The well of lost plots (35 page)

“Cat!”
¹

“There’s been a code-12. Fictional vehicle left on Pendine sands in the Outland. I need a fixed perimeter and a cleanup gang ASAP!”
²

“Not good, Chesh. I’ll get back to you.”
³

“Dear Thursday,” said Miss Havisham, clasping my hand in hers, “was it an accident?”

“I don’t know, Miss Havisham. But the Eject-O-Hat was not mine — it was intended for you.”

She sighed. “Then, then . . . they got to me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. This is the BookWorld so it’s got to be someone close and whom we don’t suspect. Someone we thought was a friend.”

“Bradshaw?”

She shook her head and started to cough. For a moment, I didn’t think she would stop. The Jurisfiction medic jumped into the darkened room, followed by several nurses, who pushed me out of the way as they tried to cool and dress her wounds. But I couldn’t get away. Havisham still had hold of my hand and pulled me closer.

“I will not come through this,” she whispered.

“You’ll be fine! In
Great Expectations
you survive until the end — can’t let Dickens or the readers down, hey?”

“Then it looks like we will both be guilty of a Fiction Infraction, my dear.”

She tried to smile but couldn’t make her swollen features do as she bid.

“I have enough strength to make a good exit. I will make my peace with Pip and Estella — a far better ending for me, I think.”

“Miss Havisham!” I pleaded. “Please don’t talk this way!”

“You are close to me, my dear,” she hissed, “they will come for you next!”

“But why?”

“The formulaic, Thursday. It is our enemy. Uphold fiction’s independence, beware of Big Martin and shun the frumious bandersnatch . . .”

“She’s becoming delirious,” said the medic as I felt her clasp loosen from mine, and with it, I felt my eyes start to stream. More medics arrived and I moved towards the back of the room where Pip, Estella, and Mr. Pumblechook had all arrived to look on helplessly as the medics attempted to save her life.

“You did what you could,” said Pip slowly, “and we are very grateful to you.”

“It wasn’t enough,” I said quietly, “but she wants to improvise a new ending with you.”

“Then I will stay here,” said Pip softly, “until she regains consciousness.”

We waited there, Pip and I, until Miss Havisham was well enough to make her final appearance in
Great Expectations
. She had bade farewell to the Bellman and Bradshaw. The Council of Genres had even interrupted their busy schedule to rubber-stamp an Internal Plot Adjustment to allow her to improvise her own fiery ending. An A-2 generic was being trained to take her place even as we were saying our good-byes. She took my arm even though she couldn’t see me and pressed the Ultra Word™ copy of
The Little Prince
into my hand.

“The formulaic,” she said again, “is our one true enemy. Defend the BookWorld against it, promise me?”

“I promise.”

“You know, Thursday, you’re going to be pretty good at all this.”

I thanked her.

“One more thing.”

I leaned closer.

“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I don’t think men are
quite
so bad as I make out.”

I smiled. “You might be right.”

She coughed again and signaled for me to leave. I had many questions I needed to ask, but she didn’t have long and we both knew it. I nodded to Pip as we passed each other at the door, and I gently closed it behind me. I waited outside with a heavy heart and tensed as I heard a shriek and a flickering orange light shone beneath the door. I heard Pip curse, then more thumps and shouts as he smothered the fire with his cape. Jaw clenched, I turned away, my heart heavy with loss. She had been bossy and obnoxious, but she had protected me, rescued me and taught me well. I have yet to meet a more extraordinary woman, either real or imagined, and she would always have a place in my heart.

The Bellman lived in a grace-and-favor apartment at Norland Park when he wasn’t working in
The Hunting of the Snark
. He had been head of Jurisfiction for twenty years and was required, under Council of Genres mandate, to stand down. The Bellman, oddly enough, had always been called the Bellman — it was no more than coincidence that he had actually been a Bellman himself. The previous Bellman had been Bradshaw, and before him, Virginia Woolf. Under Woolf, Jurisfiction roll calls tended to last several hours.

THE BELLMAN,
Hardest Job in Fiction

I WALKED INTO THE Jurisfiction offices an hour later. The Bellman, Bradshaw and Harris Tweed were staring at two pieces of broken and scorched metal lying on a desk.

