Jasper Fforde_Thursday Next_05 Read Online Free PDF

the Paleocene anomaly that faced me—he, too, had once been extinct and was here not by the meanderings of natural selection but from the inconsiderate meddling of a scientist who never stopped to ask whether if a thing could be done, that it should. His name was Stig, and he was a reengineered neanderthal, ex–SO-13 and a valued colleague from the old days of SpecOps. He’d saved my butt on several occasions, and I’d helped him and his fellow extinctees to species self-determination.
    “Don’t move,” said Stig in a low rumble. “We don’t want to hurt it.”
    He never did. Stig saw any renegade unextinctees as something akin to family and always caught them alive, if possible. On the other hand, chimeras, a hodgepodge of the hobby sequencer’s art, were another matter—he dispatched them without mercy, and without pain. The Diatryma made a vicious jab toward me; I jumped to my left as the beak snapped shut with the sound of oversize castanets. Quick as a flash, Stig leaped forward and covered the creature’s head with an old flour sack, which seemed to subdue it enough for him to wrestle it to the floor. I joined in, as did the entire storeroom staff, and within a few moments we had wrapped some duct tape securely around its massive beak, rendering it harmless.
    “Thanks,” said Stig, securing a leash around the bird’s neck.
    “Salisbury?” I asked as we walked past the rolls of Wilton shag and cushioned linoleum in a wide choice of colors.
    “Devizes,” replied the neanderthal. “We had to run for eight miles across open farmland to catch it.”
    “Did anyone see you?” I asked, mindful of any rumors getting out.
    “Who’d believe them if they did?” he replied. “But there’re more Diatrymas —we’ll be out again to night.”
    Acme Carpets, as you might have gathered, was just the cover story. In truth it was the old SpecOps under another name. The ser vice hadn’t really been disbanded in the early nineties—it just went underground, and freelance. All strictly unofficial, of course. Luckily, the Swindon chief of police was Braxton Hicks, my old divisional boss at SpecOps. Although he suspected what we got up to, he told me he would feign ignorance unless “someone gets eaten or something.” Besides, if we didn’t mop up all the bizarrer elements of modern living, his regular officers would have to, and Braxton might then have a demand of bonus payments for “actions beyond the call of duty.” And Hicks loved his bud get almost as much as he loved his golf. So the cops didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them.
    “We have a question,” said Stig. “Do we have to mention the possibility of being trampled by mammoths on our Health and Safety Risk-Assessment Form?”
    “No—that’s the part of Acme we don’t want anyone to know about. The safety stuff only relates to carpet laying.”
    “We understand,” said Stig. “What about being shredded by a chimera?”
    “Just carpets, Stig.”
    “Okay. By the way,” he added, “have you told Landen about all your SpecOps work yet? You said you were going to.”
    “I’m…building up to it.”
    “You should tell him, Thursday.”
    “I know.”
    “And have a good anniversary of your mother giving birth to you.”
    “Thank you.”
    I bade Stig good day and then walked to the store offices, which were situated in a raised position halfway between the storeroom and the showroom floor. From there you could see pretty much everything that went on in the building. As I walked in, a man looked up from where he was crouched under the desk.
    “Have you captured it?” he asked in a quavering voice.
    “Yes.”
    He looked relieved and clambered out from his hiding place. He was in his early forties, and his features were just beginning to show the shades of middle age. Around his eyes were fine lines, his dark hair now flecked with gray. Even though he was management, he also wore an Acme Carpets uniform. Only his looked a lot