The well of lost plots (6 page)

“Seen Anton recently?” he asked.

“He’s up the coast for a few weeks,” I told him.

“Ah, you made me fifty pounds when you won the ladies’ boxing last weekend. I’m very grateful.”

I smiled and thanked him but he wasn’t paying me any attention — he was busy studying a map.

“We’re going here, Corporal.”

I studied the chart. It was the closest to the front lines I’d ever been. To my shame, I found the perceived danger somewhat intoxicating. Landen sensed it.

“It’s not as wildly exciting as you might think, Next. I’ve been up there twenty times and was only shelled once.”

“What was it like?”

“Disagreeably noisy. Take the road to Balaklava — I’ll tell you when to turn right.”

So we bumped off up the road, past a scene of such rural tranquillity that it was hard to imagine that two armies were facing each other not ten miles away with enough firepower to lay the whole peninsula to waste.

“Ever seen a Russian?” he asked as we passed military trucks supporting the frontline artillery batteries; their sole job was to lob a few shells towards the Russians — just to show we were still about.

“Never, sir.”

“They look just like you and me, you know.”

“You mean they don’t wear big furry hats and have snow on their shoulders?”

The sarcasm wasn’t wasted.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to patronize. How long have you been out here?”

“Two weeks.”

“I’ve been here two
years
, but it might as well be two weeks. Take a right at the farmhouse just ahead.”

I slowed down and cranked the wheel round to enter the dusty farm track. The springs on a Dingo are quite hard — it was a jarring ride along the track, which passed empty farm buildings, all bearing the scars of long-past battles. Old and rusting armor and other war debris was lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumor had it that in the middle of no-man’s-land there were still artillery pieces dating from the nineteenth century. We stopped at a checkpoint, Landen showed his pass and we drove on, a soldier joining us up top “as a precaution.” He had a second ammunition clip taped to the first in his weapon — always a sign of someone who expected trouble — and a dagger in his boot. He had only fourteen words and twenty-one minutes left before he was to die amongst a small spinney of trees that in happier times might have been a good place for a picnic. The bullet would enter below his left shoulder blade, deflect against his spine, go straight through his heart and exit three inches below his armpit, where it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and eighteen months later I would relate what had happened to his parents. His mother would cry and his father would thank me with a dry throat. But the soldier didn’t know that. These were my memories, not his.

“Russian spotter plane!” hissed the doomed soldier.

Landen ordered me back to the trees. The soldier had eleven words left. He would be the first person I saw killed in the conflict but by no means the last. As a civvy you are protected from such unpleasantries, but in the forces it is commonplace — and you never get used to it.

I pulled the wheel over hard and doubled back towards the spinney as fast as I could. We halted under the protective cover of the trees and watched the small observation plane from the dappled shade. We didn’t know it at the time, but an advance party of Russian commandos were pushing towards the lines in our direction. The observation post we were heading for had been overrun half an hour previously, and the commandos were being supported by the spotter plane we had seen — and behind them, twenty Russian battle tanks with infantry in support. The attack was to fail, of course, but only by virtue of the VHF wireless set carried in the Dingo. I would drive us out of there and Landen would call in an airstrike. That was the way it had happened. That’s the way it had
always
happened. Brought together in the white heat and fear of combat. But as we sat beneath the cover of the birch trees, huddled down in the scout car, the only sound the gentle thrum of the Dingo’s engine, we knew nothing — and were only concerned that the spotter plane that wheeled above us would delay our arrival at the OP.

“What’s it doing?” whispered Landen, shielding his eyes to get a better look.

“Looks like a Yak-12,” replied the soldier.

Six words left and under a minute. I had been looking up with them but now glanced out of the hatch at the front of the scout car. My heart missed a beat as I saw a Russian run and jump into a natural hollow a hundred yards in front of the Dingo.

“Russki!” I gasped. “Hundred yards, twelve o’clock!”

I reached up to close the viewing hatch but Landen grabbed my wrist.

“Not yet!” he whispered. “Put her in gear.”

I did as I was told as Landen and the soldier twisted around to look.

