The Extremes

  There are 16,794 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry​/​Gerald Dean Grove’. Display? Yes​/​No.

  Teresa found some Post-it notes in a desk-tidy behind the monitor. She scribbled on one of them, This computer is in use—please do not touch, and stuck it in the centre of the screen…over the words ‘Gerald Dean Grove’, and not entirely by accident.

  She went through to the reception area, and found Paula standing by the glass door, looking out into the road. There were now five police cars outside the building, and a cordon of officers in front of the main door.

  Teresa told Paula what she would like to do, and with an air of preoccupation the young woman typed on her keyboard, and produced a credit-card slip and an access number. Teresa deliberately did not ask what was going on outside; the less she knew about Grove’s movements, on this day of virtuality June 3, the better.

  Paula had returned to staring through the glass door as Teresa walked through into Cyberville UK, next to reception.

  The place was empty, the rows of computer screens all idle.

  She went to sit at one of the terminals, and typed in the access code Paula had just given her. After a moment, a welcome screen appeared.

  Teresa logged on to the website for the Abilene Lone Star News, and within a few seconds the newspaper’s home page appeared. She glanced through it, then clicked on the icon for the archive.

  She typed in the date: June 4, the day after this, the day after this one eight months ago. It was illogical: how could she look into the archived files of a newspaper that would not be published until the next day? It was another test of historical certainty against virtuality. If she was here, really here, time-travelled back to Bulverton on June 3, then of course what she was trying would not be allowed. But Teresa was certain that nothing any more was real, not real in the way she used to mean it. Just real enough.

  Real-enough reality was confirmed: the facsimile front page of the Abilene Lone Star News of June 4 came into view, the graphic image scanning slowly from the top.

  First came the title of the newspaper. Then the black headline, inch-high capitals, spreading over two lines: MASS SHOOTING AT KINGWOOD’S NORTH CROSS MALL. Text started appearing with three bylines: the terse, excited words put together by the team of reporters assigned to the story. A few inches down, set into the text in an outlined block, was the Arkansas mugshot of Aronwitz.

  The image scanned quickly into view.

  It was the face of Gerry Grove.

  Back at the on-line database terminal, Teresa removed her Post-it note, clicked on No to the question about displaying the 16,794 hyperlinks, and cleared the screen. Then she connected her name with Grove’s once more, interested to see how the exponential growth had proceeded. A few more minutes went by. Then it said:

  There are 73,788 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry​/​Gerald Dean Grove’. Display? Yes​/​No.

  She clicked on No. She typed in her name and Andy’s instead, and in almost instant response the computer said:

  There are 1 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Andy​/​Andrew Wellman Simons’. Display? Yes​/​No.

  She clicked on Yes, and the name of the scenario in Kingwood City came into view. She cancelled it, knowing that that was not the one she wanted.

  She now knew what she had to do. She typed in Andy’s name again, and her own. This time, though, she called herself ‘Teresa Ann Gravatt​/​Simons’. The computer said:

  There are 23 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Gravatt​/​Simons’ to ‘Andy​/​Andrew Wellman Simons’. Display? Yes​/​No.

  Teresa clicked on Yes, and with the list in front of her began constructing the remainder of her life.

  CHAPTER 38

  Teresa came in at night: she had always remembered it happening during the day. Her memories were exact, but apparently in error. The discovery frightened her because it made her think, inevitably, that what she was doing had gone wrong from the outset. She paused in the street, trying to decide whether to abort the scenario before it went any further, go back and check the preparations she had made, or to go on with it, and see what transpired.

  While she stood there undecided, a door opened in the large building behind her, and a shaft of electric light played across the concrete. A young man stepped out, pulling a thick leather jacket round his shoulders. With his fists in his pockets, and his elbows sticking out, he strode past her.

  ‘Good evening, ma’am,’ he said, noncommittally, not really looking at her.

  ‘Hi,’ Teresa replied, then turned in shock and surprise to stare at him as he walked off into the night. It was her father, Bob Gravatt.

