I turned to see a tall man leaning against a silver birch, holding a copy of the Jurisfiction trade paper, Movable Type. I recognised him although we had never been introduced. It was Perkins, who partnered Snell at Jurisfiction, much as they did in the Perkins & Snell series of detective novels.
'Hello,' he said, proffering a hand and smiling broadly, 'put it there. Perkins is the name. Akrid tells me you sorted Hopkins out good and proper.'
'Thank you,' I replied. 'Akrid's very kind but it isn't over yet.'
He cast an arm towards the horizon.
'What do you think?'
I looked at the view. High snow-capped mountains rose in the distance above a green and verdant plain. At the foot of the hills were forests, and a large river wended its way through the valley.
'Beautiful.'
'We requisitioned it from the fantasy division of the Well of Lost Plots. It's a complete world in itself, written for a sword and sorcery novel entitled The Sword of the Zenobians. Beyond the mountains are icy wastes, deep fjords and relics of long-forgotten civilisations, castles, that sort of stuff. It was auctioned off when the book was abandoned. There were no characters or events written in, which was a shame — considering the work he did on the world itself, this might have been a bestseller. Still, the Outland's loss is our gain. We use it to keep grammasites and other weird beasts who for one reason or another can't live safely within their own books.'
'Sanctuary?'
'Yes — and also for study and containment — hence the password.'
'There seem to be an awful lot of rabbits,' I observed, looking around.
'Ah, yes,' replied Perkins, crossing an arched stone bridge that spanned the small stream, 'we never did get the lid on reproduction within Watership Down — if left to their own devices, the book would be so full of dandelion-munching lagomorphs that every other word would be "rabbit" within a year. Still, Lennie enjoys it here when he has some time off.'
We walked up a path towards a ruined castle. Grass covered the mounds of masonry that had collapsed from the curtain wall, and the wood of the drawbridge had rotted and fallen into a moat now dry and full of brambles. Above us, what appeared to be ravens circled the highest of the remaining towers.
'Not birds,' said Perkins, handing me a pair of binoculars. 'Have a look.'
I peered up at the circling creatures who were soaring on large wings of stretched skin.
'Parenthiums?'
'Very good. I have six breeding pairs here — purely for research, I hasten to add. Most books can easily support forty or so with no ill effects — it's just when the numbers get out of hand that we have to take action. A swarm of grammasites can be pretty devastating.'
'I know,' I replied, 'I was almost—'
'Watch out!'
He pushed me aside as a lump of excrement splattered on to the ground near where I had been standing. I looked up at the battlements and saw a man-beast covered in coarse dark hair who glared down at us and made a strangled cry in the back of his throat.
'Yahoos,' explained Perkins with disdain. 'They're not terribly well behaved and quite beyond training.'
'From Gulliver's Travels'?'
'Bingo. When truly original works like Jonathan Swift's are made into new books characters are often duplicated for evaluation and consultative purposes. Characters can be retrained but creatures usually end up here. Yahoos are not exactly a favourite of mine but they're harmless enough, so the best thing to do is ignore them.'
We walked quickly under the keep to avoid any other possible missiles and entered the inner bailey, where a pair of centaurs were grazing peacefully. They looked up at us, smiled, waved and carried on eating. I noticed that one of them was listening to a Walkman.
'You have centaurs here?'
'And satyrs, troglodytes, chimeras, elves, fairies, dryads, sirens, Martians, leprechauns, goblins, harpies, aliens, Daleks, trolls — you name it.' Perkins smiled. 'A large proportion of unpublished novels are in the fantasy genre, and most of them feature mythical beasts. Whenever one of those books gets demolished I can usually be found down at the salvage yard. It would be a shame to reduce them to text now, wouldn't it?'
'Do you have unicorns?' I asked.
'Yes.' Perkins sighed. 'Sack-loads. More than I know what to do with. I wish potential writers would be more responsible with their creations. I can understand children writing about them, but adults should know better. Every unicorn in every demolished story ends up here. I had this idea for a bumper sticker. "A unicorn isn't for page twenty-seven, it's for eternity." What do you think?'
'I think you won't be able to stop people writing about them. How about taking the horn off and seeking placement in pony books?'
'I'll pretend I didn't hear that,' replied Perkins stonily, adding: 'We have dragons, too. We can hear them sometimes, at night when the wind is in the right direction. When — or if — Pellinore captures the Questing Beast it will come to live here. Somewhere a long way away, I hope. Careful — don't tread in the orc shit. You're an Outlander, aren't you?'
'Born and bred.'
'Has anyone realised that platypuses and sea horses are fictional?'
'Are they?'
'Of course — you don't think anything that weird could have evolved by chance, do you? By the way, how do you like Miss Havisham?'
'I like her a great deal.'
'So do we all. I think she quite likes us, too, but she'd never admit it.'
We had arrived at the inner keep and Perkins pushed open the door. Inside was his office and laboratory. One wall was covered with glass jars filled with odd creatures of all shapes and sizes, and on the table was a partially dissected grammasite. Within its gut were words in the process of being digested into letters.
'I'm not really sure how they do it,' said Perkins, prodding at the carcass with a spoon. 'Have you met Mathias?'
I looked around but could see nothing but a large chestnut horse whose flanks shone in the light. The horse looked at me and I looked at the horse, then past the horse — but there was no one else in the room. The penny dropped.
'Good morning, Mathias,' I said as politely as I could. 'I'm Thursday Next.'
Perkins laughed out loud and the horse brayed and replied in a very deep voice:
'Delighted to make your acquaintance, madam. Permit me to join you in a few moments?'
I agreed and the horse returned to what I now saw were some complicated notes it was writing in a ledger open on the floor. Every now and then it paused and dipped the quill that was attached to its hoof into an inkpot and wrote in a large copperplate script.
'A Houyhnhnm?' I asked. 'Also from Gulliver's Travels?'
Perkins nodded. 'Mathias, his mare and the two Yahoos were all used as consultants for Pierre Boulle's 1963 remake: La planète des singes.'
'Louis Aragon once said,' announced Mathias from the other side of the room, 'that the function of geniuses was to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years on.'
'I hardly think that Boulle was a cretin, Mathias,' said Perkins, 'and anyway, it's always the same with you, isn't it? "Voltaire said this—", Baudelaire said that—". Sometimes I think that you just … just—'
He stopped, trying to think of the right words.
'Was it Da Vinci who said,' suggested the horse helpfully, 'that anyone who quotes authors in discussion is using their memory, not their intellect?'
'Exactly,' replied the frustrated Perkins, 'what I was about to say.'
'Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis,' murmured the horse, staring at the ceiling in thought.
'The only thing that proves is how pretentious you are,' muttered Perkins. 'It's always the same when we have visitors, isn't it?'
'Someone has to raise the tone in this miserable backwater,' replied Mathias, 'and if you call me a "pseudo-erudite ungulate" again, I shall bite you painfully on the buttock.'
Perkins and the horse glared at one another.
'You said there was a pair of Hounyhnhms?' I interjected, trying to defuse the situation.
'My partner, my love, my mare,' explained the horse, 'is currently at Oxford, your Oxford — studying political science at All Souls and paying her way by doing the odd job in the oral tradition.'
'Whereabouts?' I asked, wondering where a talking horse might find employment.
'Jokes about talking horses,' explained Mathias with a shiver of indignation. 'You have heard the one about the talking horse in the pub, I trust?'
'Not for a while,' I replied.
'I'm not surprised,' retorted the horse loftily. 'Her studies do tend to keep her quite busy. Whenever she runs out of funds she does the rounds with a new one. I think she is reprising the talking-horse-with-greyhound gag at the moment.'
It was true. Bowden had used that one at his Happy Squid talent contest. This was probably why jokes 'did the rounds' — it was oral tradition fictioneers going on tour. Another thought struck me.
'Don't you think they'd notice?' I asked. 'A horse, at Oxford?'
'You'd be surprised how unobservant some of the dons are,' snorted Perkins. 'Where do you think Napoleon the pig studied Marxism? The Harris bacon factory?'
'Didn't the other students complain?'
'Of course! Napoleon was expelled.'
'Was it the smell?'
'No — the cheating. This way. I keep the minotaur in the dungeons. You are fully conversant with the legend?'
'Of course,' I replied. 'It's the half-man, half-bull offspring of King Minos' wife, Pasiphaë.'
'Spot on.' He chuckled. 'The tabloids had a field day: "Cretan Queen in Bull Love-child Shock." We built a copy of the Labyrinth to hold it but the Monsters' Humane Society insisted two officials inspect it first.'
'And?'
'That was over twelve years ago; I think they're still in it. I keep the minotaur in here.'
He opened a door that led into a vaulted room below the old hall. It was dark and smelt of rotten bones and sweat.
'Er, you do keep it locked up?' I asked as my eyes struggled to see in the semi-dark.
'Of course!' he replied, nodding towards a large key hanging from a hook. 'What do you think I am, an idiot?'
As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I could see that the back half of the vault was caged off with rusty iron bars. There was a door in the centre which was secured with a ridiculously large padlock.
'Don't get too near,' warned Perkins as he took a steel bowl down from a shelf. 'I've been feeding him on yogurt for almost five years, and to be truthful he's getting a bit bored.'
