One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde Read Free Book Online Page A

“You’re more alike than you suppose.”
    “Physically, perhaps,” I replied, “but I flunked my Jurisfiction training.”
    “On occasion, people of talent are kept in reserve at times of crisis.”
    I stared at him for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?”
    “I don’t have much time. I think they saw us talking. Heed this and heed it well: One of our Thursdays is missing! ”
    “What do you mean?”
    “This: Trust no one but yourself.”
    “Which ‘yourself’? I have several. Me, the real me and Carmine who is being me when I’m not me.”
    He didn’t get to answer. The tram lurched, and with a sharp squeal of the emergency brakes we ground to a halt. The reason we had stopped was that two highly distinctive 1949 Buick Roadmaster automobiles were blocking the road, and four men were waiting for us. The cars and their occupants were among the more iniquitous features of the remaking. The Council of Genres, worried about increased security issues with the freedom of movement, had added another tier of law enforcement to the BookWorld. Shadowy men and women who were accountable only to the council and seemed to know no fear or restraint: the Men in Plaid.
    The doors of the tram hissed open, and one of the agents climbed inside. He wore a well-tailored suit of light green plaid with a handkerchief neatly folded in his top pocket.
    I turned to the red-haired gentleman to say something, but he had moved across the aisle to the seat opposite. The Man in Plaid’s eye fell upon my new friend, and he quickly strode up and placed a pistol to his head.
    “Don’t make any sudden movements, Kiki,” ordered the Man in Plaid. “What are you doing so far outside Crime?”
    “I came to Fantasy to look at the view.”
    “The view is the same as anywhere else.”
    “I was misinformed.”
    The red-haired gentleman was soon handcuffed. With a dramatic flourish, the Man in Plaid pulled out a bloodstained straight razor from the red-haired gentleman’s pocket. A gasp went up from the occupants of the tram.
    “This lunatic has been AWOL from his short story for twenty-four hours,” announced the agent. “You are fortunate to have survived.”
    The red-haired gentleman was pulled from the tram and bundled into the back of one of the Buick Roadmasters, which then sped from the scene.
    The Man in Plaid came back on the tram and stared at us all in turn.
    “A consummate liar, whose manipulative ways have seen two dead already. Did he say anything to anyone?”
    The red-haired gentleman had admitted to me that he’d done terrible things, but that wasn’t unusual. Out of their books, crazed killers could be as pleasant as pie.
    “He murdered two women,” continued the first Man in Plaid, presumably in order to loosen our tongues. “He cut the throat of one and strangled the other. Now, did he say anything to anybody?”
    I remained silent, and so did everyone else. In the short time the Men in Plaid had been operational, people had learned they were simply trouble and best not assisted in any way.
    “Are you a Man in Plaid?” asked one of the passengers.
    The man stared at the passenger in a way you wouldn’t like to be stared at. “It’s not plaid. It’s tartan.”
    The agent, apparently satisfied that the red-haired gentleman had not spoken to anyone, stepped off the tram, and the doors hissed shut. I shivered as a sudden sense of foreboding shuffled through the four hundred or so verbs, nouns and similes that made up my being. The red-haired gentleman had told me he thought that “one of our Thursdays is missing,” and by that I took him to mean Thursday Next, the real Thursday Next. My flesh-and-blood alter-better ego. But I didn’t get to muse on it any further, for a few minutes later we arrived at the border between Human Drama and Thriller.

5.
    Sprockett
    The logic of cog-based intelligences is unimpeachable. Unlike the inferior electronics-based intelligences, they cannot show error, for the