3
Three witches, multiple choice and sarcasm

   'Jurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency that works inside books. Under a remit from the Council of Genres and working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction comprise a mixed bag of characters, most drawn from the ranks of fiction but some, like Harris Tweed and myself, from the real world. Problems in fiction are noticed by "spotters" employed at Text Grand Central, and from there relayed to the Bellman, a ten-yearly elected figure who runs Jurisfiction under strict guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres. Jurisfiction has its own code of conduct, technical department, canteen, and resident washerwoman.'

THURSDAY NEXT – The Jurisfiction Chronicles


   Mrs Singh didn't waste the opportunity, and she gathered together several other trainee pathologists she knew from the Well. They all sat spellbound as I recounted the limited information I possessed. Exhausted, I managed to escape four hours later. It was evening when I finally got home. I opened the door to the flying boat and kicked off my shoes. Pickwick rushed up to greet me and tugged excitedly at my trouser leg. I followed her through to the living room and then had to wait while she remembered where she had left her egg. We finally found it rolled behind the hi-fi and I congratulated her, despite there being no change in its appearance.
   I returned to the kitchen, ibb and obb had been studying Mrs Beeton all day, and ibb was attempting steak Diane with french fries. Landen used to cook that for me and I suddenly felt very lonesome and small, so far from home I might very well be on Pluto, obb was putting the final touches to a fully decorated four-tier wedding cake.
   'Hello, ibb,' I said, 'how's it going?'
   'How's what going?' replied the Generic in that annoying literal way in which they speak. 'And I'm obb.'
   'Sorry – obb.'
   'Why are you sorry? Have you done something?'
   'Never mind.'
   I sat down at the table and opened a package that had arrived. It was from Miss Havisham and contained the Jurisfiction Standard Entrance Exam. Jurisfiction was the policing agency within fiction that I had joined almost by accident – I had wanted to get Jack Schitt out of 'The Raven' and getting involved with the agency seemed to be the best way to learn. But Jurisfiction had grown on me and I now felt strongly about maintaining the solidity of the written word. It was the same job I had undertaken at SpecOps, just from the other side. But it struck me that, on this occasion, Miss Havisham was wrong – I was not yet ready for full membership.
   The hefty tome consisted of five hundred questions, nearly all of them multiple choice. I noticed that the exam was self-invigilating; as soon as I opened the book a clock in the top left-hand corner started to count down from two hours. They were mostly questions about literature, which I had no problem with. Jurisfiction law was trickier and I would probably need to consult Miss Havisham. I made a start and ten minutes later was pondering question forty-six: Which of the following poets never used the outlawed word 'majestic' in their work? when there was a knock at the door accompanied by a peal of thunder.
   I closed the exam book and opened the door. On the jetty were three ugly old crones dressed in filthy rags. They had bony features, rough and warty skin, and they launched into a well-rehearsed act as soon as the door opened.
   'When shall we three meet again?' said the first witch. 'In Thurber, Wodehouse, or in Greene?'
   'When the hurly-burly's done,' added the second, 'when the story's thought and spun!'
   There was a pause until the second witch nudged the third.
   'That will be Eyre the set of sun,' she said quickly.
   'Where the place?'
   'Within the text.'
   'There to meet with MsNext!'
   They stopped talking and I stared, unsure of what I was meant to do.
   'Thank you very much,' I replied, but the first witch snorted disparagingly and "wedged her foot in the door as I tried to close it.
   'Prophecies, kind lady?' she asked as the other two cackled hideously.
   'I really don't think so,' I answered, pushing her foot away. 'Perhaps another time.'
   'All hail, MsNext! hail to thee, citizen of Swindon!'
   'Really, I'm sorry – and I'm out of change.'
   'All hail, MsNext, hail to thee, full Jurisfiction agent, thou shalt be!'
   'If you don't go,' I began, starting to get annoyed, 'I'll—'
   'All hail, MsNext, thou shalt be Bellman thereafter!'
   'Sure I will. Go on, clear off, you imperfect speakers – bother someone else with your nonsense!'
   'A shilling!' said the first. 'And we shall tell you more – or less, as you please.'
   I closed the door despite their grumbling and went back to my multiple choice. I'd only just answered question forty-nine: Which of the following is not a gerund? when there was another knock at the door.
   'Blast!' I muttered, getting up and striking my ankle on the table leg. It was the three witches again.
   'I thought I told you—'
   'Sixpence, then,' said the chief hag, putting out a bony hand.
   'No,' I replied firmly, rubbing my ankle. 'I never buy anything at the door.'
   They all started up then:
   'Thrice to thine and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up–'
   I shut the door again. I wasn't superstitious and had far more important things to worry about. I had just sat down again, sipped my tea and answered the next question: Who wrote 'Toad of Toad Hall'? when there was another rap at the door.
   'Right,' I said to myself, marching across the room, 'I've had it with you three.'
   I pulled open the door and said:
   'Listen here, hag, I'm really not interested, nor ever will be in your … Oh.'
   I stared. Granny Next. If it had been Admiral Lord Nelson himself I don't think I could have been more surprised.
   'Gran!?!' I exclaimed. 'What on earth are you doing here?'
   She was dressed in a spectacular outfit of blue gingham, from her dress to her overcoat and even her hat, shoes and bag.
   I hugged her. She smelt of Bodmin for Women. She hugged me in return in that sort of fragile way that very elderly people do. And she was elderly – a hundred and eight, at the last count.
   'I have come to look after you, young Thursday,' she announced.
   'Er – thank you, Gran,' I replied, wondering quite how she got here.
   'You're going to have a baby and need attending to,' she added grandly. 'My suitcase is on the jetty and you're going to have to pay the taxi.'
   'Of course,' I muttered, going outside and finding a yellow cab with TransGenreTaxis written on the door.
   'How much?' I asked the cabby.
   'Seventeen and six.'
   'Oh yes?' I replied sarcastically. 'Took the long way round?'
   'Trips to the the Well cost double,' said the cabby. 'Pay up or I'll make sure Jurisfiction hears about it.'
   I handed him a pound and he patted his pockets.
   'Sorry,' he said, 'have you got anything smaller? I don't carry much change.'
   'Keep it,' I told him as his footnoterphone muttered something about a party often wanting to get out of Florence in The Decameron. I got a receipt and he vanished from view. I picked up Gran's suitcase and hauled it into the Sunderland.
   'This is ibb and obb,' I explained, 'Generics billeted with me. The one on the left is ibb.'
   'I'm obb.'
   'Sorry. That's ibb and that's obb. This is my grandmother.'
   'Hello,' said Granny Next, gazing at my two house guests.
   'You're very old,' observed ibb.
   'One hundred and eight,' announced Gran proudly. 'Do you two do anything but stare?'
   'Not really,' said ibb.

   'Plock,' said Pickwick, who had popped her head round the door. She ruffled her feathers excitedly and rushed up to greet Gran, who always seemed to have a few spare marshmallows about her.
   'What's it like being old?' asked ibb, who was peering closely at the soft pink folds in Gran's skin.
   'Death's adolescence,' replied Gran, 'but you know the worst part?'
   Ibb and obb shook their heads.
   'I'm going to miss my funeral by three days.'
   'Gran!' I scolded. 'You'll confuse them – they tend to take things literally.'
   It was too late.
   'Miss your own funeral?' muttered ibb, thinking hard. 'How is that possible?'
   'Think about it, ibb,' said obb. 'If she lived three days longer, she'd be able to speak at her own funeral – get it?'
   'Of course,' said ibb, 'stupid of me.'
   And they went into the kitchen, talking about Mrs Beeton and the best way to deal with amorous liaisons between the scullery maid and the boot boy – it must have been an old edition.
   'When's supper?' asked Gran, looking disdainfully at the interior of the flying boat. 'I'm absolutely famished – but nothing tougher than suet, mind. The gnashers aren't what they were.'
   I delicately helped her out of her gingham coat and sat her down at the table. Steak Diane would be like eating railway sleepers to her, so I started to make an omelette.
   'Now, Gran,' I said, cracking some eggs into a bowl, 'I want you to tell me what you're doing here.'
   'I need to be here to remind you of things you might forget, young Thursday.'
   'Such as what?'
   'Such as Landen. They eradicated my husband too, and the one thing I needed was someone to help me through it, so that's what I'm here to do for you.'
   'I'm not going to forget him, Gran!'
   'Yes,' she agreed in a slightly peculiar way, 'I'm here to make sure of it.'
   'That's the why,' I persisted, 'but what about the how?'
   'I too used to do the occasional job for Jurisfiction in the old days,' she explained, 'a long time ago, mind, but it was just one of many jobs that I did in my life – and not the strangest, either.'
   'What was?' I asked, knowing in my heart that I really shouldn't be asking.
   'Well, I was God Emperor of the Universe once,' she answered in the same manner in which she might have admitted to going to the pictures, 'and being a man for twenty-four hours was pretty weird.'
   'Yes,' I replied, 'I expect it was.'

