A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (192 page)

“Captain,” said Fitzwilliam, “we only have five minutes. You
must
torture this person.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled incoherently, “I know.”

“We will all die,” he continued. “
Again.
”

I looked up into his eyes. I'd never noticed how incredibly blue they were.

“You all die in the end, don't you?” I said miserably. “No matter what I do. It's just one increasingly bad dilemma after another until everyone's dead, right?”

“Four minutes, Captain.”

“Am I right?”

Fitzwilliam looked away.

“I asked you a question, Number One.”

He looked up at me, and he seemed to have tears in his eyes. “We have all been drowned,” he said in a quiet voice, “over a thousand times each. We have been eaten, blown up and suffered fatal illnesses. The drownings are the worst. Each time I can feel the smothering effect of water, the blind panic as I suffocate—”

“Fitzwilliam,” I demanded, “where is this damnable place?”

He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “We're oral tradition, but we're not in a story—we're an
ethics seminar
.”

“You mean you're all hypothetical characters during a lecture?”

Fitzwilliam nodded miserably. The steward somewhat chillingly handed me a pair of pliers, while reminding me in an urgent whisper that there were only three minutes left.

I looked down at the pliers in an absent sort of way, at Jebediah, then back to Fitzwilliam, who was staring at the floor. So much suffering on board this ship, and for so long. Perhaps there
was
another way out. The thing was, to take such radical action in the oral tradition risked the life of the lecturer giving the talk. But what was more important? The well-being of one real-life ethics professor or the relentless torture of his subjects, who had to undergo his sadistic and relentless hypothetical dilemmas for two-hour sessions three times a week? When you tell a tragic story, someone dies for real in the BookWorld. I was in the oral tradition. Potentially the best storytelling there was—and the most destructive.

“McTavish, prepare the lifeboat for launching. I'm leaving.”

McTavish looked at Fitzwilliam, who shrugged, and the large Scotsman and his tattoos departed.

“That isn't one of the options,” said Fitzwilliam. “You can't do it.”

“I have experience of the oral tradition,” I told him. “All these scenarios are taking place only because I am here to preside in judgment upon them. This whole thing goes just one way: in a downward spiral of increasingly impossible moral dilemmas that will leave everyone dead except myself and one other, whom I will be forced to kill and eat or something. If I take myself out of the equation, you are free to sail across the sea unhampered, unimpeded—and safe.”

“But that might…that might—”

“Harm the lecturer, even kill him? Possibly. If the bomb goes off, you'll know I've failed and he's okay. If it doesn't, you'll all be safe.”

“And you?” he asked. “What about you?”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Don't worry about me. I think you've all suffered enough on account of the Outland.”

“But surely…we can pick you up again if all goes well?”

“No,” I said, “that's not how it works. It can't be a trick. I have to cast myself adrift.”

I trotted out of the wardroom and to the side of the ship, where McTavish had already lowered the lifeboat. It was being held against the scramble net by lines fore and aft clutched by deck-hands, and it thumped against the hull as the waves caught it. As I put my leg over the rail to climb down, Fitzwilliam grasped my arm. He wasn't trying to stop me—he wanted to shake me by the hand.

“Good-bye, Captain—and thank you.”

I smiled. “Think you'll make Port Conjecture?”

He smiled back. “We'll give it our best shot.”

I climbed down the scramble net and into the lifeboat. They let go fore and aft, and the boat rocked violently as the bow wave caught it. For a moment I thought it would go over, but it stayed upright, and I rapidly fell behind as the ship steamed on.

I counted off the seconds until the bomb was meant to explode, but, thankfully, it didn't, and across the sea I heard the cheer of forty people celebrating their release. I couldn't share in their elation, because in a university somewhere back home the ethics lecturer had suddenly keeled over with an aneurysm. They'd call a doctor, and with a bit of luck he'd pull through. He might even lecture again, but not with this crew.