“What have you got?” hissed Landen.

“Five, maybe six,” the soldier whispered back, “heading this way.”

“Me, too,” muttered Landen. “Go, Corporal, go!”

I revved the engine, dropped the clutch and the Dingo lunged forward. Almost instantaneously there was a rasp of machine-gun fire as the Russians opened up. To them, we were a surprise ruined. I heard the closer rattle of gunfire as our soldier replied along with the sporadic crack of a pistol that I knew was Landen. I didn’t close the steel viewing hatch; I needed to be able to see as much as I could. The scout car bounced across the track and swerved before gathering speed with the metallic
spang
of small-arms fire hitting the armor plate. I felt a weight slump against my back and a bloodied arm fell into my vision.

“Keep going!” shouted the soldier. “And don’t stop until I say!”

He let go another burst of fire, took out the spent clip, knocked the new magazine on his helmet, reloaded and fired again.

“That wasn’t how it happened — !” I muttered aloud, the soldier having gone way over his allotted time and word count. I looked at the bloodied hand that had fallen against me. A feeling of dread began to gnaw slowly inside me — the fuel gauge was still intact — shouldn’t it have been shattered when the soldier was shot? Then I realized. The soldier had survived and the
officer
was dead.

I sat bolt upright in the bed, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The strength of the memories had lessened with the years, but here was something new, something unexpected. I replayed the images in my head, watching the bloodstained hand fall again and again. It all felt so horribly real. But there was something, just there outside my grasp, something that I should know but didn’t — a loss that I couldn’t explain, an absence of some sort I couldn’t place —

“Landen,” said a soft voice in the darkness, “his name was
Landen
.”

“Landen — !” I cried. “Yes, yes, his name was Landen.”

“And he didn’t die in the Crimea. The soldier did.”

“No, no, I just remembered him dying!”

“You remembered
wrong
.”

It was Gran, sitting beside me in her gingham nightie. She held my hand tightly and gazed at me through her spectacles, her gray hair adrift and hanging down in wispy strands. And with her words, I began to remember. Landen
had
survived — he must have done in order to call up the airstrike. But even now, awake, I could remember him lying dead beside me. It didn’t make sense.

“He didn’t die?”

“No.”

I picked up the picture I had sketched of him from the bedside table.

“Did I ever see him again?” I asked, studying the unfamiliar face.

“Oh, yes,” replied Gran. “Lots and lots. In fact, you married him.”

“I did, didn’t I?” I cried, tears coming to my eyes as the memories returned. “At the Blessed Lady of the Lobster in Swindon! Were you there?”

“Yes, wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

I was still confused. “What happened to him? Why isn’t he with me now?”

“He was eradicated,” replied Gran in a low voice, “by Lavoisier — and Goliath.”

“I remember,” I answered, the darkness in my mind made light as a curtain seemed to draw back and everything that had happened flooded in. “Jack Schitt. Goliath. They eradicated Landen to blackmail me. But I failed. I didn’t get him back — and that’s why I’m here.” I stopped. “But, but, how could I possibly forget him? I was only thinking about him yesterday! What’s happening to me?”

“It’s Aornis, my dear,” explained Gran, “she is a mnemonomorph. A memory-changer. Remember the trouble you had with her back home?”

I did, now she mentioned it. Gran’s prompting broke the delicate veil of forgetfulness that cloaked Aornis’s presence in my mind — and everything about Hades’s little sister returned to me as though no longer hidden from my conscious memory. Aornis, who had sworn revenge for her brother’s death at my hands; Aornis, who could manipulate memories as she chose; Aornis, who had nearly brought about a gooey Dream Topping global Armageddon. But Aornis wasn’t from here. She lived in —

“— the
real
world,” I murmured out loud. “How can she be here, inside fiction? In
Caversham Heights
of all places?”

“She isn’t,” replied Gran. “Aornis is only in your mind. It isn’t all of her, either — simply a mindworm — a sort of mental virus. She is resourceful, adaptable and spiteful; I know of no one else who can have an independent life within someone else’s memory.”

“So how do I get rid of her?”

