The Well of Lost Plots

17 Minotaur trouble

I read myself into the Well and was soon in an elevator, heading up towards the Library. I had bought a copy of The Word; the front page led with: 'Nursery rhyme characters to go on indefinite strike'. Farther down, the previous night's attack on Heathcliff had been reported. It added that a terror group calling itself 'The Great Danes' had also threatened to kill him — they wanted Hamlet to win this year's 'Most Troubled Romantic Lead' BookWorld award and would do anything to achieve this. I turned to page two and found a large article extolling the virtues of UltraWord™ with an open letter from Text Grand Central explaining how nothing would change and all jobs and privileges would be protected.

The elevator stopped on the first floor; I quickly made my way to Sense and Sensibility and read myself in. The crowd was still outside the doors of Norland Park, this time with tents, a brass band and a metal brazier burning scrap wood. As soon as they saw me a chant went up:

'WE NEED A BREAK, WE NEED A BREAK …'

A tired-looking woman with an inordinate number of children gave me a leaflet.

'Three hundred and twenty-five years I've been doing this job,' she said, 'without even so much as a weekend off!'

'I'm sorry.'

'We don't want pity,' said Solomon Grundy, who, what with it being a Saturday, wasn't looking too healthy, 'we want action. Oral traditionalists should be allowed the same rights as any other fictioneers.'

'Right,' said a young lad carrying a bucket with his head wrapped in brown paper, 'no amount of money can compensate the brotherhood for the inconvenience caused by repetitive retellings. However, we would like to make the following demands. One: that all nursery rhyme characters are given immediate leave of absence for a two-week period. Two: that—'

'Really,' I interrupted him, 'you're talking to the wrong person. I'm only an apprentice. Jurisfiction has no power to dictate policy anyway — you need to speak to the Council of Genres.'

'The Council sent us to talk to TGC, who referred us to the Great Panjandrum,' said Humpty Dumpty to a chorus of vigorous head-nodding, 'but no one seems to know if he — or she -even exists.'

'If you've never seen him he probably doesn't exist,' said Little Jack Horner. 'Pie, anyone?'

'I've never seen Vincent Price,' I observed, 'but I know he exists.'

'Who?'

'An actor,' I explained, feeling somewhat foolish. 'Back home.'

Humpty Dumpty narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

'You're talking complete Lear, Miss Next.'

'King?'

'No,' he replied, 'Edward.'

'Oh.'

'MONGOOSE!' yelled Humpty, drawing a small revolver and throwing himself to the ground where, unluckily for him, there just happened to be a muddy puddle.

'You're mistaken,' explained Grundy wearily, 'it's a guide dog. Put the gun away before you hurt yourself.'

'A guide dog?' repeated Humpty, slowly getting to his feet. 'You're sure?'

'Have you spoken to WordMaster Libris?' I asked. 'We all know he exists.'

'He won't speak to us,' said Humpty Dumpty, wiping his face with a large handkerchief. 'The oral tradition is unaffected by the UltraWord™ upgrade so he doesn't think we're that important. If we don't negotiate a few rights before the new system comes in, we won't ever get any!'

'Libris won't even speak to you?' I repeated.

'He sends us notes,' squeaked the oldest of three mice, all of whom had no tails, held a white cane in one hand and a golden retriever in the other. 'He says that he is very busy but will give "our concerns his fullest attention".'

'What's going on?' squeaked one of the other mice. 'Is that Miss Next?'

'It's a brush-off,' said Grundy. 'Unless we get an answer soon there won't be a single nursery rhyme anywhere, either spoken or read! We're going on a forty-eight-hour stoppage from midnight. When parents can't remember the words to our rhymes, the fur will really fly, I can promise you that!'

'I'm sorry,' I began again, 'I have no authority — I can't do anything—'

'Then just take this to Agent Libris?'

Humpty Dumpty handed me a list of demands, neatly written on a page of foolscap paper. The crowd grew suddenly silent. A sea of eyes, all blinking expectantly, were directed at me.

'I promise nothing,' I said, taking the piece of paper, 'but if I see Libris, I will give this to him — okay?'

'Thank you very much,' said Humpty. 'At last someone from Jurisfiction will listen!'

I turned away and overheard Humpty say to Grundy: 'Well, I thought that went pretty well, didn't you?'

