A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (90 page)

They stared at one another.

“Then I'll go alone,” replied Snell with finality, pulling the mask down over his face and releasing the safety on his automatic.

Havisham caught his elbow as she rummaged in her TravelBook for her own mask. “We go together or not at all, Akrid.”

I found the correct page for the mask, pulled it out of its slot and put it on under the Eject-O-Hat. Miss Havisham pinned a carrot to my jacket, too.

“A carrot is the best litmus test for the mispeling vyrus,” she said, helping Bradshaw on with his mask. “As soon as the carrot comes into contact with the vyrus, it will start to mispel into
parrot
. You need to be out before it can talk. We have a saying: ‘When you can hear Polly, use the brolly.' ” She tapped the toggle of the Eject-O-Hat. “Understand?”

I nodded.

“Good. Bradshaw, lead the way!”

We stepped carefully across the door with its mispeled hinges, and into the lab, which was in chaotic disorder. Mispeling was merely an annoyance to readers—but
inside
the BookWorld it was a menace. The mispeling was the effect of sense distortion, not the cause—once the internal meaning of a word started to break down, then the mispeling arose merely as a result of this. Unmispeling the word at TGC might work if the vyrus hadn't taken a strong hold, but usually it was pointless; like making the beds in a burning house.

The interior of the laboratory was heavily disrupted. On the far wall the shelves were filled with a noisy company of
featherbound rooks;
we stepped forward onto the
fattened tarpit
only to see that the imposing table in the center of the room was now an enormous
label.
The glass apparatus had become
grass asparagus,
and worst of all, Mathias the talking horse was simply a large model
house
—like a doll's house but much more detailed. Miss Havisham looked at me and pointed to her carrot. Already it was starting to change color—I could see tinges of red, yellow and blue.

“Carefool,” said Snell, “look!”

On the floor next to more shards of broken
grass
was a small layer of the same purple mist I had seen the last time I was here. The area of the floor touched by the vyrus was constantly changing meaning, texture, color and appearance.

“Where waz the Minotour kept?” asked Havisham, her carrot beginning to sprout a small beak.

I pointed the way and Bradshaw took the lead. I pulled out my gun, despite Bradshaw's assurances that it was a waste of time, and he gently pushed the door open to the vault beneath the old hall. Snell snapped on a torch and flicked it within the chamber. The door to the Minotaur's cage was open, but of the beast, there was no sign. I wish I could have said the same for Perkins. He—or what was left of him—was lying on the stone floor. The Minotaur had devoured him up to his chest. His spine had been picked clean and the lower part of a leg had been thrown to one side. I choked at the sight and felt a knot rise in my throat. Bradshaw cursed low and turned to cover the doorway. Snell dropped to his knees to close Perkins's eyes, which were staring off into space, a look of fear still etched upon his features. Miss Havisham laid a hand on Snell's shoulder.

“I'm so sory, Akrid. Perkins wos a good man.”

“I can't beleive he wood have been sew stewpid,” muttered Snell angrily.

“We shood be leaving,” said Bradshaw, “now we kno there is
definitly
a Minotour loose, we must come bak beter armed and with more peeple!”

Snell got up. Behind his MV Mask I could see tears in his eyes. Miss Havisham looked at me and pointed to her carrot, which had started to sprout feathers. A proper cleanup gang would be needed. Snell placed his jacket over Perkins and joined us as Bradshaw led the way out.

“Bak to Norland, yes?”

“I've hunted Minotour befour,” said Bradshaw, his instincts alerted, “Stalingrad, 1944. They neffer stray far from the kil.”

“Bradshore—!” urged Miss Havisham, but the commander wasn't the sort to take orders from another, not even someone as forthright as Havisham.

“I don't git it,” murmured Snell, stopping for a moment and staring at the chaos within the laboratory and the small glob of purple mist on the floor. “Their just isn't enuff vyrus here to corze the problims we've seen.”

“Wot are U saying?” I asked.

Bradshaw looked carefully out of the open door, indicated all was clear and beckoned for us to leave.

“There mite be some
moor
vyrus around,” continued Snell. “Wot's in this cuppboard?”

He strode towards a small wooden cabinet that had telephone directory pages pasted all over it.

“Wate!” cried Bradshaw, striding from the other side of the room. “Let me.”

He grasped the handle as a thought struck me. They weren't telephone directory pages, they were from a dictionary. The door was
shielded
.

