First Among Sequels

  M y father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a Colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn’t know he’d gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication Order open-dated at both ends and demanded to know where and when he was. Dad has remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as “morally and historically corrupt” and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Stemporal Temp…Tability. Temporal…Stemp…Special—

  “Why don’t we just hold it right there?” I said before Thursday5 tied her tongue in knots.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I think my biorhythms must be out of whack.”

  “Remember what we talked about?” I asked her, raising an eyebrow.

  “Or perhaps it’s just a tricky line to say. Here goes: Special…Temporal…Stability. Got it!” She smiled proudly at her accomplishment. Then a stab of self-doubt crossed her face. “But aside from that, I’m doing okay, right?”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  We were standing in the opening chapter of The Eyre Affair, or at least the refurbished first chapter. Evil Thursday’s erasure caused a few ruffled feathers at Text Grand Central, especially when Alice-PON-24330 said that while happy to keep the series running for the time being, she was not that keen about taking on the role permanently—what with all the sex, guns, swearing and stuff. There were talks of scrapping the series until I had a brain wave. With the erasure of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, Thursday5 was now bookless and needed a place to live; she could take over. Clearly, there had to be a few changes—quite a lot actually—but I didn’t mind; in fact, I welcomed it. I applied for a whole raft of internal plot adjustments, and Senator Jobsworth, still eager to make amends and keep his job after the reality book farrago, was only too happy to accede to my wishes—as long as I at least tried to make the series commercial.

  “Can we get a move on?” asked Gerry, the first assistant imaginator. “If we don’t get to the end of this chapter by lunchtime, we’re going to get behind schedule for the scene at Gad’s Hill tomorrow.”

  I left them to it and walked to the back of Stanford Brookes’s café in London, faithfully re-created from my memory and the place where the new Eyre Affair starts, rather than at a burned-out house belonging to Landen, where, in point of fact, I didn’t live for another two years. I watched as the imaginators, characters and technicians translated the story into storycode text to be uploaded to the engines at TGC—and eventually to replace the existing TN series. Perhaps, I mused to myself, life might be getting back to normal after all.

  It had been a month since we’d erased Pepys Fiasco, and Racy Novel, despite all manner of threats, had to admit that dirty-bomb technology was still very much in the early stages, so Feminist and Ecclesiastical breathed a combined sigh of relief and returned to arguing with each other about the malecentricity of religion.

  At the same time, the gentle elongation of the Now was beginning to take effect: The Read-O-Meter had been steadily clicking upward as ReadRates once again began to rise. In the Outland the reality TV craze was now fortunately on the wane—Samaritan Kidney Swap had so few viewers that by the second week they became desperate and threatened to shoot a puppy on live TV unless a million people phoned in. They had 2 million complaints and were closed down. Bowden and I visited Booktastic! a week ago to find they now had two entire sections of books because, as the manager explained, “there had been a sudden demand.”

  As part of the whole ChronoGuard decommissioning process, Dad had been reactualized from his state of quasi nonexistence and turned up at Mum’s carrying a small suitcase and a bunch of flowers. We had a terrific reunion for him, and I invited Major Pickles along, who seemed to hit it off rather well with Aunt Polly.

  On other matters, I traveled to Goliathopolis to meet with Jack Schitt and return his wife’s necklace, with an explanation of what had happened to her on board the Hesperus. He took the jewelry and the details of her death in stony silence, thanked me and was gone. John Henry Goliath made no appearance, and I didn’t tell anyone at Goliath that the Austen Rover was, as far as we knew, still adrift without power in intragenre space somewhere between Poetry and Maritime. I didn’t know whether this was the end of the Book Project or not, but TGC was taking no chances and had erected a battery of Textual Sieves in the direction of the Outland and marked any potential transfictional incursions as “high priority.”

  I walked out of the café to where Isambard Kingdom Buñuel was waiting for me. We were standing in Hangar Three among the fabric of Affair, ready to be bolted in. Buñuel had already built a reasonable facsimile of Swindon that included my mum’s house and the Literary Detectives’ office, and he was just getting started on Thornfield Hall, Rochester’s house.

  “We’ve pensketched the real Thornfield,” he explained, showing me some drawings for approval, “but we were kind of think-worthing how your Porsche was painted?”

  “Do you know Escher’s Reptiles?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s like that—only in red, blue and green.”

  “How about the Prose Portal?”

  I thought for a moment. “A sort of large leatherbound book covered in knobs, dials and knife switches.”

  He made a note. “And the unextincted Pickwick?”

  “About so high and not very bright.”

  “Did you bring some snapimagery?”

  I rummaged in my shoulder bag, brought out a wad of snaps and went through them.

  “That’s Pickers when she still had feathers. It’s blurred because she blinked and fell over, but it’s probably the best. And this is Landen, and that’s Joffy, and that’s Landen again just before his trousers caught fire—that was hilarious—and this is Mycroft and Polly. You don’t need pictures of Friday, Tuesday or Jenny do you?”

  “Only Friday birth-plus-two for Something Rotten.”

  “Here,” I said, selecting one from the stack. “This was taken on his second birthday.”