I walked briskly up the front steps of Norland Park, where I was admitted by the same frog-like footman I had seen on my first visit. I crossed the hall and entered the ballroom. Miss Havisham was at her desk with Akrid Snell, who was talking into the footnoterphone. Standing next to them was Bradshaw, who had not retired as promised, filling out a form with the Bellman, who appeared very grave. The only other occupant of the room was Harris Tweed, who was reading a report. He looked up as I entered, said nothing and continued reading. Miss Havisham was studying some photographs as I walked up.

'Damn and blast!' she said, looking at one before tossing it over her shoulder and staring at the next. 'Pathetic!' she muttered, looking at another. 'Derisive!'

'Perkins?' I asked, sitting down.

'Speed camera pictures back from the labs,' she said, handing them over. 'I thought I would have topped one hundred and sixty, but look — well, it's pitiful, that's what it is!'

I looked. The speed camera had caught the Higham Special but recorded only a top speed of 152.76 mph. But what was worse, it showed Mr Toad travelling at over a hundred and eighty — and he had even raised his hat at the speed camera as he went past.

'I managed a hundred and seventy when I tried it on the M4,' she said sadly. 'Trouble is, I need a longer stretch of road — or sand. Well, can't be helped now. The car has been sold. I'll have to go cap in hand to Sir Malcolm if I want to get a shot at beating Toad.'

'Norland Park to Perkins,' said Snell into the footnoterphone, 'come in, please. Over.'

I looked at Havisham.

'No answer for almost six hours,' she said. 'Mathias isn't answering either — we got a Yahoo once but you might as well talk to Mrs Bennett. What's that?'

'It's a list of demands from the nurseries outside.'

'Rabble,' replied Havisham, 'all of them replaceable. How hard can it be, appearing in a series of rhyming couplets? If they don't watch themselves they'll be replaced by scab Generics from the Well. It happened when the Amalgamated Union of Gateway Guardians struck in 1932. They never learn.'

'All they want is a holiday—'

'I shouldn't concern yourself with nursery politics, Miss Next,' said Havisham, so sharply I jumped.

'Good work on the ProCath attack,' announced Tweed, who had walked over. 'I've had a word with Plum over at JurisTech; he's going to extend the footnoterphone network to cover more of Wuthering Heights — we shouldn't have a problem with mobilefootnoterphones dropping out again.'

'We'd better not,' replied MissHavisham coldly. 'Lose Heathcliff and the Council of Genres will have our colons for garters. Now, to work. We don't know what to expect as regards the minotaur, so we have to be prepared.'

'Like boy scouts?'

'Can't stand them, but that's beside the point. Turn to page seven eighty-nine in your TravelBook.'

I did as she bade. This was in an area of the book where the pages contained gadgets in hollowed-out recesses deeper than the book was thick. One page contained a device similar to a flare gun which had 'Mk IV TextMarker' written on its side. Another page had a glass panel covering a handle like a fire alarm. A note painted on the glass read: 'IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS'. The page Havisham had indicated was neither of these; page 789 contained a brown Homburg hat. Hanging from the brim was a large red toggle with 'In emergency pull down sharply' written on it. There was also a chin strap, something I've never seen on a Homburg before — or even a fedora or trilby, come to that.

Havisham took the hat from my hands and gave me a brief induction course.

'This is the Martin-Bacon Mk VII Eject-O-Hat,' she explained, for high-speed evacuation from a book. Takes you straight out in an emergency.'

'Where to?'

'A little-known novel entitled The Middle of Next Week. You can make your way out to the Library at leisure. But be warned: the jump can be painful, even fatal — so it should only be used as a last resort. Remember to keep the chin strap tight or it'll take your ears off during the ejection sequence. I will say "JUMP!" twice — by the third I will have gone. Any questions?'

'How does it work?'

'I'll rephrase that — any questions I can possibly hope to answer?'

'Does this mean we'll see Bradshaw without his pith helmet?'

'Ha-ha!' Bradshaw laughed, releasing the toggle from the brim. 'I have the smaller Mk XII version — it could be fitted into a beret or a veil, if we so wished.'

I picked up the Homburg from the table and put it on.

'What are you expecting?' I asked slightly nervously, adjusting the chin strap.

'We think the minotaur has escaped,' she answered gravely. 'If it has and we meet it, just pull the cord as quickly as you can. It always takes at least ten to twelve words to initiate a standard jump — you could be minotaur appetiser by that time.'

