One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [103]
“Do you see the others, ma’am?” asked Sprockett as he swerved hard to miss the Greatest Oversize Book of All Time but the abrupt sideways movement caused a ventral compressor stall on the Technobabble™ drive, and we went spiraling downwards out of control until Sprockett achieved an emergency relight.
“On the left!” I yelled as the second Roadmaster swept past, a shot from an eraserhead removing half the rear bumper and a fender. Sprockett jinked hard, spiraled up for a second, then shot past Cooking for Fusspots and Helmut Newton Nudes.
“Rewind me again, ma’am, if you please,” said Sprockett, hauling sideways on the wheel to avoid the Times Atlas. The exertions on his frame had depleted his spring at a furious rate—I’d have to remain conscious, if only to rewind him.
“Watch out!”
It was too late. We had taken a hard left at The Titanic Revisited and were met by a group of Oversize Books that had bunched together tightly for self-protection. There was no time to avoid them and all we could see was a saber jet fragmenting in front of us as we loomed ever closer to Lichtenstein Prints. But just when I thought we were dead for sure, Sprocket pulled the wheel hard over and we entered The Works of Thomas Gainsborough through a small thermal-exhaust port near the preface.
I stared wide-eyed as Sprockett drove the cab through the paintings of Gainsborough at over a hundred miles per hour. We shot through early landscapes, dodged past Cornard Wood and then burst into portraiture at John Plampin, then twisted and turned past a dozen or so well-dressed dignitaries, who for their part looked as startled and horrified as we did. We went between the knees of Mr. Byam and at one point nearly knocked the hat off Mrs. Siddons. But still the Roadmaster stuck to us like glue, not able to fire at us with the constant movement but awaiting the opportunity with a certain calm detachment. We doubled back around The Blue Boy as Sprockett searched for the exit.
“Can you see a way out, ma’am?”
“There!” I said, having heard a lowing in the distance, “behind the third cow from the left in The Watering Place.”
We passed The Harvest Wagon for a second time as Sprockett lowered the nose and accelerated across the painted landscape, the Roadmaster still close behind. We turned sharp left as the Duchess of Devonshire loomed up in front of us, and there was a thump as we collided with something. The Roadmaster behind us had misjudged the turn and struck the duchess on the shins, the resulting explosion scattering metal fragments that hit the back of the cab with a metallic rattle.
In another second we were clear, none the worse for our rapid traverse aside from a brace of partridge that had jammed in the wipers and cracked the screen.
“What did they hit?” asked Sprockett.
“The Duchess of Devonshire—took off both legs.”
“She’ll be a half portrait from now on. Whoops.”
The third Roadmaster had appeared in front of us, and another eraserhead had taken the “taxi” light off the roof and blasted a hole into Classic Bedford Single-Deckers, releasing several Plaxton-bodied coaches to tumble out into the void.
“We’re causing too much damage,” I said, catching sight of the now-chaotic movement of the Oversize Books, some of them on fire, others locked in collision and one, Detroit’s Muscle Cars, falling to earth in a slow death spiral, the huge forces breaking apart the book and spilling 1972 Dodge Chargers across the BookWorld. “We need to leave the Oversize Books section.”
“Logically, it places us in grave danger, ma’am.”
“But we are endangering others, Sprockett.”
“I place our chances of survival in open orbit at less than 1.7 percent, ma’am.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “we are causing more destruction and death than we are worth.”
His eyebrow pointer clicked to “Puzzled.” “I do not understand.”
“It’s the right thing to do, Sprockett. Not for us but for them.”
“Is this compassion, ma’am? The following of the correct course irrespective of the outcome?”
The Duplex-5s