The
Moral Dilemma
was at least a quarter mile away by now, and within ten minutes the steamer was just a smudge of smoke on the horizon. In another half hour, it had vanished completely, and I was on my own in a gray sea that lasted forever in all directions. I looked through my shoulder bag and found a bar of chocolate, which I ate in a despondent manner and then just sat in the bow of the lifeboat and stared up at the gray sky, feeling hopelessly lost. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

Had I done the right thing? I had no idea. The lecturer couldn't have known the suffering he was putting his hypothetical characters through, but even if he had, perhaps he'd justify it by reasoning that the suffering was worth the benefits to his students. If he survived, I'd be able to ask him his opinion. But that wasn't likely. Rescue seemed a very remote possibility, and that was at the nub of the whole ethical-dilemma argument. You never come out on top, no matter what. The only way to win the game is not to play.

W
hen I awoke, nothing had changed. The sea was still gray, the sky a dull overcast. The water was choppy but not dangerously so and had a sort of twenty-second pattern of movement to it. With nothing better to do, I sat up and watched the waves as they rose and fell. By fixing my eyes on a random part of the ocean, I could see that the same wave would come around again like a loop in a film. Most of the BookWorld was like that. Fictional forests had only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. It was what made the real world so rich by comparison. I looked at my watch. The reality book show of
The Bennets
would be replacing
Pride and Prejudice
in three hours, and the first task of the house hold would be unveiled in two. Equally bad, that worthless shit Wirthlass-Schitt might well have the recipe by now and would be hoofing it back to Goliath. But then again, she might not. I'd visited enough Poetry to know that it's an emotionally draining place and on a completely different level. Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.

My mind, I knew, was wandering. It was intentional. If I didn't let it, it returned like an annoying default setting to Landen and the kids. Whenever I thought of them, my eyes welled up, and that was no good for anything. Perhaps, I mused, instead of lying to Landen after the Minotaur had shot me in 1988, I should have just stayed at home and led a blameless life of unabashed domestication. Washing, cleaning and making meals. Okay, with
some
part-time work down at Acme in case I went nuts. But no SpecOps stuff. None.
Except
maybe dispatching a teensy-weensy chimera. Or two. And if Spike needed a hand? Well, I couldn't say no, now could—
1

My thoughts were interrupted by my mobilefootnoterphone. Until now it had been resolutely silent. I dug it out of my bag and stared at it hopefully. There was still no signal, which meant that
someone else
was within a radius of about 10 million words. Not far in a shelf of Russian novels, perhaps, but out here in the oral tradition it could mean over a thousand stories or more. It was entirely possible that whoever it was wasn't a friend at all, but anything was better than slow starvation, so I keyed the mike and pretended I was a communications expert from OFF-FNOP, the watchdog responsible for overseeing the network.

“OFF-FNOP tech number…um, 76542: Request user ident.”

I looked carefully all around me, but the horizon was clear. There was nothing at all, just endless gray. It was like—
2

I paused. Footnoterphones weren't like normal phones—they were textual. It was impossible to tell who was talking. It was a bit like text messages back home, but without the dopey CUL8R shorthand nonsense.

“I say again: Request user ident.”

I looked around desperately, but still nothing. I hoped it wasn't another poor twit like me, compelled to take over the reins as ethical arbiter.
3

My heart suddenly leaped. Whoever it was, was somewhere close—and didn't read like anyone who would do me harm. I needed to tell the person how to find me, but the only directions I could think of were “I'm near a wave,” which was marginally less useful than “I'm in a boat.” Then I had an idea.

“If you can hear me,” I said into my phone, “head for the rainstorm of text.”

I tucked the phone in my pocket and took out my pistol. I released the safety, pointed it into the air and fired. There was a low thud, and the air seemed to wobble as the eraserhead arced high into the sky. It was a risky move, as it would almost certainly be picked up by the weather stations dotted around the genres and from there to Text Grand Central. If they were looking for me, they'd know instantly where I was.

It took a few seconds for the charge to reach the thick stratus of cloud, but when it hit, the effect can be described only as spectacular. There was a yellow-and-green starburst, and the textual clouds changed rapidly from gray to black as the words dissolved, taking the meaning with them. A dark cloud of letters was soon fluttering down toward the sea like chaff, a pillar of text that could be seen for miles. They landed on me and the boat, but mostly the sea, where they settled like autumn leaves on a lake.

