The well of lost plots (40 page)

“Where are you going?” asked Arnie.

“To visit the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group on the seventeenth floor. I think they might be able to help.”

“Will they want to?”

I shrugged. “Asking wasn’t part of the plan.”

The elevator doors opened on the seventeenth floor. This held all the books whose authors began with
Q
, and since there weren’t that many of them, the remainder of the space had been given over to the Jurisfiction Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group. If any live mispeling vyrus was at Jurisfiction, this would be the place to find it.

This floor of the Great Library was more dimly lit than the others, and the rows of bunk beds containing the DanverClones began soon after the Quiller-Couch novels ended. The Danvers were all sitting bolt upright, their eyes following me silently as I walked slowly down the corridor. It was disquieting to be sure, but I could think of no other place to look.

I reached the central core of the library, a circular void surrounded by a wrought-iron rail at the center of the four corridors. The way I had come was all Danvers, and so were two of the others. The fourth corridor was lined with packing cases of dictionaries, and beyond them, the medical area in which I had last seen Snell. I walked closer, my feet making no noise on the padded carpet. Perhaps Snell had known as much as Perkins? They were partners, after all. I cursed myself for not thinking of this before.

I arrived at the small medical unit that was ready and waiting to deal with any infected person. The shielded curtains, the bandages overprinted with dictionary entries. They could soothe and contain but rarely cure — Snell was doomed as soon as he was soaked in the vyrus and he knew it.

I opened a few drawers here and there but found nothing. Then, I noticed a large pile of dictionaries stacked by themselves in a roped-off area. I walked closer, repeating the word
ambidextrous
as I did so.

“Ambidextrous . . . ambidextrous . . . ambidextrous . . . ambidextruos.”

Bingo. I’d found it.

“Miss Next? What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. If it had been Libris, I would have been worried; but it wasn’t — it was Harris Tweed.

“You nearly scared me half to death!” I told him.

“Sorry!” He grinned. “What are you up to?”

“There’s something wrong with Ultra Word™.”

Tweed looked up and down the corridor and lowered his voice. “I think so, too,” he hissed, “but I’m not sure what — I’ve a feeling that it uses a faster ‘memory fade’ utility than Version 8.3 so the readers will want to reread the book more often. The Council of Genres are interested in upping their published ReadRates — the battle with nonfiction is hotting up; more than they care to tell
us
about.”

It was the sort of thing I had suspected.

“What have
you
discovered?” he asked.

I leaned closer. “UltraWord™ has a ‘thrice only’ read capability.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Tweed. “Find anything else?”

“Not yet. I was hoping to discover what Snell said before he died. It was badly mispeled but I thought perhaps I could
unmispel
it by repeating it close to a mispeling source.”

“Good thought, but we must take care.” Tweed donned a pair of dictosafe gloves. “Sit here and repeat Snell’s words.” He placed a chair not a yard from the pile of dictionaries. “I’ll remove one OED at a time and we’ll see what happens.”

“
Wode — Cone, udder whirled — doughnut Trieste
,” I recited as Tweed pulled a single dictionary from the large pile that covered the vyrus. “
Wode — Cone, ulder whirled — dougnut Trieste
.”

“Who else knows about this?” he asked. “If what you say is true, this knowledge is dangerous enough to have killed three times — I hate to say it, but I think we have a rotten apple at Jurisfiction.”

“I told no wun at Jurizfaction.
Wede — Caine, ulder whorled — dogn’ut Triuste
.”

Harris carefully removed another dictionary. I could see the faint purple glow from within the stacked books.

“We don’t know who we can trust,” he said somberly. “Who
did
you tell, precisely? It’s important, I need to know.”

He removed another dictionary.

“Twede — Caine, ulter whorled — dogn’t Truste.”

My heart went cold.
Twede
. Could that be
Tweed
? I tried to look normal and glanced across at him, attempting to figure out if he had heard me. I had good reason to be concerned; if he removed one too many dictionaries, I could be fatally mispeled into a
Thirsty Neck
or something — and nobody knew I was here.

“I cane right you a liszt if it wood yelp,” I said, trying to sound as normal as I could.

