34
Loose ends

   'Contrary to Text Grand Central's claims, there were no new plots using Ultra Word. Ex-WordMaster Libris had become so obsessed with the perfection of his operating system that nothing else had mattered to him and he lied repeatedly to cover up its failings. BOOK V8.3 remained the operating system for many years to come, although one of the UltraWord copies of The Little Prince can be viewed in the Jurisfiction museum. To avoid a repeat of this near-disaster, the Council of Genres took the only course of action open to them to ensure TGC would be too inefficient and unimaginative to pose a threat. They appointed a committee to run it.'

MILTON DE FLOSS – UltraWord – the Aftermath


   It was nearly morning when the BookWorld Awards party finished. Heathcliff was furious that in all the excitement the final award of the night had been forgotten; I saw him talking angrily to his personal imaginator an hour after the appearance of the Great Panjandrum. There would be next year, of course, but his seventy-seven-year record had been broken and he didn't like it. I thought he might take it out on Linton and Catherine when he got home, and he did.
   No one had been more surprised than me by the arrival of the Great Panjandrum when I pulled the emergency handle. For the non-believers it was something of a shock, and no less so for the faithful. She had been so long a figure of speech that seeing her in the flesh was startling. I thought she had seemed quite plain and in her mid-thirties, but Humpty Dumpty told me later he had been shaped like an egg. In any event, the marble statue that now stands in the lobby of the Council of Genres depicts the Great Panjandrum as Mr Price the stonemason saw him – with a leather apron and carrying a mallet and stone chisel.
   When she arrived the Great Panjandrum read the situation perfectly. She froze all the text within the room, locked the doors and decreed that a vote be taken there and then. She summoned the head of the Council of Genres and the vote against UltraWord was carried unanimously. She spoke to me three times: once to tell me I had The Write Stuff, second to ask me whether I would take on the job of the Bellman, and lastly to ask whether disco mirror balls in the Outland had a motor to make them go round or whether they did so by virtue of the light. I answered 'Thank you", "Yes" and "I don't know", in that order.

   After the party was over I walked back through the slowly stirring Well of Lost Plots to the shelf that held Caversham Heights and read myself back inside, tired but happy. The Bellman's job would keep me busy but purely in administration. I wouldn't have to go jumping around in books – just the thing to allow my ankles to swell in peace and quiet, and to plan my return to the Outland when the infant Next and its mother were strong enough. Together we would face the tribulations of Landen's return, because the little one would have a father, I had promised it that much already. I opened the door to Mary's Sunderland and felt the old flying boat rock slightly as I entered. When I first came here it had unnerved me, but now I wouldn't have had it any other way. Small wavelets slapped against the hull and somewhere an owl hooted as it returned to roost. It felt as much like home as home had ever done. I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long, because, she said, 'she had yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel'.
   I closed my eyes for a moment and fell fast asleep without the nagging fear of Aornis, and it was nearly ten when I awoke. But I didn't wake naturally – Pickwick was tugging at the corner of my dress.
   'Not now, Pickers,' I mumbled sleepily, trying to turn over and nearly impaling myself on a knitting needle. She carried on tugging until I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched noisily. She seemed insistent so I followed her upstairs to my bedroom. Sitting on the bed and surrounded by broken eggshell was something that I could only describe as a ball of a fluff with two eyes and a beak.
   'Plock-plock,' said Pickwick.
   'You're right,' I told her, 'she's very beautiful. Congratulations.'
   The small dodo blinked at us both, opened its beak wide and said, in a shrill voice:
   'Plunk!'
   Pickwick started and looked at me anxiously.
   'Well!' I told her. 'A rebellious teenager already?'
   Pickwick nudged the chick with her beak and it plunked indignantly before settling down.
   I thought for a moment and said: 'You aren't going to feed her doing that disgusting regurgitation seabird thing, are you?'
   The door burst open downstairs.
   'Thursday!' yelled Randolph anxiously. 'Are you in here?'
   'I'm here,' I shouted, leaving Pickwick with her offspring and coming downstairs to find a highly agitated Randolph, pacing up and down the living room.
   'What's up?'
   'It's Lola.'
   'Some unsuitable young man again? Really, Randolph, you've got to learn not to be so jealous—'
   'No,' he said quickly, 'it's not that. Girls Make all the Moves didn't find a publisher and the author burnt the only manuscript in a drunken rage! That's why she wasn't at the awards last night!'
   I started. If a book had been destroyed in the Outland then all the characters and situations would be up for salvage—
   'Yes,' said Randolph, reading my thoughts, 'they're going to auction off Lola!'
   I quickly changed out of my dress and we arrived as the sale was winding up. Most of the descriptive scenes had already gone, the one-liners packaged and sold as a single lot, and all the cars and most of the wardrobe and furniture disposed of. I pushed through to the front of the crowd and found Lola looking very dejected sitting on her suitcase.
   'Lola!' said Randolph, as they hugged. 'I brought Thursday to help you!'
   She jumped up and smiled but it was a despairing half-smile at best and it spoke volumes.
   'Come on,' I said, grabbing her by the hand, 'we're out of here.'
   'Not so fast!' said a tall man in an immaculate suit. 'No goods are to be removed until paid for!'
   'She's with me,' I told him as several hulking great bouncers appeared from nowhere.
   'No she's not. She's lot ninety-seven. You can bid if you want to.'
   'I'm Thursday Next, the Bellman-elect,' I told him, 'and Lola is with me.'
   'I know who you are and you did good, but I have a business to run. I haven't done anything wrong. You can take the Generic home with you in ten minutes – after you have won the bidding.'
   I glared at him.
   'I'm going to close down this foul trade,' I told him, 'and enjoy it every step of the way!'
   'Really?' replied the man. 'I'm quaking in my boots. Now are you going to bid or do I withdraw the lot and put it up for private tender?'
   'She's not an it,' snarled Randolph angrily, 'she's a Lola – and I love her!'
   'You're breaking my heart. Bid or bugger off, the choice is yours.'

  Randolph made to plant a punch on the dealer's chin but he was caught by one of the bouncers and held tightly.
   'Control your Generic or I'll throw you both out! Get it?'
   Randolph nodded and he was released. We stood together at the front watching Lola, who was weeping silently into her handkerchief.
   'Gentlemen. Lot ninety-seven. Fine female B-4 Generic, ident: TSI-1404912-C. Attractive and personable. An opportunity to secure this sort of highly entertaining and pneumatic young lady does not come often. Her high appetite for sexual congress, slight dopiness and winsome innocence combined with indefatigable energy make her especially suitable for "racy" novels. What am I bid?'
   It was bad. Very bad. I turned to Randolph.
   'Do you have any money?'
   'About a tenner.'
   The bidding had already reached a thousand. I didn't have a tenth of that either here or back home – nor anything to sell to raise such a sum. The bidding rose higher, and Lola grew more depressed. For the amount that was being bid, she was probably in for a series of books – and the movie rights. I shuddered.
   'With you, sir, at six thousand!' announced the auctioneer as the bidding bounced backwards and forwards between two well-known dealers. 'Any more bids?'
   'Seven thousand!'
   'Eight!'
   'Nine!'
   'I can't watch,' said Randolph, tears streaming down his face. He turned and left as Lola stared after him as he pushed his way to the back.
   'Any more bids?' asked the auctioneer. 'With you, sir, at nine thousand … going once … going twice …'
   'I BID ONE ORIGINAL IDEA!' I shouted, digging in my bag for the small nugget of originality Miss Havisham had given me and marching up to the auctioneer's table. There was a deathly hush as I held the glowing fragment aloft, and placed it on his desk with a flourish.
   'A nugget of originality for a trollop like that?' hissed a man at the front. 'The Bellman-elect's got a screw loose.'
   'Lola is that important to me,' I said sombrely. Miss Havisham had told me to use the nugget wisely – I think I did.
   'Is it enough?'
   'It's enough,' said the vendor, picking up the nugget and staring at it avariciously through an eyeglass. 'This lot is withdrawn from the sale. Miss Next, you are the proud owner of a Generic.'
   Lola nearly wet herself, poor girl, and she hugged me tightly during the five minutes it took to complete the paperwork.
   We found Randolph sitting on a mooring bollard down by the docks, staring off into the Text Sea with a sad and vacant look in his eyes. Lola leaned down and whispered in his ear.
   Randolph jumped and turned round, flung his arms around her and cried for joy.
   'Yes,' he said, 'yes, I did mean it! Every bit of it!'
   'Come on, lovebirds,' I told them, 'I think it's time to leave this cattle market.'
   We walked back to Caversham Heights, Randolph and Lola holding hands, making plans to start a home for Generics who had fallen on hard times, and trying to think up ways to raise funding. Neither of them had the resources to undertake such a project, but it got me thinking.

