A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (117 page)

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Authors: Jasper Fforde

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“Ow, ow, ow, get off!” he said. “You're hurting!”
I twisted his arm, and he dropped to his knees. I was just patting his pockets for a weapon when another man, dressed not unlike the first, came charging out from behind an abandoned car, holding aloft a tree branch. I spun, dodged the blow, and as the second man's momentum carried him on, I pushed him hard with my foot, and he slammed headfirst into a wall and collapsed unconscious.
The first man was unarmed, so I made sure his unconscious friend was also unarmed—and wasn't going to choke on his blood or teeth or something.
“I know you're not SpecOps,” I observed, “because you're both way too crap. Goliath?”
The first man got slowly to his feet and was looking curiously at me, rubbing his arm where I had twisted it. He was a big man, but not an unkindly-looking one. He had short dark hair and a large mole on his chin. I had broken his spectacles; he didn't look Goliath, but I had been wrong before.
“I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Next. I've been waiting for you for a long long time.”
“I've been away.”
“Since January 1986. I've waited nearly two and a half years to see you.”
“And why would you do a thing like that?”
“Because,” said the man, producing an identity badge from his pocket and handing it over, “I am your officially sanctioned
stalker.
”
I looked at the badge. It was true enough; he was allocated to me. All 100 percent legit, and I didn't have a say in it. The whole stalker thing was licensed by SpecOps-33, the Entertainments Facilitation Department, who had drawn up specific rules with the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers as to who is allowed to stalk whom. It helps to regulate a historically dark business and also grades stalkers according to skill and perseverance. My stalker was an impressive Grade-1, the sort who are permitted to stalk the really big celebrities. And that made me suspicious.
“A Grade-1?” I queried. “Should I be flattered? I don't suppose I'm anything above a Grade-8.”
“Not nearly that high,” agreed my stalker. “More like a Grade- 12. But I've got a hunch you're going to get bigger. I latched on to Lola Vavoom in the sixties when she was just a bit part in
The Streets of Wootton Bassett
and stalked her for nineteen years, man and boy. I only gave her up to move on to Buck Stallion. When she heard, she sent me a glass tankard with THANK YOU FOR A GREAT STALK, LOLA etched onto it. Have you ever met her?”
“Once, Mr. . . .” I looked at the pass before handing it back. “De Floss. Interesting name. Any relation to Candice?”
“The author? In my dreams,” replied the stalker, rolling his eyes. “But since I'd like us to be friends, do please call me Millon.”
“Millon it is, then.”
And we shook hands. The man on the ground moaned and sat up, rubbing his head.
“Who's your friend?”
“He's not my friend,” said Millon, “he's my stalker. And a pain in the arse he is, too.”
“Wait—you're a stalker and you have a stalker?”
“Of course!” laughed Millon. “Ever since I published my autobiography,
A Stalk on the Wild Side,
I've become a bit of a celebrity myself. I even have a sponsorship deal with Compass Rose™ duffel coats. It is
my
celebrity status that enables Adam here to stalk
me.
Come to think of it, he's a Grade-3 stalker, so it's possible he's got a stalker of his own—haven't you heard the poem?”
Before I could stop him, he started to recite:
“. . . And so the tabloids do but say,
that stalkers on other stalkers prey,
and these have smaller stalkers to stalk 'em
and so proceed, ad infinitum. . . .”
 
