One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [94]
“I welcome nothing else.”
“Is it possible that Thursday is alive and well but just suffering some bizarre mental aberration?”
He stared at me. “You think you might be Thursday?”
I shrugged. “Landen seems to think so. I saw Jenny, and I could do things—fight, think on my feet and disarm a man in under a second. Things I never knew I could do.”
He smiled and patted my arm. “It’s not uncommon to have feelings of elevated status after visiting the RealWorld. It’ll soon pass.”
“But could I tell if I were real? Could anyone tell?”
“There are lots of signs,” said Bradshaw, “but here’s the easiest: What am I doing now?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about now?”
“As far as I can tell, you’re not doing anything at all.” Bradshaw took his finger off my nose and smiled. “I suppressed my action line. The real Thursday could have seen what I was doing, but you had to rely on the description. You’re fictional, my dear, through and through.”
“But I could be just thinking you did that—the same as I thought I saw Jenny, and all my backstory about being the written Thursday. I could be . . . delusional.”
“And part of this delusion is you thinking you might be delusional? And me here right now talking to you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Pull yourself together, girl,” he snapped, “and don’t be such a bloody fool. If you were Thursday, you’d be saving the BookWorld, not blundering around the Outland like a petulant bull in a china shop. This is Fiction, not Psychology.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“That’s okay. Now, is there anything else to report?”
I told him about Jenny, the comment about Lyell and how Goliath had developed a Green Fairy and wanted to know where the Austen Rover had ended up.
“Goliath is an ongoing thorn,” said Bradshaw grimly, “but we’re dealing with the problem. Anything else?”
I thought for a moment. If I couldn’t trust Bradshaw, I couldn’t trust anyone.
“This morning Jobsworth and Red Herring asked me to pretend to be Thursday and go to the peace talks on Friday.”
“We thought they might.”
“Should I go?”
“It would be my advice that you shouldn’t. Don’t be insulted by this, but civilians are ill equipped to deal with anything beyond that which is normally expected of them. The BookWorld is fraught with dangers, and your time is best served bringing as many readers as you can to your series, then keeping them.”
“Can I go back to the RealWorld?”
“No.”
“I have unfinished business. I did go on a somewhat risky mission for you—I could have ended up erased or dead—or both.”
“You have the gratitude of the head of Jurisfiction,” he said.
“That should be enough. He’s not your husband, Thursday. He’s Thursday’s. Go back to your book and just forget about everything that’s happened. You’re not her and never can be. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. Appreciate a girl who knows when to call it a day. The frog guy will see you out. Good day.”
And so saying, he turned on his heel and walked into the ballroom. The door closed behind him, leaving me confused, drained and missing Landen. I thought of going to find Whitby to cry on his shoulder, but then I remembered about the nuns.
“Damn,” I said, to no one in particular.
The frog-footman saw me to the front door, then handed me the Rubik’s Cube I’d lent him.
“Here,” he said. “It’s got me flummoxed, I can tell you.”
Despite his working on the puzzle during my absence the cube had remained resolutely unsolved—all six sides were still the same unbroken colors.
28.
Home Again
There are multiple BookWorlds, all coexisting in parallel planes and each unique to its own language. Naturally, varying tastes around the Outland make for varying popularity of genres, so no two BookWorlds are ever the same. Generally, they keep themselves to themselves, except for the annual BookWorld Conference, where the equivalent characters get together to discuss translation issues. It invariably ends in arguments and recriminations.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (2nd edition)
I climbed out of the Porsche, slammed the door and leaned