“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 patronizingly.
“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 in de pen-dent 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 ser vice 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.”