Read Online Lost in a good book by Jasper Fforde - Free Book Online

‘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. What is this,” I added, outraged by the crude approach, “staff training day for the trigger-happy clots at SO-14?”
    “It’s not unusual for hostages to start to empathize with their captors, Thursday. Let us handle this.”
    “Di,” I said in a clear voice, “listen to me: No one is either threatened or in danger! ”
    “Yet, Thursday. Yet. Listen, we’re not going to take that risk. 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?”
    “You don’t kill neanderthals; they are destroyed. There’s a big difference—and besides, the law is very strict on hijackers.”
    “He’s nothing of the sort, Di. He’s just a confused extinctee!”
    “Sorry, Thursday—this is out of my hands.”
    I hung up the phone angrily 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—the subtleties of 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 drafty 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 clues of the crossword 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, 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 done, 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