He nodded and we moved to the top of the previous page, just as Briggs was leaving.
Jack did indeed get it and Briggs departed.
He shivered in the cold and looked at the young DS again. 'Mary Jones, eh?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What have you found out so far?'
She dug in her pocket for a notebook, couldn't find it so counted the points off on her fingers instead.
'Deceased's name is Sonny DeFablio.'
'What else?'
'Your wife phoned.'
'She … did?'
'Yes. Said it was important.'
'I'll drop by this evening.'
'She said it was very urgent,' stressed Jones.
'Hold the fort for me, would you?'
'Certainly, sir.'
Jack walked from the crime scene leaving Jones with Dr Singh.
'Right,' said Mary, 'what have we got? …'
'I hope you know what you're doing.'
'Not a clue.'
'Me neither,' replied the quasi-pathologist. 'You know that long speech I made just now about post-mortem bruising, angles of bullet entry and discoloration of body tissues—?'
'Yes?'
She leaned closer.
'Didn't understand a word. Eight pages of technical dialogue and haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about. I only trained at Generic college as a mother figure in domestic potboilers. If I'd known I was to be drafted to this I would have spent a few hours in a Cornwell. Do you have any clues as to what I'm actually meant to do?'
I rummaged in her bag and brought out a large thermometer.
'Try this.'
'What do I do with it?'
I pointed.
'You're kidding me,' replied Dr Singh, aghast.
3
Mrs Singh didn't waste the opportunity, and she gathered together several other trainee pathologists she knew from the Well. They all sat spellbound as I recounted the limited information I possessed. Exhausted, I managed to escape four hours later. It was evening when I finally got home. I opened the door to the flying boat and kicked off my shoes. Pickwick rushed up to greet me and tugged excitedly at my trouser leg. I followed her through to the living room and then had to wait while she remembered where she had left her egg. We finally found it rolled behind the hi-fi and I congratulated her, despite there being no change in its appearance.
I returned to the kitchen, ibb and obb had been studying Mrs Beeton all day, and ibb was attempting steak Diane with french fries. Landen used to cook that for me and I suddenly felt very lonesome and small, so far from home I might very well be on Pluto, obb was putting the final touches to a fully decorated four-tier wedding cake.
'Hello, ibb,' I said, 'how's it going?'
'How's what going?' replied the Generic in that annoying literal way in which they speak. 'And I'm obb.'
'Sorry — obb.'
'Why are you sorry? Have you done something?'
'Never mind.'
I sat down at the table and opened a package that had arrived. It was from Miss Havisham and contained the Jurisfiction Standard Entrance Exam. Jurisfiction was the policing agency within fiction that I had joined almost by accident — I had wanted to get Jack Schitt out of 'The Raven' and getting involved with the agency seemed to be the best way to learn. But Jurisfiction had grown on me and I now felt strongly about maintaining the solidity of the written word. It was the same job I had undertaken at SpecOps, just from the other side. But it struck me that, on this occasion, Miss Havisham was wrong — I was not yet ready for full membership.
The hefty tome consisted of five hundred questions, nearly all of them multiple choice. I noticed that the exam was self-invigilating; as soon as I opened the book a clock in the top left-hand corner started to count down from two hours. They were mostly questions about literature, which I had no problem with. Jurisfiction law was trickier and I would probably need to consult Miss Havisham. I made a start and ten minutes later was pondering question forty-six: Which of the following poets never used the outlawed word 'majestic' in their work? when there was a knock at the door accompanied by a peal of thunder.
I closed the exam book and opened the door. On the jetty were three ugly old crones dressed in filthy rags. They had bony features, rough and warty skin, and they launched into a well-rehearsed act as soon as the door opened.
'When shall we three meet again?' said the first witch. 'In Thurber, Wodehouse, or in Greene?'
'When the hurly-burly's done,' added the second, 'when the story's thought and spun!'
There was a pause until the second witch nudged the third.
'That will be Eyre the set of sun,' she said quickly.
'Where the place?'
'Within the text.'
'There to meet with MsNext!'
They stopped talking and I stared, unsure of what I was meant to do.
'Thank you very much,' I replied, but the first witch snorted disparagingly and "wedged her foot in the door as I tried to close it.
'Prophecies, kind lady?' she asked as the other two cackled hideously.
'I really don't think so,' I answered, pushing her foot away. 'Perhaps another time.'
'All hail, MsNext! hail to thee, citizen of Swindon!'
'Really, I'm sorry — and I'm out of change.'
'All hail, MsNext, hail to thee, full Jurisfiction agent, thou shalt be!'
'If you don't go,' I began, starting to get annoyed, 'I'll—'
'All hail, MsNext, thou shalt be Bellman thereafter!'
'Sure I will. Go on, clear off, you imperfect speakers — bother someone else with your nonsense!'
'A shilling!' said the first. 'And we shall tell you more — or less, as you please.'
I closed the door despite their grumbling and went back to my multiple choice. I'd only just answered question forty-nine: Which of the following is not a gerund? when there was another knock at the door.
'Blast!' I muttered, getting up and striking my ankle on the table leg. It was the three witches again.
'I thought I told you—'
'Sixpence, then,' said the chief hag, putting out a bony hand.
'No,' I replied firmly, rubbing my ankle. 'I never buy anything at the door.'
They all started up then:
'Thrice to thine and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up—'
I shut the door again. I wasn't superstitious and had far more important things to worry about. I had just sat down again, sipped my tea and answered the next question: Who wrote 'Toad of Toad Hall'? when there was another rap at the door.
'Right,' I said to myself, marching across the room, 'I've had it with you three.'
I pulled open the door and said:
'Listen here, hag, I'm really not interested, nor ever will be in your … Oh.'
I stared. Granny Next. If it had been Admiral Lord Nelson himself I don't think I could have been more surprised.
'Gran!?!' I exclaimed. 'What on earth are you doing here?'
She was dressed in a spectacular outfit of blue gingham, from her dress to her overcoat and even her hat, shoes and bag.
I hugged her. She smelt of Bodmin for Women. She hugged me in return in that sort of fragile way that very elderly people do. And she was elderly — a hundred and eight, at the last count.
'I have come to look after you, young Thursday,' she announced.
