The Information Junkie (23 page)

Not if I see you first, I thought.

Now, then, gentles—or, buddies. Johnny Fowles wrote a novel called
A Maggot
, using the word in the figurative and obsolete senses. Figurative because a maggot is the stage in the development of winged creature; perhaps too an author's thoughts. Obsolete in the sense of whim. Am I reading too much into Anthony's observation or am I paying
my
gentles a compliment? What do
you
—yes: YOU, my single, unique gentle—think?

Amber was a surprise, wasn't she? Odd name. Warm name. Precious fossil: fossilised tree resin. Honey-coloured. And she's a engineer. I wonder if she could throw a wooden bridge, firm, unwobbly, across the Thames? D'you know? I suspect she could. We may yet find out.

In fact the future's full of possibilities as Charlie is finding out. Oh yes, folks, He went back to the doc. Pardon? You thought the doc had written himself out because he'd been seen through? That's an ugly sentence. Let's try again. You thought the doc had put himself on the back burner because the gentles had rumbled his fictiveness? Still ugly. Keep it simple. So, you thought the doc was a dead character who had opted out of fictional life because he'd realised that he was not real? Mm. That implies that he is real. And, of course, the doc is real. So, Charlie went back to the doc. Excuse me while I just slip back into character.

*

'Hi, doc. Long see, no time. How's it hanging?'

'Don't you mean: Long time, no see, Charlie?'

'No, doc, think about it...'

'But I'm supposed to be helping you.'

'Doc, a patient repays a doctor badly if he remains only a patient. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser.'

'Two neat, safe clichés, Charlie. Why are you really here?'

'To tell you about some developments.'

He sat back receptively. 'For a cardboard character I seem to be almost human,' he said.

'Well, there I can help you, doc. Give you a start, throw a spark your way. You can help the spark achieve a temperature of 451 Fahrenheit and so consume yourself. Or you can cherish the spark and create.'

He smiled. 'Go on.'

'Life, doc, is a wonderful thing.'

'Well, you're certainly more cheerful—and playful—since we last met. You were weighed down by mid-life
angst
. What's changed?'

I've been speaking with Anthony Burgess.'

'But he's dead, isn't he?'

'Yes, but we're not going to let the facts get in the way of a good story, are we?'

He chuckled. 'So, what can I do for you?'

'It's your bill,' I said, 'your final bill,' and I produced the document.

He looked puzzled. 'When did I give you that?'

'Part Two—chapter 10.'

'And what did you want to say about it?'

'It's this line here, doc,' I said, pointing.

Terminal charge.

'What's wrong with that?' he said.

'I'm not dead.'

'But you wanted
me
to take an exit. In my off-stage life I'll still have expenses.'

'I'll gladly pay but
terminal
sounds rather final.'

'Terminal
means
final, Charlie.' He smiled. 'Or am I speaking to Rod?'

I laughed. 'Don't peak too soon, doc.' He had liberated himself since our last chat, was starting to determine his own, new life in the wings, and beyond.

'Well...?' he said.

'Let's keep this very simple,' I said, unsure really where the conversation was leading. I felt a new spontaneity. But instead of me leading, it was the doc.

'Do you want me to stay?' I wasn't sure so half-smiled. 'Do you?'

All I could do was grasp at a line from
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
, which, appropriate or not, I paraphrased: 'Why don't you hang around, doc?'

'Where do you want me—off or on the stage.'

'I'll leave that to you, ' I said and smiled. He smiled back.

And it was a knowing smile.

28

Knew I was dying. I'd crawled as far as I could with my lower legs holding on with mere sinew. The sun was making me delirious. Thought I'd met Clark Gable but knew he was dead. I might just as well have imagined meeting Robert Taylor or Ernest Hemingway.

Nmbmba had knee-capped me to make me suffer. But he'd also given me a gift: time before death. Death would be my last—the biggest—adventure. And would I glimpse God at the instant of death? I'd read of people travelling towards a bright light. But I'd done wrong: killed people for money. No less than a regular or conscripted soldier. Killing was killing, surely...? Death was death. Wasn't it?

