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I told him I had a moment, so he showed Landen and me the images that had been sent back. The pictures were again fuzzy and indistinct and difficult to interpret. I could see what I thought were mountains and streams and clouds and a unicorn or two, then explosions and large tracked vehicles.
“Do those look like battle tanks to you?” said Landen.
“I’ve been watching glimpses of conflict all morning,” replied the Wingco. “Things don’t look good in there.”
“Can we get another dodo inside to see some more?”
“Interesting point. I spoke to the Swindon Dodo Fanciers Club, who tell me that pre-V2 dodos have almost four times the sensory bit rate and a larger buffer. If we could get a Version Two or lower in there, we might get some better images—and sound.”
“You wouldn’t get a Version Two in any condition these days for less than half a million,” I replied, a comment that reflected the greatly increasing value of early home-builds.
“It was just an idea,” replied the Wingco, “but a sound one. I would even volunteer to take it myself.”
“How would you enter the DRM?” I asked.
He gave a few instances of how it might be done, and I froze as a sudden thought struck me. Jack Schitt’s inexplicable behavior of late—in having an assistant destroy the pages with the lost works of Homer written beneath the later, crappier works— might not be so inexplicable after all, and it might just explain why the pro-literature Krantz was so willing to help us by supplying Day Players on a regular basis.
“By the Gods,” I murmured. “I think I know what Jack Schitt and Goliath are up to.”
The Wingco and Landen looked at me.
“Krantz worked for decades on the Book Project at Goliath, and it was his love of literature and the written word that set him on his self-destructive course.”
“I hope you’re not going to do one of those bullshit ‘I’ll tell you more when I know for sure’ deals,” said Landen. “That could be a serious annoyance.”
“Not at all,” I replied. “As the Wingco will tell you, travel to the Dark Reading Matter is a one-way journey. You can never get back. Unless you have one of these.” I pointed to myself.
“A left breast?” said Landen.
“No, clot, a Day Player. What I’m walking around in here might have been designed to be a twenty-four-hour disposable office worker or soldier, but it’s also the perfect way of getting into the Dark Reading Matter.”
I paused for a moment, waiting for this to filter in.
“Nope,” said Landen, “not getting this at all.”
“Okay, let’s start with his apparent escape from the Lobsterhood. He didn’t fast descend to escape and he didn’t BASE jump. He read his way into the lost work on the palimpsest. He then had his confederate destroy the pages. It was the only copy, so, once destroyed, the now-deleted work entered the Dark Reading Matter, with Jack in it.”
They stood and stared at me in silence.
“Jack could read himself into a book?” said Landen. “I thought that was something only you could do?”
“A Day Player can do almost anything. I’d say we were almost designed to be able to cross the transfictional border. Jack could stay for as long as his Day Player holds out, then die or be killed—and come straight back out of the DRM and into the RealWorld, memories and consciousness intact.”
“I think you might be right,” said Landen. “But why Krantz?” “He spent fifteen years on the Book Project ostensibly because he loved literature. I guess he didn’t want to see mankind’s lost works defiled and exploited.”
There was a long pause while we all thought about what this might mean. The Wingco broke the silence.
“What are they up to in there?”
“I’m only guessing here,” I said, “but past experience might indicate there is a seriously large pot of cash involved. They’ve probably been infiltrating the BookWorld for months. All those tanks we saw could well be Goliath—attempting to subjugate the Dark Reading Matter. I’ll find out more the next time I meet Jack Schitt.”
“I need to report this to Commander Bradshaw,” said the Wingco. “We may have to start sending troops in on a one-way journey. I don’t think it’ll be considered a suicide mission any longer—just a permanent reassignment.”
“And I’ve got to go,” I said, glancing at the clock. “Joffy told me I should be ready and waiting at Chiseldon from eleven.”
Landen asked me if I was going to be okay, which seemed a bit daft, to be honest. The only thing to fear was the failure of my set task—the good thing about being a Day Player was that death was downgraded from a vexatious lack of existence to merely a temporary inconvenience.
“If the worst comes to the worst,” I said, “you’ll know about it, because I’ll be yelling for a cup of tea from the guest room.”
