A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (135 page)

The agent shrugged and walked to the Land Rover to fetch a body bag.

“Every time we do this, it's like killing one of our own,” said Stiggins softly. “Where have you been, Miss Next? In prison?”

“Why does everyone think I've been in prison?”

“Because you were heading towards either death or prison when we last met—and you are not dead.”

Dennis's maker was rocking backwards and forwards, bemoaning the loss of his creation.

The agent returned with a body bag and a female colleague, who gently pried the man from the creature and told his unhearing ears his rights.

“Only one signature on a piece of paper keeps neanderthals from being destroyed, the same as him,” said Stiggins, indicating the creature. “We can be added to the list of banned creatures and designated a chimera without even an act of parliament.”

We turned from the scene as the other two agents laid out the body bag and then rolled the corpse of the chimera onto it.

“You remember Bowden Cable?” I asked. “My partner at the LiteraTecs.”

“Of course,” replied Stiggins, “we met at your reception.”

“How have you been?” asked Bowden.

Stiggins stared back at him. It was a pointless human pleasantry that neanderthals never trouble themselves with.

“We have been fine,” replied Stig, forcing the standard answer from his lips. Bowden didn't know it, but he was only rubbing Stiggins's nose deeper in
sapien
-dominated society.

“He means nothing by it,” I said matter-of-factly, which is how neanderthals like all their speech. “We need your help, Stig.”

“Then we will be happy to give it, Miss Next.”

“Mean nothing by
what?
” asked Bowden as we walked across to a bench.

“Tell you later.”

Stig sat down and watched as another SO-13 Land Rover turned up, followed by two police cars to disperse the now curious crowd. He pulled out a carefully wrapped package of greaseproof paper and unfolded it to reveal his lunch—two windfall apples, a small bag of live bugs and a chunk of raw meat.

“Bug?”

“No thanks.”

“So what can we do for the Literary Detectives?” he asked, attempting to eat a beetle that didn't really want him to and was chased twice around Stig's hand until caught and devoured.

“What do you make of this?” I asked as Bowden handed him a picture of the Shaxtper cadaver.

“It is a dead human,” replied Stig. “Are you sure you won't have a beetle? They're very crunchy.”

“No thanks. What about this?”

Bowden handed him another picture of one of the other dead clones, and then a third.

“The same dead human from a different viewpoint?”

“They're all different corpses, Stig.”

He stopped chewing the uncooked lamb chop and stared at me, then wiped his hands on a large handkerchief and looked more carefully at the photographs. “How many?”

“Eighteen that we know of.”

“Cloning entire humans has always been illegal,” murmured Stig. “Can we see the real thing?”

 

The Swindon morgue was a short walk from the SpecOps office. It was an old Victorian building, which in a more enlightened age would have been condemned. It smelt of formaldehyde and damp, and all the morgue technicians looked unhappy and probably had odd hobbies that I would be happier not knowing about.

The lugubrious head pathologist, Mr. Rumplunkett, looked avariciously at Mr. Stiggins. Since killing a neanderthal wasn't technically a crime, no autopsy was ever performed on one—and Mr. Rumplunkett was by nature a curious man. He said nothing, but Stiggins knew precisely what he was thinking.

“We're pretty much the same inside as you, Mr. Rumplunkett. That was, after all, the reason we were brought into being in the first place.”

“I'm sorry—” began the embarrassed chief pathologist.

“No, you're
not,
” replied Stig. “Your interest is purely professional and in the pursuit of knowledge. We take no offense.”

“We're here to look at Mr. Shaxtper,” said Bowden.

We were led to the main autopsy room, where several bodies were lying under sheets with tags on their toes.

“Overcrowding,” said Mr. Rumplunkett, “but they don't seem to complain too much. This the one?”

He threw back a sheet. The cadaver had a high-domed head, deep-set eyes, a small mustache and goatee. It looked a lot like William Shakespeare from the Droeshout engraving on the title page of the First Folio.

“What do you think?”

“Okay,” I said slowly, “he
looks
like Shakespeare, but if Victor wore his hair like that, so would he.”

Bowden nodded. It was a fair point.

“And this one wrote the Howdy Doody sonnet?”

“No, that particular sonnet was written by
this
one.”

With a flourish, Bowden pulled back the sheet from another cadaver to reveal an identical corpse to the first, only a year or two younger. I stared at them both as Bowden revealed yet another.

“So how many Shakespeares did you say you had?”

“Officially, none. We've got a Shaxtper, a Shakespoor and a Shagsper. Only two of them had any writing on them, all have ink-stained fingers, all are genetically identical, and all died of disease or hypothermia brought on by self-neglect.”

“Down-and-outs?”

“Hermits is probably nearer the mark.”

“Aside from the fact they all have two left eyes and one size of toe,” said Stig, who had been examining the cadavers at length, “they are very good indeed. We haven't seen this sort of craftsmanship for years.”

“They're copies of a playwright named William Shakes—”

“We know of Shakespeare, Mr. Cable,” interupted Stig. “We are particularly fond of Caliban from
The Tempest
. This is a deep recovery job. Brought back from a piece of dried skin or a hair in a death mask or something.”

“When and where, Stig?”

He thought for a moment.

“They were probably built in the mid-thirties,” he announced. “At the time there were perhaps only ten biolabs in the world who could have done this. We think we can safely say we are looking at one of the three biggest genetic-engineering labs in England.”

