‘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 deja 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.’
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
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!’