   Ibb laid the table and we sat down to eat ten minutes later. As Gran sucked on her omelette I tried to make conversation with ibb and obb. The trouble was, neither of them had the requisite powers of social communication to assimilate anything from speech other than the bald facts it contained. I tried a joke I had heard from Bowden, my partner at SpecOps, about an octopus and a set of bagpipes. But when I delivered the punchline they both stared at me.
   'Why would the bagpipes be dressed in pyjamas?' asked ibb.
   'They weren't,' I replied, 'it was the tartan. That's just what the octopus thought they were.'
   'I see,' said obb, not seeing at all. 'Would you mind going over it again?'
   'That's it,' I said resolutely, 'you're going to have a personality if it kills me.'
   'Kill you?' enquired ibb in all seriousness. 'Why would it kill you?'
   I thought carefully. There had to be somewhere to begin. I clicked my fingers.
   'Sarcasm,' I said. 'We'll start with that.'
   They both looked at me blankly.
   'Well,' I began, 'sarcasm is closely related to irony and implies a twofold view – a literal meaning yet a wholly different intention from what is said. For instance, if you were lying to me about who ate all the anchovies I left in the cupboard, and you had eaten them, you might say: "It wasn't me" and I would say: "Sure it wasn't," meaning I'm sure it was but in an ironic or sarcastic manner.'
   'What's an anchovy?' asked ibb.
   'A small and very salty fish.'
   'I see,' replied ibb. 'Does sarcasm work with other things or is it only fish?'
   'No, the stolen anchovies was only by way of an example. Now you try.'
   'An anchovy?'
   'No, you try some sarcasm.'
   They continued to look at me blankly. I sighed.
   'Like trying to nail jelly to the wall,' I muttered under my breath.
   'Plock,' said Pickwick in her sleep as she gently keeled over. 'Plocketty-plock.'
   'Sarcasm is better explained through humour,' put in Gran, who had been watching my efforts with interest. 'You know that Pickwick isn't too clever?'
   Pickwick stirred in her sleep where she had fallen, resting on her head with her claws in the air.
   'Yes, we know that,' replied ibb and obb, who were nothing if not observant.
   'Well, if I were to say that it is easier to get yeast to perform tricks than Pickwick, I'm using mild sarcasm to make a joke.'
   'Yeast?' queried ibb. 'But yeast has no intelligence.'
   'Exactly,' replied Gran. 'So I am making a sarcastic observation that Pickwick has less brain power than yeast. You try.'
   The Generic thought long and hard.
   'So,' said ibb slowly, 'how about … Pickwick is so clever she sits on the TV and stares at the sofa?'
   'It's a start,' said Gran.
   'And,' added ibb, gaining confidence by the second, 'if Pickwick went on Mastermind, she'd do best to choose "Dodo eggs" as her specialist subject.'
   Obb was getting the hang of it, too.
   'If a thought crossed her mind it would be the shortest journey on record—'
   'Pickwick would cause a sensation at Oxford – but only from within a specimen jar—'
   'All right, that's enough sarcasm,' I said quickly. 'I know Pickwick won't win "Brain of BookWorld" but she's a loyal companion.'
   I looked across at Pickwick, who slid off the sofa and landed with a thump on the floor. She woke up and started plocking loudly at the sofa, coffee table, rug – in fact, anything close by – before calming down, climbing on top of her egg and falling asleep again.
   'You did well, guys,' I said. 'Another time we'll tackle subtext.'
   Ibb and obb went to their room soon afterwards, discussing how sarcasm was related to irony, and whether irony itself could be generated in laboratory conditions. Gran and I chatted about home. Mother was very well, it seemed, and Joffy and Wilbur and Orville were as mad as ever. Gran, conscious of my dealings with Yorrick Kaine in the past, reported that Kaine had returned soon after the episode with the Glatisant at Volescamper Towers, lost his seat in the house and been back at the helm of his newspaper and publishing company soon after. I knew he was fictional and a danger to my world but couldn't see what to do about it from here. We talked into the night about the BookWorld, Landen, eradications and having children. Gran had had three herself so she told me all the stuff they don't tell you when you sign on the dotted line.
   'Think of swollen ankles as trophies,' she said, somewhat unhelpfully.

   That night I put Gran in my room and slept in the bedroom under the flight deck. I washed, undressed and climbed into bed, weary after the day's work. I lay there, staring at the pattern of reflected light dancing on the ceiling, and thought of my father, Emma Hamilton, Jack Spratt, Dream Topping and babies. I was meant to be here resting but the demolition problem of Caversham Heights couldn't be ignored – I could have moved but I liked it here, and besides, I had done enough running away already. The arrival of Gran had been strange, but since much was odd here in the Well, weird had become commonplace. If things carried on like this the dull and meaningless would become items of spectacular interest.

4
Landen Parke-Laine

   'They say that no one really dies until you forget them, and in Landen's case it was especially true. Since Landen had been eradicated I had discovered that I could bring him back to life in my memories and my dreams, and I had begun to look forward to falling asleep and returning to treasured moments which we could share, albeit only fleetingly.
   'Landen lost a leg to a landmine and his best friend to a military blunder. The friend had been my brother, Anton – and Landen testified against him at the hearing that followed the disastrous "Charge of the Light Armoured Brigade" in 1973. My brother was blamed for the debacle, Landen was honourably discharged and I was awarded the Crimea Star for gallantry. We didn't speak for ten years, and we were married two months ago. Some people say it was an unorthodox romance – but I never noticed this myself

