A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (79 page)

“How much?” he asked.

“Three hundred,” ventured Garcia.

“Three hundred?!” exclaimed Snell. “I could buy a dozen head-in-a-bag plot devices with that and still have change for a missing Nazi gold consignment.”

“No one's using the old ‘missing Nazi gold consignment' plot device anymore.” Garcia laughed. “If you don't want the head you can pass—I can sell heads pretty much anywhere I like. I just came to you first because we've done business before and I like you.”

Snell thought for a moment. “A hundred and fifty.”

“Two hundred.”

“One seventy-five.”

“Two hundred and I'll throw in a case of mistaken identity, a pretty female double agent and a missing microfilm.”

“Done!”

“Pleasure doing business with you,” said Garcia as he handed over the head and took the money in return. “Give my regards to Mr. Perkins, won't you?”

He smiled, shook hands with us both and departed.

“Oh, boy!” exclaimed Snell, excited as a kid with a new bicycle. “Wait until Perkins sees this! Where do you think we should find it?”

I thought in all honesty that “head in a bag” plot devices were a bit lame, but being too polite to say so, I said instead, “I liked the deep-freezer idea, myself.”

“Me, too!” Snell enthused as we passed a small shop whose painted headboard read:
Backstories built to order. No job too difficult. Painful childhoods a specialty.

“Backstories?”

“Sure. Every character worth their salt has a backstory. Come on in and have a look.”

We stooped and entered the low doorway. The interior was a workshop, small and smoky. A workbench in the middle of the room was liberally piled with glass retorts, test tubes and other chemical apparatus; the walls, I noticed, were lined with shelves that held tightly stoppered bottles containing small amounts of colorful liquids, all with labels describing varying styles of backstory, from one named
Idyllic childhood
to another entitled
Valiant war record
.

“This one's nearly empty,” I observed, pointing to a large bottle with
Misguided feelings of guilt over the death of a loved one/partner ten years previously
written on the label.

“Yes,” said a small man in a corduroy suit so lumpy it looked as though the tailor were still inside doing alterations, “that one's been quite popular recently. Some are hardly used at all. Look above you.”

I looked up at the full bottles gathering dust on the shelves
above. One was labeled
Studied squid in Sri Lanka
and another,
Apprentice Welsh mole catcher.

“So what can I do for you?” inquired the backstoryist, gazing at us happily and rubbing his hands. “Something for the lady? Ill treatment at the hands of sadistic stepsisters? Traumatic incident with a wild animal? No? We've got a deal this week on unhappy love affairs; buy one and you get a younger brother with a drug problem at no extra charge.”

Snell showed the merchant his Jurisfiction badge.

“Business call, Mr. Grnksghty—this is apprentice Next.”

“Ah!” he said, deflating slightly. “The law.”

“Mr. Grnksghty here used to write backstories for the Brontës and Thomas Hardy,” explained Snell, placing his bag on the floor and sitting on a table edge.

“Ah, yes!” replied the man, gazing at me from over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles. “But that was a long time ago. Charlotte Brontë, now she
was
a writer. A lot of good work for her, some of it barely used—”

“Yes, speaking,” interrupted Snell, staring vacantly at the array of glassware on the table. “I'm with Thursday down in the Well. . . . What's up?”

He noticed us both staring at him and explained, “Footnoterphone. It's Miss Havisham.”

“It's so rude,” muttered Mr. Grnksghty. “Why can't he go outside if he wants to talk on one of those things?”

“It's probably nothing but I'll go and have a look,” said Snell, staring into space. He turned to look at us, saw Mr. Grnksghty glaring at him and waved absently before going outside the shop, still talking.

“Where were we, young lady?”

“You were talking about Charlotte Brontë ordering backstories and then not using them?”

“Oh, yes.” The man smiled, delicately turning a tap on the apparatus and watching a small drip of an oily colored liquid fall into a flask. “I made the most wonderful backstory for both
Edward and Bertha Rochester, but do you know she only used a very small part of it?”