“No, I hadn't heard that one,” I mused as the second stalker placed a handkerchief to his bleeding lip.
“Miss Next, this is Adam Gnusense. Adam, Miss Next.”
He waved weakly at me, looked at the bloodied handkerchief and sighed mournfully. I felt rather remorseful all of a sudden.
“Sorry to hit you, Mr. Gnusense, “ I said apologetically. “I didn't know what either of you were up to.”
“Occupational hazard, Miss Next.”
“Hey, Adam,” said Millon, suddenly sounding enthusiastic, “do you have your own stalker yet?”
“Somewhere,” said Gnusense looking around, “a Grade-34 loser. The sad bastard was rummaging through my bins last night. Passé or what!”
“Kids—tsk,” said Millon. “It might have been de rigueur in the sixties, but the modern stalker is much more subtle. Long vigils, copious notes, timed entry and exits, telephoto lenses.”
“We live in sad times,” agreed Adam, shaking his head sadly. “Must be off. I said I'd keep a close eye on Adrian Lush for a friend.”
He stood up and shambled slowly away down the alley, stumbling on discarded beer cans.
“Not a great talker is old Adam,” said Millon in a whisper, “but sticks to his target like a limpet. You wouldn't catch him rummaging through dustbins—unless he was giving a master class for a few of the young pups, of course. Tell me, Miss Next, but where have you been for the past two and a half years? It's been a bit dull here—after the first eighteen months of you not showing up, I'd reduced my stalking to only three nights a week.”
“You'd never believe me.”
“You'd be surprised what I can believe. Aside from stalking I've just finished my new book,
A Short History of the Special Operations Network
. I'm also editor of
Conspiracy Theorist
magazine. In between pieces on the very tangible link between Goliath and Yorrick Kaine and the existence of a mysterious beast known only as Guinzilla, we've run several articles devoted entirely to you and that
Jane Eyre
thing. We'd love to do a piece on your uncle Mycroft's work, too. Even though we know almost nothing, the conspiracy network is alive with healthy half-truths, lies and supposition. Did he really build an LCD cloaking device for cars?”
“Sort of.”
“And translating carbon paper?”
“He called it rossetionery.”
“And what about the Ovinator?
Conspiracy Theorist
devotes several pages of unsubstantiated rumors to this one invention alone.”
“I don't know. Some sort of machine for cooking eggs, perhaps? Is there anything you
don't
know about my family?”
“Not a lot. I'm thinking of writing a biography about you. How about
Thursday Next: A Biography
?”
“The title? Way too imaginative.”
“So I have your permission?”
“No, but if you can put a dossier together on Yorrick Kaine, I'll tell you all about Aornis Hades.”
“Acheron's little sister? It's a deal! Are you sure I can't write your biography? I've already made a start.”
“Positive. If you find anything, knock on my door.”
“I can't. There's a blanket restraining order on all members of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers. We're not allowed within a hundred yards of your place of residence.”
I sighed. “All right, just wave when I come out.”
De Floss readily agreed to that plan, and I left him rearranging his notebook, binoculars and camera and starting to make copious notes on his first encounter with me. I couldn't get rid of the poor deluded fool, but a stalker just might—
might
—be an ally.
3.
Evade the Question Time
Perfidious Danes “Historically Our Enemy,” Claims Insane Historian
“Quite frankly, I was yim-pim-pim appalled,” said England's leading mad history scholar yesterday. “The eighth-century Danish attack on our flibble-flobble sceptered isle is a story of invasion, subjugation, plunder and exploitation that would remain bleep-bleep-baaaaa unequaled until we tried it ourselves many years later.” The confused and barely coherent historian's work has been authenticated by another equally feeble-minded academic who told us yesterday, “The Danish invasion began in 786 when the Danes set up a kingdom in East Anglia. They didn't even use their own names either. They preferred to do their brutal work cowardly hiding beneath the pseudonyms of Angles, Bruts and Flynns.” Further research has shown that the Danes stayed for over four hundred years and were driven home only by the crusading help of our new close friends the French.
Article in
The New Oppressor,
the official mouthpiece of the Whig Party
 
 
 
 
 
