One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

Jobsworth was perhaps sixty or sixty-five, graying at the temples and with the look of someone weighed down heavily by responsibility. He stepped forward and put a finger under my chin. I should have been more overawed in his presence, but I wasn’t. In fact, I had every reason to dislike him. When the senior senator was merely a senator, he had blocked my series from having Landen in it. He had said having no Landen was “as the author intended,” but that didn’t really help, to be honest.

“It looks exactly like her,” he breathed.

“Like two goddamn peas in a pod,” agreed Bradshaw’s companion.

“I’m mirrored with her, Senator,” I explained. “The books were built using H-29 biographical architecture before they were moved to Nonfiction, so my looks are directly linked to hers. I age at the same rate and even grow the same scars in sympath—”

“Fascinating. Does it have skills and an intellect to match, Commander Bradshaw?”

“It does not—nor any dress sense. What’s your interest in an A-8 copy of Thursday Next, Senator?”

“The interests of the council are not necessarily the interests of Jurisfiction, Bradshaw.”

They stared at each other for several seconds. I expect this happened quite a lot. Jurisfiction was a policing agency, working under the council, who were wholly political. I can’t imagine they ever got on.

“Sir?” said Barnes, gently coaxing the senator to stick to his schedule. “You have a meeting.”

“Very well,” said the head of Fiction, and he strode off into the Jurisfiction offices with Herring, Barksdale and his entourage. Bradshaw stared at me for a moment, then told me I was excused. I needed no further bidding, and curtsied politely before hurrying off with the frog-footman.

“Well, thanks for that,” said the frog-footman sarcastically. “You just ruined my six-year ‘being ignored by Commander Bradshaw’ record.”

“He didn’t remember your name,” I said, trying to be helpful, “and was horribly insensitive when he called you ‘frog guy.’”

“Well, okay,” said the frog-footman, “that does take the sting out a little bit. But tell me,” he said, staring at me with his large, protruding eyes and broad mouth, “why did he call me ‘frog guy’?”

“I was up for Jurisfiction once,” I said, quickly changing the subject, “but it didn’t work out.”

“Me, too,” sadly replied the frog-footman, whose mind didn’t seem to pause on any one subject for long. “I didn’t make it past the ‘What is your name?’ question. You?”

“Training day. Froze when the going got tough. Nearly got my mentor killed.”

“To fail spectacularly is a loser’s paradise,” said the frog-footman wistfully. “This way.”

14.

Stamped and Filed

Distilling metaphor out of raw euphemism was wasteful and expensive, and the euphemism-producing genres on the island were always squeezing the market. Besides, the by-product of metaphor using the Cracked Euphemism Process liberates irony-238 and dangerous quantities of alliteration, which are associated with downright dangerous disposal difficulties.

Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (9th edition)

We walked down the seemingly endless corridors, every door placarded with the name of the department contained within. One was labeled OLD JOKES and another NOUN-TO-VERB CONVERSION UNIT. Just past the offices of the Synonym Squad and the Danvers Union headquarters was a small office simply labeled JAID.

“Right. Well,” I said, “I’ll see myself out when I’m done.”

“I’m afraid not,” replied the frog-footman. “I am instructed to escort you both in and out.”

So while the frog-footman sat on a chair in the corridor opposite, I knocked on the door.

“Commander Herring told me you would be stopping by,” said Lockheed as I entered. “Do come in. Tea?”

“No thank you.”

I looked around. The office was roomy, had a large window and was paneled in light pine. The pictures that decorated the walls all depicted a book disaster of some sort, mostly with Lockheed featured prominently in the foreground, grinning broadly. There was little clutter, and the single filing cabinet probably contained nothing but a kettle and some co

okies. Jurisfiction had finally managed to commit itself to a paperless office—all files were committed to the prodigious memory of Captain Phantastic, just down the hall.

“Impressive office, eh?” said Lockheed. “We even have a window—with a view. Come and have a look.”