One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [127]
“No thank you, sir.”
I found Senator Jobsworth discussing the talks with Emperor Zhark and Colonel Barksdale.
“Have you seen Herring?” asked Jobsworth. “He should really be going through the final details with us.”
“He went to get a doughnut.”
“He did? Leave us now. We’re very busy.”
“I have important information. I think I know why Thursday was assassinated.”
Jobsworth stared at me. “Thursday’s dead?”
“Well, no, because her imagination is still alive. It was an assassination attempt—in a crummy book written by Adrian Dorset.”
“Adrian Dorset?”
“Jack Schitt, if you must. It was the epizeuxis that got her. And Mediocre.”
“Who’s Mediocre?”
“Gatsby.”
“He’s anything but mediocre, my girl.”
And both he and Zhark laughed in a patronizing sort of way.
“Seriously,” I said hotly, “Thursday was attacked, and the reason—”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fascinating,” said Jobsworth, “but it’s going to have to wait. We enter the subgenre Racy Classics in five minutes and meet with the other delegates in forty-five. We have much work to do. If you really want to be helpful, make me a cup of tea or go find Herring.”
“But—”
“GO!”
I mumbled an apology and backed out the door, cursing my own weakness.
“That could have gone better,” said Sprockett. “I’ll try to find Herring for you.”
And with a mild buzz, he disappeared. I walked down to the lower deck feeling hot and frustrated. I didn’t like to be talked to that way, but this could indeed wait. I’d leave it until Jobsworth had a quieter moment and then tell him—or perhaps speak to Speedy Muffler’s people in private and see if my suspicions were correct. Perhaps it was better not to talk to Jobsworth.
I went down to my cabin to wash my face but stopped at Cabin 12, next door to mine. The mysterious passenger’s escape from the steamer still made no sense, so I pushed open the door and went in.
The bed was made up, as I might have suspected—we weren’t due to return until tomorrow. I searched through the missing passenger’s baggage and found none of the shoulder or knee pads that Sprockett had described, although the fire retardant was still there, unopened. There was a change of clothes and nothing else. I was about to close the door when I remembered—the mysterious passenger had his luggage with him when we saw him rowing away.
A flurry of unpleasant thoughts went through my head, and I suddenly realized not only why the mysterious passenger would have knee pads, but who had attacked the Fourteenth Clown and what was going on in the Outland that made the whole thing possible. This was a complex plot of considerable dimension, and I was now certain who was behind it all. My first thought was to go and tell Jobsworth exactly what was happening, but I stopped as a far worse realization dawned upon me. The plan would work only if everyone on board the Metaphoric Queen were to be assassinated.
I grabbed a fire ax and ran up the companionway to the deck.
38.
Answers
Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity lies Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (2nd edition)
One of Jobsworth’s D-3 minions had been given the task of keeping an eye on the riveted box that contained the valuable plot-line gifts for Speedy Muffler, and he noticed me only when I was halfway across the foredeck, my intention already clear to those present. He dropped his copy of The Word and took a pace towards me. I caught him on the solar plexus with the ball of my hand, and he reeled over backwards. The foredeck would have been in plain view from the wheelhouse, and the captain pulled on the steam whistle and sent a deafening blast echoing across Racy Novel, temporarily quenching the sounds of the enthusiastic moans that echoed over the water.
The whistle also drowned out the sound of the padlock being smashed off, and