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'What happens to the books which are unpublished?'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 Most of the dross, rejects or otherwise unpublished just languish down here in the Well until they are broken up for salvage.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
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:
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?'
'As I said, those grammasites were Verbisoids,' she replied without looking up, 'and a Verbisoid, in common with many language students, hates and fears irregular verbs — they much prefer consuming regularverbs with the "ed" word endings. Strong irregulars such as "to sing" with their internal vowel changes — we will sing, we sang, we have sung — tend to scramble their tiny minds.'
'Any irregular verb frightens them off?' I asked with interest.
'Pretty much; but some irregulars are more easy to demonstrate than others — we could cut, I suppose, or even be, but then the proceedings change into something akin to a desperate game of charades — far easier to just sing and have done 'with it.'
'What about if we were to go? I ventured, thinking practically for once. 'There can't be anything more irregular than go, went, gone, can there?'
'Because,' replied Miss Havisham, her patience eroding by the second, 'they might misconstrue it as walked — note the "ed" ending?'
'Not if we ran," I added, not wanting to let this go, 'that's irregular, too.'
Miss Havisham stared at me icily.
'Of course we could. But ran might be seen in the eyes of a hungry Verbisoid to be either trotted, galloped, raced, rushed, hurried, hastened, sprinted or even departed.'
'Ah,' I said, realising that catching Miss Havisham out was about as likely as nailing Banquo's ghost to a coffee table, 'yes, it might, mightn't it?'
'Look,' said Miss Havisham, softening slightly, 'if running away killed grammasites there wouldn't be a single one left. Stick to "Jerusalem" and you won't go far wrong — just don't try it with adjectivores or the parataxis; they'd probably join in — and then eat you.'
The elevator stopped on the eleventh sub-basement, the doors opened and a large Painted Jaguar got in with her son, who had a paddy-paw full of prickles and was complaining bitterly that he had been tricked by a hedgehog and a tortoise, who had both escaped. The Mother Jaguar shook her head sadly, looked to heaven in exasperation and then turned to her son.
'Son, son,' she said, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'what have you been doing that you shouldn't have?'
'So,' said Miss Havisham as the elevator moved off again, 'how are you getting along in that frightful Caversham Heights book?'
'Well, thank you, Miss Havisham,' I muttered, 'the people in it are worried that their book will be demolished from under their feet.'
'With good reason,' replied Havisham. 'I've read it. Hundreds of books like Heights are demolished every day. If you stopped to waste any sympathy, you'd go nuts — so don't. It's man eat man in the Well. I'd keep yourself to yourself and don't make too many friends — they have a habit of dying just when you get to like them. It always happens that way. It's a narrative thing.'
'Heights isn't a bad place to live,' I ventured, hoping to elicit a bit of compassion.
'Doubtless,' she murmured, staring off into the middle distance. 'I remember when I was in the Well, when they were building Great Expectations. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when they told me I would be working with Charles Dickens. Top of my class at Generic College and, without wanting to seem immodest, something of a beauty. I thought I would make an admirable young Estella — both refined and beautiful, haughty and proud, yet ultimately overcoming the overbearing crabbiness of her cantankerous benefactor to find true love.'
'So … what happened?'
'I wasn't tall enough.'
'Tall enough? For a book? Isn't that like having the wrong hair colour for the wireless?'
'They gave the part to a little strumpet who was on salvage from a demolished Thackeray. Little cow. It's no wonder I treat her so rotten — the part should have been mine!'
She fell into silence.
'Let me get this straight,' said the Painted Jaguar, who was having a bit of trouble telling the difference between a hedgehog and a tortoise, 'if it's slow-and-solid I drop him in the water and then scoop him out of his shell—'
'Son, son!' said his mother, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'now attend to me and remember what I say. A hedgehog curls himself up into a ball and his prickles stick out every way—'
'Did you get the Jurisfiction exam papers I sent you?' asked Miss Havisham. 'I've got your practical booked for the day after tomorrow.'
'Oh!' I said.
'Problems?' she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
'No, ma'am, I just feel a bit unprepared — I think I might make a pig's ear of it.'
'I disagree,' she replied, staring at the floor indicator. 'I know you'll make a pig's ear of it. But wheels within wheels. All I ask is you don't make a fool of yourself or lose your life — now that would be awkward.'
