'We're down here.'

It was a hedgehog and a tortoise. But the hedgehog wasn't like Mrs Tiggy-winkle, who was as tall as me; this hedgehog and tortoise were just the size they should have been.

'Thursday Next?' said the hedgehog.

'Yes,' I replied, 'what can I do for you?'

'You can stop poking your nose in where it's not wanted,' said the hedgehog haughtily, 'that's what you can do.'

'I don't understand.'

'Painted Jaguar?' suggested the tortoise. 'Can't curl, can swim. Ring any bells, Smart Alec?'

'Oh!' I said. 'You must be Stickly-prickly and Slow-and-Solid.'

'The same. And that little mnemonic you so kindly gave to the Painted Jaguar is going to cause us a few problems — the dopey feline will never forget that in a month of Sundays.'

I sighed. Living in the BookWorld was a great deal more complicated than I had imagined.

'Well, why don't you learn to swim or something?'

'Who, me?' said Stickly-prickly. 'Don't be absurd; whoever heard of a hedgehog swimming?'

'And you could learn to curl,' I added to Slow-and-Solid.

'Curl?' replied the tortoise indignantly. 'I don't think so, thank you very much.'

'Give it a go,' I persisted. 'Unlace your backplates a little and try and touch your toes.'

There was a pause. The hedgehog and tortoise looked at one another and giggled.

'Won't Painted Jaguar be surprised!' they chortled, thanked me, and left.

I closed the door, sat down and looked in the fridge, shrugged and ate a large portion of apples Benedict before having a long and very relaxing shower.

The corridors of the Well were as busy as the day before. Traders bustled with buyers, deals were done, orders taken, bargains struck. Every now and then I saw characters fading in and out as their trade took them from book to book. I looked at the shopfronts as I walked past, trying to guess how they did what they did. There were holesmiths, grammatacists, pace-setters, moodmongers, paginators — you name it.[10]

It was the junkfootnoterphone starting up again. I tried to shut it out but only succeeded in lowering the volume. As I walked along I noticed a familiar figure among the traders and plot speculators. He was dressed in his usual hunter/explorer garb, safari jacket and pith helmet with a revolver in a leather holster. It was Commander Bradshaw, star of thirty-four thrilling adventure stories for boys available in hardback at 7/6 each. Out of print since the thirties, Bradshaw entertained himself in his retirement by being something of an éminence grise at Jurisfiction. He had seen and done it all — or claimed he had.

'A hundred!' he exclaimed bitterly as I drew closer. 'Is that the best you can offer?'

The Action Sequence trader he was talking to shrugged.

'We don't get much call for lion attacks these days.'

'But it's terrifying, man, terrifying!' exclaimed Bradshaw. 'Real hot breath down the back of your neck stuff. Brighten up a chicklit no end, I should wager — make a change from parties and frocks, what?'

'A hundred and twenty, then. Take it or leave it.'

'Blood-sucker!' mumbled Bradshaw, taking the money and handing over a small glass globe with the lion attack, I presumed, safely freeze-dried within. He turned away from the trader and caught me looking at him. He quickly hid the cash and raised his pith helmet politely.

'Good morning!'

'Good morning,' I replied.

He waved a finger at me.

'It's Havisham's apprentice, isn't it? What was your name again?'

'Thursday Next.'

'Is it, by gum?' he exclaimed. 'Well I never.'

He was, I noticed, a good foot taller than the last time we had met. He now almost came up to my shoulder.

'You're much—' I began, then checked myself.

'—taller?' he guessed. 'Quite correct, girlie. Appreciate a woman who isn't trammelled by the conventions of good manners. Melanie — that's the wife, you know — she's pretty rude, too. "Trafford," she says — that's my name, Trafford — "Trafford," she says, "you are a worthless heap of elephant dung." Well, this was out of the blue — I had just returned home after a harrowing adventure in Central Africa where I was captured and nearly roasted on a spit. The sacred emerald of the Umpopo had been stolen by two Swedish prospectors and—'

'Commander Bradshaw,' I interrupted, desperate to stop him recounting one of his highly unlikely adventures, 'have you seen Miss Havisham this morning?'

'Quite right to interrupt me,' he said cheerfully. 'Appreciate a woman who knows when to subtly tell a boring old fart to button his lip. You and Mrs Bradshaw have a lot in common. You must meet up some day.'

We walked down the busy corridor.[11]

I tapped my ears.

'Problems?' enquired Bradshaw.

'Yes,' I replied, 'I've got two gossiping Russians inside my head again.'

'Crossed line? Infernal contraptions. Have a word with Plum at JurisTech if it persists. I say,' he went on, lowering his voice and looking round furtively, 'you won't tell anyone about that lion attack sale, will you? If the story gets around that old Bradshaw is cashing in his Action Sequences, I'll never hear the last of it.'

'I won't say a word,' I assured him as we avoided a trader trying to sell us surplus B-3 Darcy clones, 'but do many people try and sell off parts of their own book?'

'Oh yes,' replied Bradshaw. 'But only if they are out of print and can spare it. Trouble is,' he went on, 'I'm a bit strapped for the old moolah. What with the BookWorld Awards coming up and Mrs Bradshaw a bit shy in public I thought a new dress might be just the ticket — and the cost of clothes is pretty steep down here, y'know.'

'It's the same in the Outland.'

'Is it, by George?' He guffawed. 'The Well always reminds me of the market in Nairobi; how about you?'

'There seems to be an awful lot of bureaucracy,' I observed. 'I would have thought a fiction factory would be, by definition, a lot more free and relaxed.'

'If you think this is bad, you ought to visit non-fiction. Over there, the rules governing the correct use of a semi-colon alone run to several volumes. Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hard-wired at inception, m'girl. I'm surprised you hadn't figured that out yet. What do you think of the Well?'

'I'm still a bit new to it,' I confessed.

'Really?' he replied. 'Let me help you out.'

He stopped and looked around for a moment, then pointed out a man in his early twenties who was walking towards us. He was dressed in a long riding jacket and carried a battered leather suitcase emblazoned with the names of books and plays he had visited in the course of his trade.

'See him?'

'Yes?'

'He's an artisan — a holesmith.'

'He's a plasterer?'

'No; he fills narrative holes, plot and expositional anomalies — Bloopholes. If a writer said something like: "The daffodils bloomed in summer" or: "They checked the ballistics report on the shotgun", then artisans like him are there to sort it out. It's one of the final stages of construction just before the grammatacists, echolocators and spellcheckers move in to smooth everything over.'

The young man had drawn level with us by this time.

'Hello, Mr Starboard,' said Bradshaw to the holesmith, who gave a wan smile of recognition.

'Commander Bradshaw!' he muttered slightly hesitantly. 'What a truly delightful honour it is to meet you again, sir. Mrs Bradshaw quite well?'

'Quite well, thank you. This is Miss Next — new at the department. I'm showing her the ropes.'

The holesmith shook my hand and made welcoming noises.

'I closed a hole in Great Expectations the other day,' I told him. 'Was that one of your books?'