The Well of Lost Plots

by Jasper Fforde

  There was silence.

  'Proof!' cried Libris. 'All you have demonstrated so far is that you can spin a yarn as well as any plotsmith! Where is your proof?'

  'Very well,' I said slowly. 'Mrs Bradshaw? The skylark, if you please.'

  Mrs Bradshaw produced the small cage from beneath the table and handed it up to me.

  'I have seen an UltraWord™ character with my own eyes and they are empty husks; if an old book is read in UltraWord™ it is very good – but if it is written in UltraWord™ it will be flat and trite, devoid of feeling, the SmileyBurger of the storytelling world. The Well may be wasteful and long winded, but every book read in the Outland was built there – even the greats.'

  I took the skylark from the cage.

  'This was the proof that Perkins died for.'

  I placed the small songbird beneath the ImaginoTransference device and the skylark's description was transmitted to the audience.

  Oh Lark so quick of wing,

  Dive down from up on high,

  Perch proud upon the post

  Melt darkness with thy cry.

  Come make my spirits soar,

  Dance here and hover long,

  Tempt summer with your trill,

  Sweet stream of endless song.

  The audience reacted favourably to the words and there was a smattering of applause, despite their nervousness.

  'What's wrong with that?' insisted Libris. 'UltraWord™ takes language and uses it in ways more wonderful than you can imagine!'

  The Bellman looked at me.

  'Miss Next,' he demanded, 'explain yourself

  'Well,' I said slowly, 'that wasn’t an UltraWord™ skylark. I picked it up from the Library this morning.'

  There was an expectant hush as Mrs Bradshaw produced a second bird seemingly identical to the first and handed it up to me.

  'This is the UltraWord™ version. Shall we compare?'

  'That's not necessary!' said Libris quickly. 'We get the point.' He turned to the Bellman. 'Sir, we need a few more weeks to sort out a few minor kinks—'

  'Go ahead, Thursday,' said the Bellman. 'Let's see how UltraWord™ compares.'

  I placed the bird in the ITRD and it transmitted the cold and clinical description to the audience.

  With a short tail and large wings with pale trailing edges, a skylark is easily recognised inflight. There is a very distinctive streaking pattern to the brown plumage on the breast, and a black-and-white pattern beneath the tail. Nests in hollow on ground. Can sing a bit.

  'I call a vote right now!' exclaimed the Bellman, climbing on to the stage.26

  I looked across at Tweed, who was tapping his mobile footnoterphone and smiling.

  'What's the problem?' I asked.27

  'Eh?' asked the Bellman.

  'The vote!' I urged. 'Hurry!'

  'Of course,' he replied, knowing full well that Text Grand Central were not defeated until the vote had been taken. The Council of Genres wasn't involved – but would be if TGC tried to go against a BookWorld referendum. That was something they could never rewrite.

  'Good!' said Tweed into his mobile footnoterphone. 'Communications have been restored.'

  He smiled at me and signalled to Libris, who calmed dramatically as only the supremely confident can do.

  'Very well,' said Libris slowly. 'The Bellman has called for a vote and, as the rules state, I am allowed to answer any criticism laid before me.'

  'A rebuttal of a rebuttal?' I cried. 'The rules don't state that!'

  'But they do!' said Libris kindly. 'Perhaps you'd like to look at the BookWorld constitution?'

  He pulled the slim volume from his coat and I could smell the cantaloupes from where I stood. It would say whatever they wanted it to say. Libris walked over to us and said to the Bellman in a quiet voice:

  'We can do this the easy way or the hard way. We make the rules, we can change the rules, we can modify the rules. We can do anything we want. You are due to step down. Go with me on this one and you can have an easy retirement. Go against me and I'll crush you.'

  Libris turned to me.

  'What do you care? No one in the Outland will notice the difference. You'll have a week to pack up and move out – you have my word on that.'

  The Bellman glared at Libris.

  'How much did they pay you?'

