“Remember that craze a few years back in the BookWorld for sending chain letters? Receive a letter and send one on to ten friends? Well, someone has been overenthusiastic with the letter U—I’ve got a report here from the Text Sea Environmental Protection Agency saying that reserves of the letter U have reached dangerously low levels—we need to decrease consumption until stocks are brought back up. Any suggestions?”

“How about using a lower-case n upside down?” said Benedict.

“We tried that with M and W during the great M Migration of ’62; it never worked.”

“How about respelling what, what?” suggested King Pellinore, stroking his large white mustache. “Any word with the our ending could be spelt or, don’tchaknow.”

“Like neighbor instead of neighbour?”

“It’s a good idea,” put in Snell. “Labor, valor, flavor, harbor—there must be hundreds. If we confine it to one geographical area, we can claim it as a local spelling idiosyncrasy.”

“Hmm,” said the Bellman, thinking hard, “do you know, it just might work.”

He looked at his clipboard again. “Item three—Tweed, are you here?”

Harris Tweed signaled from where he was standing.

“Good,” continued the Bellman. “I understand you were pursuing a PageRunner who had taken up residence in the Outland?”

Tweed glanced at me and stood up.

“Fellow by the name of Yorrick Kaine. He’s something of a big cheese in the Outland—runs Kaine Publishing and has set himself up as head of his own political party—”

“Yes, yes,” said the Bellman impatiently, “and he stole Cardenio, I know. But the point is, where is he now?”

“He went back to the Outland, where I lost him,” replied Tweed.

“The Council of Genres are not keen to sanction any work in the real world,” said the Bellman slowly, “it’s too risky. We don’t even know which book Kaine is from—and since he’s not doing anything against us at present, I think he should stay in the Outland.”

“But Kaine is a real danger to our world,” I exclaimed.

Considering Kaine’s righter-than-right politics, this was a fresh limit to the word understatement.

“He has stolen from the Great Library once,” I continued. “How can we suppose he won’t do the same again? Don’t we have a duty to the readers to protect them from fictionauts hellbent on—”

“Ms. Next,” interrupted the Bellman, “I understand what you are saying, but I am not going to sanction an operation in the Outland. I’m sorry, but that is how it is going to be. He goes on the PageRunners’ register and we’ll set up textual sieves on every floor of the library in case he plans to come back. Out there you may do as you please; here you do as we tell you. Is that clear?”

I grew hot and angry but Miss Havisham squeezed my arm, so I remained quiet.