The Well of Lost Plots

4 Landen Parke-Laine

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.'