A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (69 page)

“Compeyson—!” she muttered without waking. “You lying, stealing, thieving, hound of a . . .”

“Miss Havisham?” I asked.

She stopped mumbling and opened her eyes.

“Next, my girl,” she gasped. “I need—”

“Yes?” I asked, leaning closer.

“—a cup of tea.”

“Can do!” said Mr. Cullards cheerfully, pouring out a fresh cup. Miss Havisham sat up, drank three cups of tea and also ate the biscuit that Cullards was reserving for his birthday next May. I introduced the Hoover instructionalist, and Miss Havisham nodded politely before announcing we would have to be off.

We said our goodbyes and Mr. Cullards made me promise I would clean out the powder dispenser on my washer; in an unguarded moment I had let slip I had yet to do so, despite the washer's being nearly three years old.

The short trip to the nonfiction section of the Great Library was an easy jump for Miss Havisham, and from there we
fworped
back into her dingy ballroom in
Great Expectations
, where the Cheshire Cat and Harris Tweed were waiting for us, talking to Estella. The Cat seemed quite relieved to see us both, but Harris simply scowled.

“Estella!” said Miss Havisham abruptly. “
Please
don't talk to Mr. Tweed.”

“Yes, Miss Havisham,” replied Estella meekly.

Havisham replaced her trainers with the less comfortable wedding shoes.

“I have Pip waiting outside,” said Estella slightly nervously. “If you will excuse me mentioning it—ma'am is a paragraph
late.
”

“Dickens can just flannel for a bit longer,” replied Havisham. “I must finish with Miss Next.”

She turned to me with a grim look; I thought I'd better say something to soothe her—I hadn't yet seen Havisham lose her temper and I was in no hurry to do so.

“Thank you for my rescue, ma'am,” I said quickly. “I'm very grateful to you.”

“Humph!” replied Miss Havisham. “Don't expect salvation from me every time you get yourself into a jam, my girl. Now, what's all this about a
baby?
”

The Cheshire Cat, sensing trouble, vanished abruptly on the pretext of some “cataloguing,” and even Tweed mumbled something about checking
Lorna Doone
for grammasites and went too.

“Well?” asked Havisham again, peering at me quite intensely.

I didn't feel quite as frightened of her as I once did, so I thought I should come clean and tell her everything. I told her all about Landen's eradication, the offer from Goliath, Jack
Schitt in “The Raven” and even Mycroft's Prose Portal. Just for good measure I finished up by telling her how much I was in love with Landen and how I'd do
anything
to get him back.

“For love? Pah!” she answered, dismissing Estella with a wave of her hand in case the young woman got any odd ideas. “And what, in your tragically limited experience, is
that?
”

She didn't seem to be losing her temper, so, emboldened, I continued: “I think you know, ma'am. You were in love once, I believe?”

“Stuff and nonsense, girl!”

“Isn't the pain you feel
now
the equal to the love you felt
then?
”

“You're coming perilously close to contravening my Rule Two!”

“I'll tell you what love is,” I told her. “It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter!”

“That was quite good,” said Havisham, looking at me curiously. “Could I use that? Dickens won't mind.”

“Of course.”

“I think,” said Miss Havisham after a few moments of deliberation, “that I shall categorize your complex marital question under
widowed,
which sits with me well enough. Upon reflection—and quite possibly against my better judgment— you may stay as my apprentice. That's all. You are needed to help retrieve
Cardenio.
Go!”

So I left Miss Havisham in her darkened chamber with all the trappings of her wedding that never was. In the few days I had known her I had learned to like her a great deal, and hoped someday I might repay her kindness and match her fortitude.

PageRunner:
Any character who is out of his or her book and moves through the backstory (or more rarely the plot) of another book. PageRunners may be lost, vacationing, part of the Character Exchange Program or criminals, intent on mischief. (See: Bowdlerizers)

Texters:
Slang term given to a relatively harmless PageRunner (q.v.) (usually juvenile) who surfs from book to book for adventure and rarely appears in the frontstory but does, on occasion, cause small changes to text and/or plot lines.

UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT
,
The Jurisfiction Guide to BookJumping
(glossary)

H
ARRIS
T
WEED
and the Cheshire Cat took me back to the library. We sat on a bench in front of the Boojumorial and Harris stared at me while the Cat—who was nothing if not courteous—went to get me a pasty from the snack bar just next to Mr. Wemmick's storeroom.

“Where did she find you?” snapped Harris. I was getting used to his aggressive mannerisms by now. If he thought as little of me as he made out, then I wouldn't be here at all.

The Cat popped his head up between us and said: “Hot or cold pasty?”

“Hot, please.”

“Okay then,” he said, and vanished again.

