The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [653]
“No reason. Where’s Friday?”
“In his room. I made him have a shower, so he’s in a bit of a snot.”
“Plock.”
“A clean snot is better than a dirty snot I suppose. And Jenny?”
“Watching TV.”
I called out, “Hey, Jenny!” but there was no answer.
“Plock.”
“She’s upstairs in her room.”
I looked at the hall clock. We still had a half hour until we had to go to the ChronoGuard’s career-advisory pre sen ta tion.
“PLOCK!”
“Yes, yes, hello, Pickwick—how’s this?”
I showed her the finished blue-and-white sweater, and before she could even think of complaining, I had slipped it over her featherless body. Landen and I stared at her this way and that, trying to figure out if it was for the better or the worse.
“It makes her look like something out of the Cornish Blue pottery cata log,” said Landen at last.
“Or a very large licorice allsort,” I added.
Pickwick glared at us sullenly, then realized she was a good deal warmer and hopped off the kitchen table and trotted down the corridor to try to look in the mirror, which was unfortunately just too high, so she spent the next half hour jumping up and down trying to catch a glimpse of herself.
“Hi, Mum,” said Friday, looking vaguely presentable as he walked down the stairs.
“Hello, Sweetpea,” I said, passing him the CD Polly had given me. “I got this for you. It’s an early release of Hosing the Dolly. Check out the guitar riff on the second track.”
“Cool,” replied Friday, visibly impressed in a “nothing impresses me” sort of way. “How did you get hold of it?”
“Oh, you know,” I said offhandedly. “I have friends in the recording industry. I wasn’t always just a boring mum, you know.”
“Polly gave it to you, didn’t she?”
I sighed. “Yes. Ready to go?”
Landen joined us, and he and I moved toward the door. Friday stood where he was.
“Do I have to?”
“You promised. And there isn’t another ChronoGuard career-advisory meeting in Swindon for another six months.”
“I don’t want to work in the time industry.”
“Listen,” I said, my voice rising as I finally lost patience, “get your lazy butt out the door—okay?”
He knew better than to argue with angry-determined Mum. Landen knocked on the partition wall, and a minute later our neighbor Mrs. Berko-Boyler was on the doorstep wearing a pink quilted dressing gown, her hair in curlers.
“Good evening, Mrs. Berko-Boyler,” I said.
“Is it?” she said with a snarl. “Is it really?”
“We’ll be about an hour,” explained Landen, who was more skilled at dealing with our volatile yet oddly helpful neighbor.
“Do you know the last time Mr. Berko-Boyler took me out anywhere?” she asked, scowling at all three of us.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Saturday.”
“Well, that’s not that long ago—”
“Saturday, October the sixth, 1983,” she said with a contemptuous sniff, and shuffled past us into the living room. “Nineteen years ago. Makes me sick, I tell you. Hello, Tuesday,” she said in a kindlier tone. “Where’s your sister?”
We walked down to the tram stop in silence. Friday’s lack of interest in the ChronoGuard was a matter not only of annoyance but surprise. The Standard History Eventline had him joining the industry three years ago on their Junior Time Scout program, something that he had failed to do despite our efforts and those of the ChronoGuard, which was as concerned as we were. But we couldn’t force him either—time was the glue of the cosmos and had to be eased apart—push destiny too hard and it had an annoying habit of pushing back. He had to join the ChronoGuard, but it had to be his decision. Every way you looked at it, time was out of joint.
14.
The ChronoGuard
SpecOps-12 is the ChronoGuard, the governmental department dealing with Temporal Stability. Its job is to maintain the integrity of the Standard History Eventline (SHE) and police the time stream against any unauthorized changes or usage. Its most brilliant work is never noticed, as changes in the past always seem to have been that way. Planet-destroying cataclysms generally happen twice a week but are carefully rerouted by skilled ChronoGuard operatives. The citizenry never notices