   The following week, soon after I was inaugurated as the Bellman, I gave my proposal to the Council of Genres – Caversham Heights should be bought by the Council and used as a sanctuary for characters who needed a break from the sometimes arduous and repetitive course that fictional people are forced to tread. A sort of 'Textual Butlins' but without the redcoats. To my delight the Council approved the measure, as it had the added bonus of a solution to the nursery rhyme problem. Jack Spratt was overjoyed at the news and didn't seem in the least put out by the massive changes that would be necessary in order to embrace the visitors.
   'The drug plot is out, I'm afraid,' I told him as we discussed it over lunch a few days later.
   'What the hell,' he exclaimed. 'I was never in love with it anyway. Do we have a replacement boxer?'
   'The boxing plot is out too.'
   'Ah. How about the money-laundering sub-plot where I discover the mayor has been taking kickbacks? That's still in, yes?'
   'Not … as such,' I said slowly.
   'It's gone too?' he asked. 'Do we even have a murder?'
   'That we have,' I replied, passing him over the new outline I had been thrashing out with a freelance imaginator the previous day.
   'Ah!' he said, scanning the words eagerly. ' "It's Easter in Reading – a bad time for eggs – and Humpty Dumpty is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town …" '
   He flicked a few more pages.
   'What about Dr Singh, Madeleine, Unidentified Police Officers 1 and 2 and all the others?'
   'All still there. We've had to reassign a few parts but it should hold together. The only person who wouldn't move was Agatha Diesel – I think she might give you a few problems.'
   'I can handle her,' replied Jack, flicking to the back of the outline to see how it all turned out. 'Looks good to me. What do the nurseries say about it?'
   'I'm talking to them next.'
   I left Jack with the outline and jumped to Norland Park, where I took the news to Hurnpty Dumpty; he and his army of pickets were still camped outside the doors of the house – they had been joined by characters from nursery stories, too.
   'Ah!' said Humpty as I approached. 'The Bellman. The three witches were right after all.'
   'They generally are,' I replied. 'I have a proposal for you.'
   Humpty's eyes nearly popped out of his head when I explained what I had in mind.
   'Sanctuary?' he asked.
   'Of sorts," I told him. 'I'll need you to coordinate all the nurseries, who will find narrative a little bit alien after doing couplets for so long, so you'll be dead when the story opens.'
   'Not … the wall thing?'
   'I'm afraid so. What do you think?'
   'Well,' said Humpty, reading the outline carefully and smiling. 'I'll take it to the membership but I think I can safely say that there is nothing here that we can find any great issue with. Pending a ballot, I think you've got yourself a deal.'

   It took the C of G almost a year to dismantle Text Grand Central's UltraWord engines, and many more arrests followed, although sadly none in the Outland. Vernham Deane was released, and he and Mimi were awarded the 'Gold Star for Reading' as well as the plot realignment they had wanted for so many years. They married and quite unprecedented for a Farquitt baddy – lived happily ever after, something that caused a severe drop in sales for The Squire of High Potternews. Harris Tweed, Xavier Libris and twenty-four others at Text Grand Central were tried and found guilty of crimes against the BookWorld'. Harris Tweed was expelled permanently from fiction and returned to Swindon. Heep, Orlick and Legree were all sent back to their books and the rest were reduced to text.

   It was the first day of the influx of nursery rhyme refugees and Lola and I were sitting on a park bench in Caversham Heights soon to be renamed Nursery Crime. We were watching Humpty Dumpty welcome the long line of guests as Randolph allocated parts. Everyone was very happy with the arrangements but I wasn't overwhelmed with joy myself. I still missed Landen and I was reminded of this every time I tried – and failed – to get my old trousers to button up over my rapidly expanding waistline.
   'What are you thinking about?'
   'Landen.'
   'Oh,' said Lola, staring at me with her big brown eyes, 'you will get him back, I am sure of it – please don't be downhearted!'
   I patted her hand and thanked her for her kind words.
   'I never did say thank you for what you did,' she said slowly. 'I missed Randolph more than anything. If only he'd told me what he felt I would have stayed in Heights or sought a dual placement – even as a C-grade.'
   'Men are like that,' I told her. 'I'm just glad you're both happy.'
   'I'll miss being the main protagonist,' she said wistfully. Girls Make all the Moves was a good role but in a crap book – do you think I'll ever be the heroine again?'
   'Well, Lola,' I told her, 'some would say that the hero of any story is the one who changes the most. If we take the moment when we first met as the beginning of the story and right now as the end, I think that makes you and Randolph the heroes by a long chalk.'
   'It does, doesn't it?'
   She smiled and we sat in silence for a moment.
   'Thursday?'
   'Yes?'
   'So who did kill Godot?'

Credits

   Falstaff, the three witches, Banquo's ghost, Beatrice and Benedict all kindly supplied by Shakespeare (William) Inc.
   Our thanks to Mr Heathcliff for graciously agreeing to appear in this novel.
   Uriah Heep kindly loaned by Wickfield & Heep, attorneys-at-law.
   My thanks to ScarletBea, Yan, Ben, Carla, Jon, Magda, AllAmericanCutie and Dave at the Fforde Fforum for their nominations in the 'Bookie' awards.
   Hedge-pig research, Anna Karenina footnoterphone gossip and 'Dodo egg' sarcasm furnished by Mari Roberts.
   Solomon's Judgements © The Council of Genres, 1986.
   'Chocolate orange' joke used with kind permission of John Birmingham.
   UltraWord – the Ultimate Reading Experience™ remains a trademark of Text Grand Central.
   'Best Dead Person in Fiction' Bookie category courtesy of C.J. Avery.
   'Fictionaut' wordsmithed by Jon Brierley.
   Evilness consultant: Ernst Blofeld.
   Mrs Bradshaw's gowns by Coco Chanel.
   Aornis little sister idea courtesy of Rosie Fforde.
   Our grateful thanks to the Great Panjandrum for help and guidance in the making of this novel.
   No unicorns were written expressly for this book and no animals or Yahoos (other than grammasites) were harmed in its construction.

   This novel was written in BOOK V8.3 and was sequenced using a Mk XXIV ImaginoTransference device. Peggy Malone was the imagmator. Plot Devices and Inciting Incidents supplied by Billy Budd's Bargain Basement and the WOLP Plot Salvage and Recycling Corporation. Generics supplied and trained by St Tabularasa's.

   Holes were filled by apprentices at the Holesmiths' Guild, and echolocation and grammatisation was undertaken by Outland contractors at Hodder and Penguin.

   The 'Galactic Cleansing" policy undertaken by Emperor Zhark is a personal vision of the emperor's, and its inclusion in this work does not constitute tacit approval by the author or the publisher for any such projects, howsoever undertaken. Warning: The author may have eaten nuts while writing this book.

   Made wholly on location within the Well of Lost Plots.

