One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [11]
“If Fantasy is your thing,” I said, “plenty. Moving cross-genre is not recommended, as the border guards can get jumpy, and it will never do to be caught in another genre just when you’re needed. Oh, and don’t do anything that my dodo might disapprove of.”
“Such as what?”
“The list is long. Here we are.”
We had arrived on the top of a low rise where there was a convenient park bench. From this vantage point, we could see most of Fiction Island.
“That’s an impressive sight,” said Carmine.
There was no aerial haze in the BookWorld, and because the island was mildly dished where it snuggled against the interior of the sphere, we could see all the way to the disputed border between Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction in the far north of the island, and beyond that the unexplored Dismal Woods.
“That’s the Metaphoric River,” I explained, pointing out the sinuous bends of the waterway whose many backwaters, bayous, streams and rivulets brought narrative ambiguity and unnecessarily lengthy words to the millions of books that had made their home in the river’s massive delta. “To the east of Racy Novel is Outdated Religious Dogma.”
“Shouldn’t that be in Nonfiction?” asked Carmine.
“It’s a contentious issue. It was removed from Theology on the grounds that the theories had become ‘untenable in a modern context’ and ‘were making us look medieval.’”
“And that island off the coast of Dogma?” she asked, pointing to a craggy island partially obscured by cloud.
“The smaller of the two is Sick Notes, and the larger is Lies, Self-Delusion and Excuses You Can Use to Justify Poor Behavior. South of Dogma is Horror, then Fantasy, with Adventure and Science Fiction dominating the south coast.”
“I’ll never remember all that.”
I handed her my much-thumbed copy of Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion. “Use this,” I said, showing her the foldout map section and train timetables. “I’ve got the new edition on order.”
Whilst we had been sitting there, the recently evicted book had been unbolted by a team of Worker Danvers.
“Raphael’s Walrus has been unread for over two years,” I explained, “so it’s off to the narrative doldrums of the suburbs. Not necessarily permanent, of course—a resurgence of interest could bring it back into the more desirable neighborhoods in an instant.”
“How come your series is still here?” she asked, then put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, was that indelicate of me?”
“No, most people ask that. The Text Grand Central Mapping Committee keeps us here out of respect.”
“For you?”
“No—for the real Thursday Next.”
A smattering of soil and pebbles descended to earth as Raphael’s Walrus rose into the air, the self-sealing throughput and feedback conduits giving off faint puffs of word vapor as they snapped shut. This was how the new Geographic BookWorld worked. Books arrived, books left, and the boundaries of the various genres snaked forwards and backwards about the land, reflecting the month-to-month popularity of the various genres. The Crime genre was always relatively large, as were Comedy, Fantasy and Science Fiction. Horror had gotten a boost recently with the burgeoning Urban Vampires sector, while some of the lesser-known genres had shrunk to almost nothing. Squid Action/Adventure was deleted quite recently, and Sci-Fi Horse Detective looked surely set to follow.
But the vacated area was not empty for long. As we watched, the first of many prefabricated sections of the new book arrived, fresh from the construction hangars in the Well of Lost Plots. The contractors quickly surveyed the site, pegged out strings and then signaled to large transporter slipcases that were hovering just out of sight. Within a few minutes, handling ropes were dropped as the sections moved into a hover thirty feet or so above, and the same small army of Worker Danvers, cheering and grunting, maneuvered the sections into position, and then riveted them in place with pneumatic hammers. The first setting to be completed was a semiruined castle, then a mountain range, then a forest—with each tree, rabbit,