'Hi!'

Harry sighed. 'Look, I explained this last time. You can't get in because you haven't been written in a piece of fiction yet.'

'Really?' Anji said. 'Then how do you explain _this_?'

She brandished a piece of paper at him. It was headed 'It Fitz Perfectly', by Alan Taylor.

And it was dated 20th May 1998.

Harry gave it a once-over. 'Ah. Well.... Umm... We changed the rules? That's it. We changed the rules in August. Just before Compassion arrived...'

Anji raised an eyebrow. 'In that case,' she said, 'you won't mind if I ask _why_ you changed the rules...'

'And,' came a voice from behind her, 'why this 'rules change' of yours didn't seem to apply when I came in for a drink yesterday...'

Harry was starting to break out in small beads of sweat. 'Errr... Ahh... '

'If you're going to keep this young lady out on those grounds, then I insist the same be applied to me.'

Professor Evelyn Smythe smiled. 'Backdated retrospectively, of course... Which will mean that you suddenly lose a good chunk of your profit, because I wasn't there to provide it. How _does_ the proprietor look on staff who lose him money these days?'

Anji grinned. 'Well, Fitz told me...'

Harry's screaming lasted a very long time.

'Damn,' said a voice by the bar, 'Have to replenish the Bad Pun Fund now... and after that offer of a guest-star slot in every PT3 story went down so _well_ with him...'

Doug looked at Mistress Helen. 'That's _all_ you offered?'

'Well, that and the wild sex orgy with the chickens, the Alpha Centaurian ambassador, and the trained moose.'

'Ah... '

--

End

--

Copyright 2001 Imran Inayat