   A Fforde/Hodder/Penguin production. All rights reserved.

notes

---

1

   '… This is WOLP-12 on the Well of Lost Plots' own footnoterphone station, transmitting live on the hour every hour to keep you up to date with news in the Fiction Factory …'

2

   '… After the headlines you can hear our weekly documentary show WellSpeak where today we will discuss hiding exposition; following that there will be a WellNews special on the launch of the new Book Operating system. Ultra Word™, featuring a live studio debate with WordMaster Xavier Libris of Text Grand Central …'

3

   '… here are the main points of the news. Prices of semi-colons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty-eight points off the TomJones Index. The Council of Genres has announced the nominations for the 923rd annual BookWorld Awards; Heathcliff is once again to head the 'Most Troubled Romantic Lead' category for the seventy-seventh year running …'

4

   '… A new epic poem is to be constructed for the first time in eighty-seven years. Title and subject to be announced, but pundits reckon that it's a pointless exercise: skills have all but died out. Next week will also see the launch of a new shopping chain offering off-the-peg narrative requisites. It will be called Prêt-à-Ecrire …'

5

   "… Visit Aaron's Assorted Alliteration Annexe, the superior sellers of stressed syllable or similar-sounding speech sequences since the sixteenth century. Stop soon and see us situated on floor sixteen, shelf six seventy-six …'

6

   '… Visit Bill's Dictionorium for every word you'll ever need! From Be to Antidisestablishmentarianism, we have words to suit all your plotting needs. Floor twelve, shelf seventy-eight …'

7

   '… Soon to be launched: UltraWord™– The Ultimate Reading Experience. For FREE information on the very latest Book Operating System and how its new and improved features will enhance your new book, call Text Grand Central on:freefootnoterphone/ultraword …'

8

   '… Honest John's Pre-featured Character salesroom for all your character needs! Honest John has Generics grade A-6 to D-Q. Top bargains this week: Mrs Danvers, choice of three, unused. +++Lady of Shallott cloned for unfinished remake; healthy A-6 in good condition. + + + Group of unruly C-5S suitable for any crowd scene – call for details. Listen to our full listings by polling on footnoterphone/honestjohn …'

9

   'Vera Tushkevitch! Can you hear me?'
   'Yes, I'm here. No need to shout. You will deafen me, I'm sure!'
   'I don't trust these strange footnoterphone devices. I'm sure I'll catch some nasty proletarian disease. Where did we last meet? At that party with the Schuetzburgs? The one where they served apples Benedict?'
   'No, Sofya, my husband and I were not invited. He voted against Count Schuetzburg at the last election.'
   'Then it must have been at Bolshaia Marskaia with Princess Betsy. Whatever did happen to that Karenin girl, have you any idea?'
   'Anna? Yes indeed – but you must not tell a soul! Alexei Vronsky was smitten by her from the moment he saw her at the station.'
   'The station? Which station?'
   'St Petersburg; you remember when a guard fell beneath the train and was crushed?'
   'Anna and Vronsky met there? How terribly unsophisticated!'
   'There is more, my dear Vera. Wait – the doorbell! I must leave you; not a word to anyone and I will call again soon!'

10

   '… Special on at St Tabularasa's Generic College – superior-quality Blocking Characters available now for instant location to your novel. From forbidding fathers to "by the book" superior police officers, our high-quality Blockers will guarantee conflict from the simplest protagonist! Call freefootnoterphone/St Tabularasa's for more details …'

11

   'Vera? Is that you? What a day! All noise and rain. Do please carry on about Anna!'
   'Well. Anna danced with Vronsky – at the ball that night; he became her shadow and very much more!'
   'No! – Alexei Vronsky and Anna – an affair! What about her husband? Surely he found out?'
   'Eventually, yes. I think Anna told him, but not until she was with child, Vronsky's child. There was to be no hiding that.'
   'What did he say?'
   'Believe it or not, he forgave them both! Insisted that they remain married and attempted to continue as if nothing had happened.'
   'I always did think that man was a fool. What happened next?'
   'Vronsky shot himself, claiming he could not bear to be apart from her. Melodramatic is not the word for it!'
   'It reads like a cheap novelette! Did he die?'
   'No; merely wounded. It gets worse. Karenin realised that to save Anna he himself must take the disgrace and admit that he had been unfaithful so that Anna was not ruined and could marry Vronsky.'
   'So Karenin let them go? He didn't ban her from ever seeing her lover again? Didn't horse-whip either of them or sell his story to The Mole? It strikes me Karenin himself may have had some totty on the side, too. Wait! My husband calls me – stay tuned. Fare-well for now, my dear Vera!'

12

   'Miss Next, are you there?'

13

   'Good. Meet me at the Junsfiction office as soon as possible. It's about Perkins – the minotaur has escaped.'

14

   'Not really. You see, Perkins isn't responding to footnoterphone communications – we think something might have happened to him.'

15

   'Sofya! Where were you? I have been calling for ever! Tell me, the Karenins – they divorced?'
   'No! Maybe if they had been divorced, events would have been different. I remember her attending the theatre in Petersburg. What a disaster!'
   'Why? Whatever happened? Did she make a fool of herself?'
   'Yes, by appearing in the first place! How could she? Madame Kartasova, who was in the adjacent box with that fat bald husband of hers, made a scene: she said something aloud, something insulting, and left the theatre. We all saw it happen. Anna tried to ignore everything but she must have known …'
   'Why didn't they push for a divorce, the foolish pair!'
   'Vronsky wanted her to but she kept putting it off. They moved to Moscow, but she was never happy. Vronsky spent his time involved in politics and she was convinced that he was with other women. A jealous, fallen disgrace of a woman she was. Then, at Znamanka station she could take it no longer – she flung herself upon the rails and was crushed by the 20.02 to Obiralovka!'
   'No!'
   'Yes, but don't tell a soul – it is a secret between you and me! Come – for dinner on Tuesday – we are having turnip à l’orange. I have a simply adorable new cook. Adieu, my good friend, adieu!'

16

   'Thursday, are you there?'

17

   'It's the Cheshire Cat. Do you know how to play the piano?'

18

   'Oh, no reason; I just thought I'd ask to be on the safe side.'

19

   'Why, the piano, of course!'

20

   'You've got a hearing for your trial – remember the fiction infraction? Well, there have been some delays with Max de Winter's appeal so they've applied for a continuancel – can you come this afternoon if you're not too busy, say three o'clock?'

21

   'Alice in Wonderland, just after the "Alice's Evidence" chapter. The Gryphon will be representing you. Don't forgetl – three o'clock.'

22

   '… Dear Friend, I am a fifty-year-old lady from the Republic of Gondal. I got your details from the Council of Genres and decided to contact you to see if you could help. My husband Reginald Jackson was the rebel leader in Gondal in Turmoil. (RRP: £4.99) and just before he was assassinated he gave me 12 million dollars and I departed the book to be a refugee in The Well of Lost Plots with my two children. On arrival, I decided to deposit this money in a security company for safekeeping. Right now, I am seeking assistance from you so that I can transfer the funds from the Well to your Outland account. If this offer meets your approval, you could reach me on my footnoterphone. Thank you, Mrs R. Jackson …'

