The Well of Lost Plots

'Sorry to keep you all waiting,' he muttered. 'As you have seen, things are a little fraught outside. But I am delighted to see so many of you here. Is there anyone still to come?'

'Shall we wait for Godot?' enquired Deane.

'Anyone know where he is?' asked the Bellman. 'Beatrice, weren't you working with him?'

'Not I,' replied the young woman. 'You might enquire this of Benedict if he troubles to attend but you would as well speak to a goat — a stupid goat, mark me.'

'The sweet lady's tongue does abuse to our ears,' said Benedict, who had been seated out of our view but now rose to glare at Beatrice. 'Were the fountain of your mind clear again, that I might water an ass at it.'

'Ah!' retorted Beatrice with a laugh. 'Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike!'

'Dear Beatrice,' returned Benedict, bowing low, 'I was looking for a fool when I found you.'

'You, Benedict, who has not so much brain as ear-wax?'

They narrowed their eyes at one another and then smiled with polite enmity.

'All right, all right,' interrupted the Bellman. 'Calm down, you two. Do you know where Agent Godot is or not?'

Beatrice answered that she didn't.

'Right,' announced the Bellman. 'Let's get on. Jurisfiction meeting number 40319 is now in session.'

He tingled his bell again, coughed and consulted his clipboard.

'Item one. Our congratulations go to Deane and Lady Cavendish for foiling the Bowdlerisers in Chaucer.'

There were a few words of encouragement and back-slapping.

'There has been damage done but it's got no worse, so let's just try and keep an eye out in the future. Item two.'

He put down his clipboard and leaned on the lectern.

'Remember that craze a few years back in the BookWorld for sending chain letters? Receive a letter and send one on to ten friends? Well, someone has been over-enthusiastic with the letter "U". I've got a report here from the Text Sea Environmental Protection Agency saying that reserves of the letter "U" have reached dangerously low levels — we need to decrease consumption until stocks are brought back up. Any suggestions?'

'How about using a lower-case "N" upside down?' said Benedict.

'We tried that with "M" and "W" during the Great "M" Migration of '62; it never worked.'

'How about respelling what, what?' suggested King Pellinore, stroking his large white moustache. 'Any word with the "our" ending could be spelt "or", dontchaknow.'

'Like neighbor instead of neighbour?

'It's a good idea,' put in Snell. 'Labor, valor, flavor, harbor— there are hundreds. If we confine it to one geographical area we can claim it as a local spelling idiosyncrasy.'

'Hmm,' said the Bellman, thinking hard. 'Do you know, it just might work.'

He looked at his clipboard again.

'Item three — Tweed, are you here?'

Harris Tweed signalled from where he was sitting.

'Good,' continued the Bellman. 'I understand you were pursuing a PageRunner who had taken up residence in the Outland?'

Tweed glanced at me and stood up.

'Fellow by the name of Yorrick Kaine. He's something of a big cheese in the Outland — runs Kaine Publishing and has set himself up as head of his own political party—'

'Yes, yes,' said the Bellman impatiently, 'and he stole Cardenio, I know — but the point is, where is he now?'

'He went back to the Outland where I lost him,' replied Tweed.

'The Council of Genres are not keen to sanction any work in the real world,' said the Bellman slowly. 'It's too risky. We don't even know which book Kaine is from — and since he's not doing anything against us at present, I think he should stay in the Outland.'

'But Kaine is a real danger to our world,' I exclaimed.

Considering Kaine's righter-than-right politics, this was a fresh limit to the word understatement.

'He has stolen from the Great Library once,' I continued. 'How can we suppose he won't do the same again? Don't we have a duty to the readers to protect them from fictionauts hell-bent on—'

'Ms Next,' interrupted the Bellman, 'I understand what you are saying but I am not going to sanction an operation in the Outland. I'm sorry, but that is how it is going to be. He goes on the PageRunners' register and we'll set up textual sieves on every floor of the Library in case he plans to come back. Out there you may do as you please; here you do as we tell you. Is that clear?'

I grew hot and angry but Miss Havisham squeezed my arm, so I remained quiet.

'Good,' carried on the Bellman, consulting his clipboard again. 'Item four. Text Grand Central have reported several attempted incursions from the Outland. Nothing serious but enough to generate a few ripples in the Ficto-Outland barrier. Miss Havisham, didn't you report that an Outlander company was doing some research into entering fiction?'

It was true. Goliath had been attempting entry into the BookWorld for many years but with little success; all they had managed to do was extract a stodgy gunge from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese. Uncle Mycroft had sought refuge in the Sherlock Holmes series to avoid them.

'It was called the Something Company,' replied Havisham thoughtfully.

'Goliath,' I told her. 'It's called the Goliath Corporation.'

'Goliath. That was it. I had a look round while I was retrieving Miss Next's TravelBook.'

'Do you think Outlander technology is that far advanced?' asked the Bellman.

'No. They're still a long way away. They'd been trying to send an unmanned probe into The Listeners but, from what I saw, with little success.'

'Okay,' replied the Bellman, 'we'll keep an eye on them. What was their name again?'

'Goliath,' I said.

He made a note.

'Item five. All of the punctuation has been stolen from the final chapter of Ulysses. Probably about five hundred assorted full stops, commas, apostrophes and colons.'

He paused for a moment.

'Vern, weren't you doing some work on this?'

'Indeed,' replied the squire, stepping forward and opening a notebook. 'We noticed the theft two days ago. I spoke to the Cat and he said that no one has entered the book, so we can only assume that the novel was penetrated through the literary interpretation of Dublin — which gives us several thousand suspects. I surmise the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into Ulysses — you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from Moby-Dick, which no one ever noticed? Well, this theft was noted, but initial reports show that readers are regarding the lack of punctuation as not a cataclysmic error but the mark of a great genius, so we've got some breathing space.'

'Are we sure it was a thief?' asked Beatrice. 'Couldn't it just be grammasites?'

'I don't think so,' replied Perkins, who had made bookzoology into something closely resembling a science. 'Punctusauroids are pretty rare, and to make off with so many punctuations you would need a flock of several hundred. Also, I don't think they would have left the last full stop — that looks to me like a mischievous thief

'Okay,' said the Bellman, 'so what are we to do?'

'The only ready market for stolen punctuation is in the Well.'

'Hmm,' mused the Bellman. 'A Jurisfiction agent down there is about as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. We need someone to go undercover. Any volunteers?'

'It's my case,' said Vernham Deane. 'I'll go. That is if no one thinks themselves better qualified.'

There was silence.

'Looks like you're it!' enthused the Bellman, writing a note on his clipboard. 'Item six. As you recall, David and Catriona Balfour were Boojummed a few weeks back. Because there can't be much Kidnapped and Catriona without them and Robert Louis Stevenson remains a popular author, the Council of Genres has licensed a pair of A-4 Generics to take their place. They'll be given unlimited access to all Stevenson's books, and I want you all to make them feel welcome.'