Lost in a Good Book

  'Three down,' exclaimed a short woman who was staring at a folded-up newspaper, half to herself and half to the rest of us. 'Well decorated for prying, perhaps? Ten letters.'

  No one answered as we sailed past Cricklade station without stopping, much to the annoyance of a large, expensively dressed lady who huffed loudly and pointed at the operator with her umbrella.

  'You there!' she boomed like a captain before the storm. 'What are you doing? I wanted to get off at Cricklade, damn you!'

  The operator seemed unperturbed at the insult and muttered an apology. This obviously wasn't good enough for the loud and objectionable woman, who jabbed the small Neanderthal violently in the ribs with her umbrella. He didn't yell out in pain; he just flinched, pulled the driver's door closed behind him and locked it. I snatched the umbrella from the woman, who seemed shocked and outraged at my actions.

  'What the—!' she said indignantly.

  'Don't do that,' I told her, 'it's not nice.'

  'Poppycock!' she guffawed in a loud and annoying manner. 'He's only a Neanderthal!'

  'Meddlesome,' said one of the other passengers with an air of finality, staring at an advert for the Gravitube that was pinned at eye level.

  The objectionable lady and I stared at her, wondering who she was referring to. She looked at us both, flushed, and said:

  'No, no. Ten letters, three down Well decorated for prying. Meddlesome.'

  'Very good,' muttered the lady with the crossword as she scribbled in the answer.

  I glared at the well-heeled woman, who eyed me back malevolently.

  'Jab the Neanderthal again and I'll arrest you for assault.'

  'I happen to know,' announced the woman tartly, 'that Neanderthals are legally classed as animals. You cannot assault a Neanderthal any more than you can a mouse!'

  My temper began to rise – always a bad sign. I would probably end up doing something stupid.

  'Perhaps,' I replied, 'but I can arrest you for cruelty, bruising the peace and anything else I can think of.'

  But the woman wasn't the least bit intimidated.

  'My husband is a Justice of the Peace,' she announced, as if it were a hidden trump. 'I can make things very tricky for you. What is your name?'

  'Next,' I told her unhesitantly. 'Thursday Next. SO-27.'

  Her eyelids flickered slightly and she stopped rummaging in her bag for a pencil and paper.

  'The Jane Eyre Thursday Next?' she asked, her mood changing abruptly.

  'I saw you on the telly,' said the woman with the crossword. 'You seem a bit obsessed with your dodo, I must say. Why couldn't you talk about Jane Eyre, Goliath or ending the Crimean War?'

  'Believe me, I tried.'

  The Skyrail swept on past Broad Blunsdon station and the passengers all sighed, made tut-tut noises and shrugged at one another.

  'I am going to complain to the Skyrail management about this,' said a heavy-set woman with make-up like woad who carried a disgruntled-looking Pekinese. 'A good cure for insubordination is—'

  Her speech came to an abrupt end as the Neanderthal suddenly increased the speed of the car. I knocked on the heavy acetate door and shouted:

  'What's going on, pal?'

  'Open this door immediately!' demanded the well-heeled woman, brandishing her umbrella. But the Neanderthal had taken about as much umbrella jabbing as he could that day.

  'We are going home now,' he said simply, staring straight ahead.

  'We?' echoed the woman. 'No we're not. I live at Crick—'

  'He means I,' I told her. 'Neanderthals don't use the singular personal pronoun.'

  'Damn stupid!' she replied, yelling a few more insults for good measure before she harrumphed back to her seat. I settled closer to the driver.

  'What's your name?'

  'Kaylieu,' he replied.

  'Good. Now, Kaylieu, I want you to tell me what the problem is.'

  He paused for a moment as the Swindon airship stop came and went. I saw another shuttle that had been diverted to a siding and several Skyrail officials waving at us, so it was only a matter of time before the authorities knew what was going on.

  'We want to be real.'

  'Day's hurt?' murmured the squat woman at the back, still sucking the end of her pencil and staring at the crossword.

  'What did you say?' I said.

  'Day's hurt?' she repeated. 'Nine down; eight letters – I think it's an anagram.'

