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'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, holdi
ng 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.