“I have some experience of mnemonomorphs from my youth, but some things you have to defeat on your own. Stay on your toes and we will speak often and at length.”

“Then this isn’t over yet?”

“No,” replied Gran sadly, shaking her head. “I wish it were. Be prepared for a shock, young Thursday — tell me Landen’s name in full.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I scoffed. “It’s Landen Parke—”

I stopped as a cold fear welled up inside my chest. Surely I could remember my own husband’s name? But try as I might, I could not. I looked at Gran.

“Yes, I do know,” she replied, “but I’m not going to tell you. When you remember, you will know you have won.”

Footnoterphone:
Although the idea of using footnotes as a communication medium was suggested by Dr. Faustus as far back as 1622, it wasn’t until 1856 that the first practical footnoterphone was demonstrated. By 1895 an experimental version was built into
Hard Times
, and within the next three years most of Dickens was connected. The system was expanded rapidly, culminating in the first transgenre trunk line, opened with much fanfare in 1915 between Human Drama and Crime. The network has been expanded and improved ever since, but just recently the advent of mass junkfootnoterphones and the deregulation of news and entertainment channels has almost clogged the system. A mobilefootnoterphone network was introduced in 1985.

CAT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHESHIRE,
Guide to the Great Library

GRAN HAD GOT up early to make my breakfast and I found her asleep in the armchair with the kettle almost molten on the stove and Pickwick firmly ensnared in Gran’s knitting. I made some coffee and cooked myself breakfast despite feeling nauseated. ibb and obb wandered in a little later and told me they had “slept like dead people” and were so hungry they could “eat a horse between two mattresses.” They were just tucking into my breakfast when there was a rap at the door. It was Akrid Snell, one-half of the Perkins & Snell series of detective fiction. He was about forty, dressed in a sharp fawn suit with a matching fedora, and wore a luxuriant red mustache. He was one of Jurisfiction’s lawyers and had been appointed to represent me; I was still facing a charge of Fiction Infraction after I changed the ending of
Jane Eyre
.

“Hello!” he said. “Welcome to the BookWorld!”

“Thank you. Are you well?”

“Just dandy! I got Oedipus off the incest charge — technicality, of course — he didn’t know it was his mother at the time.”

“Of course. And Fagin?”

“Still due to hang, I’m afraid,” he said more sadly. “The Gryphon is onto it — he’ll find a way out, I’m sure.”

He was looking around the shabby flying boat as he spoke.

“Well!” he said at last. “You do make some odd decisions. I’ve heard the latest Daphne Farquitt novel is being built just down the shelf — it’s set in the eighteenth century and would be a lot more comfortable than this. Did you see the review of my latest book?”

He meant the book he was featured in, of course — Snell was fictional from the soles of his brogues to the crown of his fedora — and like most fictioneers, a little sensitive about it. I had read the review of
Wax Lyrical for Death
and it was pretty scathing; tact was of the essence in situations like these.

“No, I think I must have missed it.”

“Oh! Well, it was really — really quite good, actually. I was glowingly praised as ‘Snell is . . . very good . . .
well rounded
is . . . the phrase I would use,’ and the book itself was described as ‘surely the biggest piece of . . . 1986.’ There’s talk of a boxed set, too. Listen, I wanted to tell you that your Fiction Infraction trial will probably be next week. I tried to get another postponement but Hopkins is nothing if not tenacious; place and time to be decided upon.”

“Should I be worried?” I asked, thinking about the last time I’d faced a court here in the BookWorld. It had been in Kafka’s
The Trial
and it turned out predictably unpredictable.

“Not really,” admitted Snell. “Our ‘strong readership approval’ defense should count for something — after all, you did actually do it, so just plain lying might not help so much after all. Listen,” he went on without stopping for breath, “Miss Havisham asked me to introduce you to the wonders of the Well — she would have been here this morning but she’s on a grammasite extermination course.”

“We saw a grammasite in
Great Expectations
.”

“So I heard. You can never be too careful as far as grammasites are concerned.” He looked at ibb and obb, who were just finishing off my bacon and eggs. “Is this breakfast?”