“I can’t say how sorry we all are,” said the Bellman, “we all thought the world of her. Did she tell you about the time the Martians escaped and tried to force the Council of Genres into ordering a sequel — one where they were triumphant?”

“No,” I said quietly, “she rarely talked about her past work. What’s this?” I pointed at the broken pieces of metal.

“It’s the stub axle from the Bluebird. It looks as though it failed through metal fatigue.”

“An accident?”

The Bellman nodded his head. They hadn’t got to her after all. Earlier, Bradshaw had shown me the UltraWord™ reports written by Perkins, Deane and Miss Havisham. They’d all given it the thumbs-up. If Perkins
was
murdered, it wasn’t over Ultra Word™. Despite all that had happened, I still only had a doctored Eject-O-Hat to point to anything suspicious about Havisham’s death, and only a misplaced key for Perkins’s. Motor racing has its own share of dangers, and Havisham knew it.

“You’re off the active list for a few days, Miss Next,” said the Bellman. “Take it easy at home and come back in when you’re ready.”

Tweed said, “She was one of the best.”

“One in a million,” added Bradshaw, “won’t see the likes of her again, I’ll be bound.”

“We want to offer you a permanent job,” said the Bellman. “A modern system like Ultra Word™ needs people like you to police it. I want you to consider a post here within Fiction. Good retirement plan and plenty of perks.”

I looked up at him. This seemed to me like rather a good idea. After all, there was no one waiting for me back at Swindon. What did I need the real world for?

“Sounds good, Mr. Bellman. Can I sleep on it?”

He smiled. “Take as long as you want.”

I got back to Mary’s flying boat and sat on the jetty until the sun had gone down, mulling over everything that Miss Havisham and I had done together. When it grew chilly, I moved myself indoors and read over what Miss Havisham had done with her final scene. A professional to the last, she had enacted her own death with a sensitivity I had never seen her exhibit in life. I found a bottle of wine, poured myself a large glass and drank it gratefully. Oddly, I thought there was a reason perhaps I
shouldn’t
be drinking, but couldn’t think what it was. I looked at my hand where there had been a name written that morning. Havisham had instructed me to scrub it out, and I had — but even so I was intrigued and tried to figure out from the small marks visible what had been written there.

“Lisbon,” I muttered. “Why would I write
Lisbon
on my hand?”

I shrugged. The delicate red was a welcome friend and I poured another glass. I found the copy of
The Little Prince
that Havisham had given me and opened the cover. The paper felt like a sort of thin plastic, the letters a harsh black against the milky white pages. The text glowed in the dim light of the kitchen, and intrigued, I took the book into the darkness of the utility cupboard where I could still read it as clear as day. I returned to my place at the table and tried the “read sensitive” preferences page, the words changing from red to blue as I read them, then back again as I reread them. In this manner I turned the PageGlow™ feature on and off, and then I played with the levels of the background and music tracks.

I started to read the book, and as the first words entered my head, a huge panoply of new emotions opened up. As I read the sequence in the desert, I could hear the sound of the wind on the dunes and even feel the heat and taste the scorched sands. The voice of the narrator was different to that of the Prince, and no dialogue tags were needed to differentiate them. It was, as Libris had asserted, an extraordinary piece of technology. I shut the book, leaned back on my chair and closed my eyes.

There was a tap at the door.

“Hullo!” Arnold said. “Can I come in?”

“Make yourself at home. Drink?”

“Thank you.”

He sat down and smiled at me. I’d never really noticed it before but he was quite a handsome man.

“Where’s everyone else?” he asked, looking around.

“Out somewhere,” I replied, waving a hand in the direction of the boat and feeling a bit dizzy. “Lola’s probably under her latest beau, Randolph is doubtless complaining to someone about it — and I’ve no idea where Gran is. Have a drink?”

“You’ve already poured one.”

“So I have. What brings you here, Arnie?”

“Just passing. How are things at work?”