THURSDAY NEXT – TheJurisfiction Chronicles


   That night, I went to the Crimea again. Not, you might think, the most obvious port of call in my sleep. The peninsula had been a constant source of anguish in my waking hours: a time of stress, of pain, and violent death. But the Crimea was where I met Landen, and where we fell in love. The memories were more dear to me now because it had never happened, and it was for this reason that the Crimea's sometimes painful recollections came back to me. I relaxed and was transported in the arms of Morpheus to the Black Sea peninsula, twelve years before.
   No shots had been fired for ten years when I arrived on the peninsula in the May of 1973 although the conflict itself had been going for a hundred and twenty years. I was attached to the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armoured Brigade as a driver – I was twenty-three years old and drove thirteen tons of armoured vehicle under the command of Major Phelps, who was later to lose his lower arm and his mind during a badly timed charge into the massed Russian artillery. In my youthful naïveté, I had thought the Crimea was fun – a notion that was soon to change.
   'Report to the vehicle pool at fourteen hundred hours,' I was told one morning by our sergeant, a kindly yet brusque man by the name of Tozer. He would survive the charge but be lost in a training accident eight years later. I was at his funeral. He was a good man.
   'Any idea what I'll be doing, Sarge?' I asked.
   Sergeant Tozer shrugged.
   'Special duties. I was told to allocate someone intelligent – but they weren't available, so you'll have to do.'
   I laughed.
   'Thanks, Sarge.'
   I dreamed this scene more often these days, and the reason was clear – it was the first time Landen and I spent any time together. My brother Anton was also serving out here and he had introduced us a few weeks before – but Anton did that a lot. Today I was to drive Landen in an armoured scout car to an observation post overlooking a valley in which a build-up of Imperial Russian artillery had been reported. We referred to the incident as 'our first date'.
   I arrived for duty and was told to sign for a Dingo scout car, a small two-person armoured vehicle with enough power to get out of trouble quick – or into it, depending on one's level of competency. I duly picked up the scout car and waited for nearly an hour, standing in a tent with a lot of other drivers, talking and laughing, drinking tea and telling unlikely stories. It was a chilly day but I was glad I was doing this instead of daily orders, which generally meant cleaning up the camp and other tedious tasks.
   'Corporal Next?' said an officer who poked his head into the tent. 'Drop the tea – we're off!'
   He wasn't handsome but he was intriguing, and, unlike many of the officers, he seemed to have a certain relaxed manner about him.
   'Good morning, sir,' I said, unsure of whether he remembered me. I needn't have worried. I didn't know it yet, but he had specifically asked Sergeant Tozer for me. He was intrigued too, but fraternising on active duty was a subtle art. The penalties could be severe.
   I led him to where the Dingo was parked and climbed in. I pressed the starter and the engine rumbled into life. Landen lowered himself into the commander's seat.
   'Seen Anton recently?' he asked.
   'He's up the coast for a few weeks,' I told him.
   'Ah,' he replied, 'you made me fifty pounds when you won the ladies' boxing last weekend. I'm very grateful.'
   I smiled and thanked him but he wasn't paying me any attention – he was busy studying a map.
   'We're going here, Corporal.'
   I studied the chart. It was the closest to the front lines I'd ever been. To my shame, I found the perceived danger somewhat intoxicating. Landen sensed it.
   'It's not as wildly exciting as you might think, Next. I've been up there twenty times and was only shelled once.'
   'What was it like?'
   'Disagreeably noisy. Take the road to Balaclava – I'll tell you when to turn right.'
   So we bumped off up the road, past a scene of such rural tranquillity that it was hard to imagine that two armies were facing each other not ten miles away with enough firepower to lay the whole peninsula to waste.
   'Ever seen a Russian?' he asked as we passed military trucks supporting the front-line artillery batteries; their sole job was to lob a few shells towards the Russians – just to show we were still about.
   'Never, sir.'
   'They look just like you and me, you know.'
   'You mean they don't wear big furry hats and have snow on their shoulders?'
   The sarcasm wasn't wasted.
   'Sorry,' he said, 'Ididn't mean to patronise. How long have you been out here?'
   'Two weeks.'
   'I've been here two years,' said Landen, 'but it might as well be two weeks. Take a right at the farmhouse just ahead.'
   I slowed down and cranked the wheel round to enter the dusty farm track. The springs on a Dingo are quite hard – it was a jarring ride along the track, which passed empty farm buildings, all bearing the scars of long-past battles. There was old and rusting armour and other war debris lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumour had it that in the middle of no man's land there were still artillery pieces dating from the nineteenth century. We stopped at a checkpoint, Landen showed his pass and we drove on, a soldier joining us up top 'as a precaution'. He had a second ammunition clip taped to the first in his weapon – always a sign of someone who expected trouble – and a dagger in his boot. He had only fourteen words and twenty-one minutes left before he was to die in a small spinney of trees that in happier times might have been a good place for a picnic. The bullet would enter below his left shoulder blade, deflect against his spine, go straight through his heart and exit three inches below his armpit, whereupon it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and I would relate what happened to his parents eighteen months later. His mother would cry and his father would thank me with a dry throat. But the soldier didn't know that. These were my memories, not his.
   'Russian spotter plane!' hissed the doomed soldier.
   Landen ordered me back to the trees. The soldier had eleven words left. He would be the first person I saw killed in the conflict but by no means the last. As a civvy you are protected from such unpleasantries but in the forces it is commonplace – and you never get used to it.
   I pulled the wheel hard over and doubled back towards the spinney as fast as I could. We halted under the protective cover of the trees and watched the small observation plane from the dappled shade. We didn't know it at the time but an advance party of Russian commandos were pushing towards the lines in our direction. The observation post we were heading for had been overrun half an hour previously and the commandos were being supported by the spotter plane we had seen – and behind them, twenty Russian battle tanks with infantry in support. The attack was to fail, of course, but only by virtue of the VHF wireless set carried in the Dingo. I would drive us out of there and Landen would call in an air strike. That was the way it had happened. That was the way it had always happened. Brought together in the white heat and fear of combat. But as we sat beneath the cover of the birch trees, huddled down in the scout car, the only sound the coo of a partridge and the gentle thrum of the Dingo's engine, we knew nothing – and were concerned only that the spotter plane that wheeled above us would delay our arrival at the OP.
   'What's it doing?' whispered Landen, shielding his eyes to get a better look.
   'Looks like a Yak-12,' replied the soldier.

   Six words left and under a minute. I had been looking up with them but now glanced out of the hatch at the front of the scout car. My heart missed a beat as I saw a Russian run and jump into a natural hollow a hundred yards in front of the Dingo.
   'Russkie! I gasped. 'Hundred yards twelve o'clock!'
   I reached up to close the viewing hatch but Landen grabbed my wrist.
   'Not yet!' he whispered. 'Put her in gear.'
   I did as I was told as Landen and the soldier twisted around to look.
   'What have you got?' hissed Landen.
   'Five, maybe six,' the soldier whispered back, 'heading this way.'
   'Me too,' muttered Landen. 'Go, Corporal, go!'
   I revved the engine, dropped the clutch and the Dingo lunged forward. Almost instantaneously there was a rasp of machine-gun fire as the Russians opened up. To them, we were a surprise ruined. I heard the closer rattle of gunfire as our soldier replied, along with the sporadic crack of a pistol that I knew was Landen. I didn't close the steel viewing hatch; I needed to be able to see as much as I could. The scout car bounced across the track and swerved before gathering speed with the metallic spang of small-arms fire hitting the armour plate. I felt a weight slump against my back and a bloodied arm fell into my vision.
   'Keep going!' shouted the soldier. 'And don't stop until I say!' He let go another burst of fire, took out the spent clip, knocked the new magazine on his helmet, reloaded and fired again.
   'That wasn't how it happened—!' I muttered aloud, the soldier having gone way over his allotted time and word count. I looked at the bloodied hand that had fallen against me. A feeling of dread began to gnaw slowly inside me. The fuel gauge was still intact – shouldn't it have been shattered when the soldier was shot? Then I realised. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.

