by Rob Grant
Which is something of a shame.
Because that is the last meal Eddie will ever eat.
16
Eddie's beginning to get a handle on the ship's layout. He manages to find his way back to his own apartment, and he only gets lost half a dozen times. There are corridor karts, little electrically powered shuttle buses, that ferry passengers between transway stations. The transway system networks the ship, and it's more efficient for longer trips.
That's assuming you don't get in the wrong carriage, heading in the wrong direction on the wrong deck, which Eddie seems to have a penchant for doing.
Mr Styx himself is supervising the forensic search of Eddie's apartment, which is a little worrying, on several counts. He looks up as Eddie steps out of the kart at the end of the corridor. 'Mr Gordon,' he chides, 'I thought I made it clear this was a code orange.'
'You did, Mr Styx. Sorry, I got... I was waylaid.' Eddie hopes this will be excuse enough. After all, he is the Community Planner on this mission. 'And what are you doing pootling about with a little house break-in? Wouldn't you be better occupied in the minor matter of tracking down the murderous fugitive?'
'This is part of the same investigation, sir.'
What?
Styx beckons Eddie into the apartment. 'We've reason to believe it was the fugitive who did this.'
Eddie steps through the door. Any small hopes he might still have entertained that Pink Socks was here by coincidence, or hunting down some other poor wretch, disappear with the sound of his stomach rumble.
The room is destroyed. The furniture is smashed, his clothes are slashed and even the walls are daubed with hate messages in a strange brown paint.
Styx sees him wondering. 'That's blood, sir.'
'Blood?'
'From the security guard I allocated to look after you.'
'He's dead, this guard?'
Styx nods grimly. 'Very. Do these messages mean anything to you?'
Eddie scans the wall. A couple of unpleasant expletives. The word 'pig'. A death threat: 'die'. He's about to shake his head when he spots the wall above his mantelpiece. A charming display it makes, too. The grinning skeletons from the Mexican Day of the Dead festival have knives jabbed into their skulls. And above them, daubed madly in blood, 'I'm coming for you, Eddie.'
'Anything at all?' Styx is urging.
Eddie manages to grunt a negative. 'Nurghh.'
'Do you know who "Eddie" might be?'
Eddie grunts again.
'He's used the name before. When we had him in custody. He's hell bent on ripping this Eddie to pieces, whoever he is.' Styx looks over at the message and shakes his head. 'I sure wouldn't like to be Eddie.'
Eddie smiles, weakly. 'Me neither.'
'I've already allocated you another apartment.'
'Thank you.'
'It won't be exactly to your taste, of course.'
To his taste? Just so long as the walls aren't splattered with hate messages daubed in another man's lifeblood, that would be to Eddie's taste. And it's not as if he plans to actually go to an apartment and be on his own any time soon. He mumbles a thank you, and makes his way towards the door, without any idea where he's going to go.
'Oh, by the way...'
Eddie stops at the door and turns. 'Eh?'
'There was a note for you.' Styx dips into his pocket.
'A note?'
'We opened it, I'm afraid. In case it was pertinent to the inquiry.' He hands over a folded blue letter. 'We don't think it is. Sorry.'
Eddie accepts the note, steps out of the room, and actually takes a breath.
And as he inhales, he smells a scent. And even in these strained circumstances, the smell fills him with cheer.
Carbolic soap.
He flips the note open.
It's short and very sweet.
Meet me in the rose garden. 0100 hrs. And it's signed simply P.
P.
The gardens. There is a huge vegetation zone on the ship, with artificial sunlight, and now, presumably, at this hour, artificial moonlight. It performs a number of functions: assisting oxygen regeneration, for instance, and supplementing the artificial and recycled foodstuff in the crew's diet.
And not listed in the brochure: it also provides a perfect setting for a romantic assignation.
Eddie smells the note again, pops it tenderly into his breast pocket and heads up the corridor, towards the nearest transway station.
