Lost in a good book (42 page)

“Goodness!” said Mr. Cullards, scratching his shiny bald head and smiling impishly. “Jurisfiction, eh? You
are
off the beaten track. The only visitor I’ve had was—excuse me—
Control setting D: Whites economy, lightly soiled cotton or linen articles which are color-fast to boiling
—was the time we had a new supplement regarding woolens—but that would have been six or seven months ago. Where
does
the time go?”

He seemed a cheerful enough chap. He thought for a moment and then said: “Would you like a cup of tea?”

I thanked him and he put the kettle on.

“So what’s the news?” asked Mr. Cullards, rinsing out his one and only cup. “Any idea when the new washing machines are due out?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I have no idea—”

“I’m about ready to move on to something a bit more modern. I started on vacuum cleaner instructions but was promoted to Hoovermatic T5004, then transferred to the Electron 800 after twin-tub obsolescence. They asked me to take care of the 1100 Deluxe, but I told them I’d sooner wait until the Logic 1300 came out.”

I looked around at the small room.

“Don’t you ever get bored?”

“Not at all!” said Cullards, pouring the hot water into the teapot. “Once I’ve put in my ten years I’m eligible to apply for work in
all
domestic appliance instructions: food mixers, liquidizers, microwaves—who knows, if I work
really
hard I could make it into television or wireless.
That’s
the future for an ambitious manual worker. Milk and sugar?”

“Please.”

He leaned closer.

“Management have this idea that only young ’uns should do Sound & Vision instructions, but they’re wrong. Most of the kids in VCR manuals barely do six months in Walkmans before they’re transferred. It’s little wonder no one can understand them.”

“I never thought of that before,” I confessed.

We chatted for the next half hour. He told me he had begun French and German classes so he could apply for work in multilingual instructions, then confided in me his fondest feelings for Tabitha Doehooke, who worked for Kenwood Mixers. We were just talking about the sociological implications of labor-saving devices within the kitchen and how they related to the women’s movement when Miss Havisham stirred.

“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.

30.
Cardenio
Rebound

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?”