I looked up and saw that the hole in the clouds was already healing itself, and within a few minutes the text would start to sink. I opened the pistol and reloaded, but I didn't need to fire a second time. On the horizon and heading toward me was a small dot that gradually grew bigger and bigger until it was overhead, then circled twice before it slowed to a stop, hovering in the air right next to the lifeboat. The driver rolled down his window and consulted a clipboard.

“Are you Ms. Next?” he asked, which was mildly surprising, to say the least.

“Yes, I am.”

“And you ordered me?”

“Yes, yes I did.”

“Well, you better get in, then.”

I was still in mild shock at the turn of events but quickly gathered my thoughts and my belongings and climbed into the yellow vehicle. It was dented and dirty and had the familiar TransGenre Taxis logo on the door. I'd never been so glad to see a cab in my entire life.

I settled myself into the backseat as the driver switched on the meter, turned to me with a grin and said, “Had the devil's job finding you, darling—where to?”

It was a good point. I thought for a moment.
Pride and Prejudice
was definitely in dire peril, but if the Now got any shorter, then
all
books were in danger—and a lot more besides.

“Longfellow,” I said, “and make it snappy. I think we're going to have some unwanted company.”

The cabbie raised his eyebrows, pressed on the accelerator, and we were soon scooting across the sea at a good rate of knots.

He caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“The worst kind,” I replied, thinking that I was going to have to trust this cabbie to do the right thing. “I'm subject to a shoot-to-kill order from the CofG, but it's bullshit. I'm a Jurisfiction agent, and I could seriously do with some help right now.”

“Bureaucrats!” he snorted disparagingly, then thought hard for a moment and added, “Next, Next—you wouldn't be
Thursday
Next, would you?”

“That's me.”

“I like your books a lot. Especially the early ones with all the killing and gratuitous sex.”

“I'm not like that. I'm—”

“Whoa!”

The cabbie swerved abruptly, and I was thrown violently to the other side of the taxi. I looked out the rear window and could see a figure in a long black dress hit the sea in a cascade of foam. They were onto me already.

“That was strange,” said the cabbie, “but I could have sworn that was a fifty-something, creepy-looking house keeper dressed entirely in black.”

“It was a Danverclone,” I said. “There'll be more.”

He clicked down the central locking and turned to stare at me. “You've really pissed someone off good and proper, haven't you?”

“Not without good reason—Look out!”

He swerved again as another Danverclone bounced off the hood and stared at me in a very unnerving way as she flew past the window. I watched her cartwheel across the the waves behind us. That was the thing about Danverclones. They were wholly expendable.

A moment later a heavy thump on the roof shook the cab. I looked behind, but no one had fallen off, and then I heard a noise like an angle grinder from above. It was another Danverclone on the roof, and she was planning on getting in.

“This is too heavy for me,” said the cabbie, whose sense of fair play was rapidly departing. “I've got a livelihood and a very expensive backstory to support.”

“I'll buy you a fleet of new cabs,” I told him somewhat urgently. “And Master Backstoryist Grnksghty is a personal friend of mine; he'll spin you a backstory of your choice.”

Before the cabbie could answer, another Mrs. Danvers landed heavily on the hood near the radiator. She stared at us for a moment and then, by pushing her fingers into the steel bodywork, began to crawl up the hood toward us, lips pursed tightly, the slipstream flapping her clothes and tugging at her tightly combed black hair. She wore the same small dark glasses as the rest of them, but you didn't need to see her eyes to guess her murderous intent.

“I'm going to have to turn you in,” said the cabbie as yet another Danverclone landed on the taxi with a crash that shattered the side window. She hung on to the roof trim and flapped around for a bit before finally getting a hold, and then, reaching in through the broken window, she fumbled for the door handle. I reached across, flicked off the lock and kicked the door open, dislodging the Danverclone, who seemed to hang in the air for a moment before a large wave caught her and she was left behind the rapidly moving taxi.

“I'm not sure I can help you any further,” continued the cabbie. “This is some seriously bad shit you're gotten yourself into.”

