Lost in a Good Book

  'Perhaps,' put in Lavoisier, 'you would accept this as a token of my intent.'

  He handed me a brown hardback envelope I opened it and pulled out a picture of Landen and me at our wedding.

  'I have nothing to gain from your husband's eradication and everything to lose, Miss Next. Your father … well, I'll get to him eventually. But you have my word – if that's good enough.'

  I looked at Lavoisier, then at Schitt-Hawse, then at the photo.

  'I need a sheet of paper.'

  'Why?' asked Schitt-Hawse

  'Because I have to write a detailed description of this charming dungeon to be able to get back.'

  Schitt-Hawse nodded to Chalk, who gave me a pen and paper, and I sat down and wrote the most detailed description that I could. The travel book said that five hundred words was adequate for a solo jump, a thousand words if you were intending to bring anyone with you, so I wrote fifteen hundred just in case. Schitt-Hawse looked over my shoulder as I wrote, checking I wasn't describing another destination.

  'I'll take that back, Next,' he said, retrieving the pen as soon as I had finished. 'Not that I don't trust you or anything.'

  I took a deep breath, opened the copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and read the first verse to myself

  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

  O'er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next –

  This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising,

  Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text.

  'Get me out!' I said, advising, 'pluck me from this jail of text –

  or I swear I'll wring your neck!'

  He was still pissed off, make no mistake about that. I read on:

  Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in my bleak September

  When that loathsome SpecOps member tricked me through 'The Raven's' door

  Eagerly I wished the morrow would release me from this sorrow,

  Then a weapon I will borrow, sorrow her turn to explore –

  I declare that obnoxious maiden who is little but a whore –

  Darkness hers – for evermore!

  'Still the same old Jack Schitt,' I murmured.

  'I won't let him lay a finger on you, Miss Next,' assured Schitt-Hawse. 'He'll be arrested before you can say ketchup.'

  So, gathering my thoughts, I offered my apologies to Miss Havisham for being an impetuous student, cleared my mind and throat and then read the words out loud, large as life and clear as a bell.

  There was a distant rumble of thunder and the flutter of wings close to my face. An inky blackness fell and a wind sprang up and whistled about me, tugging at my clothes and flicking my hair into my eyes. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the sky about me, and I realised with a start that I was high above the ground, hemmed in by clouds filled with the ugly passion of a tempest in full spate. The rain struck my face like a heavy damp cloak and I saw in the feeble moonlight that I was being swept along close to a large storm cloud, illuminated from within by bolts of lightning. Just when I thought that perhaps I had made a very big mistake by attempting this feat without proper instruction, I noticed a small dot of yellow light through the swirling rain. I watched as the dot grew bigger until it wasn't a dot but an oblong, and presently this oblong became a window, with frames, and glass, and curtains beyond. I flew closer and faster, and just when I thought I must collide with the rain-splashed glass I was inside, wet to the skin and quite breathless.

  The mantel clock struck midnight in a slow and steady rhythm as I gathered my thoughts and looked around. The furniture was of highly polished dark oak, the drapes a gloomy shade of purple, and the wall coverings, where not obscured by bookshelves or morbid mezzotints, were a dismal brown colour. For light there was a solitary oil lamp that flickered and smoked from a poorly trimmed wick. The room was in a mess; a bust of Pallas lay shattered on the floor and the books that had once graced the shelves were now scattered about the room with their spines broken and pages torn. Worse still, some books had been used to rekindle the fire, a choked profusion of blackened paper had fallen from the grate and now covered the hearth. But to all of this I paid only the merest attention. Before me was the poor narrator of The Raven himself, a young man in his mid-twenties seated in a large armchair, bound and gagged. He looked at me imploringly and mumbled something behind the gag as he struggled with his bonds. As I removed the gag the young man burst forth in speech as though his life depended upon it.

  ' 'Tis some visitor,' he spoke urgently and rapidly, 'tapping at my chamber door – only this and nothing more!'

  And so saying, he disappeared from view into the room next door.