'Er — thank you, Gran,' I replied, wondering quite how she got here.
'You're going to have a baby and need attending to,' she added grandly. 'My suitcase is on the jetty and you're going to have to pay the taxi.'
'Of course,' I muttered, going outside and finding a yellow cab with TransGenreTaxis written on the door.
'How much?' I asked the cabby.
'Seventeen and six.'
'Oh yes?' I replied sarcastically. 'Took the long way round?'
'Trips to the the Well cost double,' said the cabby. 'Pay up or I'll make sure Jurisfiction hears about it.'
I handed him a pound and he patted his pockets.
'Sorry,' he said, 'have you got anything smaller? I don't carry much change.'
'Keep it,' I told him as his footnoterphone muttered something about a party often wanting to get out of Florence in The Decameron. I got a receipt and he vanished from view. I picked up Gran's suitcase and hauled it into the Sunderland.
'This is ibb and obb,' I explained, 'Generics billeted with me. The one on the left is ibb.'
'I'm obb.'
'Sorry. That's ibb and that's obb. This is my grandmother.'
'Hello,' said Granny Next, gazing at my two house guests.
'You're very old,' observed ibb.
'One hundred and eight,' announced Gran proudly. 'Do you two do anything but stare?'
'Not really,' said ibb.
'Plock,' said Pickwick, who had popped her head round the door. She ruffled her feathers excitedly and rushed up to greet Gran, who always seemed to have a few spare marshmallows about her.
'What's it like being old?' asked ibb, who was peering closely at the soft pink folds in Gran's skin.
'Death's adolescence,' replied Gran, 'but you know the worst part?'
Ibb and obb shook their heads.
'I'm going to miss my funeral by three days.'
'Gran!' I scolded. 'You'll confuse them — they tend to take things literally.'
It was too late.
'Miss your own funeral?' muttered ibb, thinking hard. 'How is that possible?'
'Think about it, ibb,' said obb. 'If she lived three days longer, she'd be able to speak at her own funeral — get it?'
'Of course,' said ibb, 'stupid of me.'
And they went into the kitchen, talking about Mrs Beeton and the best way to deal with amorous liaisons between the scullery maid and the boot boy — it must have been an old edition.
'When's supper?' asked Gran, looking disdainfully at the interior of the flying boat. 'I'm absolutely famished — but nothing tougher than suet, mind. The gnashers aren't what they were.'
I delicately helped her out of her gingham coat and sat her down at the table. Steak Diane would be like eating railway sleepers to her, so I started to make an omelette.
'Now, Gran,' I said, cracking some eggs into a bowl, 'I want you to tell me what you're doing here.'
'I need to be here to remind you of things you might forget, young Thursday.'
'Such as what?'
'Such as Landen. They eradicated my husband too, and the one thing I needed was someone to help me through it, so that's what I'm here to do for you.'
'I'm not going to forget him, Gran!'
'Yes,' she agreed in a slightly peculiar way, 'I'm here to make sure of it.'
'That's the why,' I persisted, 'but what about the how?'
'I too used to do the occasional job for Jurisfiction in the old days,' she explained, 'a long time ago, mind, but it was just one of many jobs that I did in my life — and not the strangest, either.'
'What was?' I asked, knowing in my heart that I really shouldn't be asking.
'Well, I was God Emperor of the Universe once,' she answered in the same manner in which she might have admitted to going to the pictures, 'and being a man for twenty-four hours was pretty weird.'
'Yes,' I replied, 'I expect it was.'
Ibb laid the table and we sat down to eat ten minutes later. As Gran sucked on her omelette I tried to make conversation with ibb and obb. The trouble was, neither of them had the requisite powers of social communication to assimilate anything from speech other than the bald facts it contained. I tried a joke I had heard from Bowden, my partner at SpecOps, about an octopus and a set of bagpipes. But when I delivered the punchline they both stared at me.
'Why would the bagpipes be dressed in pyjamas?' asked ibb.
'They weren't,' I replied, 'it was the tartan. That's just what the octopus thought they were.'
'I see,' said obb, not seeing at all. 'Would you mind going over it again?'
'That's it,' I said resolutely, 'you're going to have a personality if it kills me.'
'Kill you?' enquired ibb in all seriousness. 'Why would it kill you?'
I thought carefully. There had to be somewhere to begin. I clicked my fingers.
'Sarcasm,' I said. 'We'll start with that.'
They both looked at me blankly.
'Well,' I began, 'sarcasm is closely related to irony and implies a twofold view — a literal meaning yet a wholly different intention from what is said. For instance, if you were lying to me about who ate all the anchovies I left in the cupboard, and you had eaten them, you might say: "It wasn't me" and I would say: "Sure it wasn't," meaning I'm sure it was but in an ironic or sarcastic manner.'
'What's an anchovy?' asked ibb.
'A small and very salty fish.'
'I see,' replied ibb. 'Does sarcasm work with other things or is it only fish?'
'No, the stolen anchovies was only by way of an example. Now you try.'
'An anchovy?'
'No, you try some sarcasm.'
They continued to look at me blankly. I sighed.
'Like trying to nail jelly to the wall,' I muttered under my breath.
'Plock,' said Pickwick in her sleep as she gently keeled over. 'Plocketty-plock.'
'Sarcasm is better explained through humour,' put in Gran, who had been watching my efforts with interest. 'You know that Pickwick isn't too clever?'
Pickwick stirred in her sleep where she had fallen, resting on her head with her claws in the air.
'Yes, we know that,' replied ibb and obb, who were nothing if not observant.
'Well, if I were to say that it is easier to get yeast to perform tricks than Pickwick, I'm using mild sarcasm to make a joke.'
'Yeast?' queried ibb. 'But yeast has no intelligence.'
'Exactly,' replied Gran. 'So I am making a sarcastic observation that Pickwick has less brain power than yeast. You try.'
The Generic thought long and hard.
'So,' said ibb slowly, 'how about … Pickwick is so clever she sits on the TV and stares at the sofa?'
'It's a start,' said Gran.
'And,' added ibb, gaining confidence by the second, 'if Pickwick went on Mastermind, she'd do best to choose "Dodo eggs" as her specialist subject.'
Obb was getting the hang of it, too.
