First Among Sequels

  “Your loyalty is misplaced, Ms. Next. What could be wrong with offering readers choice? I say we vote on it. All those in favor of directing funds and resources to an interactive reality-book project?”

  They all raised their hands—except me and Senator Beauty.

  Me because I didn’t agree with them and Beauty because he had a hoof. It didn’t matter. He was against it.

  “As usual,” growled Aimsworth, “the contrarian amongst us knows better. Your objections, Ms. Next?”

  I took a deep breath. “The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that we’re not in the book industry. This isn’t a publishing meeting with sales targets, goals, market research and focus groups. The book may be the delivery medium, but what we’re actually peddling here is story. Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath, and we should be there, too, supporting that one last person. I say we place our faith in good stories well told and leave the interactivity as the transient Outlander fad that it is. Instead of being subservient to reader opinion, we should be leading it.”

  I paused for a moment and stared at the sea of unconvinced faces. The Read-O-Meter clicked down another twenty-eight books.

  “Listen, I’m as worried about falling ReadRates as anyone, but wild and desperate measures are not the answer. We’ve got to go back to the root cause and figure out why people prefer watching Samaritan Kidney Swap to reading a good book. If we can’t create better books, then we should be doing a lot more than simply dreaming up gimmicks to pander to the lowest common denominator.”

  There was silence. I meant about 75 percent of it but needed to get the message across. There should be room on this planet for Dr. Zhivago and Extreme Spatula Make over, but the scales had tipped far enough—and I didn’t want them to go any further. They all stared at me in silence as Jobsworth drummed his fingers on the desk.

  “Does this mean you are exercising your veto?”

  “It does.”

  There was a collective groan from the other delegates, and I suddenly wondered if I’d gone too far. After all, they had the good of the BookWorld as their priority, as did I—and it wasn’t as though I could come up with anything better.

  “I’d like to conduct my own study group,” I said, hoping that by using their own corporate-buzzword language I might get them to go for it, “and see if I can throw up any strategies to pursue. If I can’t, we’ll go with your interactivity idea, no matter how dumb it sounds.”

  “I see,” intoned Jobsworth as they all exchanged annoyed looks. “Since I know you too well to expect you to change your mind, we’ll reappraise the situation in a week’s time and move on. Next item?”

  Colonel Barksdale stood up and looked at us all in the somber manner in which he always imparted bad news. He never had anything else. In fact, I think he engineered bad news in order to have the pleasure of giving it. He’d been head of BookWorld Defense for the past eight years and clearly wanted to increase his game to include an intragenre war or two. A chance to achieve greatness, if you like.

  “I expect you’ve all heard about Speedy Muffler’s recent threat to the stability of the BookWorld?”

  We all mumbled our agreement.

  “Good. Well, as security is my province, I want you all to agree to a plan of action that is both decisive and final. If Muffler can deploy a dirty bomb, then none of us are safe. Hard-liners in Ecclesiastical and Feminist are ready to mobilize for war to protect their ideologies, and it is my opinion that a preemptive strike will show those immoral bastards that we mean business. I’ve three brigades of Danverclones ready and waiting to stream across the border. It won’t take long—Racy Novel is a ramshackle genre at best.”

  “Isn’t war a bit hasty?” I persisted. “Muffler will try anything to punch above his weight. And even if he has developed a dirty bomb, he still has to deliver it. How’s he going to smuggle something like that into Feminist? It’s got one of the best-protected frontiers in the BookWorld.”

  “We have it on good authority that they might disguise it as a double entendre in a bedroom farce and deliver it up the rear entrance at Comedy.”

  “Pure conjecture. What about good old-fashioned diplomacy? You could offer Muffler some Well-surplus subtext or even dialogue to dilute the worst excesses of the genre—he’d probably respond favorably to it. After all, they merely want to develop as a genre.”

  Colonel Barksdale drummed his fingers impatiently and opened his mouth to speak, but Jobsworth beat him to it.