  'I have no idea,' I replied before turning my attention back to Kaylieu. 'What do you mean, real?'

  'We are not animals,' announced the small and once extinct strand of human. 'We want to be a protected species – like dodo, mammoth – and you. We want to speak to head man at Goliath and someone from Toad News.'

  'I'Il see what I can do.'

  I moved to the back of the shuttle and picked up the emergency phone.

  'Hello?' I said to the operator. 'This is Thursday Next, SO-27. We have a situation in shuttle number, ah, 6-1-7-4.'

  When I told the operator what was going on she breathed in sharply and asked how many people were with me and whether anyone was hurt.

  'Seven females, myself and the driver; we are all fine.'

  'Don't forget Pixie Frou-Frou,' said the large woman.

  'And one Pekinese.'

  The operator told me they were clearing all the tracks ahead; we would have to keep calm and she would call back. I tried to tell her that it wasn't a bad situation, but she had rung off.

  I sat down next to the Neanderthal again. Jaw fixed, he was staring intently ahead, knuckles white on the throttle lever. We approached the Wanborough junction, crossed the M4 and were diverted west. One of the younger passengers caught my eye; she looked frightened.

  'What's your name?' I asked her.

  'Irma,' she replied, 'Irma Cohen.'

  'Poppycock!' said the umbrella woman. 'I'm Irma Cohen!'

  'So am I,' said the woman with the Peke.

  'And me!' exclaimed the thin woman at the back. It was clear after a short period of frenzied cries of 'Ooh, fancy that!' and 'Well I never!', that everyone in the Skyrail except me and Kaylieu and Pixie Frou-Frou were called Irma Cohen. Some of them were even vaguely related. It was quite a coincidence – for today, the best yet.

  'Thursday,' said the squat woman.

  'Yes?'

  But she wasn't talking to me; she was writing in the answer: Day's hurt – Thursday. It was an anagram.

  The emergency phone rang.

  'This is Diana Thuntress, trained negotiator for SpecOps 9,' said a businesslike voice. 'Who is this?'

  'Di, it's me, Thursday.'

  There was a pause.

  'Hello, Thursday. Saw you on the telly last night. Trouble seems to follow you around, doesn't it? What's it like in there?'

  I looked at the small and unconcerned crowd of commuters, who were showing each other pictures of their children. Pixie Frou-Frou had fallen asleep and the Irma Cohen with the crossword was puzzling on six across: The parting bargain.

  'They're fine. A little bored, but not hurt.'

  'What does the perp want?'

  'He wants to talk to someone at Goliath about species self-ownership.'

  'Wait – he's a Neanderthal?

  'Yes.'

  'It's not possible' A Neanderthal being violent?'

  'There's no violence up here, Di —just desperation.'

  'Shit,' muttered Thuntress. 'What do I know about dealing with Thals? We'll have to get one of the SpecOps Neanderthals in.'

  'He also wants to see a reporter from Toad News.'

  There was silence at the other end of the phone.

  'Di?'

  'Yes?'

  'What can I tell Kaylieu?'

  'Tell him that – er – Toad News are supplying a car to take him to the Goliath Genetic Labs in the Preselh mountains where Goliath's Governor, Chief Geneticist and a team of lawyers will be waiting to agree terms.'

  As lies go, it was a real corker.

  'But is
that right?' I asked.

  'There is no "right", Thursday,' snapped Diana. 'Not since he took control of the Skyrail. There are eight lives in there. It doesn't take the winner of Name That Fruit! to figure out what we have to do. Pacifist Neanderthal or not, there is a chance he could harm the passengers.'

  'Don't be ridiculous! No Neanderthal has ever harmed anyone!'

  'We're not going to take that risk, Next. This is how it's going to be. We're going to divert you back up along the Cirencester line. We'll have SO-14 agents in position at Cricklade. As soon as he stops I'm afraid we will have no alternative but to take him out. I want you to make sure the passengers are all in the back of the car.'

  'Diana, that's crazy! You'd kill him because he took a few lamebrained commuters for a merry trip round the Swindon loop?'

  'The law is very strict on hijackers, Next.'

  'He's nothing of the sort, Di. He's just a confused extinctee!'

  'Sorry, Thursday – this is out of my hands.'

  I hung up as the shuttle was diverted back up towards Cirencester. We flew through Shaw station, much to the surprise of the waiting commuters, and were soon heading north again. I returned to the driver.

  'Kaylieu, you must stop at Purton.'

  He grunted in reply but showed little sign of being happy or sad – Neanderthal facial expressions were mostly lost on us. He stared at me for a moment and then asked:

  'You have childer?'

  I hastily changed the subject. Being sequenced infertile was the Neanderthals' biggest cause of complaint against their sapien masters. Within thirty years or so the last of the experimental Neanderthals would die of old age. Unless Goliath sequenced some more, that would be it. Extinct again – it was unlikely even we would manage that

  'No, no, I don't,' I replied hastily.

  'Nor us,' returned Kaylieu, 'but you have a choice. We don't. We should never have been brought back. Not to this. Not to carry bags for Sapien, no childer and umbrellas jab-jab.'

  He stared bleakly into the middle distance – perhaps to a better life thirty thousand years ago when he was free to hunt large herbivores from the relative safety of a draughty cave. Home for Kaylieu was extinction again – at least for him. He didn't want to hurt any of us and would never do so. He couldn't hurt himself either, so he would rely on SpecOps to do the job for him.

  'Goodbye '

  I jumped at the finality of the pronouncement but upon turning found that it was merely the crossword Mrs Cohen filling in the last clue.

  'The parting bargain,' she muttered happily. 'Good buy. Goodbye. Finished!'

  I didn't like this; not at all. The three answers to the crossword clues had been 'meddlesome', 'Thursday' and 'goodbye'. More coincidences. Without the dual blowout and the fortuitous day ticket, I wouldn't be here at all. Everyone was called Cohen and now the crossword. But goodbye? If all went according to SpecOps plans, the only person worthy of that interjection would be Kaylieu. Still, I had other things to worry about as we passed Purton without stopping. I asked everyone to move to the back of the car and, once they had, joined Kaylieu at the front.

  'Listen to me, Kaylieu. If you don't make any threatening movements they may not open fire.'

  'We thought of that,' said the Neanderthal as he pulled an imitation automatic from his tunic.

  'They will fire,' he said, as Cricklade station hove into view a half-mile up the line. 'We carved it from soap – Dove soap,' he added. 'We thought it ironic.'

  We approached Cricklade at full speed; I could see SpecOps 14 vehicles parked on the road and black-uniformed SWAT teams waiting on the platform. With a hundred yards to run, the power to the Skyrail abruptly cut out and the shuttle skidded, power off, towards the station. The door to the driver's compartment swung open and I squeezed in. I grabbed Kaylieu's soapy gun and threw it to the floor. He wasn't going to die – at least, not if I could help it. We rumbled into the station. The doors were opened by SO-14 operatives and all the Irma Cohens were rapidly evacuated. I put my arm round Kaylieu.

  'Move away from the Thal!' said a voice through a bullhorn.

  'So you can shoot him?' I yelled back.

  'He threatened the lives of commuters, Next. He is a danger to civilised society!'

  'Civilised?' I shouted angrily. 'Look at you!'

  'Next!' said the voice. 'Move aside. That is a direct order!'

  'You must do as they say,' said the Neanderthal.

  'Over my dead body.'

  As if in reply there was a gentle pok sound and a single bullet hole appeared in the windshield of the shuttle. Someone had decided they could take Kaylieu out anyway. My temper flared and I tried to yell out in anger but no sound came from my lips. My legs felt weak and I fell to the floor in a heap, the world turning grey about me. I couldn't even feel my legs. I heard someone yell 'Medic!' and the last thing I saw before the darkness overtook me was Kaylieu's broad face looking down at me. He had tears in his eyes and was mouthing the words 'We're so sorry. So very, very sorry.'

  5

  Vanishing hitch-hikers

  * * *

  'Urban legends are older than congress gaiters but far more interesting. I'd heard most of them, from the dog in the microwave to ball lightning chasing a housewife in Preston, to the fried dodo leg found in a SmileyFriedChicken, to the carnivorous Diatryma supposedly re-engineered and now living in the New Forest. I'd read all about the alien spaceship that crash-landed near Lambourn in 1952, the story that Charles Dickens was a woman and that the president of the Goliath Corporation was actually a 142-year-old man kept alive by medical science in a bottle. Stories about SpecOps abound, the favourite at present relating to "something odd" dug up in the Quantock Hills. Yes, I'd heard them all. Never believed any of them. Then one day, I was one …'

  THURSDAY NEXT – A Life in SpecOps

  I opened one eye, then the other. It was a warm summer's day on the Marlborough downs. A light zephyr brought with it the delicate scent of honeysuckle and wild thyme. The air was warm and small puffy clouds were starting to tinge red from the setting sun. I was standing by the side of a road in open country. In one direction I could see a lone cyclist; in the other the road wound away into the distance past fields in which sheep grazed peacefully. If this was life after death then a lot of people had not much to worry about and the Church had delivered the goods after all.

  'Psssst!' hissed a voice close at hand. I turned to see a figure crouched behind a large Goliath Corporation billboard advertising buy-two-get-one-free grand pianos.

  'Dad—?'

  He pulled me behind the hoarding with him.

  'Standing there like a tourist, Thursday!' he snapped crossly. 'Anyone would think you wanted to be seen!'

  I regarded my father as a sort of time-travelling knight errant, but to the ChronoGuard he was nothing less than a criminal. He threw in his badge and went rogue seventeen years ago when his 'historical and moral' differences brought him into conflict with the ChronoGuard High Chamber. The downside of this was that he didn't really exist at all in any accepted terms of the definition; the ChronoGuard had interrupted his conception in 1917 by a well-timed knock on his parents' front door. But despite all this Dad was still around, and I and my brothers had been born. 'Things,' Dad used to say, 'are a whole lot weirder than we can know.'

  He glanced nervously up and down the road.

  'How are you, by the way?' he asked.

  'I think I was just accidentally shot dead by a SpecOps marksman.'

  He laughed for a while, then suddenly stopped when he saw I was serious.

  'Goodness!' he said. 'You do live an exciting life. But never fear. You can't die until you've lived, and you've barely started that at all. What's the news from home?'

  'A ChronoGuard officer turned up at my wedding bash wanting to know where you were.'

  'Lavoisier?'

  'Yes; do you know him?'

  'I should think so.' My father sighed. 'We were partners for nearly seven centuries.'
r />   'He said you were very dangerous.'

  'No more dangerous than anyone else who dares speak the truth. How's your mother?'

  'She's fine, although you might try and clear up that misunderstanding about Emma Hamilton.'

  'Emma and I … I mean Lady Hamilton and I are simply "good friends". There's nothing to it, I swear.'

  'Tell her that.'

  'I try, but you know what a temper she has. I only have to mention I've been anywhere near the turn of the nineteenth century and she gets in a frightful strop. What else is happening?'

  'We found a thirty-third play by Shakespeare.'

  'Thirty-three?' echoed my father. 'That's odd. When I took the entire works back to the actor Shakespeare to distribute there were only eighteen.'

  'Until yesterday there have always been thirty-two.'

  'Hmm,' he replied, brow furrowed. Dad's work in the timestream could be tricky to get your head round sometimes

  'Perhaps the actor Shakespeare started writing them himself?' I suggested

  'By thunder, you could be right!' exclaimed my father. 'He looked a bright spark. Tell me, how many comedies are there now?'

  'Fifteen,' I replied.

  'But I only gave him three. They must have been so popular he started writing new ones himself!'

  'It would explain why all the comedies are pretty much the same,' I added. 'Spells, identical twins, shipwrecks—'

  '—usurped dukes, men dressed as women,' continued my father. 'You could be right'

  'But wait a moment—' I began. But my father, sensing my disquiet over the seemingly impossible paradoxes, silenced me with his hand.

  'One day you'll understand and everything will be more different than you can, at present, possibly hope to imagine.'

  I must have looked blank for he continued:

  'Remember, Thursday, that scientific thought – indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else – is just like the fashions that we wear – only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.'