The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [761]
“But isn’t that what happens in most Farquitt novels? Maidservant ravaged by cruel squire?”
“You don’t understand, Thursday. Mimi and I are in love.”
“Ah!” I replied slowly, thinking of Landen. “That can change things.”
“Come,” said Deane, beckoning me through the hub and dodging the footnoterphone messages, “we have made our home in a disused branch line—after Woolf wrote To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, the Council of Genres thought Stream of Consciousness would be the next Detective—they built a large hub to support the rackloads of novels that never appeared.”
We turned into a large tunnel about the size of the underground back in Swindon, and the messages whizzed back and forth, almost filling the tube to capacity.
After a few hundred yards we came to another hub and took the least used—barely two or three messages a minute buzzed languidly past, and these seemed to be lost; they moved around vaguely for a moment and then evaporated. The sides of the tube were less shiny, rubbish had collected at the bottom and water leaked in from the roof. Every now and then we passed small unused offshoots, built to support books that were planned but never written.
“Why did you come for me, Vern?”
“Because I don’t believe you would kill Miss Havisham, and I love stories as much as anyone. UltraWordTM is flawed, and I’m not going to see it dominate the BookWorld if I can help it.”
The tunnel opened out into a large chamber where a settlement of sorts had been built from rubbish and scrap wood—items that could be removed from the BookWorld without anyone noticing. The buildings were little more than tents with the orange flicker of oil lamps from within.
“Vern!” A dark-haired young woman waved at him from the nearest tent. She was heavily pregnant and Deane rushed up to hug her affectionately. I watched them with a certain degree of jealousy. I noticed I had placed my hand on my own tum quite subconsciously. I sighed and pushed it to the back of my mind.
“Mimi, this is Thursday,” said Vern. I shook her hand and she led us into their tent, offering me a small wooden box to sit on that I noticed had once been used to held past tenses.
“So what’s wrong with UltraWordTM?” I asked, my curiosity overcoming me.
“Flawed by the need for control,” he said slowly. “Think the BookWorld is overregulated? Believe me, it’s an anarchist’s dreamworld compared to the future seen by TGC!”
And so, as quickly as possible, he told me exactly what he had discovered. The problem was, I needed something more than his theories. To do battle with Tweed and TGC, I needed proof.
“Proof,” said Deane, “yes, that was always the problem. Let me show you what Perkins left us.”
He returned with a birdcage containing a skylark and set it upon the table.
I looked at the bird and the bird looked back.
“This is the proof?”
“So Perkins said.”
“Do you have any idea what he meant?”
“None at all.” Deane sighed. “He was Minotaur shit long before he tried to explain it to any of us.”
I leaned forward for a closer look and smelt—cantaloupes.
“It’s UltraWordTM,” I breathed.
“It is?” echoed Deane in surprise. “How can you tell?”
“It’s an Outlander thing. I have a plan, but to do it I have to be at liberty—and free from the Bellman’s suspicions.”
“I can arrange that.” Deane smiled. “Come on, let’s do this thing before it gets any worse.”
1. Mimi was standing outside the footnoterphone tube entrance to Text Grand Central and looking at her watch. The words sped backwards and forwards, darting inside the tunnel, which had a sturdy grate across it streaked with rust. Every now and then messages were deflected off. It was a textual sieve—used here for deleting unwanted junkfootnoterphone messages.
She gestured to the man accompanying her and stepped back.
Quasimodo—who had found sanctuary, finally—grunted in reply and gently placed Das Kapital next to Mein Kampf, separating them only by a thin