The Eyre Affair

by Jasper Fforde

  Bowden had been watching what was going on behind us. As he and I drove toward the instability the officers’ movements seemed to accelerate until they were just a blur. The cars that had been blocking the carriageway were turned around and directed swiftly back down the hard shoulder at a furious rate. Bowden also noticed the sun rising rapidly behind us and wondered quite what he had let himself in for.

  The green sedan had two occupants; a man and a woman. The woman was asleep and the driver was looking at the dark hole that had opened up in front of them. I shouted to him to stop. He wound down his window and I repeated myself, added “SpecOps!” and waved my ID. He dutifully applied his brakes and his stoplights came on, puncturing the darkness. Three minutes and twenty-six seconds had elapsed since we had begun our journey.

  From where the ChronoGuard were standing, they could just see the brake lights on the green sedan come languidly on in the funnel of darkness that was the event’s influence. They watched the progress of the green sedan over the next ten minutes as it made an almost imperceptible turn toward the hard shoulder. It was nearly 10 A.M. and an advance ChronoGuard outfit had arrived direct from Wareham. Their equipment and operatives were being airlifted in an SO-12 Chinook helicopter, and Colonel Rutter had flown ahead to see what needed to be done. He had been surprised that two ordinary officers had volunteered for this hazardous duty, especially as nobody could tell him who we were. Even a check of my car registration didn’t help, as it was still listed as belonging to the garage I had bought it from. The only positive thing about the whole damn mess, he noted, was the fact that the passenger seemed to be holding a sphere of some sort. If the hole grew any bigger and time slowed down even more it might take them several months to reach us, even in the fastest vehicle they had. He lowered the binoculars and sighed. It was a stinking, lousy, lonely job. He had been working in the ChronoGuard for almost forty years, Standard Earth Time. In logged work time he was 209. In his own personal physiological time he was barely

  28. His children were older than him and his wife was in a nursing home. He had thought the higher rates of pay would compensate him for any problems, but they didn’t.

  As the green sedan fell quickly away behind us, Bowden again looked back and saw the sun rising faster and higher. A helicopter arrived in a flash with the distinctive “CG” motif of the ChronoGuard. Ahead of us now there was only the motorcyclist, who seemed to be perilously close to the dark, swirling hole. He wore red leathers and was driving a top-of-the-range Triumph motorcycle, ironically enough about the only bike capable of escape from the vortex if he had known what the problem was. We had taken another six minutes to catch up with him and as we approached a roaring sound started to rise above the wind noise; the sort of scream a typhoon might make as it passed over the top of you. We were still about twelve feet behind and finding it difficult to keep up. The speedometer needle on the Porsche touched ninety as we roared along together. I blew my horn but the screaming drowned it out.

  “Get ready!” I shouted to Bowden as the wind whipped our hair and the air tugged at our clothes. I flashed my lights at the bike again and at last he saw us. He turned around and waved, mistook our intent for a desire to initiate a race, kicked down a gear and accelerated away. The vortex caught him in an instant and he seemed to stretch out and around and inside out as he flowed rapidly into the instability; within what appeared to be a second he had gone. As soon as I thought we could get no closer I stamped on the brakes and yelled:

  “Now!”

  Smoke poured off the tires as we careened across the tarmac; Bowden threw the basketball, which seemed to swell in size with the hole, the ball flattening to a disc and the hole stretching out to a line. We saw the basketball hit the hole, bounce once and let us through. I glanced at the watch as we tipped through into the abyss, the basketball shutting out the last glimpse of the world we had left behind as we dropped through to Elsewhere. Up until the point we passed the event, twelve minutes and forty-one seconds had elapsed. Outside it had been closer to seven hours.

  “Motorcycle’s gone,” remarked Colonel Rutter. His second-in-command grunted in reply. He didn’t approve of non-Chronos attempting his work. They had managed to maintain the job’s mysticism for over five decades with the wages to suit; have-a-go heroes could only serve to weaken people’s undying trust in what they did. It wasn’t a difficult job; it just took a long time. He had mended a similar rent in spacetime that had opened up in Weybridge’s municipal park just between the floral clock and the bandstand. The job itself had taken ten minutes; he had simply walked in and stuck a tennis ball across the hole while outside seven months flashed by—seven months on double pay plus privileges, thank you very much.

  The ChronoGuard operatives set up a large clock facing inward so any operatives within the field’s influence would know what was happening. A similar clock on the back of the helicopter gave the officers outside a good idea of how slow time was running within.

  After the motorcycle disappeared they waited another half-an-hour to see what would happen. They watched Bowden slowly rise and throw what appeared to be a basketball.

  “Too late,” murmured Rutter, having seen this sort of thing before. He ordered his men into action, and they were just starting to crank up the rotors of the helicopter when the darkness around the hole evaporated. The night slid back and a clear road confronted them. They could see the people in the green sedan get out and look around in amazement at the sudden day. A hundred yards farther on, the basketball had neatly blocked the tear and now stood trembling slightly in midair as the vortex behind the rip sucked at the ball. Within a minute the tear healed and the basketball dropped harmlessly to the asphalt, bouncing a few times before rolling to the side of the road. The sky was clear and there was no evidence that time wasn’t the same as it had always been. But of the Datsun, the motorcyclist and the brightly painted sports car, there was no trace at all.

