The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [422]
I had heard enough. “You’re finished, Tweed. When the Bellman hears what you’ve been up to—!”
“The Bellman is only a tool of Text Grand Central, Next. He does what we tell him. Release me and take your place at my side. Untold adventures and riches await you—we can even write your husband back.”
“Not a chance. I want the real Landen or none at all.”
“You won’t know the difference. Take my hand—I won’t offer it again.”
“No deal.”
“Then,” he said slowly, “it is good-bye.”
I saw something out of the corner of my eye and moved quickly to my right. A pickax handle glanced off my shoulder and struck the carpet. It was Uriah Hope. No wonder Tweed hadn’t seemed that worried. I rolled off Tweed and dodged Uriah’s next blow, pushing myself backwards along the carpet in my haste to get away. He swung again and shattered a desk, wedging the handle in the wood and struggling with it long enough for me to get to my feet and raise my gun. I wasn’t quick enough and he knocked it from my grasp; I ducked the next blow and ran back towards Tweed, who was starting to get up. He hooked my ankle and I came crashing down. I rolled onto my back as Uriah jumped towards me with a wild cry. I put out a foot, caught him on the chest and heaved. His momentum carried him over onto the pile of dictionaries—and the mispeling vyrus. Tweed tried to grab me but I was off and running down the corridor as the DanverClones began to stir.
“Kill her!” screamed Tweed, and the Danvers started to move off their bunk beds and walk slowly towards me. I took my TravelBook from my pocket, opened it at the right page and stopped, right in the middle of the corridor. I couldn’t outrun them but I could outread them. As I jumped out, I could just feel the bony fingers of the Danvers clutching my rapidly vanishing form.
I jumped clean into Norland Park. Past the striking nursery characters and the frog-faced doorman to appear a little too suddenly in the Jurisfiction offices. I ran straight into the Red Queen, who collapsed and in turn knocked over Benedict and the Bellman. I quickly grabbed Benedict’s pistol in case Tweed or Hope arrived ready for action and was consequently attacked from an unexpected quarter. Mistaking my intentions, the Red Queen grabbed my gun arm and twisted it around behind me while Benedict tackled me round the waist and pulled me down yelling, “Gun! Protect the Bellman!”
“Wait!” I shouted. “There’s a problem with Ultra Word™!”
“What do you mean?” demanded the Bellman when I had surrendered the gun. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“No joke. It’s Tweed—”
“Don’t listen to her!” shouted Tweed, who had just appeared. “She is an ambitious murderer who will stop at nothing to get what she wants!”
The Bellman looked at us both in turn. “You have proof of this, Harris?”
“Oh, yes—more proof than you’ll ever need. Heep, bring it in.”
Uriah Hope—or Heep as he was now—had survived the mispeling but had been changed irrevocably. Whilst before he had been adventurous, he was, thanks to the vyrus, cadaverous; thin instead of lithe, fawning instead of frowning. But that was, for the moment, by the by. Uriah was holding the stained pillowcase that contained Snell’s head. Not his own, of course—the plot device Snell had paid so much for in the Well.
“We found this in Thursday’s home,” announced Tweed, “hidden in the broom cupboard. Heep, would you?”
The thin and sallow youth, whose hair was now oily rather than curly, laid the bag on a table and lifted the head out by its hair. A gasp came from Benedict’s lips and the Red Queen crossed herself.
“Heavens above,” murmured the Bellman, “it’s Godot!”
31.
Tables Turned
Insider Trading: Slang term for Internal Narrative Manipulation. Illegal since 1932 and contrary to item B17(g) of the Narrative Continuity Code, this self-engineered plot fluctuation is so widespread