'If a thought crossed her mind it would be the shortest journey on record—'
'Pickwick would cause a sensation at Oxford — but only from within a specimen jar—'
'All right, that's enough sarcasm,' I said quickly. 'I know Pickwick won't win "Brain of BookWorld" but she's a loyal companion.'
I looked across at Pickwick, who slid off the sofa and landed with a thump on the floor. She woke up and started plocking loudly at the sofa, coffee table, rug — in fact, anything close by — before calming down, climbing on top of her egg and falling asleep again.
'You did well, guys,' I said. 'Another time we'll tackle subtext.'
Ibb and obb went to their room soon afterwards, discussing how sarcasm was related to irony, and whether irony itself could be generated in laboratory conditions. Gran and I chatted about home. Mother was very well, it seemed, and Joffy and Wilbur and Orville were as mad as ever. Gran, conscious of my dealings with Yorrick Kaine in the past, reported that Kaine had returned soon after the episode with the Glatisant at Volescamper Towers, lost his seat in the house and been back at the helm of his newspaper and publishing company soon after. I knew he was fictional and a danger to my world but couldn't see what to do about it from here. We talked into the night about the BookWorld, Landen, eradications and having children. Gran had had three herself so she told me all the stuff they don't tell you when you sign on the dotted line.
'Think of swollen ankles as trophies,' she said, somewhat unhelpfully.
That night I put Gran in my room and slept in the bedroom under the flight deck. I washed, undressed and climbed into bed, weary after the day's work. I lay there, staring at the pattern of reflected light dancing on the ceiling, and thought of my father, Emma Hamilton, Jack Spratt, Dream Topping and babies. I was meant to be here resting but the demolition problem of Caversham Heights couldn't be ignored — I could have moved but I liked it here, and besides, I had done enough running away already. The arrival of Gran had been strange, but since much was odd here in the Well, weird had become commonplace. If things carried on like this the dull and meaningless would become items of spectacular interest.
4
That night, I went to the Crimea again. Not, you might think, the most obvious port of call in my sleep. The peninsula had been a constant source of anguish in my waking hours: a time of stress, of pain, and violent death. But the Crimea was where I met Landen, and where we fell in love. The memories were more dear to me now because it had never happened, and it was for this reason that the Crimea's sometimes painful recollections came back to me. I relaxed and was transported in the arms of Morpheus to the Black Sea peninsula, twelve years before.
No shots had been fired for ten years when I arrived on the peninsula in the May of 1973 although the conflict itself had been going for a hundred and twenty years. I was attached to the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armoured Brigade as a driver — I was twenty-three years old and drove thirteen tons of armoured vehicle under the command of Major Phelps, who was later to lose his lower arm and his mind during a badly timed charge into the massed Russian artillery. In my youthful naïveté, I had thought the Crimea was fun — a notion that was soon to change.
'Report to the vehicle pool at fourteen hundred hours,' I was told one morning by our sergeant, a kindly yet brusque man by the name of Tozer. He would survive the charge but be lost in a training accident eight years later. I was at his funeral. He was a good man.
'Any idea what I'll be doing, Sarge?' I asked.
Sergeant Tozer shrugged.
'Special duties. I was told to allocate someone intelligent — but they weren't available, so you'll have to do.'
I laughed.
'Thanks, Sarge.'
I dreamed this scene more often these days, and the reason was clear — it was the first time Landen and I spent any time together. My brother Anton was also serving out here and he had introduced us a few weeks before — but Anton did that a lot. Today I was to drive Landen in an armoured scout car to an observation post overlooking a valley in which a build-up of Imperial Russian artillery had been reported. We referred to the incident as 'our first date'.
I arrived for duty and was told to sign for a Dingo scout car, a small two-person armoured vehicle with enough power to get out of trouble quick — or into it, depending on one's level of competency. I duly picked up the scout car and waited for nearly an hour, standing in a tent with a lot of other drivers, talking and laughing, drinking tea and telling unlikely stories. It was a chilly day but I was glad I was doing this instead of daily orders, which generally meant cleaning up the camp and other tedious tasks.
'Corporal Next?' said an officer who poked his head into the tent. 'Drop the tea — we're off!'
He wasn't handsome but he was intriguing, and, unlike many of the officers, he seemed to have a certain relaxed manner about him.
'Good morning, sir,' I said, unsure of whether he remembered me. I needn't have worried. I didn't know it yet, but he had specifically asked Sergeant Tozer for me. He was intrigued too, but fraternising on active duty was a subtle art. The penalties could be severe.
I led him to where the Dingo was parked and climbed in. I pressed the starter and the engine rumbled into life. Landen lowered himself into the commander's seat.
'Seen Anton recently?' he asked.
'He's up the coast for a few weeks,' I told him.
'Ah,' he replied, '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 Balaclava — 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 front-line 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, 'Ididn't mean to patronise. How long have you been out here?'
'Two weeks.'
'I've been here two years,' said Landen, '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. There was old and rusting armour and other war debris lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumour 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 in 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, whereupon it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and I would relate what happened to his parents eighteen months later. 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 hard over 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 air strike. That was the way it had happened. That was 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 coo of a partridge and the gentle thrum of the Dingo's engine, we knew nothing — and were concerned only 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.
'Russkie! 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 armour 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 realised. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.
I sat bolt upright in 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 grey 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 air strike. 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,' said Gran, '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 her presence in my mind — and everything about Hades' little sister returned to me as though 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 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,' replied Gran, '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.'
5
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 her knitting. I made some coffee and cooked myself breakfast despite feeling nauseous. 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 in to 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 with a luxuriant red moustache. 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!' he replied. 'I got Oedipus off the incest charge. Technicality, of course — he didn't know it was his mother at the time.'
'Of course,' I remarked, 'and Fagin?'
'Still due to hang, I'm afraid,' he said more sadly. 'The Gryphon is on to 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!' he replied. '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 had faced a court here in the BookWorld. It had been in Kafka's The Trial and had turned out predictably unpredictable.
'Not really,' admitted Snell. 'Our "strong readership approval" defence 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,' I told him.
'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?'
I nodded.
'Fascinating! I've always wondered what a breakfast looked like. In our books we have twenty-three dinners, twelve lunches and eighteen afternoon teas — but no breakfasts.' He paused for a moment. 'And why is orange jam called marmalade, do you suppose?'
