The well of lost plots (14 page)

It was Marianne Dashwood and she had been puffing away at a small cigarette as we rounded the corner. She quickly threw the butt away and held her breath for as long as possible before coughing and letting out a large cloud of smoke.

“Commander!” she wheezed, eyes watering. “Promise you won’t tell!”

“My lips are sealed,” replied Bradshaw sternly, “just this once.”

Marianne breathed a sigh of relief and turned to me. “Miss Next!” she enthused. “Welcome back to our little book. I trust you are well?”

“Quite well,” I assured her, passing her the Marmite, Mintolas and AA batteries I had promised her from my last visit. “Will you make sure these get to your sister and mother?”

She clapped her hands with joy and took the gifts excitedly. “You are a darling!” she said happily. “What can I do to repay you?”

“Don’t let Lola Vavoom play you in the movie.”

“Out of my hands,” she replied unhappily, “but if you need a favor, I’m here!”

We made our way up the servants’ staircase and into the hall above where a much bedraggled Bellman was walking towards us, shaking his head and holding the employment demands that Humpty-Dumpty had thrust into his hands.

“Those Orals get more and more militant every day,” he gasped. “They are planning a forty-eight-hour walkout tomorrow.”

“What effect will that have?” I asked.

“I should have thought that would be obvious,” chided the Bellman. “Nursery rhymes will be unavailable for recall. In the Outland there will be a lot of people thinking they have bad memories. It won’t do the slightest bit of good — a storybook is usually in reach wherever a nursery rhyme is told.”

“Ah,” I said.

“The biggest problem,” added the Bellman, mopping his brow, “is that if we give in to the nursery rhymsters, everyone
else
will want to renegotiate their agreements — from the poeticals all the way through to nursery stories and even characters in jokes. Sometimes I’m glad I’m up for retirement — then someone like you can take over, Commander Bradshaw!”

“Not me!” he said grimly. “I wouldn’t be the Bellman again for all the
T
’s in
Little Tim Tottle’s twin sisters take time tittle-tattling in a tuttle-tuttle tree — twice
.”

The Bellman laughed and we entered the ballroom of Norland Park.

“Have you heard?” said a young man who approached us with no small measure of urgency in his voice. “The Red Queen had to have her leg amputated. Arterial thrombosis, the doctor told me.”

“Really?” I said. “When?”

“Last week. And that’s not all.” He lowered his voice. “
The Bellman has gassed himself
!”

“But we were just talking to him,” I replied.

“Oh,” said the young man, thinking hard. “I meant
Perkins
has gassed himself.”

Miss Havisham joined us.

“Billy!” she said in a scolding tone. “That’s quite enough of that. Buzz off before I box your ears!”

The young man looked deflated for a moment, then pulled himself up, announced haughtily that he had been asked to write additional dialogue for John Steinbeck and strode off. Miss Havisham shook her head sadly.

“If he ever says ‘good morning,’ ” she said, “don’t believe him. All well, Trafford?”

“Top-notch, Estella, old girl, top-notch. I bumped into Tuesday here in the Well.”

“Not selling parts of your book, were you?” she asked mischievously.

“Good heavens, no!” replied Bradshaw, feigning shock and surprise. “Goodness me,” he added, staring into the room for some form of escape, “I must just speak to the Warrington Unitary — I mean the authority of Cat — wait — I mean, the Cat formerly known as Cheshire. Good day!”

And tipping his pith helmet politely, he was gone.

“Bradshaw, Bradshaw,” sighed Miss Havisham, shaking her head sadly. “If he flogs one more inciting incident from
Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser
, it will have so many holes we could use it as a colander.”

“He needed the money to buy a dress for Mrs. Bradshaw,” I explained.

“Have you met her yet?”

“Not yet.”

“When you do, don’t stare, will you? It’s very rude.”

“Why would I—”

“Come along! Almost time for roll call!”

