelled Jobsworth, who knew how to act properly when evidence presented itself. The captain opened the wheelhouse window and leaned out, cupping a hand to his ear.
“Turn the Queen about and get us downstream. If we go up, I want to be taking only Racy Pulp with us!”
The captain needed no further bidding, and he ordered the helm hard over to turn midriver.
I leaned in and examined the contents of the box. It was a classy job. There was a single glass jar that contained, as far as I could see, a lot of foam. This was attached to a funnel and a time switch, and wrapped around all this was a series of embarrassingly bad descriptions of sexual congress. Emperor Zhark moved closer and put on his glasses.
“By the seven-headed Zook of Zargon,” he breathed. “It’s full of antikern.”
“It’s full of what?”
“Kerning is the adjustment of the white spaces between the letters,” he explained, “in order to make the letters seem proportionally spaced. What this does is remove the white spaces entirely—within an instant this entire boat and everyone in it will implode into nothing more than an oily puddle of ink floating on the river.”
I pointed to the poorly written descriptions of sexual congress wrapped around the device.