The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [260]
I closed my eyes and thought of Landen. He was there as I best remembered him: seated in his study with his back to me, oblivious to everything, writing. The sunlight streamed in through the window and the familiar clacketty-clack of his old Underwood typewriter sounded like a fond melody to my ears. He stopped occasionally to look at what he had written, make a correction with the pencil clenched between his teeth, or just pause for pause’s sake. I leaned on the doorframe for a while and smiled to myself. He mumbled a line he had written, chuckled to himself and typed faster for a moment, hitting the carriage return with a flourish. He typed quite animatedly in this fashion for about five minutes until he stopped, took out the pencil and slowly turned to face me.
“Hey, Thursday.”
“Hey, Landen. I didn’t want to disturb you; shall I—?”
“No, no,” he said hurriedly, “this can wait. I’m just pleased to see you. How’s it going out there?”
“Boring,” I told him despondently. “After Jurisfiction, SpecOps work seems as dull as ditchwater. Flanker at SO-1 is still on my back, I can feel Goliath breathing down my neck, and this Lavoisier character is using me to get to Dad.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
So I sat on his lap and he massaged the back of my neck. It was heaven.
“How’s Junior?”
“Junior is smaller than a broadbean—little more to the left—but making himself known. The Lucozade keeps the nausea at bay most of the time; I must have drunk a swimming pool of it by now.”
There was a pause.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
I held him tightly but said nothing. He understood and patted my shoulder.
“Let’s talk about something else. How are you getting along at Jurisfiction?”
“Well,” I said, blowing my nose loudly, “I’m not a natural at this bookjumping lark. I want you back, Land, but I’m only going to get one shot at ‘The Raven,’ and I need to get it right. I’ve not heard from Havisham for nearly three days—I don’t know when the next assignment will be.”
Landen shook his head slowly.
“Sweetness, I don’t want you to go into ‘The Raven.’ ”
I looked up at him.
“You heard me. Leave Jack Schitt where he is. How many people would have died for him to make a packet out of that plasma rifle scam? One thousand? Ten thousand? Listen, your memory may grow fuzzy, but I’ll still be here, the good times—”
“But I don’t want just the good times, Land. I want all the times. The shitty ones, the arguments, that annoying habit you had of always trying to make the next filling station and running out of petrol. Picking your nose, farting in bed. But more than that, I want the times that haven’t happened yet—the future. Our future! I am getting Schitt out, Land—make no mistake about that.”
“Let’s talk about something else again,” said Landen. “Listen— I’m a bit worried about someone trying to kill you with coincidences.”
“I can look after myself.”
He looked at me solemnly.
“I don’t doubt it for one moment. But I’m only alive in your memories—and some mewling and puking ones of my mum’s I suppose—and without you I’m nothing at all, ever—so if whoever is juggling with entropy gets lucky next time, you and I are both for the high jump—but at least you get a memorial and a SpecOps regulation headstone.”
“I see your point, however muddled you might make it. Did you see how I manipulated coincidences in the last entropic lapse to find Mrs. Nakajima? Clever, eh?”
“Inspired. Now, can you think of any linking factor—except the intended victim—that connects the three attacks?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’ve thought it through a thousand times. Nothing.”
Landen thought for a moment, tapped a finger on his temple and smiled.
“Don’t be so sure. I’ve been having a little peek myself, and, well, I want to show you something.”
And there we were, on the platform of the Skyrail station at South Cerney. But it wasn’t a moving memory, like the other ones I had enjoyed with Landen, it was frozen like a stilled video image—and like a stilled video image, it wasn’t very good; all blurry and a bit jumpy.