The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [642]
We walked on and presently saw the Book Maintenance Facility hangars in the distance, rising above the low roofs of the street like the airship hangars I knew so well back home. They were always full; book maintenance carried on 24/7. After another five minutes’ walk and with the street expanding dramatically to be able to encompass the vast size of the complex, we arrived outside the Book Maintenance Facility.
11.
The Refit
Books suffer wear and tear, just the same as hip joints, cars and reputations. For this reason all books have to go into the maintenance bay for a periodic refit, either every thirty years or every million readings, whichever comes first. For those books that suffer a high initial readership but then lose it through boredom or insufficient reader intellect, a partial refit may be in order. Salmon Thrusty’s intractable masterpiece The Demonic Couplets has had its first two chapters rebuilt six times, but the rest is relatively unscathed.
Ever since the ProCaths had mounted a guerrilla-style attack on Wuthering Heights during routine maintenance, security had been increased, and tall cast-iron railings now separated the Book Maintenance Facility from the rest of the Well. Heathcliff—possibly the most hated man inside fiction—had not been harmed, partly due to the vigilance of the Jurisfiction agents who were on Heathcliff Protection Duty that day but also due to a misunderstanding of the word “guerrilla,” a woeful lexicological lapse that had left five confused apes dead and the facility littered with bananas. There was now a guard house, too, and it was impossible to get in unless on official business.
“Now, here’s an opportunity,” I whispered to Thursday5, “to test your aggressiveness. These guys can be tricky, so you need to be firm.”
“Firm?”
“Firm.”
She took a deep breath, steeled herself and marched up to the guard house in a meaningful manner.
“Next and Next,” she announced, passing our IDs to a guard who was sitting in a small wooden shed at the gates of the facility. “And if you cause us any trouble, we’ll…not be happy. And then you’ll not be happy, because we can do unhappy things…to people…sometimes.”
“I’m sorry?” said the guard, who had a large white mustache and seemed to be a little deaf.
“I said…ah, how are you?”
“Oh, we’re fine, thank you, missy,” replied the guard amiably. Thursday5 turned to me and gave me the thumbs-up sign, and I smiled. I actually quite liked her, but there was a huge quantity of work to be done before she might be considered Jurisfiction material. At present I was planning on assessing her “potential with retraining” and sending her back to cadet school.
I looked around as the guard stared at our identification and then at us. Above the hangars I could see tall chimneys belching forth clouds of smoke, while in the distance we could hear the ring of hammers and the rumble of machinery.
“Which one is Thursday Next?” asked the guard, staring closely at the almost identical IDs.
“Both of us,” said Thursday5. “I’m Thursday5, and she’s the Outlander.”
“An Outlander?” repeated the guard with great interest. I glared at Thursday5. My Outlander status wasn’t something I liked to bandy about.
“Hey, Bert!” he said to the other guard, who seemed to be on permanent tea break. “We’ve got an Outlander here!”
“No!” he said, getting up from a chair that had its seat polished to a high shine. “Get out of here!”
“What an honor!” said the first guard. “Someone from the real world.” He thought for a moment. “Tell me, if it rains on a really hot day, do sheep shrink?”
“Is that a security question?”
“No, no,” replied the guard quickly. “Bert and I were just discussing it recently.”
This wasn’t unusual. Characters in fiction had a very skewed view of the real world. To them the extreme elements of human experience were commonplace, as they were generally the sorts of issues that made it into books, which left the mundanities of real life somewhat obscure and mysterious. Ask a resident of the Book-World about terminal diseases, loss,