The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [437]
MILLON DE FLOSS,
Ultra Word™—the Aftermath
IT WAS NEARLY morning when the BookWorld Awards party finished. Heathcliff was furious that in all the excitement the final award of the night had been forgotten; I saw him talking angrily to his personal imaginator an hour after the appearance of the Great Panjandrum. There would be next year of course, but his seventy-seven-year record had been broken and he didn’t like it. I thought he might take it out on Linton and Catherine when he got home, and he did.
No one had been more surprised than me by the arrival of the Great Panjandrum when I pulled the emergency handle. For the nonbelievers it was something of a shock, but not any less than for the faithful. She had been so long a figure of speech that seeing her in the flesh was something of a shock. I thought she had seemed quite plain and in her midthirties, but Humpty-Dumpty told me later he had been shaped like an egg. In any event, the marble statue that now stands in the lobby of the Council of Genres depicts the Great Panjandrum as Mr. Price the stonemason saw him—with a leather apron and carrying a mallet and stone chisel.
When she arrived, the Great Panjandrum read the situation perfectly. She froze all the text within the room, locked the doors and decreed that a vote be taken there and then. She summoned the head of the Council of Genres, and the vote against UltraWord was carried unanimously. She spoke to me three times: once to tell me I had The Write Stuff, second to ask me if I would take on the job of the Bellman, and lastly to ask if disco mirror-balls in the Outland had a motor to make them go round or whether they did it by the action of the lights. I answered “Thank you,” “Yes” and “I don’t know” in that order.
After the party was over, I walked back through the slowly stirring Well of Lost Plots to the shelf that held Caversham Heights and read myself back inside, tired but happy. The Bellman’s job would, I hoped, keep me busy, but purely in administration—I wouldn’t have to go jumping around in books—just the thing to allow my ankles to swell in peace and quiet, and to plan my return to the Outland when the infant Next and its mother were strong enough. Together we would face the tribulations of Landen’s return, because the little one would have a father, I had promised it that much already. I opened the door to the Sunderland and felt the old flying boat rock slightly as I entered. When I’d first come here, it had unnerved me, but now I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Small wavelets slapped against the hull, and somewhere an owl hooted as it returned to roost. It felt as much like home as home had ever done. I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long because, she said, she had “yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and fell fast asleep without the nagging fear of Aornis, and it was nearly ten the next morning when I awoke. But I didn’t wake naturally—Pickwick was tugging at the corner of my dress.
“Not now, Pickers,” I mumbled sleepily, trying to turn over and nearly impaling myself on a knitting needle. She carried on tugging until I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched noisily. She seemed insistent so I followed her upstairs to my bedroom. Sitting on the bed and surrounded by broken eggshell was something that I could only describe as a ball of fluff with two eyes and a beak.
“Plock-plock,” said Pickwick.
“You’re right,” I told her, “she’s very beautiful. Congratulations.”
The small dodo blinked at us both, opened its beak wide and said, in a shrill voice, “Plunk!”
Pickwick started and looked at me anxiously.
“Well!” I told her. “A rebellious teenager already?”
Pickwick nudged the chick with her beak and it plunked indignantly before settling down.
I thought for a moment and said, “You aren’t going to feed her doing that disgusting regurgitation seabird thing are you?”
The door burst