One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [125]
It seemed as though an entire company had been wiped out.
37.
Revision
Amongst all the genres on Fiction Island, Comedy is the only one that still demands compulsory military service and a bucket of water down the trousers for every citizen. Conscripts are trained in the clown martial art of slapstick and do not graduate from military academy until they can kill silently with a frying pan and achieve fatal accuracy with a custard pie at forty yards. It’s a bit like Sparta, only with jokes.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (7th edition)
We convened in the bar soon afterwards and related everything we had seen at the Middle Station. Colonel Barksdale, Herring, Zhark and Senator Jobsworth listened carefully to all we had to say but didn’t seem to have any better idea of what was going on than we did.
“There is no reason for the Fourteenth Motorized Clown to be this far north,” declared Colonel Barksdale angrily. “It is a flagrant breach of numerous peace agreements and specifically the 1996 Clown Army Proliferation Treaty.”
“Shouldn’t you have known about it?” asked Emperor Zhark, who knew better than most the value of intelligence.
“The Textual Sieve network is patchy up here,” replied Barksdale in a sulky tone. “We can’t know everything. I can only think the Fourteenth Clown must have been massing in the demilitarized zone as the potential allies of Racy Novel.”
“Then who killed them and all the civilians?” asked the adventurer, to which question there didn’t seem to be much of an answer. They all fell silent for a moment.
“When do we meet with the other delegates?” asked Jobsworth.
“In an hour,” replied Herring. “Aunt Augusta of WomFic and Cardinal Fang of Outdated Religious Dogma are meeting us at Fanny Hill. Would you excuse me? We’re out of footnoterphone range, and I’m going to have to send a message to the council via the shortwave colophone.”
Drake and I were dismissed, as Jobsworth, Barksdale and Zhark had decided to discuss the finer points of the peace talks, something to which we could not be privy.
“I’m going to freshen up before we get there,” said Drake, “and maybe rub on some crocodile repellent.”
I laughed, saw he was serious, turned the laugh into a cough and said, “Good idea.”
We were now well within Racy Novel, and the rustling of bushes, the groans and squeaks of delight echoed in from the riverbanks, where large privet hedges were grown to afford some sort of privacy for the residents. Every now and then, a slip in the riverbank allowed us a brief glimpse of what went on, which was generally several scantily dressed people running around in a gleeful manner—usually in a bedroom somewhere, but occasionally in the outdoors and once on the top deck of a London bus.
I made my way forward, where I was met by Sprockett, who beckoned me into a laundry cupboard.
“I took the opportunity to go through the mysterious passenger’s belongings, ma’am.”
“And?”
“I came across some shoulder pads, knee pads, a chest protector and a gallon of fire retardant.”
“What?”
“Shoulder pads—”
“I heard. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“All of it. From beginning to end. We reach Fanny Hill in half an hour, and the peace talks begin as soon as we are escorted to Pornucopia. It’s time to go over what we’ve found. I feel the answer is staring me in the face.”
“Shouldn’t we gather all the suspects in the bar?” asked Sprockett, who was fast becoming infected by the Metaphoric Queen’s capacity for narrative formulaicism.
“No. And another thing—”
I was interrupted by a cry from outside, and the engine went to slow ahead. We stepped out of the laundry cupboard to see several crewmen run past, and we followed them to the upper rear deck, from where we could see across the top of the sternwheel. Behind us in midstream was a figure in one of the riverboat’s four-man tenders. The man was rowing in a measured pace away from the boat, and given our forward speed, the distance between the two craft was rapidly increasing.
“Who is it?” asked