  'Damn you, Sebastian!' said a chillingly familiar voice from the adjoining room. 'I would pin you to your chair if this poetical coffin had seen so fit as to furnish me with hammer and nails!'

  But the speaker stopped abruptly as he entered the room and saw me. Jack Schitt was in a wretched condition. His previously neat crew cut had been replaced by straggly hair and his thin features were now covered with a scruffy beard; his eyes were wide and haunted and hung with dark circles from lack of sleep. His sharp suit was rumpled and torn, his diamond tiepin lacking in lustre. His arrogant and confident manner had given way to a lonely desperation, and as his eyes met mine I saw tears spring up and his lips tremble. It was, to a committed Schitt-hater like myself, a joyous spectacle.

  'Thursday!' he croaked in a strangled cry. 'Take me back! Don't let me stay one more second in this vile place! The endless clock staking midnight, the tap-tap-tapping, the raven – oh my good God, the raven!'

  He fell to his knees and sobbed as the young man bounded happily back into the room and started to tidy up as he muttered:

  ' 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door!'

  'I'd be more than happy to leave you here, Mr Schitt, but I've cut a deal. C'mon, we're going home.'

  I grasped the Goliath agent by the lapel and started to read the description of the vault back at Goliath R&D. I felt a tug on my body and another rush of wind, the tapping increased and I just had time to hear the student say: 'Sir or madam truly, your forgiveness I implore …' when we found ourselves back in the Goliath lab at Aldermaston. I was pleased with this, as I hadn't thought it would be that easy, but all my feelings of self-satisfaction vanished when, instead of being arrested, Jack was hugged warmly by his half-brother.

  'Jack!' said Schitt-Hawse happily. 'Welcome back!'

  'Thank you, Brik – how's Mum?'

  'The trouble with you, Miss Next,' said Schitt-Hawse, 'is that you are far too trusting. Did you really think for one moment that we were going to give up on such an important man as Jack?'

  'You promised!' I said somewhat uselessly.

  'Goliath doesn't keep promises,' replied Schitt-Hawse. 'The profit margin is too low.'

  'Lavoisier!' I yelled. 'You promised!'

  Lavoisier walked from the room without looking back.

  'Thank you, Monsieur!' shouted Schitt-Hawse after him. 'The wedding picture was a touch of genius!'

  I leaped forward to grab Schitt-Hawse but was pinned down by Chalk and Cheese. I struggled long, hard – and hopelessly. My shoulders sagged and I stared at the ground. How could I have been so stupid as to think they would keep to their part of the deal? Delusive hope, so often the partner of strong love, had blinded me. Landen had been right. I should have walked away.

  'I want to wring her ghost upon the floor,' said Jack Schitt, staring in my direction, 'to still this beating of my heart. Mr Cheese, your weapon.'

  'No, Jack,' said Schitt-Hawse. 'Miss Next and her unique attributes could open up a large and highly profitable market to exploit.'

  Schitt rounded on his half-brother.

  'Do you have any idea of the fantastic terrors I've just been through? Tapping … I mean trapping me in The Raven is something Next is not going to live to regret. No, Brik, the book slut will surcease my sorrow!
'

  Schitt-Hawse held Jack by the shoulders and shook him.

  'Snap out of that Raven talk, Jack. You're home now. Listen: the book slut is potentially worth billions.'

  Schitt stopped and gathered his thoughts.

  'Of course,' he murmured finally, 'a vast untapped resource of consumers. How much useless rubbish do you think we can offload on those ignorant masses in nineteenth-century literature?'

  'Indeed,' replied Schitt-Hawse, 'and our unreprocessed waste – finally an effective disposal location. Untold riches await the Corporation. And listen – if it doesn't work out, then you can kill her.'

  'When do we start?' asked Schitt, who seemed to be growing stronger by the second.

  'It depends,' said Schitt-Hawse, looking at me, 'on Miss Next.'

  'I would sooner die than be a party to your foul plans,' I said angrily.

  'Oh!' said Schitt-Hawse. 'Hadn't you heard? As far as the outside world is concerned you're dead already! Did you think you could see all that was going on here and live to tell the tale?'