23

   The Jurisfiction office vanished and was replaced by a large and shiny underground tube. It was big enough to stand up in but even so I had to keep pressed against the wall as a constant stream of words flashed past in both directions. Above us another pipe was leading upwards, and every now and then a short stream of words was diverted into this small conduit.
   'Where are we?' I asked, my voice echoing about the steel walls.
   'Somewhere quite safe,' replied Deane. 'They'll be wondering where you went.'
   'We're in the Outland – I mean, home?'
   Deane laughed.
   'No, silly – we're in the footnoterphone conduits.'
   I looked at the stream of messages again.
   'We are?'
   'Sure.'
   'Come on, let me show you something.'
   We walked along the pipe until it opened out into a bigger room – a hub where messages went from one genre to the next. The exits closest to me were marked 'Crime', 'Romance', 'Thriller' and 'Comedy', but there were plenty more, all routeing the footnoterphone messages towards some sub-genre or other.
   'It's incredible!' I breathed.
   'Oh, this is just a small hub,' replied Deane, 'you should see the bigger ones. It all works on the ISBN number system, you know – and the best thing about it is that neither Text Grand Central nor the Council of Genres knows that you can get down here. It's sanctuary, Thursday. Sanctuary away from the prying eyes of Jurisfiction and the rigidity of the narrative.'
   I caught his eye.
   'Tweed thinks you killed Perkins, Snell and that serving girl.'
   He stopped walking and sighed.
   'Tweed is working with Text Grand Central to make sure Ultra Word™ is launched without any trouble. He knew I didn't like it. He offered me a plot realignment in The Squire of High Potternews to "garner my support".'
   'He tried to buy you?'
   'When I refused he threatened to kill me – that's why we escaped.'
   'We?'
   'Of course. The maidservant that I ravage in chapter eight and then cruelly cast into the night. She dies of tuberculosis and I drink myself to death. Do you think we could allow that?'
   'But isn't that what happens in most Farquitt novels?' I asked. 'Maidservant ravaged by cruel squire?'
   'You don't understand, Thursday. Mimi and I are in love.'
   'Ah!' I replied slowly, thinking of Landen. 'That can change things.'
   'Come,' said Deane, beckoning me through the hub and dodging the footnoterphone messages, 'there is a settlement in a disused branch line. After Woolf wrote To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway the Council of Genres thought Stream of Consciousness would be the next Detective – they built a large hub to support the rack-loads of novels that never appeared.'
   We turned into a large tunnel about the size of the underground back in Swindon, and the messages whizzed back and forth, almost filling the tube to capacity.
   After a few hundred yards we came to another hub and took the least used – barely two or three messages a minute buzzed languidly past, and these seemed to be lost; they moved around vaguely for a moment and then evaporated. The sides of the tube were less shiny, rubbish had collected at the bottom and water leaked in from the roof. Every now and then we passed small unused offshoots, built to support books that were planned but never written.
   'Why did you come for me, Vern?'
   'Because I don't believe you would kill Miss Havisham, and, like it or not, despite my rejection of Farquitt, I love stories as much as anyone. UltraWord™ is flawed. Havisham, Perkins, Snell and I were all trying to figure out some sort of a proof when Perkins was eaten.'
   The tunnel opened out into a large chamber where a settlement of sorts had been built from rubbish and scrap wood – items that could be removed from the BookWorld without anyone noticing. The buildings were little more than tents with the orange flicker of oil lamps from within.
   'Vern!' came a voice, and a dark-haired young woman waved at him from the nearest tent. She was heavily pregnant and Deane rushed up to hug her affectionately. I watched them with a certain degree of jealousy. I noticed I had placed my hand on my own turn quite subconsciously. I sighed and pushed my thoughts to the back of my mind.
   'Mimi, this is Thursday,' said Vern. I shook her hand and she led us into their tent, offering me a small wooden box to sit on that I noticed had once been used to held past tenses.
   'We scrounge a lot from the Well,' explained Deane, making some coffee. 'It's pretty unregulated down there and we can pinch almost anything.'
   'So what's wrong with UltraWord™?' I asked him, my curiosity overcoming me.
   'Flawed by the need for control,' he said slowly. 'Think the BookWorld is over-regulated? Believe me, it's an anarchist's dreamworld compared to the future seen by TGC!'
   And so, over the next hour, he proceeded to tell me exactly what he had discovered. The problem was, it might very well be seen as hearsay. We needed something more than possibilities and allegations, we needed proof.
   'Proof,' said Deane, 'yes, that was always the problem. I don't have any. Perkins died trying to protect the only proof he said we have. I'll go and fetch it.'
   He returned with a birdcage containing a skylark and set it on the table.
   I looked at the bird and the bird looked back.
   'This is the proof?'
   'So Perkins said.'
   'Do you have any idea what he meant?'
   'None at all.' He sighed. 'He was minotaur shit long before he tried to explain it to any of us.'
   I leaned forward for a closer look and smelt – cantaloupes.
   'It's UltraWord™,' I breathed.
   'It is?' echoed Deane in surprise. 'How can you tell?'
   'It's an Outlander thing. Do you still have your UltraWord™ copy of The Little Prince?'
   He handed me the slim volume.
   'What's on your mind?'
   'I have a plan,' I told him, 'but to do it I have to be at liberty – and free from the Bellman's suspicions.'
   'I can arrange that.' Deane smiled. 'Come on, let's do this thing before it gets any worse.'

24

   Mimi was standing outside the footnoterphone tube entrance to Text Grand Central and looking at her watch. The words sped backwards and forwards, darting inside the tunnel, which had a sturdy grate across it streaked with rust. Every now and then messages were deflected off. It was a textual sieve – used here for deleting unwanted junk footnoterphone messages.
   She gestured to the man accompanying her and stepped back.
   Quasimodo—who had found sanctuary, finally—grunted in reply and gently placed a copy of Das Kapital next to Mein Kampf, separating them with only a thin metal sheet. The 'book sandwich' was held together by rubber bands and a string was attached to the metal sheet. Quasimodo tied the books to the grate and then retired down the conduit, paying out the string as he went. He joined Mimi at a little-used sub-genre pipe entitled 'Squid Action/Adventure' and waited for Thursday's signal.

25

   Mimi nodded to Quasimodo, who pulled the string. The steel plate shot out and Das Kapital and Mein Kampf came together, their conflicting ideologies starting to generate heat. The books turned brown, smouldered for a moment and then, as Mimi and Quasimodo scurried away, the two volumes reached critical mass, turned white hot, and exploded. The detonation echoed down the footnoterphone pipes, followed by a deathly silence. They had done it. The footnoterphone conduit was destroyed – Libris and Tweed were cut off from Text Grand Central.

26

   'Thursday! It's Mimi, are you there?'

27

   'They are rerouting messages through the auxiliary ducts past Spy Thrillers and through Horror. If you haven't got a vote, get one now!'

Something rotten

Jasper Fforde


"Thursday Next", #4

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Jasper Fforde
Something rotten
(Thursday Next #4)