“Why not just tell me,” he said, still smiling. “Who was it? Some of those Generics at
Caversham Heights
?”

“I tolled the bell, man.”

The smile dropped from his face. “Now I know you’re lying.”

We stared at one another. Tweed was no fool; he knew his cover was blown.

“
Tweed
,” I said, the unmispeling now complete, “
Kaine — Ultra Word — Don’t trust
!”

I jumped aside as soon as I had said it. I was only just in time — Tweed yanked out three dictionaries near the bottom and the dictosafe partially collapsed.

I sprawled on the ground as the heavy glow, emanating in one direction from the disrupted pile of dictionaries, instantly turned the hospital bed behind me into an
hospitable ted
, a furry stuffed bear who waved his paw cheerfully and told me to pop round for dinner any day of the week — and to bring a friend.

I threw myself at Tweed, who was not as quick as I, my speech returning to normal almost immediately.

“Snell and Perkins?!” I yelled pinning him to the ground. “Who else? Havisham?”

“It’s not important,” he cried as I took his gun and forced his chin into the carpet.

“You’re wrong!” I told him angrily. “What’s the problem with Ultra Word™?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” he replied, trying to sound reasonable. “In fact, everything’s
right
with it! Control of the BookWorld will have never been easier. And with modern and freethinking Outlanders like you and I, we can take fiction to new and dizzying heights!”

I pushed my knee harder into the back of his neck and he yelped.

“And where does Kaine come into this?”

“Ultra Word™ benefits everyone, Next. Us in here and publishers out there. It’s the perfect system!”

“Perfect? You need to resort to murder to keep it on track? How can it be perfect?”

“You don’t understand, Next. In the Outland murder is morally reprehensible, but in here it has a narrative necessity — without it and the jeopardy it generates, we’d have lost a million readers long ago!”

“She was my friend, Tweed!” I yelled. “Not some cannon fodder for a cheap thriller!”

“You’re making a big mistake,” he replied, face still pressed into the carpet. “I can offer you an important position at Text Grand Central. With UltraWord™ under our control we will have the power to change anything we please within fiction. You gave
Jane Eyre
a happy ending — we can do the same with countless others and give the reading public what they want. We will dictate terms to that moth-eaten bunch of bureaucrats at the Council of Genres and forge a new, stronger fiction that will catapult the novel to new heights — no longer will we be looked down upon by the academic press and marginalized by nonfiction!”

I had heard enough. “You’re finished, Tweed. When the Bellman hears what you’ve been up to — !”

“The Bellman is only a tool of Text Grand Central, Next. He does what we tell him. Release me and take your place at my side. Untold adventures and riches await you — we can even write your husband back.”

“Not a chance. I want the real Landen or none at all.”

“You won’t know the difference. Take my hand — I won’t offer it again.”

“No deal.”

“Then,” he said slowly, “it is good-bye.”

I saw something out of the corner of my eye and moved quickly to my right. A pickax handle glanced off my shoulder and struck the carpet. It was Uriah Hope. No wonder Tweed hadn’t seemed that worried. I rolled off Tweed and dodged Uriah’s next blow, pushing myself backwards along the carpet in my haste to get away. He swung again and shattered a desk, wedging the handle in the wood and struggling with it long enough for me to get to my feet and raise my gun. I wasn’t quick enough and he knocked it from my grasp; I ducked the next blow and ran back towards Tweed, who was starting to get up. He hooked my ankle and I came crashing down. I rolled onto my back as Uriah jumped towards me with a wild cry. I put out a foot, caught him on the chest and heaved. His momentum carried him over onto the pile of dictionaries — and the mispeling vyrus. Tweed tried to grab me but I was off and running down the corridor as the DanverClones began to stir.

“Kill her!” screamed Tweed, and the Danvers started to move off their bunk beds and walk slowly towards me. I took my TravelBook from my pocket, opened it at the right page and stopped, right in the middle of the corridor. I couldn’t outrun them but I could
outread
them. As I jumped out, I could just feel the bony fingers of the Danvers clutching my rapidly vanishing form.

