The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [472]
Before the Kaine magnetism could take me over any further, I took a deep breath, grabbed the outstretched hand and muttered quickly, “It was a time of peace within the land of the Zenobians. . . .”
It didn’t take long for me to jump into the BookWorld. Within a few moments, the bustling nighttime crowd in the car park of ToadNewsNetwork studios had vanished from view, to be replaced by a warm, verdant valley where herds of unicorns grazed peacefully under the summer sun. Grammasites wheeled in the blue skies, riding the thermals that rose from the warm grassland.
“So!” I said, turning to Kaine and receiving something of a shock. Beside me was not Yorrick but a middle-aged man holding a Whig Party flag and staring at the crystal-clear waters babbling through a gap in the rocks. I must have grabbed the wrong hand.
“Where am I?” asked the man, who was understandably confused.
“It’s a near-death experience,” I told him hastily. “What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful!”
“Good. Don’t get too fond of it. I’m taking you back.”
I grasped him again, muttered the password under my breath and jumped out of fiction, something I had a lot less trouble with. We arrived behind some dustbins just as Kaine and his entourage were driving off. I ran up to Joffy, who was still waving good-bye, and told him to snap out of it.
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “What happened to you?”
“Don’t ask. C’mon, let’s go home.”
We left the scene as a very excited and confused middle-aged man tried to tell anyone who would listen about his “near-death experience.”
I went to bed past midnight, my head spinning from my experience of Kaine’s almost hypnotic hold of the populace. Still, I wasn’t out of ideas. I could try to grab him again and, failing that, use the eraserhead I had smuggled out of the BookWorld. Destroying him didn’t bother me. I’d be no more guilty of murder than would an author with a delete key. But while Formby opposed him, Kaine would not become dictator, so I had a bit of time to work up a strategy. I could observe and plan. “Time spent doing renaissance,” Mrs. Malaprop used to say, “is never wasted.”
4.
A Town Like Swindon
Formby Denies Kaine
President-for-Life George Formby vetoed Chancellor Kaine’s attempts to make himself dictator of England yesterday during one of the most heated exchanges this nation has ever seen. Kaine’s Ultimate Executive Power Bill, already passed by parliament, requires only the presidential signature to become law. President Formby, speaking from the presidential palace in Wigan, told reporters, “Eeee, I wouldn’t have a ***** like that run a grocer’s, let alone a country!” Chancellor Kaine, angered by the President’s remark, declared Formby “too old to have a say in this nation’s future,” “out of touch” and “a poor singer,” the last of which he was forced to retract after a public outcry.
Article in The Toad, July 13, 1988
It was the morning following Evade the Question Time, and I had slept badly, waking up before Friday, which was unusual. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Kaine. I’d have to follow him to his next public engagement before he discovered that I had returned. I was just thinking about why Joffy and I had nearly been sucked into the whole Yorrick circus when Friday awoke and blinked at me in a breakfast sort of way. I dressed quickly and took him downstairs.
“Welcome to Swindon Breakfast with Toad,” announced the TV presenter as we walked in, “with myself, Warwick Fridge, and the lovely Leigh Onzolent