The Power of Forgetting (52 page)

I felt my way
round to the space where the others were resting. I made sure that
the lamp was set still, so Marcia could see when she woke.

Davey and
Oliver were busy making a simple stew. I offered to help, but
Oliver just shook his head, and Davey carried on solemnly adding
measured amounts of the dried ingredients to the two pans. I saw
Lorraine stirring. She sat and rubbed her eyes, then stretched. She
saw me, and tilted her head in a gesture of questioning.

‘Stew for
supper,’ I said, ‘In…what is it Davey?’

‘Ten minutes.’
He said rather shortly. I turned away and went to wake Marcia.

She was sat on
top of her clothes with her metal tag in her hands. She slid the
two halves back together as I came near to her. She let it drop and
reached out to me with both arms. She pulled me into her embrace
and wrapped herself around me.

‘Jared….
please…please.’ she whispered urgently, pulling at the sweater I
had only just put on a minute or two ago.

‘What do you
need woman?’ I said softly, and she clung to me like a creeper
round a tree, and mumbled something indistinct into my
shoulder.

‘I can’t hear
you.’

‘Take your
clothes off.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes Cutie;
right now.’

‘Cutie?’ I
asked, ‘Are you sure you mean me?’

‘Well, yes… or
perhaps you prefer Gorgeous?’

‘Err….’ I
slipped out of the shirt as well it seemed the easiest thing.
Marcia was pulling my combats down and massaging a point deep in
the crease of my hip as she worked herself round onto me. I was
shocked the way that everything simply responded… she just touched
me lightly here and there; and felt a rush and I forced her down
onto me a few seconds after that. She was a special kind of
insanity…. the sanest kind. I had, in a few short hours been fully
converted to the idea that had always circulated about Marcia being
the sort of woman who was full of a kind of energy that could short
circuit a man’s brain in thirty seconds flat; a sexual frisson that
left you wondering what the hell happened to your resolve to be in
command of the encounter… not that I had ever thought that… Oh
bloody hell! I had to clench my jaw to stop a scream of sheer brain
blanking pleasure, which was breaking like a wave over a rock.

I laid back.
She was still astride me and smiled benignly.

‘Tell me I’m
good.’ She said.

‘You’re good…
you’re better than good… you’re brilliant…’

She rolled over
and lay next to me, and stretched like a cat does. She stared up
wards for a moment then rolled up on one elbow. Some of her curls
brushed my shoulder, and I shivered then.

‘you need to
get your clothes back on.’ She said and sat up, still naked and
took one of my cigarettes from my jacket. She flicked the lighter
expertly and lit it. She offered it to me. I took a couple of drags
and then she took it back. ‘I’m still too warm.’ She said cupping
her right breast in one hand. I blinked and shook my head to clear
it. I couldn’t quite jump back into Jared and Marcia, boyfriend and
girlfriend; she was a Goddess, a glorious intoxication. We shared
the smoke and then she slid back into her clothes.

It was as if
she put her normal self back in place at the same time.

I found the
lighter and returned it to my pocket. Marcia pulled her belt tight;
‘Do you think we need to ice suits on yet?’ she asked.

‘Not sure;
what’s the time now?’

‘About ten… in
the evening. It sounds like the storm had gone now. But we better
eat and then get going.’

‘Stew should be
ready by now.’ I looked sideways at her. She smiled that private
smile just once more, then we slowly made our way back round to the
group.

I could not see
Hanson. I supposed that he might be behind the little boys’
rock.

Davey was
stirring the two small canteens of stew. He tasted one. ‘Not bad.’
He said appraisingly.

‘Where’s
Janey?’ Oliver asked me.

‘Janey? I
thought she was with you and Joe?’

Oliver grinned
at me, ‘She must be powering her nose then.’

Joe looked up
as Lorraine moved suddenly and groaned. She smoothed her plait and
then went down to the designated ladies room space. Marcia, quite
unconcerned sat down near to Davey and looked into the pot
nearest.

‘Is it
alright?’ He asked her.

‘It’s fine.’
She said, then, ‘someone call Janey; we need to eat and then get
going in half an hour.’

‘The plan is?’
Oliver looked up as Janey was seen slowly picking her way into the
circle of light.