   I sat bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The strength of the memories had lessened with the years but here was something new, something unexpected. I replayed the images in my head, watching the bloodstained hand fall again and again. It all felt so horribly real. But there was something, just there outside my grasp, something that I should know but didn't – a loss that I couldn't explain, an absence of some sort I couldn't place—
   'Landen,' said a soft voice in the darkness, 'his name was Landen.'
   'Landen—!' I cried. 'Yes, yes, his name was Landen.'
   'And he didn't die in the Crimea. The soldier did.'
   'No, no, I just remembered him dying—!'
   'You remembered wrong.'
   It was Gran, sitting beside me in her gingham nightie. She held my hand tightly and gazed at me through her spectacles, her grey hair adrift and hanging down in wispy strands. And with her words, I began to remember. Landen had survived – he must have done in order to call up the air strike. But even now, awake, I could remember him lying dead beside me. It didn't make sense.
   'He didn't die?'
   'No.'
   I picked up the picture I had sketched of him from the bedside table.
   'Did I ever see him again?' I asked, studying the unfamiliar face.
   'Oh, yes,' replied Gran. 'Lots and lots. In fact, you married him.'
   'I did, didn't I?' I cried, tears coming to my eyes as the memories returned. 'At the Blessed Lady of the Lobster in Swindon! Were you there?'
   'Yes,' said Gran, 'wouldn't have missed it for the world.'
   I was still confused.
   'What happened to him? Why isn't he with me now?'
   'He was eradicated,' replied Gran in a low voice, 'by Lavoisier – and Goliath.'
   'I remember,' I answered, the darkness in my mind made light as a curtain seemed to draw back and everything that had happened flooded in. 'Jack Schitt. Goliath. They eradicated Landen to blackmail me. But I failed. I didn't get him back – and that's why I'm here.'
   I stopped.
   'But … but how could I possibly forget him? I was only thinking about him yesterday! What's happening to me?'
   'It's Aornis, my dear,' explained Gran, 'she is a mnemonomorph. A memory-changer. Remember the trouble you had with her back home?'
   I did, now she mentioned it. Gran's prompting broke the delicate veil of forgetfulness that cloaked her presence in my mind – and everything about Hades' little sister returned to me as though hidden from my conscious memory. Aornis, who had sworn revenge for her brother's death at my hands; Aornis, who could manipulate memories as she chose; Aornis, who had nearly brought about a gooey Dream Topping armageddon. But Aornis wasn't from here. She lived in—
   '—the real world,' I murmured out loud. 'How can she be here, inside fiction? In Caversham Heights of all places?'
   'She isn't,' replied Gran. 'Aornis is only in your mind. It isn't all of her, either – simply a mindworm, a sort of mental virus. She is – resourceful, adaptable and spiteful; I know of no one else who can have an independent life within someone else's memory.'
   'So how do I get rid of her?'
   I have some experience of mnemonomorphs from my youth,' replied Gran, 'but some things you have to defeat on your own. Stay on your toes and we will speak often and at length.'
   'Then this isn't over yet?'
   'No,' replied Gran sadly, shaking her head, 'I wish it were. Be prepared for a shock, young Thursday – tell me Landen's name in full.'
   'Don't be ridiculous!' I scoffed. 'It's Landen Parke—'
   I stopped as a cold fear welled up inside my chest. Surely I could remember my own husband's name? But try as I might, I could not. I looked at Gran.
   'Yes, I do know,' she replied, 'but I'm not going to tell you. When you remember, you will know you have won.'

5
The Well of Lost Plots

   'Footnoterphone: Although the idea of using footnotes as a communication medium was suggested by Dr Faustus as far back as 1622, it wasn't until 1856 that the first practical footnoterphone was demonstrated. By 1895 an experimental version was built into Hard Times, and within the next three years most of Dickens was connected. The system was expanded rapidly, culminating in the first trans-genre trunk line, opened with much fanfare in 1915 between Human Drama and Crime. The network has been expanded and improved ever since, but just recently the advent of mass junkfootnoterphones and the deregulation of news and entertainment channels have almost clogged the system. A mobilefootnoterphone network was introduced in 1985.'

UA OF W CAT – The Jurisfiction Guide to the Creat Library (glossary)


   Gran had got up early to make my breakfast and I found her asleep in the armchair with the kettle almost molten on the stove and Pickwick firmly ensnared in her knitting. I made some coffee and cooked myself breakfast despite feeling nauseous. ibb and obb wandered in a little later and told me they had 'slept like dead people' and were so hungry they could 'eat a horse between two mattresses'. They were just tucking in to my breakfast when there was a rap at the door. It was Akrid Snell, one half of the Perkins & Snell series of detective fiction. He was about forty, dressed in a sharp fawn suit with a matching fedora and with a luxuriant red moustache. He was one of Jurisfiction's lawyers and had been appointed to represent me; I was still facing a charge of fiction infraction after I changed the ending of Jane Eyre.
   'Hello!' he said. 'Welcome to the BookWorld!'
   'Thank you. Are you well?'
   'Just dandy!' he replied. 'I got Oedipus off the incest charge. Technicality, of course – he didn't know it was his mother at the time.'
   'Of course,' I remarked, 'and Fagin?'
   'Still due to hang, I'm afraid,' he said more sadly. 'The Gryphon is on to it – he'll find a way out, I'm sure.'
   He was looking around the shabby flying boat as he spoke.
   'Well!' he said at last. 'You do make some odd decisions. I've heard the latest Daphne Farquitt novel is being built just down the shelf – it's set in the eighteenth century and would be a lot more comfortable than this. Did you see the review of my latest book?'
   He meant the book he was featured in, of course – Snell was fictional from the soles of his brogues to the crown of his fedora and, like most fictioneers, a little sensitive about it. I had read the review of Wax Lyrical for Death and it was pretty scathing; tact was of the essence in situations like these.
   'No, I think I must have missed it.'
   'Oh!' he replied. 'Well, it was really … really quite good, actually. I was glowingly praised as: "Snell is … very good … well rounded is … the phrase I would use" and the book itself was described as: "Surely the biggest piece of … 1986." There's talk of a boxed set, too. Listen, I wanted to tell you that your fiction infraction trial will probably be next week. I tried to get another postponement but Hopkins is nothing if not tenacious; place and time to be decided upon.'
   'Should I be worried?' I asked, thinking about the last time I had faced a court here in the BookWorld. It had been in Kafka's The Trial and had turned out predictably unpredictable.
   'Not really,' admitted Snell. 'Our "strong readership approval" defence should count for something – after all, you did actually do it, so just plain lying might not help so much after all. Listen,' he went on without stopping for breath, 'Miss Havisham asked me to introduce you to the wonders of the Well – she would have been here this morning but she's on a grammasite extermination course.'
   'We saw a grammasite in Great Expectations,' I told him.
   'So I heard. You can never be too careful as far as grammasites are concerned.' He looked at ibb and obb, who were just finishing off my bacon and eggs. 'Is this breakfast?'
   I nodded.
   'Fascinating! I've always wondered what a breakfast looked like. In our books we have twenty-three dinners, twelve lunches and eighteen afternoon teas – but no breakfasts.' He paused for a moment. 'And why is orange jam called marmalade, do you suppose?'
   I told him I didn't know and passed him a mug of coffee.
   'Do you have any Generics living in your books?' I asked.
   'A half-dozen or so at any one time,' he replied, spooning in some sugar and staring at ibb and obb, who, true to form, stared back. 'Boring bunch until they develop a personality, then they can be quite fun. Trouble is, they have an annoying habit of assimilating themselves into a strong leading character, and it can spread among them like a rash. They used to be billeted en masse but that all changed after we lodged six thousand Generics inside Rebecca. In under a month all but eight had become Mrs Danvers. Listen, I don't suppose I could interest you in a couple of housekeepers, could I?'
   'I don't think so,' I replied, recalling Mrs Danvers' slightly abrasive personality.
   'Don't blame you,' replied Snell with a laugh.
   'So now it's only limited numbers per novel?'
   'You learn fast. We had a similar problem with Merlins. We've had aged-male-bearded-wizard-mentor types coming out of our ears for years.'
   He leaned closer.
   'Do you know how many Merlins the Well of Lost Plots has placed over the past fifty years?'
   'Tell me.'
   'Nine thousand!' he breathed. 'We even altered plot lines to include older male mentor figures! Do you think that was wrong?'
   'I'm not sure,' I said, slightly confused.
   'At least the Merlin type is a popular character,' added Snell. 'Stick a new hat on him and he can appear pretty much anywhere. Try getting rid of thousands of Mrs Danvers. There isn't a huge demand for creepy fifty-something housekeepers; even buy-two-get-one-free deals didn't help – we use them on anti-mispeling duty, you know. A sort of army.'
   'What's it like?' I asked.
   'How do you mean?'
   'Being fictional.'
   'Ah!' replied Snell slowly. 'Yes – fictional.'
   I realised too late that I had gone too far – it was how I imagined a dog would feel if you brought up the question of distemper in polite conversation.
   'I forgive your inquisitiveness, Miss Next, and since you are an Outlander I will take no offence. If I were you I shouldn't enquire too deeply about the past of fictioneers. We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot. After basic training at St Tabularasa's I progressed to the Dupin School for Detectives; I went on field trips around the works of Hammett, Chandler and Sayers before attending a postgraduate course at the Agatha Christie Finishing School. I would have liked to have been an original but I was born seventy years too late for that.'
   He stopped and paused for reflection. I was sorry to have raised the point. It can't be easy, being an amalgamation of all that has been written before.
   'Right!' he said, finishing his coffee. 'That's enough about me. Ready?'
   I nodded.
   'Then let's go.'
   So, taking my hand, he transported us both out of Caversham Heights and into the endless corridors of the Well of Lost Plots.