As long as people wanted wars, as long as one group sought to dominate another, I—or my kind—would always find work. I had specialised in giving people the same end that Nmbmba had given me. The ledger was balanced, the transaction complete.

No choice now but to give in to it. All of my life has led up to this point. Going, flying down a long corridor. It's one I recognise, have seen in my dreams. Of course. This would be wasted on the living, as youth is wasted on the young. Faster now, I'm pulled along on a sleigh of stars and my soul opens up to embrace the world. This isn't the end; it's eternity. Places, which my soul didn't know existed, open up to encircle the earth.

Of course: the kitchen, the back door, a lane to the field. Here all time is reconciled. Dear God: accept this sinner's soul.

29

'So,' said Anthony, 'that's Mitch dispatched. I suppose we can take it that anyone left in the desert will stay there because they all died too soon.'

I nodded.

'Right, old chap. That just leaves you and me.'

'Wrong, Anthony. That leaves just you.'

'But I've already died once. Why do I have to go through it again?'

'This,' I said, 'is only a paper death.'

'Oh, Rod, I could help you so much. Please don't dispense with me now. I could be your guide. I have all the time in the world.'

'Sorry, Anthony, but the final third of this work demands a new guide, a different
other
.'

'But we've had such fun.'

'Then time to part before it turns sour. As Blake said: Kiss the joy as it flies.'

'Not quite, old chap. He said: "...he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise."' He waited a while. 'And another thing, my friend. You are my only source of
Monkey's Bum
.'

'I'll give you a few crates before I go. I mean, before
you
go.'

'Will you be ending Part Six on my departure?'

'No, as I said, you're not in it. I've already written the end.'

'Is there anything I can do, say, to change your mind? I could always help you revise. Repunctuate as necessary. Toss in a few neologisms and some tortuous word-order to bring the gentles up with a start.' He was almost childlike in his supplication.

'But you've taught me how to do that.
You taught me language; and my profit on't is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, for learning me your language!
'

'You are more intelligent than Caliban,' he said.

'Yet just as vulnerable.'

'What do you mean?'

'Oh, no matter,' I said. This middle section has a sprinkling of Burgessisms.'

He scratched his head. 'So, back to the point: do I end up in the desert?'

'No: you didn't die too soon. Seventy-six years. You've had your time, little Wilson.'

He sighed.

'Anyway,' I said, 'I can't leave you to be mauled by Miss Stephen and the Woolf hounds.'

'Are you playing with fire?'

I smiled. 'Something far worse.'

'Oh,' he sighed. 'I do hope you know what you're doing.'

'I don't know that I do—but it'll be exciting.'

'Oh,' said Anthony. 'I've thought of another slogan.'

'Go on...'

'
Shit myself, is it? Clean up with a Monkey's Bum
.'

'How I could work that in?'

'Use it as you see fit. And I don't require a credit.'

'Thanks. But I think the time now has come. I feel awful, like a warder leading a lifer to the execution chamber.' I paused a moment. 'But, my Lord Burgess, I'm not writing you out. You're making your own exit.'

'You mean that you're making me walk the gangplank.'

'Not necessarily.'

'I have another jingle,' he said.

'Sing it...'

He sang: '
I'm a lush with a Krush, so push off from my bush.
'

'Too many visual rhymes, but I like the tune. It has a hook. In fact, it's little more than a hook. Could you work on the words?'

'Is this a reprieve?'

'Temporary.'

Anthony sat down with his portable keyboard and started improvising. He stopped suddenly:

'If I'm to be banished, Rod, then this jingle writing will be pointless. As will the secret information I possess.'

I couldn't resist. 'Secret...?'

'I did a poll.'

Tempting me. 'A poll...?'

'A straw poll, amongst ten writers.'

'Dead ones...?'

'No, the immortals.'

Crafty man; I probed. 'Hardy, Woolf, Orwell, Hemingway...?' But he wasn't biting.

'It's,' he replied, 'up here secret ballot.'

Okay: if he wouldn't tell me the means I'd have to settle for the end. 'And the result...?'

