The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [367]
She melted into the air about me and I walked off down the library corridor towards the elevators. I passed Falstaff, who invited me to dance around his maypole. I told him to sod off, of course, and pressed the elevator call button. The doors opened a minute later and I stepped in. But it wasn’t empty. With me were Emperor Zhark and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.
“Which floor?” asked Zhark.
“First, please.”
He pressed the button with a long and finely manicured finger and continued his conversation with Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.
“. . . and that was when the rebels destroyed the third of my battle stations,” said the emperor sorrowfully. “Have you any idea how much these things cost?”
“Tch,” said Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, bristling her spines, “they always find some way of defeating you, don’t they?”
Zhark sighed. “It’s like one huge conspiracy,” he muttered. “Just when I think I have the galaxy at my mercy, some hopelessly outnumbered young hothead destroys my most insidious death machine using some hitherto-undiscovered weakness. I’m suing the manufacturer after that last debacle.”
He sighed again, sensed he was dominating the conversation and asked, “So how’s the washing business?”
“Well, the price of starch is something terrible these days.”
“Oh, I know,” replied Zhark, thumbing his high collar, “look at this. My name alone strikes terror into billions, but can I get my collars done exactly how I want them?”
The elevator stopped at my floor and I stepped out.
I read myself into Sense and Sensibility and avoided the nursery rhyme characters who were still picketing the front door; I had Humpty’s proposals in my back pocket but still hadn’t given them to Libris—in truth I had only promised to do my best, but didn’t particularly want to run the gauntlet again. I ran up the back stairs, nodded a greeting to Mrs. Henry Dashwood and bumped into Tweed in the lobby; he was talking to a lithe and adventurous-looking young man whose forehead was etched with an almost permanent frown.
Tweed quickly broke off when I appeared. “Ah! Thursday. Sorry to hear about Snell; he was a good man.”
“I know—thank you.”
“I’ve appointed the Gryphon as your new attorney,” Tweed said. “Is that all right?”
“Sounds fine.” I turned to the youth, who was pulling his hands nervously through his curly hair. “Hello! I’m Thursday Next.”
“Sorry!” mumbled Tweed. “This is Uriah Hope from David Copperfield; an apprentice I have been asked to train.”
“Pleased to meet you,” replied Hope in a friendly tone. “Perhaps you and I could discuss apprenticeships together sometime?”
“The pleasure’s mine, Mr. Hope. I’m a big fan of your work in Copperfield.”
I thanked them both and left to find the JurisTech offices along Norland Park’s seemingly endless corridors. I stopped at a door at random, knocked and looked in. Behind a desk was one of the many Greek heroes who could be seen wandering around the library; licensing their stories for remakes made a very reasonable living. He was on the footnoterphone.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll be down to pick up Eurydice next Friday. Anything I can do for you in return?” He raised a finger at me to wait. “Don’t look back? That’s all? Okay, no problem. See you then. Bye.”
He put down the horn and looked at me. “Thursday Next, isn’t it?”
“Yes; do you know where the Juris Tech office is?”
“Down the corridor, first on the right.”
“Thanks.”
I made to leave but he called me back, pointing at the footnoterphone. “I’ve forgotten already—what was I meant not to do?”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
I walked down the corridor, opened another door into a room that had nothing in it except a man with a frog growing out of his shiny bald head.
“Goodness!” I said. “How did that happen?”
“It all started with a pimple on my bum,” said the frog. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Professor Plum.”
“You want Juris Tech. This is Old Jokes. Try next door.”
I thanked him and knocked on the next door. There was a very singsong “Come in!” and I entered. Although I had expected to see a strange laboratory full of odd inventions,