The well of lost plots (45 page)

IT WAS NEARLY morning when the BookWorld Awards party finished. Heathcliff was furious that in all the excitement the final award of the night had been forgotten; I saw him talking angrily to his personal imaginator an hour after the appearance of the Great Panjandrum. There would be next year of course, but his seventy-seven-year record had been broken and he didn’t like it. I thought he might take it out on Linton and Catherine when he got home, and he did.

No one had been more surprised than me by the arrival of the Great Panjandrum when I pulled the emergency handle. For the nonbelievers it was something of a shock, but not any less than for the faithful. She had been so long a figure of speech that seeing her in the flesh was something of a shock. I thought she had seemed quite plain and in her midthirties, but Humpty-Dumpty told me later he had been shaped like an egg. In any event, the marble statue that now stands in the lobby of the Council of Genres depicts the Great Panjandrum as Mr. Price the stonemason saw him — with a leather apron and carrying a mallet and stone chisel.

When she arrived, the Great Panjandrum read the situation perfectly. She froze all the text within the room, locked the doors and decreed that a vote be taken there and then. She summoned the head of the Council of Genres, and the vote against UltraWord
^TM
was carried unanimously. She spoke to me three times: once to tell me I had
The Write Stuff
, second to ask me if I would take on the job of the Bellman, and lastly to ask if disco mirror-balls in the Outland had a motor to make them go round or whether they did it by the action of the lights. I answered “Thank you,” “Yes” and “I don’t know” in that order.

After the party was over, I walked back through the slowly stirring Well of Lost Plots to the shelf that held
Caversham Heights
and read myself back inside, tired but happy. The Bellman’s job would, I hoped, keep me busy, but purely in administration — I wouldn’t have to go jumping around in books — just the thing to allow my ankles to swell in peace and quiet, and to plan my return to the Outland when the infant Next and its mother were strong enough. Together we would face the tribulations of Landen’s return, because the little one
would
have a father, I had promised it that much already. I opened the door to the Sunderland and felt the old flying boat rock slightly as I entered. When I’d first come here, it had unnerved me, but now I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Small wavelets slapped against the hull, and somewhere an owl hooted as it returned to roost. It felt as much like home as home had ever done. I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long because, she said, she had “yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and fell fast asleep without the nagging fear of Aornis, and it was nearly ten the next morning when I awoke. But I didn’t wake naturally — Pickwick was tugging at the corner of my dress.

“Not now, Pickers,” I mumbled sleepily, trying to turn over and nearly impaling myself on a knitting needle. She carried on tugging until I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched noisily. She seemed insistent so I followed her upstairs to my bedroom. Sitting on the bed and surrounded by broken eggshell was something that I could only describe as a ball of fluff with two eyes and a beak.

“Plock-
plock
,” said Pickwick.

“You’re right,” I told her, “she’s very beautiful. Congratulations.”

The small dodo blinked at us both, opened its beak wide and said, in a shrill voice, “
Plunk
!”

Pickwick started and looked at me anxiously.

“Well!” I told her. “A rebellious teenager already?”

Pickwick nudged the chick with her beak and it
plunked
indignantly before settling down.

I thought for a moment and said, “You aren’t going to feed her doing that disgusting regurgitation seabird thing are you?”

The door burst open downstairs.

“Thursday!” yelled Randolph anxiously. “Are you in here?”

“I’m here,” I shouted, leaving Pickwick with her offspring and coming downstairs to find a highly agitated Randolph, pacing up and down the living room.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Lola.”

“Some unsuitable young man again? Really, Randolph, you’ve got to learn not to be so jealous—”

“No,” he said quickly, “it’s not that.
Girls Make All the Moves
didn’t find a publisher and the author burnt the only manuscript in a drunken rage! That’s why she wasn’t at the awards last night!”

I stopped. If a book had been destroyed in the Outland, then all the characters and situations would be up for salvage —

“Yes,” said Randolph, reading my thoughts, “they’re going to auction off Lola!”