  He passed under a streetlight, and she saw his close-shaved head, his round ears, his thickening neck, the roll of fleece visible at the neck of his jacket. He walked to a pick-up truck, climbed in and drove away.

  Teresa went into the barracks building, and climbed a flight of concrete steps. It was a communal staircase, with doors leading off landings to individual apartments. On the top floor she came to a brown-painted door that faced into the stairwell. A piece of card, inscribed in her father’s square lettering, carried his name: S/S R.D. Gravatt. Cautiously, she pushed the door open. A short corridor ran towards the kitchen at the far end. Music from a radio could be heard from this, and the sound of kitchen utensils in use.

  The temptation to walk down and see her mother was almost impossible to resist, but Teresa knew that it would lead necessarily to her aborting the scenario and having to start again. She had set up a chain of contiguity, and she was reluctant to break it so early. Instead, then, she turned into the first room on the right of the corridor, which she knew was her parents’ bedroom.

  A small girl stood there, next to a plain wooden chair in the centre of the room. An automatic handgun, instantly recognized by Teresa as a .32-calibre Smith & Wesson, lay on the chair. The child was facing a large mirror, the size of a door, attached to the wall opposite the double bed.

  A mirror, a real mirror!

  The little girl’s reflection stared back at herself.

  ‘Look what I’ve got,’ said seven-year-old Teresa, and she picked up the handgun in both hands, straining to lift it.

  Teresa gasped in horror at the speed with which this happened. She had no time to speak, only to make a futile grabbing action towards the gun. The movement distracted the little girl, who jerked around in surprise, and somehow those tiny hands managed to pull the sensitized trigger. Teresa ducked as the gun went off—a shattering explosion in the confines of the room—and saw the mirror on the wall smash into a dozen crazed pieces. The gun flew out of the child’s hands, crashing on the floor. The pieces of broken mirror slid heavily to the floor, revealing the dirty wooden board that had been behind the glass.

  ‘Tess?!’

  From the other end of the apartment there came the sound of something heavy and metallic being dropped, then footsteps rushing down the corridor towards her.

  Little Teresa was staring in disbelief at the shattered mirror, holding her hurting wrist, her face rigid with shock and fear and pain.

  The door burst open, but before her mother appeared Teresa recalled the LIVER mnemonic.

  She was in Cleveland, 1962. East 55th Street, outside a bank. She knew what was coming, and there was no need to allow it to happen. Six seconds went by, and the door she was standing next to began to open quickly, LIVER. Two hours’ wait for Charles Dayton Hunter in the dimly lit interior of a San Antonio bar had no more attraction, LIVER.

  She was hiding behind a toll-booth at the northern end of a suspension bridge thrown high across a river. She was wearing a bulletproof vest, a hardened helmet and silvered shades. Around her were twenty or thirty other cops dressed identically. They were all carrying rifles of a make she could not identify. A helicopter was moving snappily overhead.

  ‘Who we waitin’ for?’ Teresa gritted to the man next to her.


  ‘It’s Gerry Grove,’ the man snarled, spitting a jet of orange tobacco juice. ‘He’s on the rampage in Bulverton, England, and we gotta stop him, and stop him now! There he is, boys! He’s comin’ our way!’

  With several of the others, Teresa took up position in the narrow roadway that ran between two of the tollbooths. The other cops disposed themselves similarly. A man was running down the centre of the carriageway towards them. At intervals he loosed off a stream of bullets at passing vehicles, causing them to skid and crash. One caught fire, and rolled slowly backwards down the incline towards the booths, leaving a trail of burning oil.

  From the helicopter came a loudly amplified voice, screeching down at the gunman from above:

  ‘We know you’re in there, Grove! Throw down your weapon or weapons, and come out with your hands up! Let the hostage—’

  Gerry Grove rolled on his back, took aim, and pumped a dozen bullets into the belly of the helicopter. There was a mighty explosion, and shattered glass, engine housing and rotor blades flew in all directions.

  ‘Let’s get him, boys!’ yelled the police captain.