I shouted but it was too late. Bradshaw opened the cupboard and was bathed in a faint purple light. The cabinet contained two dozen or so broken jars, all of which leaked the pestilential vyrus.

“Ahh!” he cried, staggering backwards and dropping his
gum
as the carrot transformed into a loud
parrot.
Bradshaw, his actions instinctive after years of training, pulled the cord on his Eject-O-Hat and vanished with a loud
bang
.

The room mutated as the mispeling got a hold. The floor buckled and softened into
flour,
the walls changed into
balls
. I
looked across at Havisham. Her carrot was a parrot, too—it had hopped to her other shoulder and was looking at me with its head cocked to one side.

“Go, go!”
she yelled at me, pulling the cord and vanishing like Bradshaw before her. I grasped the handle and pulled—but it came off in my hand. I threw it to the ground, where it became a
candle
.

“Hear,” said Snell, removing his own Eject-O-Hat, “use myne.”

“Bat the vyruz!”

“Hange the vyruz, Neckts—jist go!”

He did not look at me again. He just walked towards the cupboard with the broken jars and slowly closed the door, his hands morphing into
lands—
complete with miniature trees, forests and hills—as he touched the raw power of the vyrus. I ran outside, casting off the now useless hat and attempting to clip on the chin strap of Snell's. It wasn't easy. I caught my foot on a piece of half-buried masonry and fell headlong—to land within three paces of two large cloven hooves.

I looked up. The Minotaur was semicrouched on his muscular haunches, ready to jump. His bull's head was large and sat heavily on his body—what neck he did have was hidden beneath taut muscle. Within his mouth two rows of fine-pointed teeth were shiny with saliva, and his sharpened horns pointed forward, ready to attack. Five years eating nothing but yogurt. You might as well feed a tiger on Ryvita.

“Nice Minotaur,” I said soothingly, slowly reaching for my automatic, which had fallen on the grass beside me, “good Minotaur.”

He took a step closer, his hooves making deep impressions in the grass. He stared at me and breathed out heavily through his nostrils, blowing tendrils of mucus into the air. He took another step, his deep-set yellow eyes staring into mine with an expression of loathing. My hand closed around the butt of my automatic as the Minotaur bent closer and put out a large clawed hand. I moved the gun slowly towards me as the Minotaur
reached down and—picked up Snell's hat. He turned it over in his claws and licked the brim with a tongue the size of my forearm. I had seen enough. I leveled my automatic and pulled the trigger at the same time as the Minotaur's clawed hand caught in the toggle and activated the Eject-O-Hat. The mythological man-beast vanished with a loud detonation as my gun went off, the shot whistling harmlessly through the air.

I breathed a sigh of relief but quickly rolled aside because, with a loud whooshing noise, a packing case fell from the heavens and landed with a crash right where I had lain. The case had
Property of Jurisfiction
stenciled on it and had split open to reveal—
dictionaries.
Another case landed close by, then a third and a fourth. Before I had time to even begin to figure out what was happening, Bradshaw had reappeared.

“Why didn't you jump, you litle fool?”

“My hat failed!”

“And Snell?”

“Insyde.”

Bradshaw pulled on his MV Mask and rushed off into the building as I took refuge from the packing cases of dictionaries that were falling with increased rapidity. Harris Tweed appeared and barked orders at the small army of Mrs. Danvers that had materialized with him. They were all wearing identical black dresses high-buttoned to the collar, which only served to make their pale skin seem even whiter, their hollow eyes more sinister. They moved slowly but purposefully, and began to stack, one by one, the dictionaries against the castle keep.

“Where's the Minotaur?” asked Havisham, who suddenly appeared close by.

I told her he had ejected with Snell's fedora and she vanished without another word.

Bradshaw reappeared from the keep, dragging Snell behind him. The rubber on Akrid's MV Mask had turned to
blubber,
his suit to
soot
. Bradshaw removed him from
Sword of the Zenobians
to the Jurisfiction sick bay just as Miss Havisham returned. We watched together as the stacked dictionaries rose around the
remains of Perkins's laboratory, twenty feet thick at the base, rising to a dome like a sugarloaf over the castle keep. It might have taken a long time but there were many Mrs. Danvers, they were highly organized and they had an inexhaustible supply of dictionaries.

“Find the Minotaur?” I asked Havisham.

“Long gon. There will be hell to pay about this, I assure you!”

