“Isn’t that the impostor?”
“There’s a subtle difference.” Drake mused for a moment, staring at the ceiling. “But I’m not sure precisely what it is. I was born yesterday, you know.”
“My name is Florent,” announced a new bar steward who had just come on duty. “May I mix you a Tahiti Tingle?”
I frowned, then turned. It was Sprockett, dressed as a bar steward and sporting a ridiculous false mustache on his porcelain features. Since he didn’t greet me, I assumed he wanted to remain incognito, so I merely said I already had a drink and resumed my conversation with Drake.
“Are journeys upriver usually like this?” I asked.
“Apparently so. How do they think they’re going to stop Speedy Muffler anyway?”
“By telling him that massed armies on the borders of WomFic and Dogma are waiting to invade if he so much as hiccups.”
“What makes you think Speedy Muffler is doing anything but rattling his saber? The only people who stand to gain by a war are the neighboring genres who get to divvy up the spoils.”
“I knew Speedy Muffler in the old days,” said one of the foreigners who had joined us, “long before the BookWorld was remade—even before Herring and Barksdale and that idiot Jobsworth were about.”
“What do you know about Speedy Muffler?”
“That he wasn’t always the leader of Racy Novel. He was once a minor character in Porn with delusions of grandeur. Muffler was up here in the days before Racy Novel, when the Frowned-Upon Genres were clustered in the north beyond Comedy. His name came to prominence when he quite suddenly started sending large quantities of metaphor downriver. He wasn’t licensed to do so, but because his supplies were consistent, the rules were relaxed. Pretty soon he was taking more and more territory for himself, but he kept on sending down the metaphor, and the CofG kept on turning a blind eye until he publicly proclaimed the area as Racy Novel, which was when the CofG started to take notice.”
“By then it was too late,” added Drake. “Speedy Muffler’s power was established, his genre large enough to demand a chair at the Council of Genres.”
“I guess WomFic/Feminism were none too happy?”
“Not overawed, no. Especially when he used to turn up at high-level summits with his shirt open and declaring that feminists needed to ‘loosen up’ and should groove with his love machine.”
“Is he still shipping metaphor downriver?” I asked.
“Not as much as before,” said Drake, “but still more than WomFic and Dogma. The area is rich in metaphor, and whoever can send the most downriver is the wealthiest. Put simply: Whoever controls the Northern Genres controls the metaphor supply, and whoever controls the supply of metaphor controls Fiction. It’s not by chance that WomFic and Crime have fortythree percent of the Outland readership. If Squid Procedural had been positioned up here, everyone would be reading about Decapod Gumshoes, and loving it.”
“So why isn’t Racy Novel read more than Women’s Fiction? If he sends more metaphor downriver, I mean?”
“Because of sanctions,” said Drake, looking at me oddly, “imposed by WomFic and Dogma—and pretty much everyone else. Like it or not, Racy Novel isn’t very highly thought of.”
“Is that fair?”
“You’re asking a lot of basic questions,” said Drake. “I thought Thursday Next would be well up on all this—especially if she’s here for the peace talks.”
“I need to gauge local opinion,” I said quickly. “This is Fiction, after all—interpretation trumps fact every time.”
“Oh,” said Drake, “I see.”
I excused myself, as Sprockett had just left the bar, and I caught up with him farther down the steamer, just outside the storeroom.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he whispered. “How is it going?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m the bar steward.”
“I can see that.”
“I knew you couldn’t actually let me go,” he said. “I’m too good a butler for that. So I simply assumed you were being compassionate and thought this trip too dangerous for you to take staff. So I came anyway. What do you want me to do?”
I took a deep breath. It seemed as though butlers were like flat feet, dimples and troublesome aunts—you’ve got them for life.
“There’s a mysterious passenger in Cabin Twelve. I want you to find out what he’s doing here.”
“He doesn’t do anything—he’s simply the MP-C12. Have you figured out who the fodder is yet?”
“It’s Drake.”
“Ooh. Will he be eaten by a crocodile? A poison dart in the eye?”
“Just find out what you can about the mysterious passenger, would you? I overheard him say, ‘I won’t take your place at the talks,’ and it might be significant.”
“Very good, ma’am. I’ll make inquiries.”
36.
Middle Station
For those of you who have tired of the glitzy world of shopping and inappropriate boyfriends in Chick Lit, a trip to Dubious Lifestyle Advice might be the next step. An hour in the hallowed halls of invented ills will leave you with at least ten problems you never knew you had, or even knew existed.
It took us an hour to steam through Comedy, and whilst mostly light and airy and heard-it-beforeish, the atmosphere became more strained and intimidating as we chugged slowly through Mother-in-Law Jokes and Sexist Banter. Despite being advised to remain out of sight, I elected to stay on deck and brazen out the worst abuses that came shouted unseen from the thick trees that covered the riverbank. The two ladies of negotiable affection had no difficulty with the comments, having heard much worse before, and simply retorted with aplomb—delicately countering the more vulgar insinuations with amusing attacks on the male psyche and various aspersions on their manhood or ability.
We came across the Middle Station at noon. The small trading town was right on the point where the Double Entendre River becomes the Innuendo, and although we had been traveling through the buffer genre of Bawdy Romp, replete with amusing sketches of people running in and out of each other’s bedrooms in a retro-amusing manner, we were now very much within the influence of Racy Novel, and we all knew it. The first part of the journey had been a pleasing chug up the river, but now we were here for business, and a sense of brooding introspection had fallen upon the boat.
The arrival of the paddle steamer at the Middle Station was welcomed not by sound but by silence. The constant tramp-tramp-tramp of the engines, for five hours a constant background chorus, made things seem deafeningly quiet when the engines were stopped. I stood on the foredeck as the steamer drifted towards the jetty. The Middle Station, usually a throbbing hub of activity, seemed deserted. Drake stood next to me, his hand on the butt of his revolver.
“I’m going ashore to check this out,” I said, “and I think it would be better if you stayed here.”
“Au contraire, Miss Next. It is you who will be staying here.” There seemed no easy way to say this, so I came right out with it.
“Drake,” I said in a quiet voice, “you’re the fodder, due for a tragic yet potentially heroic end.”
He looked at me for a moment. “It’s very good of you to warn me, but that’s not how I see it.”
“You think it’s someone else?”
“I think the fodder is you, Thursday.”
“No it’s not.”
“What are you if you’re not the fodder?”
“I’m the impostor.”
“You . . . could be the impostor and the fodder.”
“The unions would never allow it.”
“They might.”
“Look,” I said, “we could argue this all day, but here’s the thing: You graduated only this morning with a minimal backstory. I’ve been working the BookWorld for over three years—who’s most likely to cop it in the next few hours?”