The well of lost plots (48 page)

“No! Alexey Vronsky and Anna — an
affair
! What about her husband? Surely he found out?”

“Eventually, yes. I think Anna told him, but not until she was with child, Vronsky’s child. There was to be no hiding
that
.”

“What did he say?”

“Believe it or not, he forgave them both! Insisted that they remain married and attempted to continue as if nothing had happened.”

“I always did think that man was a fool. What happened next?”

“Vronsky shot himself, claiming he could not bear to be apart. Melodramatic is
not
the word for it!”

“It reads like a cheap novelette! Did he die?”

“No; merely wounded. It gets worse. Karenin realized that to save Anna he
himself
must take the disgrace and admit that he had been unfaithful so that Anna was not ruined and could marry Vronsky.”

“So Karenin let them go? He didn’t ban her from ever seeing her lover again? Didn’t horsewhip either of them or sell his story to
The Mole
? It strikes me Karenin himself may have had some totty on the side, too. Wait! My husband calls me — stay tuned, farewell for now, my dear Vera!”

1. “Miss Next, are you there?”

2. “Good. Meet me at the Jurisfiction office as soon as possible. It’s about Perkins — the Minotaur has escaped.”

3. “Not really. You see, Perkins isn’t responding to footnoterphone communications — we think something might have happened to him.”

1. “Sofya! Where were you? I have been calling forever! Tell me, the Karenins — they divorced?”

“No! Maybe if they
had
been divorced, events would have been different. I remember her attending the theater in Petersburg. What a disaster!”

“Why? Whatever happened? Did she make a fool of herself?”

“Yes, by appearing in the first place! How could she? Madame Kartasova, who was in the adjacent box with that fat, bald husband of hers, made a scene. She said something aloud, something insulting, and left the theater. We all saw it happen. Anna tried to ignore everything but she must have known.”

“Why didn’t they push for a divorce, the foolish pair!”

“Vronsky wanted her to but she kept putting it off. They moved to Moscow, but she was never happy. Vronsky spent his time involved in politics and she was convinced that he was with other women. A jealous, fallen disgrace of a woman she was. Then, at Znamanka station she could take it no longer — she flung herself upon the rails and was crushed by the 20:02 to Obiralovka!”

“No!”

“Yes — but don’t tell a soul — it is a secret between you and I! Come for dinner on Tuesday — we are having Turnips à l’Orange — I have a simply
adorable
new cook. Adieu, my good friend, adieu!”

1. “Thursday, are you there?”

2. “It’s the Cheshire Cat. Do you know how to play the piano?”

3. “Oh, no reason; I just thought I’d ask to be on the safe side.”

4. “Why the
piano
, of course!”

5. “You’ve got a hearing for your trial — remember the Fiction Infraction? Well, there have been some delays with Max De Winter’s appeal, so they’ve applied for a continuance — can you come this afternoon if you’re not too busy, say three o’clock?”

6. “
Alice in Wonderland
, just after the ‘Alice’s Evidence’ chapter. The Gryphon will be representing you. Don’t forget — three o’clock.”

1. “. . . Dear Friend, I am a fifty-year-old lady from the Republic of Gondal. I got your details from the Council of Genres and decided to contact you to see if you could help. My husband, Reginald Jackson, was the rebel leader in
Gondal in Turmoil
(RRP: £4.99), and just before he was assassinated, he gave me twelve million dollars and I departed the book to be a refugee in the Well of Lost Plots with my two children. On arrival, I decided to deposit this money in a security company for safekeeping. Right now, I am seeking assistance from you so that I can transfer the funds from the Well to your Outland account. If this offer meets your approval, you could reach me on my footnoterphone. Thank you, Mrs. R. Jackson . . .”

1. “Speaking!”

2. “I’m on it. How is she?”

3. “Okay. A cleanup gang of Danvers are on their way now.”

1. The Jurisfiction office vanished and was replaced by a large and shiny underground tube. It was big enough to stand up in, but even so I had to keep pressed against the wall as a constant stream of words flashed past in both directions. Above us, another pipe was leading upwards, and every now and then a short stream of words were diverted into this small conduit.

“Where are we?” I asked, my voice echoing about the steel walls.

“Somewhere quite safe,” replied Deane. “They’ll be wondering where you went.”

“We’re in the Outland — I mean, home?”

Deane laughed. “No, silly, we’re in the footnoterphone conduits.”

I looked at the stream of messages again. “We are?”

“Sure.”

“Come on, let me show you something.”

We walked along the pipe until it opened out into a bigger room — a hub where messages went from one genre to another. The exits closest to me were marked
Crime, Romance, Thriller
and
Comedy
, but there were plenty more, all routing the footnoterphone messages towards some subgenre or other.

“It’s incredible!” I breathed.

“Oh, this is just a small hub,” replied Deane, “you should see the bigger ones. It all works on the ISBN number system, you know — and the best thing about it is that neither Text Grand Central nor the Council of Genres know that you can get down here. It’s sanctuary, Thursday. Sanctuary away from the prying eyes of Jurisfiction and the rigidity of the narrative.”

I caught his eye. “Tweed thinks you killed Perkins, Snell and that serving girl.”

