“Acheron smiled admiringly. He would have continued his brutal game for as long as he could but the distant wail of police sirens hastened him into action. He shot me once in the chest and left me for dead.”
The SO-1 officials shuffled slightly as I concluded my story. They swapped looks, but I had no interest in whether they believed me or not. Hades had left me for dead but my time wasn’t yet up. The copy of Jane Eyre that Tamworth had given me had saved my life. I had placed it in my breast pocket; Hades’ slug had penetrated to the back cover but had not gone through. Broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a bruise to die for—but I had survived. It was luck, or fate, or whatever the hell you want to make of it.
“That’s it?” asked Flanker.
I nodded.
“That’s it.”
It wasn’t it, of course, there was a lot more, but none of it was relevant to them. I hadn’t told them how Hades had used Filbert Snood’s death to grind me down emotionally; that was how he managed to get the first shot in.
“That’s about all we need to know, Miss Next. You can return to SO-27 as soon as you are able. I would remind you that you are bound by the confidentiality clause you signed. A misplaced word could have very poor consequences. Is there anything you would like to add yourself?”
I took a deep breath.
“I know a lot of this sounds far-fetched, but it is the truth. I am the first witness who has seen what Hades will do to survive. Whoever pursues him in the future must be fully aware of what he is capable of.’
Flanker leaned back in his chair. He looked at the man with the twitch, who nodded in return.
“Academic, Miss Next.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hades is dead. SO-14 are not complete losers despite a certain trigger-happiness. They pursued him up the M4 that night until he crashed his car by junction twelve. It rolled down an embankment and burst into flames. We didn’t want to tell you until we’d heard your evidence.”
The news hit me squarely and hard. Revenge had been a prime emotion keeping me together over the past two weeks. Without a burning desire to see Hades punished, I might not even have made it at all. Without Acheron all my testimony would be left unproven. I hadn’t expected it all to be believed, but at least I could look forward to being vindicated when others came across him.
“Sorry?” I asked suddenly.
“I said that Hades was dead.”
“No he isn’t,” I said without thinking.
Flanker supposed that my reaction was the effect of traumatic shock.
“It might be difficult to come to terms with, but he is. Burned almost beyond recognition. We had to identify him by dental records. He still had Snood’s pistol with him.”
“The Chuzzlewit manuscript?”
“No sign—we think destroyed as well.”
I looked down. The whole operation had been a fiasco.
“Miss Next,” said Flanker, standing up and laying a hand on my shoulder, “you will be pleased to hear that none of this will be published below SO-8. You can return to your unit without a blemish on your record. There were errors, but none of us have any idea how anything might have turned out given a different set of circumstances. As for us, you won’t be seeing us again.’
He turned off the cassette recorder, wished me good health and walked out of the room. The other officers joined him, except for the man with the twitch. He waited until his colleagues were out of earshot then whispered to me:
“I think your testimony is bullshit, Miss Next. The service can ill afford to lose the likes of Fillip Tamworth.”
“Thank you.”
“What for?”
“For telling me his first name.”
The man moved to say something, thought the better of it and then left.
I got up from the table in the impromptu interview room and stared out of the window. It was warm and sunny outside and the trees swayed gently in the breeze; the world looked as though it had little room for people like Hades. I allowed the thoughts of the night to come back again. The part I hadn’t told them was about Snood. Acheron had talked some more that night. He had indicated the tired and worn body of Snood and said:
“Filbert asked me to say he was sorry.”
“That’s Filbert’s father!—” I corrected him.
“No,” he chuckled. “That was Filbert.”
I looked at Snood again. He was lying on his back with his eyes open and the likeness was unmistakable, despite the sixty-year age gap.
“Oh my God, no! Filbert? Was that him?”
Acheron seemed to be enjoying himself.
“ ‘Unavoidably detained’ is a ChronoGuard euphemism for a time aggregation, Thursday. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Caught outside the herenow. Sixty years piled onto him in less than a minute. It’s little surprise he didn’t want you to see him.”
There hadn’t been any girl in Tewkesbury after all. I had heard about time dilations and temporal instabilities from my father. In the world of the Event, the Cone and the Horizon, Filbert Snood had been unavoidably detained. The tragedy of it was, he never felt he could tell me. It was then, as I hit my lowest, that Acheron had turned and fired. It was as he had planned it.
I walked slowly back to my room and sat on the bed feeling utterly dejected. Tears come easily to me when no one is about. I wept copiously for about five minutes and felt a great deal better, blew my nose noisily then switched on the television as a distraction. I rattled through the channels until I chanced across the Toad News Network. It was more about the Crimea, of course.
“Still on the subject of the Crimea,” announced the anchorwoman, “the Goliath Corporation Special Weapons Division has unveiled the latest weapon in the struggle against the Russian aggressors. It is hoped that the new Ballistic Plasma Energy Rifle—code-named ‘Stonk’—will be the decisive weapon to change the tide of the war. Our defense correspondent James Backbiter takes us through it.”
