The well of lost plots (42 page)

I STOOD OFFSTAGE AT the Starlight Room, one in a long line of equally minor celebrities, all awaiting our turn to go and read the nominations. The hospitality lounge where we had all been mustered was about the size of a football pitch, and the massed babble of excited voices sounded like rushing water. I had been trying to avoid Tweed all evening. But whenever I lost him, Heep would take over. There were others about, too. Bradshaw had pointed out Orlick and Legree, two other assistants of Tweed’s that he thought I should be wary of.

Of them all, Heep was the most amateur. His skills at unobserved observation were woefully inadequate.

“Well!” he said when I caught him staring at me. “You and me both waiting for awards!” He rubbed his hands and tapped his long fingers together. “I ask you, me all humble and you an Outlander. Thanks to you and the mispeling incident I’m up for Most Creepy Character in a Dickens Novel. What would you be up for?”

“I’m giving one, not accepting one, Uriah — and why are you following me?”

“Apologies, ma’am,” he said, squirming slightly and clasping his hands together to try to stop them from moving, “Mr. Tweed asked me to keep a particular close eye on you in case of an attack, ma’am.”

“Oh, yes?” I replied, unimpressed by the lame cover story. “From whom?”

“Those who would wish you harm, of course. ProCaths, bowdlerizers — even the townspeople from
Shadow
. It was them what tried to kill you at Solomon’s, I’ll be bound.”

Sadly, it was true. There had been two attempts on my life since Deane’s arrest. The first had been a tiger released in Kenneth’s office. I thought at first it was Big Martin catching up with me — but it wasn’t. Bradshaw had dealt with the creature; he sent it on a one-way trip to
Zenobians
. The second had been a contract killing. Fortunately for me, Heep’s handwriting was pretty poor and Thursby from
The Maltese Falcon
was shot instead. It was only because I was an Outlander that I was still alive — if I’d been a Generic, Text Grand Central could have erased me at source long ago.

“Mr. Tweed said that Outlanders have to stick together,” carried on Heep, “and look after each other. Outlanders have a duty—”

“This is all really very sweet of him,” I interrupted, “but I can look after myself. Good luck with your award; I’m sure you’ll win.”

“Thank you!” he said, fidgeting for a moment before moving off a little way and continuing to stare at me in an unsubtle manner.

I was summoned towards the stage where I could see the master of ceremonies winding up the previous award. He reminded me of Adrian Lush — all smiles, insincerity and bouffant hair.

“So,” he carried on, “ ‘teleportation’ a clear winner for the Most Implausible Premise in an SF Novel, which was hard luck on ‘And they lived happily after,’ which won last year. If I could thank all the nominees and especially Ginger Hebblethwaite for presenting it.”

There was applause; a freckled youth in a flying jacket waved to the crowd and winked at me as he trotted offstage.

The emcee took a deep breath and consulted his list. Unlike awards at home, there was no TV coverage as no one in the BookWorld had a TV. You didn’t need one. The Generics who had remained in the books as a skeleton staff to keep the stories in order were kept up-to-date with a live footnoterphone link from the Starlight Room. With all the usual characters away at the awards, fiction wasn’t
quite
so good, but no one generally noticed. This was often the reason people in the Outland argued over the quality of a recommended book. They had read it during the Bookies.

“The next award, ladies, gentleman and, er,
things
, is to be given by the newest Jurisfiction agent to join the ranks of the BookWorld’s own policing agency. Fresh from a glittering career in the Outland and engineer of the improved ending to
Jane Eyre
, may I present — Thursday Next!”

There was applause and I walked on, smiling dutifully. I shook the hand of the emcee and looked out into the auditorium.

It was vast.
Really
vast. The Starlight Room was the largest single-function room ever described in any book. A lit candelabra graced each of the hundred thousand tables, and as I looked into the room, all I could see was a never-ending field of white lights, flickering in the distance like stars. Seven million characters were here tonight, but by using a convenient temporal-field displacement technology borrowed from the boys in the SF genre, everyone in the room had a table right next to the stage and could hear and see us with no problems at all.

