Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

Monty drew himself up and smoothed the sweater down. “Don’t threaten me. You have a contempt for me. Fair enough—you always were a supercilious bastard. But just think how I might feel about you! I’ve had to edit ten years of your stupid life down to make a presentable bullet. It wasn’t too edifying, old sport, let me tell you. A ten-year plod down the recesses of your memory! A bit like looking down into a sewer at times—no offense meant.” He elaborated on this in some detail, concluding by saying, “You ought to be glad to be rid of stuff like that. You’re free of it—Free Of All Memory!”

  “Oh, I see, Butterworth. The FOAM theory of history: never learn anything… Just bloody forget, is that it? Have you ever heard that saying about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it? Why do you think the world’s in such a fucking mess?” With a quick move, he twisted Monty’s arm and had him in a half-Nelson. “It’s retribution time, Monty, and a stinking Hungarian call for you.” He gave Butterworth’s arm an extra wrench, till the man howled. A waiter came to watch, without interfering.

  “God, that’s no way to treat… Listen, Roy, Roy, look, stop this. Do you really want unpleasant publicity? This is what I’ll do. I’ll make a deal. A generous deal.”

  “No deals, you sod. You caught me once—you aren’t going to catch me again. Out of that door.”

  “Wait, wait. Ouch! Listen, you sadist, here’s the deal. Just let me go, savvy?”

  “Don’t let him go,” advised the waiter from the sidelines.

  “Let me go and I will nip straight round to the clinic. It’s locked but I’ve got a key. I’ll nip straight round to the clinic and I’ll steal the master-bullet and bring it back to you. Where are you staying? The Gellert again, I suppose? You plutocrats… I’ll bring you back the memory bullet we made.”

  Burnell twisted the arm again. The waiter said, appreciatively, “This man, he never pays a round.”

  Another twist, more details. “There are two bullets, to be honest. I’m being honest, Roy. Ow! I’ll bring them both back to you. And you can then go somewhere—England, Germany, France—and get those squalid years of yours reinserted back in your noodle, if that’s what you want. What do you say?”

  Burnell relaxed his hold. “I’ll come with you.”

  Straightening, Monty regained confidence.

  “No, you won’t. There’s a guard on the clinic door these days. He’d kill you. I’ll get the bullets. Promise. Bring them to the Gellert without fail at—” he looked at his watch “—give me two hours. Say six o’clock, OK. I think I can swing it.”

  With some reluctance, Burnell agreed to his plan. He let go of Monty entirely. Recent sessions with Rebecca Rosebottom had made him, he felt, unusually alert to fraudulence. Accordingly, he watched to see what Monty might do when he left the bar.

  Monty performed somewhat as expected. The moment he was in the street, he started to run. Burnell ran after him. Monty dodged along a side alley, down some steps, and into a main thoroughfare. A tram car was approaching. As Monty rushed to get on, Burnell’s hand fell on his shoulder.

  Only for a moment did a look of anger cross Monty’s face.

  “Oh, Roy, dear old feller—how glad I am you’re here. Thanks so much.” The tram sliced by within a few inches of them. He fell into Burnell’s arms. The latter fended him off but, before he could speak, Monty was babbling on, eyebrows shooting up and down.

  “Roy, I have such trouble. As I left that rotten drinking establishment, the ghost of Charles de Gaulle was waiting outside for me. You know, the French chappie with the big conk who made it to President? Charles de Gaulle—an airport named after him outside Paris. There he was again! Right in the street, in broad daylight. Did you see him? I ran like billy-oh. Thank God you saved me! Sometimes he follows me into the old W. Never knew a case like it.”

  Burnell hailed a cab and bundled Monty in.

  At the Gellert, Burnell paid off the cab and heaved Monty, now in a collapsible state, into the ornate foyer.

  “All right, Butterworth, now let’s have the truth. No bloody ghost stories. I have every reason to beat you up, so vex me no further. How do I get my memory back? How do you get it back for me?”

  Pulling himself upright and tugging his little beard, Monty said, “Please don’t threaten me in a place I’m well respected. Besides, I’m feeling unwell after all the exertion. Let me be honest with you, Roy, your last ten years were crap. Full of crap… There, I don’t want to be too hard on you. Everyone’s last ten years were probably full of crap. I ought to know—I’ve edited enough of Antonescu’s silly symphonies in the last few weeks. What utter shits men are… Now I think of it, I feel sorry for you.”