  “That’s the worry. Ecclesiastical is concerned that Racy Novel wants to undertake an expansionist policy—there’s talk of their wanting to reoccupy the dehumorized zone. Besides,” he added, “subtext and dialogue are up to almost seven hundred and fifty guineas a kilo.”

  “Do we know if they even have a dirty bomb?” I asked. “It might all be a bluff.”

  Jobsworth signaled to Colonel Barksdale, who handed me a dossier marked ‘Terribly Secret.’

  “It’s no bluff. We’ve been sent some rather disturbing reports regarding outbreaks of incongruous obscenity from as far away as Drama—Charles Dickens, no less.”

  “Bleak House,” I read from the sheet of paper I’d been handed, “and I quote: ‘Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates.’”

  “You see?” said Barksdale as the rest of the delegates muttered to themselves and shook their heads in a shocked manner. “And what about this one?”

  He handed me another sheet of paper, this time from Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge.

  “‘…the Mayor beheld the unattractive exterior of Farfrae’s erection.’”

  “And,” he added decisively, “we’ve got a character named ‘Master Bates’ turning up all over Oliver Twist.”

  “Master Bates has always been called that,” I pointed out. “We used to giggle over the name at school.”

  “Despite that,” replied Colonel Barksdale with no loss of confidence, “the other two are quite enough to have this taken extremely seriously. The Danverclones are ready. I only need your approval—”

  “It’s called ‘word drift.’”

  It was Thursday5. The meeting had never seen such a flagrant lapse of protocol, and I would have thrown her out myself—but for the fact she had a point.

  “I’m sorry,” said Senator Jobsworth in a sarcastic tone. “I must have missed the meeting where the other Thursday was elected to the Security Council. Jurisfiction Cadets must train, so I will overlook it this once. But one more word…!”

  Unabashed, Thursday5 added, “Did Senator Muffler send those examples to you?”

  Senator Jobsworth wasted no time and called over his shoulder to one of the many Danverclones standing close by. “Security? See that Thursday with the flower in her hair? She is to be returned to her—”

  “She’s with me,” I said, staring at Jobsworth, who glared back dangerously, “and I vouch for her. She has opinions that I feel are worth listening to.”

  Jobsworth and Barksdale went silent and looked at each other, wondering if there wasn’t some sort of rule they could invoke. There wasn’t. And it was for precisely these moments that the Great Panjandrum had given me the veto—to slow things down and make the Council of Genres think before it acted.

  “Well?” I said. “Did Speedy Muffler send those examples to you?”

  “Well, not perhaps…as such,” replied Colonel Barksdale with a shrug, “but the evidence is unequivocally compelling and totally, absolutely without doubt.”

  “I contend,” added Thursday5, “that they are simply words whose meanings have meandered over the years, and those books were written with precisely the words you quoted us now. Word drift.”

  “I hardly think that’s likely, my dear,” replied Jobsworth patr
onizingly.

  “Oh, no?” I countered. “Do you mean to tell me that when Lydia from Pride and Prejudice thinks of Brighton and ‘…the glories of the camp—its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay,’ that she might possibly mean something else?”

  “Well, no, of course not,” replied the senator, suddenly feeling uncomfortable under the combined baleful stares of Thursday5 and me.

  There was a mumbling among the other delegates, and I said, “Words change. Whoever sent these examples to you has an agenda, which is more about confrontation than a peaceful outcome to the crisis. I’m going to exercise my veto again. I suggest that a diplomatic resolution be attempted until we have irrefutable evidence that Muffler really has the capabilities he claims.”

  “This is bad judgment,” growled Jobsworth with barely controlled rage as he rose from his seat and gathered his papers together. “You’re on morally tricky ground if you side with Racy Novel.”

  “I’m on morally trickier ground if I don’t,” I replied. “I will not sanction a war on misplaced words in a few of the classics. Show me a blatantly unsubtle and badly written sex scene in To the Lighthouse and I will personally lead the battle myself.”