  My car slid on and on. The motorway had been replaced by a swirling mass of light and color that had no meaning to either of us. Occasionally a coherent image would emerge from the murk and on several occasions we thought we had arrived back in a stable time, but were soon whisked back into the vortex, the typhoon raging in our ears. The first occasion was on a road somewhere in the Home Counties. It looked like winter, and ahead of us a lime-green Austin Allegro estate pulled out from a slip road. I swerved and drove past at great speed, sounding my horn angrily. That image collapsed abruptly and fragmented itself into the dirty hold of a ship. The car was wedged between two packing cases, the closest of which was bound for Shanghai. The howl of the vortex had diminished, but we could hear a new roar, the roar of a storm at sea. The ship wallowed and Bowden and I looked at one another, unsure as to whether this was the end of the journey or not. The roaring sound grew as the dank hold folded back into itself and vanished, only to be replaced by a white hospital ward. The tempest subsided, the car’s engine ticking over happily. In the only occupied bed there was a drowsy and confused woman with her arm in a sling. I knew what I had to say.

  “Thursday—!” I shouted excitedly.

  The woman in the bed frowned. She looked across at Bowden, who waved back cheerily.

  “He didn’t die!” I continued, saying now what I knew to be the truth. I could hear the tempest starting to howl again. It wouldn’t be long before we were taken away.

  “The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don’t die that easily! Take the Litera Tec job in Swindon!”

  The woman in the bed just had time to repeat my last word before the ceiling and floor opened up and we plummeted back into the maelstrom. After a dazzling display of colorful noise and loud light, the vortex slid back to be replaced by the parking lot of a motorway services somewhere. The tempest slowed and stopped.

  “Is this it?” asked Bowden.

  “I don’t know.”

  It was night and the streetlamps cast an orange glow over the parking lot, the roadway shiny from recent rain.
A car pulled in next to us; it was a large Pontiac containing a family. The wife was berating her husband for falling asleep at the wheel and the children were crying. It looked like it had been a near-miss.

  “Excuse me!” I yelled. The man wound down his window.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s the date?”

  “The date?”

  “It’s July 8,” replied the man’s wife, shooting him and me an annoyed glance.

  I thanked her and turned back to Bowden.

  “We’re three weeks in the past?” he queried.

  “Or fifty-six weeks into the future.”

  “Or one hundred and eight.”

  “I’m going to find out where we are.”

  I turned off the ignition and got out. Bowden joined me as we walked toward the cafeteria. Beyond the building we could see the motorway, and beyond that the connecting bridge to the services on the opposite motorway.

  Several tow trucks drove past us with empty cars hitched to the back of them.

  “Something’s not right.”

  “I agree,” replied Bowden. “But what?”

  Suddenly, the doors to the cafeteria burst open and a woman pushed her way out. She was carrying a gun and pushing a man in front of her, who stumbled as they hurried out. Bowden pulled me behind a parked van. We peered cautiously out and saw that the woman had unwelcome company; several men had appeared seemingly from nowhere and all of them were armed.

  “What the?—” I whispered, suddenly realizing what was happening. “That’s me!”

  And so it was. I looked slightly older but it was definitely me. Bowden had noticed too.

  “I’m not sure I like what you’ve done with your hair.”

  “You prefer it long?”

  “Of course.”

  We watched as one of the three men told the other me to drop her gun. I-me-she said something we couldn’t hear and then put her gun down, releasing her hold on the man, who was then grabbed roughly by one of the other men.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  “We’ve got to go!” replied Bowden.

  “And leave me like this?”

  “Look.”

  He pointed at the car. It was shaking slightly as a localized gust of wind seemed to batter it.

  “I can’t leave her—me—in this predicament!”

  But Bowden was pulling me toward the car, which was rocking more violently and starting to fade.

  “Wait!”

  I struggled free, pulled out my automatic and hid it behind one of the wheels of the nearest car, then ran after Bowden and leaped into the back of the Speedster. I was just in time. There was a bright flash and a peal of thunder and then silence. I opened an eye. It was daylight. I looked at Bowden, who had made it into the driver’s seat. The motorway services car park had vanished and in its place was a quiet country lane. The journey was over.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  Bowden felt the three-day stubble that had inexplicably grown on his chin.

  “I think so. How about you?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  I checked my shoulder holster. It was empty.

  “I’m bursting for a pee, though. I feel like I haven’t gone for a week.”

  Bowden made a pained expression and nodded.

  “I think I could say the same.”

  I nipped behind a wall. Bowden walked stiffly across to the other side of the road and relieved himself in the hedge.

  “Where do you suppose we are?” I shouted to Bowden from behind the wall. “Or more to the point, when?”

  “Car twenty-eight,” crackled the wireless, “come in please.”

  “Who knows?” called out Bowden over his shoulder. “But if you want to try that again you can do it with someone else.”

