'Blast!' said Jack. 'Damn and blast!'

'What is it?' I asked as letters that spelt 'saxophone' came barrelling towards us, changing to a real saxophone as they crossed the threshold and hit the ironwork of the staircase with a crash. The clouds of individual letters in the sky above the wave-tossed sea contained punctuation marks that swirled in ugly patterns. Now and then a bolt of lightning struck the sea and the letters swirled near the point of discharge, spontaneously creating words.

'The Text Sea!' yelled Jack against the rush of wind. We attempted to close the door against the gale as a grammasite flew past with a loud 'Gark!' and expertly speared a verb that had jumped from the sea at a badly chosen moment.

We pressed our weight against the door and it closed. The wind abated, the thunder now merely a distant rumble behind the half-glazed door. I picked up the bent saxophone.

'I had no idea the Text Sea looked like anything at all,' I said, panting. 'I thought it was just an abstract notion.'

'Oh, it's real, all right,' replied Jack, picking up his hat, 'as real as anything is down here. The LiteraSea is the basis for all prose written in roman script. It's connected to the Searyllic Ocean somewhere but I don't know the details. You know what this means, don't you?'

'That scene-stealers have been at work?'

'It looks more like a deletion to me,' replied Jack grimly, 'excised. The whole kerfuffle. Characters, setting, dialogue, sub-plot and the narrative-turning device regarding the fight-fixing that the writer had pinched from On the Waterfront.'

'Where to?' I asked.

'Probably to another book by the same author.'Jack sighed. 'Kind of proves we won't be long for the Well. It's the next nail in the coffin.'

'Can't we just jump into the next chapter and the discovery of the drug dealer shot dead when the undercover buy goes wrong?'

It would never work,' said Jack, shaking his head. 'Let me see — I wouldn't have known about Hawkins' involvement with Davison's master plan. More importantly, Mickey Finn would have no reason to be killed if he didn't talk to me, so he would have been there to stop the fight before Johnson placed his three-hundred-thousand-pound bet — and the heart-warming scene in the last two pages of the book with the young lad will make no sense unless I meet him here first. Shit. There isn't a holesmith anywhere in the Well who can fill this one. We're finished, Thursday. As soon as the book figures the gym scene has gone the plot will start to spontaneously unravel. We'll have to declare literary insolvency. If we do it quick we might be able to get most of the major parts reassigned to another book.'

'There must be something we can do!'

Jack thought for a moment.

'No, Thursday. It's over. I'm calling it.'

'Hang on,' I said. 'What if we come in again but instead of us both walking up the stairs you start at the top, meet me coming up and explain what you have just found out. We jump straight from there to chapter eight and … you're looking at me a bit oddly.'

'Mary—'

'Thursday.'

'Thursday. That would make chapter seven only a paragraph long!'

'Better than nothing.'

'It won't work.'

'Vonnegut does it all the time.' -

He sighed.

'Okay. Lead on, maestro.'

I smiled and we jumped back three pages.

Reading, Tuesday. It had been raining all night and the rain-washed streets reflected the dour sky. Mary was late and she met Jack walking down the stairway from an upstairs gymnasium, his feet ringing on the iron treads.

'Sorry I'm late,' said Mary, 'I had a puncture. Did you meet up with your contact?'

'Y-es,' replied Jack. 'Had you visited the gym — which you haven't, of course — you would have found it a lugubrious place that smells of sweat and dreams, where hopefuls try to spar their way out of Reading's underclass.'

'Who were you seeing?' asked Mary as they walked back to her car.

'Mickey Finn,' replied Jack, 'ex-boxer with scarred eyes and a tremor to match. He told me that Hawkins was involved with Davison's master plan. There is talk of a big shipment coming in on the fifth and he also let slip that he was going to see Jethro — the importance of which I won't understand until later.'

'Anything else?' asked Mary, looking thoughtful.

'No.'

'Are you sure?' 'Yes.'

'Are you SURE you're sure?'

'Er … No, wait. I've just remembered. There was this young kid there up for his first fight. It could make him. Mickey said he was the best he'd ever seen — he could be a contender.'

'Sounds like you had a busy morning,' said Mary, looking up at the grey sky.

'The busiest,' answered Jack, pulling his jacket around his shoulders. 'Come on, I'll buy you lunch.'

The chapter ended and Jack covered his face with his hands and groaned.

'I can't believe I said "the importance of which I won't understand until later". They'll never buy it. It's rubbish!'

'Listen,' I said, 'stop fretting. It'll be fine. We just have to hold the book together long enough to figure out a rescue plan.'

'What have we to lose?' replied Jack with a good measure of stoicism. 'You get up to Jurisfiction and see what you can find out about the Book Inspectorate. I'll hold a few auditions and try to rebuild the scene from memory.'

He paused.

'And Thursday?' 'Yes?'

'Thanks.'

I drove back to the flying boat. Having said I wasn't going to get involved with any internal politics, I was surprised by how much of a kinship with Caversham Heights I was feeling. Admittedly, the book was pretty dreadful, but it was no worse than the average Farquitt — perhaps I felt this way because it was my home.

'Are we going shopping now?' asked Lola, who had been waiting for me. 'I need something to wear for the BookWorld Awards the week after next.'

'Are you invited?'

'We all are,' she breathed excitedly. 'Apparently the organisers are borrowing a displacement field technology from SF. The long and short of it is that we will all be able to fit in the Starlight Room — it's going to be quite an event!'

'It certainly will,' I said, going upstairs. Lola followed me and watched from my bed as I changed out of Mary's clothes.

'You're quite important at Jurisfiction, aren't you?'

'Not really,' I replied, trying to do up my trouser button and realising that it was tighter than normal.

'Blast!' I said.

'What?'

'My trousers are too small.'

'Shrunk?'

'No …' I replied, staring into the mirror. There was no doubt about it. I was starting to put on a small amount of girth. I stared at it this way and that and Lola did the same, trying to figure out what I was looking at.

Catalogue shopping from the inside was a lot more fun than I had thought. Lola squeaked with delight at all the clothes on offer and tried about thirty different types of perfume before deciding not to buy any at all — she, in common with nearly all bookpeople, had no sense of smell. Watching her was like letting a child loose in a toy store — and her energy for shopping was almost unbelievable. It was while we were on the lingerie page that she asked me about Randolph.

'What do you think of him?'

'Oh, he's fine,' I replied non-committally, sitting on a chair and thinking of babies while Lola tried on one bra after another, each of which she seemed to love to bits until the next one. 'Why do you ask?'

'Well, I rather like him in a funny kind of way.'

'Does he like you?'

'I'm not sure. I think that's why he ignores me and makes jokes about my weight. Men always do that when they're interested. It's called subtext, Thursday — I'll tell you all about it some day.'