The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [600]
“That’s excellent news,” I told him. “Jurisfiction will be very happy.”
He paused. “I’m still a bit annoyed that someone told Ophelia about Emma. It wasn’t you, was it?”
“On my honor.”
He got up, bowed and kissed my hand. “Come and visit me, won’t you?”
“You can count on it,” I replied. “Just one question: where on earth did you find Daphne Farquitt? She’s the recluse’s recluse.”
He grinned. “I didn’t. By the morning of the SuperHoop, I had managed to gather about nine people. There’s a limit to how much anti-Kaine sentiment you can muster going door to door in Swindon at two in the morning.”
“So there never was a Farquitt Fan Club?”
“Oh, I’m sure there is somewhere, but Kaine didn’t know it, now, did he?”
I laughed. “I’ve a feeling you’re going to be an asset to Jurisfiction, Hamlet. And I want you to take something with you as a gift from me.”
“A gift? I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those before.”
“No? Well, always a first for everything. I want you to have . . . Alan.”
“The dodo?”
“I think he’d be an invaluable addition to Elsinore Castle—just don’t let him get into the main story.”
Hamlet looked at Alan, who looked back at him longingly.
“Thank you,” he said with as much sincerity as he could. “I’m deeply honored.”
Alan went a bit floppy as Hamlet picked him up, and a few moments later they both vanished back to Elsinore, Hamlet to further continue his work as a career procrastinator, and Alan to cause trouble in the Danish court.
“Hello, Sweetpea.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You did a terrific job over that SuperHoop. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good.”
“Did I tell you that as soon as Zvlkx got hit by that Number 23 bus, the Ultimate Likelihood Index of that Armageddon rose to eighty-three percent?”
“No, you never told me that.”
“Just as well really—I wouldn’t have wanted you to panic.”
“Dad, who was St. Zvlkx?”
He leaned closer. “Don’t tell a soul, but he was someone named Steve Schultz of the Toast Marketing Board. I think I might have recruited him, or he might have approached me to help—I’m not sure. History has rewritten itself so many times I’m really not sure how it was to begin with—it’s a bit like trying to guess the original color of a wall when it’s been repainted eight times. All I can say is that everything turned out okay—and that things are far weirder than we can know. But the main thing is that Goliath now answers to the Toast Marketing Board and Kaine is out of power. The whole thing has been rubber-stamped into historical fact, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“How did you manage to jump Schultz or Zvlkx or whoever he was all the way from the thirteenth century without the ChronoGuard spotting what you were up to?”
“Where do you hide a pebble, Sweetpea?”
“On a beach.”
“And where do you hide a thirteenth-century impostor saint?”
“With . . . lots of other thirteenth-century impostor saints?”
He smiled.
“You sent all twenty-eight of them forward just to hide St. Zvlkx?”
“Twenty-seven, actually—one of them was real. But I didn’t do it alone. I needed someone to whip up a timephoon in the Dark Ages as cover. Someone with remarkable skills as a time traveler. An expert who can surf the time line with a skill I will never possess.”
“Me?”
He chuckled. “No, silly—Friday.”
The little boy looked up when he heard his name and chewed a crayon, made a face and spat the bits on Pickwick, who jumped up in fright and ran away to hide.
“Meet the future head of the ChronoGuard, Sweetpea. How did you think he survived Landen’s eradication?”
I stared at the little boy, who stared back, and smiled.
Dad looked at his watch. “Well, I’ve got to go. Nelson’s up to his old tricks again. Time waits for no man, as we say.”
44.
Final Curtain
Neanderthals Make New Year’s “At Risk” List
Neanderthals, the once extinct cousins of Homo sapien, were yesterday granted “at risk” status along with the Edible Dormouse and Poorly Crested Grebe. Incoming Chancellor Mr. Redmond van de Poste of the Toast Party