Lost in a good book (39 page)

“It’s her, isn’t it?” asked Landen.

“Yes,” I murmured, staring at the wraithlike figure in front of me. “But it doesn’t help; none of these memories are strong enough for a positive ID.”

“Perhaps not on their
own,
” observed Landen. “But since I’ve been in here I’ve figured out a few things about how your memory works. Try and
superimpose
the images.”

I thought of the woman on the platform, placed her across the vague form in the market and then added the specter who had called herself De’ath. The three images shimmered for a bit before they locked together. It wasn’t great. I needed more. I pulled from my memory the half-shredded picture that Lamme and Slorter had shown me. It fitted perfectly, and Landen and I stared at the result.

“What do you think?” asked Landen. “Twenty-five?”

“Possibly a little older,” I muttered, looking closer at the amalgam of my attacker, trying to fix it in my memory. She had plain features, a small amount of makeup and blond hair cut in an asymmetric bob. She didn’t look like a killer. I ran through all the information I had—which didn’t take long. The failed SpecOps-5 investigations allowed me a few clues: the recurring name of Hades, the initials A.H., the fact that she
did
resolve on pictures. Clearly it wasn’t Acheron in disguise, but perhaps—

“Oh,
shit.
”

“What?”

“It’s Hades.”

“It can’t be. You killed him.”

“I killed
Acheron.
He had a brother named Styx—why couldn’t he have a sister?”

We exchanged nervous looks and stared at the mnemonograph in front of us. Some of her features
did
seem to resemble Acheron now that I stared at her. Like Hades, she was tall and her lips were thin. That alone would not have been enough; after all, many people are tall with thin lips, and few, if any, are evil geniuses. But her eyes were unmistakable—they had a sort of brooding
darkness
to them.

“No wonder she’s pissed off with you,” murmured Landen. “You killed her brother.”

“Thanks for that, Landen,” I replied. “Always know how to relax a girl.”

“Sorry. So we know the H in A.H. is
Hades
—what about the A?”

“The Acheron was a tributary of the river Styx,” I said quietly. “As was the Phlegethon, Cocytus, Lethe—and
Aornis.
”

I’d never felt so depressed at having identified a suspect before. But something was niggling at me. There was something here that I
couldn’t
see, like listening to a TV from another room. You hear dramatic music but you have no idea what’s going on.

“Cheer up,” smiled Landen, rubbing my shoulder, “she’s ballsed it up three times already—it might never happen!”

“There’s something
else,
Landen.”

“What?”

“Something I’ve forgotten. Something I never remembered. Something about—I don’t know.”

“It’s no good asking me,” replied Landen. “I may
seem
real to you, but I’m not—I’m only here as your
memory
of me. I can’t know any more than you do.”

Aornis had vanished and Landen was starting to fade.

“You’ve got to go now,” he said in a hollow-sounding voice. “Remember what I said about Jack Schitt.”

“Don’t go!” I yelled. “I want to stay here for a bit. It’s not much fun out here at the moment, I think it’s Miles’s baby, Aornis wants to kill me and Goliath and Flanker—”

But it was too late. I’d woken up. I was still in bed, undressed, bedclothes rumpled. The clock told me it was a few minutes past nine. I stared at the ceiling in a forlorn mood, wondering how I could really have got myself into such a mess, and then wondering if there was anything I could have done to prevent it. I decided, on the face of it, probably not. This, to my fuddled way of thinking, I took to be a positive sign, so I slipped on a T-shirt and shuffled into the kitchen, filled the kettle and put some dried apricots in Pickwick’s bowl after trying and failing once again to get her to stand on one leg.

I shook the entroposcope just in case—was thankful to find everything normal—and was just checking the fridge for some fresh milk when the doorbell rang. I trotted out to the hall, picked up my automatic from the table and asked: “Who is it?”

“Open the door, Doofus.”

I put the gun away and opened the door. Joffy smiled at me as he entered and raised his eyebrows at my disheveled state.

“Half day today?”

“I don’t feel like working now that Landen’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. Coffee?”

We walked into the kitchen. Joffy patted Pickwick on the head, and I emptied the old grounds out of the coffee jug. He sat down at the table.

“Seen Dad recently?”