  I tried to think of some way to escape but there was nothing to hand – no weapon, no book, nothing.

  'I really haven't decided,' continued Schitt-Hawse in a patronising tone, 'whether you fell down a lift shaft or blundered into some machinery. Do you have any preferences?'

  And he laughed a short and very cruel laugh. I said nothing. There didn't seem to be anything I could say.

  'I'm afraid, my girl,' said Schitt-Hawse as they started to file out through the vault door, taking my travel book with them, 'that you are a guest of the Corporation for the rest of your natural life. But it won't all be bad. We will be willing to reactualise your husband. You won't actually meet him again, of course, but he will be alive – so long as you co-operate, and you will, you know.'

  I glared at the two Schitts.

  'I will never help you, as long as I have breath in my lungs.'

  Schitt-Hawse's eyelid twitched.

  'Oh, you'll help us, Next – if not for Landen then for your child. Yes, we know about that. We'll leave you for now. And you needn't bother looking for any books in here to pull your vanishing trick – we made quite sure there were none!'

  He smiled again and stepped out of the vault. The door slammed shut with a reverberating boom that shook me to the core. I sat down on one of the chairs, put my head in my hands and cried tears of frustration, anger and loss.

  29

  Rescued

  * * *

  '… Miss Havisham's extraction of Thursday from the Goliath vault is the stuff that legends are built on. The thing was, not only had no one ever done it before, no one had even thought of doing it before. It put them both on the map and earned Havisham her eighth cover on the Jurisfiction trade paper, Movable Type, and Thursday her first. It cemented the bond between them. In the annals of Jurisfiction there were notable partnerships such as Beowulf & Sneed, Falstaff & Tiggywinkle, Voltaire & Flark. That night Havisham & Next emerged as one of the greatest pairings Jurisfiction would ever see …'

  UA OF W CAT – Jurisfiction Journals

  The first thing I noticed about being locked in a vault twelve floors below ground at the Goliath R&D lab was not the isolation, but the silence. There was no hum of air-conditioning, no odd snatch of conversation heard through the door, nothing. I thought about Landen, about Miss Havisham, Joffy, Miles and then the baby. What, I wondered, did Schitt-Hawse have in store for him? I sighed, got up and walked around the vault. It was lit by harsh striplights and had a large mirror on the wall which I had to assume was some kind of watching gallery. There was a toilet and shower in a room behind, and a bedroll and a few toiletries that someone had left out for me. I spent twenty minutes searching in all the nooks and crannies of the room, hoping to find a discarded trashy novel or something that might effect me an escape. There was nothing. Not so much as a pencil shaving, let alone a pencil. I sat down, closed my eyes and tried to visualise the library, to remember the description in my travel book, and even recited aloud the opening passage of A Tale of Two Cities, something I had learned at school many years ago. I then tried every quote I could think of, every passage, every poem I had ever committed to memory from Ovid to De La Mare. When I ran out of those I switched to limericks – and ended up telling Bowden's jokes out loud. Nothing.

  Not so much as a flicker.

  I unravelled the bedroll, lay on the floor and closed my eyes, hoping to remember Landen again and discuss the problem with him. It wasn't to be. At that moment the ring that Miss Havisham had given me grew almost unbearably hot, there was a sort of fworpish noise and a figure was standing next to me. It was Miss Havisham, and she didn't look terribly pleased.

  'You, young lady, are in a lot of trouble!'

  'Tell me about it.'

  This wasn't the sort of careless remark she liked to hear from me, and she certainly expected me to jump to my feet when she arrived, so she rapped me painfully on the knee with her stick.

  'Ow!' I said, getting the message and rising. 'Where did you spring from?'

  'Havishams come and go as they please,' she replied imperiously. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

  'I didn't think you'd approve of me leaping into a book on my own – especially not Poe.'

  'I couldn't care less about that,' remarked Miss Havisham haughtily. 'What you do in your own time to cheap reprints is no concern of mine!'

