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they got up to was anyone s guess. Whatis known is that the individual
operatives themselves are slightly unbalanced. If you want to be a SpecOp,
the saying goes, act kinda weird.
My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don t mean that he was ugly
or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had
the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a Colonel in
the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we
didn t know he d gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our
house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication Order open-dated at both
ends and demanded to know where and when he was. Dad has remained at liberty
ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole
ser vice as morally and historically corrupt and was fighting a one-man war
against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Stemporal
Temp& Tability.Temporal & Stemp& Special
Why don t we just hold it right there? I said before Thursday5 tied her
tongue in knots.
I m sorry, she said with a sigh. I think my biorhythms must be out of
whack.
Remember what we talked about? I asked her, raising an eyebrow.
Or perhaps it s just a tricky line to say. Here goes:
Special& Temporal& Stability. Got it! She smiled proudly at her accomplishment.
Then a stab of self-doubt crossed her face. But aside from that, I m doing
okay, right?
You re doing fine.
We were standing in the opening chapter ofThe Eyre Affair, or at least the
refurbished first chapter. Evil Thursday s erasure caused a few ruffled
feathers at Text Grand Central, especially when Alice-PON-24330 said that
while happy to keep the series running for the time being, she was not that
keen about taking on the role permanently what with all the sex, guns,
swearing and stuff. There were talks of scrapping the series until I had a
brain wave. With the erasure ofThe Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, Thursday5 was
now bookless and needed a place to live;she could take over. Clearly, there
had to be a few changes quite a lot actually but I didn t mind; in fact, I
welcomed it. I applied for a whole raft of internal plot adjustments, and
Senator Jobsworth, still eager to make amends and keep his job after the
reality book farrago, was only too happy to accede to my wishes as long as I
at leasttried to make the series commercial.
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Can we get a move on? asked Gerry, the first assistant imaginator. If we
don t get to the end of this chapter by lunchtime, we re going to get behind
schedule for the scene at Gad s Hill tomorrow.
I left them to it and walked to the back of Stanford Brookes s café in
London, faithfully re-created from my memory and the place where the newEyre
Affair starts, rather than at a burned-out house belonging to Landen, where,
in point of fact, I didn t live for another two years. I watched as the
imaginators, characters and technicians translated the story into storycode
text to be uploaded to the engines at TGC and eventually to replace the
existing TN series. Perhaps, I mused to myself, life might be getting back to
normal after all.
It had been a month since we d erasedPepys Fiasco, and Racy Novel, despite
all manner of threats, had to admit that dirty-bomb technology was still very
much in the early stages, so Feminist and Ecclesiastical breathed a combined
sigh of relief and returned to arguing with each other about the
malecentricity of religion.
At the same time, the gentle elongation of the Now was beginning to take
effect: The Read-O-Meter had been steadily clicking upward as ReadRates once
again began to rise. In the Outland the reality TV craze was now fortunately
on the wane Samaritan Kidney Swaphad so few viewers that by the second week
they became desperate and threatened to shoot a puppy on live TV unless a
million people phoned in. They had 2 million complaints and were closed down.
Bowden and I visited Booktastic! a week ago to find they now had two entire
sections of books because, as the manager explained, there had been a sudden
demand.
As part of the whole ChronoGuard decommissioning process, Dad had been
reactualized from his state of quasi nonexistence and turned up at Mum s
carrying a small suitcase and a bunch of flowers. We had a terrific reunion
for him, and I invited Major Pickles along, who seemed to hit it off rather
well with Aunt Polly.
On other matters, I traveled to Goliathopolis to meet with Jack Schitt and
return his wife s necklace, with an explanation of what had happened to her on
board theHesperus . He took the jewelry and the details of her death in stony
silence, thanked me and was gone. John Henry Goliath made no appearance, and I
didn t tell anyone at Goliath that theAusten Rover was, as far as we knew,
still adrift without power in intragenre space somewhere between Poetry and
Maritime. I didn t know whether this was the end of the Book Project or not,
but TGC was taking no chances and had erected a battery of Textual Sieves in
the direction of the Outland and marked any potential transfictional
incursions as high priority.
I walked out of the café to where Isambard Kingdom Buñuel was waiting for me.
We were standing in Hangar Three among the fabric ofAffair, ready to be bolted
in. Buñuel had already built a reasonable facsimile of Swindon that included
my mum s house and the Literary Detectives office, and he was just getting
started on Thornfield Hall, Rochester s house.
We ve pensketched the real Thornfield, he explained, showing me some
drawings for approval, but we were kind of think-worthing how your Porsche
was painted?
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Do you know Escher sReptiles ?
Yes.
It s like that only in red, blue and green.
How about the Prose Portal?
I thought for a moment. A sort of large leatherbound book covered in knobs,
dials and knife switches.
He made a note. And the unextincted Pickwick?
About so high and not very bright.
Did you bring some snapimagery?
I rummaged in my shoulder bag, brought out a wad of snaps and went through
them.
That s Pickers when she still had feathers. It s blurred because she blinked
and fell over, but it s probably the best. And this is Landen, and that s
Joffy, and that s Landen again just before his trousers caught fire that
washilarious and this is Mycroft and Polly. You don t need pictures of
Friday, Tuesday or Jenny do you?
Only Friday birth-plus-two forSomething Rotten .
Here, I said, selecting one from the stack. This was taken on his second
birthday.
Buñuel recoiled in shock. What s that strangeturbing stick-brownymass on his
face? Some species of alien facehugger or somewhat?
No, no, I said hurriedly, that s chocolate cake. He didn t master the fine
art of cutlery until& well, he s yet to figure it out, actually.
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