We had by now walked outside the building, and John Henry’s Bentley pulled up in front of us.

“My car is yours. Good day, Ms. Next.”

“Good day, Mr. Goliath.”

He shook my hand and then departed. I looked at the Bentley and then at the ranks of cabs a little way down the road. I shrugged and climbed in the back of the Bentley.

“Where to, madam?” asked the driver.

I thought quickly. I had my TravelBook on me and could jump to the Great Library from here-as long as I could find a quiet spot conducive to bookjumping.

“The nearest library,” I told him. “I’m late for work.”

“You’re a librarian?” he inquired politely.

“Let’s just say I’m really into books.”

A few minutes and several pints of rehydrating water later, I walked into the Jurisfiction offices at Norland Park. Thursday5 was waiting for me by my desk, looking decidedly pleased with herself.

“Guess what!” she enthused.

“I have no idea.”

“Go on, guess!”

“I don’t want to guess,” I told her, hoping the tedium in my voice would send out a few warning bells. It didn’t.

“No, you must guess!”

“Okay,” I sighed. “You’ve got some new beads or something.”

“Wrong,” she said, producing a paper bag with a flourish. “I got you the bacon roll you wanted!”

“I never would have guessed that,” I replied, sitting before a desk that seemed to be flooded with new memos and reports, adding, in an unthinking moment, “How are things with you?”

“I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

I rubbed my forehead as she sat down and stared at me intently, hands clasped nervously in front of her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my inquiry over her health was merely politeness. I didn’t actually want to know. Quite the reverse, in fact.

“Really?” I said, trying to find a memo that might be vaguely relevant to something.

“No. I was thinking about the Minotaur incident yesterday, and I want to apologize-again.”

“It’s past history. Any messages?”

“So I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Now: Any messages?”

“I wrote you a letter outlining my apology.”

“I won’t read it. The matter is closed.”

“Yes…well…right,” she began, flustered that we weren’t going to analyze the previous day at length and trying to remember everything she’d been told that morning. “Mr. Buñuel called to say that he’d completed the refit of Pride and Prejudice and it was online again this morning. He’s got Northanger Abbey in the maintenance bay at the moment, and it should be ready on time as long as Catherine stops attempting to have the book ‘Gothicized.’”

“Good. What else?”

“The Council of Genres,” she announced, barely able to control her excitement. “Senator Jobsworth’s secretary herself called to ask you to appear in the debating chamber for a policy-directive meeting at three this afternoon!”

“I wonder what the old bore wants now? Anything else?”

“No,” replied Thursday5, disappointed that I didn’t share her unbridled enthusiasm over an appearance at the CofG. I couldn’t. I’d been there so many times I just saw it as part of my duties, nothing more.

I opened my desk drawer to take out a sheet of letterhead and noticed Thursday5’s assessment letter where I’d put it the night before. I thought for a moment and decided to give her one more chance. I left it where it was, pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote a letter to Wing Commander Scampton-Tappett, telling him to get out of Bananas for Edward, since Landen wasn’t currently working on it, and move instead to The Mews of Doom, which he was. I folded up the letter, placed it in an envelope and told Thursday5 to deliver it to Scampton-Tappett in person. I could have asked her to send it by courier, but twenty minutes’ peace and quiet had a great deal of appeal to it. Thursday5 nodded happily and vanished.

I had just leaned back in my chair and was thinking about Felix8, the possible End of Time and the Austen Rover when a hearty bellow of “Stand to!” indicated the imminence of Bradshaw’s daily Jurisfiction briefing. I dutifully stood up and joined the other agents who had gathered in the center of the room.

After the usual apologies for absence, Bradshaw climbed on to a table, tinkled a small bell and said, “Jurisfiction meeting number 43370 is now in session. But before all that we are to welcome a new agent to the fold: Colonel William Dobbin!”

We all applauded as Colonel Dobbin gave a polite bow and remarked in a shy yet resolute manner that he would do his utmost to further the good work of Jurisfiction.

“Jolly good,” intoned Bradshaw, eager to get on. “Item One: An active cell of bowdlerizers has been at work again, this time in Philip Larkin and ‘This Be the Verse.’ We’ve found several editions with the first line altered to read ‘They tuck you up, your mum and dad,’ which is a gross distortion of the original intent. Who wants to have a go at this?”

“I will,” I said.

“No. What about you, King Pellinore?”

“Yes-yes what-what hey-hey?” said the white-whiskered knight in grubby armor.

“You’ve had experience dealing with bowdlerizers in Larkin before-cracking the group that altered the first line of ‘Love Again’ to read: ‘Love again: thanking her at ten past three’ was great stuff-fancy tackling them again?”

“What-what to go a mollocking for the bowlders?” replied Pellinore happily. “’Twill be achieved happily and in half the time.”

“Anyone want to go with him?”

“I’ll go.” I said.

“Anyone else?”

The Red Queen put up her hand.

“Item Two: The Two Hundred Eighty-seventh Annual Book-World Conference is due in six months’ time, and the Council of Genres has insisted we need to have a security review after last year’s…problems.”

There was a muttering from the assembled agents. BookCon was the sort of event that was too large and too varied to keep all factions happy, and the previous year’s decision to lift the restriction on Abstract Concepts attending as delegates opened the floodgates to a multitude of Literary Theories and Grammatical Conventions who spent most of the time pontificating loftily and causing trouble in the bar, where fights broke out at the drop of a participle. When Poststructuralism got into a fight with Classicism, they were all banned, something that upset the Subjunctives no end, who complained bitterly that if they had been fighting, they would have won.

“Are the Abstracts allowed to attend this year?” asked Lady Cavendish.

“I’m afraid so,” replied Bradshaw. “Not to invite them would be seen as discriminatory. Volunteers?”

Six of us put up our hands, and Bradshaw diligently scribbled down our names.

“Top-notch,” he said at last. “The first meeting will be next week. Now, Item Three, and this one is something of a corker: We’ve got a Major Narrative Flexation brewing in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.”

“Is it the Watson bullet-wound problem again?” asked Mr. Fainset.

“No, it’s more serious than that. Sherlock Holmes…has been murdered!”

There was a spontaneous cry of shock and outrage from the assembled agents. The Holmes series was a perennial favorite and thus of par tic ular concern-textual anomalies in unread or unpopular books were always lower priority, or ignored altogether. Bradshaw handed a stack of papers to Lady Cavendish, who distributed them.