Lost in a Good Book

‘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.