‘Eat first.’
said Marcia.

Everyone
gathered and we passed bowls of the warm tasty concoction round
silently. There was a ten-minute stillness, and everyone was sat
near to each other, closer than we were often used to be. Even Joe,
who tended to be somewhat separatist, permitted Lorraine and Janey
in close proximity.

‘Seconds.’ said
Davey. And everyone was handed a second lot of the stew from what
Hanson called the “magic porridge pot”.

Oliver nudged
me a moment later. He passed me a small steel cup with amber liquid
filling it almost to the top. He gave one to Hanson and Joe, and
the fourth to Lorraine. She blinked in a surprized kind of way, and
looked sort of upset. She sipped it slowly, unlike us lot who took
it back in one. Oliver refilled the tots for Marcia and Davey and
lastly Janey. Lorraine seemed to be having some trouble with
something in her eye. Oliver went and sat next to her and she gave
back the little metal cup. He took a measure himself, as Lorraine
watched his every move, eyes round and glassy. She put her hands
over her face again, and Oliver spoke softly. She seemed to calm
down then.

Janey and
Marcia were both staring at me. Hanson was helping Davey clear up
and Joe was rummaging in his pack.

‘Is everyone
okay to listen for a moment?’ Marcia’s voice was quiet and
undemanding. Joe looked up, ‘I want to say something,’ he said,
‘and perhaps I should have said it sooner.’

‘Very well,’
said Marcia after a pause, ‘Go ahead Joe.’

‘I…. I’m sorry.
To Janey. Really. I thought that we were; well I thought we had
been dropped in it there. Forgive me for doubting you. I really
thought that was it; back there I mean.’

Janey seemed
moved by his confession in front of witnesses. Knowing her like I
did, I knew that she had not expected this. Nor, in a way needed
it. She knew how frightening the situation had become. She looked
to me then and back at the group.

‘Thank you,’
she said, ‘and I will tell you all. I have always been with you. I
would do everything I could to make sure that my friends were safe…
if I could. I was following a line of enquiry. And I was the one
who was a tempting enough treat to bait the hook for
Rimmington.’

‘You knew that
he was after Jared?’ Joe looked shocked.

‘Of
course.’

It seemed as if
Joe’s sympathy had suddenly switched from Janey to me.

‘It seems,’
said Oliver in a clear firm voice, ‘that we all need to believe and
trust in each other again. We have seen these doubles. And some of
us know the difficulty of distinguishing them from the real person
they are made from. I think that we all should lay to rest the idea
that anyone is in some weird way not with us. Please…. This is
hard. None of us are really certain what is real right now. I can
see that it’s affecting everyone’s mind. I would like to zip it
back together folks… as it were.’

‘He’s right.’
said Hanson thickly, ‘I am with you. If you’ll have me. Help me…
please. I let them take a piece of me and now it’s running around
without my permission. I have no access. They must be destroyed.
The copies that the experiment used. I don’t want to be part of
that any more. I was wrong to get involved.’

I saw Marcia
look towards Hanson with an almost hungry look. A fraction of
second. I’d didn’t miss it. I looked down thinking of the lab; that
giant freezer and the tag in my pocket. Zip it together. Oliver
knew about the little tag. But somehow it seemed like it wasn’t a
thing to be concerned about right now. Someone else was talking, I
might be missing something so I looked up. Oliver had the map
spread out on the floor. We gathered round.

‘We are quite
high up,’ he was saying, ‘and we need to get higher. There may be a
chance to get a relay signal. And just beyond that ridge… if I
reckon it right, we will have line of sight on the transport.’

‘There is still
the river to cross.’ said Davey. He looked worried. I guess he was
thinking rather too much about how high up we were.

‘The time it
nearly 23 hundred hours,’ said Marcia, ‘let’s move. If Oliver is
right, we can be down to the transport by dawn.’

‘Six am.’ said
Oliver, in answer to Lorraine’s enquiring looking. She rubbed her
eyes and wearily started to fasten her jacket back up.

‘I don’t
recommend anything stimulating except strong tea.’ Aid Joe, ‘If I
gave anyone a speed hit right now it might kill you by lunch
time.’

‘As long as we
do actually have lunch.’ Davey muttered.

