Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book

‘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 .’

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.’

‘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.’