First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

“Humph,” replied Bradshaw, bristling his mustache in anger. “I’ll take it under advisement—but you’re still suspended.”

I jerked a thumb in the direction of Thursday1–4. “What about her?”

“She’s your cadet, Thursday. you deal with it.”

He took a deep breath, shook his head, softened for a moment to tell me to look after myself and departed. I told Thursday5 to meet me up at the CofG and beckoned Thursday1–4 into the corridor.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said, “don’t be such a hard-ass. There’s no seriously lasting damage. So I dropped a piano into Emma—it’s not like it landed on anyone.”

I stared at her for a moment. Even allowing for Thursday1–4’s supreme arrogance, it still didn’t make any sense.

“You’re not stupid. You knew it would get you fired once and for all, so why do it?”

She stared at me with a look of cold hatred. “You were going to fire me anyway. There wasn’t a ghost’s chance I’d have made it.”

“The chance was slim,” I admitted, “but it was there.”

“I don’t agree. You hate me. Always have. From the moment I was first published. We could have been friends, but you never even visited. Not once in four entire books. Not a postcard, a footnote, nothing. I’m closer to you than family, Thursday, and you treated me like crap.”

And then I understood.

“You put the piano into Emma to stitch me up, didn’t you?”

“After what you’ve done to me, you deserve far worse. You had it in for me the moment I arrived at Jurisfiction. You all did.”

I shook my head sadly. She was consumed by hate. But instead of trying to deal with it, she just projected it onto everyone around her. I sighed.

“You did this for revenge over some perceived slight?”

“That wasn’t revenge,” said Thursday1–4 in a quiet voice. “You’ll know revenge when you see it.”

“Give me your badge.”

She dug it from her pocket and then tossed it onto the floor rather than hand it over.

“I quit,” she spat. “I wouldn’t join Jurisfiction now if you begged me.”

It was all I could do not to laugh at her preposterous line of reasoning. She couldn’t help herself. She was written this way.

“Go on,” I said in an even tone, “go home.”

She seemed surprised that I was no longer angry.

“Aren’t you going to yell at me or hit me or try to kill me or something? Face it: This isn’t much of a resolution.”

“It’s all you’re going to get. You really don’t understand me at all, do you?”

She glared at me for a moment, then bookjumped out.

I stood in the corridor for a few minutes, wondering if there was anything else I might have done. Aside from not trusting her an inch, not really. I shrugged, tried and failed to get TransGenre Taxis to even answer the footnoterphone and then, checking the time so I wouldn’t be late for the policy-directive meeting, made my way slowly toward the elevators.

24.

Policy Directives

The Council of Genres is the administrative body that looks after all aspects of BookWorld regulation, from making policy decisions in the main debating chamber to the day-to-day running of ordinary BookWorld affairs, from furnishing plot devices to controlling the word supply coming in from the Text Sea. They oversee the Book Inspectorate, which governs which books are to be published and which to be demolished, and also Text Grand Central and Jurisfiction—but only regarding policy. For the most part, they are evenhanded but need to be watched, and that’s where I come into the equation.