I pulled out my automatic to check it but Bradshaw shook his head.

'Your Outlander lead will not be enough.'

He held up the box of cartridges he had signed for.

'Boojum-tipped,' he explained, tapping the large hunting rifle he was carrying, 'for total annihilation. Back to text in under a second. We call them Eraserheads. Snell? Are you ready?'

Snell had a fedora version of the Eject-O-Hat which suited his trenchcoat a bit better. He grunted but didn't look up. This assignment was personal. Perkins was his partner—not just at jurisfiction but in the Perkins & Snell series of detective novels. If Perkins was hurt in some way, the future could be bleak. Generics could be trained to take over a vacated part, but it's never the same.

'Okay,' said Havisham, adjusting her own Homburg, 'we're out of here. Hold on to me, Next. If we are split up we'll meet at the gatehouse — no one enters the castle without Bradshaw, okay?'

Everyone agreed and Havisham mumbled to herself the code word and some of the text of Sword of the Zenobians.

Pretty soon Norland Park had vanished and the bright sun of Zenobia greeted us. The grass was springy under foot and herds of unicorns grazed peacefully beside the river. Grammasites wheeled in the blue skies, riding the thermals that rose from the warm grassland.

'Everyone here?' asked Havisham.

Bradshaw, Snell and I nodded our heads. We walked in silence, past the bridge, up to the old gatehouse and across the drawbridge. A dark shadow leaped from a corner of the deserted guardroom but before Bradshaw could fire Havisham yelled 'Wait!' and he stopped. It was a Yahoo — but he hadn't come to throw his shit about, he was running away in terror.

Bradshaw and Havisham exchanged nervous looks and we moved closer to where Perkins and Mathias had been doing their work. The door was broken and the hinges had vanished, replaced by two very light burn marks.

'Hold it!' said Bradshaw, pointing at the hinges. 'Did Perkins hold any vyrus on the premises?'

For a moment I didn't understand why Bradshaw was asking this question, but realisation slowly dawned upon me. He meant the mispeling vyrus. The hinges had become singes. The vyrus was a lot more powerful than I had supposed. Mispeled speech was only the start of it.

'Yes,' I replied, 'a small jar — well shielded by dictionaries.'

There was a strange and pregnant pause. The danger was real and very clear, and even seasoned PROs like Bradshaw and Havisham were thinking twice about entering Perkins' lab.

'What do you think?' asked Bradshaw.

'Vyrus and a minotaur,' Havisham sighed. 'We need more than the four of us.'

'I'm going in,' said Snell, pulling a respirator from his TravelBook. The mask was made of rubber and similar to the ones at home — only with a dictionary where the filter would have been. It wasn't just one dictionary, either — the Lavina-Webster had been taped back to back with the Oxford English Dictionary.

Don't forget your carrot,' said Havisham, pinning a vegetable to the front of his jacket.

'I'll need the rifle,' said Snell.

No,' replied Bradshaw, 'I signed for it, so I'm keeping it.'

'This is not the time for sticking to the rules, Bradshaw — my partner's in there!'

'This is exactly the time we should stick to the rules, Snell.'

They stared at one another.

'Then I'll go alone,' replied Snell with finality, pulling the mask down over his face and releasing the safety catch on his automatic. Havisham caught his elbow as she rummaged in her TravelBook for her own mask. 'We go together or not at all, Akrid.'

I found the correct page for the mask, pulled it out of its slot and put it on under the Eject-O-Hat. Miss Havisham pinned a carrot to my jacket, too.

'A carrot is the best litmus test for the mispeling vyrus,' she said, helping Bradshaw on with his mask. 'As soon as the carrot comes into contact with the vyrus, it will start to mispel into parrot. You need to be out before it can talk. We have a saying: "When you can hear Polly, use the brolly."'

She tapped the toggle of the Eject-O-Hat. X

'Understand?'

I nodded.

'Good. Bradshaw, lead the way!'

We stepped carefully across the door with its mispeled hinges and into the lab, which was in a state of chaotic disorder. Mispeling was merely an annoyance to readers in the real world — but inside fiction it was a menace. The mispeling was the effect of sense distortion, not the cause — once the internal meaning of a word started to break down then the mispeling arose as a consequence of this. Unmispeling the word at TGC might work if the vyrus hadn't taken a strong hold but usually it was pointless; like making the beds in a burning house.

