One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

I walked through to the front room. My potential understudy looked pleasant enough and had troubled to integrate herself into my body type and vague looks. She had a Thursday Next outfit on, too. She wanted this job badly.

“The written Thursday Next,” I said, shaking her hand.

“Carmine O’Kipper,” she replied with a nervous smile. “ID A4-5619-23. Pleased to be here.”

“You’re an A-4, Miss O’Kipper?”

“Call me Carmine. Is that a problem?”

“Not at all.”

An A-4 character was theoretically only three steps down from the Jane Eyres and Scout Finches. To be able to handle first person, you had to be an A-grade, but none of the other understudies had been higher than an A-9.

“You must be at least an A-2, yes?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I replied as we sat. “Do you know of the series?”

“I used to keep a scrapbook of the real Thursday Next.”

“If you’re here to catch a glimpse of her, it’s unlikely. She dropped in once soon after the remaking, but not since then.”

“I’m really just after the work, Miss Next.”

She handed me her CV. It wasn’t long, nor particularly impressive. She was from an original manuscript sitting abandoned in a drawer somewhere in the Outland. She would have handled loss, love, uncertainty and a corkingly good betrayal. It looked like it might have been a good gig. But after fifteen years and not a single reader, it was time to move on.

“So . . . why do you want to work in my series?”

“I’m eager to enter a new and stimulating phase of my career,” she said brightly, “and I need a challenging and engaging book in which I can learn from a true professional.”

It was the usual bullshit, and it didn’t wash.

“You could get a read anywhere,” I said, handing back the CV, “so why come to the speculative end of Fantasy?”

She bit her lip and stared at me.

“I’ve only ever been read by one person at a time,” she confessed. “I took a short third-person locum inside a Reader’s Digest version of Don Quixote as Dulcinea two weeks ago. I had a panic attack when the read levels went over twenty-six and went for the Snooze.”

I heard Mrs. Malaprop drop a teacup in the kitchen. I was shocked, too. The Snooze Button was reserved only for dire emergencies. Once it was utilized, a reverse throughput capacitor on the imaginotransference engines would cause the reader instantaneous yawning, drowsiness and then sleep. Quick, simple—and the readers suspected nothing.

“You hit Snooze?”

“I was stopped before I did.”

“I’m very relieved.”

“Me, too. Rocinante had to take over my part—played her rather well, actually.”

“Did the Don notice? Rocinante playing you, I mean?”

“No.”

Carmine was just what I was looking for. Overqualified understudies rarely stayed long, but what with her being severely readerphobic, the low ReadRates would suit her down to the ground. I was mildly concerned over her eagerness to hit Snooze. To discourage misuse, every time the button was pressed, one or more kittens were put to death somewhere in the BookWorld. It was rarely used.

“Okay,” I said, “you’re hired. One caveat: You don’t get the Snooze Button access codes. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Excellent. How much reading time do you have?”