The scene changed to a close-up of an exotic-looking weapon handled by a soldier in military SpecOps uniform.
“This is the new Stonk plasma rifle, unveiled today by the Goliath Special Weapons Division,” announced Backbiter, standing next to the soldier on what was obviously a test range. “We can’t tell you very much about it for obvious reasons, but we can show its effectiveness and report that it uses a bolt of concentrated energy to destroy armor and personnel up to a mile away.”
I watched in horror as the soldier demonstrated the new weapon. Invisible bolts of energy tore into the target tank with the power of ten of our howitzers. It was like an artillery piece in the palm of your hand. The barrage ended and Backbiter asked a colonel a couple of obviously posed questions as soldiers paraded with the new weapon in the background.
“When do you suppose the frontline troops will be issued with Stonk?”
“The first weapons are being shipped now. The rest will be supplied just as soon as we can set up the necessary factories.”
“And finally, its effect on the conflict?”
A small amount of emotion flickered on the colonel’s face.
“I predict Stonk will have the Russians suing for peace within a month.”
“Oh, shit,” I murmured out loud. I’d heard this particular phrase many times during my time in the military. It had supplanted the hoary old “over by Christmas” for sheer fatuousness. It had always, without exception, been followed by an appalling loss of life.
Even before the first deployment of the new weapon, its mere existence had upset the balance of power in the Crimea. No longer keen on a withdrawal, the English government was trying to negotiate a surrender of all Russian troops. The Russians were having none of it. The UN had demanded that both sides return to the talks in Budapest, but it had all stalled; the Imperial Russian Army had dug themselves in against the expected onslaught. Earlier in the day the Goliath Special Weapons spokesman had been instructed to appear before Parliament to explain the delay of the new weapons, as they were
now a month behind schedule.
A screech of tires roused me from my thoughts. I looked up. In the middle of the hospital room was a brightly painted sports car. I blinked twice but it didn’t vanish. There was no earthly reason why it should be in the room or even any evidence as to how it got there, the door being only wide enough for a bed, but there it was. I could smell the exhaust and hear the engine ticking over, but for some reason I did not find it at all unusual. The occupants were staring at me. The driver was a woman in her midthirties who looked sort of familiar.
“Thursday!—” cried the driver with a sense of urgency in her voice.
I frowned. It all looked real and I was definitely sure I had seen the driver somewhere before. The passenger, a young man in a suit whom I didn’t know, waved cheerily.
“He didn’t die!” said the woman, as though she wouldn’t have long to speak. “The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don’t die that easily! Take the Litera Tec job in Swindon!”
“Swindon?—” I echoed. I thought I had escaped that town—it afforded me a few too many painful memories.
I opened my mouth to speak but there was another screech of rubber and the car departed, folding up rather than fading out until there was nothing left but the echo of the tires and the faint smell of exhaust. Pretty soon that had gone too, leaving no clue as to its strange appearance. I held my head in my hands. The driver had been very familiar. It had been me.
My arm was almost healed by the time the internal inquiry circulated its findings. I wasn’t permitted to read it but I wasn’t bothered. If I had known what was in it, I would probably only have been more dissatisfied and annoyed than I was already. Boswell had visited me again to tell me I had been awarded six months’ sick leave before returning, but it didn’t help. I didn’t want to return to the Litera Tec’s office; at least, not in London.
“What are you going to do?” asked Paige. She had turned up to help me pack before I was discharged from the hospital.
“Six months’ leave can be a long time if you’ve got no hobbies or family or boyfriend,” she went on. She could be very direct at times.
“I have lots of hobbies.”
“Name one.”
“Painting.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I’m currently painting a seascape.”
“How long has it taken you so far?”
“About seven years.”
“It must be very good.”
“It’s a piece of crap.”
“Seriously, though,” said Turner, who had become closer to me in these past few weeks than during the entire time we had known each other, “what are you going to do?”
I handed her the SpecOps 27 gazette; it outlined postings around the country. Paige looked at the entry that I had circled in red ink.
“Swindon?”
“Why not? It’s home.”
“Home it might be,” replied Turner, “but weird it definitely is.” She tapped the job description. “It’s only for an operative— you’ve been acting inspector for over three years!”
“Three and a half. It doesn’t matter. I’m going.”
I didn’t tell Paige the real reason. It could have been a coincidence, of course, but the advice from the driver of the car had been most specific: Take the LiteraTec job in Swindon! Perhaps the vision had been real after all; the gazette with the job offer had arrived after the visitation by the car. If it had been right about the job in Swindon, it stood to reason that perhaps the news about Hades was also correct. Without any further thought, I had applied. I couldn’t tell Paige about the car; if she had known, friendship notwithstanding, she would have reported me to Boswell. Boswell would have spoken to Flanker and all sorts of unpleasantness might have happened. I was getting quite good at concealing the truth, and I felt happier now than I had for months.
“We’ll miss you in the department, Thursday.”
“It’ll pass.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Thanks, Paige, I appreciate it. I’ll miss you too.”
