Something rotten

A low, deep rumble began somewhere overhead. The windows rattled in their frames and dust fell from the rafters. A crack opened up in the plaster and a cup vibrated off the table to break on the floor. One of the windows shattered and a shadow fell across the street. The deep rumble grew in volume, drowned out the Narrative Proximity Device that was wailing plaintively, then became so loud it didn't seem like a sound at all — just a vibration that shook the sheriff's office so strongly my sight blurred. Then, as the clock fell from the wall and smashed into pieces, I realised what was going on.

'Oh . . . NO!' I howled with annoyance as the noise waned to a dull roar. 'Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!'

'Emperor Zhark?' queried Bradshaw.

'Who else would dare pilot a Zharkian Battle Cruiser into Western Pulp?'

We looked outside as the vast spaceship passed overhead, its vectored thrusters swivelling downward with a hot rush of concentrated power that blew up a gale of dust and debris and set the livery stables on fire. The huge bulk of the battle cruiser hovered for a moment as the landing gear unfolded, then made a delicate touchdown — right on top of McNeil and his horse, who were squashed to the thickness of a ha'penny.

My shoulders sagged as I watched my paperwork increase exponentially. The townsfolk ran around in panic and horses bolted as the A-7 gunmen fired pointlessly at the ship's armoured hull. Within a few moments the interstellar battle cruiser had disgorged a small army of foot-soldiers carrying the very latest Zharkian weaponry. I groaned. It was not unusual for the emperor to go overboard at moments like this. Undisputed villain of the eight 'Emperor Zhark' books, the most feared Tyrannical God-Emperor of the known Galaxy just didn't seem to comprehend the meaning of restraint.

In a few minutes it was all over. The A-7s had either been killed or escaped to their own books, and the Zharkian Marine Corps had been dispatched to find the Minotaur. I could have saved them the trouble. He would be long gone. The A-7s and McNeil would have to be sourced and replaced, the whole book rejigged to remove the twenty-sixth-century battle cruiser that had arrived uninvited into 1875 Nebraska. It was a flagrant breach of the Anti-Cross-Genre Code that we attempted to uphold within fiction. I wouldn't have minded so much if this had been an isolated incident, but Zhark did this too often to be ignored. I could hardly control myself as the emperor descended from his starship with an odd entourage of aliens and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who also worked for Jurisfiction.

'WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYING AT?!?'

'Oh!' said the emperor, taken aback at my annoyance, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see us!'

'The situation was bad but not irredeemable,' I told him, sweeping my arm in the direction of the town. 'Now look what you've done!'

He looked around. The confused townsfolk had started to emerge from the remains of the buildings. Nothing so odd as this had happened in Western since an alien brain-sucker had escaped from SF and been caught inside Wild Horse Mesa.

'You do this to me every time! Have you no conception of stealth and subtlety?'

'Not really,' said the emperor, looking at his hands nervously. 'Sorry.'

His alien entourage, not wanting to hang around in case they also got an earful, walked, slimed or hovered back into Zhark's ship.

'You sent a textmarker—'

'So what if we did? Can't you enter a book without destroying everything in sight?'

'Steady on, Thursday,' said Bradshaw, laying a calming hand on my arm, 'we did ask for assistance, and if old Zharky here was the closest, you can't blame him for wanting to help. After all, when you consider that he usually lays waste to entire galaxies, torching just the town of ProVIDence and not the whole of Nebraska was actually quite an achievement . . .' His voice trailed off before he added: '. . . for him.'

'AHHH!' I yelled in frustration, holding my head. 'Sometimes I think I'm—'

I stopped. I lost my temper now and again, but rarely with my colleagues, and when that happens, things are getting bad. When I started this job it was great fun, as it still was for Bradshaw. But just lately the enjoyment had waned. It was no good. I'd had enough. I needed to go home.

'Thursday?' asked Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, concerned by my sudden silence. 'Are you okay?'

She came too close and spined me with one her quills. I yelped and rubbed my arm while she jumped back and hid a blush. Six-foot-high hedgehogs have their own brand of etiquette.

'I'm fine,' I replied, dusting myself down. 'It's just that things have a way of, well, spiralling out of control.'

'What do you mean?'

'What do I mean? What do I mean? Well, this morning I was tracking a mythological beast using a trail of custard pie incidents across the old West, and this afternoon a battle cruiser from the twenty-sixth century lands in ProVIDence, Nebraska. Doesn't that sound sort of crazy?'

'This is fiction,' replied Zhark in all innocence, 'odd things are meant to happen.'

'Not to me,' I said with finality. 'I want to see some sort of semblance of. . . of reality in my life.'

'Reality?' echoed Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. 'You mean a place where hedgehogs don't talk or do washing?'

'But who'll run Jurisfiction?' demanded the emperor. 'You were the best we ever had!'

I shook my head, threw up my hands and walked over to where the ground was peppered with the A-7 gunman's text. I picked up a 'D' and turned it over in my hands.

'Please reconsider,' said Commander Bradshaw, who had followed me. 'I think you'll find, old girl, that reality is much overrated.'

'Not overrated enough, Bradshaw,' I replied with a shrug. 'Sometimes the top job isn't the easiest one.'

'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,' murmured Bradshaw, who probably understood me better than most. He and his wife were the best friends I had in the BookWorld; Mrs Bradshaw and my son were almost inseparable.

'I knew you wouldn't stay for good,' continued Bradshaw, lowering his voice so the others didn't hear. 'When will you go?'

I shrugged.

'Soon as I can. Tomorrow.'

I looked around at the destruction that Zhark had wrought upon Death at Double-X. There would be a lot of clearing up, a mountain of paperwork — and there might be the possibility of disciplinary action if the Council of Genres got wind of what had happened.

'I suppose I should complete the paperwork on this debacle first,' I said slowly. 'Let's say three days.'

'You promised to stand in for Joan of Arc while she attended a martyrs refresher course,' added Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who had tiptoed closer.

I'd forgotten about that.

'A week, then. I'll be off in a week.'

We all stood in silence, I pondering my return to Swindon, and all of them considering the consequences of my departure — except Emperor Zhark, who was probably thinking about invading the Planet Thraal, for fun.

'Your mind is made up?' asked Bradshaw. I nodded slowly. There were other reasons for me to return to the real world, more pressing than Zhark's gung-ho lunacy. I had a husband who didn't exist, and a son who couldn't spend his life cocooned inside books. I had retreated into the old Thursday, the one who preferred the black-and-white certainties of policing fiction to the ambiguous mid-tone greys of emotion.