The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [78]
Victor sat down.
“It’s signed Acheron. Imagine Martin Chuzzlewit without Chuzzlewit!” he exclaimed earnestly, running through all the possibilities. “The book would end within a chapter. Can you imagine the other characters sitting around, waiting for a lead character who never appears? It would be like trying to stage Hamlet without the prince!”
“So what do we do?” asked Bowden.
“Unless you have a Gainsborough you don’t want and ten million in loose change, we take this to Braxton.”
Jack Schitt was in Braxton Hicks’s office when we entered. He didn’t offer to leave when we told Hicks it was important and Hicks didn’t ask him to.
“So what’s up?” asked Braxton, glancing at Schitt, who was practicing his putting on the carpet.
“Hades is alive,” I told him, staring at Jack Schitt, who raised an eyebrow.
“Goodness!” muttered Schitt in an unconvincing tone. “That is a surprise.”
We ignored him.
“Read this,” said Victor, handing across Acheron’s note in a cellophane wrapper. Braxton read it before passing it to Schitt.
“Place the ad, Officer Next,” said Braxton loftily. “You seem to have impressed Acheron enough for him to trust you. I’ll speak to my superiors about his demands and you can inform me when he contacts you again.”
He stood up to let us know that the interview had ended but I stayed seated.
“What’s going on, sir?”
“Classified, Next. We’d like you to make the drop for us but that’s the only way you can be involved in the operation. Mr. Schitt has an extremely well-trained squad behind him who will take care of Hades’s capture. Good-day.”
Still I didn’t rise.
“You’re going to have to tell me more, sir. My uncle is involved, and if you want me to play ball I’m going to have to know what’s happening.”
Braxton Hicks looked at me and narrowed his eyes.
“I’m afraid—”
“What the hell,” interjected Schitt. “Tell ’em.”
Braxton looked at Schitt, who continued to practice his putting.
“You may have the honor, Schitt,” said Braxton angrily. “It’s your show after all.”
Schitt shrugged and finished the putt. The ball hit its mark and he smiled.
“Over the last hundred years there has been an inexplicable cross-fertilization between works of fiction and reality. We know that Mr. Analogy has been investigating the phenomenon for some time, and we know about Mr. Glubb and several other characters who have crossed into books. We knew of no one to have returned so we considered it a one-way journey. Christopher Sly changed all that for us.”
“You have him?” asked Victor.
“No; he went back. Quite of his own accord, although unfortunately because he was so drunk he went back not to Will’s version of The Taming of the Shrew, but to an uneven rendition in one of the Bad Quartos. Melted into thin air one day while under observation.”
He paused for effect and polished his putter with a large red-spotted handkerchief.
“For some time now, the Goliath Advanced Weapons Division has been working on a device that will open a door into a work of fiction. After thirty years of research and untold expenditure, all we have managed to do is synthesize a poor-quality cheddar from volumes one to eight of The World of Cheese. We knew that Hades was interested, and there was talk of clandestine experiments here in England. When the Chuzzlewit manuscript was stolen and we found that Hades had it, I knew we were on the right track. Your uncle’s kidnapping suggested that he had perfected the machine and the Quaverley extraction proved it. We’ll get Hades, although it’s the machine that we really want.”
“You forget,” I said slowly, “that the machine does not belong to you; knowing my uncle he’d destroy the idea forever rather than sell out to the military.”
“We know all about Mycroft, Miss Next. He will learn that such a quantum leap in scientific thought should not be the property of a man who is incapable of understanding the true potential of his device. The technology belongs to the nation.”
“You’re wrong,” I said obstinately, getting up to leave. “About as wrong as you can possibly