He took his hands from the keyboard, turned to face me fully. 'I don't know how you'll take this. In my random group of novelists, eight out of ten of those who expressed a preference thought your work better than expected.'

'I'm not quite sure what that means.'

'I've given them verbal titbits and most got a sight of your MS too.'

'Oh, so when you said the King thought my work not fit for man or beast you meant the immortals.'

'It's a verbal trick, I know. But this is fiction, after all.' He left a silence. 'I was challenging you to write better.'

I stopped to consider. He went on:

'Now, do you want me to continue with this composition?'

I had to be firm. 'No. I want this to be processed not by Caxton's contraption but by Microsoft's machine. I'm at home with an IBM; you're not. Your last love was the Olivetti; my first the Imperial. But things move on. We have no choice but to go with the tide. Time for us to part, Anthony.' He closed his keyboard, snapped the lid shut and placed it in his pocket. He said:

'I don't suppose, old boy, you could smuggle me in a packet of cheroots?'

I shook my head, but felt cruel. This was a real man I was saying goodbye to. 'Our business is transacted, fair knight. Our revels here are ended.'

'I feel,' he said, 'as if I'm in a Hardy novel. On a field at the end of a summer's day, surrounded by pretty maidens and that life is just beginning. So, although
our
revels here are ended, I can have as many other revels as I want.'

'Good, my fine knight.' I did feel guilty about dispensing with him but he'd made it easier for me: he'd begun to invent his own life, his off-stage life. 'I can't get cheroots for you. I'm sure there's some kind of barrier preventing that. You're still on probation: I don't want you thrown into the slammer.'

'Oh, no need to worry about that, old boy. I've already been awarded seven days' solitary. I used it to write a short story and a couple of sonatas.'

(He would, wouldn't he?) 'Anthony, I'm not going to shake hands but will say,
Auf Wiedersehen!'

'
Arrivederci
. Just those crates...' he said.

So I popped down to the cellar to get the
Monkey's Bums
.

30

London would become a grass-grown path.

She left Bond Street and headed for the square. Her dust would be mixed with everyone else's. Even Bruton Street, which she now walked down, would be wild: cow parsley, common teasel, spear thistle. Her bones would be ground to powder and molecules of her flesh would be incorporated into the DNA of plants, the atoms which she had breathed forming the leaves of shepherd's purse—a plant which thrived in Britain long before colonisation by man.

*

He left the square, not bothering to stamp out his cigarette but leaving it to smoulder, before heading for Bruton Street without looking in either direction. A BMW tooted dutifully but neither the driver nor the pedestrian took much notice: time was too precious. One bomb—the ultimate leveller—then everyone's particles would mix; and, once the clouds had cleared, grass would take over. Leave an area untouched for twenty to thirty years, he knew, and you have a cover of trees.

The man—for he was now a man, despite the provocative stance—held up two fingers in a limp gesture of hostility. But the driver barely shook his head. Once he had crossed the road, the man hovered at the kerb.

It had been a memorable summer: as people woke they hardly dared believe that today could be a continuation of the extremes of yesterday. All grass was yellow—you were forbidden to water it; streams had dried up; reservoirs were so low that desalination plants were being manufactured by any country that still had an industrial capability. But how much time was left? It felt like the perfect summer before the outbreak of war; but no poets would chronicle this one. This time, the bombs would be indiscriminately democratic.

The man, who was fascinated and appalled by extremes, both willed and feared the outcome. But, as he took his first step down the street, time seemed to slow; it took an age to place one foot in front of the other. Perhaps this was the beginning.

From a distance his attention was caught by an unusual hat, then a whole outfit. Here was a tallish, slim woman dressed in Twenties clothing who walked amongst the early pioneers of the twenty-first century, yet no one took any notice of her. It was as if she had been plucked from the past (though not at random) and had a destiny to walk London's West One district. He appeared to be the only one to notice her oddness.

Time now slowed even more. Although she was still a hundred paces away he fancied he could almost see her mouthing phrases. He knew they had to meet to exchange words.