36. Senator Jobsworth

I impatiently drummed my fingers on the wall of the elevator as I rose to the twenty-sixth floor of the Great Library and the Council of Genres. I checked in my bag and found I still had two eraserheads but wasn’t sure if a show of force was the correct way to go about this. If what Bradshaw had said was true and Evil Thursday was commanding a legion of Danvers, I might not even have a chance to plead my own case, let alone Pride and Prejudice’s.

I decided that the best course of action was simply to wing it and was just wondering how I should approach even this strategy when the elevator doors opened and I was confronted by myself, staring back at me from the corridor. The same jacket, the same hair, trousers, boots-everything except a black glove on her left hand, which covered the eraserhead wound, I imagined. Bradshaw was right-Thursday1-4 had divested herself of her own identity and taken mine-along with my standing, integrity and reputation-an awesome weapon for her to wield. Not only as the CofG’s LBOCS and as a trusted member of Jurisfiction, but everything. Jobsworth, in all his dreary ignorance, probably thought that this was me, having undergone a bizarre and-to him-entirely fortuitous change of mind about policy directives.

We stared at each other for a moment, she with a sort of numbed look of disbelief, and I-I hoped-with the expression that a wife rightly reserves for someone who has slept with her husband.

“Meddling fool!” she said at last, waving a copy of Pride and Prejudice that she’d been reading. “I can only think this is your doing. You may have won the first round, but it’s merely a postponement-we’ll have the reality book show back on track after the first three chapters have run their course!”

“I’m going to erase you,” I said in a quiet voice, “and, what’s more, enjoy it.”

She stared at me with a vague look of triumph. “Then I was wrong,” she replied. “We are alike.”

I didn’t have time to answer. She took to her heels and ran off down the corridor toward the debating chamber. I followed; if we were externally identical, then the first to plead her case to the CofG had a clear advantage.

Thinking about it later, the pair of us running hell for leather down the corridors must have been quite a sight, but probably not that unusual, given the somewhat curious nature of fiction. Annoyingly, we were evenly matched in speed and stamina, and her ten-foot head start was still there when we arrived at the main debating chamber’s door two minutes and many startled CofG employees later. She had to slow down at the door, and as she did so, I made a flying tackle and grabbed her around the waist. Toppled by the momentum, the pair of us went sprawling headlong on the carpet, much to the astonishment of three heavily armed Danverclones who were just inside the door.

The strange thing about fighting with yourself is that not only are you of equal weight, strength and skill, but you both know all the same moves. After we had grappled and rolled around on the carpet for about five minutes and achieved nothing but a lot of grunting and strained muscles, my mind started to shift and think about other ways in which to win-something my opponent did at exactly the same moment-and we both switched tactics and went for each other’s throats. The most this achieved was that Landen’s birthday locket was torn off, something that drove me to a rage I never knew I had.

I knocked her hand away, rolled on top of her and punched her hard in the face. She went limp, and I climbed off, breathing hard, picked up my bag and locket and turned to Jobsworth and the rest of the security council, who had come into the corridor to watch.

“Arrest her,” I panted, wiping a small amount of blood from my lip, “and bind her well.”

Jobsworth looked at me and the other Thursday, then beckoned to the Danverclones to do as I asked.

She was still groggy but seemed to regain enough consciousness to yell, “Wait, wait! She’s not the real Thursday-I am!”

Jobsworth, Barksdale and Baxter all swiveled their heads to me, and even the Danverclones took notice. In the CofG, my veto counted for everything, and if there was any doubt at all over which was the correct Thursday, I had to quash it here and now.

“Want me to prove it?” I said. “Here it is: The interactive book project stops now.”

Jobsworth’s face fell. “Stop it? But you were all for it not less than an hour ago!”

“That wasn’t me,” I said, pointing an accusing finger at the disheveled and now-defeated Thursday, who was at that moment being cuffed by the Danverclones. “It was the other Thursday, the one from the crappy-as-hell TN series, who has been trying, for reasons of her own personal vindictiveness, to screw up everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

“She’s lying!” said the other Thursday, who now had her arms secured behind her back and still seemed unsteady from when I’d hit her. “She’s the ersatz Thursday-I’m the real one!”

“You want more proof?” I said. “Okay. I’m also reinforcing my veto on the insane decision to invade the Racy Novel genre. Diplomacy is the key. And I want all Jurisfiction agents released from their books and returned to work.”

“But that was your idea!” muttered Jobsworth, who, poor fellow, was still confused. “You said there was a bad apple at Jurisfiction and you needed to flush it out!”

“Not me,” I said. “Her. To keep me from returning. And if you need any more proof, here’s the clincher: We’re not going to have her reduced to text. She’s going to spend the next two years contemplating her navel within the pages of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. She’s smart and resourceful, so we’ll keep her in isolation in case she wants to try to be me again, and if she even attempts to escape, she’ll be reduced to text.”

Jobsworth needed no further convincing.

“It shall be so,” he said in a faintly pompous way, and the other Thursday was dragged off, still uselessly proclaiming her unbogusness.

I took a deep breath and sat down at my desk. I could feel a bruise coming up on the side of my neck and my knee hurt. I stretched my hand and rubbed it where I’d struck her.

“Well,” said Baxter, “I can’t say I’m glad you’ve decided against either invading Racy Novel or canceling the reality book shows, but I am a lot happier that you are the one making the wrong decisions, and not some poorly written wannabe. What the hell was she up to?”

“As you say. Just a jumped-up generic who wanted to be real. Better put a Textual Sieve Lockdown on The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco both in and out-I don’t want to even entertain the possibility of someone rescuing her.”

Jobsworth nodded to one of his aides to do as I’d asked and also-very reluctantly-to put a halt to the interactivity project and the Racy Novel invasion plans.

“But look here,” said Colonel Barksdale, who seemed to be somewhat miffed that he wasn’t going to spearhead an invasion of Racy Novel, “we can’t just ignore Speedy Muffler and those heathens.”

“And we shan’t,” I replied. “After we have followed all possible diplomatic channels, then we’ll have a look at other means of keeping them in check-and I rule out nothing.”

Barksdale stared at me, unconvinced.