Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next 2)

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.'