'So,' said the Painted Jaguar, rubbing his head, 'if it can roll itself into a ball it must be a tortoise and—'
'AHHH!' cried the Mother Jaguar, lashing her tail angrily. 'Completely wrong. Miss Havisham, what am I to do with this boy?'
'I have no idea,' she replied. 'All men are dolts, from where I'm standing.'
The Painted Jaguar looked crestfallen and stared at the floor.
'Can I make a suggestion?' I asked.
'Anything!' replied the Mother Jaguar.
'If you make a rhyme out of it he might be able to remember.'
The Mother Jaguar sighed.
'It won't help. Yesterday he forgot he was a Painted Jaguar. He makes my spots ache, really he does.'
'How about this?' I said, making up a rhyme on the spot:
'I thought we were going to the Jurisfiction offices?' I said as we walked along the corridors of the Great Library, the wooden shelves groaning under the weight of the collected imaginative outpourings of nearly two millennia.
'The next roll-call is tomorrow,' she replied, stopping at a shelf and dropping the grammasites' waistcoats into a heap before picking out a roughly bound manuscript, 'and I told Perkins you'd help him feed the minotaur.'
'You did?' I asked, slightly apprehensively.
'Of course. Fictionalzoology is a fascinating subject and, believe me, it's an area about which you should know more.'
She handed me the book which, I noticed, was hand-written.
'It's codeword protected,' announced Havisham, 'mumble Sapphire before you read yourself in.'
She gathered up the waistcoats again.
'I'll pick you up in about an hour. Perkins will be waiting for you on the other side. Please pay attention and don't let him talk you into looking after any rabbits. Don't forget the password — you'll not get in or out without it.'
'Sapphire,' I repeated.
'Very good,' she said, and vanished.
I placed the book on one of the reading desks and sat down. The marble busts of writers that dotted the Library seemed to glare at me and I was just about to start reading when I noticed, high up on the shelf opposite, an ethereal form that was coalescing, wraith-like, in front of my eyes. At home this might be considered a matter of great pith and moment, but here it was merely the Cheshire Cat making one of his celebrated appearances.
'Hello!' he said as soon as his mouth had appeared. 'How are you getting along?'
The Cheshire Cat was the librarian and the first person I had met in the BookWorld. With a penchant for non sequiturs and obtuse comments, it was hard not to like him.
'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'I was attacked by grammasites, threatened by Big Martin's friends and a Thraal. I've got two Generics billeted with me, the characters in Caversham Heights think I can save their book and right now I have to give the minotaur his breakfast.'
'Nothing remarkable there. Anything else?'
'How long have you got?'[9]
I tapped my ears.
'Problems?'
'I can hear two Russians gossiping, right here inside my head.'
'Probably a crossed footnoterphone line,' replied the Cat. He jumped down, pressed his soft head against mine and listened intently.
'Can you hear them?' I asked after a bit.
'Not at all,' replied the Cat, 'but you do have very warm ears. Do you like Chinese food?'
'Yes, please,' I replied; I hadn't eaten for a while.
'Me too,' mused the Cat. 'Shame there isn't any. What's in the bag?'
'Something of Snell's.'
'Ah. What do you think of this UltraWord™ lark?'
'I'm really not sure,' I replied, truthfully enough, 'how about you?'
'How about me what?'
'What do you think of the new operating system?'
'When it comes in I shall give it my fullest attention,' he said ambiguously, adding: 'It's a laugh, isn't it?'
'What is?'
'That noise you make at the back of your throat when you hear something funny. Let me know if you need anything. 'Bye.'
And he very slowly faded out, from the tip of his tail to the tip of his nose. His grin, as usual, stayed for some time after the rest of him had gone.
I turned back to the book, murmured 'sapphire' and read the first paragraph aloud.
7
I found myself in a large meadow next to a babbling brook; willows and larches hung over the crystal-clear waters while mature oaks punctuated the land. It was warm and dry and quite delightful — like a perfect summer's day in England, in fact — and I suddenly felt quite homesick.
'I used to look at the view a lot,' said a voice close at hand. 'Don't seem to have the time, these days.'
'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?'
'As I said, those grammasites were Verbisoids,' she replied without looking up, 'and a Verbisoid, in common with many language students, hates and fears irregular verbs — they much prefer consuming regularverbs with the "ed" word endings. Strong irregulars such as "to sing" with their internal vowel changes — we will sing, we sang, we have sung — tend to scramble their tiny minds.'
