One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [63]
“They say she’s dead, you know,” said Jobsworth, striding to the large window in his office that looked out over the BookWorld, the islands of the various categories of books patches of verdant green against the dark slatey gray of the Text Sea. “Killed in the Outland, killed in the BookWorld—who knows? What do you think?”
“I have no opinion on the matter, sir. I just play her in the series.”
“You must have some idea.”
I looked across at the chief of staff, who was gazing at me intently. “No.”
Jobsworth stared at me for a long while, then grunted and looked outside his office again. Yet this time he wasn’t looking at the larger BookWorld, but rather at the island of Fiction below him. The Ungenred Zone was on the west coast about halfway up. Crime was just to the north, but the areas I knew best—Adventure, Fantasy and Sci-Fi—were situated in the southeast, out of sight. It was Herring who spoke next.
“Ever been up-country?”
“I’ve been to Crime.”
“Farther. Towards Racy Novel.”
“No.”
“So there is a good chance they haven’t seen you up there? Or even know about you?”
I suddenly had a very unpleasant feeling and turned back to Jobsworth. “What is it you want me to do, Senator?”
“A small favor. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important. And if you do this for us, I’m sure it will be to your benefit if you reapply to join Jurisfiction.”
I was right. If that was the carrot, I could be in for some serious stick.
“It’s nothing too onerous,” added Colonel Barksdale, who had so many campaign medals on his chest that he was probably bulletproof. “It simply requires you to take Thursday’s place at the peace talks on Friday.”
I was momentarily at a loss for words. I should have tried to extricate myself, but I had paused too long.
“Splendid,” said Jobsworth, crossing to a scale model of the island that was built upon a large oak table. “Let me give you some background.”
“Would you excuse me?” said Herring. “I have to revise the upcoming Linguistic Hygiene Bill if we’re to have any chance of rejecting it.”
“Thank you, Red.”
Herring wished me good day, thanked me for my selfless adherence to duty and walked from the room. Jobsworth beckoned me closer to the large model of the island, where the topography was perfectly realized in miniature, including the individual genres along with their borders, railway networks, major rivers and capital novels. He swept his hand in the direction of the Northern Genres.
“You’ve heard about Speedy Muffler’s threats and the peace talks on Friday?”
I said that I had.
“Speedy Muffler claims to have developed a dirty bomb,” announced Jobsworth with a grimace, “a loosely bound collection of badly described scenes of a sexual nature. The detonation of such a bomb could cause untold damage, flinging wholly gratuitous sex scenes as far as Mrs. Dalloway.”
“But has he really?” I asked, since the possession of the bomb was only conjecture, much like Comedy’s claim to be experimenting with a fifty-megaton-yield deep satire device.
“Do you know,” said Jobsworth, “it doesn’t matter. Feminism and Dogma are taking the threat seriously and are massing armies on the border ready to take preemptive action ahead of the peace talks. And we can’t have that.”
“Invasion?” I said. “What would Feminism and Dogma do with Racy Novel?”
“They’ll simply push the rogue genre up north towards Porn and De Sade. Fanny Hill, The Story of O and The Adventures of Tom Jones will be annexed back into Classics, and the territory shared between them. Comedy will still insist upon the buffer zone of Bedroom Farce, and since Comedy is regarded with a certain sense of reluctant admiration by Romance and Dogma, they’ll not want to go any farther.”
He took a deep breath.
“But we can’t risk that kind of disruption. The genres might take months to rebuild to current strength, and the prose will suffer terribly. With the advent of e-books