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“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said by way of conversation—a good relationship with the characters within the BookWorld was essential in our work. “Have you been read recently?”
The cricket in the pillbox hat suddenly looked embarrassed.
“The truth is,” he said awkwardly, “we’ve never been read. Not once in seventy-three years. Deluxe book-club editions are like that—just for show. But if we did have a reading, we’d all be primed and set to go.”
“I can do a lot more than the ‘being hit with the mallet’ stunt,” added Bruises excitedly. “Would you like me to set myself on fire and fall out of a window? I can wave my arms very convincingly.”
“No thanks.”
“Shame,” replied Bruises wistfully. “I’d like to broaden my skills to cover car-to-helicopter transfers and being dragged backwards by a horse—whatever that is.”
“When the last of the nine copies of this book have gone,” pointed out the cricket, “we can finally come off duty and be reassigned. I’m studying for the lead in Charlotte’s Web.”
“Do you know of any other books that require stunt cri
ckets?” asked Bruises hopefully. “I’ve been practicing the very dangerous and not-at-all-foolhardy leap over seventeen motorcycles in a double-decker bus.”
“Isn’t it meant to be the other way around?”
“I told you it seemed a bit rum,” said the cricket as Bruises’ shoulders sagged. “But never mind all that,” he added, returning his attention to me. “I suppose you’re here about…the thing?”
“We are, sir. Where is it?”
The cricket pointed with three of his legs at a pile of half-finished toys in the corner and, thus rendered lopsided, fell over. His stunt double laughed until the cricket glared at him dangerously.
“It appeared unannounced three days ago—quite ruined my entrance.”
“I thought you’d never been read?”
“Rehearsals, dahling. I do like to keep the thespian juices fresh—and Bruises here likes to practice his celebrated ‘falling from the wall after being struck by a mallet’ stunt—and then the leg twitching and death throes, which he does so well.”
Bruises said nothing and studied the tips of his antennae modestly.
I cautiously approached the area of the room the cricket had indicated. Half hidden behind a marionette with no head and a hobby horse in need of sanding was a dull metallic sphere about the size of a grapefruit. It had several aerials sticking out of the top and an array of lenses protruding from the front. I leaned closer and sniffed at it cautiously. I could smell the odor of corrosion and see the fine pits on the heat-streaked surface. This wasn’t an errant space probe from the Sci-fi canon; it was too well described for that. Bradshaw had been right—it was trans-fictional.
“Where do you think it’s from?” asked the cricket. “We get scraps of other books blowing in from time to time when there’s a WordStorm, but nothing serious. Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream sheltered here for a while during the textphoon of ’32 and picked up a thing or two from Lamp-Wick, but only the odd verb or two otherwise. Is it important?”
“Not really,” I replied. It was a lie, of course—but I didn’t want a panic. This was anything but unimportant. I gently rotated the probe and read the engraved metal plate on the back. There was a serial number and a name that I recognized only too well—the Goliath Corporation. My least favorite multinational and a thorn in my side for many years. I was annoyed and heartened all at the same time. Annoyed that they had developed a machine for hurling probes inside fiction, but heartened that this was all they had managed to achieve. As I peered closer at the inert metallic ball, there was a warning chirp from my bag. I quickly dug out a small instrument and tossed it to Thursday5.
“A reader?” she said with surprise. “In here?”
“So it seems. How far away?”
She flipped the device open and stared at the flickering needle blankly. Technology was another point she wasn’t that strong on. “We’re clear. The reader is…er, two paragraphs ahead of us.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked at the instrument again. It was a Narrative Proximity Device, designed to ensure that our intrafictional perambulations couldn’t be seen by readers in the Outland. One of the odd things about the BookWorld was that when characters weren’t being read, they generally relaxed and talked, rehearsed, drank coffee, watched cricket or played mah-jongg. But as soon as a reading loomed, they all leaped into place and did their thing. They could sense the reading approaching out of long experience, but we couldn’t—hence the Narrative Proximity Device. Being caught up in a reading wasn’t particularly desirable for a Jurisfiction agent, as it generally caused a certain degree of confusion in the reader. I was spotted once myself—and once is once too often.
“I think so,” replied Thursday, staring at the meter again. “No, wait—yes.”
“A positive echo means the reader is ahead of us, a negative means…?”
“Bother,” she muttered. “Paragraphs behind and coming this way—Ma’am, I think we’re about to be read.”
“Is it a fast reader?”
She consulted the meter once more. If the reader was fast—a fan on a reread or a bored student—then we’d be fine. A slow reader searching every word for hidden meaning and subtle nuance and we might have to jump out until whoever it was had passed.
