The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [667]
“She should be at Checkout Six,” said Friday, leading the way past a ten-foot-wide translucent yellow sphere that was centered on the chair outside the changing rooms. “That’s Reginald Danforth,” murmured Friday. “He assassinated Mahatma Winston Smith al Wazeed during his historic speech to the citizens of the World State in 3419. Looped for seven hundred and ninety-eight years in an eight-minute sliver of time where he’s waiting for his girlfriend, Trudi, to try on a camisole.”
“Does he know he’s looped?”
“Of course.”
I looked at Danforth, who was staring at the floor and clenching and unclenching his fists in frustration.
“How long’s he been in?”
“Thirty-four years. If he tells us who his co-conspirator was, we’ll enlarge his loop from eight minutes to fifteen.”
“Do you loop people just in stores?”
“We used to use dentists’ waiting rooms, bus stops and cinemas during Merchant-Ivory films, as these tended to be natural occurrences of slow time, but there were too many prisoners, so we had to design our own. Temporal-J, Maximum Security—why, what did you think T.J. Maxx was?”
“A place to buy designer-label clothing at reasonable prices?”
He laughed. “The very idea! Next you’ll be telling me that IKEA just sells furniture you have to build yourself.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not. Here she is.”
We had approached the checkout, where a sphere of warm light about eighteen feet wide encompassed most of the till and a line of bored-looking shoppers. Right at the back of the queue was a familiar face: Aornis Hades, younger sister of Acheron. She was a Mnemonomorph—someone with the ability to control memories. I’d defeated her good and proper, twice in the real world and once in my head. She was slim, dark and attractive and dressed in the very latest fashion—but only from when she was looped seven years ago. Mind you, because of the vague meanderings of the fashion industry, she’d been in and out of high style twenty-seven times since then and was currently in—although she’d never know it. To a looped individual, time remains the same.
“You know she can control coincidences?”
“Not anymore,” replied Friday, with a grimness that I found disconcerting in one so young.
“Who are they?” I asked, pointing at the other women in the line for the checkout.
“They’re not prisoners—just real shoppers doing real shopping at the time of her enloopment; Miss Hades is stuck in an eight-minute zone waiting to pay for goods, but she never does. If it’s true what they say about her love of shopping, this punishment is particularly apt.”
“Do I have anything to bargain with?”
Friday looked at the file. “You can stretch her loop by twenty minutes.”
“How do I get to talk to her?”
“Just step inside the sphere of influence.”
I took a deep breath and walked into the globe of yellow light. All of a sudden, normality returned with a jerk. I was back in what seemed like real life. It was raining outside, which was what must have been happening when she was looped. Aornis, well used to the monotonous round of limited dialogue during her eight-minute existence, noticed me immediately.
“Well, well,” she murmured sarcastically, “is it visitors’ day already?”
“Hello, Aornis,” I said with a smile. “Remember me?”
“Very funny. What do you want, Next?”
I offered her a small vanity case with some cosmetics in it that I had picked off a shelf earlier. She didn’t take it.
“Information,” I said.
“Is there a deal in the offing?”
“I can give you another ten minutes. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
She looked at me, then all around her. She knew that people were outside the sphere looking in, but not how many and who. She had the power to wipe memories but not read minds. If she could, she’d know how much I hated her. Mind you, she probably knew that already.
“Next, please!” said the checkout girl, and Aornis put two dresses and a pair of shoes on the counter.
“How’s the family, Thursday—Landen and Friday and the girls?”
“Information, Aornis.”
She took a deep breath as the loop jumped back to