The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [557]
“I’d be pissed off, too.”
We found Stiggins’s house, and I opened the door and walked straight in. I knew a bit about neanderthal customs, and you would never go into a neanderthal home unless you were expected—in which case you treated it as your own and walked in unannounced. The house was built entirely of scrap wood or recycled rubbish and was circular in shape, with a central hearth. It was comfortable and warm and cozy, but not the sort of basic cave I think Bowden expected. There was a TV and proper sofas, chairs and even a hi-fi. Standing next to the fire was Stiggins, and next to him was a slightly smaller neanderthal.
“Welcome!” said Stig. “This is Felicity—we are a partnership.”
His wife walked silently up to us and hugged us both in turn, taking an opportunity to smell us, first in the armpit and then in the hair. I saw Bowden flinch, and Stig gave a small, grunty cough that was a neanderthal laugh.
“Mr. Cable, you are uncomfortable,” observed Stig.
Bowden shrugged. He was uncomfortable, and he knew neanderthals well enough to know that you can’t lie to them.
“I am,” he replied. “I’ve never been in a neanderthal house before.”
“Is it any different to yours?”
“Very,” said Bowden, looking up at the construction of the roof beams, which had been made by gluing oddments of wood together and then planing them into shape.
“Not a single wood screw or bolt, Mr. Cable. Have you heard the noise wood makes when you turn a screw into it? Most uncharitable.”
“Is there anything you don’t make yourself?”
“Not really. You are insulting the raw material if you do not extract all possible use from it. Any cash we earn has to go to our buyback scheme. We may be able to afford our ownership papers by the time we are due to leave.”
“Then what, if you’ll excuse me, is the point?”
“To die free, Mr. Cable. Drink?”
Mrs. Stiggins appeared with four glasses that had been cut from the bottom of wine bottles and offered them to us. Stig drank his straight down, and I tried to do the same and nearly choked—it was not unlike drinking petrol. Bowden did choke, and clasped his throat as if it were on fire. Mr. and Mrs. Stiggins stared at us curiously, then collapsed into an odd series of grunty coughs.
“I’m not sure I see the joke,” said Bowden, eyes streaming.
“It is the neanderthal custom to humiliate guests,” announced Stig, taking our glasses from us. “Yours was potato gin—ours was merely water. Life is good. Have a seat.”
We sat down on the sofa, and Stig poked at the embers in the fire. There was a rabbit on a stick, and I gave a deep sigh of relief it wasn’t going to be beetles for lunch.
“Those croquet players outside,” I began, “do you suppose anything could induce them to play for the Swindon Mallets?”
“No. Only humans define themselves by conflict with other humans. Winning or losing has no meaning to us. Things just are as they are meant to be.”
I thought about offering some money. After all, a month’s salary for an averagely rated player would easily cover a thousand buyback schemes. But neanderthals are funny about money—especially money that they don’t think they’ve earned. I kept quiet.
“Have you had any more thoughts about the cloned Shakespeares?” asked Bowden.
Stig thought for a moment, twitched his nose, turned the rabbit and then went to a large rolltop bureau and returned with a manila folder—the genome report he had got from Mr. Rumplunkett.
“Definitely clones,” he said, “and whoever built them covered their tracks—the serial numbers are scrubbed from the cells, and the manufacturer’s information is missing from the DNA. On a molecular level, they might have been built anywhere.”
“Stig,” I said, thinking of Hamlet, “I can’t stress how important it is that I find a WillClone—and soon.”
“We haven’t finished, Miss Next. See this?”
He handed me a spectroscopic evaluation of Mr. Shaxtper’s teeth, and I looked at the zigzag graph uncomprehendingly.
“We do this test