The well of lost plots (9 page)

Zhark departed and I looked around. At the next table a
fourth
cat had joined the other three. It was bigger than the others and considerably more battle-scarred — it had only one eye and both ears had large bites taken out of them. They all licked their lips as the newest cat said in a low voice, “Shall we eat her?”

“Not yet,” replied the first cat, “we’re waiting for Big Martin.”

They returned to their drinks but never took their eyes off me. I could imagine how a mouse felt. After ten minutes I decided that I was not going to be intimidated by outsize house pets and got up to leave, taking Snell’s head with me. The cats got up and followed me out, down the dingy corridor. Here the shops sold weapons, dastardly plans for world domination and fresh ideas for murder, revenge, extortion and other general mayhem. Generics, I noticed, could be trained in the dark art of being an accomplished evildoer as easily as any other profession. The cats yowled excitedly and I quickened my step only to stumble into a clearing amidst the shantytown of wooden buildings. The reason for the clearing was obvious. Sitting atop an old packing case was another cat. But this one was different. No oversize house cat, this beast was four times the size of a tiger and it stared at me with ill-disguised malevolence. Its claws were extended and fangs at the ready, glistening slightly with hungry anticipation. I stopped and looked behind me to where the four other cats had lined up and were staring at me expectantly, tails gently lashing the air. A quick glance around the corridor proved that there was no one near who might offer me any assistance; indeed, most of the bystanders seemed to be getting ready for something of a show.

I pulled out my automatic as one of the cats bounded up to the newcomer and said, “Can we eat her now, please?”

The large cat placed one of its claws in the packing case and drew it through the wood like a razor-sharp chisel cutting through soft clay; it stared at me with huge green eyes and said in a deep, rumbling voice:

“Shouldn’t we wait until Big Martin gets here?”

“Yes,” sighed the smaller cat with a strong air of disappointment, “perhaps we should.”

Suddenly, the big cat pricked up his ears and jumped from his box into the shadows; I pointed my gun but it wasn’t attacking — the overgrown tiger was departing in a panic. The other cats quickly left the scene and pretty soon the bystanders had gone, too. Within a few moments I was completely alone in the corridor, with nothing to keep me company but the rapid thumping of my own heart, and a head in a bag.

Grammasite:
Generic term for a parasitic life-form that lives inside books and feeds on grammar. Technically known as Gerunds or Ingers, they were an early attempt to transform nouns (which were plentiful) into verbs (which at the time were not) by simply attaching an
ing
. A dismal failure at verb resource management, they escaped from captivity and now roam freely in the subbasements. Although they are thankfully quite rare in the library itself, isolated pockets of grammasites are still found from time to time and dealt with mercilessly.

CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE,
Guide to the Great Library

