The well of lost plots (31 page)

“Lola,” I said quietly, “they were probably just talking.”

She looked at her hands for a moment. “You’re right. And what do I care anyway? They clearly deserve one another!”

“I heard that!” said a voice from the back of the flying boat. Randolph strode into the room and waved a finger at Lola, who glared back angrily.

“You’ve got a nerve accusing me of being with another woman when you’ve slept with almost everyone at school!”

“And so what if I have?” screamed Lola. “Who are you, my father? Have you been spying on me?”

“Even the worst spy in the genre couldn’t fail to notice what you’re up to — don’t you know the meaning of the word
discretion
?”

“One-dimensional!”

“Cardboard!”

“Stereotype!”

“Predictable!”

“Jerkoff!”

“Arsehole!”

“Duck, Gran,” I whispered as Lola picked up a vase and threw it at Randolph. It missed and went sailing over the top of our heads to shatter on the far wall.

“Okay,” I said loudly, using my best and most assertive voice, “any more crap out of you two and you can live somewhere else. Randolph. You can sleep on the sofa. Lola, you can go to your room — and if I hear a peep out of either of you, I’ll have you both allocated to knitting patterns —
get it
?”

They went quiet, mumbled something about being sorry and walked slowly from the room.

“Oh, that was good, balls-for-brains,” muttered Lola as they moved off, “get us both into trouble, why don’t you?”

“Me?” he returned angrily. “Your knickers are off so often I’m amazed you bother with them at all.”

“
Did you hear me
?” I yelled after them, and there was quiet.

I sat down next to Gran again, who was picking bits of broken vase from the tabletop.

“Where were we?” she asked

“Er . . . retaking my memories?”

“Exactly so. She’ll be wanting to try and break you down, so things are going to get worse before they get better — only when she thinks she has defeated you can we go on the offensive.”

“What do you mean by getting worse? Hades? Landen’s eradication? Darren? How far do I have to go?”

“Back to the worst time of all — the truth about what happened during the charge.”

“Anton.” I groaned and rubbed my face. “I don’t want to go back there, Gran, I can’t!”

“Then she’ll pick away at your memory until there is nothing left; she doesn’t want that — she’s after revenge. You
have
to go back to the Crimea, Thursday. Face up to the worst and grow stronger from it.”

“No, I won’t go back there and you can’t make me.”

I got up without a word and went to have a bath, trying to soak away the worries. Aornis, Landen, Goliath, the ChronoGuard and now Perkins’s and Snell’s murders here in the BookWorld; I’d need a bath the size of Windermere to soak those away. I had come to
Caversham Heights
to stay away from crisis and conflict — but they seemed to follow me around like a stray dodo.

I stayed in the bath long enough to need to top it up with hot water twice and, when I came out, found Gran sitting on the laundry basket outside the door.

“Ready?” she asked softly.

“Yes, I’m ready.”

I slept in my own bed — Gran said she would sit in the armchair and wake me if things looked as though they were getting out of hand. I stared at the ceiling, the gentle curve of the wooden paneling and the single domed ceiling light. I stayed awake for hours, long after Gran had fallen asleep and dropped her copy of
Tristram Shandy
on the floor. Night and sleep had once been a time of joyous reunion with Landen, a collection of moments that I treasured: tea and hot buttered crumpets, curled up in front of a crackling log fire, or golden moments on the beach, cavorting in slow motion as the sun went down. But no longer. With Aornis about, my memory was now a battleground. And with the whistle of an artillery shell, I was back where I least wanted to be — the Crimea.

“So there you are!” cried Aornis, grinning at me from her seat in the armored personnel carrier as the wounded were removed. I had returned from the lines to the forward dressing station where the disaster had generated a sustained and highly controlled panic. Cries of “Medic!” and swearing punctuated the air while less than three miles away we could still hear the sound of the Russian guns pummeling the remains of the Wessex Light Tank. Sergeant Tozer stepped from the back of the APC with his hand still inside the leg of a soldier as he tried to staunch the bleeding; another soldier blinded by splinters was jabbering on about some girl he had left back home in Bradford-on-Avon.