  Burnell stuck his knuckles between the other’s thin ribs.

  “Stop bullshitting me, you little cheat. You robbed me. You buggered up my life and then had me dumped on Salisbury Plain.”

  Shaking his head, Monty looked out miserably across the Danube to Pest with its dense Magyar thoroughfares where fat profiteers of many nations were sweating over their calculators. “You were lucky. Believe me. As a compatriot, as an old friend far from home, I interceded for you. Generally our victims—well, patients, let’s say—get dumped outside the city, still drugged, on a refuse-tip twenty kilometers away from here. And what happens to them then? Peasants rob ’em or kill ’em.

  “You’ve had an easy time of it. You should be grateful. Your pater was always well-heeled, not to mention being a bit of a crook, eh?

  “In your case—Roy, old chap, I shouldn’t be telling you this. It puts my very life in hazard. In your case, I interceded. ‘Cedo, cedere, cessi, cessum,’ to beg or something. A flight was being planned to deliver arms to the UK, to the BRI. British Revolutionary Islam savvy? Totally secret of course. A secret arms drop on Salisbury Plain, paid for by Muslims over here. I pulled a few strings and got you flown over too. Drugged. You were dropped along with the weaponry. Better than the refuse-tip, admit it. You owe me a big favor.”

  “I owe you nothing. You’re going to give me back those memory bullets right now.” Knuckle in deeper. A passing sheikh, wafting perfume, looked surprised, but not extremely surprised.

  “You’re hurting me, Roy. I don’t feel well. The drink in that place was poisoned. I need to go to the Gents. I am about to be sick.” He writhed realistically, and made appropriate noises in his throat.

  Burnell got him up to his room. He bound Monty’s hands behind his back with a tie.

  “This talk about a master-bullet in Antonescu’s clinic. Are you lying? You’d better tell me, Butterworth, or I’ll lock you in the wardrobe and leave you there to die.”

  By this time, Monty was the same shade of trampled gray as the carpet. “Really, old boy, you can work that one out for yourself. Antonescu runs an illegal operation. Is he going to leave evidence lying about? He might be raided any day—not by the police, of course, but by a rival gang. From the master-bullets we make about five hundred copies. Not much profit in it, really. As soon as these are sold to a dealer, they’re off our hands and the masters are destroyed.”

  “Five hundred copies? You made five hundred copies of my precious memories?” He was almost bereft of speech. While he knew nothing of his recent past, the whole world could be laughing over it.

  “You weren’t exactly in the Casanova league, old chum, let’s face it. We had a Pole in the clinic a couple of months ago… He was in the two-thousand-copy bracket, because—”

  “Never mind the Poles. You said you made two bullets. Was that also a lie?”

  Presenting an expression of blameless honesty, Monty explained that Mircea Antonescu dealt in more than one market. He extracted all Burnell’s professional knowledge, editing it from the ten-year period. That knowledge was reproduced in an edition of maybe a hundred copies. A limited scholarly audience existed for such things, and paid well. Lazy students of architecture, teachers needing a short cut—such people formed a ready market. Pausing to gather courage, Monty added that Burnell’s store of learning
made up one bullet; his love life made up the other. All skillfully edited, of course—by himself.

  “Oh God!” Burnell sat down and hid his face in his hands. “You swear this is truth, you little chiseler?”

  “Would I lie? Read my lips.” He started to go into details of what he referred to as “the choice bits,” but Burnell interrupted him.

  “So where have all these copies of my memory—my life—gone?”

  Monty declared that that was up to the dealer to whom Antonescu sold. Antonescu was naturally secretive about such matters, but he had heard that the dealer traded the bullets on promptly to Eastern Europe and beyond, where they could not be traced. “Buchuresti is one market. Bootleg EMVs move from there further East. All the old nations and raggle-taggle once coerced into the Soviet Union are avid to feed on porn.”

  “Porn! You call my sacred memories porn, you little skunk?”

  “It’s a matter of terminology, Roy, old boy. They want to know how the West performs in bed. Insatiable. Untie me, please. A drink wouldn’t come amiss after all the excitement.”

