One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [49]
14.
Stamped and Filed
Distilling metaphor out of raw euphemism was wasteful and expensive, and the euphemism-producing genres on the island were always squeezing the market. Besides, the by-product of metaphor using the Cracked Euphemism Process liberates irony-238 and dangerous quantities of alliteration, which are associated with downright dangerous disposal difficulties.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (9th edition)
We walked down the seemingly endless corridors, every door placarded with the name of the department contained within. One was labeled OLD JOKES and another NOUN-TO-VERB CONVERSION UNIT. Just past the offices of the Synonym Squad and the Danvers Union headquarters was a small office simply labeled JAID.
“Right. Well,” I said, “I’ll see myself out when I’m done.”
“I’m afraid not,” replied the frog-footman. “I am instructed to escort you both in and out.”
So while the frog-footman sat on a chair in the corridor opposite, I knocked on the door.
“Commander Herring told me you would be stopping by,” said Lockheed as I entered. “Do come in. Tea?”
“No thank you.”
I looked around. The office was roomy, had a large window and was paneled in light pine. The pictures that decorated the walls all depicted a book disaster of some sort, mostly with Lockheed featured prominently in the foreground, grinning broadly. There was little clutter, and the single filing cabinet probably contained nothing but a kettle and some cookies. Jurisfiction had finally managed to commit itself to a paperless office—all files were committed to the prodigious memory of Captain Phantastic, just down the hall.
“Impressive office, eh?” said Lockheed. “We even have a window—with a view. Come and have a look.”
I walked over to the window and looked out. All I could see was a brick wall barely six feet away.
“Very nice,” I murmured.
“If you lean right out with someone hanging on to your shirttails, you can almost see the sky, but not quite. Would you like to try?”
“No thanks.”
“So,” said Lockheed, sitting down on his swivel chair and motioning me to a seat, “something to report to Commander Herring about the accident?”
I swallowed hard. “It was simply that,” I said, an odd leaden feeling dropping down inside me. “An accident.”
Lockheed breathed a visible sigh of relief. “Commander Herring will be delighted. When he hears bad news, he usually likes to hit someone about the head with an iron bar, and I’m often the closest. Are you sure there is nothing to report?”
I wondered for a moment whether to report the epizeuxis worm, scrubbed ISBN and the Vanity roots of The Murders on the Hareng Rouge. Not necessarily because it was the right thing to do, but simply to watch the eye-popping effect it might have on Lockheed.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Unprecedented and unrepeatable?”
“Exactly so.”
I felt the curious leaden feeling again. I didn’t know what it was; I patted my chest and cleared my throat.
“Little cog, big machine,” said Lockheed as he filled out a form for me to sign. “We are here to facilitate, not to pontificate. If we can sew this whole incident shut, the sooner we can get on with our lives and maintain our unimpeachable hundred percent dealt-with rate. Wheels within wheels, Thursday.”
“Wheels within wheels, sir.”
“Did you find out what the book was, by the way?”
“Not a clue,” I lied. “I didn’t find a single ISBN, so I thought ‘Why bother?’ and decided to simply give up.”
I didn’t know why I was suddenly being sarcastic. It might have been something to do with the odd leaden feeling inside. Lockheed, however, missed the sarcasm completely. Most D-3s did.
“Splendid!” he said. “I can see that you and Commander Herring will be getting on very well. You can expect a few more incidents heading your way with this kind of flagrant level of inspired disinterest. Sign here . . . and here.”
He handed the form over, and I paused, then signed on the dotted line. This isn’t what Thursday would have done, but then I wasn’t Thursday.
“Excellent,” he said,