When our carrots had returned to being crunchy vegetables, and the last vestiges of parrotness had been removed, Havisham and I pulled off our vyrus masks and tossed them in a heap—the dictionary filters were almost worn out.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“It is torched,” replied Tweed, who was close by, “it is the only way to destroy the vyrus.”

“What about the evidence?” I asked.

“Evidence?” echoed Tweed. “Evidence of what?”

“Perkins,” I replied. “We don't know the full details of his death.”

“I think we can safely say he was killed and eaten by the Minotaur,” said Tweed, borrowing Havisham's not-to-be-questioned voice. “It's too dangerous to go back in, even if we wanted to. I'd rather torch this now than risk spreading the vyrus and having to demolish the whole book and everything in it—do you know how many creatures live in here?”

He lit a flare.

“You'd better stand clear.”

The DanverClones were leaving now, vanishing with a faint pop, back to wherever they had been pulled from. Bradshaw and I withdrew as Tweed threw the flare on the pile of dictionaries. They burst into flames and were soon so hot that we had to withdraw to the gatehouse, the black smoke that billowed into the sky taking with it the remnants of the vyrus—and the evidence of Perkins's murder. Because I was sure it
was
murder. When we had walked into the Minotaur's vault, I had noticed that the key was missing from its hook.
Someone had let the Minotaur out.

I didn't notice it straightaway but Vernham, Nelly and Lucy all had the same surname: Deane. They weren't related. In the Outland this happens all the time, but in fiction it is rare; the problem is aggressively attacked by the
echolocators
(qv), who insist that no two people in the same book have the same name. I learned years later that Hemingway once wrote a book that was demolished because he insisted that every single one of the eight characters was named Gordon.

THURSDAY NEXT
,
The Jurisfiction Chronicles

T
HE MINOTAUR HAD
given Havisham the slip and was last seen heading towards the works of Zane Grey; the semibovine wasn't stupid—he knew we'd have trouble finding him amidst a cattle drive. Snell lasted another three hours. He was kept in an isolation tent made of fine plastic sheeting that had been overprinted with pages from the
Oxford English Dictionary
. We were in the sick bay of the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group. At the first sign of any deviant mispeling, thousands of these volumes were shipped to the infected book and set up as barrages either side of the chapter. The barrage was then moved in, paragraph by paragraph, until the vyrus was forced into a single sentence, then word, then smothered completely. Fire was not an option in a published work; they had tried it once in Samuel Pepys's
Diary
and burnt down half of London.

“Does he have any family?” I asked.

“Snell was a loner detective, Miss Next,” explained the doctor. “Perkins was his only family.”

“Is it safe to go up to him?”

“Yes—but be prepared for some mispelings.”

I sat by his bed while Havisham stood and spoke quietly with the doctor. Snell lay on his back and was breathing with small, shallow gasps, the pulse on his neck racing—it wouldn't be long before the vyrus took him away and he knew it. I leaned closer and held his hand through the sheeting. His complexion was pail, his breething labored, his skein covered in painful and unsightly green pastilles. As I wotched, his dry slips tried to foam worlds but all he could torque was ninsense.

“Thirsty!” he squeeked. “Wode—Cone, udder whirled—doughnut Trieste—!”

He grisped my arm with his fungers, made one last stringled cry before feeling bakwards, his life force deported from his pathotic mispeled boddy.

“He was a fine operative,” said Havisham as the doctor pulled a sheep over his head.

“What will happen to the Perkins and Snell series?”

“I'm not sure,” she replied softly. “Demolished—saved with new Generics—I don't know.”

“What ho!” exclaimed Bradshaw, appearing from nowhere. “Is he—?”

“I'm afraid so,” replied Havisham.

“One of the best,” murmured Bradshaw sadly. “When they made Snell, they threw away the mold.”

“I hope not,” added Havisham. “If we
do
replace him, it might make things a bit tricky.”

“Figure of speech,” countered Bradshaw. “Did he say anything before he died?”

“Nothing coherent.”

“Hmm. The Bellman wanted a report on his death as soon as possible. What do you think?”

He handed Havisham a sheet of paper, and she read:

“ ‘Minotaur escapes, finds captor, eats captor, captor dies. Horse mispeled in struggle. Colleague dies attempting rescue. Minotaur escapes.' ”

She turned over the piece of paper, but it was blank on the other side.

“That's it?”

“I didn't want it to get boring,” replied Bradshaw, “and the Bellman wanted it as simple as possible. I think he's got Libris breathing down his neck. The investigation of a Jurisfiction agent so close to the launch of Ultra Word™ will make the Council of Genres jittery as hell.”