'Any irregular verb frightens them off?' I asked with interest.
'Pretty much; but some irregulars are more easy to demonstrate than others — we could cut, I suppose, or even be, but then the proceedings change into something akin to a desperate game of charades — far easier to just sing and have done 'with it.'
'What about if we were to go? I ventured, thinking practically for once. 'There can't be anything more irregular than go, went, gone, can there?'
'Because,' replied Miss Havisham, her patience eroding by the second, 'they might misconstrue it as walked — note the "ed" ending?'
'Not if we ran," I added, not wanting to let this go, 'that's irregular, too.'
Miss Havisham stared at me icily.
'Of course we could. But ran might be seen in the eyes of a hungry Verbisoid to be either trotted, galloped, raced, rushed, hurried, hastened, sprinted or even departed.'
'Ah,' I said, realising that catching Miss Havisham out was about as likely as nailing Banquo's ghost to a coffee table, 'yes, it might, mightn't it?'
'Look,' said Miss Havisham, softening slightly, 'if running away killed grammasites there wouldn't be a single one left. Stick to "Jerusalem" and you won't go far wrong — just don't try it with adjectivores or the parataxis; they'd probably join in — and then eat you.'
The elevator stopped on the eleventh sub-basement, the doors opened and a large Painted Jaguar got in with her son, who had a paddy-paw full of prickles and was complaining bitterly that he had been tricked by a hedgehog and a tortoise, who had both escaped. The Mother Jaguar shook her head sadly, looked to heaven in exasperation and then turned to her son.
'Son, son,' she said, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'what have you been doing that you shouldn't have?'
'So,' said Miss Havisham as the elevator moved off again, 'how are you getting along in that frightful Caversham Heights book?'
'Well, thank you, Miss Havisham,' I muttered, 'the people in it are worried that their book will be demolished from under their feet.'
'With good reason,' replied Havisham. 'I've read it. Hundreds of books like Heights are demolished every day. If you stopped to waste any sympathy, you'd go nuts — so don't. It's man eat man in the Well. I'd keep yourself to yourself and don't make too many friends — they have a habit of dying just when you get to like them. It always happens that way. It's a narrative thing.'
'Heights isn't a bad place to live,' I ventured, hoping to elicit a bit of compassion.
'Doubtless,' she murmured, staring off into the middle distance. 'I remember when I was in the Well, when they were building Great Expectations. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when they told me I would be working with Charles Dickens. Top of my class at Generic College and, without wanting to seem immodest, something of a beauty. I thought I would make an admirable young Estella — both refined and beautiful, haughty and proud, yet ultimately overcoming the overbearing crabbiness of her cantankerous benefactor to find true love.'
'So … what happened?'
'I wasn't tall enough.'
'Tall enough? For a book? Isn't that like having the wrong hair colour for the wireless?'
'They gave the part to a little strumpet who was on salvage from a demolished Thackeray. Little cow. It's no wonder I treat her so rotten — the part should have been mine!'
She fell into silence.
'Let me get this straight,' said the Painted Jaguar, who was having a bit of trouble telling the difference between a hedgehog and a tortoise, 'if it's slow-and-solid I drop him in the water and then scoop him out of his shell—'
'Son, son!' said his mother, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'now attend to me and remember what I say. A hedgehog curls himself up into a ball and his prickles stick out every way—'
'Did you get the Jurisfiction exam papers I sent you?' asked Miss Havisham. 'I've got your practical booked for the day after tomorrow.'
'Oh!' I said.
'Problems?' she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
'No, ma'am, I just feel a bit unprepared — I think I might make a pig's ear of it.'
'I disagree,' she replied, staring at the floor indicator. 'I know you'll make a pig's ear of it. But wheels within wheels. All I ask is you don't make a fool of yourself or lose your life — now that would be awkward.'
'So,' said the Painted Jaguar, rubbing his head, 'if it can roll itself into a ball it must be a tortoise and—'
'AHHH!' cried the Mother Jaguar, lashing her tail angrily. 'Completely wrong. Miss Havisham, what am I to do with this boy?'
'I have no idea,' she replied. 'All men are dolts, from where I'm standing.'
The Painted Jaguar looked crestfallen and stared at the floor.
'Can I make a suggestion?' I asked.
'Anything!' replied the Mother Jaguar.
'If you make a rhyme out of it he might be able to remember.'