I quickly changed out of my dress and we arrived as the sale was winding up. Most of the descriptive scenes had already gone, the one-liners packaged and sold as a single lot, and all the cars and most of the wardrobe and furniture were disposed of. I pushed through to the front of the crowd and found Lola looking dejected, sitting on her suitcase.

“Lola!” said Randolph, as they hugged. “I brought Thursday to help you!”

She jumped up and smiled, but it was a despairing half smile at best and it spoke volumes.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing her by the hand, “we’re out of here.”

“Not so fast!” said a tall man in an immaculate suit. “No goods are to be removed until paid for!”

“She’s with me,” I told him as several hulking great bouncers appeared from nowhere.

“No, she’s not. She’s lot ninety-seven. You can bid if you want to.”

“I’m Thursday Next, the Bellman-elect, and Lola is with me.”

“I know who you are and you did good, but I have a business to run. I haven’t done anything wrong. You can take the Generic home with you in ten minutes —
after
you have won the bidding.”

I glared at him. “I’m going to close down this foul trade and enjoy it every step of the way!”

“Really? I’m quaking in my boots. Now, are you going to bid or do I withdraw the lot and put it up for private tender?”

“She’s not an
it
,” snarled Randolph angrily, “she’s a Lola — and I love her!”

“You’re breaking my heart. Bid or bugger off, the choice is yours.”

Randolph made to plant a punch on the dealer’s chin, but he was caught by one of the bouncers and held tightly.

“Control your Generic or I’ll throw you both out! Get it?”

Randolph nodded and he was released. We stood together at the front watching Lola, who was weeping silently into her handkerchief.

“Gentlemen. Lot ninety-seven. Fine female B-3 Generic, ident: TSI-1404912-A, attractive and personable. An opportunity to secure this sort of highly entertaining and pneumatic young lady does not come often. Her high appetite for sexual congress, slight dopiness and winsome innocence mated to indefatigable energy makes her especially suitable for ‘racy’ novels. What am I bid?”

It was bad.
Very
bad. I turned to Randolph. “Do you have any money?”

“About a tenner.”

The bidding had already reached a thousand. I didn’t have a tenth of that either here or back home — nor anything to sell to raise such a sum. The bidding rose higher, and Lola grew more depressed. For the amount that was being bid, she was probably in for a series of books — and the movie rights. I shuddered.

“With you, sir, at six thousand!” announced the auctioneer as the bidding bounced backwards and forwards between two well-known dealers. “Any more bids?”

“Seven thousand!”

“Eight!”

“Nine!”

“I can’t watch,” said Randolph, tears streaming down his face. He turned and left as Lola stared after him, trying to see him as he pushed his way to the back.

“Any more bids?” asked the auctioneer. “With you, sir, at nine thousand . . . going once . . . going twice . . .”

“
I bid one original idea
!” I shouted, digging in my bag for the small nugget of originality and marching up to the auctioneer’s table. There was a deathly hush as I held the glowing fragment aloft, then placed it on his desk with a flourish.

“A nugget of originality for a trollop like that?” muttered a man at the front. “The Bellman-elect’s got a screw loose.”

“Lola is that important to me,” I said somberly. Miss Havisham had told me to use the nugget wisely — I think I did.

“Is it enough?”

“It’s enough,” said the vendor, picking up the nugget and staring at it avariciously through an eyeglass. “This lot is withdrawn from the sale. Miss Next, you are the proud owner of a Generic.”

Lola nearly wet herself, poor girl, and she hugged me tightly during the five minutes it took to complete the paperwork.

We found Randolph sitting on a bollard down by the docks, staring off into the Text Sea with a sad and vacant look in his eyes. Lola leaned down and whispered in his ear.

Randolph jumped and turned round, flung his arms around her and cried for joy.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I did mean it! Every bit of it!”

“Come on, lovebirds,” I told them, “I think it’s time to leave this cattle market.”

We walked back to
Caversham Heights
, Randolph and Lola holding hands, making plans to start a home for Generics who had fallen on hard times, and trying to think up ways to raise funding. Neither of them had the resources to undertake such a project, but it got me thinking.