Miss Havisham handed the report back to Bradshaw. “Perhaps, Commander, you should lose that report in the pending tray for a bit.”

“This sort of stuff happens in fiction all the time,” he replied. “Do you have any evidence that it was
not
accidental?”

“The key to the padlock wasn't on its hook,” I murmured.

“Well spotted,” replied Miss Havisham.

“Skulduggery?” Bradshaw hissed excitedly.

“I fervently hope not,” she returned. “Just delay the findings for a few days—we should see if Miss Next's observational skills hold up to scrutiny.”

“Righty-o!” replied Bradshaw. “I'll see what I can do!”

And he vanished. We were left alone in the corridor, the bunk beds of the DanverClones stretching off to the distance in both directions.

“It might be nothing, Miss Havisham, but—”

She put her fingers to her lips. Havisham's eyes, usually resolute and fixed, had, for a brief moment, seemed troubled. I said nothing but inwardly I felt worried. Up until now I had thought Havisham feared nothing.

She looked at her watch. “Go to the bun shop in
Little Dorrit
, would you? I'll have a doughnut and a coffee. Put it on my tab and get something for yourself.”

“Thank you. Where shall we meet?”

“
Mill on the Floss
, page five hundred twenty-three in twenty minutes.”

“Assignment?”

“Yes,” she replied, deep in thought. “Some damn meddling fool told Lucy Deane that Stephen and not Philip will be boating with Maggie—she may try to stop them. Twenty minutes and not the jam doughnuts, the ones with the pink icing, yes?”

Thirty-two minutes later I was inside
Mill on the Floss
, on the banks of a river next to Miss Havisham, who was observing a couple in a boat. The woman was dark-skinned with a jet-black coronet of hair. She was lying on a cloak with a parasol above her as a man rowed her gently downriver. He was of perhaps five-and-twenty years old, quite striking, and with short dark hair that stood erect, not unlike a crop of corn. They were talking earnestly to each other. I passed Miss Havisham a cup of coffee and a paper bag full of doughnuts.

“Stephen and Maggie?” I asked, indicating the couple as we walked along the path by the river.

“Yes,” she replied. “As you know, Lucy and Stephen are a hairsbreadth from engagement. Stephen and Maggie's indiscretion in this boat causes Lucy Deane no end of distress. I told you to get the ones with pink icing.”

“They'd run out.”

“Ah.”

We kept a wary eye on the couple in the boat as I tried to remember what actually happened in
Mill on the Floss
.

“They agree to elope, don't they?”

“Agree to—but don't. Stephen is being an idiot and Maggie should know better. Lucy is meant to be shopping in Lindum with her father and Aunt Tulliver, but she gave them the slip an hour ago.”

We walked on for a few more minutes. The story seemed to be following the correct path with no intervention of Lucy's we could see. Although we couldn't make out the words, the sound of Maggie's and Stephen's voices carried across the water.

Miss Havisham took a bite of her doughnut.

“I noticed the missing key, too,” she said after a pause. “It was pushed under a workbench. It was murder. Murder . . . by Minotaur.”

She shivered.

“Why didn't you tell Bradshaw?” I asked. “Surely the murder of a Jurisfiction operative warrants an investigation?”

She stared at me hard and then looked at the couple in the boat again.

“You don't understand, do you?
The Sword of the Zenobians
is code-word-protected.”

“Only Jurisfiction agents can get in and out,” I murmured.

“Whoever killed Perkins and Mathias was Jurisfiction, and
that's
what frightens me. A rogue agent.”

We walked in silence, digesting this information.

“But why would anyone want to kill Perkins and a talking horse?”

“I think Mathias just got in the way.”

“And Perkins?”

“Not just Perkins. Whoever killed him tried to get someone else that day.”

I thought for a moment and a sudden chill came over me.

“My Eject-O-Hat. It failed.”

Miss Havisham produced the homburg from a carrier bag, slightly squashed from where several Mrs. Danvers had trodden on it. The frayed cord looked as though it might have been cut.

“Take this to Professor Plum at Juris Tech and have him look at it. I'd like to be sure.”

“But . . . but why am
I
a threat?”

“I don't know,” admitted Miss Havisham. “You are the most junior member of Jurisfiction and arguably the least threatening—you can't even bookjump without moving your lips, for goodness' sake!”

I didn't need reminding, but I saw her point.

“So what happens now?” I asked at length.

