The Well of Lost Plots

'It was your duty, all right, Thursday, but it was not for the army, regiment, brigade or platoon � certainly not for 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 worshipped 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 been, quite simply, 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 of 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 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 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 W/T 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 armour amid 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,' I said, 'are you having one of your fuzzy moments?'

'No,' she replied, '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 whose name I couldn't remember � the one who died in the charge.

23 Jurisfiction session number 40320

'Snell was buried in the Text Sea. It was invited guests only so although Havisham went, I did not Both Perkins 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 to be offered as a boxed set, and neither of them would ever know it.'

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 reading 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 He was a tall man who 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 'Ah-ha!' 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 earlier, 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,' I replied. 'Being the newest Jurisfiction member affords one that privilege, apparently.'

'Oh?' he replied. '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,' he began, '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.'