All kinds of thoughts are swirling through his mind. He's racing through possible explanations why the savage Ms Peck might have had a change of heart. His irresistible charm? Doubtful. She suffered some kind of blow to the head? More likely. Or...
Or she's suddenly found Eddie's been allocated to her as a sexual partner! Yes! That one makes sense. She's discovered that, and she wants to make the best of things.
It doesn't occur to Eddie that the letter might be a device, a ruse to get him alone, in a deserted place. That it might have been counterfeited by someone who has bad intentions towards him. Very bad intentions.
He's actually whistling a Hoagy Carmichael tune as the transway carriage arrives and he steps into it.
And that's the last thing he remembers.
That's the last thing he remembers for a very long time.
PART THREE
Generation X
'Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound:
His strength the more is.'
(John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress)
17
Eddie's not dreaming, but he's not in reality, either.
He's in a forest clearing, but the trees aren't entirely convincing. The details are fine. The morning sun is sending misted shafts through the overhanging branches. Nice touch, Eddie's thinking. And a very plausible lens flare as he looks through the canopy of leaves directly towards the sun.
He's lying on a bed of soft foliage. Maybe he should get up, but it feels like that would be too much effort right now. Besides, this is a good place. Unthreatening. There is birdsong. He's safe here. He's calm and safe.
There is a rustling sound in the bushes beside him. He directs his eyes towards it. For some reason, actually moving his head doesn't seem like a wonderful idea at this moment. He sees a white foal, bent over, lapping at a crystal stream. It turns its head to face him, and Eddie spots a fledgling horn sprouting from its forehead. A baby unicorn. Delightful.
In his extremely relaxed state, the unicorn doesn't surprise Eddie. Nothing would surprise him. Not even the nymph who's crouching over him, looking at his face, wearing a floral crown, a flimsy slip of shiny, translucent material and a concerned expression. He smiles at her. This seems to please her. Good. She's very, very beautiful, and Eddie wants to please her. She speaks. The accent is strange. Impossible to place.
'I think that would qualify as a response.'
Eddie thinks he recognizes her, but his memory's not too... it's not exactly firing on all... what are those things in an internal combustion engine? Tubular things? The nymph's lips are moving again, but her voice isn't quite in synch.
'Do you know who you are?'
Of course he knows who he is. He smiles and tries to nod, but he can only incline his head ever so slightly. Perhaps that should worry him, but it doesn't.
The nymph looks cross, for a second. Not very nymph-like, really. Then she smiles again. An unaccomplished smile. 'Would you like to actually try and tell us who you are? With speech?' And even though she's smiling, there is definitely a note of impatience in the voice.
Fair enough. This is Eddie's personal Paradise, he assumes, so it would make sense to have a short-tempered nymph tending to him. Eddie tries to say 'This is a heaven, isn't it?', but it comes out all mixed up. Vowels and consonants in the wrong place, in the wrong order. And his voice doesn't sound right. Like it's coming from somewhere else. Somewhere underwater. Like it doesn't belong to him. That should definitely worry him, but it
definitely doesn't.
There is another voice, a male voice, 'What did he say?' and a satyr is suddenly crouching next to the nymph, pointed ears, furry legs, the whole enchilada. Eddie certainly recognizes him. That crewcut security hombre. Slick? Stick? No, Styx. What's he doing in Eddie's Heaven?
The nymph shoots the satyr a withering look. 'He said...' and she accurately reproduces the jumbled nonsense that just tumbled out of Eddie's mouth.
The satyr appears to be concentrating very hard. His face looks like it has to do this a lot. 'That's French, right?'
The nymph dismisses the satyr with a small flick of her eyes and turns her attention back to Eddie. 'Don't panic. You haven't spoken in some considerable time. You may simply be experiencing some minor difficulty re-acquainting the appropriate muscles with their correct function. Either that or your voice box is shot all to hell and utterly beyond repair. Just relax and try again.'
Some considerable time? What could that mean? Eddie tries trawling through the mess of his memory. What exactly was the last thing that happened to him? No? Nothing coming? OK. All right then. What's the last thing he remembers?