  'They didn't need to. Money doesn't mean anything down here. No, it's the technology that I really love. It's too perfect to be sidelined by people like you. I get a hundred per cent control. Everything will go through TGC. No more Well of Lost Plots, no more Generics, no more Council, no more strikes by disgruntled nurseries. Design and marketing must be brought together for efficiency reasons. But do you know the best bit? No more authors. No more missed deadlines. No more variable-quality second books – each one in the series will be the same as the next. When a publisher needs a best-seller all they need do is contact our sole representative in the Outland!'

  'Yorrick Kaine,' I murmured.

  'Indeed. Do you know how much money is lost through people lending their books? The advertising revenue and product placement deals made possible by UltraWord™ are worth billions. Books will have links to related products and services on every page. It's all for the best, Thursday, artistically and financially. In fact, as a first step, we will merge the two words for ever. How does "fartinancially" sound to you?'

  Incredibly, it was worse than I thought. It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries.

  'But the books!' I cried. 'They'll be terrible!'

  'Within a few years no one will notice,' replied Libris. 'Mr Bellman, do you go with us on this or not?'

  'I would sooner die!' he exclaimed, trembling with rage.

  'As you wish,' replied Libris.

  There was a short crackling noise and I saw the Bellman stiffen slightly.

  'Now,' said Libris, 'let's finish this all up. Bellman, would you refute Miss Next's points one by one?'

  'I should be delighted,' he said slowly and without emotion. I turned to him in shock, and could see how his features were less defined than before – like an out-of-focus photograph. The smell of melons once more drifted across the stage.

  'Friends!' began the Bellman. 'Miss Next is entirely mistaken …'

  I turned to Libris and he smiled triumphantly. I reached into my bag for my gun but it had been changed to marmalade.

  'Tch, tch,' said Libris in a whisper. 'That's a BookWorld gun and now under our control. What a shame you lost your Outlander Browning in the struggle with Tweed!'

  I had only one card left. I pulled out my TravelBook and opened it, flicking past the TextMarker and Eject-O-Hat and on towards the glass panel covering a red-painted handle. A note painted on the glass read: IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS. If this wasn't an unprecedented emergency, I didn't know what was. I smashed the glass, grabbed the handle and pulled it down with all my strength.

  34

  Loose ends

  * * *

  'Contrary to Text Grand Central's claims, there were no new plots using UltraWord. Ex-WordMaster Libris had become so obsessed with the perfection of his operating system that nothing else had mattered to him and he lied repeatedly to cover up its failings. BOOK V8.3 remained the operating system for many years to come, although one of the UltraWord copies of The Little Prince can be viewed in the Jurisfiction museum. To avoid a repeat of this near-disaster, the Council of Genres took the only course of action open to them to ensure TGC would be too inefficient and unimaginative to pose a threat. They appointed a committee to run it.'

  MILTON DE FLOSS – UltraWord – the Aftermath

  It was nearly morning when the BookWorld Awards party finished. Heathcliff was furious that in all the excitement the final award of the night had been forgotten; I saw him talking angrily to his personal imaginator an hour after the appearance of the Great Panjandrum. There would be next year, of course, but his seventy-seven-year record had been broken an
d he didn't like it. I thought he might take it out on Linton and Catherine when he got home, and he did.

  No one had been more surprised than me by the arrival of the Great Panjandrum when I pulled the emergency handle. For the non-believers it was something of a shock, and no less so for the faithful. She had been so long a figure of speech that seeing her in the flesh was startling. I thought she had seemed quite plain and in her mid-thirties, but Humpty Dumpty told me later he had been shaped like an egg. In any event, the marble statue that now stands in the lobby of the Council of Genres depicts the Great Panjandrum as Mr Price the stonemason saw him – with a leather apron and carrying a mallet and stone chisel.

  When she arrived the Great Panjandrum read the situation perfectly. She froze all the text within the room, locked the doors and decreed that a vote be taken there and then. She summoned the head of the Council of Genres and the vote against UltraWord was carried unanimously. She spoke to me three times: once to tell me I had The Write Stuff, second to ask me whether I would take on the job of the Bellman, and lastly to ask whether disco mirror balls in the Outland had a motor to make them go round or whether they did so by virtue of the light. I answered 'Thank you", "Yes" and "I don't know", in that order.