“Last week. He was fine. How much did you make on the art sale?”

“Over £2,000 in commission. I thought of using the cash to repair the church roof but then figured, what the hell—I’ll just blow it on drink, curry and prostitutes.”

I laughed.

“Sure you will, Joff.”

I rinsed some mugs and stared out of the window.

“What can I do for you, Joff?”

“I came round to pick up Miles’s things.”

I stopped what I was doing and turned to face him.

“Say that again.”

“I said I’d come—”

“I
know
what you said, but, but—how do you know Miles?”

Joffy laughed, saw I was serious, frowned at me and then remarked: “He
said
you didn’t recognize him that night at Vole Towers. Is everything okay?”

I shrugged. “Not really, Joff—but tell me: How do you know him?”

“We’re going out, Thurs—surely you can’t have forgotten?”

“You and Miles?”

“Sure! Why not?”

This was
very
good news indeed.

“Then his clothes are in my apartment because—”

“—we borrow it every now and then.”

I tried to grasp the facts.

“You borrow my apartment because it’s . . . secret—?”

“Right. You know how old-fashioned SpecOps are when it comes to their staff fraternizing with clerics.”

I laughed out loud and wiped away the tears that had sprung to my eyes.

“Sis?” said Joffy, getting up. “What’s the matter?”

I hugged him tightly.

“Nothing’s the matter, Joff. Everything’s
wonderful!
—I’m not carrying his baby!”

“Miles?” said Joff. “Wouldn’t know how. Wait a minute, sis—you’ve got a bun in the oven? Who’s the father?”

I smiled through my tears.

“It’s Landen’s,” I said with a renewed confidence. “By God it’s Landen’s!”

And I jumped up and down overwhelmed by the sheer joy of the fact, and Joffy, who had nothing better to do, joined me in jumping up and down until Mrs. Scroggins in the apartment below banged on the ceiling with a broom handle.

“Sister dearest,” said Joffy as soon as we had stopped, “who in St. Zvlkx’s name is Landen?”

“Landen Parke-Laine,” I gabbled happily. “The ChronoGuard eradicated him, but something
other
happened and I still have his child, so it’s all
meant
to come out right, don’t you see? And I
have
to get him back because if Aornis
does
get to me then he’ll
never
exist ever ever ever—and neither will the baby and I can’t stand that idea and I’ve been farting around for too long so I’m going to go into ‘The Raven’ no matter what— because
if I don’t I’m going to go nuts!
”

“I’m more than happy for you,” said Joffy slowly. “You’ve completely lost your tiny doofus-like mind, but I’m very happy for you, in spite of it.”

I ran into the living room, rummaged across my desk until I found Schitt-Hawse’s calling card and rang the number. He answered in less than two rings.

“Ah, Next,” he said with a triumphant air. “Changed your mind?”

“I’ll go into ‘The Raven’ for you, Schitt-Hawse. Double-cross me and I’ll maroon both you and your half brother in the worst Daphne Farquitt novel I can find. Believe me, I can do it—and will do it, if necessary.”

There was a pause.

“I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

The phone went dead and I placed the receiver back on the cradle. I took a deep breath, shooed Joffy out of the door once he had collected Miles’s stuff, then had a shower and got dressed. My mind was set. I would get Landen back, no matter what the risks. I was still lacking a coherent plan, but this didn’t bother me that much—I seldom did.

28.
“The Raven”

“The Raven” was undoubtedly Edgar Allan Poe’s finest and most famous poem, and was his own personal favorite, being the one he most liked to recite at poetry readings. Published in 1845, the poem drew heavily on Elizabeth Barrett’s “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” something he acknowledged in the original dedication but had conveniently forgotten when explaining how he wrote “The Raven” in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition”—the whole affair tending to make nonsense of Poe’s attacks on Longfellow as a plagiarist. A troubled genius, Poe also suffered the inverse cash/ fame law—the more famous he became, the less money he had. “The Gold Bug,” one of his most popular short stories, sold over 300,000 copies but netted him only $100. With “The Raven” he fared even worse. Poe’s total earnings for one of the greatest poems in the English language were a paltry $9.

MILLON DE FLOSS
,
Who Put the Poe in Poem?

