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A Cretan Minotaur in Nebraska

'Jurisfiction is the na with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the many Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction work tirelessly to es of all the books ever written, a soents live mostly on their wits as they atteinal wishes and readers' expectations within a strict and largely pointless set of bureaucratic guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres I headed Jurisfiction for over two years and was always astounded by the variety of the work: one day Ito coax the impossibly shy Darcy fro the Martians' latest atte and full of bizarre twists But when the peculiar and downright weird becoin to yearn for the banal"

THURSDAY NEXT – The Jurisfiction Chronicles

The Minotaur had been causing trouble far in excess of his literary ienre PrisonBook Sword of the Zenobians, then by leading us on aall atteical half-hted within Riders of the Purple Sage only ahim alive at this point so we had darted him with a small dose of Slapstick Theoretically, we needed only to track outbreaks of custard-pie-in-face routines and walking-into-las within fiction to be led to the cannibalistic man-beast It was an experimental idea and, sadly, also a dismal failure Aside from Lafeu's celebrated mention of

custard in All's Well that Ends Well and the ludicrous four-wheeled chaise sequence in Pickwick Papers, little was noticed The Slapstick either hadn't been strong enough or had been diluted by the BookWorld's natural aversion to visual jokes

In any event ere still searching for hi the cattle drives that the Minotaur foundAnd it was for this reason that Coe seventy-three of an obscure pulp from the thirties entitled Death at Double-X Ranch

'What do you think, old girl?' asked Bradshahose pith helmet and safari suit were ideally suited to the hot Nebraskan sue-wise by four decades; his sun-dried skin and snohite acy of his many years in Colonial African Fiction: he had been the lead character in the twenty-three 'Commander Bradshaw' novels, last published in 1932 and last read in 1963 Many characters in fiction define themselves by their popularity, but not Co spent an adventurous and entirely fictional life defending British East Africa against a host of unlikely foes, and killing almost every animal it was possible to kill, he now enjoyed his retirement and was much in demand at Jurisfiction, where his fearlessness under fire and knowledge of the BookWorld reatest assets

He was pointing at a weathered board that told us the small township not more than half a mile ahead hailed by the optimistic name of Providence and had a population of 2,387

I shielded e stretched all the way to the etation had a repetitive pattern that belied its fictional roots The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft undulating hills and randoes was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author's initial description In the make-believe world where I had ht different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds A hedgerow repeated itself every eight feet, a e every sixth peak It hadn't botheredinside fiction I had begun to yearn for a world where every tree and rock and hill and cloud had its own unique shape and identity And the sunsets I missed them most of all Even the best-described ones couldn't hold a candle to a real one I yearned to witness once again the delicate hues of the sky as the sun dipped below the horizon Froe, to pink, to blue, to navy, to black

Bradshaw looked across at me and raised an eyebrow quizzically As 'The Bellman' – the head of Jurisfiction – I shouldn't really be out on assignment at all, but I was neverthe Minotaur was important He had killed one of our own, and that made it unfinished business

During the past e had searched unsuccessfully through six civil war epics, three frontier stories, twenty-eight high-quality Westerns and ninety-seven dubiously penned novellas before finding ourselves within Death at Double-X Ranch, right on the outer riht be described as acceptably written prose We had drawn a blank in every single book No minotaur, nor even the merest whiff of one, and believe me, they can whiff

'A possibility?' asked Bradshaw, pointing at the Providence sign

'We'll give it a try,' I replied, slipping on a pair of dark glasses and consultingplaces 'If we draw a blank we'll stop for lunch before heading off into The Oklahoma Kid'

Bradshaw nodded, opened the breech of the hunting rifle he was carrying and slipped in a cartridge It was a conventional weapon but loaded with unconventional aency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw's rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist – all that is left when the bonds that link text to es of cruelty failed to have anywhen at the last Beast Census there were over a million almost identical raphic novels and urns that featured hieRunner

As alked closer the sounds of a busy Nebraskan frontier town reached our ears A new building was being erected and the ha of nails into lumber punctuated the clop of horses' hoofs, the clink of harnesses and the ru of the blacksmith's hammer mixed with the distant tones of a choir froeneral conversational hubbub of busy townsfolk We reached the corner of Eckley's Livery Stables and peered cautiously down the main street