The following week and soon after the Bellman inauguration, I gave my proposal to the Council of Genres —
Caversham Heights
should be bought by the Council and used as a sanctuary for characters who needed a break from the sometimes arduous and repetitive course that fictional people are forced to tread. A sort of textual summer camp. To my delight the Council approved the measure, as it had the added bonus of a solution to the nursery rhyme problem. Jack Spratt was overjoyed at the news and didn’t seem in the least put out by the massive changes that would be necessary to embrace the visitors.

“The drug plot is out, I’m afraid,” I told him as we discussed it over lunch a few days later.

“What the hell,” he exclaimed, “I was never in love with it anyway. Do we have a replacement boxer?”

“The boxing plot is out, too.”

“Ah. How about the money-laundering subplot where I discover the mayor has been taking kickbacks? That’s still in, yes?”

“Not . . . as such,” I said slowly.

“It’s gone, too? Do we even have a murder?”

“
That
we have.” I passed him the new outline I had been thrashing out with a freelance imaginator the previous day.

“Ah!” he said, scanning the words eagerly. “It’s Easter in Reading — a bad time for eggs — and Humpty-Dumpty is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. . . .”

He flicked a few more pages. “What about Dr. Singh, Madeleine, Unidentified Police Officers 1 and 2 and all the others?”

“All still there. We’ve had to reassign a few parts, but it should hold together. The only person who wouldn’t move was Agatha Diesel — I think she might give you a few problems.”

“I can handle her,” replied Jack, flicking to the back of the outline to see how it all turned out. “Looks good to me. What do the nurseries say about it?”

“I’m talking to them next.”

I left Jack with the outline and jumped to Norland Park, where I took the news to Humpty-Dumpty; he and his army of pickets were still camped outside the doors of the house — they had been joined by characters from nursery stories, too.

“Ah!” said Humpty as I approached. “The Bellman. The three witches were right after all.”

“They generally are,” I replied. “I have a proposal for you.”

Humpty’s eyes grew bigger and bigger as I explained what I had in mind.

“Sanctuary?” he asked.

“Of sorts,” I told him. “I’ll need you to coordinate all the nurseries who will find narrative a little bit alien after doing couplets for so long, so you’ll be dead when the story opens.”

“Not . . . the
wall
thing?”

“I’m afraid so. What do you think?”

“Well,” said Humpty, reading the outline carefully and smiling, “I’ll take it to the membership, but I think I can safely say that there is nothing here that we can find any great issue with. Pending a ballot, I think you’ve got yourself a deal.”

It took the C of G almost a year to scrap the pristine and unused Ultra Word
^TM
engines, and many more arrests followed, although sadly, none in the Outland. Vernham Deane was released, and he and Mimi were awarded the Gold Star for Reading as well as the plot realignment they had wanted for so many years. They married and — quite unprecedented for a Farquitt baddy — lived happily ever after, something that caused a severe drop in sales for
The Squire of High Potternews
. Harris Tweed, Xavier Libris and twenty-four others at Text Grand Central were tried and found guilty of “crimes against the BookWorld.” Harris Tweed was expelled permanently from fiction and returned to Swindon. Heep, Orlick and Legree were all sent back to their books, and the rest were reduced to text.

It was the first day of the influx of nursery rhyme refugees, and Lola and I were sitting on a park bench in
Caversham Heights
— soon to be renamed
Nursery Crime
. We were watching Humpty-Dumpty welcome the long line of guests as Randolph allocated parts. Everyone was happy with the arrangements, but I wasn’t overwhelmed with joy myself. I still missed Landen and I was reminded of this every time I tried — and failed — to get my old trousers to button up over my rapidly expanding waistline.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Landen.”

“Oh,” said Lola, staring at me with her big brown eyes. “You will get him back, I am sure of it — please don’t be downhearted!”

I patted her hand and thanked her for her kind words.

“I never did say thank you for what you did,” she said slowly. “I missed Randolph more than anything — if only he’d told me what he felt I would have stayed in
Heights
or sought a dual placement — even as a C-grade.”