“We have to assume whoever killed Snell might try again. You are to be on your guard. Wait—there she is!”

We had walked over a small rise and were slightly ahead of the boat. A young woman was lying on the ground in a most unladylike fashion, pointing a sniper's rifle towards the small skiff that had just come into view. I crept cautiously forward; she was so intent on her task that she didn't notice me until I was close enough to grab her. She was a slight thing, and her strugglings, whilst energetic, were soon overcome. I secured her in an armlock as Havisham unloaded the rifle. Maggie and Stephen, unaware of the danger, drifted softly past on their way to Mudport.

“Where did you get this?” asked Havisham, holding up the rifle.

“I don't have to say anything,” replied the angelic-looking girl in a soft voice. “I was only going to knock a hole in the boat, honestly I was!”

“Sure you were. You can let go, Thursday.”

I relaxed my grip and the girl stepped back, pulling at her clothes to straighten them after our brief tussle. I checked her for any other weapons but found nothing.

“Why should Maggie force a wedge between our happiness?” she demanded angrily. “Everything would be so
wonderful
between my darling Stephen and I—why am I the victim? I, who only wanted to do good and help everyone—especially Maggie!”

“It's called drama,” replied Havisham wearily. “Are you going to tell us where you got the rifle or not?”

“Not. You can't stop me. Maybe they'll get away, but I can be here ready and waiting on the next reading—or even the one after that! Think you have enough Jurisfiction agents to put Maggie under constant protection?”

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” replied Miss Havisham, looking her squarely in the eye. “Is that your final word?”

“It is.”

“Then you are under arrest for attempted Fiction Infraction,
contrary to Ordinance FMB/0608999 of the Narrative Continuity Code. By the power invested in me by the Council of Genres, I sentence you to banishment outside
Mill on the Floss
. Move.”

Miss Havisham ordered me to cuff Lucy and, once I had, held on to me as we jumped into the Great Library. Lucy, for an arrested ad-libber, didn't seem too put out.

“You can't imprison me,” she said as we walked along the corridor of the twenty-third floor. “I reappear in Maggie's dream seven pages from now. If I'm not there, you'll be in more trouble than you know what to do with. This could mean your job, Miss Havisham! Back to Satis House—for good.”

“Would it mean that?” I asked, suddenly wondering whether Miss Havisham wasn't exceeding her authority.

“It would mean the same as it did the last time,” replied Havisham, “absolutely
nothing
.”

“Last time?” queried Lucy. “But this is the first time I've tried something like this!”

“No,” replied Miss Havisham, “no, it most certainly is not.”

Miss Havisham pointed out a book entitled
The curious experience of the Patterson Family on the island of Uffa
and told me to open it. We were soon inside, on the foreshore of a Scottish island in the late spring.

“What do you mean?” asked Lucy, looking around her as her earlier confidence evaporated to be replaced by growing panic. “What is this place?”

“It is a prison, Miss Deane.”

“A prison? A prison for whom?”

“For them,” said Havisham, indicating several identically youthful and fair-complexioned Lucy Deanes, who had broken cover and were staring in our direction. Our Lucy Deane looked at us, then at her identical sisters, then back to us again.

“I'm sorry!” she said, dropping to her knees. “Give me another chance—please!”

“Take heart in that this doesn't make you a bad person,” said Miss Havisham. “You just have a repetitive character disorder. You are a serial ad-libber and the seven hundred and ninety-sixth
Lucy we have had to imprison here. In less civilized times you would have been reduced to text. Good day.”

And we vanished back to the corridors of the Great Library.

“And to think she was the most pleasant person in
Floss
!” I said, shaking my head sadly.

“You'll find that the most righteous characters are the first ones to go loco down here. The average life of a Lucy Deane is about a thousand readings; self-righteous indignation kicks in after that. No one could believe it when David Copperfield killed his first wife, either. Good day, Chesh.”

The Cheshire Cat had appeared on a high shelf, grinning to us, itself and anything else in view.

“Well!” said the Cat. “Next and Havisham! Problems with Lucy Deane?”

“The usual. Can you get the Well to send in the replacement as soon as possible?”

The Cat assured us he would, seemed crestfallen that I hadn't brought him any Moggilicious cat food and vanished again.

“We need to find out anything unusual about Perkins's death,” said Miss Havisham. “Will you help?”

“Of course!” I enthused.

Miss Havisham smiled a rare smile. “You remind me of myself, all those years ago, before that rat Compeyson brought my happiness to an end.”