The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [743]
We stared at each other for a moment, she with a sort of numbed look of disbelief, and I—I hoped—with the expression that a wife rightly reserves for someone who has slept with her husband.
“Meddling fool!” she said at last, waving a copy of Pride and Prejudice that she’d been reading. “I can only think this is your doing. You may have won the first round, but it’s merely a postponement—we’ll have the reality book show back on track after the first three chapters have run their course!”
“I’m going to erase you,” I said in a quiet voice, “and, what’s more, enjoy it.”
She stared at me with a vague look of triumph. “Then I was wrong,” she replied. “We are alike.”
I didn’t have time to answer. She took to her heels and ran off down the corridor toward the debating chamber. I followed; if we were externally identical, then the first to plead her case to the CofG had a clear advantage.
Thinking about it later, the pair of us running hell for leather down the corridors must have been quite a sight, but probably not that unusual, given the somewhat curious nature of fiction. Annoyingly, we were evenly matched in speed and stamina, and her ten-foot head start was still there when we arrived at the main debating chamber’s door two minutes and many startled CofG employees later. She had to slow down at the door, and as she did so, I made a flying tackle and grabbed her around the waist. Toppled by the momentum, the pair of us went sprawling headlong on the carpet, much to the astonishment of three heavily armed Danverclones who were just inside the door.
The strange thing about fighting with yourself is that not only are you of equal weight, strength and skill, but you both know all the same moves. After we had grappled and rolled around on the carpet for about five minutes and achieved nothing but a lot of grunting and strained muscles, my mind started to shift and think about other ways in which to win—something my opponent did at exactly the same moment—and we both switched tactics and went for each other’s throats. The most this achieved was that Landen’s birthday locket was torn off, something that drove me to a rage I never knew I had.
I knocked her hand away, rolled on top of her and punched her hard in the face. She went limp, and I climbed off, breathing hard, picked up my bag and locket and turned to Jobsworth and the rest of the security council, who had come into the corridor to watch.
“Arrest her,” I panted, wiping a small amount of blood from my lip, “and bind her well.”
Jobsworth looked at me and the other Thursday, then beckoned to the Danverclones to do as I asked.
She was still groggy but seemed to regain enough consciousness to yell, “Wait, wait! She’s not the real Thursday—I am!”
Jobsworth, Barksdale and Baxter all swiveled their heads to me, and even the Danverclones took notice. In the CofG, my veto counted for everything, and if there was any doubt at all over which was the correct Thursday, I had to quash it here and now.
“Want me to prove it?” I said. “Here it is: The interactive book project stops now.”
Jobsworth’s face fell. “Stop it? But you were all for it not less than an hour ago!”
“That wasn’t me,” I said, pointing an accusing finger at the disheveled and now-defeated Thursday, who was at that moment being cuffed by the Danverclones. “It was the other Thursday, the one from the crappy-as-hell TN series, who has been trying, for reasons of her own personal vindictiveness, to screw up everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
“She’s lying!” said the other Thursday, who now had her arms secured behind her back and still seemed unsteady from when I’d hit her. “She’s the ersatz Thursday—I’m the real one!”
“You want more proof?” I said. “Okay. I’m also reinforcing my veto on the insane decision to invade the Racy Novel genre. Diplomacy is the key.