“That must have been very disappointing.”

“It was,” he sighed. “I am an artist, not a technician. But it didn't matter. I sold it lock, stock and barrel a few years back to
The Wide Sargasso Sea.
Harry Flashman from
Tom Brown's Schooldays
went the same way. I had Mr. Pickwick's backstory for years but couldn't make a sale—I donated it to the Jurisfiction museum.”

“What do you make a backstory out of, Mr. Grnksghty?”

“Treacle, mainly,” he replied, shaking the flask and watching the oily substance change to a gas, “and memories.
Lots
of memories. In fact, the treacle is really only there as a binding agent. Tell me, what do you think of this upgrade to Ultra Word™?”

“I have yet to hear about it properly,” I admitted.

“I particularly like the idea of ReadZip™,” mused the small man, adding a drop of red liquid and watching the result with great interest. “They say they will be able to crush
War and Peace
into eighty-six words and still retain the scope and grandeur of the original.”

“Seeing is believing.”

“Not down here,” Mr. Grnksghty corrected me. “Down here,
reading
is believing.”

There was a pause as I took this in.

“Mr. Grnksghty?”

“Yes?”

“How do you pronounce your name?”

At that moment Snell strolled back in.

“That was Miss Havisham,” he announced, retrieving his head. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Grnksghty—come on, we're off.”

Snell led me down the corridor past more shops and traders until we arrived at the bronze-and-wood elevators. The doors opened and several small street urchins ran out holding cleft sticks with a small scrap of paper wedged in them.

“Ideas on their way to the books-in-progress,” explained Snell as we stepped into the elevator. “Trading must have just started. You'll find the Idea Sales and Loan department on the seventeenth floor.”

The ornate elevator plunged rapidly downwards.

“Are you still being bothered by junkfootnoterphones?”

“A little.”
⁴

“You'll get used to ignoring them.”

The bell sounded and the elevator doors slid open, bringing with it a chill wind. It was darker than the floor we had just visited and several disreputable-looking characters stared at us from the shadows. I moved to get out but Snell stopped me. He looked about and whispered, “This is the twenty-second subbasement. The roughest place in the Well. A haven for cutthroats, bounty hunters, murderers, thieves, cheats, shape-shifters, scene-stealers, brigands and plagiarists.”

“We don't tolerate these sort of places back home,” I murmured.

“We
encourage
them here,” explained Snell. “Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.”

I could feel the menace as soon as we stepped from the elevator. Low mutters were exchanged amongst several hooded figures who stood close by, their faces obscured by the shadows, their hands bony and white. We walked past two large cats with eyes that seemed to dance with fire; they stared at us hungrily and licked their lips.

“Dinner,” said one, looking us both up and down. “Shall we eat them together or one by one?”

“One by one,” said the second cat, who was slightly bigger and a good deal more fearsome, “but we better wait until Big Martin gets here.”

“Oh, yeah,” said the first cat, retracting his claws quickly, “so we'd better.”

Snell had ignored the two cats completely; he glanced at his watch and said, “We're going to the Slaughtered Lamb to visit a contact of mine. Someone has been cobbling together plot devices from half-damaged units that should have been condemned. It's not only illegal—it's dangerous. The last thing anyone needs is a ‘Do we cut the red wire or the blue wire?' plot device going off an hour too early and ruining the suspense—how many stories have you read where the bomb is defused with an hour to go?”

“Not many, I suppose.”

“You suppose right. We're here.”

The gloomy interior was shabby and smelt of beer. Three ceiling fans stirred the smoke-filled atmosphere, and a band was playing a melancholy tune in one corner. The dark walls were spaced with individual booths where somberness was an abundant commodity; the bar in the center seemed to be the lightest place in the room and gathered there, like moths to a light, were an odd collection of people and creatures, all chatting and talking in low voices. The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic clichés you could have cut it with a knife.