The ballroom of Norland Park had long since been used for nothing but Jurisfiction business. The floor space was covered with tables and filing cabinets, and the many desks were piled high with files tied up with ribbon. There was a table to one side with food upon it, and waiting for us — or the Bellman, at least — were the staff at Jurisfiction. About thirty operatives were on the active list, and since up to ten of them were busy on assignment and five or so active in their own books, there were never more than fifteen people in the office at any one time. Vernham Deane gave me a cheery wave as we entered. He was the resident cad and philanderer in a Daphne Farquitt novel entitled
The Squire of High Potternews
, but you would never know to talk to him — he had always been polite and courteous to me. Next to him was Harris Tweed, who had intervened back at the Slaughtered Lamb only the day before.

“Miss Havisham!” he exclaimed, walking over and handing us both a plain envelope. “I’ve got your bounty for those grammasites you killed; I split it equally, yes?”

He winked at me, then left before Havisham could say anything.

“Thursday!” said Akrid Snell, who had approached from another quarter. “Sorry to dash off like that yesterday — hello, Miss Havisham — I heard you got swarmed by a few grammasites; no one’s ever shot six Verbisoids at one go before!”

“Piece of cake,” I replied. “And, Akrid, I’ve still got that, er, thing you bought.”

“Thing? What thing?”

“You remember,” I urged, knowing that trying to influence his own narrative was strictly forbidden, “the
thing
. In a bag. You know.”

“Oh! Ah . . . ah, yes,” he said, finally realizing what I was talking about. “The
thing
thing. I’ll pick it up after work, yes?”

“Snell insider-trading again?” asked Havisham quietly as soon as he had left.

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’d do the same if my book was as bad as his.”

I looked around to see who else had turned up. Sir John Falstaff was there, as was King Pellinore, Deane, Lady Cavendish, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle with Emperor Zhark in attendance, Gully Foyle, and Perkins.

“Who are they?” I asked Havisham, pointing to two agents I didn’t recognize.

“The one on the left holding the pumpkin is Ichabod Crane. Beatrice is the other. A bit loud for my liking, but good at her job.”

I thanked her and looked around for the Red Queen, whose open hostility to Havisham was Jurisfiction’s least-well-kept secret; she was nowhere to be seen.

“Hail, Miss Next!” rumbled Falstaff, waddling up and staring at me unsteadily from within a cloud of alcohol fumes. He had drunk, stolen and womanized throughout
Henry IV
parts I and II, then inveigled himself into
Merry Wives of Windsor
. Some saw him as a likable rogue; I saw him as just plain revolting — although he
was
the blueprint of likable debauchers in fiction everywhere, so I thought I should try to cut him a bit of slack.

“Good morning, Sir John,” I said, trying to be polite.

“Good morning to
you
, sweet maid,” he exclaimed happily. “Do you ride?”

“A little.”

“Then perhaps you might like to take a ride up and down the length of my merry England? I could take you places and show you things—”

“I must politely decline, Sir John.”

He laughed noisily in my face. I felt a flush of anger rise within me, but luckily the Bellman, unwilling to waste any more time, had stepped up to his small dais and tingled his bell.

“Sorry to keep you all waiting,” he muttered. “As you have seen, things are a little fraught outside. But I am delighted to see so many of you here. Is there anyone still to come?”

“Shall we wait for Godot?” inquired Deane.

“Anyone know where he is?” asked the Bellman. “Beatrice, weren’t you working with him?”

“Not I,” replied the young woman. “You might inquire this of Benedict if he troubles to attend, but you would as well speak to a goat.”

“The sweet lady’s tongue does abuse to our ears,” said Benedict, who had been seated out of our view but now rose to glare at Beatrice. “Were the fountain of your mind clear again, that I might water an ass at it.”

“Ah!” retorted Beatrice with a laugh. “Look, he’s winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike!”

“Dear Beatrice,” returned Benedict, bowing low, “I was looking for a fool when I found you.”

“You, Benedict? Who has not so much brain as earwax?”

He thought hard for a moment. “Methink’st thou art a general offense and every man should beat thee, fair Beatrice.”

They narrowed their eyes at each other and then smiled with polite enmity.

“All right, all right,” interrupted the Bellman, “calm down, you two. Do you know where Agent Godot is or not?”

Beatrice answered that she didn’t.

“Then,” announced the Bellman, “we’ll get on. Jurisfiction meeting number 40319 is now in session.”

He tingled his bell again, coughed and consulted his clipboard.