The Mother Jaguar sighed.
'It won't help. Yesterday he forgot he was a Painted Jaguar. He makes my spots ache, really he does.'
'How about this?' I said, making up a rhyme on the spot:
The Mother Jaguar stopped lashing her tail and asked me to write it down. She was still trying to get her son to remember it when the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor and we got out.
'Can't curl, but can swim —
Slow-Solid, that's him!
Curls up, but can't swim —
Stickly-Prickly, that's him!'
'I thought we were going to the Jurisfiction offices?' I said as we walked along the corridors of the Great Library, the wooden shelves groaning under the weight of the collected imaginative outpourings of nearly two millennia.
'The next roll-call is tomorrow,' she replied, stopping at a shelf and dropping the grammasites' waistcoats into a heap before picking out a roughly bound manuscript, 'and I told Perkins you'd help him feed the minotaur.'
'You did?' I asked, slightly apprehensively.
'Of course. Fictionalzoology is a fascinating subject and, believe me, it's an area about which you should know more.'
She handed me the book which, I noticed, was hand-written.
'It's codeword protected,' announced Havisham, 'mumble Sapphire before you read yourself in.'
She gathered up the waistcoats again.
'I'll pick you up in about an hour. Perkins will be waiting for you on the other side. Please pay attention and don't let him talk you into looking after any rabbits. Don't forget the password — you'll not get in or out without it.'
'Sapphire,' I repeated.
'Very good,' she said, and vanished.
I placed the book on one of the reading desks and sat down. The marble busts of writers that dotted the Library seemed to glare at me and I was just about to start reading when I noticed, high up on the shelf opposite, an ethereal form that was coalescing, wraith-like, in front of my eyes. At home this might be considered a matter of great pith and moment, but here it was merely the Cheshire Cat making one of his celebrated appearances.
'Hello!' he said as soon as his mouth had appeared. 'How are you getting along?'
The Cheshire Cat was the librarian and the first person I had met in the BookWorld. With a penchant for non sequiturs and obtuse comments, it was hard not to like him.
'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'I was attacked by grammasites, threatened by Big Martin's friends and a Thraal. I've got two Generics billeted with me, the characters in Caversham Heights think I can save their book and right now I have to give the minotaur his breakfast.'
'Nothing remarkable there. Anything else?'
'How long have you got?'[9]
I tapped my ears.
'Problems?'
'I can hear two Russians gossiping, right here inside my head.'
'Probably a crossed footnoterphone line,' replied the Cat. He jumped down, pressed his soft head against mine and listened intently.
'Can you hear them?' I asked after a bit.
'Not at all,' replied the Cat, 'but you do have very warm ears. Do you like Chinese food?'
'Yes, please,' I replied; I hadn't eaten for a while.
'Me too,' mused the Cat. 'Shame there isn't any. What's in the bag?'
'Something of Snell's.'
'Ah. What do you think of this UltraWord™ lark?'
'I'm really not sure,' I replied, truthfully enough, 'how about you?'
'How about me what?'
'What do you think of the new operating system?'
'When it comes in I shall give it my fullest attention,' he said ambiguously, adding: 'It's a laugh, isn't it?'
'What is?'
'That noise you make at the back of your throat when you hear something funny. Let me know if you need anything. 'Bye.'
And he very slowly faded out, from the tip of his tail to the tip of his nose. His grin, as usual, stayed for some time after the rest of him had gone.
I turned back to the book, murmured 'sapphire' and read the first paragraph aloud.
7
Feeding the minotaur
'Name: Perkins — David "Pinky".
Operator's number: AGD136-323
Address: c/o Perkins & Snell Detective Series
Induction date: September 1957
'Notes: Perkins joined the service and has shown exemplary conduct throughout his service career. After signing up for a twenty-year tour of duty, he extended that to another tour in 1977. After five years heading the mispeling Protection Squad, he was transferred to grammasite inspection & eradication, and in 1983 took over leadership of the grammasite research facility.'
Entry from Jurisfiction Service Record (abridged)
I found myself in a large meadow next to a babbling brook; willows and larches hung over the crystal-clear waters while mature oaks punctuated the land. It was warm and dry and quite delightful — like a perfect summer's day in England, in fact — and I suddenly felt quite homesick.
'I used to look at the view a lot,' said a voice close at hand. 'Don't seem to have the time, these days.'