The Well of Lost Plots

'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.'

'That's terrible!' I said. 'What shall we do?'

'Do?' replied Fnorp. 'We aren't going to do anything. Lola has turned out admirably — so much so that we've got her a leading role in Girls Make all the Moves, a thirty-something romantic comedy novel. No, I'm really here because I'm worried about Randolph.'

'I … see. What's the problem?'

'Well, he's just not taking his studies very seriously. He's not stupid; I could make him an A-4 if only he'd pay a little more attention. Those good looks of his are probably his downfall. Aged fifty-something as he is and what we call a "distinguished grey" archetype, I think he feels he doesn't need any depth — that he can get away with a good descriptive passage at introduction and then do very little.'

'And this is a problem because—?'

'I just want something a bit better for him,' sighed Dr Fnorp, who clearly had the best interest of his students at heart. 'He's failed his B-grade exams twice; once more and he'll be nothing but an incidental character with a line or two — if he's lucky.'

'Perhaps that's what he wants,' I suggested. 'There isn't enough room for all characters to be A-grade.'

'That's what's wrong with the system,' said Fnorp bitterly. 'If incidental characters had more depth the whole of fiction would be a lot richer — I want my students to enliven even the C-grade parts.'

I got the point. Even from my relative ignorance I could see the importance of fully rounded characters — the trouble was, for budgetary reasons, the Council of Genres had pursued a policy of minimum requirements for Generics for more than thirty years.

'They fear rebellion,' he said quietly. 'The C of G wants Generics to stay stupid; an unsophisticated population is a compliant one — but it's at the cost of the BookWorld.'

'So what do you want me to do?'

'Well,' sighed Fnorp, finishing his coffee, 'have a word with Randolph and see what you can do — try to find out why he is being so intransigent.'