  Jobsworth stared at me, and I stared back angrily.

  “By then the damage will have been done. We want to stop them before they even get started,” he insisted.

  He paused and composed himself.

  “Two vetoes in one day,” he added. “You must be particularly pleased with yourself. I hope you have as many smart answers when smutty innuendo is sprinkled liberally across The Second Sex.”

  And without another word, he stormed from the meeting, closely followed by Barksdale, Baxter and all the others, each of them making tut-tut noises and shaking their heads in a sickening display of inspired toadying. Only Senator Beauty wasn’t with them. He shook his own head at me in a gesture meaning “better you than me” and then trotted out.

  We were left in silence, aside from the Read-O-Meter, which ominously dropped another thirty-six books.

  “That word-drift explanation was really very good,” I said to Thursday5 when we were back in the elevator.

  “It was nothing, really.”

  “Nothing?” I echoed. “Don’t sell yourself short. You probably just averted a genre war.”

  “Time will tell. I meant to ask. You said you were the ‘LBOCS.’ What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m the council’s Last Bastion of Common Sense. Because I’m from the Outland, I have a better notion of independent thought than those in the generally deterministic BookWorld. Nothing happens without my knowledge or comment.”

  “That must make you unpopular sometimes.”

  “No,” I replied, “it makes me unpopular all the time.”

  We went back down to the Jurisfiction offices for me to formally hand over my badge to Bradshaw, who took it from me without expression and resumed his work. I returned despondently to where Thursday5 was waiting expectantly at my desk. It was the end of her assessment, and I knew she wanted to be put out of her misery one way or another.

  “There are three recommendations I can make,” I began, sitting back in my chair. “One: for you to be put forward for further training. Two: for you to be returned to basic training. And three: for you to leave the service entirely.”

  I looked across at her and found myself staring back at me. It was the look I usually gave to the mirror, and it was disconcerting. But I had to be firm and make my decision based on her performance and suitability.

  “You were nearly eaten by a grammasite, and you would have let the Minotaur kill me,” I began, “but on the plus side, you came up with the word-drift explanation, which was pretty cool.”

  She looked hopeful for a moment.

  “But I have to take all things under consideration and without bias—either in your favor or against. The Minotaur episode was too important a failing for me to ignore, and much as I like your mildly eccentric ways, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to recommend that you do not join Jurisfiction, either now or in the future.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while and looked as though she was about to cry, which she did a second or two later. She might have made a decent Jurisfiction agent, but the chances of her getting herself killed were just too high for me to risk. On my graduation assignment, I was almost murdered by a bunch of emotion junkies inside Shadow the Sheepdog. Given the same situation, Thursday5 wouldn’t have survived, and I wasn’t going to have that on my conscience. She wasn’t just a version of me, she was something closer to family, and I didn’t want her coming to any harm.

  “I understand,” she said between sniffs, dabbing at her nose with a lacy handkerchief.

  She thanked me for my time, apologized again for the Minotaur, laid her badge on my desk and vanished off into her book. I leaned back in my chair and sighed—what with firing both Thursdays, I’d really been giving myself a hard time today. I wanted to go home, but the power required for a transfictional jump to the Outland might be tricky on an empty stomach. I looked at my watch. It was only four, and Jurisfiction agents at that time liked to take tea. And to take tea, they generally liked to go to the best tearooms in the BookWorld—or anywhere else, for that matter.

  25.

  The Paragon

  There are three things in life that can make even the worst problems seem just that tiniest bit better. The first is a cup of tea—loose-leaf Assam with a hint of Lapsang and poured before it gets too dark and then with a dash of milk and the smallest hint of sugar. Calming, soothing and almost without peer. The second, naturally, is a hot soaking bath. The third is Puccini. In the bath with a hot cup of tea and Puccini. Heaven.