  Buñuel recoiled in shock. “What’s that strangeturbing stick-brownymass on his face? Some species of alien facehugger or somewhat?”

  “No, no,” I said hurriedly, “that’s chocolate cake. He didn’t master the fine art of cutlery until…well, he’s yet to figure it out, actually.”

  “Can I temporown these?” asked Buñuel. “I’ll have them snoodled up to St. Tabularasa’s to see what they can do.”

  “Be my guest.”

  The book preproduction had been going on for about two weeks now, and as soon as Buñuel had constructed everything for The Eyre Affair, he could move on to the more complex build for Lost in a Good Book.

  “Is there anything you’ll be able to salvage from the old series?” I asked, always thinking economically.

  “Indeedly-so,” he answered. “Acheron Hades and all his heavisters can be brought across pretty much unaltered. Delamare, Hobbes, Felix7 and 8, Müller—a few different lines here and there and you’ll never know the difference.”

  “You’re right,” I said slowly as an odd thought started to germinate in my mind.

  “A few of the other iddybiddyparts we can scavenge,” added Buñuel, “but most of it will be a newbuild. The warmspect the Council of Genres holds for you is reflected in the high costcash.”

  “What was that?” I asked. “I was miles away.”

  “I was mouthsounding that the budget for the new TN series—”

  “I’m sorry,” I replied in a distracted manner, “would you excuse me for a moment?”

  I walked to where Colin was waiting for me in his brand-new taxi. Under the TransGenre Taxis logo, they had added “By Appointment to Thursday Next” in an elegant cursive font. I didn’t ordi
narily endorse anything, but they had told me I would always be ‘priority one’, so I figured it was worth it.

  “Where to, Ms. Next?” he asked as I climbed in.

  “Great Library, floor six.”

  “Righto.”

  He pulled off, braked abruptly as he nearly hit a shiny black Ford motorcar, yelled at the other driver, then accelerated rapidly toward the wall of the hangar that opened like a dark void in front of us.

  “Thanks for the Hoppity Hop,” he said as the hole closed behind us and we motored slowly past the almost limitless quantity of books in the Great Library. “I’ll be dining out on that for months. Any chance you can get me a Lava Lite?”

  “Not unless you save my life again.”

  I noted the alphabetically listed books on the shelves of the library and saw that we were getting close. “Just drop me past the next reading desk.”

  “Visiting Tom Jones?”

  “No.”

  “Bridget Jones?”

  “No. Just drop me about…here.”

  He stopped next to the bookcase, and I got out, told him he didn’t need to wait and to put the fare on my account, and he vanished.

  I was in the Great Library standing opposite the original Thursday Next series, the one kept going by Alice-PON-24330, and I was here because of something Buñuel had said. Spike and I had never figured out how Felix8 had managed to escape, and since his skeletal remains were found up on the Savernake, Spike had suggested quite rightly that he had been not Felix8 but Felix9. But Spike could have been wrong. What if the Felix I had met was the written Felix8? It would explain how he had gotten out of the Weirdshitorium—he’d just melted back into his book.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to go anywhere near the old TN series, but this begged further investigation. I picked up the first in the series and read myself inside.

  Within a few moments, the Great Library was no more and I was instead aboard an airship floating high over the home counties. But this wasn’t one of the small fifty-seaters that plied the skies these days; it was a “Hotel Class” leviathan, designed to roam the globe in style and opulence during the halcyon days of the airship. I was in what had once been the observation deck, but many of the Plexiglas windows had been lost, and the shabby craft rattled and creaked as its lumbering bulk pushed through the air. The icy slipstream blew into the belly of the craft where I stood and made me shiver, while the rush of air and incessant flap of loose fabric were a constant percussive accompaniment to the rhythmic growl of the eight engines. The aluminum latticework construction was apparent wherever I looked, and to my left a door gave access to a precipitous veranda where first-class passengers would once have had a unique bird’s-eye view of the docking and landing procedure. In the real world, these monsters had been melted down into scrap long ago, the job of repeater stations for TV and wireless signals now taken over by pilotless drones in the upper atmosphere. But it was kind of nostalgic to see one again, even in this illusory form.

  I wasn’t in the main action, the “better dead than read” adage as important to me as to anyone else. The narrative was actually next door in the main dining room, where Thursday, a.k.a. Alice-PON-24330, was attempting to outwit Acheron Hades. This wasn’t how it really happened, of course—Acheron’s hideout had actually been in Merthyr Tydfil’s abandoned Penderyn Hotel in the Socialist Republic of Wales. It was dramatic license—and fairly bold dramatic license at that.

  There was a burst of gunfire from next door, some shouting and then more shots. I positioned myself behind the door as Felix8 came running through the way he usually did, escaping from Bowden and myself once Acheron leaped into the pages of Jane Eyre. As soon as he was inside, he relaxed, since he was officially “out of the story.” I saw him grin to himself and click on the safety of his machine pistol.

  “Hello, Felix8.”

  He turned and stared at me. “Well, well,” he said after a pause. “Will the real Thursday Next please stand up?”

