Read Online Lost in a good book by Jasper Fforde - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jasper Fforde
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Contemporary, english, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Time travel, Women Detectives, Next, Fiction - Authorship, Books and reading, Characters and Characteristics in Literature, Thursday (Fictitious character), Women detectives - Great Britain
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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 his soapy gun and threw it to the floor. Kaylieu 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 rapidly evacuated. I put my arm round Kaylieu. It was the first time I had done so to any neanderthal and I was surprised by how hard the muscles were—and how warm to the touch.
“Move away from the thal!” said a voice from a bullhorn.
“So you can shoot him?” I yelled back.
“He threatened the lives of commuters, Next. He is a danger to civilized society!”
“Civilized?” 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 he could take out Kaylieu 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 gray 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 Hitchhikers
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 Smiley Fried Chicken, to the carnivorous Diatryma supposedly reengineered and now living in the New Forest. I’d read all about the alien spaceship that crash-landed near Lam-bourn 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 in a bottle by medical science. Stories about SpecOps abound, the favorite 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 tinged red from the setting sun. I was standing by the side of a road in open country. In one direction I could just see a lone cyclist moving towards where I stood and 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 billboard with him.
“Don’t stand there like a tourist, Thursday!” he snapped crossly. “Anyone would think you wanted to be seen!”
“Hi, Dad!” I said fondly, giving him a hug.
“Hello, hello,” he said absently, glancing up and down the road and consulting the chronograph on his wrist and muttering: “fundamental things apply as time goes by. . . .”
I regarded my father as a sort of time-traveling knight errant, but to the ChronoGuard he was nothing less than a criminal. He threw in his badge and went rogue seventeen
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 his soapy gun and threw it to the floor. Kaylieu 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 rapidly evacuated. I put my arm round Kaylieu. It was the first time I had done so to any neanderthal and I was surprised by how hard the muscles were—and how warm to the touch.
“Move away from the thal!” said a voice from a bullhorn.
“So you can shoot him?” I yelled back.
“He threatened the lives of commuters, Next. He is a danger to civilized society!”
“Civilized?” 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 he could take out Kaylieu 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 gray 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 Hitchhikers
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 Smiley Fried Chicken, to the carnivorous Diatryma supposedly reengineered and now living in the New Forest. I’d read all about the alien spaceship that crash-landed near Lam-bourn 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 in a bottle by medical science. Stories about SpecOps abound, the favorite 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 tinged red from the setting sun. I was standing by the side of a road in open country. In one direction I could just see a lone cyclist moving towards where I stood and 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 billboard with him.
“Don’t stand there like a tourist, Thursday!” he snapped crossly. “Anyone would think you wanted to be seen!”
“Hi, Dad!” I said fondly, giving him a hug.
“Hello, hello,” he said absently, glancing up and down the road and consulting the chronograph on his wrist and muttering: “fundamental things apply as time goes by. . . .”
I regarded my father as a sort of time-traveling knight errant, but to the ChronoGuard he was nothing less than a criminal. He threw in his badge and went rogue seventeen
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