“They’re fine. A little bored, but not hurt.”

“What does the perp want?”

“He wants to talk to someone at Goliath about species self-ownership.”

“Wait—he’s neanderthal?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not possible! A neanderthal being violent?”

“There’s no violence up here, Di—just desperation.”

“Shit,” muttered Thuntress. “What do I know about dealing with thals? We’ll have to get one of the SpecOps neanderthals in.”

“He also wants to see a reporter from Toad News.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Di?”

“Yes?”

“What can I tell Kaylieu?”

“Tell him that—er—Toad News are supplying a car to take him to the Goliath Genetic Labs in the Preselli Mountains where Goliath’s governor, chief geneticist and a team of lawyers will be waiting to agree to terms.”

As lies go, it was a real corker.

“But is that right?” I asked.

“There is no ‘right,’ Thursday,” snapped Diana, “not since he took control of the Skyrail. There are eight lives in there. It doesn’t take the winner of Name That Fruit! to figure out what we have to do. Pacifist neanderthal or not, there is a chance he could harm the passengers.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! No neanderthal has ever harmed anyone. What is this,” I added, outraged by the crude approach, “staff training day for the trigger-happy clots at SO-14?”

“It’s not unusual for hostages to start to empathize with their captors, Thursday. Let us handle this.”

“Di,” I said in a clear voice, “listen to me: No one is either threatened or in danger!”

“Yet, Thursday. Yet. Listen, we’re not going to take that risk. This is how it’s going to be: We’re going to divert you back up along the Cirencester line. We’ll have SO-14 agents in position at Cricklade. As soon as he stops I’m afraid we will have no alternative but to take him out. I want you to make sure the passengers are all in the back of the car.”

“Diana, that’s crazy! You’d kill him because he took a few lamebrained commuters for a merry trip round the Swindon loop?”

“You don’t kill neanderthals; they are destroyed. There’s a big difference—and besides, the law is very strict on hijackers.”

“He’s nothing of the sort, Di. He’s just a confused extinctee!”

“Sorry, Thursday—this is out of my hands.”

I hung up the phone angrily as the shuttle was diverted back up towards Cirencester. We flew through Shaw Station, much to the surprise of the waiting commuters, and were soon heading north again. I returned to the driver.

“Kaylieu, you must stop at Purton.”

He grunted in reply but showed little sign of being happy or sad—the subtleties of neanderthal facial expressions were mostly lost on us. He stared at me for a moment and then asked:

“You have childer?”

I hastily changed the subject. Being sequenced infertile was the neanderthals’ biggest cause of complaint against their sapien masters. Within thirty years or so the last of the experimental neanderthals would die of old age. Unless Goliath sequenced some more, that would be it. Extinct again—it was unlikely even we would manage that.