'Yogurt?'
'With some bran mixed in. Feeding him on Grecian virgins was too expensive.'
'Wasn't he slain by Theseus?' I asked, as a dark shape started moving at the back of the vault accompanied by a low growling noise. Even with the bars I really wasn't happy to be there.
'Usually,' replied Perkins, ladling out some yogurt, 'but mischievous Generics took him out of a copy of Graves' The Greek Myths in 1944 and dropped him in Tsaritsyn. A sharp-eyed Jurisfiction agent figured out what was going on and we took him out — he's been here ever since.'
Perkins filled the steel bowl with yogurt, mixed up some bran from a large dustbin and then placed the bowl on the floor a good five feet from the bars. He pushed the dish the remainder of the way with the handle of a floor mop.
As we watched, the minotaur appeared from the dark recesses of the cage and I felt the hairs bristle on the back of my neck. His large and muscular body was streaked with dirt and sharpened horns sprouted from his bull-like head. He moved with the low gait of an ape, using his forelegs to steady himself. As I watched he put out two clawed hands to retrieve the bowl, then slunk off to a dark corner. I caught a glimpse of his fangs in the dim light, and a pair of deep yellow eyes which glared at me with hungry malevolence.
'I'm thinking of calling him Norman,' murmured Perkins. 'Come on, I want to show you something.'
We left the dark and fetid area beneath the old hall and walked back into the laboratory, where Perkins opened a large leather-bound book that was sitting on the table.
'This is the Jurisfiction Bestiary,' he explained, turning the page to reveal a picture of the grammasite we had encountered in Great Expectations.
'An adjectivore,' I murmured.
'Very good,' replied Perkins. 'Fairly common in the Well but under control in fiction generally.'
He turned a page to reveal a sort of angler fish, but instead of a light dangling on a wand sticking out of its head it had the indefinite article.
'Nounfish,' explained Perkins. 'They swim the outer banks of the Text Sea, hoping to attract and devour stray nouns eager to start an embryonic sentence.'
He turned the page to reveal a picture of a small maggot.
'A bookworm?' I suggested, having seen these before at my Uncle Mycroft's workshop.
'Indeed,' replied Perkins. 'Not strictly a pest and actually quite necessary to the existence of the BookWorld. They take words and expel alternative meanings like a hot radiator. I think earthworms are the nearest equivalent in the Outland. They aerate the soil, yes?'
I nodded.
'Bookworms do the same job down here. "Without them, words would have one meaning, and meanings would have one word. They live in thesauri but their benefit is felt throughout fiction.'
'So why are they considered a pest?'
'Useful, but not without their drawbacks. Get too many bookworms in your novel and the language becomes almost unbearably flowery.'
'I've read books like that,' I confessed.
He turned the page and I recognised the grammasites that had swarmed through the Well earlier.
'Verbisoid,' he said with a sigh, 'to be destroyed without mercy. Once the Verbisoid extracts the verb from a sentence it generally collapses; do that once too often and the whole narrative falls apart like a bread roll in a rainstorm.'
'Why do they wear waistcoats and stripy socks?'
'To keep warm, I should imagine.'
'What's this?' I asked as he turned the page again. 'Another verbinator?'
'Well, kind of,' replied Perkins. 'This is a Converbilator. It actually creates verbs out of nouns and other words. Mostly by appending ize or ise but sometimes just by a direct conversion, such as knife, lunch and question. During a drought they have been known to even create compound verbs such as air-condition, and signpost. Like the bookworms they are necessary — but can't be allowed to get out of hand.'
'Some would say there are too many verbs already,' I commented.
'Those that do,' replied Perkins testily, 'should come and work for Jurisfiction for a bit and try and stop them.'
'What about the mispeling vyrus?' I asked.
'Speltificarious Molesworthian,' murmured Perkins, moving to where a pile of dictionaries were stacked up around a small glass jar. He picked out the container and showed it to me. A thin purple haze seemed to wisp around inside; it reminded me of one of Spike's SEBs.
'This is the larst of the vyrus,' explained Perkins. 'We had to distroy the wrist. It's very powarfull — can u feel it, even through the glas?'
'Unnessary,' I said, testing it out, 'undoutadly, professor, diarhea, nakijima. You're right, it's prety strong, isn't it?'
He replaced the jar bak in the dictosafe.
'Rampant before Agent Johnson's Dictionary in 1744,' commented Perkins. 'Lavinia-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary keep it all in check but we have to be careful. We used to contain any outbreak and offload it in the Molesworth series where no one ever notices. These days we destroy any new vyrus with a battery of dictionaries we keep on the seventeenth floor of the Great Library. But we can't be too careful. Every mispeling you come across has to be reported to the Cat on form S-I2.'
'There was the raucous blast of a car horn from outside.
'Time's up!' Perkins smiled. 'That will be Miss Havisham.'
Miss Havisham was not on her own. She was sitting in a vast automobile the bonnet of which stretched ten feet in front of her. The large spoked and unguarded wheels carried tyres that looked woefully skinny and inadequate; eight huge exhaust pipes sprouted from either side of the bonnet, joined into one and stretched the length of the body. The tail of the car was pointed, like a boat, and just forward of the rear wheels two huge drive sprockets carried the power to the rear axle on large chains. It was a fearsome beast. It was the twenty-seven-litre Higham Special.
8
'Has she been boring you, Mr Perkins?' called out Havisham.
'Not at all,' replied Perkins, giving me a wink. 'She has been a most attentive student.'
'Humph,' muttered Havisham. 'Hope springs eternal. Get in, girl, we're off!'
I paused. I had been driven by Miss Havisham once before, and that was in a car that I thought relatively safe. This beast of an automobile looked as though it could kill you twice before even reaching second gear.
'What are you waiting for, girl?' said Havisham impatiently. 'If I let the Special idle any longer we'll coke up the plugs. Besides, we need all the fuel to do the run.'
'The run?'
'Don't worry!' shouted Miss Havisham as she revved the engine. The car lurched sideways with the torque and a throaty growl filled the air. 'You won't be aboard when we do — I need you for other duties.'
I took a deep breath and climbed into the small two-seater body It looked newly converted and was little more than a racing car with a few frills tacked on to make it roadworthy. Miss Havisham depressed the clutch and wrestled with the gearshift for a moment The large sprockets took up the power with a slight tug; it felt like a thoroughbred racehorse which had just got the scent of a steeplechase.
'Where are we going?' I asked.
'Home!' answered Miss Havisham as she moved the hand throttle. The car leaped forward across the grassy courtyard and gathered speed.
'To Great Expectations?' I asked as Miss Havisham steered in a broad circuit, fiddling with the levers in the centre of the massive steering wheel.
'Not my home,' she retorted, 'yours!'
With another deep growl and a lurch the car accelerated rapidly forward — but to where I was not sure; in front of us lay the broken drawbridge and stout stone walls of the castle.
'Fear not!' yelled Havisham above the roar of the engine. 'I'll read us into the Outland as simply as blinking!'
We gathered speed. I expected us to jump straight away, but we didn't. We carried on towards the heavy castle wall at a speed not wholly compatible with survival.
'Miss Havisham?' I asked, my voice tinged with fear.
'I'm just trying to think of the best words to get us there, girl!' she replied cheerfully.
'Stop!' I yelled as the point of no return came and went in a flash.
'Let me see …' muttered Havisham, thinking hard, the accelerator still wide open.
I covered my eyes. The car was running too fast for me to jump out and a collision seemed inevitable. I grasped the side of the car's body and tensed as Miss Havisham took herself, me and two tons of automobile through the barriers of fiction and into the real world. My world.
I opened my eyes again. Miss Havisham was studying a road map as the Higham Special swerved down the middle of the road. I grabbed the steering wheel as a milk float swerved into the hedge.
'I won't use the M4 in case the C of G get wind of it,' she said, looking around. 'We'll use the A419 — are we anywhere close?'
I recognised where we were instantly. Just north of Swindon outside a small town called Highworth.
'Continue round the roundabout and up the hill into the town,' I told her, adding: 'But it's not your right of way, remember.'
It was too late. To Miss Havisham, her way was the right way. The first car braked in time but the one behind it was not so lucky — it drove into the rear of the first with a crunch. I held on tightly as Miss Havisham accelerated rapidly away up the hill into Highworth. I was pressed into my seat and for a single moment, perched above two tons of bellowing machinery, I suddenly realised why Havisham liked this sort of thing — it was, in a word, exhilarating.
'I've only borrowed the Special from the count,' she explained. 'Parry Thomas will take delivery of it next week and aim to lift the speed record for himself. I've been working on a new mix of fuels; the A419 is straight and smooth — I should be able to do at least a ton eighty on that.'
'Turn right on to the B4019 at the Jesmond,' I told her, 'after the lights turn to greeeeeeen.'
The truck missed us by about six inches.
'What's that?'
'Nothing.'
'You know, Thursday, you should really loosen up and learn to enjoy life more — you can be such an old stick-in-the-mud.'
I lapsed into silence.
'And don't sulk,' added Miss Havisham. 'If there's something I can't abide, it's a sulky apprentice.'
