The Well of Lost Plots

  I did, and the footnoterphone stopped.

  'Better?'

  I nodded.

  'You'll get the hang of it.'

  He thought for a minute, looked up and down the lake in an overtly innocent manner, and then said:

  'Do you want to buy some verbs? Not any of your rubbish, either. Good, strong, healthy regulars – straight from the Text Sea – I have a friend on a scrawltrawler.'

  I smiled.

  'I don't think so, Arnold – and I don't think you should ask me – I'm Jurisfiction.'

  'Oh,' said Arnold, looking pale all of a sudden. He bit his lip and gave such an imploring look that I almost laughed.

  'Don't sweat,' I told him, 'I won't report it.'

  He sighed a deep sigh of relief, muttered his thanks, remounted his motorbike and drove off in a jerky fashion, narrowly missing the mail boxes at the top of the track.

  The interior of the flying boat was lighter and more airy than I had imagined but it smelt a bit musty. Mary was mistaken; she had not been halfway through the craft's conversion – it was more like one tenth. The walls were half panelled with pine tongue-and-groove, and rock wool insulation stuck out untidily along with unused electrical cables. There was room for two floors within the boat's cavernous hull, the downstairs a large open-plan living room with a couple of old sofas pointing towards a television set. I tried to switch it on but it was dead – there was no TV in the BookWorld unless called for in the narrative. Much of what I could see around me was merely props, necessary for the chapter in which Jack Spratt visits the Sunderland to discuss the case. On the mantelpiece above a small wood-burning stove were pictures of Mary from her days at the police training college, and another from when she was promoted to detective sergeant.

  I opened a door that led into a small kitchenette. Attached to the fridge was the précis of Caversham Heights. I flicked through it. The sequence of events was pretty much as I remembered from my first reading in the Well, although it seemed that Mary had overstated her role in some of the puzzle-solving areas. I put the précis down, found a bowl and filled it with water for Pickwick, took her egg from my bag and laid it on the sofa, where she quickly set about turning it over and tapping it gently with her beak. I went forward and discovered a bedroom where the nose turret would have been, and climbed a narrow aluminium ladder to the flight deck directly above. This was the best view in the house, the large greenhouse-like perspex windows affording a good view of the lake. The massive control wheels were set in front of two comfortable chairs, and facing them and ahead of a tangled mass of engine control levers was a complex panel of broken and faded instruments. To my right I could see the one remaining engine looking forlorn, the propeller blades streaked with bird droppings.

  Behind the pilots' seats, where the flight engineer would have sat, there was a desk with reading lamp, footnoterphone and typewriter. On the bookshelf were mainly magazines of a police nature and lots of forensic textbooks. I walked through a narrow doorway and found a pleasant bedroom. The headroom was not over-generous but it was cosy and dry and was panelled in pine with a porthole above the double bed. Behind the bedroom was a storeroom, a hot-water boiler, stacks of wood and a spiral staircase. I was just about to go downstairs when I heard someone speak from the living room below.

  'What do you think that is?'

  The voice had an empty ring to it and was neuter in its inflection – I couldn't tell whether it was male or female.

  I stopped and instinctively pulled my automatic from my shoulder holster. Mary lived alone – or so it had said in the book. As I moved slowly downstairs I heard another voice answer the first:

  'I think it's a bird of some sort.'

  The second voice was no more distinctive than the first; indeed, if the second voice had not been answering the first, I might have thought they belonged to the same person.

  As I descended the staircase I saw two figures standing in the middle of the room staring at Pickwick, who stared back, courageously protecting her egg from behind the sofa.

  'Hey!' I said, pointing my gun in their direction. 'Hold it right there!'

  The two figures looked up and stared at me without expression from features that were as insipid and muted as their voices. Because of their equal blandness it was impossible to tell them apart. Their arms hung limply by their sides, exhibiting no body language. They might have been angry, or curious, or worried, or elated – but I couldn't tell.

  'Who are you?' I asked.

  'We are nobody,' replied the one on the left.

  'Everyone is someone,' I replied.

  'Not altogether correct,' said the one on the right. 'We have a code number but nothing more. I am TSI-I4O49I2-A and this is TSI-I4049I2-C.'