‘Take five
everyone.’ said Marcia, ‘then suit up. Lorraine, you keep the
bottle. Janey, you share on Jared’s if you need to.’

‘Okay,’ Janey
glanced at me then back at Marcia, ‘and what to say about
Jared?’

‘Nothing,’
Marcia warned, ‘Everyone is too strung out for any more
surprizes.’

‘Tell us.’ said
Joe loudly.

Everyone went
quiet.

‘We just need
to get home.’ Marcia was calm, unruffled.

‘I’ll say it
then,’ said Hanson, ‘in two words: Time. Travel.’

‘Bloody Hell!’
Davey looked up at me, and everyone else just stared.

I felt
strangely elated. Odd; if not to say unusual. I held out both
hands, palms open, in a gesture of supplication.

‘What do you
want from me?’ I asked the assembled company.

Davey was
staring and was very still. Something had settled in his mind at
last it seemed. Lorraine was looking at me with a new expression,
she looked puzzled and curious; two expressions I rarely saw her
use. Joe looked away, then back at me; there was a sense of pain in
his eyes. He wouldn’t want to be me, to share this fear; he knew
what they had always said about me; it seemed it was pity, or a
realisation that he saw the thing that made sense of this difficult
patient; and his prognosis was uncertain as to whether the patient
would make it.

Time travel….
What can one say about that? It is a common misconception that
travellers actually travel through time a lot, which it rather a
contradiction in terms. We have control of causality. “The Art of
Causality” Mr Charles had called it. I was beginning to wish I
studied with Karis now. But I needed to say something. I needed to
answer this. I was afraid of what might happen. But I trusted that
Janey had already thought of that. To control the thing that
normally commands you….it is frightening in itself.

I felt Oliver
grip my shoulder, ‘I will stop him getting you if I can. Rimmington
with have to deal with me first.’

‘And me.’ Davey
gripped my right hand in a painful way. Marcia took the left and
lifted it to her lips, ‘Count on me.’ She said.

‘The guy is
clearly a bastard.’ said Joe, ‘so it’s percentage wise, support for
you at 100 per cent.’

‘Likewise.’
That was Hanson.

‘I’m in.’ said
Lorraine.

‘Always in your
corner Brother.’ Janey said, and then turned back to her pack.
Everyone shook themselves as if they had just woken up and we
started to tighten straps and check the links of the breathing
sets.

We were
crawling out the hole after rolling back the heavy flat stone. That
was how we had kept the storm out some hours earlier. We crawled
out slowing into the little covered dry ditch and hid the entrance
to the place.

When we were
all out, Oliver and Davey set about covering the place with
vegetation to camouflage it. I was sure that the finding of this
had not been as random as we like to think. What were the chances
of getting stuck in a place like this? Any port in a storm. After
five minutes the thought of anything that we had exposed in our
selves was wiped straight from our minds in a flurry of
speculation.

Marcia sharply
said ‘Shut up!’ and crept forward slowly.

First there
seemed very little evidence of the storm this evening, apart from a
few broken branches and some churned up ground near to the place
where we had had come in. there was evidence of there being recent
traffic of some heavy treaded vehicle. The road went away from the
direction we wanted to go in, so we slid away towards the sound of
something light and tingly.

It was
daylight.

It was
impossible. Unless of course you are trapped in a day you’d rather
not have. There was a thin haze of clouds above us, and there was
the promise of good whether as the sun burned those wisps away.

‘Time. Oliver!’
Marcia ordered. Oliver got out a compass and marked the position of
the sun on a little note book worked it out.

‘We are, as
they say, on a correct heading. And the time is now eight in the
morning.’

‘Are you
sure?’

‘The only thing
I’m not certain of; which day this is. All that mess, all the
debris. It isn’t possible to clean it up, as well as being utterly
pointless. There are earlier ways to fool someone.’ Oliver seemed
satisfied that something made sense to him.

‘It’s still
today.’ I said, but only Janey heard me. As at that moment she was
at my right elbow.

‘Have a care
little brother. We are still in the anti-shift field.’

‘That’s fine,’
I said, ‘I can still run rings round him… I hope.’ An idea was
forming. The anti-shift field would stop me or Janey, but it also
would stop him.