He stopped walking and sighed. “Tweed is working with Text Grand Central to make sure UltraWord
^TM
is launched without any hitches. He knew I wanted to conduct more tests. He offered me a plot realignment in
The Squire of High Potternews
to ‘garner my support.’ ”

“He tried to buy you?”

“When I refused, he threatened to kill me — that’s why we escaped.”

“We?”

“Of course. The maidservant that I ravage in chapter eight and then cruelly cast into the night. She dies of tuberculosis and I drink myself to death. Do you think we could allow that?”

“But isn’t that what happens in most Farquitt novels? Maidservant ravaged by cruel squire?”

“You don’t understand, Thursday. Mimi and I are in love.”

“Ah!” I replied slowly, thinking of Landen. “That can change things.”

“Come,” said Deane, beckoning me through the hub and dodging the footnoterphone messages, “we have made our home in a disused branch line — after Woolf wrote
To the Lighthouse
and
Mrs. Dalloway
, the Council of Genres thought Stream of Consciousness would be the next Detective — they built a large hub to support the rackloads of novels that never appeared.”

We turned into a large tunnel about the size of the underground back in Swindon, and the messages whizzed back and forth, almost filling the tube to capacity.

After a few hundred yards we came to another hub and took the least used — barely two or three messages a minute buzzed languidly past, and these seemed to be lost; they moved around vaguely for a moment and then evaporated. The sides of the tube were less shiny, rubbish had collected at the bottom and water leaked in from the roof. Every now and then we passed small unused offshoots, built to support books that were planned but never written.

“Why did you come for me, Vern?”

“Because I don’t believe you would kill Miss Havisham, and I love stories as much as anyone. UltraWord
^TM
is flawed, and I’m not going to see it dominate the BookWorld if I can help it.”

The tunnel opened out into a large chamber where a settlement of sorts had been built from rubbish and scrap wood — items that could be removed from the BookWorld without anyone noticing. The buildings were little more than tents with the orange flicker of oil lamps from within.

“Vern!” A dark-haired young woman waved at him from the nearest tent. She was heavily pregnant and Deane rushed up to hug her affectionately. I watched them with a certain degree of jealousy. I noticed I had placed my hand on my own tum quite subconsciously. I sighed and pushed it to the back of my mind.

“Mimi, this is Thursday,” said Vern. I shook her hand and she led us into their tent, offering me a small wooden box to sit on that I noticed had once been used to held past tenses.

“So what’s wrong with UltraWord
^TM
?” I asked, my curiosity overcoming me.

“Flawed by the need for control,” he said slowly. “Think the BookWorld is overregulated? Believe me, it’s an anarchist’s dreamworld compared to the future seen by TGC!”

And so, as quickly as possible, he told me exactly what he had discovered. The problem was, I needed something more than his theories. To do battle with Tweed and TGC, I needed
proof
.

“Proof,” said Deane, “yes, that was always the problem. Let me show you what Perkins left us.”

He returned with a birdcage containing a skylark and set it upon the table.

I looked at the bird and the bird looked back.

“This is the proof?”

“So Perkins said.”

“Do you have any idea what he meant?”

“None at all.” Deane sighed. “He was Minotaur shit long before he tried to explain it to any of us.”

I leaned forward for a closer look and smelt —
cantaloupes
.

“It’s UltraWord
^TM
,” I breathed.

“It is?” echoed Deane in surprise. “How can you tell?”

“It’s an Outlander thing. I have a plan, but to do it I have to be at liberty — and free from the Bellman’s suspicions.”

“I can arrange that.” Deane smiled. “Come on, let’s do this thing before it gets any worse.”

1. Mimi was standing outside the footnoterphone tube entrance to Text Grand Central and looking at her watch. The words sped backwards and forwards, darting inside the tunnel, which had a sturdy grate across it streaked with rust. Every now and then messages were deflected off. It was a textual sieve — used here for deleting unwanted junkfootnoterphone messages.

She gestured to the man accompanying her and stepped back.

Quasimodo — who had found sanctuary, finally — grunted in reply and gently placed
Das Kapital
next to
Mein Kampf
, separating them only by a thin metal sheet. The “book sandwich” was held together by rubber bands, and a string was attached to the metal sheet. Quasimodo tied the books to the grate, then retired down the conduit, paying out the string as he went. He joined Mimi at a little-used subgenre pipe entitled Squid Action/Adventure and waited for Thursday’s signal.

2. Mimi nodded to Quasimodo, who pulled the string. The steel plate shot out and
Das Kapital
and
Mein Kampf
came together, their conflicting ideologies starting to generate heat. The books turned brown, smoldered for a moment and then, as Mimi and Quasimodo scurried away up their retreat, the two volumes reached critical mass, turned white-hot and exploded. The detonation echoed down the footnoterphone pipes, followed by a deathly silence. They had done it. The footnoterphone conduit was destroyed — Libris and Tweed were cut off from Text Grand Central.

1. “Thursday! It’s Mimi, are you there?”

2. “They are rerouting messages through the auxiliary ducts past Spy Thrillers and through Horror. If you haven’t got a vote, get one now!”