The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next 3)

'Carriage of all Narrative Turning Devices is strictly illegal. Are you a dealer? Who's your source? Peddle this sort of garbage in teenage fiction?'

'Blow it out of your arse, Tweed.'

'What did you say?'

'You heard me.'

He went crimson and might have hit me, but all I wanted was for him to move close enough for me to kick him – or his hand, at least.

'You piece of crap,' he sneered, 'I've known you were no good from the moment I saw you. Think you're something special, Miss SpecOps Outlander supremo?'

'At least I don't work for the Skyrail, Tweed. Inside fiction you're a big cheese but out in the real world you're less than a nobody!'

It had the desired effect. He took a step closer and I kicked out, connected with his hand and the small glass globe went sailing into the air, high above our heads. Heep, coward that he was, dived for cover, but Tweed and the Red Queen, wary of a Narrative Turning Device going off in a confined area, tried to catch it. They might have been successful but as it was they collided with a grunt and the small glass globe fell to the floor and shattered as they looked on helplessly.

Suddenly, a shot rang out. I didn't see where it came from but felt its full effect; the bullet hit the chain that was holding me to the anvils, shattering it neatly. I didn't pause for breath; I was off and running towards the door. I didn't know where I was heading; without my TravelBook I was trapped and Sense and Sensibility was not that big. Tweed and Heep were soon on their feet only to hit the floor again as a second volley followed the first. I ducked through the door and came upon … Vernham Deane, pistol in hand. Heep and Tweed returned fire as Deane holstered his pistol and took both my hands.

'Hold tight,' he said, 'and empty your mind. We're going to go abstract.'

I cleared my mind as much as I could and—23

'How odd!' said Tweed, walking to the place where he had last seen Thursday. He knew she couldn't jump without her book but something was wrong. She had vanished – not with the fade out of a standard bookjump, but an instantaneous departure.

Heep and the Bellman joined him, Heep with a bookhound on a leash which sniffed the ground and whimpered and yelped noisily, chops slobbering.

'No scent?' said the Bellman in a puzzled tone. 'No destination signature? Harris, what's going on?'

'I don't know, sir. With your permission I'd like to set up textual sieves on every floor of the Great Library. Heep will be your personal bodyguard from now on; Next is quite clearly insane and will try to kill you – I have no doubt about that. Do I have your permission to apply for an "Extremely Prejudicial Termination" order from the Council of Genres?'

'No, that is one step I am not prepared to take. Order the death of an Outlander? Not I.'

Tweed made to move off but the Bellman called him back.

'Tweed,' he began, 'Thursday said there was a problem with UltraWord™; do you think we should contact Text Grand Central and delay its release?'

'You mean you take all this seriously, sir?' exclaimed Tweed in a shocked tone. 'Excuse me for being so blunt but Next is a murderer and a liar – how many more people does she have to kill before she is stopped?'

'UltraWord™ is bigger than all of us,' said the Bellman slowly. 'Even if she is a murderer, she still may have found something wrong. I cannot afford to take any risks over the new upgrade.'

'Well, we can delay,' said Tweed slowly, 'but that would take the inauguration of the new operating system out of your term as Bellman. If you think that is the best course of action, perhaps we should take it. But whichever Bellman signs UltraWord™ into law might be looked on favourably by history, do you not think?'

The Bellman rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

'What more tests could we do?' he asked at length.

Tweed smiled. 'I'm not sure, sir. We fixed the flight manual conflict and debugged AutoPageTurnDeluxe™. The raciness overheat problem has been fixed and the Esperanto translation module is now working a hundred per cent. All these faults have been dealt with openly and transparently. We need to upgrade and upgrade now – the popularity of non-fiction is creeping up and we have to be vigilant.'

Heep ran up and whispered in Tweed's ear.

'That was our intelligence sources, sir. It seems that Next has been suffering from a mnemonomorph recently.'

'Great Scott!' gasped the Bellman. 'She might not even know she has done it!'

'It would explain that convincing act,' added Tweed. 'A woman with no memory of her evil has no guilt. Now, do I have your permission to apply for an "Extremely Prejudicial Termination" order?'

'Yes.' The Bellman sighed, taking a seat 'Yes, you better had and UltraWord™ is to go ahead, as planned. We have dithered enough.'

We jumped back into the Jurisfiction offices. Tweed and Heep were alone with the Bellman, overseeing a document that I found out later was my termination warrant. I had Deane's gun pointed – at Deane; he had his hands up. Heep a