I TURNED AND WALKED quickly towards the elevators, a strong feeling of impending oddness raising the hair on the back of my neck. I pressed the call button but nothing happened. I quickly dashed across the corridor and tried the second bank of elevators, but with no more success. I was just thinking of running to the stairwell when I heard a noise. It was a distant, low moan that was quite unlike any other sort of low moan that I had ever heard, nor would ever want to hear again. I put down the head in a bag as my palms grew sweaty, and although I
told
myself I was calm, I pressed the call button several more times and reached for my automatic as a shape hove into view from the depths of the corridor. It was flying close to the bookshelves and was something like a bat, something like a lizard and something like a vulture. It was covered in patchy gray fur and wearing stripy socks and a brightly colored waistcoat of questionable taste. I had seen this sort of thing before; it was a grammasite, and although dissimilar to the adjectivore I had seen in
Great Expectations
, I imagined it could do just as much harm — it was little wonder that the residents of the Well had locked themselves away. The grammasite swept past in a flash without noticing me and was soon gone with a rumble like distant artillery. I relaxed slightly, expecting to see the Well spring back into life, but nothing stirred. Far away in the distance, beyond the Slaughtered Lamb, an excited burble reached my straining ears. I pressed the call button again as the noise grew louder and a slight breeze drafted against my face, like the oily zephyr that precedes an underground train. I shuddered. Where I came from, a Browning automatic spoke volumes, but how it would work on a grammar-sucking parasite, I had no idea — and I didn’t think this would be a good time to find out. I was preparing myself to run when there was a melodious
bing
, the call button light came on and one of the elevator pointers started to move slowly towards my floor. I ran across and leaned with my back against the doors, releasing the safety on my automatic as the wind and noise increased. By the time the elevator was four floors away, the first grammasites had arrived. They looked around the corridor as they flew, sniffing at books with their long snouts and giving off excited squeaks. This was the advance guard. A few seconds later the main flock arrived with a deafening roar. One or two of them poked at books until they fell off the shelves, while other grammasites fell upon the unfinished manuscripts with an excited cry. There was a scuffle as a character burst from a page, only to be impaled by a grammasite, who reduced the unfortunate wretch to a few explanatory phrases, which were then eaten by scavengers waiting on the sidelines. I had seen enough. I opened fire and got three of them straightaway, who were devoured in turn by the same scavengers — clearly there was little honor or sense of loss amongst grammasites; their compatriots merely shuffled into the gaps left by their fallen comrades. I picked off two who were scrabbling at the bookcases attempting to dislodge more books and then turned away to reload. As I did, another eerie silence filled the corridor. I released the slide on my automatic and looked up. About a hundred or so grammasites were staring at me with their small black eyes, and it wasn’t a look that I’d describe as anywhere near friendly. I sighed. What a way to go. I could see my headstone now:

I raised my gun and the grammasites shuffled slightly, as though deciding amongst themselves who would be sacrificed for them to overpower me. I pointed the gun at whichever one started to move, hoping to postpone the inevitable. The one who seemed to be the leader — he had the brightest-colored waistcoat, I noted — took a step forward and I pointed my gun at him as another grammasite seized the opportunity and made a sudden leap towards me, its sharpened beak heading straight for my chest. I whirled around in time to see its small black eyes twinkle with a thousand well-digested verbs when a hand on my shoulder pulled me roughly backwards into the elevator. The grammasite, carried on by its own momentum, buried its beak into the wood surround. I reached to thump the close button, but my wrist was deftly caught by my as yet unseen savior.

“We
never
run from grammasites.”

It was a scolding tone of voice that I knew only too well. Miss Havisham. Dressed in her rotting wedding dress and veil, she stared at me with despair. I think I was one of the worst apprentices she had ever trained — or that was the way she made me feel, at any rate.

“We have nothing to fear except fear itself,” she intoned, whipping out her pocket derringer and dispatching two grammasites who made a rush at the elevator’s open door. “I seem to spend my waking hours extricating you from the soup, my girl!”

The grammasites were slowly advancing on us; they were now at least three hundred strong and others were joining them. We were heavily outnumbered.

“I’m sorry,” I replied quickly, curtsying just in case as I loosed off another shot, “but don’t you think we should be departing?”

“I fear only the Questing Beast,” announced Havisham imperiously. “The Questing Beast, Big Martin . . . and semolina.”

She shot another grammasite with a particularly fruity waistcoat and carried on talking. “If you had troubled to do some homework, you would know that these are Verbisoids and probably the easiest grammasite to vanquish of them all.”

And almost without pausing for breath, Miss Havisham launched into a croaky and out-of-tune rendition of William Blake’s “Jerusalem.” The grammasites stopped abruptly and stared at one another. By the time I had joined her at the “holy Lamb of God” line, they had begun to back away in fright. We sang louder, Miss Havisham and I, and by “dark Satanic mills” they had started to take flight; by the time we had got to “Bring me my chariot of fire,” they had departed completely.

“Quick!” said Miss Havisham. “Grab the waistcoats — there’s a bounty on each one.”

We stripped the waistcoats from the fallen grammasites; it was not a pleasant job — the corpses smelt so strongly of ink that it made me cough. The carcasses would be taken away by a verminator, who would boil down the bodies and distill off any verbs he could. In the Well, nothing is wasted.