  'Oh,' I said, contemplating her stern features and trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

  'You should have said something.' she said, taking another pace towards me.

  'About the baby?' I stammered.

  'No, idiot – about Cardenio!'

  'Cardenio?'

  'Yes, yes, Cardenio. Just how likely was it for a pristine copy of a missing play to just pop up out of the blue like that?'

  'You mean,' I said, the penny finally dropping, 'it's a Great Library copy?'

  'Of course it's a library copy – that fog-headed pantaloon Snell only just reported it. What's that noise?'

  There was a faint clank from the door as someone fiddled with the lock. Havisham's arrival, it seemed, had been observed.

  'It'll be Chalk and Cheese,' I told her. 'You'd better jump out of here.'

  'Absolutely not!' replied Havisham. 'We go together. You might be a complete and utter imbecile but you are my responsibility. Trouble is, fourteen feet of concrete is slightly daunting – I'm going to have to read us out. Quick, pass me your travel book!'

  'They took it from me.'

  'Never mind. Any book will do.'

  'They've removed everything from in here, Miss Havisham.'

  She looked around.

  'How about a pamphlet?'

  'No.'

  'Anything with text printed on it? Paper and pen?'

  'No.'

  'Then we might,' exclaimed Havisham, 'have a problem.'

  The door opened and Schitt-Hawse entered; he was grinning fit to burst.

  'Well, well,' he said. 'Lock up a book-jumper and another soon joins her!'

  He took one look at Havisham's old wedding dress and put two and two together.

  'Goodness! Is that … Miss Havisham?'

  As if in answer, Havisham whipped out her small pistol and fired it in his direction. Schitt-Hawse gave a yelp and leaped back out through the door, which clanged shut.

  'Are you sure there is nothing to read in here?' asked Havisham in a more urgent manner. 'There must be something!'

  'I've told you – they've removed everything!'

  Miss Havisham raised an eyebrow and looked me up and down.

  'Take off your trousers, girl – and don't say "what?" in that impudent manner. Do as you're told.'

  So I did, and Havisham turned the garment over in her fingers as she searched for something.

  'There!' she cried triumphantly as the door opened and a hissing gas canister was lobbed in. I followed her gaze but she had found only – the washing label. I must have looked incredulous for she said
in an offended manner: 'It's enough for me!' and then repeated out loud: 'Wash inside out, wash and dry separately, wash inside out, wash and dry separately …'

  We surfed in on the pungent smell of washing detergent and overheated iron. The landscape was dazzling white and was without depth; my feet were firmly planted on the ground yet I could see nothing but white surrounding my shoes when I looked down, the same as the view above me and to either side. Miss Havisham, whose dirty dress seemed even more shabby than usual in the white surroundings, was looking around the lone inhabitants of this strange and empty world: five bold icons the size of garden sheds that stood neatly in a row like standing stones. There was a crude tub with a number sixty on it, an iron shape, a tumble-dryer shape, and a couple of others that I wasn't too sure about. I touched the first icon, which felt warm to the touch and very comforting; they all seemed to be made of compressed cotton.

  'Iconographic representations of washing instructions,' muttered Havisham as I put my trousers back on. 'This could be tricky. How many other washing labels do you think there are?'

  'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'Several billions, certainly.'

  'I thought as much. We need to narrow our jump parameters, girl. I'm no expert when it comes to washing – what's the least abundant form of garment that might have washing instructions?'

  'Dressing gown?' I hazarded. 'Ra-ra skirt? But does it have to be a label?'

  Havisham raised an eyebrow so I carried on.

  'Washing machine instructions always carry these icons, explaining what they mean.'

  'Hmm,' said Miss Havisham thoughtfully. 'Do you have a washing machine?'

  Fortunately, I did – and more fortunately still, it was one of the things that had survived the sideslip. I nodded excitedly.

  'Good. Now, more importantly, do you know the make and model?'

  'Hoover Electron 1000 … No! 800 Deluxe – I think.'

  'Think? You think? You'd better be sure, girl, or you and I will be nothing more than carved names on the Boojumorial! Now. Are you sure?'