We bowled down the road, nearly losing it on an 'S' bend, until miraculously we reached the main Swindon—Cirencester road. It was a no right turn but we did anyway, to a chorus of screeching tyres and angry car horns. Havisham accelerated off, and we had just approached the top of the hill when we came across a large 'diversion' sign blocking the road. Havisham thumped the steering wheel angrily.
'I don't believe it!' she bellowed.
'Road closed?' I queried, trying to hide my relief. 'Good — I mean, good-ness gracious, what a shame. Another time, eh?'
Havisham clunked the Special into first gear and we moved off round the sign and motored down the hill.
'It's him, I can sense it!' she growled. 'Trying to steal the speed record from under my very nose!'
'Who?' I asked.
As if in answer another racing car shot past us with a loud 'poop poop!'.
'Him,' muttered Havisham as we pulled off the road next to a speed camera. 'A driver so bad he is a menace to himself and every sentient being on the highways.'
He must have been truly frightful for Havisham to notice. A few minutes later the other car returned and pulled up alongside.
'What ho, Havisham!' said the driver, taking the goggles from his bulging eyes and grinning broadly. 'Still using Count "Snaill" Zborowski's old slowpoke Special, eh?'
'Good afternoon, Mr Toad,' said Havisham. 'Does the Bellman know you're in the Outland?'
'Of course not!' yelled Mr Toad, laughing. 'And you're not going to tell him, old girl, because you're not meant to be here either!'
Havisham was silent and looked ahead, trying to ignore him.
'Is that a Liberty aero-engine under there?' asked Mr Toad, pointing at the Special's bonnet, which trembled and shook as the vast engine idled roughly to itself.
'Perhaps,' replied Havisham.
'Ha!' replied Toad with an infectious smile. 'I had a Rolls-Royce Merlin shoehorned into this old banger!'
I watched Miss Havisham with interest. She stared ahead but her eye twitched slightly when Mr Toad revved the car's engine. In the end, she could resist it no more and her curiosity got the better of her disdain.
'How does it go?' she asked, eyes gleaming.
'Like a rocket!' replied Mr Toad, jumping up and down in his excitement. 'Over a thousand horses to the back axle — makes your Higham Special look like a motor mower!'
'We'll see about that,' replied Havisham, narrowing her eyes. 'Usual place, usual time, usual bet?'
'You're on!' said Mr Toad. He revved his car, pulled down his goggles and vanished in a cloud of rubber smoke. The 'poop poop' of his horn lingered on as an echo some seconds after he had gone.
'Slimy reptile,' muttered Havisham.
'Strictly speaking, he's neither,' I retorted. 'More like a dry-skinned land-based amphibian.'
It felt safe to be impertinent because I knew she wasn't listening.
'He's caused more accidents than you've had hot dinners.'
'And you're going to race him?' I asked slightly nervously.
'And beat him too, what's more,' she replied, handing me a pair of bolt-cutters.
'What do you want me to do?' I asked.
'Open up the speed camera and get the film out once I've done my run.'
I got out. She donned a pair of goggles and was gone in a howl of engine noise and screeching of tyres. I looked nervously around as she and the car hurtled off into the distance, the roar of the engine fading into a hum, occasionally punctuated by muffled cracks from the exhaust. The sun was out and I could see at least three airships droning across the sky; I wondered what was going on at SpecOps. I had written a note to Victor telling him I had to be away for a year or more, and tendered my resignation. Suddenly I was shaken from my daydream by something else. Something dark and just out of sight. Something I should have done or something I'd forgotten. I shivered and then it clicked. Last night. Gran. Aornis' mindworm. What had she been unravelling in my mind? I sighed as the pieces slowly started to merge together in my head. Gran had told me to run the facts over and over to renew the familiar memories that Aornis was trying to delete. But how do you start trying to find out what it is you've forgotten? I concentrated … Landen. I hadn't thought about him all day and that was unusual. I could remember where we met and what had happened to him — no problem there. Anything else? His full name. Damn and blast! Landen Parke-something. Did it begin with a 'B'? I couldn't remember. I sighed and placed my hand over where I imagined our baby to be — it would now be the size of a half-crown. I remembered enough to know I loved him, and I missed him dreadfully — which was a good sign, I supposed. I thought of Lavoisier's perfidy and the Schitt brothers and started to feel rage building inside me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. There was a phone box by the side of the road, and on an impulse I called my mother.
'Hi, Mum,' I said, 'it's Thursday.'
'Thursday!' she screamed excitedly. 'Hang on — the stove's on fire.'
'The stove?'
'Well, the kitchen really — wait a mo!'
There was a crashing noise and she came back on the line a few seconds later.
'Out now. Darling! Are you okay?'
'I'm fine, Mum.'
'And the baby?'
'Fine too. How are things with you?'
'Frightful!' she exclaimed. 'Goliath and SpecOps have been camping outside since the moment you left and Emma Hamilton is living in the spare room and eats like a horse.'
There was an angry growl and a loud whooshing noise as Havisham swept past in little more than a blur; two flashes from the speed camera went off in quick succession and there were several more loud bangs as Havisham rolled off the throttle.
'What was that noise?' asked my mother.
'You'd never believe me if I told you. My — er — husband hasn't been round looking for me, has he?'
'I'm afraid not, sweetheart,' she said in her most understanding voice; she knew about Landen and understood better than most — her own husband, my father, had been eradicated himself seventeen years previously. 'Why don't you come round and talk?' she went on. 'The Eradications Anonymous meeting is at eight this evening; you'll be among friends there.'
'I don't think so, Mum.'
'Are you eating regularly?'
'Yes, Mum.'
'I managed to get DH-82 to do a few tricks.'
DH-82 was her rescue Thylacine. Training a Thylacine, usually unbelievably torpid, to do anything except eat or sleep on command was almost front-page news.
'That's good. Listen, I just called to say I miss you and not to worry about me—'
'I'm going to try another run!' shouted Miss Havisham, who had drawn up. I waved to her and she drove off.
'Are you keeping Pickwick's egg warm?'
I told Mum that this was Pickwick's job, that I would call again when I could, and hung up. I thought of ringing Bowden but decided on the face of it that this was probably not a good idea. Mum's phone was bound to have been tapped and I had given them enough already. I walked back to the road and watched as a small grey dot grew larger and larger until the Special swept past with a strident bellow. The speed camera flashed again and a belch of flame erupted from the exhaust pipe. It took Miss Havisham about a mile to slow down so I sat on a wall and waited patiently for her to return. A small four-seater airship had appeared no more than half a mile away. It seemed to be a SpecOps traffic patrol and I couldn't risk them finding out who I was. I looked urgently towards where Havisham was motoring slowly back to me.
'Come on,' I muttered under my breath, 'put some speed on, for goodness' sake.'
Havisham pulled up and shook her head sadly.
'Mixture's too rich,' she explained. 'Take the film out of the speed camera, will you?'
I pointed out the airship heading our way. It was approaching quite fast — for an airship.
Miss Havisham looked over at it, grunted and jumped down to open the huge bonnet and peer inside. I cut off the padlock, pulled the speed camera down and rewound the film as quickly as I could.
'Halt!' barked the PA system on the airship when it was within a few hundred yards. 'You are both under arrest. Wait by your vehicle.'
'We've got to go,' I said, urgently.
'Poppycock!' replied Miss Havisham.
'Place your hands on the bonnet of the car!' yelled the PA again as the airship droned past at treetop level. 'You have been warned!'
'Miss Havisham,' I said, 'if they find out who I am I could be in a lot of trouble!'
'Nonsense, girl. Why would they want someone as inconsequential as you?'
The airship swung round with the vectored engines in reverse; once they started asking questions I'd be answering them for a long time.
'We have to go, Miss Havisham!'
She sensed the urgency in my voice and beckoned for me to get in the car. Within a moment we were away from that place, car and all, back in the lobby of the Great Library.
'You're not so popular in the Outland, then?' Havisham asked, turning off the engine, which spluttered and shook to a halt, the sudden quiet a welcome break.
'You could say that.'
'Broken the law?'
'Not really.'
She stared at me for a moment.
'I thought it a bit odd that Goliath had you trapped in their deepest and most secure sub-basement. Do you have the film from the speed camera?'
I handed it over.
'I'll get double prints,' she mused. 'Thanks for your help. See you at roll-call tomorrow — don't be late!'
I waited until she had gone, then retraced my steps to the Library, where I had left Snell's 'head-in-a-bag' plot device, and made my way home. I didn't jump direct; I took the elevator. Bookjumping might be a quick way to get around, but it was also kind of knackering.
9
'I'm home!' I yelled as I walked through the door. Pickwick plocked happily up to me, realised I didn't have any marshmallows, and then left in a huff, only to return with a piece of paper she had found in the waste-paper basket, which she offered to me as a gift. I thanked her profusely and she went back to her egg.
'Hello,' said ibb, who had been experimenting, Beeton-like, in the kitchen, 'what's in the bag?'
'You don't want to know.'
'Hmm,' replied ibb thoughtfully. 'Since I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know, your response must be another way of saying: "I'm not going to tell you, so sod off." Is that correct?'
'More or less,' I replied, placing the bag in the broom cupboard. 'Is Gran around?'