“Item one. Our congratulations go to Deane and Lady Cavendish for foiling the bowdlerisers in Chaucer.”

There were a few words of encouragement and backslapping.

“There has been damage done but it’s got no worse, so let’s just try and keep an eye out in the future. Item two.”

He put down his clipboard and leaned on the lectern.

“Remember that craze a few years back in the BookWorld for sending chain letters? Receive a letter and send one on to ten friends? Well, someone has been overenthusiastic with the letter
U
— I’ve got a report here from the Text Sea Environmental Protection Agency saying that reserves of the letter
U
have reached dangerously low levels — we need to decrease consumption until stocks are brought back up. Any suggestions?”

“How about using a lower-case
n
upside down?” said Benedict.

“We tried that with
M
and
W
during the great
M
Migration of ’62; it never worked.”

“How about
respelling
what, what?” suggested King Pellinore, stroking his large white mustache. “Any word with the
our
ending could be spelt
or
, don’tchaknow.”

“Like
neighbor
instead of
neighbour
?”

“It’s a good idea,” put in Snell. “
Labor, valor, flavor, harbor
— there must be hundreds. If we confine it to one geographical area, we can claim it as a local spelling idiosyncrasy.”

“Hmm,” said the Bellman, thinking hard, “do you know, it just might work.”

He looked at his clipboard again. “Item three — Tweed, are you here?”

Harris Tweed signaled from where he was standing.

“Good,” continued the Bellman. “I understand you were pursuing a PageRunner who had taken up residence in the Outland?”

Tweed glanced at me and stood up.

“Fellow by the name of Yorrick Kaine. He’s something of a big cheese in the Outland — runs Kaine Publishing and has set himself up as head of his own political party—”

“Yes, yes,” said the Bellman impatiently, “and he stole
Cardenio
, I know. But the point is, where is he now?”

“He went back to the Outland, where I lost him,” replied Tweed.

“The Council of Genres are not keen to sanction any work in the real world,” said the Bellman slowly, “it’s too risky. We don’t even know which book Kaine is from — and since he’s not doing anything against us at present, I think he should stay in the Outland.”

“But Kaine is a real danger to
our
world,” I exclaimed.

Considering Kaine’s righter-than-right politics, this was a fresh limit to the word
understatement
.

“He has stolen from the Great Library once,” I continued. “How can we suppose he won’t do the same again? Don’t we have a duty to the readers to protect them from fictionauts hellbent on—”

“Ms. Next,” interrupted the Bellman, “I understand what you are saying, but I am
not
going to sanction an operation in the Outland. I’m sorry, but that is how it is going to be. He goes on the PageRunners’ register and we’ll set up textual sieves on every floor of the library in case he plans to come back. Out there you may do as you please; here you do as we tell you. Is that clear?”

I grew hot and angry but Miss Havisham squeezed my arm, so I remained quiet.

“Good,” carried on the Bellman, consulting his clipboard. “Item four. Text Grand Central have reported several attempted incursions from the Outland. Nothing serious, but enough to generate a few ripples in the Ficto-Outland barrier. Miss Havisham, didn’t you report that an Outlander company was doing some research into entering fiction?”

It was true. Goliath had been attempting entry into the BookWorld for many years but with little success; all they had managed to do was extract a stodgy gunge from volumes one to eight of
The World of Cheese
. Uncle Mycroft had sought refuge in the Sherlock Holmes series to avoid them.

“It was called the
Something
Company,” replied Havisham thoughtfully.

“Goliath,” I told her. “It’s called the
Goliath
Corporation.”

“Goliath. That was it. I had a look round while I was retrieving Miss Next’s TravelBook.”

“Do you think their technology is that far advanced?” asked the Bellman.

“No. They’re still a long way away. They’d been trying to send an unmanned probe into
The Listeners
, but from what I saw, with little success.”

“Okay,” replied the Bellman, “we’ll keep an eye on them. What was their name again?”

“Goliath,” I said.

He made a note.

“Item five. All of the punctuation has been stolen from the final chapter of
Ulysses
. Probably about five hundred assorted full stops, commas, apostrophes and colons.” He paused for a moment. “Vern, weren’t you doing some work on this?”