  With the others, Teresa raised her rifle and started to fire. A deafening fusillade roared out. Grove stood his ground with a calm expression on his face, firing back with deadly effect. In quick succession, policemen were thrown violently backwards by the impact of his bullets.

  Teresa, staring at the man, said aloud, ‘That’s not Grove!’

  She took off her shades to see better, then removed her helmet and shook out her long black tresses. She stepped forward. The man they had called Gerry Grove stared at her in amazement.

  He was not Grove but Dave Hartland, Amy’s brother-in-law.

  Shit, thought Teresa. I’m wasting a lot of time on this!

  LIVER.

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  ‘What?’ said Teresa, as darkness abruptly fell.

  She was in Bulverton Old Town on a cold winter’s morning. It was her first full day in England, and she had gone for a walk to see the place. A frisson of recognition ran through her; recognition not from now, as she returned via the hyperlinked scenario, but from then. Why had she felt so at home here? It could hardly matter now. She was impatient to get on. LIVER.

  She was in a hotel room, late one afternoon, daylight fading. A woman sat at a laptop computer that rested on a small working surface jutting out from one wall. She was typing slowly, and she looked tired. Her shoulders sagged. Teresa thought, This is how my life slipped away, trying to figure out the problems created by others, trying to investigate, detect, make sense of chaos. The woman stopped typing, pressed her hands down on the work surface, beginning to stand up; she looked ill and exhausted. She was about to turn, and would see herself there, so Teresa recalled the LIVER mnemonic and slipped away.

  She was in Al’s Happy Burgabar, standing by the brightly lit salad bar. The restaurant was full of families, and a cheerful noise filled the huge room. Teresa remembered the fruitless hours she had spent trying to thwart Sam Wilkins McLeod. She thought, And this is how the rest of my life slipped away, drifting in extreme reality. A movement in the parking lot, glimpsed through the plate-glass window, caught her eye, and she saw a pick-up truck parking in a row of cars. The driver took down a rifle from the gun rack. Teresa remembered the LIVER mnemonic.

  She was in Bulverton, June 3, a hot day, brilliant sunshine. On the sidewalk outside the White Dragon. A car had collided with a bollard on the traffic island, while the driver slumped over his steering wheel with blood flooding out of a head wound. Gerry Grove was on the other side of the road, carrying a rifle in both hands at chest height. He kept working the action, firing at anyone he saw. Teresa could see three people lying in the road. Grove saw her, turned the rifle towards her. Teresa stepped back in horror, but at that moment an elderly man rushed out of the door of the hotel, and yelled something at the gunman. Grove immediately fired several shots at the man, who fell back with blood spurting from his face. A stray bullet slammed into one of the large windows of the bar, shattering it and throwing the broken pieces inside. Again, Grove was turning towards her, so Teresa ducked away, hurrying towards the open door of the hotel. An elderly woman, covered in blood, was standing there, half blocking the way. ‘Is Jim…?’ she said softly. Teresa pushed past her as Grove opened fire, throwing the woman to the floor, shrieking and dying. Teresa recalled LIVER.

  A bank in Camden, New Jersey; a university campus in Austin, Texas. Both filled her with remembered horrors. São Paulo, Brazil, a knife fight in a salsa club; Sydney, Australia, a young drug addict running amok; Kansas City, Missouri, the McLaughlin siege…I should have realized that not all these would be relevant. My life is slipping away from me, as before it did, while I never saw how pointless it was. LIVER.

  It was a blisteringly hot day, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra was on the radio playing ‘Newport Up’. Teresa backed the Chevy station wagon away from the sidewalk, did a U-turn, and drove south along 30th Street. She eased herself more comfortably on the wide bench seat, and glanced up into the rear-view mirror, straining to see herself. Along the soft old bench seat, on the passenger side, was an elderly black woman. Her face was full of mild concern.

  ‘Hi, Elsa!’ Teresa said aloud, smiling across at her. ‘What’s doing?’

  ‘I do what you want to do, honey.’

  ‘Do you know where we’re going?’

  ‘I do what you want to do, honey.’