“What were the smaller ones?”

“I forget,” replied Havisham, gathering up the waistcoats. “Here, you’re going to need this. Study it well if you want to pass your exams.”

She handed me my TravelBook, the one that Goliath had taken. Within its pages were almost all the tips and equipment I needed for travel within the BookWorld.

“How did you manage that?”

Miss Havisham didn’t answer. She was a bit like a strict parent, your worst teacher and a newly appointed South American dictator all rolled into one — which wasn’t to say I didn’t like her or respect her. It was just that I felt I was still nine whenever she spoke to me.

“Why do grammasites wear stripy socks?” I ventured, tying up the waistcoats with some string that Havisham had given me.

“Probably because spotted ones are out of fashion,” she replied with a shrug, reloading her pistol. “What’s in the bag?”

“Oh, some, er, shopping of Snell’s.”

I tried to change the subject. I didn’t suppose carrying around unlicensed plot devices was something Havisham would approve of — even if they were Snell’s.

“So why did we, um, sing ‘Jerusalem’ to get rid of them?”

“As I said, those grammasites were Verbisoids,” she replied without looking up, “and a Verbisoid, in common with many language students, hates and fears
irregular
verbs — they far prefer consuming regular verbs with the
ed
word ending. Strong irregulars such as
to sing
with their internal vowel changes — we will
sing —
we
sang —
we have
sung —
tend to scramble their tiny minds.”

“
Any
irregular verb frightens them off?” I asked with interest.

“Pretty much; but some irregulars are more easy to demonstrate than others — we could
cut
, I suppose, or even
be
, but then the proceedings change into something akin to a desperate game of charades — far easier to just sing and have done with it.”

“What about if we were
to go
?” I ventured, thinking practically for once. “There can’t be anything more irregular than
go, went, gone
, can there?”

“Because,” replied Miss Havisham, her patience eroding by the second, “they might misconstrue it as
walked
— note the
ed
ending?”

“Not if we
ran
,” I added, not wanting to let this go. “That’s irregular, too.”

Miss Havisham stared at me icily. “Of course we could. But
ran
might be seen in the eyes of a hungry Verbisoid to be either trott
ed
, gallop
ed
, rac
ed
, rush
ed
, hurri
ed
, hasten
ed
, sprint
ed
and even depart
ed
.”

“Ah,” I said, realizing that trying to catch Miss Havisham out was about as likely as nailing Banquo’s ghost to a coffee table, “yes, it might, mightn’t it?”

“Look,” said Miss Havisham, softening slightly, “if running away killed grammasites, there wouldn’t be a single one left. Stick to ‘Jerusalem’ and you won’t go far wrong — just don’t try it with adjectivores or the parataxis; they’d probably join in — and then eat you.”

She snorted, picked up the bundle of waistcoats and pulled me towards the elevator, which had just reopened. It was clear that the twenty-second subbasement wasn’t a place she liked to be. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

She relaxed visibly as we rose from the subbasements and into the more ordered nature of the library itself. We weren’t alone in the elevator. With us was a large Painted Jaguar and her son, who had a paddy-paw full of prickles and was complaining bitterly that he had been tricked by a hedgehog and a tortoise, who had both escaped. The Mother Jaguar shook her head sadly and looked at us both with an exasperated air before addressing her son:

“Son, son,” she said, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, “what have you been doing that you shouldn’t have?”

“So,” said Miss Havisham as the elevator moved off, “how are you getting along in that frightful
Caversham Heights
book?”

“Well, thank you, Miss Havisham,” I muttered, “the characters in it are worried that their book will be demolished from under their feet.”

“With good reason I expect. Hundreds of books like
Heights
are demolished every day. If you stopped to waste any sympathy, you’d go nuts — so don’t. It’s man eat man in the Well. I’d keep yourself to yourself and don’t make too many friends — they have a habit of dying just when you get to like them. It always happens that way. It’s a narrative thing.”