   For Maddy, Rosie, Jordan & Alexander
   With all my love

Dramatis Personae

   Thursday Next: Ex-operative from Swindon's literary detective office of SpecOps 27 and currently head of Jurisfiction, the policing agency that operates within fiction to safeguard the stability of the written word.
   Friday Next: Thursday's son, aged two.
   Granny Next: Resident of Goliath Twilight Homes, Swindon. Aged no and cannot die until she has read the ten most boring classics.
   Wednesday Next: Thursday's mother. Resides in Swindon.
   Landen Parke-Laine: Husband of Thursday who hasn't existed since he was eradicated in 1947 by the Goliath Corporation, eager to blackmail Miss Next.
   Mycroft Next: Inventor uncle of Thursday's and last heard of living in peaceful retirement within the backstory of the Sherlock Holmes series. Designer of Prose Portal and sarcasm early warning device, among many other things. Husband to Polly.
   Colonel Next: A time-travelling knight errant, he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard, a sort of temporal policing agency. Despite this, he is still about and meets Thursday from time to time.
   Cat, formerly known as Cheshire: The ex-Wonderland Uberlibrarian at the Great Library. And Jurisfiction agent.
   Pickwick: A pet dodo of very little brain.
   Bowden Cable: Colleague of Thursday's at the Swindon Literary Detectives.
   Victor Analogy: Head of Swindon Literary Detectives.
   Braxton Hicks: Overall commander of the Swindon Special Operations network.
   Daphne Farquitt: Romance writer whose talent is inversely proportional to her sales.
   The Goliath Corporation: Vast, unscrupulous multinational corporation keen on spiritual and global domination.
   Commander Trafford Bradshaw: Popular hero in 1920s ripping adventure stories for boys, now out of print and notable Jurisfiction agent,
   Melanie Bradshaw (Mrs): A gorilla, married to Commander Bradshaw.
   Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Emperor Zhark, The Red Queen, Falstaff, Vernham Deane: All Jurisfiction operatives, highly trained.
   Yorrick Kaine: Whig politician and publishing media tycoon. Also right-wing Chancellor of England, soon to be made dictator. Fictional, and sworn enemy of Thursday Next.
   President George Formby: Octogenarian President of England and deeply opposed to Yorrick Kaine and all that he stands for.
   Wales: A socialist republic.
   Lady Emma Hamilton: Consort of Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson and lush. Upset when her husband inexplicably died at the beginning of the battle of Trafalgar. Lives in Mrs Next's spare room.
   Hamlet: A Danish prince with a propensity for prevarication.
   SpecOps: Short for Special Operations, the governmental departments that deal with anything too rigorous for the ordinary police to handle. Everything from time travel to good taste.
   Bartholomew Stiggins: Commonly known as 'Stig'. Neanderthal re-engineered from extinction, he heads SpecOps 13 (Swindon), the policing agency responsible for re-engineered species such as mammoths, dodos, sabre-toothed tigers and chimeras.
   Chimera: Any unlicensed 'non-evolved life form' created by a hobby genetic sequencer. Illegal and destroyed without mercy.
   St Zvlkx: A thirteenth-century saint whose 'Kevealments' have an uncanny knack of coming true.
   Superhoop: The World Croquet League final. Usually violent, always controversial.
   Lola Vavoom: An actress who does not feature in this novel but has to appear in the dramatis personae owing to a contractual obligation.
   Minotaur: Half-man, half-bull son of Pasiphaë, the Queen of Crete. Escaped from custody and consequently a PageRunner. Whereabouts unknown.
 
   This book has been bundled with Special Features including:
   'The Making of documentary, deleted scenes from all four books, out-takes and much more. To access all these free bonus features, log on to: www.jasperfforde.com/specialtn4.html and enter the code word as directed.
 

Acknowledgements
   Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations.

1
A Cretan Minotaur in Nebraska

   'Jurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency inside books. Working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the many Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction work tirelessly to maintain the continuity of the narrative within the pages of all the books ever written, a sometimes thankless task. Jurisfiction agents live mostly on their wits as they attempt to reconcile the author's original wishes and readers' expectations within a strict and largely pointless set of bureaucratic guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres. I headed Jurisfiction for over two years and was always astounded by the variety of the work: one day I might be attempting to coax the impossibly shy Darcy from the toilets and the next I would be thwarting the Martians' latest attempt to invade Barnaby Rudge. It was challenging and full of bizarre twists. But when the peculiar and downright weird become commonplace you begin to yearn for the banal.'

THURSDAY NEXT – The Jurisfiction Chronicles


   The Minotaur had been causing trouble far in excess of his literary importance. First by escaping from the fantasy-genre PrisonBook Sword of the Zenobians, then by leading us on a merry chase across most of fiction and thwarting all attempts to recapture him. The mythological half-man, half-bull son of Queen Pasiphaë of Crete had been sighted within Riders of the Purple Sage only a month after his escape. We were still keen on taking him alive at this point so we had darted him with a small dose of Slapstick. Theoretically, we needed only to track outbreaks of custard-pie-in-face routines and walking-into-lamp-post gags within fiction to be led to the cannibalistic man-beast. It was an experimental idea and, sadly, also a dismal failure. Aside from Lafeu's celebrated mention of custard in All's Well that Ends Well and the ludicrous four-wheeled chaise sequence in Pickwick Papers, little was noticed. The Slapstick either hadn't been strong enough or had been diluted by the BookWorld's natural aversion to visual jokes.
   In any event we were still searching for him two years later in the Western genre, among the cattle drives that the Minotaur found most relaxing. And it was for this reason that Commander Bradshaw and I arrived at the top of page seventy-three of an obscure pulp from the thirties entitled Death at Double-X Ranch.
   'What do you think, old girl?' asked Bradshaw, whose pith helmet and safari suit were ideally suited to the hot Nebraskan summer. He was shorter than me by almost a head but led age-wise by four decades; his sun-dried skin and snowy-white moustache were a legacy of his many years in Colonial African Fiction: he had been the lead character in the twenty-three 'Commander Bradshaw' novels, last published in 1932 and last read in 1963. Many characters in fiction define themselves by their popularity, but not Commander Bradshaw. Having spent an adventurous and entirely fictional life defending British East Africa against a host of unlikely foes, and killing almost every animal it was possible to kill, he now enjoyed his retirement and was much in demand at Jurisfiction, where his fearlessness under fire and knowledge of the BookWorld made him one of the agency's greatest assets.
   He was pointing at a weathered board that told us the small township not more than half a mile ahead hailed by the optimistic name of Providence and had a population of 2,387.
   I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked around. A carpet of sage stretched all the way to the mountains less than five miles distant. The vegetation had a repetitive pattern that belied its fictional roots. The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author's initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeated itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak. It hadn't bothered me that much to begin with but after two years living inside fiction I had begun to yearn for a world where every tree and rock and hill and cloud had its own unique shape and identity. And the sunsets. I missed them most of all. Even the best-described ones couldn't hold a candle to a real one. I yearned to witness once again the delicate hues of the sky as the sun dipped below the horizon. From red to orange, to pink, to blue, to navy, to black.
   Bradshaw looked across at me and raised an eyebrow quizzically. As 'The Bellman' – the head of Jurisfiction – I shouldn't really be out on assignment at all, but I was never much of a desk jockey and capturing the Minotaur was important. He had killed one of our own, and that made it unfinished business.
   During the past week we had searched unsuccessfully through six civil war epics, three frontier stories, twenty-eight high-quality Westerns and ninety-seven dubiously penned novellas before finding ourselves within Death at Double-X Ranch, right on the outer rim of what might be described as acceptably written prose. We had drawn a blank in every single book. No minotaur, nor even the merest whiff of one, and believe me, they can whiff.
   'A possibility?' asked Bradshaw, pointing at the Providence sign.
   'We'll give it a try,' I replied, slipping on a pair of dark glasses and consulting my list of potential minotaur hiding places. 'If we draw a blank we'll stop for lunch before heading off into The Oklahoma Kid.'
   Bradshaw nodded, opened the breech of the hunting rifle he was carrying and slipped in a cartridge. It was a conventional weapon but loaded with unconventional ammunition. Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw's rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist – all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed. Charges of cruelty failed to have any meaning when at the last Beast Census there were over a million almost identical minotaurs, all safely within the hundreds of books, graphic novels and urns that featured him. Ours was different – an escapee. A PageRunner.
   As we walked closer the sounds of a busy Nebraskan frontier town reached our ears. A new building was being erected and the hammering of nails into lumber punctuated the clop of horses' hoofs, the clink of harnesses and the rumble of cartwheels on compacted earth. The metallic ring of the blacksmith's hammer mixed with the distant tones of a choir from the clapboard church, and all about was the general conversational hubbub of busy townsfolk. We reached the corner of Eckley's Livery Stables and peered cautiously down the main street.
   Providence as we now saw it was happily enjoying the uninterrupted backstory, patiently awaiting the protagonist's arrival in two pages' time. Blundering into the main narrative thread and finding ourselves included within the story was not something we cared to do, and since the Minotaur avoided the primary storyline for fear of discovery we were likely to stumble across him only in places like this. But if, for any reason, the story did come anywhere near, I would be warned – I had a Narrative Proximity Device in my pocket that would sound an alarm if the thread came too close. We could hide ourselves until it passed by.
   A horse trotted past as we stepped up on to the creaky decking that ran along the front of the saloon. I stopped Bradshaw when we got to the swing-doors just as the town drunk was thrown out into the road. The bartender walked out after him, wiping his hands on a linen cloth.
   'And don't come back till you can pay your way!' he yelled, glancing at us both suspiciously.
   I showed the barkeeper my Jurisfiction badge as Bradshaw kept a vigilant lookout. The whole Western genre had far too many gunslingers for its own good; there had been some confusion over the numbers required on the order form when the genre was inaugurated. Working in Westerns could sometimes entail up to twenty-nine gunfights an hour.
   'Jurisfiction,' I told him. 'This is Bradshaw, I'm Next. We're looking for the Minotaur.'
   The barkeeper stared at me coldly.
   'Think you's in the wrong genre, partner,' he said.
   All characters or Generics within a book are graded A to D, one through ten. A-grades are the Gatsbys and Jane Eyres, D-grades the grunts who make up street scenes and crowded rooms. The barkeeper had lines so he was probably a C-2. Smart enough to get answers from but not smart enough to have much character latitude.
   'He might be using the alias Norman Johnson,' I went on, showing him a photo. 'Tall, body of a man, head of a bull, likes to eat people?'
   'Can't help you,' he said, shaking his head slowly as he peered at the photo.
   'How about any outbreaks of Slapstick?' asked Bradshaw. 'Boxing glove popping out of a box, sixteen-ton weights dropping on people, that sort of thing?'
   The barkeeper laughed. 'Ain’t seen no weights droppin’ on nobody, but I heard tell the sheriff got hit in the face with a frying pan last Toosday.'
   Bradshaw and I exchanged glances.
   'Where do we find the sheriff?' I asked.