  I t was called the Paragon and was the most perfect 1920s tea-room, nestled in the safe and unobserved background fabric of P. G. Wodehouse’s Summer Lightning. To your left and right upon entering through the carved wooden doors were glass display cases containing the most sumptuous homemade cakes and pastries. Beyond these were the tearooms proper, with booths and tables constructed of a dark wood that perfectly matched the paneled interior. This was itself decorated with plaster reliefs of Greek characters disporting themselves in matters of equestrian and athletic prowess. To the rear were two additional and private tearooms, the one of light-colored wood and the other in delicate carvings of a most agreeable nature. Needless to say, it was inhabited by the most populous characters in Wodehouse’s novels. That is to say it was full of voluble and opinionated aunts.

  There were two Jurisfiction agents sitting at the table we usually reserved for our three-thirty tea and cakes. The first was tall and dressed in jet black, high-collared robes buttoned tightly up to his throat. He had a pale complexion, prominent cheekbones and a small and very precise goatee. He sat with his arms crossed and was staring at all the other customers in the tearooms with an air of haughty superiority, eyebrows raised imperiously. This was truly a tyrant among tyrants, a ruthless leader who had murdered billions in his never-ending and inadequately explained quest for the unquestioned obedience of every living entity in the known galaxy. The other, of course, was a six-foot-tall hedgehog dressed in a multitude of petticoats, an apron and bonnet, and carrying a wicker basket of washing. There was no more celebrated partnership in Jurisfiction either then or now—it was Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark. The hedgehog from Beatrix Potter and the emperor from the Zhark series of bad science-fiction novels.

  “Good afternoon, Thursday,” intoned the emperor when he saw me, a flicker of a smile attempting to crack through his imperialist bearing.

  “Hi, Emperor. How’s the galactic-domination business these days?”

  “Hard work,” he replied, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Honestly, I invade peaceful civilizations on a whim, destroy their cities and generally cause a great deal of unhappy mayhem—and then they turn against me for absolutely no reason at all.”

  “How senselessly irrationa
l of them,” I remarked, winking at Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

  “Quite,” continued Zhark, looking aggrieved and not getting the sarcasm. “It’s not as though I put them all to the sword anyway—I magnanimously decided to spare several hundred thousand as slaves to build an eight-hundred-foot-high statue of myself striding triumphantly over the broken bodies of the vanquished.”

  “That’s probably the reason they don’t like you,” I murmured.

  “Oh?” he asked with genuine concern. “Do you think the statue will be too small?”

  “No, it’s the ‘striding triumphantly over the broken bodies of the vanquished’ bit. People generally don’t like having their noses rubbed in their ill fortune by the person who caused it.”

  Emperor Zhark snorted. “That’s the problem with inferiors,” he said at last. “No sense of humor.”

  And he lapsed into a sullen silence, took an old school exercise book from within his robes, licked a pencil stub and started to write.

  I sat down next to him.

  “What’s that?”

  “My speech. The Thargoids graciously accepted me as god-emperor of their star system, and I thought it might be nice to say a few words—sort of thank them, really, for their kindness—but underscore the humility with veiled threats of mass extermination if they step out of line.”

  “How does it begin?”

  Zhark read from his notes. “‘Dear Worthless Peons—I pity you your irrelevance.’ What do you think?”

  “Well, it’s definitely to the point,” I admitted. “How are things on the Holmes case?”

  “We’ve been trying to get into the series all morning,” said Zhark, laying his modest acceptance speech aside for a moment and taking a spoonful of the pie that had been placed in front of him, “but to no avail. I heard you got suspended. What was that about?”

  I told him about the piano and Emma, and he whistled low.

  “Tricky. But I shouldn’t sweat it. I saw Bradshaw writing up the duty rosters for next week, and you’re still on them. One moment.” He waved a carefully manicured hand at the waitress and said, “Sugar on the table, my girl, or I’ll have you, your family and all your descendants put to death.”