   The Well was similar to the Library as regards the fabric of the building – dark wood, thick carpet, tons of shelves – but here the similarity ended. Firstly, it was noisy. Tradesmen, artisans, technicians and Generics all walked about the broad corridors appearing and vanishing as they moved from book to book, building, changing and deleting to the author's wishes. Crates and packing cases lay scattered about the corridor and people ate, slept and conducted their business in shops and small houses built in the manner of an untidy shanty town. Advertising hoardings and posters were everywhere, promoting some form of goods or services unique to the business of writing.'[5]
   'I think I'm picking up junk footnoterphone messages, Snell,' I said above the hubbub. 'Should I be worried?'
   'You get them all the time down here,' he replied. 'Ignore them – and never pass on chain footnotes.'[6]
   We were accosted by a stout man wearing a sandwich board advertising bespoke plot devices 'for the discerning wordsmith'.
   'No thank you,' yelled Snell, taking me by the arm and walking us to a quieter spot between Dr Forthright's Chapter Ending Emporium and the Premier Mentor School.
   'There are twenty-six floors in the Well,' he told me, waving a hand towards the bustling crowd. 'Most of them are chaotic factories of fictional prose like this one but the twenty-sixth sub-basement has an entrance to the Text Sea – we'll go down there and see them offloading the scrawltrawlers one evening.'
   'What do they unload?'
   'Words,' smiled Snell, 'words, words and more words. The building blocks of fiction, the DNA of Story.'
   'But I don't see any books being written,' I observed, looking around.
   He chuckled.
   'You Outlanders! Books may look like nothing more than words on a page but they are actually an infinitely complex Imagino-Transference technology that translates odd inky squiggles into pictures inside your head – we're currently using Book Operating System V8.3. Not for long, though – Text Grand Central want to upgrade the system.'
   'Someone mentioned UltraWord™ on the news last night,' I observed.
   'Fancy-pants name. It's BOOK V9 to me and you. WordMaster Libris should be giving us a presentation shortly. UltraWord™ is being tested as we speak – if it's as good as they say it is, books will never be the same again!'
   'Well,' I sighed, trying to get my head around this idea, 'I had always thought novels were just, well, written.'
   'Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,' replied Snell as we walked along. 'The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer's imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader's mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer – perhaps more.'
   This was a new approach; I ran the idea around in my head.
   'Really?' I replied, slightly doubtfully.
   'Of course!' Snell laughed. 'Surf pounding the shingle wouldn't mean diddly unless you'd seen the waves cascade on to the foreshore, or felt the breakers tremble the beach beneath your feet, now, would it?'
   'I suppose not.'
   'Books,' said Snell, 'are a kind of magic.'
   I thought about this for a moment and looked around at the chaotic fiction factory. My husband was or is a novelist – I had always wanted to know what went on inside his head and this, I figured, was about the nearest I'd ever get.[7] We walked on, past a shop called 'A Minute Passed'. It sold descriptive devices for marking the passage of time – this week they had a special on Seasonal Changes.
   'What happens to the books which are unpublished?' I asked wondering whether the characters in Caversham Heights really had so much to worry about.
   'The failure rate is pretty high,' admitted Snell, 'and not just for reasons of dubious merit. Bunyan's Bootscraper by John McSquurd is one of the best books ever written but it's never been out of the author's hands. Most of the dross, rejects or otherwise unpublished just languish down here in the Well until they are broken up for salvage. Others are so bad they are just demolished – the words are pulled from the pages and tossed into the Text Sea.'
   'All the characters are just recycled like waste cardboard or something?'
   Snell paused and coughed politely.
   'I shouldn't waste too much sympathy on the one-dimensionals, Thursday. You'll run yourself ragged and there really isn't the time or resources to recharacterise them into anything more interesting.'
   'Mr Snell, sir?'
   It was a young man in an expensive suit, and he carried what looked like a very stained pillowcase with something heavy in it about the size of a melon.
   'Hello, Alfred!' said Snell, shaking the man's hand. 'Thursday, this is Garcia – he has been supplying the Perkins & Snell series of books with intriguing plot devices for over ten years. Remember the unidentified torso found floating in the Humber in Dead among the Living? Or the twenty-year-old corpse discovered with the bag of money bricked up in the spare room in Requiem for a Safecracker?
   'Of course!' I said, shaking the technician's hand. 'Good intriguing page-turning stuff. How do you do?'
   'Well, thank you,' replied Garcia, turning back to Snell after smiling politely. 'I understand the next Perkins & Snell novel is in the pipeline and I have a little something that might interest you.'
   He held the bag open and we looked inside. It was a head. More importantly, a severed head.
   A head in a bag?' queried Snell with a frown, looking closer.
   'Indeed,' murmured Garcia proudly, 'but not any old head-in-a-bag. This one has an intriguing tattoo on the nape of the neck. You can discover it in a skip, outside your office, in a deceased suspect's deep-freeze – the possibilities are endless.'
   Snell's eyes flashed excitedly. It was the sort of thing his next book needed after the critical savaging of Wax Lyrical for Death.
   'How much?' he asked.
   'Three hundred,' ventured Garcia.
   'Three hundred?!' exclaimed Snell. 'I could buy a dozen head-in-a-bag plot devices with that and still have change for a missing Nazi gold consignment.'
   Garcia laughed. 'No one's using the old "missing Nazi gold consignment" plot device any more. If you don't want the head you can pass – I can sell heads pretty much anywhere I like. I just came to you first because we've done business before and I like you.'
   Snell thought for a moment.
   'A hundred and fifty.'
   'Two hundred.'
   'One seven five.'
   'Two hundred and I'll throw in a case of mistaken identity, a pretty female double agent and a missing microfilm.'
   'Done!'
   'Pleasure doing business with you,' said Garcia as he handed over the head and took the money in return. 'Give my regards to Mr Perkins, won't you?'
   He smiled, shook hands with us both, and departed.
   'Oh, boy!' exclaimed Snell, excited as a kid with a new bicycle. 'Wait until Perkins sees this! Where do you think we should find it?'
   I thought in all honesty that 'head-in-a-bag' plot devices were a bit lame, but being too polite to say so, I said instead:
   'I liked the deep-freeze idea, myself.'
   'Me too!' he enthused as we passed a small shop whose painted headboard read: Backstories built to order. No job too difficult. Painful childhoods a speciality.
   'Backstories?'