  After the party was over I walked back through the slowly stirring Well of Lost Plots to the shelf that held Caversham Heights and read myself back inside, tired but happy. The Bellman's job would keep me busy but purely in administration. I wouldn't have to go jumping around in books – just the thing to allow my ankles to swell in peace and quiet, and to plan my return to the Outland when the infant Next and its mother were strong enough. Together we would face the tribulations of Landen's return, because the little one would have a father, I had promised it that much already. I opened the door to Mary's Sunderland and felt the old flying boat rock slightly as I entered. When I first came here it had unnerved me, but now I wouldn't have had it any other way. Small wavelets slapped against the hull and somewhere an owl hooted as it returned to roost. It felt as much like home as home had ever done. I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long, because, she said, 'she had yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel'.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and fell fast asleep without the nagging fear of Aornis, and it was nearly ten when I awoke. But I didn't wake naturally – Pickwick was tugging at the corner of my dress.

  'Not now, Pickers,' I mumbled sleepily, trying to turn over and nearly impaling myself on a knitting needle. She carried on tugging until I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched noisily. She seemed insistent so I followed her upstairs to my bedroom. Sitting on the bed and surrounded by broken eggshell was something that I could only describe as a ball of a fluff with two eyes and a beak.

  'Plock-plock,' said Pickwick.

  'You're right,' I told her, 'she's very beautiful. Congratulations.'

  The small dodo blinked at us both, opened its beak wide and said, in a shrill voice:

  'Plunk!'

  Pickwick started and looked at me anxiously.

  'Well!' I told her. 'A rebellious teenager already?'

  Pickwick nudged the chick with her beak and it plunked indignantly before settling down.

  I thought for a moment and said: 'You aren't going to feed her doing that disgusting regurgitation seabird thing, are you?'

  The door burst open downstairs.

  'Thursday!' yelled Randolph anxiously. 'Are you in here?'

  'I'm here,' I shouted, leaving Pickwick with her offspring and coming downstairs to find a highly agitated Randolph, pacing up and down the living room.

  'What's up?'

  'It's Lola.'

  'Some unsuitable young man again? Really, Randolph, you've got to learn not to be so jealous—'

  'No,' he said quickly, 'it's not that. Girls Make all the Moves didn't find a publisher and the author burnt the only manuscript in a drunken rage! That's why she wasn't at the awards last night!'

  I started. If a book had been destroyed in the Outland then all the characters and situations would be up for salvage—

  'Yes,' said Randolph, reading my thoughts, 'they're going to auction off Lola!'

  I quickly changed out of my dress and we arrived as the sale was winding up. Most of the descriptive scenes had already gone, the one-liners packaged and sold as a single lot, and all the cars and most of the wardrobe and furniture disposed of. I pushed through to the front of the crowd and found Lola looking very dejected sitting on her suitcase.

  'Lola!' said Randolph, as they hugged. 'I brought Thursday to help you!'

  She jumped up and smiled but it was a despairing half-smile at best and it spoke volumes.

  'Come on,' I said, grabbing her by the hand, 'we're out of here.'

  'Not so fast!' said a tall man in an immaculate suit. 'No goods are to be removed until paid for!'

  'She's with me,' I told him as several hulking great bouncers appeared from nowhere.

  'No she's not. She's lot ninety-seven. You can bid if you want to.'

  'I'm Thursday Next, the Bellman-elect,' I told him, 'and Lola is with me.'

  'I know who you are and you did good, but I have a business to run. I haven't done anything wrong. You can take the Generic home with you in ten minutes – after you have won the bidding.'

  I glared at him.

  'I'm going to close down this foul trade,' I told him, 'and enjoy it every step of the way!'

  'Really?' replied the man. 'I'm quaking in my boots. Now are you going to bid or do I withdraw the lot and put it up for private tender?'

  'She's not an it,' snarled Randolph angrily, 'she's a Lola – and I love her!'

