Only Forward

by Michael Marshall Smith

  After a hundred yards I stopped and turned: there was no building behind me. As I stood fighting away dizziness in the heavy air, snow began to fall, huge flakes of perfect white cutting channels down the leaden sky. With the snow came a little more clarity in the air, and I felt together enough to fumble in my pockets and dig out a cigarette. Sometimes I feel like my life is just a way of filling time between lighting the damn things.

  As I lit it shakily, shivering a little, I remembered how at first I’d felt bad about smoking in here, throwing down man-made butts onto an earth made of dreams. Then I dropped some coins once, while trying to barter a client’s favourite jacket back, and when I looked down at the floor the coins weren’t there. They were real coins, City coins, and where they went I have no idea.

  After that I didn’t think so much about cigarettes or matches: if metal could find no hold here, then surely they wouldn’t either. Over the years I came to feel that it didn’t matter much, that whatever was dropped passed through the insubstantial ground and fell down into somewhere else. And I couldn’t pretend by then that Jeamland hadn’t been changed by our presence anyway, that it would ever be the same again.

  ‘No! Please don’t!’

  ‘If you make another sound I’ll cut your throat open and put spiders in it.’

  I turned back to face the way I was going, feeling a pull. The voice floated past, dropped down with the snowflakes, as clear as if the speaker was on my shoulder. But there was no one there. For a second a feeling of utter revulsion ran through me, oiled and slick in the crisp air, a sensation of warm dark terror stirred round with shame. Then the feeling was gone, rolling sickly over itself into the distance, leaving me soiled and dirty, the world’s bright lights all pissed on at once. Taking a deep drag on my cigarette, I followed the feeling.

  The flakes fell heavily as I walked, feet swishing against the bowing grass. I walked for about an hour, I think, following my instinct, following inaudible sniggers beyond the curtain of tumbling white. I could not be far behind Alkland now. The threads of his dreams were too thick to have been left there long.

  I’ve lost people before in here, and I know how little I have to do to find them. How little, because finding them is not such a good thing, for me. It’s not like everything is coming out surprisingly and suspiciously well when I come upon them again, because each bad dream they have becomes a part of me. I can find people, lead people, because I can share their dreams. If that sounds like so much hippy bullshit, then too bad. And if losing people makes me sound incompetent, then you don’t know what you’re talking about. Next time you dream, try doing anything of your own free will, never mind taking someone with you, never mind reaching into their dreams and pulling out fistfuls until you get the right one, never mind doing that when guilt is stabbing at you from every corner and all you want to do is just go home again. There’s nobody else who can do this, and I do it as well as I can. I didn’t ask for this. All I wanted was something different. I found it. And I lost everything else, absolutely everything, apart from what I really wanted to lose.

  I came upon a car. It was an old-fashioned model, with generous curves and humps, long dead and covered with nine inches of snow. I walked slowly round it, trying to prise open the feeling of recognition it gave me. Flickers of memory began to darken the air around me, because Memory is very close to Jeamland, and you can get there too if you know how.

  I tugged one of the doors and with a wrenching squeal it opened, releasing a smell of old leather out into the snow. There was something else too, a light scent that seemed somehow brown and exciting, and I poked my head into the car, leaning on one of the red leather seats, trying to catch the remembrance.

  It came soon enough. This was my grandfather’s car, the first and only car I owned. The smell was the smell of cigarettes on cold air, early cigarettes. Youth, and foolishness, and family. I ducked back out of the car quickly, in time to see it fall in upon itself. It had never been there, just a pile of snow and icicles in a chance formation. In falling the snow assumed a shape, the shape of a man sitting as if in a car, the head turned towards me. The face was old and lined, a face I barely remembered. Then the snow slipped and the image dissolved and slid apart.

  ‘Do it!’

  ‘No,’ and the sound of desperate, hitching sobs followed by a slap.

  I pulled myself away from the pile of snow and stumbled through the drifts as quickly as I could towards the sound.

  I found him.