H
ow did Kaine rise so quickly to power?” I asked incredulouslyas Joffy and I queued patiently outside Swindon's ToadNewsNetwork studios that evening. “When I was here last, Kaine and the Whig Party were all but washed up after the
Cardenio
debacle.”
Joffy looked grim and nodded towards a large crowd of uniformed Kaine followers who were waiting in silence for their glorious leader.
“Things haven't been good back here, Thurs. Kaine regained his seat after Samuel Pring was assassinated. The Whigs formed an alliance with the Liberals and elected Kaine as their leader. He has some sort of magnetism, and the numbers that attend his rallies increase all the time. His ‘British unification' stance has had much support—mostly with stupid people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.”
“War with Wales?”
“He hasn't said as such, but a leopard doesn't change its spots. He won by a landslide after the previous government collapsed over the ‘cash for llamas' scandal. As soon as he was in power he proclaimed himself chancellor. His Unreform Act last year restricted the vote to people with property.”
“How did he get parliament to agree to
that?
” I muttered, aghast at the thought of it.
“We're not sure,” said Joffy sadly. “Sometimes parliament does the funniest things. But he's not happy just being chancellor. He's arguing that committees and accountants only slow things down, and if people
really
want trains to run on time and shopping trolleys to run straight, it could be done only by one man wielding unquestionable executive power—a dictator.”
“So what's stopping him?”
“The President,” replied Joffy quietly. “Formby has told Kaine that if Kaine pushes for a dictatorial election, he will stand against him, and Yorrick knows full well that Formby would win—he's as popular now as he ever was.”
I thought for a moment. “How old is President Formby?”
“That's the problem. He was eighty-four last May.”
We fell silent for a moment and shuffled with the queue up to the stage door, had our identities checked by two ugly men from SO-6 and were then ushered in. We took our seats at the back and waited patiently for the show to begin. It seemed hard to believe that Kaine had managed to inveigle his way to the top of English politics, but, I reflected, anything can happen to a fictional character—a trait that Yorrick had obviously exploited to the full.
“See that nasty-looking man on the edge of the stage?” asked Joffy.
“Yes,” I replied, following Joffy's finger to a stocky man with short hair and no visible neck.
“Colonel Fawsten Gayle, Kaine's head of security. Not a man to trifle with. It's rumored he was expelled from school for nailing his head to a park bench on a bet.”
Standing next to Gayle was a cadaverous man with pinched features and small round spectacles. He was holding a battered red briefcase and was dressed in a rumpled sports jacket and corduroy trousers.
“Who's that?”
“Ernst Stricknene. Kaine's personal adviser.”
I stared at them both for a while and noticed that, despite being barely two feet from each other, they didn't exchange a single word or look. Things in the Kaine camp were far from settled. If I could get close, I'd just grab Yorrick and jump him straight to one of Jurisfiction's many prison books, and that would be that. It looked as though I had got back home just in time.
I consulted the complimentary copy of
The New Oppressor
I had found on my seat.
“Why is Kaine blaming the nation's woes on the Danish?” I asked.
“Because economically we're in a serious mess after losing to Russia in the Crimean War. They didn't just get Tunbridge Wells as war reparations but a huge chunk of cash, too. The country is near bankruptcy, Kaine wants to stay in power, so—”
“Misdirection.”
“Bingo. He blames someone else.”
“But the
Danish?
”
“Shows how desperate he is, doesn't it? As a nation we've been blaming the Welsh and the French for far too long and with the Russians out of the frame he's come up with Denmark as public enemy number one. He's using the Viking raids of 800 A.D. and the Danish rule of England in the eleventh century as an excuse to whip up some misinformed xenophobia.”
“Ludicrous!”
“Agreed. The papers have been full of anti-Danish propaganda this past month. All Bang & Olufsen entertainment systems have been withdrawn due to ‘safety' concerns, and Lego has been banned pending ‘choking hazard' investigations. The list of outlawed Danish writers is becoming longer by the second. Kierkegaard's works have already been declared illegal under the Undesirable Danish Literature Act and will be burnt. Hans Christian Andersen will be next, we're told—and after that maybe even Karen Blixen.”
“They can pull my copy of
Out of Africa
from my cold, dead fingers.”
“Mine, too. You'd better make sure Hamlet doesn't tell anyone where he's from. Shhh. I think something's happening.”

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