  'What happened to -B?'

  'Taken by a grammasite last Tuesday.'

  I lowered my gun. Miss Havisham had told me about Generics. They were created here in the Well to populate the books that were to be written. At the point of creation they were simply a human canvas without paint – blank like a coin, ready to be stamped with individualism. They had no history, no conflicts, no foibles – nothing that might make them either readable or interesting in any way. It was up to various institutions to teach them to be useful members of fiction. They were graded, too. A to D, one through ten. Any that were D-graded were like worker bees in crowds and busy streets. Small speaking parts were C-grades; B-grades usually made up the bulk of featured but not leading characters. These parts usually – but not always – went to the A-grades, hand picked for their skills at character projection and multi-dimensionality. Huckleberry Finn, Tess and Anna Karenina were all A-grades, but then so were Mr Hyde, Hannibal Lecter and Professor Moriarty. I looked at the ungraded Generics again. Murderers or heroes? It was impossible to tell how they would turn out. Still, at this stage of their development they would be harmless. I reholstered my automatic.

  'You're Generics, right?'

  'Indeed,' they said in unison.

  'What are you doing here?'

  'You remember the craze for minimalism?' asked the one on the right.

  'Yes?' I replied, moving closer to stare at their blank faces curiously. There was a lot about the Well that I was going to have to get used to. They were harmless enough – but decidedly creepy. Pickwick was still hiding behind the sofa.

  'It was caused by the 1982 character shortage,' said the one on the left. 'Vikram Seth is planning a large book in the next few years and I don't think the Well wants to be caught out again – we're being manufactured and then sent to stay in unpublished novels until we are called into service.'

  'Sort of stockpiled, you mean?'

  'I'd prefer the word billeted,' replied the one on the left, the slight indignation indicating that it wouldn't be without a personality for ever.

  'How long have you been here?'

  'Two months,' replied the one on the right. 'We are awaiting placement at St Tabularasa's Generic College for basic character training. I live in the spare bedroom in the tail.'

  'So do I,' added the one on the left. 'Likewise.'

  I paused for a moment.

  'O-kay,' I began. 'Since we all have to live together I had better give you names. You,' I said, pointing a finger at the one on the right, are henceforth called ibb. You,' I added, pointing to the other, 'are now called obb.'

  I pointed at them again in case they missed it as they made no sign of either comprehending what I'd said or even hearing it.

  'You are ibb, and you are obb.'

  I paused. Something didn't sound right about their names but I couldn't place it.

  'ibb,' I said to myself, then: 'obb. ibb. ibb-obb. Does that sound odd to you?'

  'No capitals,' said obb. 'We don't get capitalised until we start school – we didn't expect names so soon, either. Can we keep them?'

  'A gift from me,' I told them.

  'I am ibb,' said the other one, as if to make the point.

  'And I am obb,' said obb.

&nb
sp; 'And I'm Thursday,' I told them, offering my hand. They shook it in turn slowly and without emotion. I could see that this pair weren't going to be a huge bundle of fun.

  'And that's Pickwick.'

  They looked at Pickwick, who plocked quietly, came out from behind the sofa, settled herself on her egg and pretended to go to sleep.

  'Well,' I announced, clapping my hands together, 'does anyone know how to cook? I'm not very good at it and if you don't want to eat beans on toast for the next year, you had better start to learn. I'm standing in for Mary, and if you don't get in my way I won't get in yours. I go to bed late and wake up early. I have a husband who doesn't exist and I'm going to have a baby later this year so might get a little cranky – and overweight. Any questions?'

  'Yes,' said the one on the left. 'Which one of us is obb, did you say?'

  I unpacked my few things in the small room behind the flight deck. I had sketched a picture of Landen from memory and I placed it on the bedside table, staring at it for a moment. I missed him dreadfully and wondered, for the umpteenth time, whether perhaps I shouldn't be here hiding, but out there, in my own world, trying to get him back. Trouble was, I'd tried that and made a complete pig's ear of it – if it hadn't have been for Miss Havisham's timely rescue I would still be locked up in a Goliath vault somewhere. With our child growing within me I had decided that flight was not a coward's option but a sensible one – I would stay here until the baby was born. I could then plan my return, and following that, Landen's.