“I'm from the Outland,” I told him as another two Danvers fell past, vainly flailing their arms as they attempted to catch hold of the taxi. “Ever wanted something Outlandish? I can get it for you.”

“Anything?” asked the cabbie. There was a screech of metal from the roof as the Danverclone up there began to cut her way in. Sparks fell from the roof as the angle grinder bit into the metal.

“
Anything!
”

“Well, now,” said the cabbie, ignoring still another Danvers, who landed on the one crawling up the hood. There was the sort of sound a squeaky toy makes when you sit on it heavily, and then they both bounced off and were gone. “What I'd really like,” he continued, completely unfazed, “is an original Hoppity Hop.”

It seemed an unusual request until you realized just how valuable Outlander memorabilia was. I'd once seen two generics almost kill each other over a traffic cone.

“Orange and with a face on the front?”

“Is there any other? You'll find a seat belt in the back.” he said. “I suggest you use it.”

I didn't even have time to search for it before he suddenly pointed the cab straight up and went into a vertical climb toward the clouds. He turned to look at me, raised his eyebrows and smiled. He thought it was something of a lark. I was…well,
concerned.
I looked behind me as the Mrs. Danvers fell from the roof along with the gasoline-driven grinder and tumbled in a spiraling manner toward the sea, which was now far below. A few moments later, we were enveloped by the soft grayness of the clouds, and almost immediately, but without any sensation of having righted ourselves, we left the cloud on an even keel and were moving slowly between a squadron of French sailing ships and a lone British one. That might have been nothing to worry about, except that they were both armed naval vessels and were firing salvos at one another, and every now and again a hot ball of iron would sail spectacularly close to the cab with a whizzing noise.

“I had that Admiral Hornblower in the back of my cab once,” said the taxidriver, chatting amiably to me in that curious way cabbies do when they talk over their shoulder and look at the road at the same time. “What a gent. Tipped me a sovereign and then tried to press me into ser vice.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“C. S. Forester's
Ship of the Line,
” replied the cabbie. “We'll hang a left after the HMS
Sutherland
and move through
The African Queen
to join the cross-Maritime thoroughfare at
The Old Man and the Sea.
Once there we'll double back through
The Sea Wolf
and come out at
Moby-Dick,
which neatly sidesteps
Trea sure Island,
as it's usually jammed at this hour.”

“Wouldn't it be better to go via
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
and hang a left at
Robinson Crusoe
?”

I could see him staring at me in the rearview mirror. “You want to try it that way?” he asked, annoyed that I might question his judgment.”

“No,” I replied hastily. “We'll do what you think best.”

He seemed happier at this. “Okeydokey. Whereabouts in Longfellow were you wanting to go?”

“‘The Wreck of the Hesperus.'”

He turned around to stare at me. “
Hesperus?
You're one whole heap of trouble, lady. I'll drop you off at ‘A Psalm of Life,' and you can walk from there.”

I glared at him. “An original Hoppity Hop was it?
Boxed?
”

He sighed. It was a good deal, and he knew it.

“Okay,” he said at last. “
Hesperus
it is.”

We moved slowly past a small steam launch that was shooting some rapids on the Ulanga, and the cabbie spoke again. “So what's your story?”

“I was replaced by my written other self, who is rubber-stamping the CofG's most harebrained schemes with the woeful compliance of our prime minister back home. You've heard about
Pride and Prejudice
being serialized as a reality book show called
The Bennets
? That's what I'm trying to stop. You got a name?”

“Colin.”

We fell silent for a moment as we followed the Ulanga down-river to where it joined the Bora and then into the lake, where the gunboat
Königin Luise
lay at anchor. I busied myself reloading my pistol and checking the last two eraserheads. I even took the pistol's holster and clipped it to my belt. I didn't like these things, but I was going to be prepared. Mind you, if they decided to send in the clones, I'd be in serious shit. There were seven thousand Danvers and only one of me. I'd have to erase over three thousand per cartridge, and I didn't think they'd all gather themselves in a convenient heap for me. I pulled out my cell phone and stared at it. We were in full signal, but they'd have a trace on me for sure.