I jumped clean into Norland Park. Past the striking nursery characters and the frog-faced doorman to appear a little too suddenly in the Jurisfiction offices. I ran straight into the Red Queen, who collapsed and in turn knocked over Benedict and the Bellman. I quickly grabbed Benedict’s pistol in case Tweed or Hope arrived ready for action and was consequently attacked from an unexpected quarter. Mistaking my intentions, the Red Queen grabbed my gun arm and twisted it around behind me while Benedict tackled me round the waist and pulled me down yelling, “Gun! Protect the Bellman!”

“Wait!” I shouted. “There’s a problem with Ultra Word™!”

“What do you mean?” demanded the Bellman when I had surrendered the gun. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“No joke. It’s Tweed—”

“Don’t listen to her!” shouted Tweed, who had just appeared. “She is an ambitious murderer who will stop at nothing to get what she wants!”

The Bellman looked at us both in turn. “You have proof of this, Harris?”

“Oh, yes — more proof than you’ll ever need. Heep, bring it in.”

Uriah Hope — or
Heep
as he was now — had survived the mispeling but had been changed irrevocably. Whilst before he had been
adventurous
, he was, thanks to the vyrus,
cadaverous
;
thin
instead of
lithe, fawning
instead of
frowning
. But that was, for the moment, by the by. Uriah was holding the stained pillowcase that contained Snell’s head. Not his own, of course — the plot device Snell had paid so much for in the Well.

“We found this in Thursday’s home,” announced Tweed, “hidden in the broom cupboard. Heep, would you?”

The thin and sallow youth, whose hair was now
oily
rather than
curly
, laid the bag on a table and lifted the head out by its hair. A gasp came from Benedict’s lips and the Red Queen crossed herself.

“Heavens above,” murmured the Bellman, “it’s Godot!”

Insider Trading:
Slang term for Internal Narrative Manipulation. Illegal since 1932 and contrary to item B17(g) of the Narrative Continuity Code, this self-engineered plot fluctuation is so widespread within the BookWorld that it is dealt with on a discretionary basis to enable it to be enforced at all. Small manipulation such as dialogue violations are generally ignored, but larger unlicensed plot adjustments are aggressively investigated. The most publicized flaunting of these rules was by Heathcliff when he burned down Wuthering Heights. Fined and sentenced to 150 hours community service within
Green Eggs and Ham
, Heathcliff was just one of many high-profile cases that Jurisfiction were prosecuting at that time.

CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE,
Guide to the Great Library
(glossary)

I HAD UNDERESTIMATED TWEED or the power he wielded in the BookWorld. Until then I don’t think I’d realized just how far they would warp the narrative to realize their ambitions. I was still standing there gaping like an idiot when Heep grasped me painfully by the arm and twisted it around, pushing me into a bookcase as he did so.

“I be ever so humbly sorry about this, Miss Next,” he whined, the mispeling having gone deeper than his skin and rotted his very soul. “Imagine me, an A-7 arresting a pretty Outlander such as yourself!”

His breath smelt rotten; I breathed through my mouth to avoid gagging. He reached in for my TravelBook and took the opportunity to slide his hand across my breast; I struggled harder — but to no avail.

“That head’s not mine!” I shouted, realizing how stupid it sounded straightaway.

“That is one thing we
are
certain of,” replied Tweed quietly. “Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t. It’s Snell’s,” I said somewhat uselessly, “he bought it for use in his next book and asked me to keep it for him.”

“Snell, insider trading? Any other ills you’d like to heap on the dead? I don’t think that’s very likely — and how did it turn out to be Godot’s? Coincidence?”

“I’m being framed,” I replied, “Godot’s head in a bag in my closet? Isn’t that a chapter ending too slick to be anything but an engineered dramatic moment?”

I stopped. I had been told many times by my SpecOps instructors that the biggest mistake anyone can make in a high-stress situation is to act too fast and say too much before thinking. I needed time — a commodity that was fast becoming a rarity.

“We have evidence of her involvement in at least three other murders, Mr. Bellman,” said Tweed.

The Bellman sighed and shook his head sadly as I was relieved of my TravelBook and handcuffed to three anvils to stop me jumping out.