The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [200]
I finished my coffee and made my way with the throng to where the shuttle was waiting to receive us. I had ridden on the Gravitube several times before, but never the DeepDrop. My recent tour of the world had all been by overmantles, which are more like trains. I carried on through passport control, boarded the shuttle and was shown to my seat by a stewardess whose fixed smile reminded me of a synchronized swimmer’s. I sat next to a man with a shock of untidy black hair who was reading a copy of Astounding Tales.
“Hello,” he said in a subdued monotone. “Ever Deep-Dropped before?”
“Never,” I replied.
“Better than any roller coaster,” he announced with finality and returned to his magazine.
I strapped myself in as a tall man in a large check suit sat down next to me. He was about forty, had a luxuriant red mustache and wore a carnation in his buttonhole.
“Hello, Thursday!” he said in a friendly voice as he proffered his hand. “Allow me to introduce myself—Akrid Snell.”
I stared at him in surprise, and he laughed.
“We needed some time to talk, and I’ve never been on one of these before. How does it work?”
“The Gravitube? It’s a tunnel running through the center of the earth. We freefall all the way to Sydney. But . . . but . . . how on earth did you find me?”
“Jurisfiction has eyes and ears everywhere, Miss Next.”
“Plain English, Snell—or I could turn out to be the most difficult client you’ve ever had.”
Snell looked at me with interest for a few moments as a stewardess gave a monotonous safety announcement, culminating with the warning that there were no toilet facilities until gravity returned to 40%.
“You work in SpecOps, don’t you?” asked Snell as soon as we were comfortable and all loose possessions had been placed in zippered bags.
I nodded.
“Jurisfiction is the service we run inside novels to maintain the integrity of popular fiction. The printed word might look solid to you, but where I come from, ‘movable type’ has a much deeper meaning.”
“The ending of Jane Eyre,” I murmured, suddenly realizing what all the fuss was about. “I changed it, didn’t I?”
“I’m afraid so,” agreed Snell, “but don’t admit that to anyone but me. It was the biggest Fiction Infraction to a major work since someone futzed so badly with Thackeray’s Giant Despair we had to delete it completely.”
“Drop is D minus two minutes,” said the announcer. “Would all passengers please take their seats, check their straps and make sure all infants are secured.”
“So what’s happening now?” asked Snell.
“Do you really not know anything about the Gravitube?”
Snell looked around and lowered his voice.
“All of your world is a bit strange to me, Next. I come from a land of trench coats and deep shadows, complex plot lines, frightened witnesses, underground bosses, gangster’s molls, seedy bars and startling six-pages-from-the-end denouements.”
I must have looked confused, for he lowered his voice further and hissed: “I’m fictional, Miss Next. Co-lead in the Perkins & Snell series of crime books. I expect you’ve read me?”
“I’m afraid not,” I admitted.
“Limited print run,” sighed Snell, “but we had a good review in CrimeBooks Digest. I was described as ‘a well rounded and amusing character . . . with quite a few memorable lines.’ The Mole placed us on their ‘Read of the Week’ list but The Toad were less enthusiastic—but listen, who takes any notice of the critics?”
“You’re fictional?” I said at last.
“Keep it to yourself though, won’t you?” he urged. “Now, about the Gravitube?”
“Well,” I replied, gathering my thoughts, “in a few minutes the shuttle will have entered the airlock and depressurization will commence—”
“Depressurization? Why?”
“For a frictionless drop. No air resistance—and we are kept from touching the sides by a powerful magnetic field. We then simply free-fall the eight thousand miles to Sydney.”
“So all cities have a DeepDrop to every other