  'Sure. Every character worth their salt has a backstory. Come on in and have a look.'
   We stooped and entered the low doorway. The interior was a workshop, small and smoky. There was a workbench in the middle of the room liberally piled with glass retorts, test tubes and other chemical apparatus; the walls, I noticed, were lined with shelves that held tightly stoppered bottles containing small amounts of colourful liquids, all with labels describing varying styles of backstory, from one named idyllic childhood to another entitled valiant war record.
   'This one's nearly empty,' I observed, pointing to a large bottle with: Misguided feelings of guilt over the death of a loved one/partner ten years previously written on the label.
   'Yes,' said a small man in a corduroy suit so lumpy it looked as though the tailor was still inside doing alterations, 'that one's been quite popular recently. Some are hardly used at all. Look above you.'
   I looked up at the full bottles gathering dust on the shelves above. One was labelled Studied squid in Sri Lanka and another Apprentice Welsh mole-catcher.
   'So what can I do for you?' enquired the backstoryist, gazing at us happily and rubbing his hands. 'Something for the lady? Ill-treatment at the hands of sadistic stepsisters? Traumatic incident with a wild animal? No? We've got a deal this week on unhappy love affairs; buy one and you get a younger brother with a drug problem at no extra charge.'
   Snell showed the merchant his Jurisfiction badge.
   'Business call, Mr Grnksghty – this is apprentice Next.'
   'Ah!' he said, deflating slightly. 'The law.'
   'Mr Grnksghty here used to write backstories for the Brontës and Thomas Hardy,' explained Snell, placing his bag on the floor and sitting on a table edge.
   'Ah, yes!' replied the man, gazing at me over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles. 'But that was a long time ago. Charlotte Brontës, now she was a writer. A lot of good work for her, some of it barely used—'
   'Yes, speaking,' interrupted Snell, staring vacantly at the array of glassware on the table. 'I'm with Thursday down in the Well … What's up?'
   He noticed us both staring at him and explained:
   'Footnoterphone. It's Miss Havisham.'
   'It's so rude,' muttered Mr Grnksghty. 'Why can't he go outside if he wants to talk on one of those things?'
   'It's probably nothing but I'll go and have a look,' said Snell, staring into space. He turned to look at us, saw Mr Grnksghty glaring at him and waved absently before going outside the shop, still talking.
   'Where were we, young lady?'
   'You were talking about Charlotte Brontë ordering backstories and then not using them.'
   'Oh, yes.' The man smiled, delicately turning a tap on the apparatus and watching a small drip of an oily coloured liquid fall into a flask. 'I made the most wonderful backstory for both Edward and Bertha Rochester, but do you know she only used a very small part of it?'
   'That must have been very disappointing.'
   'It was.' He sighed. 'I am an artist, not a technician. But it didn't matter. I sold it lock, stock and barrel a few years back to The Wide Sargasso Sea. Harry Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays went the same way. I had Mr Pickwick's backstory for years but couldn't make a sale – I donated it to the Jurisfiction museum.'
   'What do you make a backstory out of, Mr Grnksghty?' ,
   'Treacle, mainly,' he replied, shaking the flask and watching the oily substance change to a gas, 'and memories. Lots of memories. In fact, the treacle is really only there as a binding agent. Tell me, what do you think of this upgrade to Ultra Word™?'
   'I have yet to hear about it properly,' I admitted.
   'I particularly like the idea of ReadZip™,' mused the small man, adding a drop of red liquid and watching the result with great interest. 'They say they will be able to crush War and Peace into eighty-six words and still retain the scope and grandeur of the original.'
   'Seeing is believing,' I replied.
   'Not down here,' Mr Grnksghty corrected me. 'Down here, reading is believing.'
   There was a pause as I took this in.
   'Mr Grnksghty?'
   'Yes?'
   'How do you pronounce your name?'
   At that moment Snell strolled back in.
   'That was Miss Havisham,' he announced, retrieving his head. 'Thank you for your time, Mr Grnksghty – come on, we're off.'
   Snell led me down the corridor past more shops and traders until we arrived at the bronze-and-wood elevators. The doors opened and several small street urchins ran out holding cleft sticks with a small scrap of paper wedged in them.
   'Ideas on their way to the books-in-progress,' explained Snell as we stepped into the elevator. 'Trading must have just started. You'll find the Idea Sales and Loan department on the seventeenth floor.'
   The elevator plunged rapidly downwards.
   'Are you still being bothered by junk footnoterphones?'
   'A little.'[8]
   'You'll get used to ignoring them.'

  The bell sounded and the elevator doors slid open, introducing a chill wind. It was darker than the floor we had just visited and several disreputable-looking characters stared at us from the shadows. I moved to get out but Snell stopped me. He looked about and whispered:
   'This is the twenty-second sub-basement. The roughest place in the Well. A haven for cut-throats, bounty hunters, murderers, thieves, cheats, shape-shifters, scene-stealers, brigands and plagiarists.'
   'We don't tolerate these sorts of places back home,' I murmured.
   'We encourage them here,' explained Snell. 'Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.'
   I could feel the menace as soon as we stepped from the elevator.
   Low mutters were exchanged among several hooded figures who stood close by, the faces obscured by the shadows, their hands bony and white. We walked past two large cats with eyes that seemed to dance with fire; they stared at us hungrily and licked their lips.
   'Dinner,' said one, looking us both up and down. 'Shall we eat them together or one by one?'
   'One by one,' said the second cat, who was slightly bigger and a good deal more fearsome, 'but we'd better wait until Big Martin gets here.'
   'Oh yeah,' said the first cat, retracting his claws quickly, 'so we'd better.'
   Snell had ignored the two cats completely; he glanced at his watch and said:
   'We're going to the Slaughtered Lamb to visit a contact of mine. Someone has been cobbling together Plot Devices from half-damaged units that should have been condemned. It's not only illegal – it's dangerous. The last thing anyone needs is a Do we cut the red wire or the blue wire? plot device going off an hour too early and ruining the suspense – how many stories have you read where the bomb is defused with an hour to go?'
   'Not many, I suppose.'
   'You suppose right. We're here.'
   The gloomy interior of the Slaughtened Lamb was shabby and smelt of beer. Three ceiling fans stirred the smoke-filled atmosphere and a band was playing a melancholy tune in one corner. The dark walls were spaced with individual booths where sombreness was an abundant commodity; the bar in the centre seemed to be the lightest place in the room and gathered there, like moths to a light, were an odd collection of people and creatures, all chatting and talking in low voices. The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic cliches you could have cut it with a knife.
   'See over there?' said Snell, indicating two men who were deep in conversation.
   'Yes.'
   'Mr Hyde talking to Blofeld. In the next booth are Von Stalhein and Wackford Squeers. The tall guy in the cloak is Emperor Zhark, tyrannical ruler of the known galaxy. The one with the spines is Mrs Tiggy-winkle – they'll be on a training assignment, just like us.'
   'Mrs Tiggy-winkle is an apprentice?' I asked incredulously, staring at the large hedgehog who was holding a basket of laundry and sipping delicately at a dry sherry.
   'No; Zhark is the apprentice – Tiggy's a full agent. She deals with children's fiction, runs the Hedge-pigs Society – and does our washing.'
   'Hedge-pigs society?' I echoed. 'What does that do?'
   'They advance hedgehogs in all branches of literature. Mrs Tiggy-winkle was the first to get star billing and she's used her position to further the lot of her species; she's got references into Kipling, Carroll, Aesop and four mentions in Shakespeare. She's also good with really stubborn stains – and never singes the cuffs.'
   'Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth,' I muttered, counting them off on my fingers. 'Where's the fourth?'
   'Henry VI Part 1, act four, scene 1: "hedge-born swaine".'
   'I always thought that was an insult, not a hedgehog,' I observed. 'Swaine can be a country lad just as easily as a pig — perhaps more so.'
   Snell sighed. 'Well, we've given her the benefit of the doubt – it helps with the indignity of being used as a croquet ball in Alice. Don't mention Tolstoy or Berlin when she's about, either – conversation with Tiggy is easier when you avoid talk of theoretical sociological divisions and stick to the question of washing temperatures for woollens.'
   'I'll remember that,' I murmured. 'The bar doesn't look so bad with all those pot plants scattered around, does it?'
   Snell sighed again.
   'They're Triffids, Thursday. The big blobby thing practising golf swings with the Jabberwock is a Krell, and that rhino over there is Rataxis. Arrest anyone who tries to sell you Soma tablets, don't buy any Bottle Imps no matter how good the bargain, and above all don't look at Medusa. If Big Martin or the Questing Beast turn up, run like hell. Get me a drink and I'll see you back here in five minutes.'
   'Right.'
   He departed into the gloom and I was left feeling a bit ill at ease. I made my way to the bar and ordered two drinks. On the other side of the bar a third cat had joined the two I had seen previously. The newcomer pointed to me but the others shook their heads and whispered something in his ear. I turned the other way and jumped in surprise as I came face to face with a curious creature that looked as though it had escaped from a bad science fiction novel – it was all tentacles and eyes. A smile may have flicked across my face because the creature said in a harsh tone:
   'What's the problem, never seen a Thraal before?'
   I didn't understand; it sounded like a form of Courier Bold but I wasn't sure so said nothing, hoping to brazen it out.
   'Hey!' it said. 'I'm talking to you, Two-eyes.'
   The altercation had attracted another man, who looked like the product of some bizarre genetic experiment gone hopelessly wrong.
   'He says he doesn't like you.'
   'I'm sorry.'
   'I don't like you either,' said the man in a threatening tone, adding, as if I needed proof: 'I have the death sentence in seven genres.'
   'I'm sorry to hear that,' I assured him, but this didn't seem to work.
   'You're the one who'll be sorry!'
   'Come, come, Nigel,' said a voice I recognised. 'Let me buy you a drink.'
   This wasn't to the genetic experiment's liking, for he moved quickly to his weapon; there was a sudden blur of movement and in an instant I had my automatic pressed hard against his head – Nigel's gun was still in his shoulder holster. The bar went quiet.
   'You're quick, girlie,' said Nigel. 'I respect that.'
   'She's with me,' said the newcomer. 'Let's all just calm down.'
   I lowered my gun and replaced the safety catch. Nigel nodded respectfully and returned to his place at the bar with the odd-looking alien.
   'Are you all right?'
   It was Harris Tweed. He was a fellow Jurisfiction agent and Outlander, just like me. The last time I had seen him was three days ago in Lord Volescamper's library when we flushed out the renegade fictioneer Yorrick Kaine after he had invoked the Questing Beast to destroy us. Tweed had been carried off by the exuberant bark of a bookhound and I had not seen him since.
   'Thanks for that, Tweed,' I said. 'What did the alien thing want?'
   'He was a Thraal, Thursday – speaking in Courier Bold, the traditional language of the Well. Thraals are not only all eyes and tentacles, but mostly mouth, too – he'd not have harmed you. Nigel, on the other hand, has been known to go a step too far on occasion. What are you doing alone in the twenty-second sub-basement anyway?'
   'I'm not alone. Havisham's busy so Snell's showing me around.'
   'Ah,' replied Tweed, looking about. 'Does this mean you're taking your entrance exams?'
   'Third of the way through the written already. Did you track down Kaine?'
   'No. We went all the way to London, where we lost the scent. Bookhounds don't work so well in the Outland and besides, we have to get special permission to pursue PageRunners into the real world.'
   'What does the Bellman say about that?'
   'He's for it, of course,' replied Tweed, 'but the launch of UltraWord™ has dominated the Council of Genre's discussion time. We'll get round to Kaine in due course.'
   I was glad of this; Kaine wasn't only an escapee from fiction but a dangerous right-wing politician back home. I would be only too happy to see him back inside whatever book he'd escaped from – permanently.
   At that moment Snell returned and nodded a greeting to Tweed, who returned it politely.
   'Good morning, Mr Tweed,' said Snell. 'Will you join us for a drink?'
   'Sadly, I cannot,' replied Tweed. 'I'll see you tomorrow morning at roll-call, yes?'
   'Odd sort of fellow,' remarked Snell as soon as Tweed had left. 'What was he doing here?'
   I handed Snell his drink and we sat down in an empty booth. It was near the three cats and they stared at us hungrily while consulting a large recipe book.
   'I had a bit of trouble at the bar and Tweed stepped in to help.'