“See over there?” said Snell, indicating two men who were deep in conversation.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Hyde talking to Blofeld. In the next booth are Von Stalhein and Wackford Squeers. The tall guy in the cloak is Emperor Zhark, tyrannical ruler of the known galaxy and star of the Zharkian Empire series of SF books. The one with the spines is Mrs. Tiggy-winkle—they'll be on a training assignment, just like us.”

“Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is an apprentice?” I asked incredulously, staring at the large hedgehog who was holding a basket of laundry and sipping delicately at a sherry.

“No; Zhark is the apprentice—Tiggy's a full agent. She deals with children's fiction, runs the Hedgepigs Society—and does our washing.”

“Hedgepigs Society?” I echoed. “What does
that
do?”

“They advance hedgehogs in all branches of literature. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle was the first to get star billing and she's used her position to further the lot of her species; she's got references into Kipling, Carroll, Aesop and four mentions in Shakespeare. She's also good with really stubborn stains—and never singes the cuffs.”

“
Tempest
,
Midsummer Night's Dream
,
Macbeth
,” I muttered, counting them off on my fingers. “Where's the fourth?”

“
Henry VI
, part one, act four, scene one: ‘Hedge-born Swaine.' ”

“I always thought that was an insult, not a hedgehog.
Swaine
can be a
country lad
just as easily as a
pig—
perhaps more so.”

“Well,” sighed Snell, “we've given her the benefit of the doubt—it helps with the indignity of being used as a croquet ball in
Alice
. Don't mention Tolstoy or Berlin when she's about, either—conversation with Tiggy is easier when you avoid talk of theoretical sociological divisions and stick to the question of washing temperatures for woolens.”

“I'll remember that,” I murmured. “The bar doesn't look so bad with all those pot plants scattered around, does it?”

Snell sighed audibly. “They're Triffids, Thursday. The big blobby thing practicing golf swings with the Jabberwock is a Krell, and that rhino over there is Rataxis. Arrest anyone who tries to sell you soma tablets, don't buy any Bottle Imps no matter how good the bargain and above all
don't look at Medusa
. If Big Martin or the Questing Beast turn up, run like hell. Get me a drink and I'll see you back here in five minutes.”

“Right.”

He departed into the gloom and I was left feeling a bit ill at ease. I made my way to the bar and ordered two drinks. On the other side of the bar a third cat had joined the two I had previously seen. The newcomer pointed to me but the others shook
their heads and whispered something in his ear. I turned the other way and jumped in surprise as I came face-to-face with a curious creature that looked as though it had escaped from a bad science fiction novel—it was all tentacles and eyes. A smile may have flicked across my face because the creature said in a harsh tone:

“What's the problem, never seen a Thraal before?”

I didn't understand; it sounded like a form of
Courier bold,
but I wasn't sure so said nothing, hoping to brazen it out.

“Hey!”
it said.
“I'm talking to you, two-eyes.”

The altercation had attracted another man, who looked like the product of some bizarre genetic experiment gone hopelessly wrong.

“He says he doesn't like you.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I don't like you, either,” said the man in a threatening tone, adding, as if I needed proof, “I have the death sentence in seven genres.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I assured him, but this didn't seem to work.

“You're the one who'll be sorry!”

“Come, come, Nigel,” said a voice I recognized. “Let me buy you a drink.”

This wasn't to the genetic experiment's liking for he moved quickly to his weapon; there was a sudden blur of movement and in an instant I had my automatic pressed hard against his head—Nigel's gun was still in his shoulder holster. The bar went quiet.

“You're quick, girlie,” said Nigel. “I respect that.”

“She's with me,” said the newcomer. “Let's all just calm down.”

I lowered my gun and replaced the safety. Nigel nodded respectfully and returned to his place at the bar with the odd-looking alien.

“Are you all right?”

It was Harris Tweed. He was a fellow Jurisfiction agent and
Outlander, just like me. The last time I had seen him was three days ago in Lord Volescamper's library, when we had flushed out the renegade fictioneer Yorrick Kaine after he had invoked the Questing Beast to destroy us. Tweed had been carried off by the exuberant bark of a bookhound and I had not seen him since.