  ‘Well, I want to tell you, I’m trying to find my husband. I’ve got to work towards him. I call it contiguity, where these stories overlap. It was you who showed me that, out there on the highway, when we drove towards the mountains and the landscape flattened out and we never reached the edge. Do you want to do that again, Elsa?’

  ‘I do what you want to do, honey.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about this, do you, Elsa?’

  ‘I do what…’

  They rounded a corner between two hills, and as the road straightened out again they saw that a police roadblock lay ahead, with cops crouching down behind their cars. They were pointing their guns into the distance. Teresa said, ‘It was along this road! Not the other! I’ve been going the wrong way!’

  She slowed a little, and glanced again at the old lady sitting across from her. She was grinning, beating her fingers lightly against the dash in time with the music.

  Teresa slowed even more, then steered carefully between the two police units. One of the cops shouted at them, and waved his arms. Ahead, a blue Pontiac had come into sight.

  ‘You know what to do here, Elsa?’

  ‘I do what you want to do, honey.’

  ‘I’m going to leave you now. I love you, Elsa. Take care!’

  She was in Eastbourne Road, Bulverton, June 3. Hot day of blood and broken glass, and Gerry Grove still on the loose. A kid screaming in a car, with his parents lying dead or wounded in the front seats. The engine was still running. The kid was pointing upwards, towards the roof of one of the buildings beside the road. There were scaffolding poles up there, surrounding the chimney stack and the tiles by the roof’s ridge. A man’s foot had been caught in a joint of the scaffolding as he tumbled backwards from his work. His leg was bare where his trouser-leg had ridden up towards his knee, but no more of him was visible. The child kept shouting, ‘On the roof! There’s a man on the roof.’ A middle-aged woman with greying hair stood in the entrance to an enclosed alleyway that ran between two of the buildings, half shadowed. The child was screaming to her, imploring her to help, or at least just to look at the man on the roof. Grove was somewhere close at hand, firing at random. Teresa recalled the LIVER mnemonic.

  She was following a gendarme on night patrol in the immigrant quarter of the city of Lyon; it was January 10, 1959. No time for this, LIVER. She was with Sergeant Geoffrey Verrick, a uniformed traffic policeman, passenger in a patrol
car—LIVER. She was in the cramped rear seat of an open-top car, steering through the curves of Highway 2, north of Los Angeles, through the mountains…Teresa was impatient to get on, she should have researched this better, she had been in such a damned hurry to get to Andy—

  LIVER.

  She was standing in a long room, unused but for a small film set at one end. It had been made to look like a western saloon bar. A young woman, dressed as a cowgirl, wriggled uncomfortably in clothes that were obviously too tight.

  A woman carrying a powder puff stepped through the ring of lights.

  Teresa walked past the set and out through the door that led to the showers. At the far end of a narrow passageway was one of those emergency exits with a steel bar that had to be pushed down. Teresa pressed hard on the bar, but the door seemed to be stuck. She put her weight on it, and in a moment it grated open.

  A small enclosed yard was outside, piled with black plastic garbage sacks, crates of brown bottles, and bales of paper bound up with wire. Traffic roared by somewhere close at hand, but out of sight.

  Teresa retraced her steps along the passageway, opening every door that she passed, finding only small unused offices or closets. She saw a flight of steps leading down, and at the bottom there was another barred emergency exit. When she pushed this open, she emerged into the dry blazing heat of Arizona. The immense sky exploded into being.

  * * * SENSH * * *

  She looked back. Behind her was no trace of the door she had just walked through. She was in untamed scrubland, the gravelly ground littered with rocks of all sizes. A giant saguaro cactus stood a few feet away, looming over her; Teresa had never been so close to one before, and stared up at it in awe. The dry heat made her throat hurt, and the sun made the top of her head bum.

  There was a paved road a short distance away, and parked on the side was a white open-top Lincoln Continental. The driver was leaning across the front seat, waving and beckoning to her. Teresa walked quickly towards the car, wary of turning her ankle on the loose rocks.