The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [164]
“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 recognized medical condition by 2054.”
Dad held me by the arm and there was a series of rapid flashes and an intense burst of noise, and we were about a half mile and five minutes in the direction 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. I thought you might have better luck. 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 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,” mused the driver, more to himself than me. “Three point eight liters with triple DCOE Webers. Six cylinders of big cat—lovely!”
“Mind the cyclist,” I said as we rounded the corner. 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,” Bowden announced, keying the mike and turning the knob. “That’s odd.”
“No more odd than a double blowout,” I told him, walking a few paces to the handy phone booth and picking up the Skyrail ticket.
“What have you found?” asked Bowden.
“A Skyrail day pass,” I replied slowly, the broken images in my head that much clearer. “I’m going to take the Skyrail— there’s a neanderthal in trouble.”
“How do you know?”
“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 sapien 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 neanderthals felt confused and unprepared for the pressures of modern life. It was Homo sapien at his least sapient.
GERHARD VON SQUID,
Neanderthals: Back After a Short Absence
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 passerby, hoping to win it back. The