   We followed the barkeeper's directions and walked along the wooden decking past a barber shop and two grizzled prospectors who were talking animatedly in authentic frontier gibberish. I stopped Bradshaw when we got to an alleyway. There was a gunfight in progress. Or at least, there would have been a gunfight had not some dispute arisen over the times allocated for their respective showdowns. Both sets of gunmen – two dressed in light-coloured clothes, two in dark, with low-slung gunbelts decorated with rows of shiny cartridges – were arguing over their gunfight time slots as two identical ladyfolk looked on anxiously. The town mayor intervened and told them that if there was any more arguments they would both lose their slot times and would have to come back tomorrow, so they reluctantly agreed to toss a coin. The winners of the toss scampered into the main street as everyone dutifully ran for cover. They squared up to one another, hands hovering over their Colt .455 at twenty paces. There was a flurry of action, two loud detonations and one of the gunmen in black hit the dirt while the victor looked on grimly, his opponent's shot having dramatically only removed his hat. His lady rushed up to hug him as he reholstered his revolver with a flourish.
   'What a load of tripe,' muttered Bradshaw. 'The real West wasn't like this!'
   Death at Double-X Ranch was set in 1875 and written in 1908. Close enough to be historically accurate, you would have thought, but no. Most Westerns tended to show a glamorised version of the old West that hadn't really existed. In the real West a gunfight was a rarity, hitting someone with a short-barrelled Colt .45 at anything other than close range a virtual impossibility: 1870s gunpowder generated a huge amount of smoke; two shots in a crowded bar and you would be coughing – and almost blind.
   'That's not the point,' I replied as the dead gunslinger was dragged away. 'Legend is always far more readable, and don't forget we're in pulp at present – poor prose is far more common than good prose and it would be too much to hope that our bullish friend would be hiding out in Zane Grey or Owen Wister.'
   We continued on past the Majestic Hotel as a stagecoach rumbled by in a cloud of dust, the driver cracking his long whip above the horses' heads.
   'Over there,' said Bradshaw, pointing at a building opposite that differentiated itself from the rest of the clapboard town by being made of brick. It had 'Sheriff' painted above the door. We walked quickly across the road, our non-Western garb somewhat out of place among the long dresses, bonnets and breeches, jackets, dusters, vests, gunbelts and bootlace ties. Only permanently billeted Jurisfiction officers troubled to dress up, and many of the agents actively policing the Westerns are characters from the books they patrol – so don't need to dress up anyway.
   We knocked and entered. It was dark inside after the bright exterior and we blinked for few moments as we accustomed ourselves to the gloom. On the wall to our right was a noticeboard liberally covered with Wanted posters – pertaining not only to Nebraska but to the BookWorld in general; a yellowed example offered $300 for information leading to the whereabouts of Big Martin. Below this was a chipped enamelled coffee pot sitting atop a cast-iron stove, and on the wall to the left was a gun cabinet. A tabby cat sprawled upon a large bureau. The far wall was the barred frontage to the cells, one of which held a drunk fast asleep and snoring loudly on a bunk bed. In the middle of the room was a large desk which was stacked high with paperwork – circulars from the Nebraska State Legislature, a few Council of Genres Narrative Law amendments, a campanology society newsletter and a Sears/Roebuck catalogue open at the 'fancy goods' section. Also on the desk were a pair of worn leather boots, and inside these were a pair of feet attached, in turn, to the sheriff. His clothes were predominantly black and could have done with a good wash. A tin star was pinned to his vest and all we could see of his face were the ends of a large grey moustache that poked out from beneath his downturned Stetson. He was fast asleep, and balanced precanously on the rear two legs of a chair which creaked as he snored.
   'Sheriff?'
   No answer.
   'SHERIFF!'
   He awoke with a start, began to get up, overbalanced and tipped over backward. He crashed heavily to the floor and knocked against the bureau, which just happened to have a jug of water resting upon it. The jug tipped over and its contents drenched the sheriff, who roared with shock. The noise upset the cat, which awoke with a cry and leapt up the curtains, which collapsed with a crash on to the cast-iron stove, spilling the coffee and setting fire to the tinder-dry linen drapes. I ran to put it out and knocked against the desk, dislodging the lawman's loaded revolver, which fell to the floor, discharging a single shot which cut the cord of a hanging stuffed moose's head which fell upon Bradshaw. So there were the three of us; me trying to put out the fire, the sheriff covered in water and Bradshaw walking into furniture as he tried to get the moose's head off. It was precisely what we were looking for: an outbreak of unconstrained and wholly inappropriate Slapstick.
   'Sheriff, I'm so sorry about this,' I muttered apologetically, having doused the fire, de-moosed Bradshaw and helped a very damp lawman to his feet. He was over six foot tall, had a weather-beaten face and deep blue eyes. I produced my badge. 'Thursday Next, head of Jurisfiction. This is my partner, Commander Bradshaw.'
   The sheriff relaxed and even managed a thin smile. 'Thought you was more of them Baxters,' he said, brushing himself down and drying his hair with a 'Cathouses of Dawson City' tea cloth. 'I'm mighty glad you're not. Jurisfiction, hey? Ain’t seen none of yous around these parts for longer than I care to remember – quit it, Howell.'
   The drunk, Howell, had awoken and was demanding a tipple 'to set him straight'.
   'We're looking for the Minotaur,' I explained, showing the sheriff the photograph.
   He rubbed his stubble thoughtfully and shook his head.
   'Don't recall ever seeing this critter, Missy Next.'
   'We have reason to believe he passed through your office not long ago – he's been marked with Slapstick.'
   'Ah!' said the sheriff. 'I was a-wonderin’ ’bout all that. Me and Howell here have been trippin' and a-stumblin' for a whiles now – ain’t we, Howell?'
   'You're darn tootin’,' said the drunk.
   'He could be in disguise and operating under an alias,' I ventured. 'Does the name Norman Johnson mean anything to you?'
   'Can't say it does, Missy. We have twenty-six Johnsons here but all are C-7s – not 'portant 'nuff to have fust names.'
   I sketched a Stetson on to the photograph of the Minotaur, then a duster, vest and gunbelt.
   'Oh!' said the sheriff with a sudden look of recognition. 'That Mr Johnson.'
   'You know where he is?'
   'Sure do. Had him in the cells only last week on charges of eatin’ a cattle rustler.'
   'What happened?'
   'Paid his bail and wuz released. Ain’t nothing in the statutes of Nebraska that says you can't eat rustlers. One moment.'
   There had been a shot outside followed by several yells from startled townsfolk. The sheriff checked his Colt, opened the door and walked out. Alone on the street and facing him was a young man with an earnest expression, hand quivering around his gun, the elegantly tooled holster of which I noticed had been tied down – a sure sign of yet another potential gunfight.
   'Go home, Abe!' the sheriff called out. 'Today's not a good day for dyin’.'
   'You killed my pappy,' said the youth, 'and my pappy's pappy. And his pappy's pappy. And my brothers Jethro, Hank, Hoss, Red, Peregrine, Marsh, Junior, Dizzy, Luke, Peregrine, George an' all the others. I'm callin’ you out, lawman.'
   'You said Peregrine twice.'

