The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [401]
We walked beyond the harbor to where large pipes spewed jumbled letters back into the Text Sea amidst a strong smell of rubber.1
“This is where the words end up when you erase them in the Outland,” mentioned Miss Havisham as we strolled past. “Anything the matter?”
“Junkfootnoterphones again,” I muttered, trying to screen the rubbish out, “a scam of some sort, I think. What makes you believe anything is the trouble with Ultra Word™?”
“Well,” said Havisham slowly, “Perkins called me the night before he died. He said he had a surprising discovery but didn’t want to talk over the footnoterphone.”
“Was it about Ultra Word™?”
Havisham shrugged. “To be truthful, I don’t know. It’s possible—but it could have been about Deane just as easily.”
The road petered out into a beach formed by shards of broken letters. This was where novels met their end. Beneath the leaden skies the books—here taking the appearance of seven-story buildings—were cast high upon the shore, any plot devices and settings of any use torn out to be sold as salvage. The remaining hulks were then pulled to pieces by Generics working in teams with nothing more high-tech than crowbars, cutting torches and chains, stripping the old novels back into words, which were tipped into the sea by wheelbarrow gangs, the words dissolving back into letters, their meaning burning off into a slight bluish haze that collected at the foreshore.
We arrived at the copy of The Squire of High Potternews. It looked dark and somber here on the shore of the Text Sea. Anyone trying to find a copy in the Outland would have a great deal of trouble; when Text Grand Central withdraw a book, they really mean it.
The book was resting on its end and was slightly open. A large tape had been run round the outside that read Jurisfiction, Do Not Cross.
“Looking for something?”
It was Harris Tweed and Uriah Hope; they jumped down from the book and looked at us curiously.
“Good evening, Harris,” said Miss Havisham. “We were trying to find Deane.”
“Me, too. Have a look around if you wish, but I’m damned if I can find a single clue as to his whereabouts.”
“Has anyone tried to kill you recently?” I asked.
“Me?” replied Harris. “No. Why, should they?”
I told him about the Ultra Word™ connection.
“It’s possible that there might be a link,” he mused, “but I gave UltraWord™ the fullest test; it seemed to work extremely well no matter what I did! Do you have any idea what Perkins had discovered?”
“We don’t know he found anything wrong at all,” said Havisham.
Harris thought for a moment. “I think we should definitely keep this to ourselves,” he said at last, “and take great care what we do. If Deane is about and had anything to do with Perkins’s death, he might be after you or I next.”
Havisham agreed, told me to go see Professor Plum to see if he could shed any more light on the failed Eject-O-Hat and vanished after telling me she had an urgent appointment to keep.
When she had gone, Harris said to me, “Keep an eye on the old girl, won’t you?”
I promised I would and made my way back towards the elevators, deep in thought.
25.
Havisham—the Final Bow
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