  Privately, Burnell agreed. He untied Monty and took some slap, inhaling the designer drug through a short plastic tube. Monty helped himself to a generous neat gin from the mini-bar.

  “So where is this dealer?”

  “Ahh… I’ve always liked gin. Reminds me of my childhood. I’d end up on the aforesaid rubbish-tip if I gave away his whereabouts. Honor among thieves, old pal. Generally enforced at gunpoint. Besides, he’ll have shifted all the copies by now. Incidentally—this’ll amuse you—I heard over the grapevine that President Diyanizov has a fabulous collection of Western EMV ‘love’ bullets. He may be plugging in to you this very moment.”

  Monty’s laughter involved coughing circumspectly. Seeing Burnell’s expression, he added, “Diyanizov. The current boss of Turkmenistan. Far enough from here.”

  “Never heard of him. I suppose he’s a ghost, like Charles de Gaulle!”

  Monty looked pained. “That was just a joke, dear boy. Tell you what I’ll do. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll contact this dealer and see if he’s kept a couple of your bullets for himself. Stephanie’s a pretty sight in the altogether when she’s worked up… He might have hung on to them for his own entertainment.”

  “Phone him from here.”

  Another idea occurred to Monty. Antonescu had just put together an anthology bullet he called “European Peasants.” Monty knew from what he had seen that Burnell was a sport. He could have a copy for a thousand. It featured country men and women who had done disgusting acts with every animal on the farm.

  “Phone,” ordered Burnell, pointing on the instrument.

  Burnell stood listening as Monty dialed and made an oblique and muttered call. He replaced the receiver and smiled. Burnell was in luck. The dealer had the spare bullets, and would send a minion round with them on a BMW bike. Instructions were that Monty had to be by the memorial in the park behind the Gellert Hotel in half an hour, when the package would be dropped off.

  The arrangement sounded genuine. Burnell paced the room while his Dapertutto was away. Like Hoffmann, whose shadow was stolen from him in Offenbach’s opera, he was living a half-life, and would do so until his memory was restored.

  At least the Gellert management had been helpful. When Burnell disappeared, the hotel had collected his belongings from his room and handed them over to the police. After he had settled his outstanding bill, the manager had retrieved his belongings. His electronic diary yielded useful information. The address of his apartment in Frankfurt-am-Main, near the offices of World Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, was no longer a mystery. He could resume his job immediately, provided Monty Butterworth returned as promised.

  Monty did return, looking flushed and—as far as habit allowed—triumphant. He had two EMV bullets, lying snugly side by side in a plastic box of standard design.

  “Here you are, old boy. Your bullets, the last in Budapest. Ready to be inserted into the projector. There’s one on the ground floor, as you may have noticed.”

  When Burnell stretched out his hand, Monty produced only one of his coughing laughs.

  “No, no, my friend. Hold the line a tick. I didn’t obtain these treasures for nothing. I had to stump up to the despatch rider. Honest Injun. The dealer is no pushover. He rushed me twelve hundred and fifty Deutschmarks the pair—five hundred for the academic bullet, seven hundred and fifty for the amorous one. Sorry, but you’ll have to reimburse me. These babies contain your last ten years, remember! I’m just a poor exile, as you are aware…” Raising an impoverished eyebrow, he gave Burnell a look of innocent appeal.

  Trembling, Burnell paid up. Monty Butterworth touched his forelock, drained his gin glass, and disappeared. Burnell went immediately down to the EMV cubicle on the ground floor, clutching the little plastic box. It was vacant. He could regain his past time—and possibly his past wife. He fed the bullets into the apparatus, sat back in the chair, pulled the projector over his head, and switched on. Nothing happened. He turned up the intensity. Still nothing happened. The bullets were blank and Monty had escaped.

  6

  Soss City

  Fragments of various post-Soviet wars were continuing. A truce was arranged in the Crimea between Russia and Ukraine. It was the sixth such truce. Heavy fighting was reported in the Caucasus region, where Alliance troops were involved. What had been a peace force was now engaged in counter-offensive operations. The UN met every day.

