She gathered up the waistcoats again.

'I'll pick you up in about an hour. Perkins will be waiting for you on the other side. Please pay attention and don't let him talk you into looking after any rabbits. Don't forget the password — you'll not get in or out without it.'

'Sapphire,' I repeated.

'Very good,' she said, and vanished.

I placed the book on one of the reading desks and sat down. The marble busts of writers that dotted the Library seemed to glare at me and I was just about to start reading when I noticed, high up on the shelf opposite, an ethereal form that was coalescing, wraith-like, in front of my eyes. At home this might be considered a matter of great pith and moment, but here it was merely the Cheshire Cat making one of his celebrated appearances.

'Hello!' he said as soon as his mouth had appeared. 'How are you getting along?'

The Cheshire Cat was the librarian and the first person I had met in the BookWorld. With a penchant for non sequiturs and obtuse comments, it was hard not to like him.

'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'I was attacked by grammasites, threatened by Big Martin's friends and a Thraal. I've got two Generics billeted with me, the characters in Caversham Heights think I can save their book and right now I have to give the minotaur his breakfast.'

'Nothing remarkable there. Anything else?'

'How long have you got?'[9]

I tapped my ears.

'Problems?'

'I can hear two Russians gossiping, right here inside my head.'

'Probably a crossed footnoterphone line,' replied the Cat. He jumped down, pressed his soft head against mine and listened intently.

'Can you hear them?' I asked after a bit.

'Not at all,' replied the Cat, 'but you do have very warm ears. Do you like Chinese food?'

'Yes, please,' I replied; I hadn't eaten for a while.

'Me too,' mused the Cat. 'Shame there isn't any. What's in the bag?'

'Something of Snell's.'

'Ah. What do you think of this UltraWord™ lark?'

'I'm really not sure,' I replied, truthfully enough, 'how about you?'

'How about me what?'

'What do you think of the new operating system?'

'When it comes in I shall give it my fullest attention,' he said ambiguously, adding: 'It's a laugh, isn't it?'

'What is?'

'That noise you make at the back of your throat when you hear something funny. Let me know if you need anything. 'Bye.'

And he very slowly faded out, from the tip of his tail to the tip of his nose. His grin, as usual, stayed for some time after the rest of him had gone.

I turned back to the book, murmured 'sapphire' and read the first paragraph aloud.

I found myself in a large meadow next to a babbling brook; willows and larches hung over the crystal-clear waters while mature oaks punctuated the land. It was warm and dry and quite delightful — like a perfect summer's day in England, in fact — and I suddenly felt quite homesick.

'I used to look at the view a lot,' said a voice close at hand. 'Don't seem to have the time, these days.'

I turned to see a tall man leaning against a silver birch, holding a copy of the Jurisfiction trade paper, Movable Type. I recognised him although we had never been introduced. It was Perkins, who partnered Snell at Jurisfiction, much as they did in the Perkins & Snell series of detective novels.

'Hello,' he said, proffering a hand and smiling broadly, 'put it there. Perkins is the name. Akrid tells me you sorted Hopkins out good and proper.'

'Thank you,' I replied. 'Akrid's very kind but it isn't over yet.'

He cast an arm towards the horizon.

'What do you think?'

I looked at the view. High snow-capped mountains rose in the distance above a green and verdant plain. At the foot of the hills were forests, and a large river wended its way through the valley.

'Beautiful.'

'We requisitioned it from the fantasy division of the Well of Lost Plots. It's a complete world in itself, written for a sword and sorcery novel entitled The Sword of the Zenobians. Beyond the mountains are icy wastes, deep fjords and relics of long-forgotten civilisations, castles, that sort of stuff. It was auctioned off when the book was abandoned. There were no characters or events written in, which was a shame — considering the work he did on the world itself, this might have been a bestseller. Still, the Outland's loss is our gain. We use it to keep grammasites and other weird beasts who for one reason or another can't live safely within their own books.'

'Sanctuary?'

'Yes — and also for study and containment — hence the password.'

'There seem to be an awful lot of rabbits,' I observed, looking around.

'Ah, yes,' replied Perkins, crossing an arched stone bridge that spanned the small stream, 'we never did get the lid on reproduction within Watership Down — if left to their own devices, the book would be so full of dandelion-munching lagomorphs that every other word would be "rabbit" within a year. Still, Lennie enjoys it here when he has some time off.'

We walked up a path towards a ruined castle. Grass covered the mounds of masonry that had collapsed from the curtain wall, and the wood of the drawbridge had rotted and fallen into a moat now dry and full of brambles. Above us, what appeared to be ravens circled the highest of the remaining towers.

'Not birds,' said Perkins, handing me a pair of binoculars. 'Have a look.'

I peered up at the circling creatures who were soaring on large wings of stretched skin.

'Parenthiums?'

'Very good. I have six breeding pairs here — purely for research, I hasten to add. Most books can easily support forty or so with no ill effects — it's just when the numbers get out of hand that we have to take action. A swarm of grammasites can be pretty devastating.'

'I know,' I replied, 'I was almost—'

'Watch out!'

He pushed me aside as a lump of excrement splattered on to the ground near where I had been standing. I looked up at the battlements and saw a man-beast covered in coarse dark hair who glared down at us and made a strangled cry in the back of his throat.

'Yahoos,' explained Perkins with disdain. 'They're not terribly well behaved and quite beyond training.'

'From Gulliver's Travels'?'

'Bingo. When truly original works like Jonathan Swift's are made into new books characters are often duplicated for evaluation and consultative purposes. Characters can be retrained but creatures usually end up here. Yahoos are not exactly a favourite of mine but they're harmless enough, so the best thing to do is ignore them.'

We walked quickly under the keep to avoid any other possible missiles and entered the inner bailey, where a pair of centaurs were grazing peacefully. They looked up at us, smiled, waved and carried on eating. I noticed that one of them was listening to a Walkman.

'You have centaurs here?'