   'He wuz special.'
   'Abel Baxter,' whispered the sheriff out of the corner of his mouth, 'one of them Baxter boys. They turn up regular as clockwork, and I kill ’em same ways as regular.'
   'How many have you killed?' I whispered back.
   'Last count, 'bout sixty. Go home, Abe, I won't tell yer again!'
   The youth caught sight of Bradshaw and me and said:
   'New deputies, Sheriff? Yer gonna need ’em!'
   And it was then that we saw that Abel Baxter wasn't alone. Stepping out from the stables opposite were four disreputable-looking characters. I frowned. They seemed somehow out of place in Death at Double-X Ranch. For a start, none of them wore black, nor did they have tooled-leather double gunbelts with nickel-plated revolvers. Their spurs didn't clink as they walked and their holsters were plain and worn high on the hip – the weapon these men had chosen was the Winchester rifle. I noticed with a shudder that one of the men had a button missing on his frayed vest and the sole on the toe of his boot had come adrift. Flies buzzed around their unwashed and grimy faces and the sweat marks on their hats had stained halfway to the crown. These weren't C-2 generic gunfighters from pulp, but well-described A-ys from a novel of high descriptive quality – and if they could shoot as well as they had been realised by the author, we were in trouble.
   The sheriff sensed it too.
   'Where yo' friends from, Abe?'
   One of the men hooked his Winchester into the crook of his arm and answered in a low Southern drawl:
   'Mr Johnson sent us.'
   And they opened fire. No waiting, no drama, no narrative pace. Bradshaw and I had already begun to move – squaring up in front of a gunman with a rifle might seem terribly macho but for survival purposes it was a non-starter. Sadly, the sheriff didn't realise this until it was too late. If he had survived until page 164, as he was meant to, he would have taken a slug, rolled twice in the dust after a two-page build-up and lived long enough to say a pithy final goodbye to his sweetheart who would have cradled him in his bloodless dying moments. Not to be. Realistic violent death was to make an unwelcome entry into Death at Double-X. The heavy lead shot entered the sheriff's chest and came out the other side, leaving an exit wound the size of a saucer. He collapsed inelegantly on to his face and lay perfectly still, one arm sprawled outward in a manner unattainable in life and the other hooked beneath him. He didn't collapse flat, either. He ended up bent over on his knees with his backside in the air.
   The gunmen stopped firing as soon as there was no target – but Bradshaw, his hunting instincts alerted, had already drawn a bead on the sheriff's killer and fired. There was an almighty detonation, a brief flash and a large cloud of smoke. The eraserhead hit home and the gunman disintegrated mid-stride into a brief chrysanthemum of text which scattered across the main street, the meaning of the words billowing out into a blue haze which hung near the ground for a moment or two before evaporating.
   'What are you doing?' I asked, annoyed at his impetuosity.
   'Him or us, Thursday,' replied Bradshaw grimly, pulling the lever down on his Martini-Henry to reload, 'him or us.'
   'Did you see how much text he was composed of?' I replied angrily. 'He was almost a paragraph long. Only featured characters get that kind of description – somewhere there's going to be a book one character short!'
   'But,' replied Bradshaw in an aggrieved tone, 'I didn't know that before I shot him, now, did I?'
   I shook my head. Perhaps Bradshaw hadn't noticed the missing button, the sweat stains and the battered shoes, but I had. Erasure of a featured part meant more paperwork than I really wanted to deal with. From form F36/34 (discharge of an eraserhead) and form B9/32 (replacement of featured part) to the P13/36 (narrative damage assessment), I could be bogged down for two whole days. I had thought bureaucracy was bad in the real world, but here in the paper world it was everything.
   'So what do we do?' asked Bradshaw. 'Ask politely for them to surrender?'
   'I'm thinking,' I replied, pulling out my footnoterphone and pressing the button marked Cat. In fiction, the commonest form of communication was by footnote, but way out here . . .
   'Blast!' I muttered again. 'No signal.'
   'Nearest repeater station is in The Virginian,' observed Bradshaw as he replaced the spent cartridge and closed the breech before peering outside. 'And we can't bookjump direct from pulp to classic.'
   He was right. We had been crossing from book to book for almost six days, and although we could escape in an emergency, such a course of action would give the Minotaur more than enough time to escape. Things weren't good, but they weren't bad either – yet.
   'Hey!' I yelled from the sheriff's office. 'We want to talk!'
   'Is that a fact?' came a clear voice from outside. 'Mr Johnson says he's all done talkin’ – less you be in mind to offer amnesty.'
   'We can talk about that!' I replied.
   There was a beeping noise from my pocket.
   'Blast,' I mumbled, consulting the Narrative Proximity Device. 'Bradshaw, we've got a story thread inbound from the east, two hundred and fifty yards and closing. Page seventy-four, line six.'
   Bradshaw quickly opened his copy of Death at Double-X Ranch and ran a finger along the line:
   '. . . McNeil rode into the town of Providence, Nebraska, with fifty cents in his pocket and murder on his mind . . .'
   I peered cautiously out of the window. Sure enough, a cowboy on a bay horse was riding slowly into town. Strictly speaking it didn't matter if we changed the story a little as the novella had been read only sixteen times in the past ten years, but the code by which we worked was fairly unequivocal. 'Keep the story as the author intended!' was a phrase bashed into me early on during my training. I had broken it once and suffered the consequences – I didn't want to do it again.
   'I need to speak to Mr Johnson,' I yelled, keeping an eye on McNeil, who was still some way distant.
   'No one speaks to Mr Johnson less Mr Johnson says so,' replied the voice, 'but if you'll be offerin’ an amnesty, he'll take it and promise not to eat no more people.'
   'Was that a double negative?' whispered Bradshaw with disdain. 'I do so hate them.'
   'No deal unless I meet Mr Johnson first!' I yelled back.
   'Then there's no deal!' came the reply.
   I looked out again and saw three more gunmen appear. The Minotaur had clearly made a lot of friends during his stay in the Western genre.
   'We need back-up,' I murmured.
   Bradshaw clearly thought the same. He opened his TravelBook and pulled out something that looked a little like a flare gun. This was a textmarker, which could be used to signal to other Jurisfiction agents. The TravelBook was dimensionally ambivalent; the device was actually larger than the book that contained it.
   'Jurisfiction know we're in Western Pulp; they just don't know where. I'll send them a signal.'
   He dialled in the sort of textmark he was going to place using a knob on the back of the gun, then moved to the door, aimed the marker into the air and fired. There was a dull thud and the projectile soared into the sky. It exploded noiselessly high above us and for an instant I could see the text of the page in a light grey against the blue of the sky. The words were back to front, of course, and as I looked at Bradshaw's copy of Death at Double-X Ranch I noticed the written word 'ProVIDence' had been partially capitalised. Help would soon arrive – a show of force would deal with the gunman. The problem was, would the Minotaur make a run for it or fight it out to the end?
   'Purty fireworks don't scare us, missy,' said the voice again. 'You comin' out, or do wes have to come in and get yer?'
   I looked across at Bradshaw, who was smiling.
   'What?'
   'This is all quite a caper, don't you think?' said the commander, chuckling like a schoolboy who had just been caught scrumping apples. 'Much more fun than hunting elephant, wrestling lions to the ground and returning tribal knick-knacks stolen by unscrupulous foreigners.'
   'I used to think so,' I said under my breath. Two years of assignments like these had been enjoyable and challenging, but not without their moments of terror, uncertainty and panic – and I had a two-year-old son who needed more attention than I could give him. The pressure of running Jurisfiction had been building for a long time now and I needed a break in the real world – a long one. I had felt it about six months before, just after the adventure that came to be known as The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, but had shrugged it off. Now the feeling was back – and stronger.
   A low, deep rumble began somewhere overhead. The windows rattled in their frames and dust fell from the rafters. A crack opened up in the plaster and a cup vibrated off the table to break on the floor. One of the windows shattered and a shadow fell across the street. The deep rumble grew in volume, drowned out the Narrative Proximity Device that was wailing plaintively, then became so loud it didn't seem like a sound at all – just a vibration that shook the sheriff's office so strongly my sight blurred. Then, as the clock fell from the wall and smashed into pieces, I realised what was going on.
   'Oh . . . NO!' I howled with annoyance as the noise waned to a dull roar. 'Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!'
   'Emperor Zhark?' queried Bradshaw.