'I don't think so.'
obb walked in a little later, reading a textbook entitled Personalities for Beginners.
'Hello, Thursday,' it said, 'a hedgehog and a tortoise came round to see you this afternoon.'
'What did they want?'
'They didn't say.'
'And Gran?'
'In the Outland. She said not to wait up for her. You look very tired; are you okay?'
It was true, I was tired, but I wasn't sure why. Stress? It's not every day that you have to fight swarms of grammasites and deal with Havisham's driving, Yahoos, Thraals, Big Martin's friends or head-in-a-bag plot devices. Maybe it was just the baby playing silly buggers with my hormones.
'What's for supper?' I asked, slumping into a chair and closing my eyes.
'I've been experimenting with alternative recipes,' said ibb, 'so we're having apples Benedict.'
'Apples Benedict?'
'Yes; it's like eggs Benedict but with—'
'I get the picture. Anything else?'
'Of course. You could try turnips à l’orange or macaroni custard; for pudding I've made anchovy trifle and herring fool. What will you have?'
'Beans on toast.'
I sighed. It was like being back home at Mother's.
I didn't dream that night. Landen was absent, but then so too was … was … what's-her-name. I slept soundly and missed the alarm. I woke up feeling terrible and just lay flat on my back, breathing deeply and trying to push away the clouds of nausea. There was a rap at the door.
'ibb!' I yelled. 'Can you get that?'
My head throbbed but there was no answer. I glanced at the clock; it was nearly nine and both of them would be out at St Tabularasa's practising whimsical asides or something. I hauled myself out of bed, steadied myself for a moment, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and went downstairs. There was no one there when I opened the door. I was just closing it when a small voice said:
'We're down here.'
It was a hedgehog and a tortoise. But the hedgehog wasn't like Mrs Tiggy-winkle, who was as tall as me; this hedgehog and tortoise were just the size they should have been.
'Thursday Next?' said the hedgehog.
'Yes,' I replied, 'what can I do for you?'
'You can stop poking your nose in where it's not wanted,' said the hedgehog haughtily, 'that's what you can do.'
'I don't understand.'
'Painted Jaguar?' suggested the tortoise. 'Can't curl, can swim. Ring any bells, Smart Alec?'
'Oh!' I said. 'You must be Stickly-prickly and Slow-and-Solid.'
'The same. And that little mnemonic you so kindly gave to the Painted Jaguar is going to cause us a few problems — the dopey feline will never forget that in a month of Sundays.'
I sighed. Living in the BookWorld was a great deal more complicated than I had imagined.
'Well, why don't you learn to swim or something?'
'Who, me?' said Stickly-prickly. 'Don't be absurd; whoever heard of a hedgehog swimming?'
'And you could learn to curl,' I added to Slow-and-Solid.
'Curl?' replied the tortoise indignantly. 'I don't think so, thank you very much.'
'Give it a go,' I persisted. 'Unlace your backplates a little and try and touch your toes.'
There was a pause. The hedgehog and tortoise looked at one another and giggled.
'Won't Painted Jaguar be surprised!' they chortled, thanked me, and left.
I closed the door, sat down and looked in the fridge, shrugged and ate a large portion of apples Benedict before having a long and very relaxing shower.
The corridors of the Well were as busy as the day before. Traders bustled with buyers, deals were done, orders taken, bargains struck. Every now and then I saw characters fading in and out as their trade took them from book to book. I looked at the shopfronts as I walked past, trying to guess how they did what they did. There were holesmiths, grammatacists, pace-setters, moodmongers, paginators — you name it.[10]
It was the junkfootnoterphone starting up again. I tried to shut it out but only succeeded in lowering the volume. As I walked along I noticed a familiar figure among the traders and plot speculators. He was dressed in his usual hunter/explorer garb, safari jacket and pith helmet with a revolver in a leather holster. It was Commander Bradshaw, star of thirty-four thrilling adventure stories for boys available in hardback at 7/6 each. Out of print since the thirties, Bradshaw entertained himself in his retirement by being something of an éminence grise at Jurisfiction. He had seen and done it all — or claimed he had.
'A hundred!' he exclaimed bitterly as I drew closer. 'Is that the best you can offer?'
The Action Sequence trader he was talking to shrugged.
'We don't get much call for lion attacks these days.'
'But it's terrifying, man, terrifying!' exclaimed Bradshaw. 'Real hot breath down the back of your neck stuff. Brighten up a chicklit no end, I should wager — make a change from parties and frocks, what?'
'A hundred and twenty, then. Take it or leave it.'
'Blood-sucker!' mumbled Bradshaw, taking the money and handing over a small glass globe with the lion attack, I presumed, safely freeze-dried within. He turned away from the trader and caught me looking at him. He quickly hid the cash and raised his pith helmet politely.
'Good morning!'
'Good morning,' I replied.
He waved a finger at me.
'It's Havisham's apprentice, isn't it? What was your name again?'
'Thursday Next.'
'Is it, by gum?' he exclaimed. 'Well I never.'
He was, I noticed, a good foot taller than the last time we had met. He now almost came up to my shoulder.
'You're much—' I began, then checked myself.
'—taller?' he guessed. 'Quite correct, girlie. Appreciate a woman who isn't trammelled by the conventions of good manners. Melanie — that's the wife, you know — she's pretty rude, too. "Trafford," she says — that's my name, Trafford — "Trafford," she says, "you are a worthless heap of elephant dung." Well, this was out of the blue — I had just returned home after a harrowing adventure in Central Africa where I was captured and nearly roasted on a spit. The sacred emerald of the Umpopo had been stolen by two Swedish prospectors and—'
'Commander Bradshaw,' I interrupted, desperate to stop him recounting one of his highly unlikely adventures, 'have you seen Miss Havisham this morning?'
'Quite right to interrupt me,' he said cheerfully. 'Appreciate a woman who knows when to subtly tell a boring old fart to button his lip. You and Mrs Bradshaw have a lot in common. You must meet up some day.'
We walked down the busy corridor.[11]
I tapped my ears.
'Problems?' enquired Bradshaw.
'Yes,' I replied, 'I've got two gossiping Russians inside my head again.'
'Crossed line? Infernal contraptions. Have a word with Plum at JurisTech if it persists. I say,' he went on, lowering his voice and looking round furtively, 'you won't tell anyone about that lion attack sale, will you? If the story gets around that old Bradshaw is cashing in his Action Sequences, I'll never hear the last of it.'
'I won't say a word,' I assured him as we avoided a trader trying to sell us surplus B-3 Darcy clones, 'but do many people try and sell off parts of their own book?'
'Oh yes,' replied Bradshaw. 'But only if they are out of print and can spare it. Trouble is,' he went on, 'I'm a bit strapped for the old moolah. What with the BookWorld Awards coming up and Mrs Bradshaw a bit shy in public I thought a new dress might be just the ticket — and the cost of clothes is pretty steep down here, y'know.'
'It's the same in the Outland.'
'Is it, by George?' He guffawed. 'The Well always reminds me of the market in Nairobi; how about you?'
'There seems to be an awful lot of bureaucracy,' I observed. 'I would have thought a fiction factory would be, by definition, a lot more free and relaxed.'
'If you think this is bad, you ought to visit non-fiction. Over there, the rules governing the correct use of a semi-colon alone run to several volumes. Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hard-wired at inception, m'girl. I'm surprised you hadn't figured that out yet. What do you think of the Well?'
'I'm still a bit new to it,' I confessed.
'Really?' he replied. 'Let me help you out.'
He stopped and looked around for a moment, then pointed out a man in his early twenties who was walking towards us. He was dressed in a long riding jacket and carried a battered leather suitcase emblazoned with the names of books and plays he had visited in the course of his trade.
'See him?'
'Yes?'
'He's an artisan — a holesmith.'
'He's a plasterer?'
'No; he fills narrative holes, plot and expositional anomalies — Bloopholes. If a writer said something like: "The daffodils bloomed in summer" or: "They checked the ballistics report on the shotgun", then artisans like him are there to sort it out. It's one of the final stages of construction just before the grammatacists, echolocators and spellcheckers move in to smooth everything over.'
The young man had drawn level with us by this time.
'Hello, Mr Starboard,' said Bradshaw to the holesmith, who gave a wan smile of recognition.
'Commander Bradshaw!' he muttered slightly hesitantly. 'What a truly delightful honour it is to meet you again, sir. Mrs Bradshaw quite well?'
'Quite well, thank you. This is Miss Next — new at the department. I'm showing her the ropes.'
'Hello,' he said, proffering a hand and smiling broadly, 'put it there. Perkins is the name. Akrid tells me you sorted Hopkins out good and proper.'
'Thank you,' I replied. 'Akrid's very kind but it isn't over yet.'
He cast an arm towards the horizon.
'What do you think?'
I looked at the view. High snow-capped mountains rose in the distance above a green and verdant plain. At the foot of the hills were forests, and a large river wended its way through the valley.
'Beautiful.'