“Good evening,” I said, staring out at the sea of faces, “I am here to read the nominations and announce the winner of the Best Chapter Opening in the English Language category.”

I started to feel hot under the lights. I composed myself and read the back of the envelope.

“The nominations are
The Fall of the House of Usher
by Edgar Allan Poe,
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh, and
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens.”

I waited until the applause had died down and then opened the envelope.

“And the winner is . . .
Brideshead Revisited
!”

There was thunderous applause and I smiled dutifully as the emcee bent closer to the microphone.

“Wonderful!” he said enthusiastically as the applause subsided. “Let’s hear the winning paragraph, shall we?”

He placed the short section of writing into the Imagino TransferenceDevice that had been installed on the stage. But this wasn’t a recording ITD like the ones they used to create books in the Well — it was a transmitter. The words of Waugh’s story were read by the machine and projected directly into the crowd’s imagination.

     “. . . I have been here before,” I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and although I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest . . .”

There was more applause from the guests, and when finally it stopped, the emcee announced, “Mr. Waugh can’t be with us tonight, so I would like to ask Sebastian to accept the award on his behalf.”

There was a drumroll and a brief alarum of music as Sebastian walked from his table, up the steps to the podium and after kissing me on the cheek shook the emcee’s hand warmly.

“Goodness!” he said, taking a swig from the glass he had brought with him. “It’s a great honor to accept the award on behalf of Mr. Waugh. I know he would want me to thank Charles, from whose mouth all the words spring, and also Lord Marchmain for his excellent death scene, my mother, of course, and Julia, Cords—”

“What about me?” said a small voice from the
Brideshead
table.

“I was getting to you, Aloysius.” Sebastian cleared his throat and took another swig. “Of course, I would also like to say that we in
Brideshead
could not have done it all on our own. I’d like to thank all the other characters in previous works who have done so much to lay the groundwork. I’d particularly like to mention Captain Grimes, Margot Metroland, and Lord Copper. In addition . . .”

He droned on like this for almost twenty minutes, thanking everyone he could think of before finally taking the Bookie statuette and returning to his table. I was thanked by the emcee and walked off the stage feeling really quite relieved, the voice of the emcee echoing behind me:

“And for the next category, Most Incomprehensible Plot in Any Genre, we are very pleased to welcome someone who has kindly taken a few hours’ leave of his grueling schedule of sadistic galactic domination. Ladies, gentlemen and things, his Supreme Holiness Emperor Zhark!”

“You’re on,” I whispered to the emperor, who was trying to calm his nerves with a quick cigarette in the wings.

“How do I look? Enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions of merciless life-forms?”

“Terrifying. Have you got the envelope?”

He patted his thick black cloak until he found it and held it up, gave a wan smile, took a deep breath and strode purposefully onto the stage to screams of terror and boos.

I reentered the Starlight Room as the Most Incomprehensible Plot was awarded for the fifth year running to
The Magus
. I glanced at my watch. There was an hour to go until the last and most prestigious award was due to be announced — the Most Troubled Romantic Lead (Male). It was a hot contest and the odds had been fluctuating all day. Heathcliff was the clear favorite at 7–2. He had won it seventy-seven times in a row, and ever conscious of someone trying to steal his thunder, he had been altering his words and actions subtly to keep the crown firmly on his head, something the opposition had also been attempting. Jude Fawley had been trying to spike his own plot to add drama, and even Hamlet was not averse to a subtle amount of plot-shifting; he had hammed up his madness so much he had to be sent on a cruise to calm him down.

I passed a table populated entirely by rabbits.

“Waiter!” called one of them, thumping his rear paw to get attention. “More dandelion leaves for table eight, if you please, sir!”

“Good evening, Miss Next.”

It was the Bradshaws; I was glad to see that they had not been swayed by convention — Mrs. Bradshaw had decided to attend after all.

“Good evening, Commander, good evening, Mrs. Bradshaw — nice dress you’re wearing.”

