The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [11]
“Who’re number one and two?”
“I don’t know and I have been reliably informed that it’s far better not to know.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“I’ll call you. Stay alert and keep your pager with you at all times. You’re on leave as of now from SO-27, so just enjoy the time off. I’ll be seeing you!”
He was gone in an instant, leaving me with the SO-5 badge and a thumping heart. Boswell returned, followed by a curious Paige. I showed them both the badge.
“Way to go!” said Paige, giving me a hug, but Boswell seemed less happy. After all, he did have his own department to think about.
“They can play very rough at SO-5, Next,” said Boswell in a fatherly tone. “I want you to go back to your desk and have a long calm think about this. Have a cup of coffee and a bun. No, have two buns. Don’t make any rash decisions, and just run through all the pros and cons of the argument. When you’ve done that I would be happy to adjudicate. Do you understand?”
I understood. In my hurry to leave the office I almost forgot the picture of Landen.
4.
Acheron Hades
. . . The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts—and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field—is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good—and we all know how rare that is . . .
ACHERON HADES
—Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit
TAMWORTH DIDN’T call that week, nor the week after. I tried to call him at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed. I used the time to get up-to-date with some reading, filing, mending the car and also—because of the new legislation—to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn’t fancy the vet much.
“Plock-plock,” said Pickwick nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.
“No wings?” asked the official curiously, staring at Pickwick’s slightly odd shape.
“He’s a Version 1.2,” I explained. “One of the first. They didn’t get the sequence complete until 1.7.”
“Must be pretty old.”
“Twelve years this October.”
“I had one of the early Thylacines,” said the official glumly. “A Version 2.1. When we decanted him he had no ears. Stone deaf. No warranty or anything. Bloody liberty, I call it. Do you read New Splicer?”
I had to admit that I didn’t.
“They sequenced a Steller’s sea cow last week. How do I even get one of those through the door?”
“Grease its sides?” I suggested. “And show it a plate of kelp?”
But the official wasn’t listening; he had turned his attention to the next dodo, a pinkish creature with a long neck. The owner caught my eye and smiled sheepishly.
“Redundant strands filled in with flamingo,” he explained. “I should have used dove.”
“Version 2.9?”
“2.9.1, actually. A bit of a hotchpotch but to us he’s simply Chester. We wouldn’t swap him for anything.”
The inspector had been studying Chester’s registration documents.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “2.9.1s come under the new Chimera category.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not enough dodo to be dodo. Room seven down the corridor. Follow the owner of the pukey, but be careful; I sent a quarkbeast down there this morning.”
I left Chester’s owner and the official arguing together and took Pickwick for a waddle in the park. I let him off the leash and he chased a few pigeons before fraternizing with some feral dodos who were cooling their feet in the pond. They splashed excitedly and made quiet plock plock noises to one another until it was time to go home.
Two days after that I had run out of ways to rearrange the furniture, so it was lucky that Tamworth called me. He