'We requisitioned it from the fantasy division of the Well of Lost Plots. It's a complete world in itself, written for a sword and sorcery novel entitled The Sword of the Zenobians. Beyond the mountains are icy wastes, deep fjords and relics of long-forgotten civilisations, castles, that sort of stuff. It was auctioned off when the book was abandoned. There were no characters or events written in, which was a shame — considering the work he did on the world itself, this might have been a bestseller. Still, the Outland's loss is our gain. We use it to keep grammasites and other weird beasts who for one reason or another can't live safely within their own books.'
'Sanctuary?'
'Yes — and also for study and containment — hence the password.'
'There seem to be an awful lot of rabbits,' I observed, looking around.
'Ah, yes,' replied Perkins, crossing an arched stone bridge that spanned the small stream, 'we never did get the lid on reproduction within Watership Down — if left to their own devices, the book would be so full of dandelion-munching lagomorphs that every other word would be "rabbit" within a year. Still, Lennie enjoys it here when he has some time off.'
We walked up a path towards a ruined castle. Grass covered the mounds of masonry that had collapsed from the curtain wall, and the wood of the drawbridge had rotted and fallen into a moat now dry and full of brambles. Above us, what appeared to be ravens circled the highest of the remaining towers.
'Not birds,' said Perkins, handing me a pair of binoculars. 'Have a look.'
I peered up at the circling creatures who were soaring on large wings of stretched skin.
'Parenthiums?'
'Very good. I have six breeding pairs here — purely for research, I hasten to add. Most books can easily support forty or so with no ill effects — it's just when the numbers get out of hand that we have to take action. A swarm of grammasites can be pretty devastating.'
'I know,' I replied, 'I was almost—'
'Watch out!'
He pushed me aside as a lump of excrement splattered on to the ground near where I had been standing. I looked up at the battlements and saw a man-beast covered in coarse dark hair who glared down at us and made a strangled cry in the back of his throat.
'Yahoos,' explained Perkins with disdain. 'They're not terribly well behaved and quite beyond training.'
'From Gulliver's Travels'?'
'Bingo. When truly original works like Jonathan Swift's are made into new books characters are often duplicated for evaluation and consultative purposes. Characters can be retrained but creatures usually end up here. Yahoos are not exactly a favourite of mine but they're harmless enough, so the best thing to do is ignore them.'
We walked quickly under the keep to avoid any other possible missiles and entered the inner bailey, where a pair of centaurs were grazing peacefully. They looked up at us, smiled, waved and carried on eating. I noticed that one of them was listening to a Walkman.
'You have centaurs here?'
'And satyrs, troglodytes, chimeras, elves, fairies, dryads, sirens, Martians, leprechauns, goblins, harpies, aliens, Daleks, trolls — you name it.' Perkins smiled. 'A large proportion of unpublished novels are in the fantasy genre, and most of them feature mythical beasts. Whenever one of those books gets demolished I can usually be found down at the salvage yard. It would be a shame to reduce them to text now, wouldn't it?'
'Do you have unicorns?' I asked.
'Yes.' Perkins sighed. 'Sack-loads. More than I know what to do with. I wish potential writers would be more responsible with their creations. I can understand children writing about them, but adults should know better. Every unicorn in every demolished story ends up here. I had this idea for a bumper sticker. "A unicorn isn't for page twenty-seven, it's for eternity." What do you think?'
'I think you won't be able to stop people writing about them. How about taking the horn off and seeking placement in pony books?'
'I'll pretend I didn't hear that,' replied Perkins stonily, adding: 'We have dragons, too. We can hear them sometimes, at night when the wind is in the right direction. When — or if — Pellinore captures the Questing Beast it will come to live here. Somewhere a long way away, I hope. Careful — don't tread in the orc shit. You're an Outlander, aren't you?'
'Born and bred.'
'Has anyone realised that platypuses and sea horses are fictional?'
'Are they?'
'Of course — you don't think anything that weird could have evolved by chance, do you? By the way, how do you like Miss Havisham?'
'I like her a great deal.'
'So do we all. I think she quite likes us, too, but she'd never admit it.'
We had arrived at the inner keep and Perkins pushed open the door. Inside was his office and laboratory. One wall was covered with glass jars filled with odd creatures of all shapes and sizes, and on the table was a partially dissected grammasite. Within its gut were words in the process of being digested into letters.
'I'm not really sure how they do it,' said Perkins, prodding at the carcass with a spoon. 'Have you met Mathias?'
I looked around but could see nothing but a large chestnut horse whose flanks shone in the light. The horse looked at me and I looked at the horse, then past the horse — but there was no one else in the room. The penny dropped.
'Good morning, Mathias,' I said as politely as I could. 'I'm Thursday Next.'
Perkins laughed out loud and the horse brayed and replied in a very deep voice:
'Delighted to make your acquaintance, madam. Permit me to join you in a few moments?'
I agreed and the horse returned to what I now saw were some complicated notes it was writing in a ledger open on the floor. Every now and then it paused and dipped the quill that was attached to its hoof into an inkpot and wrote in a large copperplate script.
'A Houyhnhnm?' I asked. 'Also from Gulliver's Travels?'
Perkins nodded. 'Mathias, his mare and the two Yahoos were all used as consultants for Pierre Boulle's 1963 remake: La planète des singes.'
'Louis Aragon once said,' announced Mathias from the other side of the room, 'that the function of geniuses was to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years on.'
'I hardly think that Boulle was a cretin, Mathias,' said Perkins, 'and anyway, it's always the same with you, isn't it? "Voltaire said this—", Baudelaire said that—". Sometimes I think that you just … just—'
He stopped, trying to think of the right words.
'Was it Da Vinci who said,' suggested the horse helpfully, 'that anyone who quotes authors in discussion is using their memory, not their intellect?'
'Exactly,' replied the frustrated Perkins, 'what I was about to say.'
'Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis,' murmured the horse, staring at the ceiling in thought.
'The only thing that proves is how pretentious you are,' muttered Perkins. 'It's always the same when we have visitors, isn't it?'
'Someone has to raise the tone in this miserable backwater,' replied Mathias, 'and if you call me a "pseudo-erudite ungulate" again, I shall bite you painfully on the buttock.'
Perkins and the horse glared at one another.
'You said there was a pair of Hounyhnhms?' I interjected, trying to defuse the situation.
'My partner, my love, my mare,' explained the horse, 'is currently at Oxford, your Oxford — studying political science at All Souls and paying her way by doing the odd job in the oral tradition.'
'Whereabouts?' I asked, wondering where a talking horse might find employment.
'Jokes about talking horses,' explained Mathias with a shiver of indignation. 'You have heard the one about the talking horse in the pub, I trust?'
'Not for a while,' I replied.
'I'm not surprised,' retorted the horse loftily. 'Her studies do tend to keep her quite busy. Whenever she runs out of funds she does the rounds with a new one. I think she is reprising the talking-horse-with-greyhound gag at the moment.'
It was true. Bowden had used that one at his Happy Squid talent contest. This was probably why jokes 'did the rounds' — it was oral tradition fictioneers going on tour. Another thought struck me.
'Don't you think they'd notice?' I asked. 'A horse, at Oxford?'
'You'd be surprised how unobservant some of the dons are,' snorted Perkins. 'Where do you think Napoleon the pig studied Marxism? The Harris bacon factory?'
'Didn't the other students complain?'
'Of course! Napoleon was expelled.'
'Was it the smell?'
'No — the cheating. This way. I keep the minotaur in the dungeons. You are fully conversant with the legend?'
'Of course,' I replied. 'It's the half-man, half-bull offspring of King Minos' wife, Pasiphaë.'
'Spot on.' He chuckled. 'The tabloids had a field day: "Cretan Queen in Bull Love-child Shock." We built a copy of the Labyrinth to hold it but the Monsters' Humane Society insisted two officials inspect it first.'
'And?'
'That was over twelve years ago; I think they're still in it. I keep the minotaur in here.'
He opened a door that led into a vaulted room below the old hall. It was dark and smelt of rotten bones and sweat.
'Er, you do keep it locked up?' I asked as my eyes struggled to see in the semi-dark.
'Of course!' he replied, nodding towards a large key hanging from a hook. 'What do you think I am, an idiot?'
As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I could see that the back half of the vault was caged off with rusty iron bars. There was a door in the centre which was secured with a ridiculously large padlock.
'Don't get too near,' warned Perkins as he took a steel bowl down from a shelf. 'I've been feeding him on yogurt for almost five years, and to be truthful he's getting a bit bored.'
'Yogurt?'
'With some bran mixed in. Feeding him on Grecian virgins was too expensive.'
'Wasn't he slain by Theseus?' I asked, as a dark shape started moving at the back of the vault accompanied by a low growling noise. Even with the bars I really wasn't happy to be there.
'Usually,' replied Perkins, ladling out some yogurt, 'but mischievous Generics took him out of a copy of Graves' The Greek Myths in 1944 and dropped him in Tsaritsyn. A sharp-eyed Jurisfiction agent figured out what was going on and we took him out — he's been here ever since.'
Perkins filled the steel bowl with yogurt, mixed up some bran from a large dustbin and then placed the bowl on the floor a good five feet from the bars. He pushed the dish the remainder of the way with the handle of a floor mop.
