GERHARD VON SQUID – Neanderthals – Back after a Short Absence

The Brunei Centre was packed, as usual. Busy shoppers moved from chain store to chain store, trying to find bargains in places whose identical goods were price fixed by head office several months in advance. It didn't stop them trying, though.

'So why the interest in Xeroxed bards?' asked Bowden as we crossed the canal.

'We've got a crisis in the BookWorld.'

I outlined what was happening within the play previously known as Hamlet and he opened his eyes wide.

'Whoa!' he said after a pause. 'And I thought our work was unusual!'

We didn't have to wait long to find Mr Stiggins. Within a few moments there was a blood-curdling cry of terror from a startled shopper. A second scream followed, and all of a sudden there was a mad rush of people moving away from the junction of Canal Walk and Bridge Street. We moved against the flow, stepping over discarded shopping and the odd shoe. The cause of the panic was soon evident. Rifling through a rubbish bin for a tasty snack was a bizarre hybrid of a creature – in SO-13 slang, a chimera. The genetic revolution that gave us unlimited replacement organs and the power to create dodos and other extinctees from home cloning kits had a downside: perverse pastiches of animals who were not borne on the shoulders of evolution, but by hobby gene splicers who didn't know any better than to try to play God in the comfort of their own potting sheds.

As the crowds rapidly departed. Bowden and I stared at the strange creature that lurched and slavered as it rooted through the waste bin. It was about the size of a goat and had the rear legs of one. but not much else. The tail and the forelegs were lizard, the head almost feline. It had several tentacles, and it sucked noisily on a chip-soaked newspaper, the saliva from its toothless mouth dribbling copiously on to the pavement. In general, hybrid birds were the most common product of illegal gene splicing, as birds were closely enough related to come out pretty well no matter how ham-fisted the amateur splicer. You could even create a passable dogfoxwolf or a domestic catleopard with no greater knowledge than a biology GCSE. No. it was the cross-class abominations which led to the total ban on home cloning, the lizard/mammal switcheroos that really pushed the limits on what was socially acceptable. It didn't stop the sport; just pushed it underground.

The creature rummaged with its one good arm in the bin, found the remains of a SmileyBurger, stared at it with its five eyes, then pushed it into its mouth. It then flopped to the ground and moved, half shuffling and half sllthering, to the next bin, all the while hissing like a cat and slapping its tentacles together.

'Oh my God,' said Bowden, 'it's got a human arm!'