  I went downstairs and explained to obb the rudiments of cooking, which were as alien to it as having a name. Fortunately I found an old copy of Mrs Beeton's Complete Housekeeper, which I told obb to study, half jokingly, as research. Three hours later it had roasted a perfect leg of lamb with all the trimmings. I had discovered one thing about Generics already: dull and uninteresting they may be – but they learn fast.

  2

  Inside Caversham Heights

  * * *

  'Book/YGIO/1204961/: Title: Caversham Heights. UK, 1976, 90,000 words. Genre: Detective Fiction. Book Operating System: BOOK V7.2. Grammasite infestation: 1 (one) nesting pair of Parenthiums (protected). Plot: Routine detective thriller with stereotypical detective Jack Spratt. Set in Reading (England), the plot (such as it is) revolves around a drugs czar hoping to muscle in on Reading's seedy underworld. Routine and unremarkable, Caversham Heights represents all the worst aspects of amateur writing. Flat characters, unconvincing police work and a pace so slow that snails pass it in the night. Recommendation: Unpublishable. Suggest book be broken up for salvage at soonest available opportunity. Current status: Awaiting Council of Genre's Book Inspectorate's report before ordering demolition.'

  Library Sub-Basement Gazetteer 1982, Volume CLXI

  I explained the rudiments of breakfast to ibb and obb the following morning. I told them that cereal traditionally came before the bacon and eggs but that toast and coffee had no fixed place within the meal; they had problems with the fact that marmalade was almost exclusively the preserve of breakfast and I was just trying to explain the technical possibilities of dippy egg fingers when a copy of The Toad dropped on the mat. The only news story was about some sort of drug-related gang warfare in Reading. It was part of the plot in Caversham Heights and reminded me that sooner or later – and quite possibly sooner – I would be expected to take on the mantle of Mary as part of the Character Exchange Programme. I had another careful read of the précis, which gave me a good idea of the plot chapter by chapter, but no precise dialogue or indication as to what I should be doing, or when. I didn't have to wonder very long as a knock at the door revealed a very agitated man holding a clipboard.

  'Miss Next?'

  'Yes?'

  'The name's Wyatt.'

  'What?'

  'No, not Watt, Wyatt – W-Y-A-T-T.'

  'What can I do for you?'

  'You can get your arse into Reading, that's what you can do.'

  'Steady on—'

  'I don't know why people in the Character Exchange Programme think they can treat it like a holiday,' he added, clearly annoyed. 'Just because we've had a demolition order hanging over us for the past ten years, you think you can all muck about.'

  'I assure you I thought no such thing,' I replied, attempting to pacify the minor character who had taken it upon himself to keep me in check. From my reading of the book I knew that he featured as nothing more than a voice on the end of a telephone.

  'I'll be on to it straight away,' I told him, fetching my coat and heading for Mary's car. 'Do you have an address for me?'

  He handed over a scrap of paper and reminded me I was late.

  'And no ad-libbing,' he added as an afterthought. I promised I wouldn't and trotted up the lane towards Mary's car.

  I drove off slowly into Reading, across the M4, which seemed as busy as it was back home; I used the same road myself when travelling between Swindon and London. It was only when I was approaching the junction at the top of Burghfield Road that I realised there were, at most, only a half-dozen or so different vehicles on the roads. The vehicle that first drew my attention to this strange phenomenon was a large white truck with Dr Spongg's Footcare Products painted on the side. I saw three in under a minute, all with an identical driver dressed in a blue boiler suit and flat cap. The next most obvious vehicle was a red VW Beetle driven by a young lady, then a battered blue Morris Marina with an elderly man at the wheel. By the time I had drawn up outside the scene of Caversham Heights' first murder, I had counted forty-three white trucks, twenty-two red Beetles and sixteen identically battered Morris Marinas, not to mention several green Ford Escorts and a brace of white Chevrolets. It was obviously a limitation within the text and nothing more, so I hurriedly parked, read Mary's notes again to make sure I knew what I had to do, took a deep breath and walked across to the area that had been taped off. A few uniformed police officers were milling around. I showed my warrant card and ducked under the 'Police: do not cross' tape.