  “Just drop the gun.”

  “I’m not really violent,” he said. “It’s just the part I play. The real Felix8—now, that’s someone you should keep an eye on.”

  “Drop the gun, Felix. I won’t ask you again.”

  His eyes darted around the room, and I saw his hand tighten on the grip of his gun.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I told him, pointing my pistol in his general direction. “This is loaded with eraserhead. Put the gun on the floor—but really slowly.”

  Felix8, fully aware of the destructive power of an eraserhead, gently laid his weapon on the ground, and I told him to kick it to one side.

  “How did you get into the real world?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You were in the real Swindon five weeks ago. Do you know the penalty for pagerunning?”

  He said nothing.

  “I’ll remind you. It’s erasure. And if you read the papers, you know that I’ll erase a whole book if required.”

  “I’ve never been out of The Eyre Affair,” he replied. “I’m just a C-3 generic trying to do my best in a lousy book.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “That it’s a lousy book?”

  “You know what I mean. Keep your hands in the air.”

  I walked behind him and, jamming my pistol firmly against his back, searched his pockets. Given the obsession that members of the BookWorld held for the Outland, I reckoned it was impossible that he’d been all the way to Swindon and not returned with a few Outlandish mementos to sell or barter. And so it proved. In one pocket I found a joke rubber chicken and a digital watch, in the other a packet of Cup-a-Soup and a Mars bar. I chucked them on the floor in front of him.

  “Where did you get these, then?”

  He was silent, and I backed off a few yards before telling him to turn slowly around and face me.

  “Now,” I said, “let’s have some answers: You’re too mediocre to have hatched this yourself, so you’re working for someone. Who is it?”

  Felix8 gave no answer, and the airship banked slightly as it made a trifling correction to its course. The aluminum-framed door to the exterior promenade walkway swung open and then clattered shut again. It was dusk, and two miles below, the small orange jewels that were the streetlights had begun to wink on.

  “Okay,” I said, “here’s the deal: You tell me what you know and I’ll let you go. Play the hard man and it’s a one-way trip to the Text Sea. Understand?”

  “I’ve only eighteen words and one scene,” he said at last. “One lousy scene! Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

  “It’s the hand you were dealt,” I told him, “the job you do. You can’t change that. Again: Who sent you into the Outland to kill me?”

  He stared at me without emotion. “And I would have done it, too, if it wasn’t for that idiot stalker. Mind you, Johnson blew it as well, so I’m in good company.”

  This was more worrying. “Mr. Johnson” was the pseudonym used by the Minotaur—and he’d referred to my murder as “a job,” so this looked to be better organized than I’d thought.

  “Who ordered my death? And why me?”

  Felix8 smiled. “You do flatter yourself, Ms. Next. You’re not the only one they want, you’re not the only one they’ll get. And now I shall take my leave of you.”

  He moved toward the exterior door that clattered in the breeze, opened it and stepped out onto the exterior promenade. I ran forward and yelled “Hold it!”—but it was too late. With a swing of his leg, Felix8 slipped neatly over the rail and went tumbling off into space. I ran to the rail and looked down. Already he was a small figure spiraling slowly downward as the airship droned on. I felt a curious sickly feeling as he became nothing more than a small dot and then disappeared from view.

  “Damn!” I shouted, and slapped the parapet with my palm. I took a deep breath, went inside out of the chill wind, pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone and pressed the speed-dial connection to the Cheshire
Cat, who had assumed command of Text Grand Central. 1

  “Chesh, it’s Thursday.” 2

  “I’ve lost a C-3 generic Felix8 from page two hundred and seventy-eight of The Eyre Affair, ISBN 0-14-200180-5. I’m going to need an emergency replacement ASAP.” 3

  “No.” 4

  “Blast,” I muttered. “Can you find out who’s been dicking around with the Textual Sieves and get it lifted? I’ve no urge to hang around a cold airship for any longer than I have to.” 5

  I told him that I’d be fine if he’d just call me back when the sieve was lifted, then snapped the phone shut. I pulled my jacket up around my neck and stamped my feet to keep warm. I leaned against an aluminum girder and stared out at the mauve twilight, where even now I could see stars begin to appear. Felix8 would have hit the ground so hard his text would have fused with the surrounding description; when we found him, we’d have to cut him from the earth. Either way he’d not be doing any talking.

  I started thinking of people who might want me to kill me but stopped counting when I reached sixty-seven. This would be harder than I thought. But…what did Felix8 say: that I shouldn’t flatter myself…it wasn’t just me? The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed, until suddenly, with a flash of realization, I knew what was going on. Sherlock Holmes, Temperance Brennan, the Good Soldier Svejk and myself—kill us and you kill not just the individual, but the series. It seemed too bizarre to comprehend, but it had to be the truth—there was a serial killer loose in the BookWorld.

  I looked around the airship, and my heart fell. They’d tried to kill me twice already, and who was to say they wouldn’t try again? And here I was, trapped ten thousand feet in the air by a Textual Sieve that no one had ordered, hanging beneath 20 million cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen. I pulled out my cell phone and hurriedly redialed the cat. 6