   'Good thing, too. Ever see one of these?'
   He rolled a small globe across the table and I picked it up. It was a little like a Christmas decoration but a lot more sturdy. There was a small legend complete with a barcode and ID number printed on the side.
   'Suddenly, a Shot Rang Out! FAD/167945,' I read aloud. 'What does it mean?'
   'It's a stolen freeze-dried Plot Device. Crack it open and pow! – the story goes off at a tangent.'
   'How do we know it's stolen?'
   'It doesn't have a Council of Genres seal of approval. Without one, these things are worthless. Log it as evidence when you get back to the office.'
   He took a sip of his drink, coughed and stared into the glass.
   'W-what is this?'
   'I'm not sure but mine is just as bad.'
   'Not possible. Hello, Emperor, have you met Thursday-Next? Thursday, this is Emperor Zhark.'
   There was a tall man swathed in a high-collared cloak standing next to our table. He had a pale complexion, high cheekbones and a small and very precise goatee. He looked at me with cold dark eyes and raised an eyebrow imperiously.
   'Greetings,' he intoned indifferently. 'You must send my regards to Miss Havisham. Snell, how is my defence looking?'
   'Not too good, Your Mercilessness,' he replied. 'Annihilating all the planets in the Cygnus cluster might not have been a very good move.'
   'It's those bloody Rambosians,' Zhark said angrily. 'They threatened my empire. If I didn't destroy entire star systems no one would have any respect for me; it's for the good of galactic peace, you know – stability, and anyway, what's the point in possessing a devastatingly destructive death-ray if you can't use it?'
   'Well, I should keep that to yourself. Can't you claim you were cleaning it when it went off or something?'
   'I suppose,' said Zhark grudgingly. 'Is there a head in that bag?'
   'Yes,' replied Snell. 'Do you want to have a look?'
   'No thanks. Special offer, yes?'
   'What?'
   'Special offer. You know, clearance sale. How much did you pay for it?'
   'Only a … hundred,' he said, glancing at me. 'Less than that, actually.'
   'You were done.' Zhark laughed. 'They're forty a half-dozen at CrimeScene, Inc. – with double stamps, too.'
   Snell's face flushed with anger and he jumped up.
   'The little scumbag!' he spat. 'I'll have him in a bag when I see him again!'
   He turned to me.
   'Will you be all right getting out on your own?'
   'Sure.'
   'Good,' he replied through gritted teeth. 'See you later!'
   'Hold it!' I said, but it was too late. He had vanished.
   'Problems?' asked Zhark.
   'No,' I replied slowly, holding up the dirty pillowcase. 'He just forgot his head – and careful, Emperor, there's a Triffid creeping up behind you.'
   Zhark turned to face the Triffid, who stopped, thought better of an attack and rejoined his friends, who were cooling their roots at the bar.

   Zhark departed and I looked around. On the next table a fourth cat had joined the other three. It was bigger than the others and considerably more battle scarred – it had only one eye and both ears had large bites taken out of them. They all licked their lips as the newest cat said in a low voice: 'Shall we eat her?'
   'Not yet,' replied the first cat, 'we're waiting for Big Martin.'
   They returned to their drinks but never took their eyes off me. I could imagine how a mouse felt. After ten minutes I decided that I was not going to be intimidated by outsize house pets and got up to leave, taking Snell's head with me. The cats got up and followed me out, down the dingy corridor. Here the shops sold weapons, dastardly plans for world domination and fresh ideas for murder, revenge, extortion and other general mayhem. Generics, I noticed, could just as early be trained in the dark art of being an accomplished evildoer. The cats yowled excitedly and I quickened my step, only to stumble into a clearing among the shanty town of wooden buildings. The reason for the clearing was obvious. Sitting atop an old packing case was another cat. But this one was different. No oversized house cat, this beast was four times the size of a tiger, and it stared at me with ill-disguised malevolence. Its claws were extended and fangs at the ready, glistening slightly with hungry anticipation. I stopped and looked behind me to where the four other cats had lined up and were staring at me expectantly, tails gently lashing the air. A quick glance around the corridor revealed that there was no one near who might offer me any assistance; indeed, most of the bystanders seemed to be getting ready for something of a show. I pulled out my automatic as one of the cats bounded up to the newcomer and said:
   'Can we eat her now, please?'
   The large cat placed one of its claws in the packing case and drew it through the wood like a razor-sharp chisel cutting through soft clay; it stared at me with huge green eyes and said in a deep rumbling voice:
   'Shouldn't we wait until Big Martin gets here?'
   'Yes,' sighed the smaller cat with a strong air of disappointment, 'perhaps we should.'
   Suddenly, the big cat pricked up his ears and jumped from his box into the shadows; I pointed my gun but it wasn't attacking – the overgrown tiger was departing in a panic. The other cats quickly left the scene and pretty soon the bystanders had gone, too. Within a few moments I was completely alone in the corridor, with nothing to keep me company but the rapid thumping of my own heart, and a head in a bag.