   'Who else would dare pilot a Zharkian Battle Cruiser into Western Pulp?'
   We looked outside as the vast spaceship passed overhead, its vectored thrusters swivelling downward with a hot rush of concentrated power that blew up a gale of dust and debris and set the livery stables on fire. The huge bulk of the battle cruiser hovered for a moment as the landing gear unfolded, then made a delicate touchdown – right on top of McNeil and his horse, who were squashed to the thickness of a ha'penny.
   My shoulders sagged as I watched my paperwork increase exponentially. The townsfolk ran around in panic and horses bolted as the A-7 gunmen fired pointlessly at the ship's armoured hull. Within a few moments the interstellar battle cruiser had disgorged a small army of foot-soldiers carrying the very latest Zharkian weaponry. I groaned. It was not unusual for the emperor to go overboard at moments like this. Undisputed villain of the eight 'Emperor Zhark' books, the most feared Tyrannical God-Emperor of the known Galaxy just didn't seem to comprehend the meaning of restraint.
   In a few minutes it was all over. The A-7s had either been killed or escaped to their own books, and the Zharkian Marine Corps had been dispatched to find the Minotaur. I could have saved them the trouble. He would be long gone. The A-7s and McNeil would have to be sourced and replaced, the whole book rejigged to remove the twenty-sixth-century battle cruiser that had arrived uninvited into 1875 Nebraska. It was a flagrant breach of the Anti-Cross-Genre Code that we attempted to uphold within fiction. I wouldn't have minded so much if this had been an isolated incident, but Zhark did this too often to be ignored. I could hardly control myself as the emperor descended from his starship with an odd entourage of aliens and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who also worked for Jurisfiction.
   'WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYING AT?!?'
   'Oh!' said the emperor, taken aback at my annoyance, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see us!'
   'The situation was bad but not irredeemable,' I told him, sweeping my arm in the direction of the town. 'Now look what you've done!'
   He looked around. The confused townsfolk had started to emerge from the remains of the buildings. Nothing so odd as this had happened in Western since an alien brain-sucker had escaped from SF and been caught inside Wild Horse Mesa.
   'You do this to me every time! Have you no conception of stealth and subtlety?'
   'Not really,' said the emperor, looking at his hands nervously. 'Sorry.'
   His alien entourage, not wanting to hang around in case they also got an earful, walked, slimed or hovered back into Zhark's ship.
   'You sent a textmarker—'
   'So what if we did? Can't you enter a book without destroying everything in sight?'
   'Steady on, Thursday,' said Bradshaw, laying a calming hand on my arm, 'we did ask for assistance, and if old Zharky here was the closest, you can't blame him for wanting to help. After all, when you consider that he usually lays waste to entire galaxies, torching just the town of ProVIDence and not the whole of Nebraska was actually quite an achievement . . .' His voice trailed off before he added: '. . . for him.'
   'AHHH!' I yelled in frustration, holding my head. 'Sometimes I think I'm—'
   I stopped. I lost my temper now and again, but rarely with my colleagues, and when that happens, things are getting bad. When I started this job it was great fun, as it still was for Bradshaw. But just lately the enjoyment had waned. It was no good. I'd had enough. I needed to go home.
   'Thursday?' asked Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, concerned by my sudden silence. 'Are you okay?'
   She came too close and spined me with one her quills. I yelped and rubbed my arm while she jumped back and hid a blush. Six-foot-high hedgehogs have their own brand of etiquette.
   'I'm fine,' I replied, dusting myself down. 'It's just that things have a way of, well, spiralling out of control.'
   'What do you mean?'
   'What do I mean? What do I mean? Well, this morning I was tracking a mythological beast using a trail of custard pie incidents across the old West, and this afternoon a battle cruiser from the twenty-sixth century lands in ProVIDence, Nebraska. Doesn't that sound sort of crazy?'
   'This is fiction,' replied Zhark in all innocence, 'odd things are meant to happen.'
   'Not to me,' I said with finality. 'I want to see some sort of semblance of. . . of reality in my life.'
   'Reality?' echoed Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. 'You mean a place where hedgehogs don't talk or do washing?'
   'But who'll run Jurisfiction?' demanded the emperor. 'You were the best we ever had!'
   I shook my head, threw up my hands and walked over to where the ground was peppered with the A-7 gunman's text. I picked up a 'D' and turned it over in my hands.
   'Please reconsider,' said Commander Bradshaw, who had followed me. 'I think you'll find, old girl, that reality is much overrated.'
   'Not overrated enough, Bradshaw,' I replied with a shrug. 'Sometimes the top job isn't the easiest one.'
   'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,' murmured Bradshaw, who probably understood me better than most. He and his wife were the best friends I had in the BookWorld; Mrs Bradshaw and my son were almost inseparable.
   'I knew you wouldn't stay for good,' continued Bradshaw, lowering his voice so the others didn't hear. 'When will you go?'
   I shrugged.
   'Soon as I can. Tomorrow.'
   I looked around at the destruction that Zhark had wrought upon Death at Double-X. There would be a lot of clearing up, a mountain of paperwork – and there might be the possibility of disciplinary action if the Council of Genres got wind of what had happened.
   'I suppose I should complete the paperwork on this debacle first,' I said slowly. 'Let's say three days.'
   'You promised to stand in for Joan of Arc while she attended a martyrs refresher course,' added Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who had tiptoed closer.
   I'd forgotten about that.
   'A week, then. I'll be off in a week.'
   We all stood in silence, I pondering my return to Swindon, and all of them considering the consequences of my departure – except Emperor Zhark, who was probably thinking about invading the Planet Thraal, for fun.
   'Your mind is made up?' asked Bradshaw. I nodded slowly. There were other reasons for me to return to the real world, more pressing than Zhark's gung-ho lunacy. I had a husband who didn't exist, and a son who couldn't spend his life cocooned inside books. I had retreated into the old Thursday, the one who preferred the black-and-white certainties of policing fiction to the ambiguous mid-tone greys of emotion.
   'Yes, my mind's made up,' I said, smiling. I looked at Bradshaw, the emperor and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. For all their faults, I'd enjoyed working with them. It hadn't been all bad. Whilst at Jurisfiction I had seen and done things I wouldn't have believed. I'd watched grammasites in flight over the pleasure domes of Xanadu, felt the strangeness of listeners glittering on the dark stair. I had cantered bareback on unicorns through the leafy forests of Zenobia and played chess with Ozymandias, the King of Kings. I had flown with Biggies on the Western Front, locked cutlasses with Long John Silver and explored the path not taken to walk upon England's mountains green. But despite all these moments of wonder and delight, my heart belonged back home in Swindon and to a man named Landen Parke-Laine. He was my husband, the father of my son, he didn't exist, and I loved him.