  I tripped over him, in fact. When I heard the sound of the cry it was close, and I hurried towards it, even though it was the sound of a little girl and not a grown man. I ran for twenty yards, fifty, my cold breath aching in my lungs, ran as quickly as I could before something else happened and we were ripped apart again. Normally keeping track of people isn’t that difficult. But things were different now. Now Jeamland was not itself any more, but structured, reformed, mangled by someone I knew. Someone I thought was dead. No, damn it, someone I knew was dead.

  I knew that I had to do everything I could as quickly and well as possible. The time for second chances was running out. Rafe was a bad man when he was alive. Now that he was dead there was no telling what he would be like.

  After a hundred yards I was beginning to doubt my intuition and was walking more slowly, turning as I went, peering into the snow falling all around me. Then suddenly I saw a snowdrift that looked like a playground roundabout and ran to it. The snow flicked and swirled and the shape disappeared. My feet caught on something as I backed away from it and I stumbled and almost fell flat on my back. It was a figure curled in a foetal position, heavily dusted with snow and slipping deeper all the time. It was Alkland.

  Casting a quick glance around I knelt down by him and touched his shoulder. Cold though my fingers were I could tell that he was colder still.

  ‘Alkland,’ I said, and jogged his shoulder. He didn’t respond. The folds of his jacket were creased hard with ice, and he chimed as I turned him over. One side of his face was burnt, and the other had a long gash on it. The skin was a blotchy dark green, the colour of something that is about to burst. I looked at his palms and saw that they too were green now.

  Suddenly I heard something and looked up. There was nothing to be seen, nothing in the few dozen yards of sparkling visibility the snow allowed me. It looked a little like a waterfall, and for a moment I almost smiled, and then I heard the sound again. It was the sound of a sneeze. It was quickly followed by a cough, too quickly for it to have come from the same person.

  ‘Come on, Alkland, it’s the sneezing policemen again,’ I said urgently, shaking him. ‘Time to wake up.’ There was no response. I placed my hand over his mouth and squeezed his nostrils together tightly. For a long moment nothing happened and then I thought I felt the tiniest hint of movement from one of his hands.

  But he wasn’t going to wake up. I wasn’t even sure he was going to survive. I heard the sound of another sneeze and knew that I was going to have to do something I swore I’d never do again. It was something I’d done without thinking back in the old days, before I knew the damage it was doing.

  I lay down next to Alkland in the snow and wrapped my arms around him, shuddering as his cold seeped into me. I could feel no breath from his face so close to mine, and for a moment I felt despair settle into me. A gurgling laugh in the distance told me this had been picked up and I slammed a lid on it quickly, closed my eyes and kicked my mind, took a sledgehammer to it, pushed a glowing metal spike into it until it hurt enough to give me the strength I needed. It was a long time since I’d tried to do this, and it almost didn’t happen. But then I felt a sensation like falling slowly out of bed, and I woke up on my sofa.

  18

  I lied about not being able to wake up at will. I can do it.

  I lied about the two lovers talking fond nonsense as they walked along a beach. There were lovers, but they never walked along a beach. All they had was a couple of nights, and all they left behind the
m was unhappiness.

  I lied about most things, by omission.

  Most of all, I’ve lied about myself.

  I hoped I’d be able to keep this together, but life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.

  Have you noticed that? It really doesn’t.

  The apartment felt warm, unbelievably tropical and welcoming. After opening my eyes to check where I was I shut them again for a blessed moment, Alkland’s weight enough to reassure me that I’d brought him along. I lay there for a while, listening to the soft drip of melting ice.

  Eventually I struggled upright, spilling Alkland onto the sofa. He sprawled at an awkward angle, looking so dead that for a moment I thought that battle was already lost. His face, though no longer green, was horribly stretched and degraded, and the right side was bright red. His hands were covered in liver spots that had not been there before, and the gash on his other cheek had been replaced by an open sore. I leaned close to him until I felt a wisp of pale breath, and then relaxed. A little bit, for a short while. The clock told me I’d been in Jeamland less than three hours, and that it was just after seven o’clock.

