“I overheard Herring and his stunt double talking in the cabin—about ‘not doing the talks’—and my butler discovered knee and elbow pads as well as a gallon of fire retardant.”
“Whatever for?” asked Barksdale.
“Just in case I had to set myself on fire and leap out a window waving my arms,” replied Fallon wistfully. “It always pays to be prepared.”
“The switch was subtly done,” I said, “but when I met the replaced Herring later on, he was polite and asked me if I wanted a doughnut—the real Herring would never have been so accommodating.”
“I’ve heard enough,” announced Senator Jobsworth, rising to his feet. “Send word that the peace talks are postponed. I want an emergency meeting of everyone in the debating chamber this evening, a press conference at five and the WomFic and Farquitt senators in my office the minute we get back. Barnes?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Implement Emergency Snooze Protocol 7B on the whole Farquitt canon immediately. I want every Farquitt reader yawning and nodding off in under ten minutes. We need to not only close down their feedback but send Daphne Farquitt a clear message that we will not be trifled with.”
“What about the kittens?” asked Zhark in a shocked tone.
“It’s a feline-compliant executive order,” replied Jobsworth grandly. “No kittens will be harmed in the great Farquitt Snoozathon.”
While Barnes and the rest of the D-3s scurried off to do Jobsworth’s bidding, the senator and the others put their heads together. I told Fallon to go hide in his cabin until we got in, by which time he would doubtless be forgotten. He thanked me and gave me his card in case I needed someone to attempt to leap fourteen motorcycles in a double-decker bus or something, and Sprockett and I went and sat on the foredeck to watch the riverbank drift slowly past. Despite keeping a careful eye out for Herring, we saw only the upturned tender he had escaped in and figured that he was either making his escape to Farquitt or had been eaten by a crocodile who had mistaken him for fodder.
“Well,” said Sprockett, “that denouement went very well. Your first?”
“Did it show?”
“Not at all.”
I was glad of this. “I think Thursday might have been proud.”
“Yes,” agreed Sprockett, “I think she might.”
39.
Story-Ending Options
To finish off your Character Exchange Program break, Thomas Cook (BookWorld) Limited is offering tourists the option to choose how they would like to end their holidays. The “Chase” or “Scooby-Doo” endings remain popular, as do the “Death Scene” and “Reconciliation with Sworn Enemy.” Traditionalists may be disappointed, though. The ever-popular “Riding Off into the Sunset” option has recently had to be withdrawn owing to irreconcilable cliché issues.
The trip back downriver was uneventful and over in only twelve words. By the time the Metaphoric Queen had docked, the senator for Farquitt had already denied that her genre had anything to do with Herring’s plan and expressed “great surprise” and “total outrage” that someone had “faked Romantic Troops” in order to attack the Fourteenth Clown. For its part, Comedy had mobilized its Second and Sixth Clown divisions to its borders and was demanding reparations from Farquitt, at the same time bringing pressure to bear on WomFic by threatening to withdraw all humor. Not to be outdone, Speedy Muffler had declared that the “presence of untapped metaphor” within his territory was “unproven and absurd,” and he had so far refused all offers of commercial extraction contracts, further commenting that individual senators were welcome to see him personally in his “love train.”
“Looks like it’s business as usual,” I said to Commander Bradshaw.
We were in the Jurisfiction offices at Norland Park, and I was having a lengthy debrief that same afternoon. I had entered the offices not as a bit player nor an apprentice but on my own merit. Emperor Zhark had awarded me a gift of some valuable jewelry that he said had been buried with his grandfather, Mr. Fainset doffed his cap in an agreeable manner, and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle had kindly offered to do my laundry. It felt like I was part of the family.
“So what are you going to do now?” asked Bradshaw, leaning back in his chair.
“I had a small mutiny in my series,” I explained. “My own fault, really—I was thinking of Thursday and not my books. It’ll need a lot of tact and diplomacy to win it back.”
Bradshaw smiled and thought for a minute. “The BookWorld is falling apart at the seams,” he said, waving his hand at the huge pile of paperwork in his in-tray. “We’ve got a major problem with e-books that we’d never envisioned. The Racy Novel-Farquitt affair will rumble on for years, and I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of Red Herring. Ten Duplex-6s have gone missing, and everyone has escaped from The Great Escape.”
“How is that possible?”
“There was a fourth tunnel we didn’t know about—Tom, Dick, Harry and Keith. There’s a serial killer still at large, not to mention several character assassins—and that pink gorilla running around inside A Tale of Two Cities is really beginning to piss me off.”
He took a sip of coffee and stared at me.
“I’m down to only seven agents. You’ve proved your capacity for this sort of work. I want you to join us here at Jurisfiction.”
“No, no,” I said quickly, “I’ve had quite enough, thank you. The idea that people actually do this because they like it strikes me as double insanity with added insanity. Besides, you’ve already got a Thursday—you just have to find her. That reminds me.” I dug Thursday’s shield from my pocket and pushed it across the desk.
Bradshaw picked it up and rubbed his thumb against the smooth metal. “Where did you get this?”
“The red-haired man. I think Thursday knew she was compromised before she set off on her last trip and wanted me to carry on her work.”
“So that’s why he was out of his book,” muttered Bradshaw. “I’ll see him pardoned at the earliest opportunity.”
Bradshaw looked at the badge, then at me.
“So how do you think this story’s going to end?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Are you sure you’re not her?”
“It’s a tricky one,” I replied after giving the matter some thought, “and there’s evidence to suppose that I am. I can do things only she can do, I can see some things that only she can see. Landen thought I was her, and although he now thinks I’m the written one, that might be part of a fevered delusion. His or mine, I’m not sure. It’s even possible I’ve been Owlcreeked.”
Bradshaw knew what I was talking about. “Owlcreeking” was a Biercian device in which a character could spend the last few seconds of his life in a long-drawn-out digression of what might have happened had he lived. I might be at this very moment spiraling out of control in Mediocre’s cab, Herring’s coup still ahead of me and perfect in its unrevealed complexity.
“Carmine might actually be the Thursday I think I am,” I added. “It’s even possible I’m suffering the hallucinatory aftershock of a recent rewriting. And while we’re pushing the plausibility envelope, the BookWorld might not be real at all, and maybe I’m simply an Acme carpet fitter with a vibrant imagination.”
I shuddered with the possibility that none of this might be happening at all.
“This is Fiction,” said Bradshaw in a calm voice, “and the truth is whatever you make it. You can interpret the situation in any way you want, and all versions could be real—and what’s more, depending on how you act now, any one of those scenarios could become real.”