6
Night of the grammasites

   'Grammasite: Generic term for a parasitic life form that lives inside books and feeds on grammar. Technically known as Gerunds or Ingers, they were an early attempt to transform nouns (which were plentiful) into verbs (which at the time were not) by simply attaching an 'ing'. A dismal failure at verb resource management, they escaped from captivity and now roam freely in the sub-basements. Although thankfully quite rare in the Library itself, isolated pockets of grammasites are still found from time to time and dealt with mercilessly.'

UA OF W CAT – The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library (glossary)


   I turned, and walked quickly towards the elevators, a strong feeling of impending oddness raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I pressed the 'call' button but nothing happened; I quickly dashed across the corridor and tried the second bank of elevators but with no more success. I was just thinking of running to the stairwell when I heard a noise. It was a distant low moan that was quite unlike any other sort of low moan that I had ever heard, nor would ever want to hear again. I put down the head-in-a-bag as my palms grew sweaty, and although I told myself I was calm, I pressed the call button several more times and reached for my automatic as a shape hove into view from the depths of the corridor. It was flying close to the bookshelves and was something like a bat, something like a lizard and something like a vulture. Covered in patchy grey fur, it was wearing stripy socks and a brightly coloured waistcoat of questionable taste. I had seen this sort of thing before; it was a grammasite, and although dissimilar to the adjectivore I had seen in Great Expectations, I imagined it could do just as much harm – it was little wonder that the residents of the Well had locked themselves away. The grammasite swept past in a flash without noticing me and was soon gone with a rumble like distant artillery. I relaxed slightly, expecting to see the Well spring back into life, but nothing stirred. Far away in the distance, beyond the Slaughtered Lamb, an excited burble reached my straining ears. I pressed the call button again as the noise grew louder and a slight breeze draughted against my face, like the oily zephyr that precedes an underground train. I shuddered. Where I came from a Browning automatic spoke volumes, but how it would work on a grammar-sucking parasite I had no idea – and I didn't think this would be a good time to find out. I was preparing myself to run when there was a melodious 'bing', the call button light came on and one of the elevator pointers started to move slowly towards my floor. I ran across and leaned with my back against the doors, releasing the safety catch on my automatic as the wind and noise increased. By the time the elevator was four floors away the first grammasites had arrived. They looked around the corridor as they flew, sniffing at books with their long snouts and giving off excited squeaks. This was the advance guard. A few seconds later the main flock arrived with a deafening roar. One or two of them poked at books until they fell off the shelves, while other grammasites fell upon the unfinished manuscripts with an excited cry. There was a scuffle as a character burst from a page, only to be impaled by a grammasite who reduced the unfortunate wretch to a few explanatory phrases which were then eaten by scavengers waiting on the sidelines. I had seen enough. I opened fire and straight away got three of them who were devoured in turn by the same scavengers – clearly there was little honour or sense of loss among grammasites; their compatriots merely shuffled into the gaps left by their fallen comrades. I picked off two who were scrabbling at the bookcases attempting to dislodge more books and then turned away to reload. As I did so, another eerie silence filled the corridor. I released the slide on my automatic and looked up. About a hundred or so grammasites were staring at me with their small black eyes, and it wasn't a look that I'd describe as anywhere near friendly. I sighed. What a way to go. I could see my headstone now:


   THURSDAY NEXT
   1950-1986
   SpecOps agent & beloved wife
   to someone who doesn't exist
   Killed for no adequately explained reason
   in an abstract place by an abstract foe


   I raised my gun and the grammasites shuffled slightly, as though deciding among themselves who would be sacrificed in order for them to overpower me. I pointed the gun at whichever one started to move, hoping to postpone the inevitable. The one who seemed to be the leader – he had the brightest-coloured waistcoat, I noted – took a step forward and I pointed my gun at him as another grammasite seized the opportunity and made a sudden leap towards me, its sharpened beak heading straight for my chest. I whirled around in time to see its small black eyes twinkle with a thousand well-digested verbs as a hand on my shoulder pulled me roughly backwards into the elevator. The grammasite, carried on by its own momentum, buried its beak into the wood surround. I reached to thump the close button but my wrist was deftly caught by my as yet unseen saviour.
   'We never run from grammasites.'
   It was a scolding tone of voice that I knew only too well. Miss Havisham. Dressed in her rotting wedding dress and veil, she stared at me with despair. I think I was one of the worst apprentices she had ever trained – or that was the way she made me feel, at any rate.
   'We have nothing to fear except fear itself,' she intoned, whipping out her pocket derringer and dispatching two grammasites who made a rush at the elevator's open door. 'I seem to spend my waking hours extricating you from the soup, my girl!'
   The grammasites were slowly advancing on us; they were now at least three hundred strong and others were joining them. We were heavily outnumbered.
   'I'm sorry,' I replied quickly, curtsying just in case as I loosed off another shot, 'but don't you think we should be departing?'
   'I fear only the Questing Beast,' announced Havisham imperiously. 'The Questing beast, Big Martin … and semolina.'
   She shot another grammasite with a particularly fruity waistcoat and carried on talking. 'If you had troubled to do some homework you would know that these are Verbisoids and probably the easiest grammasite to vanquish of them all.'
   And almost without pausing for breath, Miss Havisham launched into a very croaky and out-of-tune rendition of 'Jerusalem'. The grammasites stopped abruptly and stared at one another. By the time I had joined her at the holy lamb of God line they had begun to back away in fright. We sang louder, Miss Havisham and I, and by dark satanic mills they had started to take flight; by the time we had got to bring me my chariot of fire they had departed completely.
   'Quick!' said Miss Havisham. 'Grab the waistcoats – there's a bounty on each one.'
   We gathered up the waistcoats from the fallen grammasites; it was not a pleasant job – the corpses smelt so strongly of ink that it made me cough. The carcasses would be taken away by a verminator who would boil down the bodies and distil off any verbs he could. In the Well, nothing is wasted.
   'What were the smaller ones?'
   'I forget,' replied Havisham, tying the waistcoats into a bundle. 'Here, you're going to need this. Study it well if you want to pass your exams.'
   She handed me my TravelBook, the one that Goliath had taken; within its pages were almost all the tips and equipment I needed for travel within the BookWorld.
   'How did you manage that?'
   Miss Havisham didn't answer. She snorted and pulled me towards the elevator again. It was clear that the twenty-second sub-basement wasn't a place she liked to be. I couldn't say I blamed her.

   Miss Havisham relaxed visibly as we rose from the sub-basements and into the more ordered nature of the Library itself.
   'Why do grammasites wear stripy socks?' I asked, looking at the bundle of garments on the floor.
   'Probably because spotted ones are out of fashion,' she replied with a shrug, reloading her pistol. 'What's in the bag?'
   'Oh, some – er – shopping of Snell's.'
   Miss Havisham was a bit like a strict parent, your worst teacher and a newly appointed South American dictator all rolled into one. Which wasn't to say I didn't like her or respect her – it was just that I felt I was still nine whenever she spoke to me.
   'So why did we sing "Jerusalem" to get rid of them?'