  ACIA had obviously been here this time. The walls were all black, which meant the power to them had been shut off and the apartment wasn’t screened any more. Maybe they’d told the Neighbourhood I was dead. Books were spread all over the floor, and the bookcase lay broken in a corner. It looked like the debris after a Gravbenda™ fuckup, and didn’t really bother me much. I felt like an intruder myself.

  When I stood up, I felt the unreality of the apartment shouting at me from every corner. What is all this? it said. Do you know where you are? Is this where you live? It was the kind of feeling you get when you come back home after a time away, and see the objects and space you surround yourself with in a new light, stripped of their arbitrary familiarity.

  But it was much, much more than that. For a second the whole thing threatened to shade away, at last to rebel and leave me to face myself and where I was. Then it settled, but grudgingly, and as I walked to the desk I felt I did so on sufferance. The world will only take so much screwing about, and I’ve been walking a fine line for too long.

  The door had been nailed shut from the outside. Due to my somewhat unusual method of re-entry, that actually made me reasonably secure for a while. Unless…I opened the drawer and got out the BugAnaly™.

  ‘Hi, Stark. Wow. You look like shit.’

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘What? Oh.’

  The machine fell silent for a moment, and then a message flashed up on its panel of lights. ‘No bugs,’ it said, then, ‘Oh, hang on…’ After a pause it flashed up, ‘Let’s have a bit of a shufti at the vidiphone.’

  I carried the machine to the vidiphone and waved it over it. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ the message panel said. ‘Just hold me still.’

  ‘Yep, the videophone’s bugged,’ it said, eventually. ‘Standard wave-tapping, audio and video. Voice-activated. You want me to kill it? It’s not a problem unless you want to make a call.’

  ‘Will they know it’s been tampered with?’ I said.

  ‘Er, yes. It has self-checking. Bit of a downer.’

  ‘Can you scramble it temporarily?’

  ‘Hang on…yes, I can white-noise-coat it. Longer than twenty seconds will cause an alert signal though.’

  ‘Twenty seconds is all I need.’ I punched a code in and waited. After a moment the screen flicked on and Shelby appeared.

  ‘Stark, hi, wow.’

  ‘I know. Deep shit, Shelby. Way, way deep.’

  ‘Lift?’

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘Your wish, Stark, is like, totally. Where?’

  ‘My apartment roof. Got to go.’

  ‘Twenty minutes.’ The screen went blank.

  Time to spare,’ said the BugAnaly™ approvingly. I think it must have done a personality transplant on itself. It wasn’t irritating me half as much as usual.

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing else?’

  ‘Zip.’

  I left the machine on the desk and went back to Alkland. Now that most of the ice on his clothes and hair had melted he was sitting in a small pool of water. A little colour had come back to his face, but he still looked very, very ill. The sore looked angry and I noticed that another one was on its way beneath his eye. He was, it had to be said, in terrible shape.

  But he was still alive, which meant he hadn’t met Rafe. It was possible that Rafe had let him be to draw me on, but such restraint seemed unlikely. He could have dismantled his head and the faint strands of Alkland’s dreams would still have been enough to attract my attention. What was going on? What was Rafe playing at?

  I rubbed Alkland’s hands for a while, trying to will warmth into them, and was rewarded with a small moan. He was not going to surface for a while, but he wasn’t going to die. Not yet, anyway.

  I covered him with a blanket and then rummaged round the apartment for a while, changing out of my own wet clothes into identical dry ones, locating some more cigarettes, that sort of thing. It didn’t take very long, and I started to feel that type of tense nervousness you get when you’re in a hurry and suddenly have a block of time you’ve no use for.

  For something to do I headed towards the kitchen to nuke some water for a couple of cups of coffee. I never got there.

  I was halfway across the living room when I heard the distinctive sound of aircars decelerating rapidly. A dread impulse took me to the window. I lifted the shade and looked down at the dark street below.