As we watched, the minotaur appeared from the dark recesses of the cage and I felt the hairs bristle on the back of my neck. His large and muscular body was streaked with dirt and sharpened horns sprouted from his bull-like head. He moved with the low gait of an ape, using his forelegs to steady himself. As I watched he put out two clawed hands to retrieve the bowl, then slunk off to a dark corner. I caught a glimpse of his fangs in the dim light, and a pair of deep yellow eyes which glared at me with hungry malevolence.
'I'm thinking of calling him Norman,' murmured Perkins. 'Come on, I want to show you something.'
We left the dark and fetid area beneath the old hall and walked back into the laboratory, where Perkins opened a large leather-bound book that was sitting on the table.
'This is the Jurisfiction Bestiary,' he explained, turning the page to reveal a picture of the grammasite we had encountered in Great Expectations.
'An adjectivore,' I murmured.
'Very good,' replied Perkins. 'Fairly common in the Well but under control in fiction generally.'
He turned a page to reveal a sort of angler fish, but instead of a light dangling on a wand sticking out of its head it had the indefinite article.
'Nounfish,' explained Perkins. 'They swim the outer banks of the Text Sea, hoping to attract and devour stray nouns eager to start an embryonic sentence.'
He turned the page to reveal a picture of a small maggot.
'A bookworm?' I suggested, having seen these before at my Uncle Mycroft's workshop.
'Indeed,' replied Perkins. 'Not strictly a pest and actually quite necessary to the existence of the BookWorld. They take words and expel alternative meanings like a hot radiator. I think earthworms are the nearest equivalent in the Outland. They aerate the soil, yes?'
I nodded.
'Bookworms do the same job down here. "Without them, words would have one meaning, and meanings would have one word. They live in thesauri but their benefit is felt throughout fiction.'
'So why are they considered a pest?'
'Useful, but not without their drawbacks. Get too many bookworms in your novel and the language becomes almost unbearably flowery.'
'I've read books like that,' I confessed.
He turned the page and I recognised the grammasites that had swarmed through the Well earlier.
'Verbisoid,' he said with a sigh, 'to be destroyed without mercy. Once the Verbisoid extracts the verb from a sentence it generally collapses; do that once too often and the whole narrative falls apart like a bread roll in a rainstorm.'
'Why do they wear waistcoats and stripy socks?'
'To keep warm, I should imagine.'
'What's this?' I asked as he turned the page again. 'Another verbinator?'
'Well, kind of,' replied Perkins. 'This is a Converbilator. It actually creates verbs out of nouns and other words. Mostly by appending ize or ise but sometimes just by a direct conversion, such as knife, lunch and question. During a drought they have been known to even create compound verbs such as air-condition, and signpost. Like the bookworms they are necessary — but can't be allowed to get out of hand.'
'Some would say there are too many verbs already,' I commented.
'Those that do,' replied Perkins testily, 'should come and work for Jurisfiction for a bit and try and stop them.'
'What about the mispeling vyrus?' I asked.
'Speltificarious Molesworthian,' murmured Perkins, moving to where a pile of dictionaries were stacked up around a small glass jar. He picked out the container and showed it to me. A thin purple haze seemed to wisp around inside; it reminded me of one of Spike's SEBs.
'This is the larst of the vyrus,' explained Perkins. 'We had to distroy the wrist. It's very powarfull — can u feel it, even through the glas?'
'Unnessary,' I said, testing it out, 'undoutadly, professor, diarhea, nakijima. You're right, it's prety strong, isn't it?'
He replaced the jar bak in the dictosafe.
'Rampant before Agent Johnson's Dictionary in 1744,' commented Perkins. 'Lavinia-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary keep it all in check but we have to be careful. We used to contain any outbreak and offload it in the Molesworth series where no one ever notices. These days we destroy any new vyrus with a battery of dictionaries we keep on the seventeenth floor of the Great Library. But we can't be too careful. Every mispeling you come across has to be reported to the Cat on form S-I2.'
'There was the raucous blast of a car horn from outside.
'Time's up!' Perkins smiled. 'That will be Miss Havisham.'
Miss Havisham was not on her own. She was sitting in a vast automobile the bonnet of which stretched ten feet in front of her. The large spoked and unguarded wheels carried tyres that looked woefully skinny and inadequate; eight huge exhaust pipes sprouted from either side of the bonnet, joined into one and stretched the length of the body. The tail of the car was pointed, like a boat, and just forward of the rear wheels two huge drive sprockets carried the power to the rear axle on large chains. It was a fearsome beast. It was the twenty-seven-litre Higham Special.
8
Ton sixty on the A419
'The wealthy son of a Polish count and an American mother, Louis Zborowski lived at Higham Place near Canterbury, where he built three aero-engined cars, all called Chitty Bang Bang, and a fourth monster, the Higham Special, a car he and Clive Gallop had engineered by squeezing a 27-litre aero engine into a Rubery Owen chassis and mating it with a Benz gearbox. At the time of Zborowski's death at Monza behind the wheel of a Mercedes, the Special had been lapping Brooklands at 116 mph — but her potential was as yet unproved. After a brief stint with a lady owner whose identity has not been revealed, the Special was sold to Parry Thomas, who with careful modifications of his own pushed the land speed record up to 170.624 mph at Pendine Sands, South Wales, in 1926.'
THE VERY REV. TOREDLYNE — The Land Speed Record
'Has she been boring you, Mr Perkins?' called out Havisham.
'Not at all,' replied Perkins, giving me a wink. 'She has been a most attentive student.'
'Humph,' muttered Havisham. 'Hope springs eternal. Get in, girl, we're off!'
I paused. I had been driven by Miss Havisham once before, and that was in a car that I thought relatively safe. This beast of an automobile looked as though it could kill you twice before even reaching second gear.
'What are you waiting for, girl?' said Havisham impatiently. 'If I let the Special idle any longer we'll coke up the plugs. Besides, we need all the fuel to do the run.'
'The run?'
'Don't worry!' shouted Miss Havisham as she revved the engine. The car lurched sideways with the torque and a throaty growl filled the air. 'You won't be aboard when we do — I need you for other duties.'
I took a deep breath and climbed into the small two-seater body It looked newly converted and was little more than a racing car with a few frills tacked on to make it roadworthy. Miss Havisham depressed the clutch and wrestled with the gearshift for a moment The large sprockets took up the power with a slight tug; it felt like a thoroughbred racehorse which had just got the scent of a steeplechase.
'Where are we going?' I asked.
'Home!' answered Miss Havisham as she moved the hand throttle. The car leaped forward across the grassy courtyard and gathered speed.
'To Great Expectations?' I asked as Miss Havisham steered in a broad circuit, fiddling with the levers in the centre of the massive steering wheel.
'Not my home,' she retorted, 'yours!'
With another deep growl and a lurch the car accelerated rapidly forward — but to where I was not sure; in front of us lay the broken drawbridge and stout stone walls of the castle.
'Fear not!' yelled Havisham above the roar of the engine. 'I'll read us into the Outland as simply as blinking!'
We gathered speed. I expected us to jump straight away, but we didn't. We carried on towards the heavy castle wall at a speed not wholly compatible with survival.
'Miss Havisham?' I asked, my voice tinged with fear.
'I'm just trying to think of the best words to get us there, girl!' she replied cheerfully.
'Stop!' I yelled as the point of no return came and went in a flash.
'Let me see …' muttered Havisham, thinking hard, the accelerator still wide open.
I covered my eyes. The car was running too fast for me to jump out and a collision seemed inevitable. I grasped the side of the car's body and tensed as Miss Havisham took herself, me and two tons of automobile through the barriers of fiction and into the real world. My world.
I opened my eyes again. Miss Havisham was studying a road map as the Higham Special swerved down the middle of the road. I grabbed the steering wheel as a milk float swerved into the hedge.
'I won't use the M4 in case the C of G get wind of it,' she said, looking around. 'We'll use the A419 — are we anywhere close?'
I recognised where we were instantly. Just north of Swindon outside a small town called Highworth.
'Continue round the roundabout and up the hill into the town,' I told her, adding: 'But it's not your right of way, remember.'
It was too late. To Miss Havisham, her way was the right way. The first car braked in time but the one behind it was not so lucky — it drove into the rear of the first with a crunch. I held on tightly as Miss Havisham accelerated rapidly away up the hill into Highworth. I was pressed into my seat and for a single moment, perched above two tons of bellowing machinery, I suddenly realised why Havisham liked this sort of thing — it was, in a word, exhilarating.
'I've only borrowed the Special from the count,' she explained. 'Parry Thomas will take delivery of it next week and aim to lift the speed record for himself. I've been working on a new mix of fuels; the A419 is straight and smooth — I should be able to do at least a ton eighty on that.'
'Turn right on to the B4019 at the Jesmond,' I told her, 'after the lights turn to greeeeeeen.'
The truck missed us by about six inches.
'What's that?'
'Nothing.'
'You know, Thursday, you should really loosen up and learn to enjoy life more — you can be such an old stick-in-the-mud.'
I lapsed into silence.
'And don't sulk,' added Miss Havisham. 'If there's something I can't abide, it's a sulky apprentice.'