“Do you think so?” asked Mrs. Bradshaw slightly nervously. “Trafford wanted me to wear something full length, but I think this little Coco Chanel cocktail number is rather fetching, don’t you?”

“Black suits your eyes,” I told her, and she smiled demurely.

“I’ve got the
thing
you wanted me to keep for you,” whispered Bradshaw under his breath. “Appreciate a girl who knows how to delegate — say the word and it’s yours!”

“I’m waiting for the announcement of Ultra Word™,” I hissed. “Tweed is on my back; don’t let him get it no matter what!”

“Don’t worry your little head about
that
,” he said, nodding towards Mrs. Bradshaw. “The memsahib’s in the loop — she may look a delicate thing, but by Saint George she’s a fearful lass when riled.”

He gave me a wink and I moved on, heart pounding. I hoped the nervousness didn’t show. Heep was on the stage, but Legree had taken his place and was keeping a surreptitious eye on me from seven hundred tables away — the temporal-field displacement technology worked in his favor — every table was next to every other.

All of a sudden there was a strong smell of beer.

“Miss Next!”

“Sir John, good evening.”

Falstaff looked me up and down. I didn’t wear a dress that often and I crossed my arms defensively.

“Resplendent, my dear, resplendent!” he exclaimed, pretending to be something of an expert.

“Thank you.”

Usually I avoided Falstaff, but if I was being watched, it made sense to talk to as many people as possible; if Tweed and TGC thought I could throw a spanner in the works, I would not help them by drawing attention to my genuine confederates.

“I know of a side room, Mistress Next, a small place of an acquainting manner — a
niche d’amour
. What say you and I retire to that place where you might learn there how I came by the name ‘Falstaff.’ ”

“Another time.”

“Really?” he asked, surprised by my — albeit accidental — acquiescence.

“No, not really, Sir John,” I said hurriedly.

“Phew!” he said, mopping his brow. “ ’T’would not be half the sport if you were to lie with me — resistance, Mistress Next, is rich allurement indeed!”

“If resistance is all you seek,” I told him, smiling, “then you will never have a keener woman to woo!”

“I’ll drink to that!” He laughed heartily — the word might have been written for him.

“I have to leave you, Sir John, no more than a gallon of beer an hour, remember?”

I patted his large tum, which was as hard and unyielding as a beer barrel.

“On my word!” he replied, wiping the froth from his beard.

I reached the Jurisfiction table. Beatrice and Benedict were arguing, as usual.

“Ah!” said Benedict as soon as I sat down. “ ’Tis beauty that dost oft make women proud, but God he knows Beatrice’s share thereof is small!”

“How so?” replied Beatrice. “That face of yours that hungry cannibals would not have touch’d!”

“Have either of you seen the Bellman?” I asked.

They said they hadn’t and I left them to their arguing as Foyle sat down next to me. I had seen him at Norland Park from time to time. He was Jurisfiction, too.

“Hello, we haven’t been introduced. Gully Foyle is my name, terra is my nation; deep space is my dwelling place and death’s my destination — I police Science Fiction.”

I shook his hand. “Thursday Next. Call me Thursday. How are you liking the awards?”

“Pretty good. I was disappointed that Hamlet won the Shakespearean Character You’d Most Like to Slap Award — my money was on Othello.”

“Well, Othello won Dopiest Shakespearean Lead, and they don’t like them to win more than one each.”

“Is that how it works?” Foyle mused. “The voting system makes no sense to me.”

“They say you’ll be partnered at Jurisfiction with Emperor Zhark,” I said, more by way of conversation than anything else.

“I hope not. We’ve been trying to raise the intellectual and philosophical status of science fiction for some time now; people like him don’t help the cause one iota.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well,” mused Foyle, “how can I put it? Zhark belongs to what we describe as Lesser Science Fiction or Winsome or maybe even Classic.”

“How about crap?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

There was a burst of applause as the emcee announced the next award.

“Ladies, gentlemen and things,” he declared, “we had asked Dorothy to present the next award, but she was, sadly, kidnapped by flying monkeys just before the show. I will therefore read the nominations myself.”