The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [426]
“Miss Havisham?” echoed the Bellman.
“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Bastard.”
Deane touched the back of his head and looked at his hand.
“Bitch!” he muttered. “I’d have killed you, too!”
He turned and leaped at me with surprising speed, grasped me by the throat before I could stop him, and we both crashed to the floor, knocking over a table as we went. It was an impressive charade.
“The little slut serving wench deserved to die!” he screamed. “How dare she spoil the happy life that could have been mine!”
I couldn’t breath and started to black out. I had wanted it to look realistic—and so, I suppose, did he.
Tweed placed a gun under Deane’s chin and forced him off. He spat in my face as I lay there, trying to get my breath back. Deane was then set upon by Heep, who took an unhealthy delight in beating him despite apologizing superciliously every time he struck him.
“Stop!” yelled the Bellman. “Calm down, all of you!”
They propped the now bleeding Deane in a chair and Heep bound his hands.
“Did you kill Perkins?” asked the Bellman, and Deane nodded sullenly.
“He was going to blow the whistle on me—Havisham, too. Snell and Mathias just got in the way. Happiness should have been mine!” he sobbed. “Why did the slut have to turn up with that little bastard—I should have married Miss O’Shaugnessy—all I wanted was something no evil squire in Farquitt ever gets!”
“And what was that?” asked the Bellman sternly.
“A happy ending.”
“Pitiful, wouldn’t you say, Tweed?”
“Pitiful, yes, sir,” he replied stonily, staring at me as I picked myself off the floor.
The Bellman tore up my termination order. “It looks like we have underestimated you,” he said happily. “I knew Havisham couldn’t be wrong. Tweed, I think you owe Miss Next an apology.”
“I apologize unreservedly,” replied Tweed through gritted teeth.
“Good,” said the Bellman. “Now, Thursday, what’s the problem with Ultra Word™?”
It was a sticky moment. We had to take this higher than the Bellman. With Libris and the whole of Text Grand Central involved, there was no knowing what they would do. I remembered an error from an early Ultra Word™ test version.
“Well,” I began, “I think there is a flight manual conflict. If you read an UltraWord™ book on an airship, it can play havoc with the flight manuals.”
“That’s been cured,” said the Bellman kindly, “but thank you for being so diligent.”
“That’s a relief. May I have some leave?”
“Of course. And if you find any other irregularities in UltraWord™, I want them brought to me and me alone.”
“Yes, sir. May I?” I indicated my TravelBook.
“Of course! Very impressive job capturing Deane, don’t you think, Tweed?”
“Yes,” replied Tweed grimly, “very impressive—well done, Next.”
I opened my TravelBook and read myself to Solomon’s outer office. Tweed wouldn’t try anything at the C of G, and the following three days were crucial. Everything I needed to say to the Bellman would have to wait until I had seven million witnesses.
32.
The 923rd Annual BookWorld Awards
The Annual BookWorld Awards (or Bookies) were instigated in 1063 C.E. and for the first two hundred years were dominated by Aeschylus and Homer, who won most of the awards in the thirty or so categories. Following the expansion in fiction and the inclusion of the oral tradition, categories totaled two hundred by 1423. Technical awards were introduced twenty years later and included Most Used English Word and the Most Widely Mispelt Word, witch has remained a contentious subject ever since. By 1879 there were over six hundred categories, but neither the length of the awards nor the vote-rigging scandal in 1964 has dented the popularity of this glittering occasion—it will remain one of the BookWorld’s most popular fixtures for years to come.
COMMANDER TRAFFORD BRADSHAW, CBE,
Bradshaw’s Guide to the BookWorld
I STOOD OFFSTAGE AT the Starlight Room, one in a long line of equally minor celebrities, all awaiting our turn to go and read the nominations. The hospitality lounge where we had all been mustered was about the size of a football pitch, and the massed babble