We bowled down the road, nearly losing it on an 'S' bend, until miraculously we reached the main Swindon—Cirencester road. It was a no right turn but we did anyway, to a chorus of screeching tyres and angry car horns. Havisham accelerated off, and we had just approached the top of the hill when we came across a large 'diversion' sign blocking the road. Havisham thumped the steering wheel angrily.
'I don't believe it!' she bellowed.
'Road closed?' I queried, trying to hide my relief. 'Good — I mean, good-ness gracious, what a shame. Another time, eh?'
Havisham clunked the Special into first gear and we moved off round the sign and motored down the hill.
'It's him, I can sense it!' she growled. 'Trying to steal the speed record from under my very nose!'
'Who?' I asked.
As if in answer another racing car shot past us with a loud 'poop poop!'.
'Him,' muttered Havisham as we pulled off the road next to a speed camera. 'A driver so bad he is a menace to himself and every sentient being on the highways.'
He must have been truly frightful for Havisham to notice. A few minutes later the other car returned and pulled up alongside.
'What ho, Havisham!' said the driver, taking the goggles from his bulging eyes and grinning broadly. 'Still using Count "Snaill" Zborowski's old slowpoke Special, eh?'
'Good afternoon, Mr Toad,' said Havisham. 'Does the Bellman know you're in the Outland?'
'Of course not!' yelled Mr Toad, laughing. 'And you're not going to tell him, old girl, because you're not meant to be here either!'
Havisham was silent and looked ahead, trying to ignore him.
'Is that a Liberty aero-engine under there?' asked Mr Toad, pointing at the Special's bonnet, which trembled and shook as the vast engine idled roughly to itself.
'Perhaps,' replied Havisham.
'Ha!' replied Toad with an infectious smile. 'I had a Rolls-Royce Merlin shoehorned into this old banger!'
I watched Miss Havisham with interest. She stared ahead but her eye twitched slightly when Mr Toad revved the car's engine. In the end, she could resist it no more and her curiosity got the better of her disdain.
'How does it go?' she asked, eyes gleaming.
'Like a rocket!' replied Mr Toad, jumping up and down in his excitement. 'Over a thousand horses to the back axle — makes your Higham Special look like a motor mower!'
'We'll see about that,' replied Havisham, narrowing her eyes. 'Usual place, usual time, usual bet?'
'You're on!' said Mr Toad. He revved his car, pulled down his goggles and vanished in a cloud of rubber smoke. The 'poop poop' of his horn lingered on as an echo some seconds after he had gone.
'Slimy reptile,' muttered Havisham.
'Strictly speaking, he's neither,' I retorted. 'More like a dry-skinned land-based amphibian.'
It felt safe to be impertinent because I knew she wasn't listening.
'He's caused more accidents than you've had hot dinners.'
'And you're going to race him?' I asked slightly nervously.
'And beat him too, what's more,' she replied, handing me a pair of bolt-cutters.
'What do you want me to do?' I asked.
'Open up the speed camera and get the film out once I've done my run.'
I got out. She donned a pair of goggles and was gone in a howl of engine noise and screeching of tyres. I looked nervously around as she and the car hurtled off into the distance, the roar of the engine fading into a hum, occasionally punctuated by muffled cracks from the exhaust. The sun was out and I could see at least three airships droning across the sky; I wondered what was going on at SpecOps. I had written a note to Victor telling him I had to be away for a year or more, and tendered my resignation. Suddenly I was shaken from my daydream by something else. Something dark and just out of sight. Something I should have done or something I'd forgotten. I shivered and then it clicked. Last night. Gran. Aornis' mindworm. What had she been unravelling in my mind? I sighed as the pieces slowly started to merge together in my head. Gran had told me to run the facts over and over to renew the familiar memories that Aornis was trying to delete. But how do you start trying to find out what it is you've forgotten? I concentrated … Landen. I hadn't thought about him all day and that was unusual. I could remember where we met and what had happened to him — no problem there. Anything else? His full name. Damn and blast! Landen Parke-something. Did it begin with a 'B'? I couldn't remember. I sighed and placed my hand over where I imagined our baby to be — it would now be the size of a half-crown. I remembered enough to know I loved him, and I missed him dreadfully — which was a good sign, I supposed. I thought of Lavoisier's perfidy and the Schitt brothers and started to feel rage building inside me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. There was a phone box by the side of the road, and on an impulse I called my mother.
'Hi, Mum,' I said, 'it's Thursday.'
'Thursday!' she screamed excitedly. 'Hang on — the stove's on fire.'
'The stove?'
'Well, the kitchen really — wait a mo!'
There was a crashing noise and she came back on the line a few seconds later.
'Out now. Darling! Are you okay?'
'I'm fine, Mum.'
'And the baby?'
'Fine too. How are things with you?'
'Frightful!' she exclaimed. 'Goliath and SpecOps have been camping outside since the moment you left and Emma Hamilton is living in the spare room and eats like a horse.'
There was an angry growl and a loud whooshing noise as Havisham swept past in little more than a blur; two flashes from the speed camera went off in quick succession and there were several more loud bangs as Havisham rolled off the throttle.
'What was that noise?' asked my mother.
'You'd never believe me if I told you. My — er — husband hasn't been round looking for me, has he?'
'I'm afraid not, sweetheart,' she said in her most understanding voice; she knew about Landen and understood better than most — her own husband, my father, had been eradicated himself seventeen years previously. 'Why don't you come round and talk?' she went on. 'The Eradications Anonymous meeting is at eight this evening; you'll be among friends there.'
'I don't think so, Mum.'
'Are you eating regularly?'
'Yes, Mum.'
'I managed to get DH-82 to do a few tricks.'
DH-82 was her rescue Thylacine. Training a Thylacine, usually unbelievably torpid, to do anything except eat or sleep on command was almost front-page news.
'That's good. Listen, I just called to say I miss you and not to worry about me—'
'I'm going to try another run!' shouted Miss Havisham, who had drawn up. I waved to her and she drove off.
'Are you keeping Pickwick's egg warm?'
I told Mum that this was Pickwick's job, that I would call again when I could, and hung up. I thought of ringing Bowden but decided on the face of it that this was probably not a good idea. Mum's phone was bound to have been tapped and I had given them enough already. I walked back to the road and watched as a small grey dot grew larger and larger until the Special swept past with a strident bellow. The speed camera flashed again and a belch of flame erupted from the exhaust pipe. It took Miss Havisham about a mile to slow down so I sat on a wall and waited patiently for her to return. A small four-seater airship had appeared no more than half a mile away. It seemed to be a SpecOps traffic patrol and I couldn't risk them finding out who I was. I looked urgently towards where Havisham was motoring slowly back to me.
'Come on,' I muttered under my breath, 'put some speed on, for goodness' sake.'
Havisham pulled up and shook her head sadly.
'Mixture's too rich,' she explained. 'Take the film out of the speed camera, will you?'
I pointed out the airship heading our way. It was approaching quite fast — for an airship.
Miss Havisham looked over at it, grunted and jumped down to open the huge bonnet and peer inside. I cut off the padlock, pulled the speed camera down and rewound the film as quickly as I could.
'Halt!' barked the PA system on the airship when it was within a few hundred yards. 'You are both under arrest. Wait by your vehicle.'
'We've got to go,' I said, urgently.
'Poppycock!' replied Miss Havisham.
'Place your hands on the bonnet of the car!' yelled the PA again as the airship droned past at treetop level. 'You have been warned!'
'Miss Havisham,' I said, 'if they find out who I am I could be in a lot of trouble!'
'Nonsense, girl. Why would they want someone as inconsequential as you?'
The airship swung round with the vectored engines in reverse; once they started asking questions I'd be answering them for a long time.
'We have to go, Miss Havisham!'
She sensed the urgency in my voice and beckoned for me to get in the car. Within a moment we were away from that place, car and all, back in the lobby of the Great Library.
'You're not so popular in the Outland, then?' Havisham asked, turning off the engine, which spluttered and shook to a halt, the sudden quiet a welcome break.
'You could say that.'
'Broken the law?'
'Not really.'
She stared at me for a moment.
'I thought it a bit odd that Goliath had you trapped in their deepest and most secure sub-basement. Do you have the film from the speed camera?'
I handed it over.
'I'll get double prints,' she mused. 'Thanks for your help. See you at roll-call tomorrow — don't be late!'
I waited until she had gone, then retraced my steps to the Library, where I had left Snell's 'head-in-a-bag' plot device, and made my way home. I didn't jump direct; I took the elevator. Bookjumping might be a quick way to get around, but it was also kind of knackering.
9
Apples Benedict, a hedgehog and Commander Bradshaw
'ImaginoTransference Recording Device: A machine used to write books in the Well, the ITRD resembles a large horn (typically eight foot across and made of brass) attached to a polished mahogany mixing board a little like a church organ but with many more stops and levers. As the story is enacted in front of the collecting horn, the actions, dialogue, humour, pathos, etc., are collected, mixed and transmitted as raw data to Text Grand Central where the wordsmiths hammer it into readable story code. Once done it is beamed direct to the author's pen or typewriter, and from there through a live footnoterphone link back to the Well as plain text. The page is read and if all is well, it is added to the manuscript and the characters move on. The beauty of the system is that the author never suspects a thing — they think they do all the work.'
