'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.