I explained Havisham's leap from the Goliath vault to the washing label; Tweed was clearly impressed. He had been apprenticed to Commander Bradshaw many years previously, and Bradshaw's accuracy in bookjumping was as poor as Havisham's was good—hence the commander's interest in maps.

“A washing label. Now that
is
impressive,” mused Harris. “Not many PROs would even attempt to jump blind into less than a hundred words. Havisham took quite a risk with you, Miss Next. Cat, what do you think?”

“I think,” said the Cat, handing me a steaming hot pasty, “that you've forgotten the Moggilicious cat food you promised, hmm?”

“Sorry,” I replied. “Next time.”

“Okay,” said the Cat.

“Right,” said Harris. “To business. Tell me, who are the chief players in
Cardenio
's discovery?”

“Well,” I began, “there's Lord Volescamper, an hereditary peer. He
said
he found it in his library. Amiable chap—bit of a duffer. Then there's Yorrick Kaine, a Whig politician who hopes to use the free distribution of the play to sway the Shakespeare vote in his favor at tomorrow's election.”

“I'll see if I can find which book they're from—if at all,” said the Cat, and vanished.

“Is that really likely?” I asked. “Volescamper has been around since before the war, and Kaine has been on the political scene for at least five years.”

“It means nothing, Miss Next,” replied Harris impatiently. “Mellors had a wife and family in Slough for two decades and Heathcliff worked in Hollywood for three years under the name of Buck Stallion—no one suspected a thing in either case.”

“But
Cardenio,
” I asked, “it
is
the library's copy, yes?”

“Without a doubt. Despite elaborate security arrangements,
someone managed to swipe it from under the Cat's whiskers— he's very upset about it.”

“Did you say
fig,
or
whig
?” inquired the Cat, who had reappeared.

“I said
Whig,
” I replied. “And I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.”

“All right,” said the Cat; and this time he vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of his tail, and ending with his grin.

“He doesn't
seem
terribly upset,” I observed.

“Looks can be deceptive—in the Cat's case, trebly so. We heard about
Cardenio
only yesterday. It nearly gave the Bellman a fit. He was all for putting together one of his madcap and typically Boojum-ridden expeditions. As soon as I found out that Kaine was going to make
Cardenio
public property, I knew we had to act and act fast.”

“But listen,” I said, my head spinning slightly with all this new intelligence, “why is it so important that
Cardenio
remain lost? It's a
brilliant
play.”

“I wouldn't expect you to understand,” replied Tweed crossly, “but believe me, there are extremely good reasons why
Cardenio
must stay lost. Listen, it's no accident that only seven out of Aeschylus' hundred or so plays survive, or that
Paradise Lost Once More
will never be known.”

“Why?”

“Don't ask,” replied Tweed shortly. “And besides, if the rest of the bookworld figures out there is something to gain by swiping library books, then we could be in one hell of a state.”

“Okay,” I returned, quite used to secretive policing divisions at SpecOps, “so why am I here?”

“Clearly, this is no place for an apprentice, but you know the layout of Vole Towers as well as having met the key suspects. Do you know where
Cardenio
is kept?”

“In a combination-and-key safe within the library itself.”

“Good. But first we need to get in. Can you remember any of the other books in the library?”

I thought for a moment.

“There was a rare first edition of
Decline and Fall
by Evelyn Waugh.”

“Come on then,” he said abruptly. “No time for dawdling. We're off.”

We took the elevator to Floor W of the library, found the copy we were looking for and were soon within the book, tiptoeing past a noisy party in the quad at Scone College. Tweed concentrated on the outward jump, and a few moments later we were standing inside the locked library at Vole Towers.

 

“Cat,” said Harris, looking around at the untidy library, “you there?”
¹

“A simple ‘Yes' will do. Send the safecrackers in by way of a first of
Decline and Fall.
If they come across Captain Grimes, they are not to lend him money
on any account.
Anything on Volescamper or Kaine?”
²

“Blast!” exclaimed Tweed. “Too much to hope they'd be stupid enough to use their own names.”

Two men suddenly appeared next to us, and Harris pointed them in the direction of the safe. One wore a fine evening dress; the other was attired in a more sober woolen suit and carried a holdall that once opened revealed an array of beautifully crafted safecracking tools. After running an expert eye over the safe for a few moments the elder of the two removed his jacket, took
the stethoscope proffered to him by his companion and listened to the safe as he gently turned the combination wheel.

“Is that Raffles?” I whispered. “The gentleman thief?”

Harris nodded, checking his watch.

“With his assistant, Bunny. If anyone can, they can.”

“So who do you think stole
Cardenio
?”

“A good one for tricky questions, aren't you, Next? We have a suspect list as long as your arm—there are several million possible contenders in the bookworld, and any one of them could have gone rogue, jumped out of their book, swiped
Cardenio
and legged it over here.”