  Three ACIA cars had pulled to an untidy halt down by the side of the building, and a pair of men emerged from each one. They glanced about with the time-honoured smugness of those who are above the law and carrying guns, and then headed for the entrance to the building.

  ‘Bug, you shit,’ I hissed, turning towards it. ‘You said the place was clean!’

  The machine said nothing. I picked it up and shook it, uselessly.

  ‘Give yourself up, Stark,’ it said tersely. ‘Game’s over. It’s a wrap. Finito.’

  I realised why the machine had sounded different. The only bug in the apartment was the one I was holding. They’d found the BugAnaly™ and reprogrammed it. The bastard machine had changed sides.

  Furiously, not caring that I had far more important things to worry about, I strode back to the window and prepared to send the machine sailing out into the night. Then I had another thought, and slammed it back on the table before running over to the sofa. I called Alkland’s name several times and received only another low, unconscious moan in response.

  Swearing heavily, I grabbed the desk and pulled it into the corner of the room. The BugAnaly™ slid off and landed hard on the floor, but I found I didn’t mind that very much. When the desk was in position I slipped my arms under Alkland’s and hoicked him up. I steered him over towards the desk and let him fall gently onto it, back first. Then I picked up his legs and slid him forwards so he was lying on the desk.

  I picked the BugAnaly™ up and ran to the bedroom where I grabbed a MiniCrunt from the bedside table. Carrying them both I took up a position behind the door. I levered the BugAnaly™’s back panel off and slipped the MiniCrunt inside, first setting it for maximum sensitivity. Then I balanced the machine on the doorknob.

  ‘Hang on, Stark,’ the machine said. ‘What’s that? What have you put inside me?’

  ‘MiniCrunt,’ I said. ‘Have a nice day.’

  Ignoring the machine’s wails I ran back to the desk and jumped on. I located my Furt and set it for cutting, meanwhile cocking an ear towards the corridor. There was no sound yet, and I hadn’t heard the elevator doors ping. I hoped it would take them at least half a minute to get through their own handiwork on the other side of the door. It wasn’t much time, but it was all I had.

  Shielding my face with my hand I held the Furt up to the ceiling and flicked the switch. A green needle of light poked straight into the plexiplaster, which was a relief. Never having trie
d to cut holes in my roof before, I hadn’t been sure it could be done.

  I knew I’d got through when I heard a startled yelp from the apartment above. As quickly as I could, hoping that the occupants above would have the sense to keep out of the way, I described a circle about two feet in diameter in the plexiplaster. I left the last couple of inches in place and shoved upwards hard. The disc of floor popped up and into the apartment above.

  Two faces of different sexes but similarly advanced years immediately took its place.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ the old man asked petulantly. He wore glasses and had a deeply lined face sparsely capped with yellowy-white hair. He looked like a dictionary illustration of the word ‘old’.

  ‘Cutting a hole in your floor,’ I said. These opportunities happen so seldom. You have to take advantage of them when they come. I do, anyway.

  ‘Don’t get smart with me, young man. You just stop that cutting right now.’

  ‘I already have,’ I quipped with manic joy. His feedlines were too good to be true. I could have stood and chatted with the old twonk all day. ‘And now I’m afraid I have to leave my apartment via your apartment.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’

  ‘Oh yes, I will, and what’s more, I need your help.’ I ducked down, slipped my hands under Alkland and manhandled him into a standing position. A slumping position, to be more accurate: unconscious bodies are sodding heavy. I lifted Alkland’s hands so that they stuck up through the hole in the floor. The old man pushed them back again. I stuck them through again. The old man pushed them back again.

  ‘Oh, Neville,’ said the old woman crossly. ‘Don’t be such an old turd. Grab the gentleman’s arms.’

  ‘Nora,’ hissed the old guy, scandalised by this subversion from within. The woman ignored him, reached one of her hands into the hole and grabbed Alkland’s arm.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse my husband,’ she said, ‘He’s very old.’

  Neville dithered for a moment, and then, making it absolutely clear that it was against his better judgement, grabbed hold of Alkland’s other hand.