  'You're breaking my heart. Bid or bugger off, the choice is yours.'

  Randolph made to plant a punch on the dealer's chin but he was caught by one of the bouncers and held tightly.

  'Control your Generic or I'll throw you both out! Get it?'

  Randolph nodded and he was released. We stood together at the front watching Lola, who was weeping silently into her handkerchief.

  'Gentlemen. Lot ninety-seven. Fine female B-4 Generic, ident: TSI-1404912-C. Attractive and personable. An opportunity to secure this sort of highly entertaining and pneumatic young lady does not come often. Her high appetite for sexual congress, slight dopiness and winsome innocence combined with indefatigable energy make her especially suitable for "racy" novels. What am I bid?'

  It was bad. Very bad. I turned to Randolph.

  'Do you have any money?'

  'About a tenner.'

  The bidding had already reached a thousand. I didn't have a tenth of that either here or back home – nor anything to sell to raise such a sum. The bidding rose higher, and Lola grew more depressed. For the amount that was being bid, she was probably in for a series of books – and the movie rights. I shuddered.

  'With you, sir, at six thousand!' announced the auctioneer as the bidding bounced backwards and forwards between two well-known dealers. 'Any more bids?'

  'Seven thousand!'

  'Eight!'

  'Nine!'

  'I can't watch,' said Randolph, tears streaming down his face. He turned and left as Lola stared after him as he pushed his way to the back.

  'Any more bids?' asked the auctioneer. 'With you, sir, at nine thousand … going once … going twice …'

  'I BID ONE ORIGINAL IDEA!' I shouted, digging in my bag for the small nugget of originality Miss Havisham had given me and marching up to the auctioneer's table. There was a deathly hush as I held the glowing fragment aloft, and placed it on his desk with a flourish.

  'A nugget of originality for a trollop like that?' hissed a man at the front. 'The Bellman-elect's got a screw loose.'

  'Lola is that important to me,' I said sombrely. Miss Havisham had told me to use the nugget wisely – I think I did.

  'Is it enough?'

  'It's enough,' said the vendor, picking up the nug
get and staring at it avariciously through an eyeglass. 'This lot is withdrawn from the sale. Miss Next, you are the proud owner of a Generic.'

  Lola nearly wet herself, poor girl, and she hugged me tightly during the five minutes it took to complete the paperwork.

  We found Randolph sitting on a mooring bollard down by the docks, staring off into the Text Sea with a sad and vacant look in his eyes. Lola leaned down and whispered in his ear.

  Randolph jumped and turned round, flung his arms around her and cried for joy.

  'Yes,' he said, 'yes, I did mean it! Every bit of it!'

  'Come on, lovebirds,' I told them, 'I think it's time to leave this cattle market.'

  We walked back to Caversham Heights, Randolph and Lola holding hands, making plans to start a home for Generics who had fallen on hard times, and trying to think up ways to raise funding. Neither of them had the resources to undertake such a project, but it got me thinking.

  The following week, soon after I was inaugurated as the Bellman, I gave my proposal to the Council of Genres – Caversham Heights should be bought by the Council and used as a sanctuary for characters who needed a break from the sometimes arduous and repetitive course that fictional people are forced to tread. A sort of 'Textual Butlins' but without the redcoats. To my delight the Council approved the measure, as it had the added bonus of a solution to the nursery rhyme problem. Jack Spratt was overjoyed at the news and didn't seem in the least put out by the massive changes that would be necessary in order to embrace the visitors.

  'The drug plot is out, I'm afraid,' I told him as we discussed it over lunch a few days later.

  'What the hell,' he exclaimed. 'I was never in love with it anyway. Do we have a replacement boxer?'

  'The boxing plot is out too.'

  'Ah. How about the money-laundering sub-plot where I discover the mayor has been taking kickbacks? That's still in, yes?'

  'Not … as such,' I said slowly.

  'It's gone too?' he asked. 'Do we even have a murder?'

  'That we have,' I replied, passing him over the new outline I had been thrashing out with a freelance imaginator the previous day.