“You haven’t dreamt for a few nights,” said Aornis as we watched the casualties being unloaded. “Have you missed me?”

“Not even an atom,” I replied, adding, “Are we done?” to the medics unloading the APC.

“We’re done!” came back the reply, and with my foot I flicked the switch that raised the rear door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked a red-faced officer I didn’t recognize.

“To pick up the rest, sir!”

“The hell you are! We’re sending in Red Cross trucks under a flag of truce!”

It would take too long and we both knew it. I dropped back into the carrier, revved the engine and was soon heading back into the fray. The amount of dust thrown up might screen me — as long as the guns kept firing. Even so, I still felt the whine of a near miss, and once an explosion went off close by, the concussion shattering the glass in the instrument panel.

“Disobeying a direct order, Thursday?” said Aornis scathingly. “They’ll court-martial you!”

“But they didn’t. They gave me a medal instead.”

“But you didn’t go back for a gong, did you?”

“It was my duty. What do you want me to say?”

The noise grew louder as I drove towards the front line. I felt something large pluck at my vehicle and the roof opened up, revealing a shaft of sunlight in the dust that was curiously beautiful. The same unseen hand picked up the carrier and threw it in the air. It ran along on one track for a few yards and then fell back upright. The engine was still functioning, the controls still felt right; I carried on, oblivious to the damage. Only when I reached up for the wireless switch did I realize the roof had been partially blown off, and only later did I discover an inch-long gash in my chin.

“It was your duty, all right, Thursday, but it was not for the army, regiment, brigade or platoon — certainly not English interests in the Crimea. You went back for Anton, didn’t you?”

Everything stopped. The noise, the explosions, everything. My brother Anton. Why did she have to bring him up?

“Anton,” I whispered.

“Your dear brother Anton,” replied Aornis. “Yes. You worshiped him. From the time he built you a tree house in the back garden. You joined the army to be like him, didn’t you?”

I said nothing. It was true, all true. Tears started to course down my cheeks. Anton had, quite simply, been the best elder brother a girl could have. He always had time for me and always included me in whatever he got up to. My anger at losing him had been driving me for longer than I cared to remember.

“I brought you here so you can remember what it’s like to lose a brother. If you could find the man that killed Anton, what would you do to him?”

“Losing Anton was
not
the moral equivalent of killing Acheron,” I shouted. “Hades deserved to die — Anton was just doing his misguided patriotic duty!”

We had arrived outside the remains of Anton’s APC. The guns were firing more sporadically now, picking their targets more carefully; I could hear the sound of small arms as the Russian infantry advanced to retake the lost ground. I released the rear door. It was jammed but it didn’t matter; the side door had vanished with the roof and I rapidly packed twenty-two wounded soldiers into an APC designed to carry eight. I closed my eyes and started to cry. It was like seeing a car accident about to happen, the futility of knowing something is about to occur but being unable to do anything about it.

“Hey, Thuzzy!” said Anton in the voice I knew so well. Only he had ever called me that; it was the last word he would speak. I opened my eyes and there he was, as large as life and despite the obvious danger, smiling.

“No!” I shouted, knowing full well what was going to happen next. “Stop! Don’t come over here!”

But he did, as he had done all those years before. He stepped out from behind cover and ran across to me. The side of my APC was blown open and I could see him clearly.

“Please no!” I shouted, my eyes full of tears. The memory of that day would fill my mind for years to come. I would immerse myself in work to get away from it.

“Come back for me, Thuz — !”

And then the shell hit him.

He didn’t explode; he just sort of vanished in a red mist. I didn’t remember driving back and I didn’t remember being arrested when I tried to take another APC back into the fray to find him. I had to be forcibly restrained and confined to barracks. I didn’t remember anything up until the moment Sergeant Tozer told me to have a shower and clean myself up. I remember treading on the small pieces of sharp bone that washed out of my hair in the shower.