“So how do you tell whether someone is an impostor or not?”

Harris looked at me.

“With great difficulty. Do you think I belong here, in your world?”

I looked at the short man with the elegant tweed herringbone suit and touched him gently on the chest with a finger. He was as real to me as anyone I had ever met, either within books or without. He breathed, smiled, scowled—how was I meant to tell?

“I don't know. Are you from a 1920s detective novel?”

“Wrong,” replied Harris. “I'm as real as you are. I work three days a week for Skyrail as a signals operator. But how could I
prove
that? I could just as easily be a minor character in an obscure novel somewhere. The only sure way to tell would be to place me under observation for two months—that's about the limit any bookperson can stay outside their book. But enough of this. Our first priority is to get the manuscript back. After that, we can start figuring out who is who.”

“There's no quicker way?”

“Only one other that I know of. No bookperson is going to take a bullet; if you try and shoot one, chances are they'll jump.”

“It sounds a bit like testing for witches. If they sink and drown, they're innocent—”

“It's not ideal,” said Harris gruffly. “I'm the first to admit that.”

Within half an hour Raffles had worked out the combination and now turned his attention to the secondary locking mechanism. He was slowly drilling a hole above the combination knob, and the quiet squeaking of the drill bit seemed inordinately loud to our heightened nerves. We were staring at him and silently urging him to go faster when a noise from the library's heavy door made us turn. Harris and I leaped to either side as the unlocking wheel spun to draw the steel tabs from the slots in the iron frame, and the door swung slowly open. Raffles and Bunny, well used to being disturbed, silently gathered up their tools and hid beneath a table.

“The manuscript will be released to the publishers first thing tomorrow morning,” said Kaine as he and Volescamper strolled in. Tweed pointed his automatic at them, and they jumped visibly. I pushed the door shut behind them and spun the locking mechanism.

“What is the meaning of this?” said Volescamper in an outraged voice. “Miss Next? Is that you?”

“As large as life, Volescamper. I'm sorry, I have to search you.”

The two of them meekly acquiesced to a searching; they were unarmed, but Yorrick Kaine had turned a deep shade of crimson during the process.

“Thieves!” he spat. “How dare you!”

“No,” replied Harris, beckoning them further into the room and signaling for Raffles to continue with his work, “we have only come to retrieve
Cardenio
—something that does not belong to either of you.”

“Now look here, I don't know what you're talking about,” began Volescamper, who was visibly outraged. “This house is
surrounded by SO-14 agents—there is no escape. And as for you, Miss Next, look here, I am deeply disappointed by your perfidy!”

“What do you reckon?” I said to Harris. “His indignation
seems
real.”

“It does—but he has less to gain from this than Kaine.”

“You're right—my money's on Kaine.”

“What are you
talking
about?!” demanded Kaine angrily. “The manuscript belongs to literature—how do you think you can sell something like this on the open market? You may think you can get away with it, but I will die before I allow you to remove the literary heritage that belongs to all of us!”

“Well, I don't know,” I added. “Kaine is pretty convincing too.”

“Remember, he's a politician.”

“Of course,” I returned, snapping my fingers. “I'd forgotten. What if it's neither?”

I didn't have time to answer as there was a crash from somewhere near the front of the house and the sound of an explosion. A low guttural moan reached our ears, followed by the terrified scream of a man in mortal terror. A shiver ran up my spine and I could see that everyone else in the room had felt it too. Even the implacable Raffles paused for a moment before returning to work with just a little bit more urgency.

“Cat!” exclaimed Harris. “What's going on?”
³

“The Questing Beast?” exclaimed Tweed. “The
Glatisant
? Summon King Pellinore
immediately.
”
⁴

“The Questing Beast?” I asked. “Is that bad?”

“Bad?” replied Harris. “It's the
worst.
Think loathsome, think repulsive, think evil, think of escape. The Questing Beast was
born in the oral tradition
before
books; an amalgam of every dark and fetid horror that ever sprang from the most depraved recesses of the human imagination—all rolled into one foul-smelling package. It has many names, but its goal is always the same: death and destruction. As soon as it comes through the door anyone still in here will be stone cold dead.”

“
Through
the vault door?”

“There is no barrier yet created that can withstand the Questing Beast, except a Pellinore—they have hunted it for years!”

Harris turned to Kaine and Volescamper.

“But there's one thing it does tell us. One of you
is
fictional. One of you has invoked the Questing Beast. I want to know who it is!”

Kaine and Volescamper looked at Tweed, then at me, at each other and finally at the steel door as we heard another low moan. The light machine gun at the front door fell silent and a splintering of wood met our ears as the Questing Beast forced its way through the main entrance and moved its odious form closer to the library.