  The yard was oblong shaped, fifteen foot wide and about twenty foot long, surrounded by a high red brick wall with crumbling mortar. There was a large white SOCO tent over the scene and a forensic pathologist was kneeling next to a well-described corpse dictating notes into a tape recorder.

  'Hello!' said a jovial voice close by. I turned to see a large man in a macintosh grinning at me.

  'Detective Sergeant Mary,' I told him obediently. 'Transferred here from Basingstoke.'

  'You don't have to worry about all that yet.' He smiled. 'The story is with Jack at the moment – he's meeting Officer Tibbit on the street outside. My name's DCI Briggs and I'm your friendly yet long-suffering boss in this little caper. Crusty and prone to outbursts of temper yet secretly supportive, I will have to suspend Jack at least once before the story is over.'

  'How do you do?' I spluttered.

  'Excellent!' cried Briggs, shaking my hand gratefully. 'Mary told me you're with Jurisfiction. Is that true?'

  'Yes.'

  'Any news about when the Council of Genres Book Inspectorate will be in?' he asked. 'It would be a help to know.'

  'Council of Genres?' I echoed, trying not to let my ignorance show. 'I'm sorry, I've not spent that much time in the BookWorld.'

  'An Outlander?' replied Briggs, eyes wide in wonderment. 'Here, in Caversham Heights?'

  'Yes,' I admitted, 'I'm—'

  'Tell me,' interrupted Briggs, 'what do waves look like when they crash on the shore?'

  'Who's an Outlander?' echoed the pathologist, a middle-aged Indian woman who suddenly leaped to her feet and stared at me intently. 'You?'

  'Y-es,' I admitted.

  'I'm Dr Singh,' explained the pathologist, shaking my hand vigorously. 'I'm matter-of-fact, apparently without humour, like cats and people who like cats, don't suffer fools, yet on occasion I do exhibit a certain warmth. Tell me, do you think I'm anything like a real pathologist?'

  'Of course,' I answered, trying to think of her brief appearances in th
e book.

  'You see,' she went on, 'I've never seen a real pathologist and I'm really not sure what I'm meant to do.'

  'You're doing fine,' I assured her.

  'What about me?' asked Briggs. 'Do you think I need to develop more as a character? Am I like all those real people you rub shoulders with, or am I a bit one-dimensional?'

  'Well—' I began.

  'I knew it!' he cried unhappily. 'It's the hair, isn't it? Do you think it should be shorter? Longer? What about having a bizarre character trait? I've been learning the trombone – that would be unusual, yes?'

  'Someone said there was an Outlander in the book—!' interrupted a uniformed officer, one of a pair who had just walked into the yard. 'I'm Unnamed Police Officer #1, this is my colleague, Unnamed Police Officer #2. Can I ask a question about the Outland?'

  'Sure.'

  'What's the point of alphabet soup?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Are you sure you're from the Outland?' he asked suspiciously, adding 'Then tell me this: why is there no singular for scampi?

  'I'm not sure.'

  'You're not from the Outland,' said Unnamed Police Officer #1 sadly. 'You should be ashamed of yourself, lying and raising our hopes like that!'

  'Very well,' I replied, covering my eyes. 'I'll prove it to you. Speak to me in turn but leave off your speech designators.'

  'Okay,' said Unnamed Police Officer #1, 'who is this talking?'

  'And who is this?' added Dr Singh.

  'I said leave off your speech designators. Try again.'

  'It's harder than you think,' sighed Unnamed Police Officer #1. 'Okay, here goes.'

  There was a pause.

  'Which one of us is talking now?'

  'And who am I?'

  'Mrs Singh first, Unnamed Police Officer #1 second. Was I correct?'

  'Amazing!' murmured Mrs Singh. 'How do you do that?'

  'I can recognise your voices. I have a sense of smell, too.'

  'No kidding? Do you know anyone in publishing?'

  'None who would help. My husband is, or was, an author, but his contacts wouldn't know me from Eve at present. I'm a SpecOps officer; I don't have much to do with contemporary fiction.'