The interior of the laboratory was heavily disrupted. On the far wall the shelves were filled with a noisy company of feather-bound rooks; we stepped forward on to the fattened tarpit only to see that the imposing table in the centre of the room was now an enormous label. The glass apparatus had become grass asparagus, and worst of all, Mathias the talking horse was simply a large model house — like a doll's house but much more detailed. Miss Havisham looked at me and pointed to her carrot. Already it was starting to change colour — I could see tinges of red, yellow and blue.

'Careful,' said Snell, 'look!'

On the floor next to more shards of broken grass was a small layer of the same purple mist I had seen the last time I was here. The area of the floor touched by the vyrus was constantly changing meaning, texture, colour and appearance.

'Where was the minotaur kept?' asked Havisham, her carrot beginning to sprout a small beak.

I pointed the way and Bradshaw took the lead. I pulled out my gun, despite Bradshaw's assurances that it was a waste of time, and he gently pushed open the door to the vault beneath the old hall. Snell snapped on a torch and flicked the beam into the chamber. The door to the minotaur's cage was open but of the beast there was no sign. I wish I could have said the same for Perkins. He — or what was left of him — was lying on the stone floor. The minotaur had devoured him up to his chest. His spine had been picked clean and the lower part of a leg had been thrown to one side. I choked at the sight and felt a knot rise in my throat. Bradshaw cursed and turned to cover the doorway. Snell dropped to his knees to close Perkins' eyes, which were staring off into space, a look of fear still etched upon his features. Miss Havisham laid a hand on Snell's shoulder.

'I'm so sorry, Akrid. Perkins was a good man.'

'I can't believe he would have been so stupid,' muttered Snell angrily.

'We should be leaving,' said Bradshaw. 'Now we know there is definitely a minotaur loose, we must come back better armed and with more agents!'

Snell got up. Behind his MV mask I could see tears in his eyes. Miss Havisham looked at me and pointed to her carrot, which had started to sprout feathers. A proper clean-up gang would be needed. Snell placed his jacket over Perkins and joined us as Bradshaw led the way out.

'Back to Norland, yes?'

'I've hunted minotaur before,' said Bradshaw, his instincts alerted. 'Tsaritsyn, 1944. They never stray far from the kill.'

'Bradshaw—!' urged Miss Havisham, but the commander wasn't the sort to take orders from another, not even someone as forthright as Havisham.

'I don't get it,' murmured Snell, stopping for a moment and staring at the chaos within the laboratory and the small glob of purple mist on the floor. 'There just isn't enough vyrus here to cause the problems we've seen.'

'What are you saying?' I asked.

Bradshaw looked carefully out of the open door, indicated all was clear and beckoned for us to leave.

'There might be some more vyrus around,' continued Snell. 'What's in this cupboard?'

He strode towards a small wooden cabinet that had telephone directory pages pasted all over it.

'Wait!' said Bradshaw, striding from the other side of the room. 'Let me.'

He grasped the handle as a thought struck me. They weren't telephone directory pages, they were from a dictionary. The door was shielded.

I shouted but it was too late. Bradshaw opened the cupboard and was bathed in a faint purple light. The cabinet contained two dozen or so broken jars, all of which leaked the pestilential vyrus.

'Ahh!' he cried, staggering backwards and dropping his gum as the carrot transformed into a very loud parrot. Bradshaw, his actions instinctive after years of training, pulled the cord on his Eject-O-Hat and vanished with a loud bang.

The room mutated as the mispelmg got a hold. The floor buckled and softened into flour, the walls changed into balls. I looked across at Havisham. Her carrot was a parrot, too — it had hopped to her other shoulder and was looking at me with its head cocked to one side.

'GO, GO!' she yelled at me, pulling the cord on her hat and vanishing like Bradshaw before her. I grasped the handle on mine and pulled — but it came off in my hand. I threw it to the ground where it became a candle.

'Hear,' said Snell, removing his own Eject-O-Hat, 'use myne.'

'Bat the vyruz!'

'Hange the vyruz, Neckts — jist go!'

He did not look at me again. He just walked towards the cupboard with the broken jars and slowly closed the door, his hands melting into glands as he touched the raw power of the vyrus. I ran outside, casting off the now useless hat and attempting to clip on the chin strap of Snell's. It wasn't easy. I caught my foot on a piece of half-buried masonry and fell headlong — to land within three paces of two large cloven hoofs.

