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She ignored me and continued, “Do you know, it’s going to be fun being you. Senator Jobsworth has extended me all the rights that are usually yours—you in the BookWorld, you at the CofG, you in the much-awaited and now greenlighted Thursday Next Returns—This Time It’s Personal and you in the Outland. That’s the bit I like best. As much Landen as I want.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “And believe me, I want a lot.”
I gave an almighty howl of anger and struggled to break loose from the Danvers, but without any luck. The clones all sniggered, and Thursday1–4 smiled unpleasantly.
“It’s time for you to vanish, Thursday,” she growled.
She tossed a pair of handcuffs to the Danvers, who pulled my arms behind my back and secured them. Thursday1–4 held on to me, took my shoulder bag from a nearby clone and began to walk away when the commander of the Mrs. Danvers contingent said, “I have orders to take her direct to the Île Saint-Joseph within Papillon as per your original plan, Ms. Next1–4.”
The other me turned to the Mrs. Danvers, looked her up and down and sneered, “You’ve done your job, Danny—you’ll be rewarded. This is my prisoner.”
But Mrs. Danvers had an order, and Danvers only do one thing: They do as they’re told—and, until countermanded by a written order, they do it rather well.
“I have my written instructions,” the clone said more firmly, and the other Danvers took a menacing step toward us, three of them producing weapons from within the folds of their black dresses.
“I’m countermanding your order.”
“No,” said Mrs. Danvers. “I have my orders, and I will carry them out.”
“Listen here shitface,” said Thursday1–4 with a snarl, “I’m the new Mrs. de Winter now—geddit?”
Mrs. Danvers took a step back in shocked amazement, and in that short moment Thursday1–4 held tightly to my arm and jumped us both out.
I was expecting a ready dug grave—or worse, a shovel and a place for me to dig one, but there wasn’t. Instead the place where we’d arrived looked more like the sitting room of a Georgian country house of moderate means somewhere, and, thankfully, there wasn’t a shovel in sight—but there was a Bradshaw, five Bennet sisters and Mr. Bennet, who were all staring at me expectantly, which was somewhat confusing.
“Ah!” said Bradshaw. “Thank goodness for that. Sorry to keep you in the dark, old girl, but I knew my footnoterphone was bugged. We’ve got to get you across to the CofG, but right now we have a serious and very pressing problem.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly and in great puzzlement. I looked across at Thursday who was rapidly divesting herself of the weapons and leather apparel.
“I actually swore,” she muttered unhappily, holding one of the automatics with a disdainful finger and thumb. “And these clothes! Made from animal skins…”
My mouth may have dropped open at this. “Thursday5?” I mumbled. “That’s you?”
She nodded shyly and shrugged. Underneath the leathers, I noticed, was her usual attire of naturally dyed cotton, crocheted sweater and Birkenstocks. She had taken her failure over the Minotaur to heart and made good. Perhaps I’d been too hasty over her assessment.
“We knew you were in the BookWorld, but then you disappeared off the radar,” said Bradshaw. “Where have you been the past ten hours?”
“I was trapped in a moral dilemma. Any news from the Outland? I mean, are people buying into this whole reality book thing?”
“And how!” exclaimed Bradshaw. “The news from the CofG is that a half million people are waiting to see how The Bennets will turn out, as the idea of being able to change a major classic has huge appeal—it’s the latest fad in the Outland, and you know how the Outlanders like fads.”
“Sometimes I think they like little else.”
Bradshaw looked at his watch. “There’s only six minutes before Pride and Prejudice as we know it is going to be rewritten and lost forever, and we don’t have a seriously good plan of action. In fact,” he added, “we don’t have any plan of action.”
Everyone stared at me. Twenty seconds ago I thought I was almost certainly dead; now I was expected at short notice to fashion a plan of infinite subtlety to save one of our greatest novels from being reduced to a mind-numbing morass of transient popular entertainment.
“Right,” I said as I attempted to gather my thoughts. “Lizzie?”
“Here, ma’am,” said the second-eldest Bennet sister, bobbing respectfully.
“Fill me in. How does this reality-book thing work? Have you been given any instructions?”
“We’ve not been told much, ma’am. We are expected to collect ourselves in the house, but instead of looking for husbands and happiness, we are to undertake a preset task of an altogether curious nature. And as we do so,” she added sorrowfully, “our new actions and words are indelibly burned into the new edition of our book.”
I looked around the room. They were still all staring at me expectantly.
“Let me see the task.”
She handed me a sheet of paper. It was on Interactive Book Council letterhead and read:
