Lost in a Good Book

  'Scientific thought a boy band? How do you figure that?'

  'Well, every now and then a boy band comes along. We like it, buy the records, posters, parade them on TV, idolise them right up until—'

  '—the next boy band?' I suggested.

  'Precisely. Aristotle was a boy band. A very good one but only number six or seven. He was the best boy band until Isaac Newton, but even Newton was transplanted by an even newer boy band. Same haircuts – but different moves.'

  'Einstein, right?'

  'Right. Do you see what I'm saying?'

  'I think so.'

  'Good. So try and think of maybe thirty or forty boy bands past Einstein. To where we would regard Einstein as someone who glimpsed a truth, played one good chord on seven forgettable albums.'

  'Where is this going, Dad?'

  'I'm nearly there. Imagine a boy band so good that you never needed another boy band ever again. Can you imagine that?'

  'It's hard. But yes, okay.'

  'Now think of a boy band so good you never needed any more music – or anything else for that matter.'

  He let this sink in for a moment.

  'When we reach that boy band, my dear, everything becomes a lot easier to understand. And you know the best thing about it? It's so devilishly simple.'

  'When is this boy band discovered?'

  Dad suddenly turned serious.

  'That's why I'm here. Perhaps never. Did you see a cyclist on the road?'

  'Yes'

  'Well,' he said, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist, 'in ten seconds that cyclist will be knocked over and killed.'

  'And?' I asked, sensing that I was missing something.

  He looked around furtively and lowered his voice.

  'Well, it seems that right here and now is the key event whereby we can avert whatever it is that destroys every single speck of life on this planet!'

  I looked into his earnest eyes.

  'You're not kidding, are you?'

  He shook his head.

  'In December 1985, your 1985, for some unaccountable reason, all the planet's organic matter turns to … this.'

  He withdrew a plastic specimen bag from his pocket. It contained a thick pinkish opaque slime. I took the bag and shook it curiously as we heard a loud screech of tyres and a sickly thud; a few moments later a broken body and a twisted bicycle landed close by.

  'On the twelfth of December at 20.23, give or take a second or two, all organic material – every plant, insect, fish, bird, mammal and the three billion human inhabitants of this planet – will start turning to that. End of all of us. End of Life – and there won't be that boy band I was telling you about. The problem,' he went on as a car door slammed and we heard feet running towards us, 'is that we don't know why. The ChronoGuard are not doing any upstreaming work at present; Downstreamers seem to be unaffected—'

  'Why is that?'

  'Industrial action. Upstreamers are on strike for shorter hours. Not actually fewer hours, you understand, it's just the hours that they do work they want to be, er, shorter.'

  'So while they are on strike the world could end? Isn't that sort of daft?'

  'From an industrial action viewpoint,' said my father, thinking about it carefully, 'I think it's a very good strategy indeed. I hope they can thrash out a new agreement in time.'

  'But that's crazy!'

  Dad shrugged.

  'I'm not in the Timeguild any more, Sweetpea. I went rogue, remember?'

  'So what can we do?' I asked.

  'The centre of the disaster is unclear,' replied my father as he patted his pockets for his pipe. 'All my efforts to jump straight there have failed. I've run trillions of timestream models and the outcome is the same – whatever happens here and now somehow relates to the aversion of the crisis. And since the cyclist's death is the only event of any significance for hours in either direction, it has to be the key event. The cyclist must live to ensure the continued health of the planet.'

  We stepped out from behind the billboard to confront the driver, a youngish man who was visibly panicking.

  'Oh my God!' he said as he stared at the twisted body at our feet. 'Oh my God! Is he—?'

  'At the moment, yes,' replied my father in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he filled his pipe.

  'I must call an ambulance!' stammered the man. 'He could still be alive!'

  'Anyway,' continued my father, ignoring the motorist completely, 'the cyclist obviously does something or doesn't do something, and that's the key to this whole stupid mess.'

  The motorist stopped wringing his hands for a moment and looked at the pair of us suspiciously

  'I wasn't speeding, you know,' he said quickly. 'The engine might have been revving but it was stuck in second …'

  'Hang on!' I said, slightly confused 'You've been beyond 1985, Dad – you told me so yourself!'

  'I know that,' replied my father grimly, 'so we'd better get this absolutely right.'

  'There was a low sun,' continued the driver, as he thought hard, 'and he swerved in front of me!'

  'Male guilt avoidance syndrome,' explained my father. 'It's a recognised medical condition by 2054.'

  Dad held me by the arm and there was a series of rapid flashes, an intense burst of noise and we were about a half-mile and five minutes in the direction from which the cyclist had come. He rode past and waved cheerily.

  We returned the wave and watched him pedal off.

  'Don't you stop him?'

  'Tried. Doesn't work. Stole his bike – he borrowed a friend's. Diversion signs he ignored and the pools win didn't stop him either. I've tried everything. Time is the glue of the cosmos, Thursday, and it has to be eased apart – try to force events and they end up whacking you on the frontal lobes like a cabbage from six paces. Lavoisier will have locked on to me by now. The car is due in thirty-eight seconds. Hitch a ride and do your best.'

  'Wait!' I said. 'What about me?'

  'I'll take you out again after the cyclist is safe.'

  'Back to where?' I asked suddenly. I had no desire to return to the moment I'd left. 'The SpecOps marksman, Dad, remember? Can't you put me back, say, thirty minutes earlier?'

  He smiled and gave me a wink.

  'Give my love to your mother. Thanks for helping out. Well, time waits for no man, as we—'

  But he was gone, melted into the air about me. I paused for a moment and put out a thumb to hail the approaching Jaguar. The car slowed and stopped and the motorist, oblivious to the impending accident, smiled and asked me to hop aboard.

  I said nothing, jumped in and we roared off.

  'Just picked the old girl up this morning,' he mused, more to himself than me. 'Three point eight litres with triple DCOE Webers. Six cylinders of big cat – lovely!'

  'Mind the cyclist,' I said as we rounded the bend. The driver stamped on the brake and swerved past the man on the bike.

  'Bloody cyclists!' he exclaimed. 'A danger to themselves and everyone else. Where are you bound, little lady?'

  'I'm, ah … visiting my father,' I explained, truthfully enough.

  'Where does he live?'

  'Everywhere,' I replied.

  « « «

  '—wireless seems to be dead,' announced Bowden, keying the mike and turning the knob. 'That's odd.'

  I picked up the Skyrail ticket as the shuttle approached high on the steel tracks.

  'What are you doing'' asked Bowden.

  'I'm going to take the Skyrail; there's a Neanderthal in trouble.'

  'How do you know?'

  I frowned.

  'Call it déjà vu this time. Something's going to happen … and I'm part of it.'

  I left my partner and walked briskly up to the station, showed my ticket to the inspector and climbed the steel steps to the platform. The doors of the shuttle hissed open and I stepped inside, this time knowing exactly what I had to do.

  4a

  Five coincidences, seven Irma Cohens and one confused Thursday Next


  * * *

  'The Neanderthal experiment was simultaneously the high and low point of the genetic revolution. Successful in that a long-dead cousin of Homo sapiens was brought back from extinction, yet a failure in that the scientists, so happy to gaze upon their experiments from their ever lofty ivory towers, had not seen so far as to consider the social implications that a new species of man might command in a world unvisited by their like for over thirty millennia. It was little surprise that so many of the Neanderthals felt confused and unprepared for the pressures of modern life. It was Homo sapiens at his least sapient.'

  GERHARD VON SQUID – Neanderthals – Back after a Short Absence

  Coincidences are strange things. I like the one about the poker player named Fallon, shot dead for cheating in San Francisco in 1858. It was considered unlucky to split the dead man's $600 winnings so they gave the money to a passer-by, hoping to win it back. The stranger converted the $600 to $2,200, and when the police arrived was asked to hand over the original $600 as it was to be given to the dead gambler's next of kin. After a brief investigation, the money was returned to the passer-by, as he turned out to be Fallon's son, who hadn't seen his father for seven years.

  My father told me that for the most part coincidences could be safely ignored. 'It would be much more remarkable,' he would say, 'if there weren't any coincidences.'

  I stepped into the Skyrail car, pulled the emergency lever and ordered everyone off. The Neanderthal operator looked at me oddly as I jammed a foot in the open door of his driver's cubicle. I hauled him out and thumped him on the jaw before handcuffing him. A few days in the cooler and he would be back to Mrs Kaylieu. There was shocked silence from the group of women in the Skyrail as I searched him and found … nothing. I looked in the cab and his sandwich box but the carved soap gun wasn't there either.

  The well-heeled woman who had earlier been so keen to jab the driver with her umbrella was suddenly full of self-righteous indignation.

  'Disgraceful!' Attacking a poor defenceless Neanderthal in this manner! I shall speak to my husband about this!'

  One of the other women had called SpecOps 21 and a third had given the Neanderthal a handkerchief to dab his bleeding mouth. I uncuffed Kaylieu and apologised, then sat down and put my head in my hands, wondering what had gone wrong. All the women were called Irma Cohen but none of them would ever know it. Dad said this sort of thing happened all the time.

  'You did what? asked Victor, a few hours later at the LiteraTec office.

  'I punched a Neanderthal.'

  'Why?'

  'I thought he had a gun on him.'

  'A Neanderthal? With a gun? Don't be ridiculous!'

  'Granted, it was carved from soap – he wanted SO-14 to kill him. But that's not the half of it. The intended victim was me. If I had journeyed on the Skyrail it would have been Thursday in the body-bag, not Kaylieu. I was set up, Victor. Someone manipulated events to try and bump me off with a stray SpecOps bullet – maybe that was their idea of a joke. If it hadn't been for Dad taking me out I'd be playing a harp by now.'

  Victor frowned and I showed him that morning's copy of The Owl, the three clues outlined in green He read them aloud.

  'Meddlesome, Thursday, Goodbye.'

  He shrugged.

  'Coincidence. I could make any sentence I wanted from any other clues just as easily. Look here.'

  He scanned the answers for a moment.

  'Planet, Destroyed, Soonest. What does that mean? The world's about to end?'

  'Well—'

  He dumped my arrest report in his out-tray.

  'Take my advice, Thursday. Tell them you thought the Neanderthal was a felon, that he reminded you of the bogeyman – anything. Mention any unauthorised ChronoGuard shenanigans and Flanker will have your badge as a paperweight. I'll write a good report to SO-1 about your work and conduct so far. With a bit of luck and some serious lying on your behalf, maybe you can get away with a reprimand. For goodness' sake, Thursday, didn't you learn anything from that Bad Time junket on the M1?'

  He got up and rubbed his legs. His body was failing him. The hip he had replaced four years ago needed to be replaced. Bowden joined us from where he had been running the copied pages of Cardenio through the Verse Metre Analyser. Unusually for him he seemed to be showing some form of outward excitement. Bouncing, almost.

  'How does it look?' I asked.

  'Astounding!' replied Bowden as he waved a printed report. 'Ninety-four per cent probability of Will being the author – not even the best fake Cardenio managed higher than a seventy-six. The VMA detected slight traces of collaboration, too.'

  'Did it say who?'

  'Seventy-three per cent likelihood of Fletcher – something that would seem to bear out against historical evidence. Forging Shakespeare is one thing, forging a collaborated work is quite another.'

  There was silence. Victor rubbed his forehead and thought carefully.

  'Okay. Strange and impossible as it might seem, we may have to accept that this is the real thing. This could turn out to be the biggest literary event in history, ever. We keep this quiet and I'll get Professor Spoon to look it over. We will have to be a hundred per cent sure. I'm not going to suffer the same embarrassment we had over that Tempest fiasco.'

  'Since it isn't in the public domain,' observed Bowden, 'Volescamper will have the sole copyright for the next seventy-six years.'

  'Every playhouse on the planet will want to put it on,' I added, 'and think of the movie rights.'

  'Exactly,' said Victor. 'He's sitting on not only the most fantastic literary discovery for three centuries but also a keg of purest gold. The question is, how did it languish in his library undiscovered all this time? Scholars have studied there since 1709. How on earth was it overlooked? Ideas, anyone?'

  'Retrosnatch?' I suggested. 'If a rogue ChronoGuard operative decided to go back to 1613 and steal a copy he could have a tidy little nest egg on his hands.'

  'SO-12 take retrosnatch very seriously and they assure me that it is always detected, sooner or later or both – and dealt with severely. But it's possible. Bowden, give SO-12 a call, will you?'

  Bowden put out his hand to pick up the phone just as it started to ring.

  'Hello … It's not, you say? Okay, thanks.'

  He put the phone down.

  'The ChronoGuard say not.'

  'How much do you think it's worth?' I asked.

  'Hundred million,' replied Victor, 'two hundred. Who knows? I'll call Volescamper and tell him to keep quiet about it. People would kill to even read it. No one else is to know about it, do you hear?'

  We nodded our agreement.

  'Good. Thursday, the Network takes internal affairs very seriously. SO-1 will want to speak to you here tomorrow at four about the Skyrail thing. They asked me to suspend you but I told them bollocks so just take some leave until tomorrow. Good work, the two of you. Remember, not a word to anyone!'

  We thanked him and he left. Bowden stared at the wall for a moment before saying:

  'The crossword clues bother me, though. If I wasn't of the opinion that coincidences are merely chance or an overused Dickensian plot device, I might conclude that an old enemy of yours wants to get even.'

  'One with a sense of humour, obviously,' I told him sullenly.

  'That rules out Goliath, I suppose,' mused Bowden. 'Who are you calling?'

  'SO-5.'

  I dug Agent Phodder's card out of my pocket and rang the number. He had told me to call him if 'an occurrence of unprecedented weird' took place, so I was doing precisely that.

  'Hello?' said a brusque-sounding man after the telephone had rung for a long time.

  'Thursday Next, SO-27,' I announced. 'I have some information for Agent Phodder.'

  There was a long pause.

  'Agent Phodder has been reassigned.'

  'Agent Kannon, then.'

  'Both Phodder and Kannon have been reassigned,' replied the man sharply. 'Freak accident laying linoleum. The fun
eral's on Friday.'

  This was unexpected news. I couldn't think of anything appropriate to say, so mumbled:

  'I'm sorry to hear that.'

  'Quite,' said the brusque man, and put the phone down.

  'What happened?' asked Bowden.

  'Both dead,' I said quietly.

  'Hades?'

  'Linoleum.'

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  'Does Hades have the sort of powers that might be necessary to manipulate coincidences?' asked Bowden.

  I shrugged.

  'Perhaps,' said Bowden thoughtfully, 'it was a coincidence after all.'

  'Perhaps,' I said, wishing I could believe it. 'Oh – I almost forgot. The world's going to end on the twelfth of December at 20.23.'

  'Really?' replied Bowden in a disinterested tone. Apocalyptic pronouncements were nothing new to any of us. The imminent destruction of the world had been predicted almost every year since the dawn of man.

  'Which one is it this time?' asked Bowden. 'Plague of mice or the wrath of God?'

  'I'm not sure. I've got to be somewhere at five. Do us a favour, would you?'

  I handed him the small evidence bag my father had given to me. Bowden stared at the goo inside.

  'What is it?'

  'Exactly. Will you have the labs analyse it?'

  We bade each other goodbye and I trotted out of the building, bumping into John Smith, who was manoeuvring a wheelbarrow with a carrot the size of a vacuum cleaner in it. There was a big label attached to the oversized vegetable that read 'evidence'. I held the door open for him.

  'Thanks,' he panted.

  I jumped in my car and pulled out of the carpark. My appointment at five was at the doctor's, and I wasn't going to miss it for anything.

  6

  Family

  * * *

  'Landen Parke-Laine had been with me in the Crimea in '72. He lost a leg to a landmine and his best friend to a military blunder. His best friend was my brother, Anton – and Landen testified against him at the hearing that followed the disastrous "Charge of the Light Armoured Brigade". My brother was blamed for the debacle, Landen was honourably discharged, I was awarded the Crimea Star for gallantry, I didn't speak to him for ten years, and now we're married. It's funny how things turn out.'