One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [112]
“Punching goblins,” replied Sprockett soothingly, “while offering short-term relief, has no long-term beneficial value.”
I sighed. “You’re right.”
“By referring to the ‘bright side,’ ma’am, I merely meant that the recent upset simply frees your schedule for more pressing matters. You have larger fish to fry over the next couple of days.”
I stood up. Sprockett was right. To hell with the series—for the moment at least.
“So where do you suggest we go now?”
“Back to Vanity.”
33.
The League of Cogmen
There are two languages peculiar to the BookWorld of which a vague understanding will help the enthusiastic tourist. Courier Bold is the traditional language of those in the support industries, such as within the Well of Lost Plots, and Lorem Ipsum is the gutter slang of the underworld—useful to have a few phrases in case you get into trouble in Horror or Noir.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (1st edition)
Sprockett, I learned, lived in the Fantasy section of Vanity, not far from Parody Valley. I was more at leisure to look about upon this, my second visit, and I noticed that whereas in Fiction the landscape was well maintained, relatively open and with good infrastructure, years of self-publishing into the same geographic area meant that Vanity was untidy, chaotic and overcrowded.
The resident novels with their settings, props and characters now occupied every spare corner of the island and had accreted on top of one another like alluvial deposits. Grand towers of imaginative speculation had arisen from the bare rock, and the island was honeycombed with passageways, tunnels and shafts to provide access to the scenes and settings now buried far below the surface. In some places the books were so close that boundaries became blurred—a tiger hunt in 1920s Bengal merged seamlessly with the TT races on the Isle of Man, a western with the 1983 Tour de France. Space in Vanity was limited.
“Don’t let on you’re published,” remarked Sprockett as we arrived at his book, a badly worn tome cemented into a cliff face of similar books and supported on slender stilts that were anchored to the rock below. He needn’t have—I knew the score. Vanity’s beef with the rest of Fiction was long-lived and not without some degree of justification.
I wiped my feet on the doormat as we entered and noted that the novel was set mostly in the manor house that belonged to Professor Winterhope, Sprockett’s creator, and was populated by a large and mildly eccentric family of mechanical men, none of whom looked as though they had been serviced for years.
“Welcome to The League of Cogmen,” said Mrs. Winterhope once the professor had taken Sprockett off for an oil change and general service. “Would you like some tea?”
I told her I would, and we walked into the front room, which was like my kitchen back home, a command center and meeting place all in one. Mrs. Winterhope introduced me to the Cogmen, who had been wound sufficiently to converse but were under strict orders not to move, so as not to wear themselves out—quite literally, as they had a limited stock of spare parts. Despite these obvious drawbacks, they still expressed the languorous attitude of the long-unread. It didn’t look as though they rehearsed much either, which was a lamentable lapse in professionalism, although I wasn’t going to say so.
“We must thank you for rescuing Sprocky from that rabble in Conspiracy,” said Mrs. Winterhope, putting an empty kettle onto a cold stove. “And we were delighted to hear he was employed by Thursday Next—even if not the real one.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Has our Sprockett been serving you well?”
“He has been beyond exemplary,” I told her. “A gentleman’s gentleman.”
“Excellent,” she replied. “I can count on you to give good references?”
“I cannot see a scenario where I would let him go,” I said with a smile. “He is utterly admirable in every respect.”
But Mrs. Winterhope wasn’t smiling.
“I understand,” she said slowly, “that you have recently