Jasper Fforde Thursday Next 4 Something Rotten

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I shook his hand. He seemed pretty much the same as any other SF writers I had
ever met. Slightly geeky but pleasant enough.
'You write the Emperor Zhark books,' I observed.
He winced slightly.
'No one ever talks about the decent stuff I write,' he moaned, 'they just ask
me for more and more Zhark stuff. I did it as a joke a pastiche of bad
science fiction, and blow me down if it isn't the most popular thing I've ever
done.'
I remembered what Emperor Zhark had told me.
'You're going to kill him off, aren't you?'
Handley started.
'How did you know that?'
'She works for SO-27,' explained Landen, 'they know everything
.'
'I thought you guys were more hooked on the classics?'
'We deal with all genres,' I explained. 'For reasons that I can't reveal, I
advise you to maroon Zhark on an uninhabited planet rather than submit him to
the humiliation of a public execution.'
Handley laughed.
'You talk about him as if he were a real person!'
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'She takes her work very seriously, Handley,' said Landen without the glimmer
of a smile. 'I'd advise you to consider very seriously anything she happens to
say. Wheels within wheels, Handley.'
But Handley was adamant.
'I'm going to kill him off so utterly and completely that no one will ever ask
me for another Zhark novel again. Thanks for lending me the book, Land. I'll
see myself out.'
'Is Handley in danger?' asked Landen as soon as he had gone.
'Quite possibly. I'm not sure the Zharkian death ray works in the real world,
and I'd hate for Handley to be the one who finds out.'
'This is a BookWorld thing, isn't it? Let's just change the subject. What did
your stalker want?'
I smiled.
'You know, Landen, things are beginning to look up. I must call Bowden.'
I quickly dialled his number.
'Bowd? It's Thursday. I've figured out how we're going to get across the
border. Set everything up for tomorrow morning. We'll muster at Leigh Delamere
at eight ... I can't tell you . . . Stig and Millon . . . see you there.
'Bye.'
I called Stig and told him the same, then kissed Landen and asked him whether
he'd mind feeding Friday on his own. He didn't, of course, and I dashed off to
speak to Mycroft.
I was back in time to help Landen scrub the food off Friday, read him a story
and put him to bed. It wasn't late but we went to bed ourselves. Tonight there
was no shyness or confusion and we undressed quickly. He pushed me back on to
the bed and with his fingertips
'Wait!' I cried out.
'What?'
'I can't concentrate with all those people !'
Landen looked round the empty bedroom.
'What people?'
'Those people,' I repeated, waving a hand in the general direction of
everywhere, 'the ones reading us.'
Landen stared at me and raised an eyebrow. I felt stupid, relaxed and gave out
a nervous giggle.
'Sorry. I've been living inside fiction for too long; sometimes I get this
weird feeling that you, me and everything else are just, well, characters in a
book or something.'
'Plainly, that is ridiculous.'
'I know, I know. I'm sorry. Where were we?'
'Just here.'
32
Area 21: The Elan
FREEDOM OF |||||||| ACT
A STEP CLOSER, ANNOUNCES MR ||||||||
Open government came one step closer yesterday with the announcement that Mr
|||||| would lend his weight to the Freedom of ||||||| Act. The act, which
aims to bring once top-||||| information from ||||||||||||| into hands of the
|||||||, was halted as a 'great leap forward' by Mr ||||||||||||, the
Departmnt of |||||||||||||||'s senior ||||||||||||. The chief opponent to the
draft bill, Mr |||||||||||, gave his assurance that 'as long as my name is
|||||||||||| I won't allow this ||||||||||| to be passed'.
Article in
The
|||||||||| newspaper, |||||||||||||||| July 19|||||
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'So, what's the plan?' asked Bowden as we drove towards the Welsh border town
of Hay-on-Wye. It was about ten in the morning, and we were travelling in
Bowden's Welsh-built Griffin Sportina with
Millon de Floss and Stig in the back seat. Behind us was a convoy of ten
lorries, all loaded with banned
Danish books.
'Well,' I said, 'ever thought it odd that Parliament just roll over and do
anything that Kaine asks?'
'I've given up even trying to understand Parliament,' said Bowden.
'They're all snivelling toadies,' put in Millon.
'If you even need a government,' added Stig, 'you are a life form flawed
beyond redemption.'
'I was confused, too,' I continued. 'A government wholly agreeable to the
worst excesses of Kaine could mean only one thing: some form of short-range
mind control wielded by unscrupulous power brokers."
'Now that's my kind of theory!' exclaimed Millon excitedly.
'I couldn't figure it out at first, but then when I was up at Goliathopolis I
felt it myself. A sort of mind-numbing go-with-the-flow feeling when I just
wanted to follow the path of least resistance, no matter how pointless, or
wrong. I had seen its effect at the
Evade the Question Time
TV show, too
the front row were eating out of Kaine's hand, no matter what he said.'
'So what's the connection?'
'I felt it again in Mycroft's lab. It was only when Landen made a sarcastic
comment that I twigged. The ovinator. We all thought the "ovine" part of it
was to do with eggs, but it's not. It's to do with sheep
. The ovinator transmits sub-alpha brain waves that inhibit free will and
instil sheep-like tendencies into the minds of anyone close by. It can be
tuned to the user so they are unaffected; it's possible that Goliath may have
developed a long-range version called the Ovitron and an anti-serum. Mycroft
thinks he probably invented it to transmit public health messages, but he
can't remember. Goliath get hold of it, Stricknene gives it to Kaine -bingo.
Parliament do everything Kaine asks. The only reason Formby is still
anti-Yorrick is because he refuses to go anywhere near him.'
There was silence in the car.
'What can we do about it?'
'Mycroft's working on an ovi-negator that should cancel it out, but we carry
on with our plans as before.
The Elan - and win the Superhoop.'
'Even I'm finding this hard to believe,' murmured Millon, 'and that's a first
for me.'
'How does it get us out of England?' asked Bowden.
I patted the briefcase that was sitting on my lap.
'With the ovinator on our side, no one will want to oppose.us.'
'I'm not sure that's morally acceptable,' said Bowden. 'I mean, doesn't that
make us as bad as Kaine?'
'I think we should stop and talk this through,' added Millon.
'It's one thing making up stories about mind control experiments, but quite
another actually using them.'
I opened the briefcase and switched the ovinator on. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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