First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

“Well,” said Ms. Yogert with a shrug, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?”

“You’ll forgive me for saying this,” said Webastow, looking over his glasses, “but this is the most harebrained piece of unad

ulterated stupidity that any government has ever undertaken anywhere.”

“Thank you very much,” replied Ms. Yogert courteously. “I’ll make sure your compliments are forwarded to Prime Minister van de Poste.”

The program changed to a report on how the “interactive book” might work. Something about “new technologies” and “user-defined narrative.” It was all baloney. I knew what was going on. It was Senator Jobsworth. He’d pushed through that interactive book project of Baxter’s. Worse, he’d planned this all along—witness the large throughput conduits in Pride and Prejudice and the recent upgrading of all of Austen’s work. I wasn’t that concerned with how they’d managed to overturn my veto or even open an office in the real world—what worried me was that I needed to be in the Book-World to stop the nation’s entire literary heritage from being sacrificed on the altar of popularism.

The phone rang. It was Bowden again. I made a trifling and wholly unbelievable excuse about looking for a hammer, then vanished into the garage so Landen couldn’t hear the conversation.

“The Interactive Book Council is run out of an office in West London,” Bowden reported when I was safely perched on the lawn mower. “It was incorporated a month ago and has the capacity to take a thousand simultaneous calls—yet the office itself is barely larger than the one at Acme.”

“They must have figured a way to transfer the calls en masse to the BookWorld,” I replied. “I’m sure a thousand Mrs. Danvers would be overjoyed to be working in a call center rather than bullying characters or dealing with rampant mispellings.”

I told Bowden I’d try to think of something and hung up. I stepped out of the garage and went back into the living room, my heart thumping. This was why I had the veto—to protect the BookWorld from the stupefyingly shortsighted decisions of the Council of Genres. But first things first. I had to contact Bradshaw and see what kind of reaction Jurisfiction was having to the wholesale slaughter of literary treasures—but how? JurisTech had never devised a two-way communication link between the Book-World and the Outland, as I was the only one ever likely to use it.

“Are you all right, Mum?” asked Tuesday.

“Yes, poppet, I’m fine,” I said, tousling her hair. “I’ve just got to muse on this awhile.”

I went upstairs to my office, which had been converted from the old box room, and sat down to think. The more I thought, the worse things looked. If the CofG had discounted my veto and forced the interactivity issue, it was entirely possible that they would also be attacking Speedy Muffler and Racy Novel. The only agency able to police these matters was Jurisfiction—but it worked to Text Grand Central’s orders, which was itself under the control of the Council of Genres, so Jobsworth was ultimately in command of Jurisfiction—and he could do with it what he wanted.

I sighed, leaned forward and absently pulled out my hair tie, then rubbed at my scalp with my fingertips. Commander Bradshaw would never have agreed to this interactivity garbage and would resign out of principle—as he had hundreds of times before. And if I were there, I could reaffirm my veto. It was a right given me by the Great Panjandrum, and not even Jobsworth would go against her will. This was all well and good but for one thing: I’d never even considered the possibility of losing my TravelBook, so I’d never worked out an emergency strategy for getting into the BookWorld without it.

The only person I knew who could bookjump without a book was Mrs. Nakajima, and she was in retirement at Thornfield Hall. Ex–Jurisfiction agent Harris Tweed had been banished permanently to the Outland, and without his TravelBook he was as marooned as I was. Ex-chancellor Yorrick Kaine, real these days and currently licking his wounds from a cell at Parkhurst, was no help at all, and neither was the only other fictionaut I knew still living, Cliff Hangar. I thought again about Commander Bradshaw. He’d certainly want to contact me and was a man of formidable resources—if I were him, how would I go about contacting someone in the real world? I checked my e-mails but found nothing and looked to see if I had any messages on my cell phone, which I hadn’t. My mobilefootnoterphone, naturally, was devoid of a signal.

I leaned back in my chair to think more clearly and let my eyes wander around the room. I had a good collection of books, amassed during my long career as a Literary Detective. Major and minor classics, but little of any great value. I stopped and thought for a moment, then started to rummage through my bookshelf until I found what I was looking for—one of Commander Bradshaw’s novels. Not one he wrote, of course, but one of the ones that featured him. There were twenty-three in the series, written between 1888 and 1922, and all featured Bradshaw either shooting large animals, finding lost civilizations or stopping “Johnny Foreigner” from causing mischief in British East Africa. He had been out of print for over sixty years and hadn’t been read at all for more than ten. Since no one was reading him, he could say what he wanted in his own books, and I would be able to read what he said. But there were a few problems: one, that twenty-three books would take a lot of reading; two, that Text Grand Central would know if his books were being read; and three, that it was simply a one-way conduit, and if he did leave a message, he would never know if it was me who’d read it.

I opened Two Years Amongst the Umpopo and flicked through the pages to see if anything caught my eye, such as a double line space or something. It didn’t, so I picked up Tilapia, the Devil-Fish of Lake Rudolph and, after that, The Man-Eaters of Nakuru. It was only while I was idly thumbing through Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser that I hit pay dirt. The text of the book remained unaltered, but the dedication had changed. Bradshaw was smart; only a variance in the story would be noticed at Text Grand Central—they wouldn’t know I was reading it at all. I took the book back to my desk and read:

Thursday, D’girl.

If you can read this, you have realized that something is seriously squiffy in the BookWorld. Plans had been afoot for weeks, and none of us had seen them. Thursday1–4 (yes, it’s true) has taken your place as the CofG’s LBOCS and is rubber-stamping all of Jobsworth’s idiotic schemes. The interactivity idea is going ahead full speed, and even now Danverclones are massing on the borders of Racy Novel, ready to invade. Evil Thursday has loaded Text Grand Central with her toadies in order to keep a careful watch for any textual anomalies that might give them—and her—a clue as to whether you have returned. For it is this that Evil Thursday fears more than anything: that you will return, unmask her as an impostor and retake your place. She has suspended Jurisfiction and had all agents confined to their books, and she now commands a legion of Danverclones, who are waiting to capture you should you appear in the BookWorld. We stole back your TravelBook and have left it for you with Captain Carver inside It Was a Dark and Stormy Night if you can somehow find a way in. This dedication will self-erase in two readings. Good luck, old girl—and Melanie sends her love.

Bradshaw.

I read the dedication again and watched as the words slowly dissolved from the page. Good old Bradshaw. I had been to It Was a Dark and Stormy Night a couple of times, mostly for training. It was a maritime adventure set aboard a tramp steamer on the Tasman Sea in 1924. It was a good choice, because it came under the deregulated area of the library known as Vanity Publishing. Text Grand Central wouldn’t even know I was there. I replaced Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser on the shelf, then unlocked the bottom drawer and took out my pistol and eraserhead cartridges. I stuffed them in my bag, noted that it was almost ten and knocked on Friday’s door.

“Darling?”

He looked up from the copy of Strontmania he was reading.

“Yuh?”

“I’m sorry, Sweetpea, but I have to go back to the BookWorld. It may put the unscrambled-eggs recipe in jeopardy.”

He sighed and stared at me. “I knew you would.”

“How?”

He beckoned me to the window and pointed to three figures sitting on a wall opposite the house. “The one in the middle is the other me. It shows there is still a chance they’ll get hold of the recipe. If we’d won, they’d be long gone.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, laying a hand on his. “I know how important the length of the Now is to all of us. I won’t go anywhere near ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus.’”

“Mum,” he said in a quiet voice, “if you get back home and I’m polite, well-mannered and with short hair, don’t be too hard on me, eh?”

He was worried about being replaced.