I told him I didn't know and passed him a mug of coffee.
'Do you have any Generics living in your books?' I asked.
'A half-dozen or so at any one time,' he replied, spooning in some sugar and staring at ibb and obb, who, true to form, stared back. 'Boring bunch until they develop a personality, then they can be quite fun. Trouble is, they have an annoying habit of assimilating themselves into a strong leading character, and it can spread among them like a rash. They used to be billeted en masse but that all changed after we lodged six thousand Generics inside Rebecca. In under a month all but eight had become Mrs Danvers. Listen, I don't suppose I could interest you in a couple of housekeepers, could I?'
'I don't think so,' I replied, recalling Mrs Danvers' slightly abrasive personality.
'Don't blame you,' replied Snell with a laugh.
'So now it's only limited numbers per novel?'
'You learn fast. We had a similar problem with Merlins. We've had aged-male-bearded-wizard-mentor types coming out of our ears for years.'
He leaned closer.
'Do you know how many Merlins the Well of Lost Plots has placed over the past fifty years?'
'Tell me.'
'Nine thousand!' he breathed. 'We even altered plot lines to include older male mentor figures! Do you think that was wrong?'
'I'm not sure,' I said, slightly confused.
'At least the Merlin type is a popular character,' added Snell. 'Stick a new hat on him and he can appear pretty much anywhere. Try getting rid of thousands of Mrs Danvers. There isn't a huge demand for creepy fifty-something housekeepers; even buy-two-get-one-free deals didn't help — we use them on anti-mispeling duty, you know. A sort of army.'
'What's it like?' I asked.
'How do you mean?'
'Being fictional.'
'Ah!' replied Snell slowly. 'Yes — fictional.'
I realised too late that I had gone too far — it was how I imagined a dog would feel if you brought up the question of distemper in polite conversation.
'I forgive your inquisitiveness, Miss Next, and since you are an Outlander I will take no offence. If I were you I shouldn't enquire too deeply about the past of fictioneers. We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot. After basic training at St Tabularasa's I progressed to the Dupin School for Detectives; I went on field trips around the works of Hammett, Chandler and Sayers before attending a postgraduate course at the Agatha Christie Finishing School. I would have liked to have been an original but I was born seventy years too late for that.'
He stopped and paused for reflection. I was sorry to have raised the point. It can't be easy, being an amalgamation of all that has been written before.
'Right!' he said, finishing his coffee. 'That's enough about me. Ready?'
I nodded.
'Then let's go.'
So, taking my hand, he transported us both out of Caversham Heights and into the endless corridors of the Well of Lost Plots.
The Well was similar to the Library as regards the fabric of the building — dark wood, thick carpet, tons of shelves — but here the similarity ended. Firstly, it was noisy. Tradesmen, artisans, technicians and Generics all walked about the broad corridors appearing and vanishing as they moved from book to book, building, changing and deleting to the author's wishes. Crates and packing cases lay scattered about the corridor and people ate, slept and conducted their business in shops and small houses built in the manner of an untidy shanty town. Advertising hoardings and posters were everywhere, promoting some form of goods or services unique to the business of writing.'[5]
'I think I'm picking up junk footnoterphone messages, Snell,' I said above the hubbub. 'Should I be worried?'
'You get them all the time down here,' he replied. 'Ignore them — and never pass on chain footnotes.'[6]
We were accosted by a stout man wearing a sandwich board advertising bespoke plot devices 'for the discerning wordsmith'.
'No thank you,' yelled Snell, taking me by the arm and walking us to a quieter spot between Dr Forthright's Chapter Ending Emporium and the Premier Mentor School.
'There are twenty-six floors in the Well,' he told me, waving a hand towards the bustling crowd. 'Most of them are chaotic factories of fictional prose like this one but the twenty-sixth sub-basement has an entrance to the Text Sea — we'll go down there and see them offloading the scrawltrawlers one evening.'
'What do they unload?'
'Words,' smiled Snell, 'words, words and more words. The building blocks of fiction, the DNA of Story.'
'But I don't see any books being written,' I observed, looking around.
He chuckled.
'You Outlanders! Books may look like nothing more than words on a page but they are actually an infinitely complex Imagino-Transference technology that translates odd inky squiggles into pictures inside your head — we're currently using Book Operating System V8.3. Not for long, though — Text Grand Central want to upgrade the system.'
'Someone mentioned UltraWord™ on the news last night,' I observed.
'Fancy-pants name. It's BOOK V9 to me and you. WordMaster Libris should be giving us a presentation shortly. UltraWord™ is being tested as we speak — if it's as good as they say it is, books will never be the same again!'
'Well,' I sighed, trying to get my head around this idea, 'I had always thought novels were just, well, written.'
'Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,' replied Snell as we walked along. 'The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer's imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader's mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer — perhaps more.'
This was a new approach; I ran the idea around in my head.
'Really?' I replied, slightly doubtfully.
'Of course!' Snell laughed. 'Surf pounding the shingle wouldn't mean diddly unless you'd seen the waves cascade on to the foreshore, or felt the breakers tremble the beach beneath your feet, now, would it?'
'I suppose not.'
'Books,' said Snell, 'are a kind of magic.'
Jack did indeed get it and Briggs departed.
He shivered in the cold and looked at the young DS again. 'Mary Jones, eh?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What have you found out so far?'
She dug in her pocket for a notebook, couldn't find it so counted the points off on her fingers instead.
'Deceased's name is Sonny DeFablio.'
'What else?'
'Your wife phoned.'
'She … did?'
'Yes. Said it was important.'
'I'll drop by this evening.'
'She said it was very urgent,' stressed Jones.
'Hold the fort for me, would you?'
'Certainly, sir.'
Jack walked from the crime scene leaving Jones with Dr Singh.
'Right,' said Mary, 'what have we got? …'
* * *
We ran the scene together, Dr Singh telling me all the information that she was more used to relating to Jack. She went into a huge amount of detail regarding the time of death and a more-than-graphic explanation of how she thought it had happened. Ballistics, trajectory, blood-splatter patterns, you name it. I was really quite glad when she finished and the chapter moved off to Jack's improvised meeting with his ex-wife. As soon as we were done, Dr Singh turned to me and said in an anxious tone:'I hope you know what you're doing.'