CMDR TRAFFORD BRADSHAW, CBE — Bradshaw's Guide to the BookWorld
'I'm home!' I yelled as I walked through the door. Pickwick plocked happily up to me, realised I didn't have any marshmallows, and then left in a huff, only to return with a piece of paper she had found in the waste-paper basket, which she offered to me as a gift. I thanked her profusely and she went back to her egg.
'Hello,' said ibb, who had been experimenting, Beeton-like, in the kitchen, 'what's in the bag?'
'You don't want to know.'
'Hmm,' replied ibb thoughtfully. 'Since I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know, your response must be another way of saying: "I'm not going to tell you, so sod off." Is that correct?'
'More or less,' I replied, placing the bag in the broom cupboard. 'Is Gran around?'
'I don't think so.'
obb walked in a little later, reading a textbook entitled Personalities for Beginners.
'Hello, Thursday,' it said, 'a hedgehog and a tortoise came round to see you this afternoon.'
'What did they want?'
'They didn't say.'
'And Gran?'
'In the Outland. She said not to wait up for her. You look very tired; are you okay?'
It was true, I was tired, but I wasn't sure why. Stress? It's not every day that you have to fight swarms of grammasites and deal with Havisham's driving, Yahoos, Thraals, Big Martin's friends or head-in-a-bag plot devices. Maybe it was just the baby playing silly buggers with my hormones.
'What's for supper?' I asked, slumping into a chair and closing my eyes.
'I've been experimenting with alternative recipes,' said ibb, 'so we're having apples Benedict.'
'Apples Benedict?'
'Yes; it's like eggs Benedict but with—'
'I get the picture. Anything else?'
'Of course. You could try turnips à l’orange or macaroni custard; for pudding I've made anchovy trifle and herring fool. What will you have?'
'Beans on toast.'
I sighed. It was like being back home at Mother's.
I didn't dream that night. Landen was absent, but then so too was … was … what's-her-name. I slept soundly and missed the alarm. I woke up feeling terrible and just lay flat on my back, breathing deeply and trying to push away the clouds of nausea. There was a rap at the door.
'ibb!' I yelled. 'Can you get that?'
My head throbbed but there was no answer. I glanced at the clock; it was nearly nine and both of them would be out at St Tabularasa's practising whimsical asides or something. I hauled myself out of bed, steadied myself for a moment, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and went downstairs. There was no one there when I opened the door. I was just closing it when a small voice said:
'We're down here.'
It was a hedgehog and a tortoise. But the hedgehog wasn't like Mrs Tiggy-winkle, who was as tall as me; this hedgehog and tortoise were just the size they should have been.
'Thursday Next?' said the hedgehog.
'Yes,' I replied, 'what can I do for you?'
'You can stop poking your nose in where it's not wanted,' said the hedgehog haughtily, 'that's what you can do.'
'I don't understand.'
'Painted Jaguar?' suggested the tortoise. 'Can't curl, can swim. Ring any bells, Smart Alec?'
'Oh!' I said. 'You must be Stickly-prickly and Slow-and-Solid.'
'The same. And that little mnemonic you so kindly gave to the Painted Jaguar is going to cause us a few problems — the dopey feline will never forget that in a month of Sundays.'
I sighed. Living in the BookWorld was a great deal more complicated than I had imagined.
'Well, why don't you learn to swim or something?'
'Who, me?' said Stickly-prickly. 'Don't be absurd; whoever heard of a hedgehog swimming?'
'And you could learn to curl,' I added to Slow-and-Solid.
'Curl?' replied the tortoise indignantly. 'I don't think so, thank you very much.'
'Give it a go,' I persisted. 'Unlace your backplates a little and try and touch your toes.'
There was a pause. The hedgehog and tortoise looked at one another and giggled.
'Won't Painted Jaguar be surprised!' they chortled, thanked me, and left.
I closed the door, sat down and looked in the fridge, shrugged and ate a large portion of apples Benedict before having a long and very relaxing shower.
The corridors of the Well were as busy as the day before. Traders bustled with buyers, deals were done, orders taken, bargains struck. Every now and then I saw characters fading in and out as their trade took them from book to book. I looked at the shopfronts as I walked past, trying to guess how they did what they did. There were holesmiths, grammatacists, pace-setters, moodmongers, paginators — you name it.[10]
It was the junkfootnoterphone starting up again. I tried to shut it out but only succeeded in lowering the volume. As I walked along I noticed a familiar figure among the traders and plot speculators. He was dressed in his usual hunter/explorer garb, safari jacket and pith helmet with a revolver in a leather holster. It was Commander Bradshaw, star of thirty-four thrilling adventure stories for boys available in hardback at 7/6 each. Out of print since the thirties, Bradshaw entertained himself in his retirement by being something of an éminence grise at Jurisfiction. He had seen and done it all — or claimed he had.
'A hundred!' he exclaimed bitterly as I drew closer. 'Is that the best you can offer?'
The Action Sequence trader he was talking to shrugged.
'We don't get much call for lion attacks these days.'
'But it's terrifying, man, terrifying!' exclaimed Bradshaw. 'Real hot breath down the back of your neck stuff. Brighten up a chicklit no end, I should wager — make a change from parties and frocks, what?'
'A hundred and twenty, then. Take it or leave it.'
'Blood-sucker!' mumbled Bradshaw, taking the money and handing over a small glass globe with the lion attack, I presumed, safely freeze-dried within. He turned away from the trader and caught me looking at him. He quickly hid the cash and raised his pith helmet politely.
'Good morning!'
'Good morning,' I replied.
He waved a finger at me.
'It's Havisham's apprentice, isn't it? What was your name again?'
'Thursday Next.'
'Is it, by gum?' he exclaimed. 'Well I never.'
He was, I noticed, a good foot taller than the last time we had met. He now almost came up to my shoulder.
'You're much—' I began, then checked myself.
'—taller?' he guessed. 'Quite correct, girlie. Appreciate a woman who isn't trammelled by the conventions of good manners. Melanie — that's the wife, you know — she's pretty rude, too. "Trafford," she says — that's my name, Trafford — "Trafford," she says, "you are a worthless heap of elephant dung." Well, this was out of the blue — I had just returned home after a harrowing adventure in Central Africa where I was captured and nearly roasted on a spit. The sacred emerald of the Umpopo had been stolen by two Swedish prospectors and—'
'Commander Bradshaw,' I interrupted, desperate to stop him recounting one of his highly unlikely adventures, 'have you seen Miss Havisham this morning?'
'Quite right to interrupt me,' he said cheerfully. 'Appreciate a woman who knows when to subtly tell a boring old fart to button his lip. You and Mrs Bradshaw have a lot in common. You must meet up some day.'
We walked down the busy corridor.[11]
I tapped my ears.
'Problems?' enquired Bradshaw.
'Yes,' I replied, 'I've got two gossiping Russians inside my head again.'
'Crossed line? Infernal contraptions. Have a word with Plum at JurisTech if it persists. I say,' he went on, lowering his voice and looking round furtively, 'you won't tell anyone about that lion attack sale, will you? If the story gets around that old Bradshaw is cashing in his Action Sequences, I'll never hear the last of it.'
'I won't say a word,' I assured him as we avoided a trader trying to sell us surplus B-3 Darcy clones, 'but do many people try and sell off parts of their own book?'
'Oh yes,' replied Bradshaw. 'But only if they are out of print and can spare it. Trouble is,' he went on, 'I'm a bit strapped for the old moolah. What with the BookWorld Awards coming up and Mrs Bradshaw a bit shy in public I thought a new dress might be just the ticket — and the cost of clothes is pretty steep down here, y'know.'
'It's the same in the Outland.'
'Is it, by George?' He guffawed. 'The Well always reminds me of the market in Nairobi; how about you?'
'There seems to be an awful lot of bureaucracy,' I observed. 'I would have thought a fiction factory would be, by definition, a lot more free and relaxed.'
'If you think this is bad, you ought to visit non-fiction. Over there, the rules governing the correct use of a semi-colon alone run to several volumes. Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hard-wired at inception, m'girl. I'm surprised you hadn't figured that out yet. What do you think of the Well?'
'I'm still a bit new to it,' I confessed.
'Really?' he replied. 'Let me help you out.'
He stopped and looked around for a moment, then pointed out a man in his early twenties who was walking towards us. He was dressed in a long riding jacket and carried a battered leather suitcase emblazoned with the names of books and plays he had visited in the course of his trade.
'See him?'
'Yes?'
'He's an artisan — a holesmith.'
'He's a plasterer?'
'No; he fills narrative holes, plot and expositional anomalies — Bloopholes. If a writer said something like: "The daffodils bloomed in summer" or: "They checked the ballistics report on the shotgun", then artisans like him are there to sort it out. It's one of the final stages of construction just before the grammatacists, echolocators and spellcheckers move in to smooth everything over.'
The young man had drawn level with us by this time.
'Hello, Mr Starboard,' said Bradshaw to the holesmith, who gave a wan smile of recognition.
'Commander Bradshaw!' he muttered slightly hesitantly. 'What a truly delightful honour it is to meet you again, sir. Mrs Bradshaw quite well?'
'Quite well, thank you. This is Miss Next — new at the department. I'm showing her the ropes.'