  Radio reports from Tbilisi claimed that the Alliance was using chemical and bacteriological weapons in the Kutasi area. There, Azeri irregulars stiffened by units of the Turkish army were fighting Armenians. Questioned, American General “Gus” Stalinbrass said, “What in hell else do we do? These assholes don’t give up that easy.”

  On the previous night, four Georgian soldiers had found their way through a minefield to give themselves up to a British journalist, Dicky Bowden, 20. One of the soldiers was a boy of fourteen.

  Bowden said, “Starved and disaffected troops such as these are all that stand between the Alliance and the Caspian Sea.”

  He said he was confident that the war would be over in a week or two. Say a month. Maximum two months. Certainly by year’s end.

  Burnell switched off the television news. He settled down to read his own book in order to regain some of the professional knowledge stolen from him. He had reinstated himself in his apartment in the Schäfer Building. It was evening in Greater FAM, as Frankfurt-am-Main was known among the traveling classes. Frankfurt, in becoming FAM, had taken its rightful place beside LA, HK, and KL, to be known by its initials like an American president of yesteryear, when American presidents had power.

  At twenty minutes to three, he rose, closing his book. His appointment with his superior at the WACH offices was at three o’clock. He took a lift to the ground floor and left the Schäfer, passing under the marble bust of Amanda Schäfer, where two lines of her poetry were incised in Carrera marble:

  Lass das Tal der Finsternesse,

  tritt in meinen Lichtkreis ein

  It was no more than a brief stroll along a grass-fringed sidewalk to the building which housed the WACH offices. The block was situated behind the brown mass of the Xerox block, built to resemble a child’s interpretation of Viollet-le-Duc’s reconstruction of Carcassonne. All the blocks here, because they had no real context, were architectural abnormalities—to Burnell’s mind, the degenerate opposite of the structures which it was his duty to protect.

  Walking here once with Burnell, a visiting friend had looked about him in dismay and exclaimed, “God had his reasons.” But God remained unobtrusive in Sossenheim, unwilling to intrude on an elaborate organization.

  Sossenheim City, its civic designation, was an aggregation within an all-embracing FAM, a grave accent stretching north-west from what remained of the Niederwald. Sossenheim was too big to be called a business park. It consisted of offices, shopping malls, urbstaks, hotels, apartment bl
ocks, Bienenhäuser, parklets, autostaks, conference centers. These units might be expressed as three million square meters of offices, two million square meters of living accommodation, point nine million square meters of retailing, and point six million square meters of automobile parking. The population of Soss City was two point two million by day and point nine eight by night. Potted plants, point four million, static. Many official bodies—such as WACH, to name one of the poorest of them—had offices in Soss City.

  Soss City possessed no center, no spot where citizens might gather, should they be seized by such an aberrant desire. Of the old village, a community where once men gathered in the bars of the crooked streets, to discuss the relative merits of Eintracht Frankfurt versus Bayern München, and beat up their wives discreetly on returning home, nothing remained: the exception being a row of two-story brick houses in Mombacher Platz. These had somehow escaped bombs in World War II and later the demolition gangs, and now formed part of a History Theme Park. The new city was divided, though in no systematic way, into national sectors. Giant Bienenhause or “beehives” contained citizens of the member nations of the EU. In other hives lived Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Californian, American, Arab, South African populations, and so on. All these hives, although basically engaged on international business, cleaved to their national idiosyncrasies, their national cooking—diversified in many cases by integral Indonesian and Chinese restaurants.

  National diversity compensated slightly for ethnographic oddity. Everyone in Soss City was middle-class, aged between about sixteen and fifty-five. Retiring drones had to take themselves off elsewhere. Children were herded and not seen.

  On his brief walk, Burnell passed not a single advertisement, such as enlivened the center of cities everywhere. Nor did he pass another human being. Only armored security vans prowled by.

  The daily tidal flow of habitation was serviced by monorails, high-speed coaches, U-bahns and S-bahns. Most early traffic surged into the various centers of FAM, fish into a crocodile’s maw. The attraction of Sossenheim was that it offered safety without the necessity of neighborliness. Burnell had always liked that; it mattered to no one whether or not he was around; he could come and go as he pleased. Also, none of the crime rampant throughout much of the Western world affected Soss City. High-income residents invested in the best security systems.