  Much relieved, we reconvened at the car. It was a beautiful day, dry and quite warm. The smell of haymaking was in the air, and in the distance we could hear a tractor lumbering across a field.

  “What was all that motorway services thing about?” asked Bowden. “Last Thursday or next Thursday?”

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t ask me to explain. I just hope I got out of that jam. Those guys didn’t look as though they were out collecting for the church fund.”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “I guess. I wonder who that man was I was trying to protect?”

  “Search me.”

  I sat on the hood and donned a pair of dark glasses. Bowden walked to a gate and looked over. In a dip in the valley was a village built of gray stone, and in the field a herd of cows was grazing peacefully.

  Bowden pointed to a milestone he had found.

  “That’s a spot of luck.”

  The milestone told him we were six miles from Haworth.

  I wasn’t listening to him. I was now puzzling over seeing myself in the hospital bed. If I hadn’t seen myself I wouldn’t have gone to Swindon and if I hadn’t gone to Swindon I wouldn’t have been able to warn myself to go there. Doubtless it would make complete sense to my father, but I might well go nuts trying to figure it out.

  “Car twenty-eight,” said the wireless, “come in please.”

  I stopped thinking about it and checked the position of the sun.

  “It’s about midday, I’d say.”

  Bowden nodded agreement.

  “Aren’t we car twenty-eight?” he asked, frowning slightly. I picked up the mike.

  “Car twenty-eight, go ahead.”

  “At last!” sounded a relieved voice over the speaker. “I have Colonel Rutter of the ChronoGuard who wants to speak to you.”

  Bowden walked over so he could hear better. We looked at each other, unsure of what was going to happen next; a chastisement or a heap of congratulations, or, as it turned out, both.

  “Officers Next and Cable. Can you hear me?” said a deep voice over the wireless.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Where are you?”

  “About six miles from Haworth.”

  “All the way up there, eh?” he guffawed. “Jolly good.” He cleared his throat. We could sense it coming.

  “Unofficially, that was one of the bravest acts I’ve ever seen. You saved a great number of lives and stopped the event from becoming a matter of some consequence. You can both be very proud of your actions and I would be honored to have two fine officers like you serving under me.”

  “Thank you, sir, I—”

  “I’m still talking!” he snapped, causing us both to jump. “Officially, though, you broke every rule in the book. And I should have both your butts nailed to the wall for not following procedure. If you ever try anything like this again, I most certainly will. Understand?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  I looked at Bowden. There was only one question we wanted to ask.

  “How long have we been gone?”

  “The year is now 2016,” said Rutter. “You’ve been gone thirty-one years!!”

  28.

  Haworth House

  Some would say the ChronoGuard have a terrific sense of humor. I would say they were just plain annoying. I had heard that they used to bundle up new recruits in gravity suits and pop them a week into the future just for fun. The game was banned when one recruit vanished outside the cone. Theoretically he is still there, just outside our time, unable to return and unable to communicate. It is calculated we will catch up with him about fourteen thousand years from now—sadly, he will have aged only twelve minutes. Some joke.

  THURSDAY NEXT

  —A Life in SpecOps

  WE WERE both victims of the ChronoGuard’s bizarre sense of humor. It was just past noon the following day. We had been gone only seven hours. We both reset our watches and drove slowly into Haworth, each sobered by the experience.

  At Haworth House a full media circus was in progress. I had hoped to arrive before this sort of thing really gained a toehold, but the hole in the M1 had put paid to that. Ly
dia Startright from the Toad News Network had arrived and was recording for the lunchtime bulletin. She stood outside the steps of Haworth House with a microphone and composed herself before beginning. She signaled to her cameraman to roll, adopted one of her most serious expressions, and began.

  “. . . As the sun rose over Haworth House this morning the police began to investigate a bold theft and double murder. Some time last night a security guard was shot dead by an unknown assailant as he attempted to stop him stealing the original manuscript of Jane Eyre. Police have been at the crime scene since early morning and have as yet given no comment. It is fairly certain that parallels must be drawn with the theft of the Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript, which, despite continued police and SpecOps efforts, has so far not come to light. Following Mr. Quaverley’s extraction and murder, it can only be surmised that a similar fate is in store for Rochester or Jane. The Goliath Corporation, whose presence this morning was an unusual development, have no comment to make—as usual.”

  “And—cut! That was very good, darling,” declared Lydia’s producer. “Can we do it once more without the reference to Goliath? You know they’ll only cut it out!”

  “Then let them.”

  “Lyds, baby—! Who pays the bills? I like free speech as much as the next man, but on someone else’s airtime, hmm?”

  She ignored him and looked around as a car arrived. Her face lit up and she walked briskly across, gesturing for her cameraman to follow.

  A lean officer of about forty with silver hair and bags under his eyes looked to heaven as she approached, cracking his unfriendly face into a smile. He waited patiently for her to make a brief introduction.

  “I have with me Detective Inspector Oswald Mandias, Yorkshire CID. Tell me, Inspector, do you think this crime is in any way connected to the Chuzzlewit theft?”

  He smiled benignly, fully aware that he would be on thirty million television screens by the evening.

  “It’s far too early to say anything; a full press release will be issued in due course.”