“Shit. Miss Havisham died, and something maybe, perhaps, possibly, is
wrong
— I just don’t know what — if at all. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of. I’ve heard Outlanders sometimes go through a period of ‘imagination free fall’ where they start trying to create plotlines out of nothing. You’ll settle down to it, I shouldn’t worry. Congratulations, by the way, I read about your appointment in the paper.”

I held up my glass in salute, and we both drank.

“So what’s the deal with you and Mary?” I asked.

“Over for a long time. She thinks I’m a loser and—”

“— tells you to go to hell. Yes, I’ve heard. What about Lola? Have you slept with her yet?”

“No!”

“You must be the only bloke in
Caversham Heights
who hasn’t. Do you want another drink?”

“Okay.”

“What about you? Tell me about your husband in the Outland.”

“I don’t have a husband, never did.”

“You told me—”

“Probably one of those ‘push off’ comments we girls sometimes use. There was this guy named Snood in the ChronoGuard, but that was a long time ago. He suffered a time aggre. Agg-era. Aggreg—”

“A what?”

“He got old before his time. He died.”

I felt confused all of a sudden and looked at the wineglass and the half-empty bottle of wine.

“What’s the matter, Thursday?”

“Oh — nothing. You know when you suddenly have a memory of something and you don’t know why — a sort of
flashback
?”

He smiled. “I don’t have many memories, Thursday, I’m a Generic. I could have had a backstory but I wasn’t considered important enough.”

“Is that a cat? I mean, is that a
fact
? Well, I just thought about the White Horse in Uffington back home. Soft, warm grassland and blue skies, warm sun on my face. Why would I have done that?”

“I have no idea. Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?”

“I’m fine. Right as rain. Never better. What’s it like being a Generic?”

“It’s not bad.” He took another swig of wine. “Promotion to a better or new part is always there if you are diligent enough and hang out at the Character Exchange. I miss having a family — that must be good.”

“My mum is a hoot, and Dad doesn’t exist — he’s a time-traveling knight-errant — don’t laugh — and I have two brothers. They both live in Swindon. One’s a priest and the other . . .”

“Is what?”

I felt confused again. It was probably the wine. I looked at my hand. “I don’t know what he does. We haven’t spoken in years.”

There was another flashback, this time of the Crimea.

“This bottle’s empty,” I muttered, trying to pour it.

“You have to take the cork out first. Allow me.”

Arnold fumbled with the corkscrew and drew the cork after a lot of effort. I think he was drunk. Some people have no restraint.

“What do you think of the Well?” he asked.

“It’s all right. Life here is pretty good for an Outlander. No bills to pay, the weather is always good and best of all — no Goliath, SpecOps or my mother’s cooking.”

“SpecOps can cook?”

I giggled stupidly and so did he. Within a few seconds we had both collapsed in hysterics. I hadn’t laughed like this for ages.

The laughter stopped.

“What were we giggling about?” asked Arnold.

“I don’t know.”

And we collapsed in hysterics again.

I recovered and took another swig of wine. “Do you dance?”

Arnie looked startled for a moment. “Of course.”

I took him by the hand and led him through into the living room, found a record and put it on the turntable. I placed my hands on his shoulders and he placed his hands on my waist. It felt odd and somehow wrong, but I was past caring. I had lost a good friend that day and deserved a little unwinding.

The music began and we swayed to the rhythm. I had danced a lot in the past, which must have been with Filbert Snood, I supposed.

“You dance well for someone with one leg, Arnie.”

“I have two legs, Thursday.”

And we burst out laughing again. I steadied myself on him and he steadied himself on the sofa. Pickwick looked on and ruffled her feathers in disgust.

“Do you have a girl in the Well, Arnie?”

“Nobody,” he said slowly, and I moved my cheek against his, found his mouth and kissed him, gently and without ceremony. He began to pull away, then stopped and returned the kiss. It felt dangerously welcome; I didn’t know why I had been single for so long. I wondered whether Arnie would stay the night.

He stopped kissing me and took a step back.

“Thursday, this is all
wrong
.”

“What could be wrong?” I asked, staring at him unsteadily. “Do you want to come and see my bedroom? It has a great view of the ceiling.”

I stumbled slightly and held the back of the sofa.

“What are you staring at?” I asked Pickwick, who was glaring at me.