'Not a clue.'
'Me neither,' replied the quasi-pathologist. 'You know that long speech I made just now about post-mortem bruising, angles of bullet entry and discoloration of body tissues—?'
'Yes?'
She leaned closer.
'Didn't understand a word. Eight pages of technical dialogue and haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about. I only trained at Generic college as a mother figure in domestic potboilers. If I'd known I was to be drafted to this I would have spent a few hours in a Cornwell. Do you have any clues as to what I'm actually meant to do?'
I rummaged in her bag and brought out a large thermometer.
'Try this.'
'What do I do with it?'
I pointed.
'You're kidding me,' replied Dr Singh, aghast.
3
Three witches, multiple choice and sarcasm
'Jurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency that works inside books. Under a remit from the Council of Genres and working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction comprise a mixed bag of characters, most drawn from the ranks of fiction but some, like Harris Tweed and myself, from the real world. Problems in fiction are noticed by "spotters" employed at Text Grand Central, and from there relayed to the Bellman, a ten-yearly elected figure who runs Jurisfiction under strict guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres. Jurisfiction has its own code of conduct, technical department, canteen, and resident washerwoman.'
THURSDAY NEXT — The Jurisfiction Chronicles
Mrs Singh didn't waste the opportunity, and she gathered together several other trainee pathologists she knew from the Well. They all sat spellbound as I recounted the limited information I possessed. Exhausted, I managed to escape four hours later. It was evening when I finally got home. I opened the door to the flying boat and kicked off my shoes. Pickwick rushed up to greet me and tugged excitedly at my trouser leg. I followed her through to the living room and then had to wait while she remembered where she had left her egg. We finally found it rolled behind the hi-fi and I congratulated her, despite there being no change in its appearance.
I returned to the kitchen, ibb and obb had been studying Mrs Beeton all day, and ibb was attempting steak Diane with french fries. Landen used to cook that for me and I suddenly felt very lonesome and small, so far from home I might very well be on Pluto, obb was putting the final touches to a fully decorated four-tier wedding cake.
'Hello, ibb,' I said, 'how's it going?'
'How's what going?' replied the Generic in that annoying literal way in which they speak. 'And I'm obb.'
'Sorry — obb.'
'Why are you sorry? Have you done something?'
'Never mind.'
I sat down at the table and opened a package that had arrived. It was from Miss Havisham and contained the Jurisfiction Standard Entrance Exam. Jurisfiction was the policing agency within fiction that I had joined almost by accident — I had wanted to get Jack Schitt out of 'The Raven' and getting involved with the agency seemed to be the best way to learn. But Jurisfiction had grown on me and I now felt strongly about maintaining the solidity of the written word. It was the same job I had undertaken at SpecOps, just from the other side. But it struck me that, on this occasion, Miss Havisham was wrong — I was not yet ready for full membership.
The hefty tome consisted of five hundred questions, nearly all of them multiple choice. I noticed that the exam was self-invigilating; as soon as I opened the book a clock in the top left-hand corner started to count down from two hours. They were mostly questions about literature, which I had no problem with. Jurisfiction law was trickier and I would probably need to consult Miss Havisham. I made a start and ten minutes later was pondering question forty-six: Which of the following poets never used the outlawed word 'majestic' in their work? when there was a knock at the door accompanied by a peal of thunder.
I closed the exam book and opened the door. On the jetty were three ugly old crones dressed in filthy rags. They had bony features, rough and warty skin, and they launched into a well-rehearsed act as soon as the door opened.
'When shall we three meet again?' said the first witch. 'In Thurber, Wodehouse, or in Greene?'
'When the hurly-burly's done,' added the second, 'when the story's thought and spun!'
There was a pause until the second witch nudged the third.
'That will be Eyre the set of sun,' she said quickly.
'Where the place?'
'Within the text.'
'There to meet with MsNext!'
They stopped talking and I stared, unsure of what I was meant to do.
'Thank you very much,' I replied, but the first witch snorted disparagingly and "wedged her foot in the door as I tried to close it.
'Prophecies, kind lady?' she asked as the other two cackled hideously.
'I really don't think so,' I answered, pushing her foot away. 'Perhaps another time.'
'All hail, MsNext! hail to thee, citizen of Swindon!'
'Really, I'm sorry — and I'm out of change.'
'All hail, MsNext, hail to thee, full Jurisfiction agent, thou shalt be!'
'If you don't go,' I began, starting to get annoyed, 'I'll—'
'All hail, MsNext, thou shalt be Bellman thereafter!'
'Sure I will. Go on, clear off, you imperfect speakers — bother someone else with your nonsense!'
'A shilling!' said the first. 'And we shall tell you more — or less, as you please.'
I closed the door despite their grumbling and went back to my multiple choice. I'd only just answered question forty-nine: Which of the following is not a gerund? when there was another knock at the door.
'Blast!' I muttered, getting up and striking my ankle on the table leg. It was the three witches again.
'I thought I told you—'
'Sixpence, then,' said the chief hag, putting out a bony hand.
'No,' I replied firmly, rubbing my ankle. 'I never buy anything at the door.'
They all started up then:
'Thrice to thine and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up—'
I shut the door again. I wasn't superstitious and had far more important things to worry about. I had just sat down again, sipped my tea and answered the next question: Who wrote 'Toad of Toad Hall'? when there was another rap at the door.
'Right,' I said to myself, marching across the room, 'I've had it with you three.'
I pulled open the door and said:
'Listen here, hag, I'm really not interested, nor ever will be in your … Oh.'
I stared. Granny Next. If it had been Admiral Lord Nelson himself I don't think I could have been more surprised.
'Gran!?!' I exclaimed. 'What on earth are you doing here?'
She was dressed in a spectacular outfit of blue gingham, from her dress to her overcoat and even her hat, shoes and bag.
I hugged her. She smelt of Bodmin for Women. She hugged me in return in that sort of fragile way that very elderly people do. And she was elderly — a hundred and eight, at the last count.
'I have come to look after you, young Thursday,' she announced.
'Er — thank you, Gran,' I replied, wondering quite how she got here.