Clearly, the memory trawl is taking more time than it ought to be, because the nymph is looking exasperated again. 'Your name?' she asks with an unnecessarily sarcastic slant. 'Shouldn't tax you too much. Of all the questions you're going to be facing, "Who are you?" is not going to be the hardest.'
Who is he? Actually, that is a hard question. And the nymph's right, it shouldn't be. He knows his name, he can see it, he just can't recall the actual words of his name. He tries his voice again. It sounds better this time. Still strange and distant, but definitely his voice, and the sounds come out in the right order. 'I... I'm not sure. I can't quite place my name.'
'That's good. You have no memory. That's going to come in handy over the next few minutes. Does the name "Morton" ring a bell?'
'Morton?'
'Dr Piers Morton?'
A face swims into Eddie's memory. That unnecessarily bald guy. 'Yes! Dr Morton? Is he here?'
This response seems to distress the nymph. 'We hope so, yes. He's you.'
Eddie mulls that one over. It doesn't sound right at all. Then a shard of memory slips painfully into place. He wasn't who he was supposed to be. Or, rather, he was someone other than he really was. Or something like that. But that other someone, the someone he was but really wasn't, that wasn't Dr Morton. How could it be? Dr Morton was Dr Morton.
Eddie's face must be contorted in confusion, because the nymph is watching him with concern. 'Is it coming back?'
'You mean is my being Dr Morton coming back? No. He's him. I'm not him. He is. I'm someone else completely.'
'All right, let's calm down. What do you remember?'
'I remember...' Eddie tries to make connections, but everything's jumbled up. He remembers a strange, small city. Fortune? Afortunado! He remembers something about a big broken window, which has inexplicably bad associations. And a casino. None of these seem to be nice memories. And then, a strange one this: staring out high over the planet Earth with the wind whistling through his hair. And there's a ship. 'The ship! I was on a spaceship!'
'Bingo.'
Eddie's getting excited now. 'A big ship. The Wilddler...? The Wilbur...? No! Willflower! It was called the Willflower.'
The nymph looks puzzled. 'It was?'
The satyr looks puzzled, too. 'The ship has a name? I mean, besides "the ship"?'
The nymph reaches over his head. Eddie tries to move his head to follow, but can't. She says: 'I'm going to purge your system.'
'Purge my system?' Whatever that means, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing a beautiful wood nymph ought to be doing in Eddie's own personal Paradise. He feels a sudden shocking coldness travel through his veins. His face shivers involuntarily.
'You've been under a fairly strong sedative. This should clear your head.'
'What is this place?' Wherever he is, Eddie is now aware it's not Paradise, which is more than a little depressing.
'The ship. You're still on the ship.'
'I'm on the ship?'
'The... Willflower? Yes.'
'But what about the unicorn?'
'Unicorn?' The nymph glances at the satyr, a leery, disturbed look, then back at Eddie. 'I didn't realize there was a unicorn here.'
'Over there.' Eddie's eyes flit left. The young unicorn is still watching them. 'By the crystal stream.'
'Ah! You're plugged into a virtual environment. It's standard procedure after...' She looks away. '... After what you've been through.'
What? What has Eddie been through? It can't be nice, what he's been through, if it requires strong sedation and a session outside of reality before he's deemed capable of facing it. His memory is returning now, drip by drip, but there's nothing he can recall that might warrant this kind of treatment. 'What happened to me?'
'Are you sure you're ready for this?'
'No. How could I know what it is I'm supposed to be ready for?'
'Good point. How can I put this without completely spoiling your day? Do you remember an accident?'
'An accident? No. What kind of accident?'
The satyr raises his eyebrows, really raises them. 'A serious accident.'
The nymph grabs the satyr roughly by his extremely muscular arm and marches him off with surprising strength. There must still be some of the sedative swirling around Eddie's system, because he finds the sight of the satyr being frogmarched by the wood nymph amusing, when he clearly should be worrying a lot. They whisper, these mystical forest dwellers, but they're not very good at it. Eddie can hear every word.
