A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (104 page)

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 as 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.

“Havisham?” he asked with a tremor in his voice.

“We believe so,” replied Tweed.

“They're fooling you, Mr. Bellman, sir,” I said, trying to sound as normal as I could. “Something is badly wrong with UltraWord™.”

“That something is you, Next,” spat Tweed. “Four Jurisfiction agents dead in the line of duty—and Deane nowhere to be found. I can't believe it—you'd kill your own mentor?”

“Steady, Tweed,” said the Bellman, drawing up a chair and looking at me sadly. “Havisham vouched for her and that counts for something.”

“Then let me educate you, Mr. Bellman,” said Tweed, sitting on the corner of a table. “I've been making a few inquiries. Even discounting Godot, there is more than enough evidence of Next's perfidy.”

“Evidence?” I scoffed. “Such as what?”

“Does the code word
sapphire
mean anything to you?”

“Of course.”

“Only eight Jurisfiction agents had access to
The Sword of the Zenobians,
” said Tweed, “and four of them are dead.”

“It's hardly a smoking gun, is it?”

“Not on its own,” replied Tweed carefully, “but when we add other facts, it starts to make sense. Bradshaw and Havisham eject from
Zenobians
leaving you alone with Snell—they arrive a few minutes later and he is mortally mispeled. Very neat, very clever.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why would I kill Miss Havisham? Why would I want to kill
any
of these people?”

“Ambition.”

“What ambition? All I want to do is to have my child and go home.”

“The Bellman's job,” announced Tweed like a hidden trump. “As an Outlander you have seniority, but only after Bradshaw, Havisham, Perkins, Deane—and me. Bradshaw has been the Bellman already, so that rules him out. Were you going to kill me next?”

“I have no ambition to be the Bellman and didn't kill Miss Havisham,” I muttered, trying to think of a plan of action.

Tweed leaned closer. “You've been using Jurisfiction as a springboard to feed your own burning ambition. It's a dangerous thing to possess. Ambition will sustain for a while—and then it kills indiscriminately.”

The Bellman, who up until this moment had been quiet, suddenly said, “I'll need more proof than your say-so, Mr. Tweed.”

“Indeed,” replied Tweed triumphantly, “as you know, the three witches have to log all their prophecies. They don't like to do it, but they have to—no paperwork, no license to read chicken entrails. Simple as that.”

He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “The day after Miss Next arrived, they filed this report.” He handed the paper to the Bellman. “Read the third on the list.”

“Prophecy three,” read the Bellman slowly,
“Thou shalt be Bellman thereafter.”

Tweed retrieved the sheet of paper and slid it across the table to me. “Do you deny this?”

“No,” I said glumly.

“We call it
Macbeth's syndrome,
” said the Bellman sadly, “an insane desire to fulfill your own prophecies. It's nearly always fatal. Sadly, not only for the sufferer.”

“I'm not a Macbeth sufferer, Mr. Bellman, and even if I am, shouldn't even the smallest error in Ultra Word™ be looked at?”

“There aren't any errors,” put in Tweed, “Ultra Word™ is the finest piece of technology we have ever devised—foolproof, stable and totally without error. Tell me the problem—I'm sure there is a satisfactory explanation.”

“Well—” I stopped myself. I knew the Bellman was still an honest man. Should I tell him about the thrice-read problem and risk Tweed covering his tracks even more? On reflection, probably not. The more I dug, the more would be found against me. I needed breathing space—I needed to
escape
.

“What's to become of me?”

“Permanent expulsion from the BookWorld,” replied Tweed. “We don't have enough evidence to convict but we do have enough to have you banned from fiction forever. There is no appeals procedure. I only have to ratify it with the Bellman.”

“Well,” said the Bellman, tingling his bell sadly, “I must concur with Tweed's recommendation. Search her for any BookWorld accessories before we send her back.”

“You're making a mistake, Mr. Bellman,” I said angrily, “a very—”

“Oooh!” said Heep, who had been rummaging in my pockets and taking the opportunity to try to touch my breasts again. “Look what I've found!”

It was the Suddenly, a Shot Rang Out! plot device Snell had given me at the Slaughtered Lamb.

“A plot device, Miss Next?” said Tweed, taking the small glass globe from Heep. “Do you have any paperwork for this?”

“No. It's evidence. I just forgot to sign it in.”

“Illegal carriage of all Narrative Turning Devices is strictly illegal. Are you a dealer? Who's your source? Peddle this sort of garbage in teenage fiction?”

“Blow it out of your arse, Tweed.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

He went crimson and might have hit me, but all I wanted was for him to move close enough for me to kick him—or his hand, at least.

“You piece of crap,” he sneered. “I've known you were no good from the moment I saw you. Think you're something special, Miss SpecOps Outlander supremo?”

“At least I don't work for the Skyrail, Tweed. Inside fiction you're a big cheese, but out in the real world you're less than a nobody!”

It had the desired effect. He took a step closer and I kicked out, connected with his hand and the small glass globe went sailing into the air, high above our heads. Heep, coward that he now was, dived for cover, but Tweed and the Red Queen, wary of a Narrative Turning Device going off in a confined area, tried to catch it. They might have been successful if just one of them had attempted it. As it was, they collided with a grunt and the small glass globe fell to the floor and shattered as they looked on helplessly.

Suddenly, a shot rang out. I didn't see where it came from but felt its full effect; the bullet hit the chain that was holding me to the anvils, shattering it neatly. I didn't pause for breath. I was off and running towards the door. I didn't know where I was heading; without my TravelBook I was trapped and
Sense and Sensibility
was not that big. Tweed and Heep were soon on their feet, only to hit the floor again as a second volley followed the first. I ducked through the door and came upon . . . Vernham Deane, pistol in hand. Heep and Tweed returned fire as Deane holstered his pistol and took both my hands.

“Hold tight,” he said, “and empty your mind. We're going to go
abstract
.”

I cleared my mind as much as I could and—
¹

We jumped back into the Jurisfiction offices. Tweed and Heep were alone with the Bellman, overseeing a document that I found out later was my termination warrant. I had Deane's gun pointed—at Deane. He had his hands up. Heep and Tweed exchanged nervous glances.

“I've brought you Deane, Bellman,” I announced. “I had no other way of proving my innocence. Vern, tell them what you told me.”

“Go to hell!”

I whacked him hard on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and he fell to the ground, momentarily stunned. Blood welled up in his hairline and I winced; luckily, no one saw me.

“That's for Miss Havisham,” I told him.

“Miss Havisham?” echoed the Bellman.

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Bastard.”

Deane touched the back of his head and looked at his hand.

“Bitch!” he muttered. “I'd have killed you, too!”

He turned and leaped at me with surprising speed, grasped me by the throat before I could stop him, and we both crashed to the floor, knocking over a table as we went. It was an impressive charade.

“The little slut serving wench deserved to die!” he screamed. “How dare she spoil the happy life that could have been mine!”

I couldn't breath and started to black out. I had wanted it to look realistic—and so, I suppose, did he.

Tweed placed a gun under Deane's chin and forced him off. He spat in my face as I lay there, trying to get my breath back. Deane was then set upon by Heep, who took an unhealthy delight in beating him despite apologizing superciliously every time he struck him.