The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

“Miss Next,” said Flanker, standing up and laying a hand on my shoulder, “you will be pleased to hear that none of this will be published below SO-8. You can return to your unit without a blemish on your record. There were errors, but none of us have any idea how anything might have turned out given a different set of circumstances. As for us, you won’t be seeing us again.’

He turned off the cassette recorder, wished me good health and walked out of the room. The other officers joined him, except for the man with the twitch. He waited until his colleagues were out of earshot then whispered to me:

“I think your testimony is bullshit, Miss Next. The service can ill afford to lose the likes of Fillip Tamworth.”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For telling me his first name.”

The man moved to say something, thought the better of it and then left.

I got up from the table in the impromptu interview room and stared out of the window. It was warm and sunny outside and the trees swayed gently in the breeze; the world looked as though it had little room for people like Hades. I allowed the thoughts of the night to come back again. The part I hadn’t told them was about Snood. Acheron had talked some more that night. He had indicated the tired and worn body of Snood and said:

“Filbert asked me to say he was sorry.”

“That’s Filbert’s father!—” I corrected him.

“No,” he chuckled. “That was Filbert.”

I looked at Snood again. He was lying on his back with his eyes open and the likeness was unmistakable, despite the sixty-year age gap.

“Oh my God, no! Filbert? Was that him?”

Acheron seemed to be enjoying himself.

“ ‘Unavoidably detained’ is a ChronoGuard euphemism for a time aggregation, Thursday. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Caught outside the herenow. Sixty years piled onto him in less than a minute. It’s little surprise he didn’t want you to see him.”

There hadn’t been any girl in Tewkesbury after all. I had heard about time dilations and temporal instabilities from my father. In the world of the Event, the Cone and the Horizon, Filbert Snood had been unavoidably detained. The tragedy of it was, he never felt he could tell me. It was then, as I hit my lowest, that Acheron had turned and fired. It was as he had planned it.

I walked slowly back to my room and sat on the bed feeling utterly dejected. Tears come easily to me when no one is about. I wept copiously for about five minutes and felt a great deal better, blew my nose noisily then switched on the television as a distraction. I rattled through the channels until I chanced across the Toad News Network. It was more about the Crimea, of course.

“Still on the subject of the Crimea,” announced the anchorwoman, “the Goliath Corporation Special Weapons Division has unveiled the latest weapon in the struggle against the Russian aggressors. It is hoped that the new Ballistic Plasma Energy Rifle—code-named ‘Stonk’—will be the decisive weapon to change the tide of the war. Our defense correspondent James Backbiter takes us through it.”

The scene changed to a close-up of an exotic-looking weapon handled by a soldier in military SpecOps uniform.

“This is the new Stonk plasma rifle, unveiled today by the Goliath Special Weapons Division,” announced Backbiter, standing next to the soldier on what was obviously a test range. “We can’t tell you very much about it for obvious reasons, but we can show its effectiveness and report that it uses a bolt of concentrated energy to destroy armor and personnel up to a mile away.”

I watched in horror as the soldier demonstrated the new weapon. Invisible bolts of energy tore into the target tank with the power of ten of our howitzers. It was like an artillery piece in the palm of your hand. The barrage ended and Backbiter asked a colonel a couple of obviously posed questions as soldiers paraded with the new weapon in the background.

“When do you suppose the frontline troops will be issued with Stonk?”

“The first weapons are being shipped now. The rest will be supplied just as soon as we can set up the necessary factories.”

“And finally, its effect on the conflict?”

A small amount of emotion flickered on the colonel’s face.

“I predict Stonk will have the Russians suing for peace within a month.”

“Oh, shit,” I murmured out loud. I’d heard this particular phrase many times during my time in the military. It had supplanted the hoary old “over by Christmas” for sheer fatuousness. It had always, without exception, been followed by an appalling loss of life.

Even before the first deployment of the new weapon, its mere existence had upset the balance of power in the Crimea. No longer keen on a withdrawal, the English government was trying to negotiate a surrender of all Russian troops. The Russians were having none of it. The UN had demanded that both sides return to the talks in Budapest, but it had all stalled; the Imperial Russian Army had dug themselves in against the expected onslaught. Earlier in the day the Goliath Special Weapons spokesman had been instructed to appear before Parliament to explain the delay of the new weapons, as they were

now a month behind schedule.

A screech of tires roused me from my thoughts. I looked up. In the middle of the hospital room was a brightly painted sports car. I blinked twice but it didn’t vanish. There was no earthly reason why it should be in the room or even any evidence as to how it got there, the door being only wide enough for a bed, but there it was. I could smell the exhaust and hear the engine ticking over, but for some reason I did not find it at all unusual. The occupants were staring at me. The driver was a woman in her midthirties who looked sort of familiar.