We hugged, she told me to keep in touch, and left the room, pager bleeping.
I finished packing and thanked the nursing staff, who gave me a brown paper parcel as I was about to leave.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It belonged to whoever saved your life that night.”
“What do you mean?”
“A passerby attended to you before the medics arrived; the wound in your arm was plugged and they wrapped you in their coat to keep you warm. Without their intervention you might well have bled to death.”
Intrigued, I opened the package. Firstly, there was a handkerchief that despite several washings still bore the stains of my own blood. There was an embroidered monogram in the corner that read EFR. Secondly the parcel contained a jacket, a sort of casual evening coat that might have been very popular in the middle of the last century. I searched the pockets and found a bill from a milliner. It was made out to one Edward Fairfax Rochester, Esq., and was dated 1833. I sat down heavily on the bed and stared at the two articles of clothing and the bill. Ordinarily I would not have believed that Rochester could have torn himself from the pages of Jane Eyre and come to my aid that night; such a thing is, of course, quite impossible. I might have dismissed the whole thing as a ludicrously complicated prank had it not been for one thing: Edward Rochester and I had met once before . . .
6.
Jane Eyre: A Short Excursion into the Novel
Outside Styx’s apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, nor would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey—and returned.
THURSDAY NEXT
—A Life in SpecOps
IT WAS 1958. My uncle and aunt—who even then seemed old—had taken me up to Haworth House, the old Brontë residence, for a visit. I had been learning about William Thackeray at school, and since the Brontës were contemporaries of his it seemed a good opportunity to further my interest in these matters. My Uncle Mycroft was giving a lecture at Bradford University on his remarkable mathematical work regarding game theory, the most practical side of which allowed one to win at Snakes and Ladders every time. Bradford was near to Haworth, so a combined visit seemed a good idea.
We were led around by the guide, a fluffy woman in her sixties with steel-rimmed spectacles and an angora cardigan who steered the tourists around the rooms with an abrupt manner, as though she felt that none of them could possibly know as much as she did, but would grudgingly assist to lift them from the depths of their own ignorance. Near the end of the tour, when thoughts had turned to picture postcards and ice cream, the prize exhibit in the form of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre greeted the tired museum-goers.
Although the pages had browned with age and the black ink faded to a light brown, the writing could still be read by the practiced eye, the fine spidery longhand flowing across the page in a steady stream of inventive prose. A page was turned every two days, allowing the more regular and fanatical Brontë followers to read the novel as originally drafted.
The day that I came to the Brontë museum the manuscript was open at the point where Jane and Rochester first meet; a chance encounter by a stile.
“—which makes it one of the greatest romantic novels ever written,” continued the fluffy yet lofty guide in her oft-repeated monologue, ignoring several hands that had been raised to ask pertinent questions.
“The character of Jane Eyre, a tough and resilient heroine, drew her apart from the usual heroines of the time, and Rochester, a forbidding yet basically good man, also broke the mold with his flawed character’s dour humor. Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Brontë in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Be
ll. Thackeray described it as ‘the master work of a great genius.’ We continue on now to the shop where you may purchase picture postcards, commemorative plates, small plastic imitation Heathcliffs and other mementos of your visit. Thank you for—”
One of the group had their hand up and was determined to have his say.
“Excuse me,” began the young man in an American accent. A muscle in the tour guide’s cheek momentarily twitched as she forced herself to listen to someone else’s opinion.
“Yes?” she inquired with icy politeness.
“Well,” continued the young man, “I’m kinda new to this whole Brontë thing, but I had trouble with the end of Jane Eyre.”
“Trouble?”
“Yeah. Like Jane leaves Thornfield Hall and hitches up with her cousins, the Riverses.”
“I know who her cousins are, young man.”
“Yeah, well, she agrees to go with this drippy St. John Rivers guy but not to marry him, they depart for India and that’s the end of the book? Hello? What about a happy ending? What happens to Rochester and his nutty wife?”
The guide glowered.
“And what would you prefer? The forces of good and evil fighting to the death in the corridors of Thornfield Hall?”
“That’s not what I meant,” continued the young man, beginning to get slightly annoyed. “It’s just that the book cries out for a strong resolution, to tie up the narrative and finish the tale. I get the feeling from what she wrote that she just kinda pooped out.”
The guide stared at him for a moment through her steel-rimmed glasses and wondered why the visitors couldn’t behave just that little bit more like sheep. Sadly, his point was a valid one; she herself had often pondered the diluted ending, wishing, like millions of others, that circumstances had allowed Jane and Rochester to marry after all.
“Some things will never be known,” she replied noncommittally. Charlotte is no longer with us so the question is abstract. What we have to study and enjoy is what she has left us. The sheer exuberance of the writing easily outweighs any of its small shortcomings.”
The young American nodded and the small crowd moved on, my aunt and uncle among them. I hung back until only I and a single Japanese tourist were left in the room; I then tried to look at the original manuscript on tiptoe. It was tricky, as I was small for my age.