The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [314]
“I have yet to hear about it properly,” I admitted.
“I particularly like the idea of ReadZip™,” mused the small man, adding a drop of red liquid and watching the result with great interest. “They say they will be able to crush War and Peace into eighty-six words and still retain the scope and grandeur of the original.”
“Seeing is believing.”
“Not down here,” Mr. Grnksghty corrected me. “Down here, reading is believing.”
There was a pause as I took this in.
“Mr. Grnksghty?”
“Yes?”
“How do you pronounce your name?”
At that moment Snell strolled back in.
“That was Miss Havisham,” he announced, retrieving his head. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Grnksghty—come on, we’re off.”
Snell led me down the corridor past more shops and traders until we arrived at the bronze-and-wood elevators. The doors opened and several small street urchins ran out holding cleft sticks with a small scrap of paper wedged in them.
“Ideas on their way to the books-in-progress,” explained Snell as we stepped into the elevator. “Trading must have just started. You’ll find the Idea Sales and Loan department on the seventeenth floor.”
The ornate elevator plunged rapidly downwards.
“Are you still being bothered by junkfootnoterphones?”
“A little.”4
“You’ll get used to ignoring them.”
The bell sounded and the elevator doors slid open, bringing with it a chill wind. It was darker than the floor we had just visited and several disreputable-looking characters stared at us from the shadows. I moved to get out but Snell stopped me. He looked about and whispered, “This is the twenty-second subbasement. The roughest place in the Well. A haven for cutthroats, bounty hunters, murderers, thieves, cheats, shape-shifters, scene-stealers, brigands and plagiarists.”
“We don’t tolerate these sort of places back home,” I murmured.
“We encourage them here,” explained Snell. “Fiction wouldn’t be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.”
I could feel the menace as soon as we stepped from the elevator. Low mutters were exchanged amongst several hooded figures who stood close by, their faces obscured by the shadows, their hands bony and white. We walked past two large cats with eyes that seemed to dance with fire; they stared at us hungrily and licked their lips.
“Dinner,” said one, looking us both up and down. “Shall we eat them together or one by one?”
“One by one,” said the second cat, who was slightly bigger and a good deal more fearsome, “but we better wait until Big Martin gets here.”
“Oh, yeah,” said the first cat, retracting his claws quickly, “so we’d better.”
Snell had ignored the two cats completely; he glanced at his watch and said, “We’re going to the Slaughtered Lamb to visit a contact of mine. Someone has been cobbling together plot devices from half-damaged units that should have been condemned. It’s not only illegal—it’s dangerous. The last thing anyone needs is a ‘Do we cut the red wire or the blue wire?’ plot device going off an hour too early and ruining the suspense—how many stories have you read where the bomb is defused with an hour to go?”
“Not many, I suppose.”
“You suppose right. We’re here.”
The gloomy interior was shabby and smelt of beer. Three ceiling fans stirred the smoke-filled atmosphere, and a band was playing a melancholy tune in one corner. The dark walls were spaced with individual booths where somberness was an abundant commodity; the bar in the center seemed to be the lightest place in the room and gathered there, like moths to a light, were an odd collection of people and creatures, all chatting and talking in low voices. The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic clichés you could have cut it with a knife.
“See over there?” said Snell, indicating two men who were deep in conversation.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Hyde talking to Blofeld. In the next booth are Von Stalhein and Wackford Squeers. The tall guy in the cloak is Emperor Zhark, tyrannical ruler