“Not possible,” said Bowden. “The manufacturing logs of York, Bognor Regis and Scunthorpe are a matter of public record; it would be inconceivable that a project of this magnitude could have been kept secret.”

“And yet they exist,” replied Stig, pointing to the corpses and bringing Bowden's argument to a rapid close. “Do you have the genome logs and trace-element spectroscopic evaluations?” he added. “More careful study might reveal something.”

“That's not standard autopsy procedure,” replied Rumplunkett. “I have my budget to think of.”

“If you do a molar cross-section as well, we will donate our body to this department when we die.”

“I'll do them for you while you wait,” said Mr. Rumplunkett.

Stig turned back to us. “We'll need forty-eight hours to have a look at them. Shall we meet again at my house? We would be honored by your presence.” He looked me in the eye and would know if I lied.

“I'd like that very much.”

“We, too. Wednesday at midday?”

“I'll be there.”

The neanderthal raised his hat, gave a small grunt and moved off.

“Well,” said Bowden as soon as Stig was out of earshot, “I hope you like eating beetles and dock leaves.”

“You and me both, Bowden—you're coming, too. If he wanted me and me alone, he would have asked me in private. But I'm sure he'll make something more palatable for us.”

I frowned as we walked blinking back out into the sunlight. “Bowden?”

“Yup?”

“Did Stig say anything that seemed unusual to you?”

“Not really. Do you want to hear my plans for infil—”

Bowden stopped talking in midsentence as the world ground to a halt. Time had ceased to exist. I was trapped between one moment and the next. It could only be my father.

“Hello, Sweetpea,” he said cheerfully, giving me a hug. “How did the SuperHoop turn out?”

“That's next Saturday.”

“Oh!” he said, looking at his watch and frowning. “You won't let me down, will you?”

“How will I not let you down? What's the connection between the SuperHoop and Kaine?”

“I can't tell you. Events
must
unfold naturally or there'll be hell to pay. You'll just have to trust me.”

“Did you come all this way just to not tell me anything?”

“Not at all. It's a Trafalgar thing. I've been trying all sorts of plans, but Nelson stubbornly resists surviving. I
think
I've figured it out, but I need your help.”

“Will this take long?” I asked. “I've got a lot to do, and I have to get home before my mother finds I've left a gorilla in charge of Friday.”

“I think I am right in saying,” replied my father with a smile, “that this will take no time at all—if you'd prefer, even less!”

 

 

 

 

 

T
here was a succession of flickering lights, and we were on the deck of a fully rigged battleship that heaved in a long swell as the wind gathered in its sails. The deck was scrubbed for action, and a sense of expectancy hung over the vessel. We were sailing abreast with two other men-of-war, and to landward a column of French ships sailed on a course that would bring us into conflict. Men shouted, the ship creaked, the sails heaved and pennants fluttered in the breeze. We were on board Nelson's flagship, the
Victory
.

I looked around. High on the quarterdeck stood a group of men, uniformed officers in navy blue, with cream breeches and cockaded hats. Amongst them was a smaller man with one arm of his uniform tucked neatly into a jacket festooned with medals and decorations. He couldn't have been a better target if he'd tried.

“It would be hard to miss him,” I breathed.

“We keep telling him that, but he's pretty pigheaded about it and won't budge—just says they are military orders and he does not fear to show them to the enemy. Would you like a jawbreaker?”

He offered me a small paper bag, which I declined. The vessel healed over again, and we watched in silence as the distance between the two ships steadily closed.

“I never get bored of this. See them?”

I followed his gaze to where three people were huddled the other side of a large coil of rope. One was dressed in the uniform of the ChronoGuard, another was holding a clipboard, and the third had what looked like a TV camera on his shoulder.

“Documentary filmmakers from the twenty-second century,” explained my father, hailing the other ChronoGuard operative. “Hello, Malcolm, how's it going?”

“Well, thanks!” replied the agent. “Got into the soup a bit when I lost that cameraman at Pompeii. Wanted an extra close-up or something.”

“Hard cheese old man, hard cheese. Golf after work?”

“Righto!” replied Malcolm, returning to his charges.

“It's nice being back at work, actually,” confessed my father, turning back to me. “Sure you won't have a jawbreaker?”

“No, thanks.”

There was a flash and a burst of smoke from the closest French warship. A second later two cannon shots plopped harmlessly into the water. The balls didn't move as fast as I supposed—I could actually see them in flight.

“Now what?” I asked. “Take out the snipers so they can't shoot Nelson?”

“We'd never get them all. No, we must cheat a little. But not yet. Time is of the essence at moments like this.”

So we waited patiently on the main deck while the battle heated up. Within minutes seven or eight warships were firing at the
Victory,
the cannonballs tearing into the sails and rigging. One even cut a man in half on the quarterdeck, and another dispatched a small gang of what I took to be marines, who dispersed rapidly. All through this the diminutive admiral, his captain and a small retinue paced the quarterdeck as the smoke from the guns billowed around us, the heat of the muzzle flashes hot on our faces, the concussion almost deafening. The ship's wheel disintegrated as a shot went through it, and as the battle progressed, we moved about the deck, following the safest path in the light of my father's superior and infinitely precise knowledge of the battle. We moved to one side as a cannonball flew past, moved to another area of the deck as a heavy piece of wood fell from the rigging, then to a third place when some musket balls whizzed past where we had been crouched.