T
HE DOORBELL RANG
as I was putting my shoes on. But it wasn’t Goliath. It was Agents Lamme and Slorter. I was really quite glad to see that they were still alive; perhaps Aornis didn’t regard them as a threat. I wouldn’t.

“Her name’s Aornis Hades,” I told them as I hopped up and down, trying to pull my other shoe on, “sister of Acheron. Don’t even
think
of tackling her. You know you’re close when you stop breathing.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Lamme, patting his pockets for a pen. “
Aornis
Hades! How did you figure that out?”

“I glimpsed her several times over the past few weeks.”

“You must have a good memory,” observed Slorter.

“I have help.”

Lamme found a pen, discovered it didn’t work and borrowed a pencil off his partner. The point broke. I lent him mine.

“What was her name again?”

I spelled it out for him and he wrote it down so slowly it was painful.

“Good!” I said once they had finished. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?”

“Flanker wants a word.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’re not busy anymore,” replied Slorter, looking very awkward and wringing her hands. “I’m sorry about this—but you’re under arrest.”

“What for
now?
”

“Possession of an illegal substance.”

This was an interesting development. He’d obviously not found the cause of tomorrow’s Armageddon and was attempting a little framing to make me compliant. I had thought he would try something of the sort, but now wasn’t the time. I had a appointment in “The Raven” I needed to keep.

“Listen, guys, I’m not just busy, I’m
really
busy, and Flanker sending you along with some bullshit trumped-up charge is just wasting your time and mine.”

“It’s
not
trumped up,” said Slorter, holding out an arrest warrant. “It’s cheese.
Illegal
cheese. SO-1 found a block of flattened cheese under a Hispano-Suiza with your prints all over it. It was part of a cheese seizure, Thursday. It should have been consigned to the furnaces.”

I groaned. It was just what Flanker wanted. A simple internal charge that usually meant a reprimand—but could, if needed, result in a custodial sentence. A solid gold arm-twister, in other words. Before the two agents could even draw breath I had slammed the door in their faces and was heading out the fire escape. I heard them yell at me as I ran out onto the road, just in time to be picked up by Schitt-Hawse. It was the first and last time I would ever be pleased to see him.

So there I was, unsure if I had just got out of the frying pan and into the fire or out of the fire and into the frying pan. I had been frisked for weapons and a wire and they had taken my automatic, keys and Jurisfiction travelbook. Schitt-Hawse drove and I was sitting in the backseat—wedged tightly between Chalk and Cheese.

“I’m kind of glad to see you, in a funny sort of way.”

There was no answer, so I waited ten minutes and then asked: “Where are we going?”

This didn’t elicit a response either, so I patted Chalk and Cheese on the knees and said: “You guys been on holiday this year?”

Chalk looked at me for a moment, then looked at Cheese and answered: “We went to Majorca,” before he lapsed back into silence.

An hour later we arrived at Goliath’s Research & Development Facility at Aldermaston. Surrounded by triple fences of razor wire and armed guards patrolling with full-sized sabertooths, the complex was a labyrinth of aluminum-clad windowless buildings and concrete bunkers interspersed with electrical substations and large ventilation ducts. We were waved through the gate and parked in a layby next to a large marble Goliath logo where Chalk, Cheese and Schitt-Hawse offered up a short prayer of contrition and unfailing devotion to the corporation. That done, we were on our way again past thousands of yards of pipework, buildings, parked military vehicles, trucks and all manner of junk.

“Be honored, Next,” said Schitt-Hawse. “Few are blessed with seeing this far into the workings of our beloved corporation.”

“I feel more humbled by the second, Mr. Schitt-Hawse.”

We drove on to a low building with a domed concrete roof. This was of an even higher security than the main entrance, and Chalk, Cheese and Schitt-Hawse had to have their half-windsor tie knots scanned for verification. The guard on duty opened a heavy blast door that led to a brightly lit corridor which in turn contained a row of elevators. We descended to lower ground twelve, went through another security check and then along a shiny corridor past doors either side of us that had brass placards screwed to the polished wood explaining what went on inside. We walked past
Electronic Computing Engines, Tachyon Communications, Square Peg in a Round Hole
and stopped at
The Book Project.
Schitt-Hawse opened the door and we entered.