First Among Sequels

5. Training Day

We stepped outside the colonnaded entrance of Norland Park and basked in the warmth of the sunshine. The story had long ago departed with the Dashwood family to Devon, and this corner of Sense and Sensibility was quiet and unused. To one side a saddled horse was leaning languidly against a tree with a hound sitting on the ground quite near it. Birds sang in the branches, and clouds moved slowly across the heavens. Each cloud was identical, of course, and the sun didn’t track across the sky as it did back home, and, come to think of it, the birdsong was on a twenty-second loop. It was what we called “narrative economics,” the bare amount of description necessary to create a scene. The Book-World was like that-mostly ordered, and without the rich texture that nature’s randomness brings to the real world.

We sat in silence for a few minutes to wait for my taxi. I was thinking about the mostly bald Pickwick, Friday’s ChronoGuard pre sen ta tion, Felix8’s return and my perfidy to Landen. Thursday5 had no such worries-she was reading the astrology section of the BookWorld’s premier newspaper, The Word.

After a while she said, “It’s my birthday today.”

“I know.”

“You do? How?”

“Never mind.”

“Listen to what it says in the horoscopes: ‘If it is your birthday, there may be an increased amount of mail. Expect gifts, friendly salutations from people and the occasional surprise. Possibility of cake.’ That’s so weird-I wonder if any of it will come true?”

“I’ve no idea. Have you noticed the amount of Mrs. Danvers you see wandering around these days?”

I mentioned this because a pair of them had been seen at Norland Park that morning. They were becoming a familiar sight in fiction, hanging around popular books out of sight of the reader, looking furtive and glaring malevolently at anyone who asked what they were up to. The excess of Mrs. Danvers in the Book-World was easily explained. Generics, or characters-in-waiting, are created blank, without any personality or gender, and are then billeted in novels until called up for training in character schools. From there they are sent either to populate the books being built or to replace characters who are due for retirement or replacement. The problem is, generics have a chameleonic habit of assimilating themselves to a strong leading character, and when six thousand impressionable generics were lodged inside Rebecca, all but eight became Mrs. Danvers, the creepy house keeper of Manderley. Since creepy house keepers are not much in demand these days, they were mostly used as expendable drones for the Mispeling Vyrus Farst Respons Groop or, more sinisterly, for riot control and any other civic disturbances. At Jurisfiction we were concerned that they were becoming another layer of policing, answerable only to the Council of Genres, something that was stridently denied.

“Mrs. Danvers?” repeated Thursday5, studying a pullout guide to reading tea leaves. “I’ve got one or two in my books, but I think they’re meant to be there.”

“Tell me,” I said by way of conversation, “is there any aspect of the BookWorld that you’d like to learn about as part of your time with me?”

“Well,” she said after a pause, “I’d like to have a go and see what it’s like inside a story during a recitation in the oral tradition-I’ve heard it’s really kind of buzzing.”

She was right. It was like sweaty live improv theater-anything could happen.

“No way,” I said, “and if I hear that you’ve been anywhere near OralTrad, you’ll be confined to The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. It’s not like books where everything’s laid out and orderly. The oral tradition is dynamic like you’ve no idea. Change anything in there and you will, quite literally, give the narrator an aneurysm.”

“A what?”

“A brain hemorrhage. The same can be said of Poetry. You don’t want to go hacking around in there without a clear head on your shoulders.”

“Why?”

“It’s like a big emotion magnifier. All feelings are exacerbated to a dangerous level. You can find things out about yourself that you never knew-or never wanted to know. We have a saying: ‘You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.’ It’s like being able to see yourself when drunk.”

“Aha,” she said in a quiet voice.

There was a pause.

“You’ve never been drunk, have you?”

She shook her head. “Do you think I should try it?”

“It’s overrated.”

I had a thought. “Have you ever been up to the Council of Genres?”

“No.”

“A lamentable omission. That’s where we’ll go first.”

I pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone and called TransGenre Taxis to see where my cab had gone. The reason for a taxi was not altogether obvious to Thursday5, who, like most residents of the BookWorld, could bookjump to any novel previously visited with an ease I found annoying. My intrafictional bookjumping was twenty times better than my transfictional jumps, but even then a bit ropey. I needed to read a full paragraph to get in, and if I didn’t have the right section in my TravelBook, then I had to walk via the Great Library or get a taxi-as long as one was available.

“Wouldn’t it be quicker just to bookjump?” asked Thursday5 with annoying directness.

“You young things are always in a hurry, aren’t you?” I replied. “Besides, it’s more dignified to walk-and the view is generally better. However,” I added with a sense of deflated ego, “in the absence of an available cab, we shall.”

I pulled out my TravelBook, turned to the correct page and jumped from Sense and Sensibility to the Great Library.