'You're going to have a baby and need attending to,' she added grandly. 'My suitcase is on the jetty and you're going to have to pay the taxi.'
'Of course,' I muttered, going outside and finding a yellow cab with TransGenreTaxis written on the door.
'How much?' I asked the cabby.
'Seventeen and six.'
'Oh yes?' I replied sarcastically. 'Took the long way round?'
'Trips to the the Well cost double,' said the cabby. 'Pay up or I'll make sure Jurisfiction hears about it.'
I handed him a pound and he patted his pockets.
'Sorry,' he said, 'have you got anything smaller? I don't carry much change.'
'Keep it,' I told him as his footnoterphone muttered something about a party often wanting to get out of Florence in The Decameron. I got a receipt and he vanished from view. I picked up Gran's suitcase and hauled it into the Sunderland.
'This is ibb and obb,' I explained, 'Generics billeted with me. The one on the left is ibb.'
'I'm obb.'
'Sorry. That's ibb and that's obb. This is my grandmother.'
'Hello,' said Granny Next, gazing at my two house guests.
'You're very old,' observed ibb.
'One hundred and eight,' announced Gran proudly. 'Do you two do anything but stare?'
'Not really,' said ibb.
'Plock,' said Pickwick, who had popped her head round the door. She ruffled her feathers excitedly and rushed up to greet Gran, who always seemed to have a few spare marshmallows about her.
'What's it like being old?' asked ibb, who was peering closely at the soft pink folds in Gran's skin.
'Death's adolescence,' replied Gran, 'but you know the worst part?'
Ibb and obb shook their heads.
'I'm going to miss my funeral by three days.'
'Gran!' I scolded. 'You'll confuse them — they tend to take things literally.'
It was too late.
'Miss your own funeral?' muttered ibb, thinking hard. 'How is that possible?'
'Think about it, ibb,' said obb. 'If she lived three days longer, she'd be able to speak at her own funeral — get it?'
'Of course,' said ibb, 'stupid of me.'
And they went into the kitchen, talking about Mrs Beeton and the best way to deal with amorous liaisons between the scullery maid and the boot boy — it must have been an old edition.
'When's supper?' asked Gran, looking disdainfully at the interior of the flying boat. 'I'm absolutely famished — but nothing tougher than suet, mind. The gnashers aren't what they were.'
I delicately helped her out of her gingham coat and sat her down at the table. Steak Diane would be like eating railway sleepers to her, so I started to make an omelette.
'Now, Gran,' I said, cracking some eggs into a bowl, 'I want you to tell me what you're doing here.'
'I need to be here to remind you of things you might forget, young Thursday.'
'Such as what?'
'Such as Landen. They eradicated my husband too, and the one thing I needed was someone to help me through it, so that's what I'm here to do for you.'
'I'm not going to forget him, Gran!'
'Yes,' she agreed in a slightly peculiar way, 'I'm here to make sure of it.'
'That's the why,' I persisted, 'but what about the how?'
'I too used to do the occasional job for Jurisfiction in the old days,' she explained, 'a long time ago, mind, but it was just one of many jobs that I did in my life — and not the strangest, either.'
'What was?' I asked, knowing in my heart that I really shouldn't be asking.
'Well, I was God Emperor of the Universe once,' she answered in the same manner in which she might have admitted to going to the pictures, 'and being a man for twenty-four hours was pretty weird.'
'Yes,' I replied, 'I expect it was.'
Ibb laid the table and we sat down to eat ten minutes later. As Gran sucked on her omelette I tried to make conversation with ibb and obb. The trouble was, neither of them had the requisite powers of social communication to assimilate anything from speech other than the bald facts it contained. I tried a joke I had heard from Bowden, my partner at SpecOps, about an octopus and a set of bagpipes. But when I delivered the punchline they both stared at me.
'Why would the bagpipes be dressed in pyjamas?' asked ibb.
'They weren't,' I replied, 'it was the tartan. That's just what the octopus thought they were.'
'I see,' said obb, not seeing at all. 'Would you mind going over it again?'
'That's it,' I said resolutely, 'you're going to have a personality if it kills me.'
'Kill you?' enquired ibb in all seriousness. 'Why would it kill you?'
I thought carefully. There had to be somewhere to begin. I clicked my fingers.
'Sarcasm,' I said. 'We'll start with that.'
They both looked at me blankly.
'Well,' I began, 'sarcasm is closely related to irony and implies a twofold view — a literal meaning yet a wholly different intention from what is said. For instance, if you were lying to me about who ate all the anchovies I left in the cupboard, and you had eaten them, you might say: "It wasn't me" and I would say: "Sure it wasn't," meaning I'm sure it was but in an ironic or sarcastic manner.'
'What's an anchovy?' asked ibb.
'A small and very salty fish.'
'I see,' replied ibb. 'Does sarcasm work with other things or is it only fish?'
'No, the stolen anchovies was only by way of an example. Now you try.'
'An anchovy?'
'No, you try some sarcasm.'
They continued to look at me blankly. I sighed.
'Like trying to nail jelly to the wall,' I muttered under my breath.
'Plock,' said Pickwick in her sleep as she gently keeled over. 'Plocketty-plock.'
'Sarcasm is better explained through humour,' put in Gran, who had been watching my efforts with interest. 'You know that Pickwick isn't too clever?'
Pickwick stirred in her sleep where she had fallen, resting on her head with her claws in the air.
'Yes, we know that,' replied ibb and obb, who were nothing if not observant.
'Well, if I were to say that it is easier to get yeast to perform tricks than Pickwick, I'm using mild sarcasm to make a joke.'
'Yeast?' queried ibb. 'But yeast has no intelligence.'
'Exactly,' replied Gran. 'So I am making a sarcastic observation that Pickwick has less brain power than yeast. You try.'
The Generic thought long and hard.
'So,' said ibb slowly, 'how about … Pickwick is so clever she sits on the TV and stares at the sofa?'
'It's a start,' said Gran.
'And,' added ibb, gaining confidence by the second, 'if Pickwick went on Mastermind, she'd do best to choose "Dodo eggs" as her specialist subject.'
Obb was getting the hang of it, too.