I looked up. The minotaur was semi-crouched on his muscular haunches, ready to jump. His bull's head was large and sat heavily on his body — what neck he had was hidden beneath taut muscle. Within his mouth two rows of fine pointed teeth were shiny with saliva, and his sharpened horns pointed forward, ready to attack. Five years eating nothing but yogurt. You might as well feed a tiger on custard creams.

'Nice minotaur,' I said soothingly, slowly reaching for my automatic which had fallen on the grass beside me, 'good minotaur.'

He took a step closer, his hoofs making deep impressions in the grass. He stared at me and breathed out heavily through his nostrils, blowing tendrils of mucus into the air. He took another step, his deep-set yellow eyes staring into mine with an expression of loathing. My hand closed around the butt of my automatic as the minotaur bent closer and put out a large clawed hand. I moved the gun slowly back towards me as the minotaur reached down and … picked up Snell's hat. He turned it over in his claws and licked the brim with a tongue the size of my forearm. I had seen enough. I levelled my automatic and pulled the trigger at the same time as the minotaur's hand caught in the toggle and activated the Eject-O-Hat. The mythological man-beast vanished with a loud detonation as my gun went off, the shot whistling harmlessly through the air.

I breathed a sigh of relief but quickly rolled aside because, with a loud whooshing noise, a packing case fell from the heavens and landed with a crash right where I had lain. The case had 'Property of Jurisfiction' stencilled on it and had split open to reveal … dictionaries.

Another case landed close by, then a third and a fourth. Before I had time to even begin to figure out what was happening, Bradshaw had reappeared.

'Why didn't you jump, you little fool?'

'My hat failed!'

'And Snell?'

'Inside.'

Bradshaw pulled on his MV mask and rushed off into the building as I took refuge from the packing cases of dictionaries which were falling with increased rapidity. Harris Tweed appeared and barked orders at the small army of Mrs Danvers that had materialised with him. They were all wearing identical black dresses high-buttoned to the collar, which only served to make their pale skin seem even whiter, their hollow eyes more sinister. They moved slowly, but purposefully, and began to stack, one by one, the dictionaries against the castle keep.

'Where's the minotaur?' asked Havisham, who suddenly appeared close by.

I told her he had ejected with Snell's fedora and she vanished without another word.

Bradshaw reappeared from the keep, dragging Snell behind him. The rubber on Akrid's MV mask had turned to blubber, his suit to soot. Bradshaw removed him from Sword of the Zenobians to the Jurisfiction sickbay just as Miss Havisham returned. We watched together as the stacked dictionaries rose around the remains of Perkins' laboratory, twenty foot thick at the base, rising to a dome like a sugarloaf over the castle keep. It might have taken a long time but there were many Mrs Danvers, they were highly organised, and they had an inexhaustible supply of dictionaries.

'Find the minotaur?' I asked Havisham.

'Long gone,' she replied. 'There will be hell to pay about this, I assure you!'

When our carrots had returned to being crunchy vegetables, and the last vestiges of parrotness had been removed, Havisham and I pulled off our vyrus masks and tossed them in a heap — the dictionary filters were almost worn out.

'What happens now?' I asked.

'It is torched,' replied Tweed, who was close by. 'It is the only way to destroy the vyrus.'

'What about the evidence?' I asked.

'Evidence?' echoed Tweed. 'Evidence of what?'

'Perkins,' I replied. 'We don't know the full details of his death.'

'I think we can safely say he was killed and eaten by the minotaur,' said Tweed pointedly. 'It's too dangerous to go back in, even if we wanted to. I'd rather torch this now than risk spreading the vyrus and having to demolish the whole book and everything in it — do you know how many creatures live in here?'

He lit a flare.

'You'd better stand clear.'

The DanverClones were leaving now, vanishing with a faint pop, back to wherever they had been pulled from. Bradshaw and I withdrew as Tweed threw the flare on the pile of dictionaries. They burst into flames and were soon so hot that we had to withdraw to the gatehouse, the black smoke that billowed into the sky taking with it the remnants of the vyrus — and the evidence of Perkins' murder. Because I was sure it was murder. When we walked into the vault I had noticed that the key was missing from its hook. Someone had let the minotaur out.