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“Here, stop this car!” I shouted, banging again on the glass partition. The driver simply accelerated, clipping another car as he took a corner a little too fast.
I pulled hard at the door handles and was about to use my heels against the window when the car abruptly screeched to a halt; I slid off the seat and collapsed in a heap in the footwell. The driver got out, opened the door for me and said:
“There you go, missy, didn’t want you to be late. Colonel Phelps’s orders.”
“Colonel Phelps?” I stammered. The driver smiled and saluted briskly as the penny dropped. Phelps had said he would send a car for me to appear at his talk, and he had.
I looked out of the door. We had pulled up outside Swindon Town Hall, and a vast crowd of people were staring at me.
“Hello, Thursday!” said a familiar voice.
“Lydia?” I asked, caught off guard by the sudden change of events.
And so it was. But she wasn’t the only TV news reporter; there were six or seven of them with their cameras trained on me as I sat sprawled inelegantly in the footwell. I struggled to get out of the car.
“This is Lydia Startright of the Toad News Network,” said Lydia in her best reporter’s voice, “here with Thursday Next, the SpecOps agent responsible for saving Jane Eyre. First let me congratulate you, Miss Next, on your successful reconstruction of the novel!”
“What do you mean?” I responded. “I loused it all up! I burned Thornfield to the ground and half-maimed poor Mr. Rochester!”
Miss Startright laughed.
“In a recent survey ninety-nine out of a hundred readers who expressed a preference said they were delighted with the new ending. Jane and Rochester married! Isn’t that wonderful?”
“But the Brontë Federation—?”
“Charlotte didn’t leave the book to them, Miss Next,” said a man dressed in a linen suit who had a large blue Charlotte Brontë rosette stuck incongruously to his lapel.
“The federation are a bunch of stuffed shirts. Allow me to introduce myself. Walter Branwell, chairman of the federation splinter group ‘Brontë for the People.’ ”
He thrust out a hand for me to shake and grinned wildly as several people near by applauded. A battery of flashguns went off as a small girl handed me a bunch of flowers and another journalist asked me what sort of a person Rochester really was. The driver took my arm and guided me into the building.
“Colonel Phelps is waiting for you, Miss Next,” murmured the man in an affable tone. The crowds parted as I was led into a large hall that was filled to capacity. I blinked stupidly and looked around. There was an excited buzz, and as I walked down the main aisle I could hear people whispering my name. There was an improvised press box in the old orchestra pit in which a sea of pressmen from all the major networks were seated. The meeting at Swindon had become the focus of the grassroots feeling about the war; what was said here would be highly significant. I made my way to the stage, where two tables had been set up. The two sides to the argument were clearly delineated. Colonel Phelps was sitting beneath a large English flag; his table was heavily festooned with bunting and several pot plants, flip-over pads and stacks of leaflets for ready distribution. With him were mostly uniformed members of the armed forces who had seen service on the peninsula. All of them were willing to speak vociferously about the importance of the Crimea. One of the soldiers was even carrying the new plasma rifle.
At the other end of the stage was the “anti” table. This too was liberally populated by veterans, but none of them wore uniforms. I recognized the two students from the airship park and my brother Joffy, who smiled and mouthed “Wotcha, Doofus!” at me. The crowd hushed; they had heard I was going to attend and had been awaiting my arrival.
The cameras followed me as I approached the steps to the stage and walked calmly up. Phelps rose to meet me, but I walked on and sat down at the “anti” table, taking the seat that one of the students had given up for me. Phelps was appalled; he went bright red, but checked himself when he saw that the cameras were watching his every move.
Lydia Startright had followed me onto the stage. She was there to adjudicate the meeting; it was she and Colonel Phelps who had insisted on waiting for me. Startright was glad they had; Phelps was not.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced Lydia grandly, “the negotiating table is empty at Budapest and the offensive lies waiting to happen. As a million troops face each other across no-man’s-land, we ask the question: What price the Crimea?”
Phelps got up to speak but I beat him to it.
“I know it’s an old joke,” I began, “but a simple anagram of ‘Crimea’ is ‘A Crime.’” I paused. “That’s the way I see it and I would defy anyone to say that it isn’t. Even Colonel Phelps over there would agree with me that it’s high time the Crimea was put to bed permanently.”
Colonel Phelps nodded.
“Where the Colonel and I differ is my belief that Russia has the better claim to the territory.”
It was a controversial remark; Phelps’s supporters were well primed, and it took ten minutes to restore order. Startright quieted them all down and finally managed to get me to finish my point.
“There was a good chance for all this nonsense to end barely two months ago. England and Russia were around the table, discussing terms for a complete withdrawal of all English troops.”
There was a hush. Phelps had leaned back in his chair and was watching me carefully.
“But then along came the plasma rifle. Code name: Stonk.”
I looked down for a moment.