'If a thought crossed her mind it would be the shortest journey on record—'
'Pickwick would cause a sensation at Oxford — but only from within a specimen jar—'
'All right, that's enough sarcasm,' I said quickly. 'I know Pickwick won't win "Brain of BookWorld" but she's a loyal companion.'
I looked across at Pickwick, who slid off the sofa and landed with a thump on the floor. She woke up and started plocking loudly at the sofa, coffee table, rug — in fact, anything close by — before calming down, climbing on top of her egg and falling asleep again.
'You did well, guys,' I said. 'Another time we'll tackle subtext.'
Ibb and obb went to their room soon afterwards, discussing how sarcasm was related to irony, and whether irony itself could be generated in laboratory conditions. Gran and I chatted about home. Mother was very well, it seemed, and Joffy and Wilbur and Orville were as mad as ever. Gran, conscious of my dealings with Yorrick Kaine in the past, reported that Kaine had returned soon after the episode with the Glatisant at Volescamper Towers, lost his seat in the house and been back at the helm of his newspaper and publishing company soon after. I knew he was fictional and a danger to my world but couldn't see what to do about it from here. We talked into the night about the BookWorld, Landen, eradications and having children. Gran had had three herself so she told me all the stuff they don't tell you when you sign on the dotted line.
'Think of swollen ankles as trophies,' she said, somewhat unhelpfully.
That night I put Gran in my room and slept in the bedroom under the flight deck. I washed, undressed and climbed into bed, weary after the day's work. I lay there, staring at the pattern of reflected light dancing on the ceiling, and thought of my father, Emma Hamilton, Jack Spratt, Dream Topping and babies. I was meant to be here resting but the demolition problem of Caversham Heights couldn't be ignored — I could have moved but I liked it here, and besides, I had done enough running away already. The arrival of Gran had been strange, but since much was odd here in the Well, weird had become commonplace. If things carried on like this the dull and meaningless would become items of spectacular interest.
4
Landen Parke-Laine
'They say that no one really dies until you forget them, and in Landen's case it was especially true. Since Landen had been eradicated I had discovered that I could bring him back to life in my memories and my dreams, and I had begun to look forward to falling asleep and returning to treasured moments which we could share, albeit only fleetingly.
'Landen lost a leg to a landmine and his best friend to a military blunder. The friend had been my brother, Anton — and Landen testified against him at the hearing that followed the disastrous "Charge of the Light Armoured Brigade" in 1973. My brother was blamed for the debacle, Landen was honourably discharged and I was awarded the Crimea Star for gallantry. We didn't speak for ten years, and we were married two months ago. Some people say it was an unorthodox romance — but I never noticed this myself
THURSDAY NEXT — TheJurisfiction Chronicles
That night, I went to the Crimea again. Not, you might think, the most obvious port of call in my sleep. The peninsula had been a constant source of anguish in my waking hours: a time of stress, of pain, and violent death. But the Crimea was where I met Landen, and where we fell in love. The memories were more dear to me now because it had never happened, and it was for this reason that the Crimea's sometimes painful recollections came back to me. I relaxed and was transported in the arms of Morpheus to the Black Sea peninsula, twelve years before.
No shots had been fired for ten years when I arrived on the peninsula in the May of 1973 although the conflict itself had been going for a hundred and twenty years. I was attached to the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armoured Brigade as a driver — I was twenty-three years old and drove thirteen tons of armoured vehicle under the command of Major Phelps, who was later to lose his lower arm and his mind during a badly timed charge into the massed Russian artillery. In my youthful naïveté, I had thought the Crimea was fun — a notion that was soon to change.
'Report to the vehicle pool at fourteen hundred hours,' I was told one morning by our sergeant, a kindly yet brusque man by the name of Tozer. He would survive the charge but be lost in a training accident eight years later. I was at his funeral. He was a good man.
'Any idea what I'll be doing, Sarge?' I asked.
Sergeant Tozer shrugged.
'Special duties. I was told to allocate someone intelligent — but they weren't available, so you'll have to do.'
I laughed.
'Thanks, Sarge.'
I dreamed this scene more often these days, and the reason was clear — it was the first time Landen and I spent any time together. My brother Anton was also serving out here and he had introduced us a few weeks before — but Anton did that a lot. Today I was to drive Landen in an armoured scout car to an observation post overlooking a valley in which a build-up of Imperial Russian artillery had been reported. We referred to the incident as 'our first date'.
I arrived for duty and was told to sign for a Dingo scout car, a small two-person armoured vehicle with enough power to get out of trouble quick — or into it, depending on one's level of competency. I duly picked up the scout car and waited for nearly an hour, standing in a tent with a lot of other drivers, talking and laughing, drinking tea and telling unlikely stories. It was a chilly day but I was glad I was doing this instead of daily orders, which generally meant cleaning up the camp and other tedious tasks.
'Corporal Next?' said an officer who poked his head into the tent. 'Drop the tea — we're off!'
He wasn't handsome but he was intriguing, and, unlike many of the officers, he seemed to have a certain relaxed manner about him.
'Good morning, sir,' I said, unsure of whether he remembered me. I needn't have worried. I didn't know it yet, but he had specifically asked Sergeant Tozer for me. He was intrigued too, but fraternising on active duty was a subtle art. The penalties could be severe.
I led him to where the Dingo was parked and climbed in. I pressed the starter and the engine rumbled into life. Landen lowered himself into the commander's seat.
'Seen Anton recently?' he asked.
'He's up the coast for a few weeks,' I told him.
'Ah,' he replied, '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 Balaclava — 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 front-line 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, 'Ididn't mean to patronise. How long have you been out here?'
'Two weeks.'
'I've been here two years,' said Landen, '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. There was old and rusting armour and other war debris lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumour 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 in 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, whereupon it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and I would relate what happened to his parents eighteen months later. 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 hard over 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 air strike. That was the way it had happened. That was 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 coo of a partridge and the gentle thrum of the Dingo's engine, we knew nothing — and were concerned only 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.
'Russkie! 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 armour 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 realised. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.
I sat bolt upright in 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 grey 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 air strike. 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,' said Gran, '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 her presence in my mind — and everything about Hades' little sister returned to me as though 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 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,' replied Gran, '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.'