The nymph hisses: 'Mr Styx, will you let me handle this? Don't you have some steroids you need to inject?'
'Come on, Oslo -- I think he's going to notice he was in a serious accident pretty soon. Round about the time he starts looking for his arms and legs.'
His arms and legs? Eddie looks down his body. Everything's there. Arms, legs, the full package. He flexes his fingers. Fine. Everything looks fine. What are they talking about? Arms and legs?
The whispering is almost inaudible now, but it sounds like the nymph is issuing un-nymphean threats and curses.
She looms back into his field of vision, the satyr looking, ego-bruisedly, over her shoulder. She tries a facial expression that doesn't look terribly well practised. Eddie supposes it's meant to reflect compassion, but it looks more like a reaction to acute dyspepsia. 'There was some kind of accident. We don't know the details. What we do know is you sustained... injuries.'
Too long a pause before the word 'injuries'. Eddie thinks he's suspecting the worst, but he's wrong. His suspicions are way short of the worst. 'What kind of injuries?'
'Extensive injuries.'
'Extensive injuries?'
The satyr smiles a stupid smile. 'Extensively extensive.'
Without taking her eyes off Eddie, the nymph flexes her arm at the elbow, delivering a single, swift and extremely effective backwards punch over her shoulder, dropping the satyr instantly on the spot.
Eddie looks down at his body again. No question: it looks absolutely fine. Better than ever, in fact. Of course, he is in a virtual environment, and that might conceivably affect his perception of his own body. But everything feels fine. There doesn't seem to be any pain. 'How extensively extensive?'
The nymph tries to put on a good-news-nurse face. 'Well, on the up side, your head, heart and spinal column were undamaged.'
'And?'
A bad-news sigh. 'There is no "and".'
There is no 'and'?
'My head, my heart and my spine? That's all that's left of me?'
'That's all that's left of the original you. But think positive. Those are most of the important bits.'
Eddie can only repeat: 'My head, my heart and my spine?' as if he's been massively burgled, and he's trying not to think of all the things that are missing by listing the few paltry possessions he has left.
The nymph lower
s her eyes. 'Actually, I'm feeling badly now.'
'You're feeling badly?'
'I wasn't one hundred per cent completely truthful with you.'
'About what?'
'About the extent of your injuries.'
The injuries are worse than she indicated? How can that be? 'How ... how untruthful, exactly?'
'Exactly thirty-three and a third per cent untruthful. You don't have your heart, in fact.'
'Then... I just have my head and my spine? And that's all?'
'I was trying to soften the blow.'
'It didn't work.'
'If it's any consolation, you still have all your hair.'
'Great. I'd hate to feel I was suddenly unattractive.'
'I think you're probably in shock.'
'Why would I be in shock?'
'Shall I turn the sedative back on?'
Yes! Crank it up! Full on! Give him excess of it!
'No, no. I have to... I need a clear head. I mean, you weren't lying about that, I'm hoping. I do still have a head?'
'Of course you still have a head. Look, I should sedate you. I know this is a difficult thing to adjust to, and in a perfect world, we'd do it more slowly. But there isn't time. There just isn't...'
'How... how am I alive?'
'You were preserved, in some kind of suspension fluid. In a jar.'
'In a jar? Like a pickle?'
'I suppose it is a kind of pickling process. Listen, do you suppose you're ready for me to turn off the artificial environment yet? Only...'
The nymph is stretching her arm to reach some switch above his head. There are very few circumstances under which Eddie would not take advantage of the pose by indulging in some amateur nipple spotting. This is one of those very few circumstances.
'Wait a minute. Preserved? How long was I preserved?'
'We're not sure. Like everything else on this idiot ship, our dating procedure's kind of screwed up.'
'Approximately?'
'Approximately? I really don't know. A long time.'
'Define "long". Weeks? Months? Years?'
'Try centuries.'
18