The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [420]
“Bad?”
“The worst. I was removed from Jurisfiction for a reason—who other than the grieving apprentice to ask awkward questions? Miss Havisham was sure there was something wrong with Ultra Word™. Her death proves it.”
“I think at best it only suggests it,” declared Randolph, who had obviously been studying law as part of his Amis bit part. “Without any evidence it will be hard to prove. Did she or any of the others say anything to you about it?”
I thought hard. “From Havisham and Perkins—nothing. And all I got from Snell was gobbledygook on his deathbed. He might have told me everything, but it was so badly spelled I didn’t understand a word.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Thirsty! Wode—Cone, udder whirled—doughnut Trieste—!’ or something quite like it.”
Arnie exchanged looks with Randolph.
“The Thirsty must be Thursday,” murmured Arnie.
“I figured that,” I returned, “but what about the rest?”
“Do you suppose,” said Randolph thoughtfully, “that if you were to recite those words near a source of mispeling, they would revert back again?”
There was one of those long pauses that usually accompany a flash of brilliance.
“It’s worth a try,” I replied, thinking hard. I checked the clip of my automatic and opened my TravelBook.
“Where are you going?” asked Arnie.
“To visit the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group on the seventeenth floor. I think they might be able to help.”
“Will they want to?”
I shrugged. “Asking wasn’t part of the plan.”
The elevator doors opened on the seventeenth floor. This held all the books whose authors began with Q, and since there weren’t that many of them, the remainder of the space had been given over to the Jurisfiction Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group. If any live mispeling vyrus was at Jurisfiction, this would be the place to find it.
This floor of the Great Library was more dimly lit than the others, and the rows of bunk beds containing the DanverClones began soon after the Quiller-Couch novels ended. The Danvers were all sitting bolt upright, their eyes following me silently as I walked slowly down the corridor. It was disquieting to be sure, but I could think of no other place to look.
I reached the central core of the library, a circular void surrounded by a wrought-iron rail at the center of the four corridors. The way I had come was all Danvers, and so were two of the others. The fourth corridor was lined with packing cases of dictionaries, and beyond them, the medical area in which I had last seen Snell. I walked closer, my feet making no noise on the padded carpet. Perhaps Snell had known as much as Perkins? They were partners, after all. I cursed myself for not thinking of this before.
I arrived at the small medical unit that was ready and waiting to deal with any infected person. The shielded curtains, the bandages overprinted with dictionary entries. They could soothe and contain but rarely cure—Snell was doomed as soon as he was soaked in the vyrus and he knew it.
I opened a few drawers here and there but found nothing. Then, I noticed a large pile of dictionaries stacked by themselves in a roped-off area. I walked closer, repeating the word ambidextrous as I did so.
“Ambidextrous . . . ambidextrous . . . ambidextrous . . . ambidextruos.”
Bingo. I’d found it.
“Miss Next? What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. If it had been Libris, I would have been worried; but it wasn’t—it was Harris Tweed.
“You nearly scared me half to death!” I told him.
“Sorry!” He grinned. “What are you up to?”
“There’s something wrong with Ultra Word™.”
Tweed looked up and down the corridor and lowered his voice. “I think so, too,” he hissed, “but I’m not sure what—I’ve a feeling that it uses a faster ‘memory fade’ utility than Version 8.3 so the readers will want to reread the book more often. The Council of Genres are interested in upping their published ReadRates—the battle with nonfiction is hotting up; more than they care to tell us about.”
It was the sort of thing I had suspected.
“What have you discovered?” he asked.
I