5
The Well of Lost Plots
'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 trans-genre 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 have almost clogged the system. A mobilefootnoterphone network was introduced in 1985.'
UA OF W CAT — The Jurisfiction Guide to the Creat Library (glossary)
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 her knitting. I made some coffee and cooked myself breakfast despite feeling nauseous. 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 in to 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 with a luxuriant red moustache. 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!' he replied. 'I got Oedipus off the incest charge. Technicality, of course — he didn't know it was his mother at the time.'
'Of course,' I remarked, 'and Fagin?'
'Still due to hang, I'm afraid,' he said more sadly. 'The Gryphon is on to 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!' he replied. '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 had faced a court here in the BookWorld. It had been in Kafka's The Trial and had turned out predictably unpredictable.
'Not really,' admitted Snell. 'Our "strong readership approval" defence 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,' I told him.
'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?'
I nodded.
'Fascinating! I've always wondered what a breakfast looked like. In our books we have twenty-three dinners, twelve lunches and eighteen afternoon teas — but no breakfasts.' He paused for a moment. 'And why is orange jam called marmalade, do you suppose?'
I told him I didn't know and passed him a mug of coffee.
'Do you have any Generics living in your books?' I asked.
'A half-dozen or so at any one time,' he replied, spooning in some sugar and staring at ibb and obb, who, true to form, stared back. 'Boring bunch until they develop a personality, then they can be quite fun. Trouble is, they have an annoying habit of assimilating themselves into a strong leading character, and it can spread among them like a rash. They used to be billeted en masse but that all changed after we lodged six thousand Generics inside Rebecca. In under a month all but eight had become Mrs Danvers. Listen, I don't suppose I could interest you in a couple of housekeepers, could I?'
'I don't think so,' I replied, recalling Mrs Danvers' slightly abrasive personality.
'Don't blame you,' replied Snell with a laugh.
'So now it's only limited numbers per novel?'
'You learn fast. We had a similar problem with Merlins. We've had aged-male-bearded-wizard-mentor types coming out of our ears for years.'
He leaned closer.
'Do you know how many Merlins the Well of Lost Plots has placed over the past fifty years?'
'Tell me.'
'Nine thousand!' he breathed. 'We even altered plot lines to include older male mentor figures! Do you think that was wrong?'
'I'm not sure,' I said, slightly confused.
'At least the Merlin type is a popular character,' added Snell. 'Stick a new hat on him and he can appear pretty much anywhere. Try getting rid of thousands of Mrs Danvers. There isn't a huge demand for creepy fifty-something housekeepers; even buy-two-get-one-free deals didn't help — we use them on anti-mispeling duty, you know. A sort of army.'
'What's it like?' I asked.
'How do you mean?'
'Being fictional.'
'Ah!' replied Snell slowly. 'Yes — fictional.'
I realised too late that I had gone too far — it was how I imagined a dog would feel if you brought up the question of distemper in polite conversation.
'I forgive your inquisitiveness, Miss Next, and since you are an Outlander I will take no offence. If I were you I shouldn't enquire too deeply about the past of fictioneers. We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot. After basic training at St Tabularasa's I progressed to the Dupin School for Detectives; I went on field trips around the works of Hammett, Chandler and Sayers before attending a postgraduate course at the Agatha Christie Finishing School. I would have liked to have been an original but I was born seventy years too late for that.'
He stopped and paused for reflection. I was sorry to have raised the point. It can't be easy, being an amalgamation of all that has been written before.
'Right!' he said, finishing his coffee. 'That's enough about me. Ready?'
I nodded.
'Then let's go.'
So, taking my hand, he transported us both out of Caversham Heights and into the endless corridors of the Well of Lost Plots.
The Well was similar to the Library as regards the fabric of the building — dark wood, thick carpet, tons of shelves — but here the similarity ended. Firstly, it was noisy. Tradesmen, artisans, technicians and Generics all walked about the broad corridors appearing and vanishing as they moved from book to book, building, changing and deleting to the author's wishes. Crates and packing cases lay scattered about the corridor and people ate, slept and conducted their business in shops and small houses built in the manner of an untidy shanty town. Advertising hoardings and posters were everywhere, promoting some form of goods or services unique to the business of writing.'[5]
'I think I'm picking up junk footnoterphone messages, Snell,' I said above the hubbub. 'Should I be worried?'
'You get them all the time down here,' he replied. 'Ignore them — and never pass on chain footnotes.'[6]
We were accosted by a stout man wearing a sandwich board advertising bespoke plot devices 'for the discerning wordsmith'.
'No thank you,' yelled Snell, taking me by the arm and walking us to a quieter spot between Dr Forthright's Chapter Ending Emporium and the Premier Mentor School.
'There are twenty-six floors in the Well,' he told me, waving a hand towards the bustling crowd. 'Most of them are chaotic factories of fictional prose like this one but the twenty-sixth sub-basement has an entrance to the Text Sea — we'll go down there and see them offloading the scrawltrawlers one evening.'
'What do they unload?'
'Words,' smiled Snell, 'words, words and more words. The building blocks of fiction, the DNA of Story.'
'But I don't see any books being written,' I observed, looking around.
He chuckled.
'You Outlanders! Books may look like nothing more than words on a page but they are actually an infinitely complex Imagino-Transference technology that translates odd inky squiggles into pictures inside your head — we're currently using Book Operating System V8.3. Not for long, though — Text Grand Central want to upgrade the system.'
'Someone mentioned UltraWord™ on the news last night,' I observed.
'Fancy-pants name. It's BOOK V9 to me and you. WordMaster Libris should be giving us a presentation shortly. UltraWord™ is being tested as we speak — if it's as good as they say it is, books will never be the same again!'
'Well,' I sighed, trying to get my head around this idea, 'I had always thought novels were just, well, written.'
'Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,' replied Snell as we walked along. 'The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer's imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader's mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer — perhaps more.'
This was a new approach; I ran the idea around in my head.
'Really?' I replied, slightly doubtfully.
'Of course!' Snell laughed. 'Surf pounding the shingle wouldn't mean diddly unless you'd seen the waves cascade on to the foreshore, or felt the breakers tremble the beach beneath your feet, now, would it?'
'I suppose not.'
'Books,' said Snell, 'are a kind of magic.'