“This is what you try and forget, isn’t it?” said Aornis, smiling at me through the steam from the shower as I tugged my fingers through my matted hair, heart thumping, the fear and pain of loss tensing my every muscle and numbing my senses. I tried to grab her by the throat in the shower but my fingers collapsed on nothing and I barked my knuckles on the shower stall. I swore and thumped the wall.

“You all right, Thursday?” said Prudence, a WT operator from Lincoln in the next shower. “They said you went back. Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true,” put in Aornis, “and she’ll be going back again right now!”

The shower room vanished and we were back on the battlefield, heading towards the wrecked armor amidst the smoke and dust.

“Well!” said Aornis, clapping her hands happily. “We should be able to manage at least eight of these before dawn — don’t you just hate reruns?”

I stopped the APC near the smashed tank and the wounded were heaved aboard.

“Hey, Thursday!” said a familiar male voice. I opened one eye and looked across at the soldier with his face bloodied and less than ten seconds of existence remaining on his slate. But it wasn’t Anton — it was another officer, the one I had met earlier and with whom I had become involved.

“Thursday!” said Gran in a loud voice. “Thursday, wake up!”

I was back in my bed on the Sunderland, drenched in sweat. I wished it had all just been a bad dream; but it
was
a bad dream and that was the worst of it.

“Anton’s not dead,” I gabbled, “he didn’t die in the Crimea it was that
other
guy and that’s the reason he’s not here now because he died and I’ve been telling myself it was because he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard but he wasn’t and—”

“Thursday!” snapped Gran. “Thursday, that is
not
how it happened. Aornis is trying to fool with your mind. Anton died in the charge.”

“No, it was the other guy—”

“Landen?”

But the name meant little to me. Gran explained about Aornis and Landen and mnemonomorphs, and although I
understood
what she was saying, I didn’t fully believe her. After all, I had seen the Landen fellow die in front of my own eyes, hadn’t I?

“Gran, are you having one of your fuzzy moments?”

“No, far from it.”

But her voice didn’t have the same sort of confidence it usually did. She wrote
Landen
on my hand with a felt pen and I went back to sleep wondering what Anton was up to, and thinking about the short and passionate fling I had enjoyed in the Crimea with that lieutenant, the one who’s name I couldn’t remember — the one who died in the charge.

Snell was buried in the Text Sea. It was invited guests only, so although Havisham went, I did not. Both Perkins’s and Snell’s places were to be taken by B-2 Generics who had been playing them for a while in tribute books — the copies you usually find in cheaply printed book-of-the-month choices. As they lowered Snell’s body into the sea to be reduced to letters, the Bellman tingled his bell and spoke a short eulogy for both of them. Havisham said it was very moving — but the most ironic part of it was that the entire Perkins & Snell detective series was finally to be offered as a boxed set, and neither of them ever knew.

THURSDAY NEXT,
The Jurisfiction Chronicles

I FELT TIRED AND washed-out the following morning. Gran was still fast asleep, snoring loudly with Pickwick on her lap when I got up. I made a cup of coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table flicking through a copy of
Movable Type
and feeling grotty when there was a gentle rap at the door. I looked up too quickly and my head throbbed.

“Yes?” I called.

“It’s Dr. Fnorp. I teach Lola and Randolph.”

I opened the door, checked his ID and let him in. A tall man, he seemed quite short and was dark-haired, although on occasion seemed blond. He spoke with a notable accent from nowhere at all, and he had a limp — or perhaps not. He was a Generic’s Generic — all things to all people.

“Coffee?”

“Thank you,” he said, adding, “Aha!” when he saw the article I had been reading. “Every year there are more categories!”

He was referring to the BookWorld Awards, which had, I noted, been sponsored by Ultra Word™.

“ ‘Dopiest Shakespearean Character,’ ” he read. “Othello should win that one hands down. Are you going to the Bookies?”

“I’ve been asked to present one. Being the newest Jurisfiction member affords one that privilege, apparently.”

“Oh? It’s the first year all the Generics will be going — we’ve had to give them a day off college.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, Lola has been late every day this week, constantly talks in class, leads the other girls astray, smokes, swears and was caught operating a distillery in the science block. She has little respect for authority and has slept with most of her male classmates.”