Life's Lottery (62 page)

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He’s living life in multiples. Fragmenting himself, spreading himself thin, sometimes almost to invisibility. And he can’t quite keep the Spiders out of it. He’s weaving a tapestry of lifelines, crissing and crossing. Some are wish-fulfilments, some are nightmares. Some are achingly real.’

‘Good God!’

‘What is it, Susan? What’s funny?’

‘A question occurs, Dr Cross. Objectively, if you had spent the last five years away from all contact with the world, which Keith Marion would you believe in?’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with it.’

‘The Keith Marion who manages a bank in the West Country? The Keith Marion who was chemically castrated after conviction as a sex offender? The Keith Marion who is married to whoever and has whichever children? Or the Keith Marion who became catatonic after battling against Arachnoids from outer space?’

‘Well, if you put it like that…’

‘The world is a fantasy, Dr Cross. A kid’s power fantasy, or an adult’s nightmare of loss of control. It’s lost all claim to be credible. Marion syndrome is a retreat to something more reasonable, more convincing.’

‘Where does that leave us, Susan?’

‘Voices in the night.’

Y
ou drift in joyful reverie from day to day, greeting each moment like an old friend. Dad comments that you dream too much. You aren’t like yourself, he says. But, of course, you are. You’re more like yourself than you were the first time round. You wonder if it’ll be different. If you can change things.

You wonder when you first had a choice, when you’ll first come to a juncture where you could have taken another path. This time, will you do better? Should you even try, considering that some tiny change might have vast ripple effects. By not getting together with Marie-Laure, will you fail to have the children who’ll rally the surviving Earth people against an invasion of alien spiders in the twenty-first century?

That’s silly. It’s equally likely or unlikely that by doing something different you’ll avert a disaster as cause one.

Do you want things to be different? Do you want to undo Josh and Jonquil’s lives, for instance, take them back out of the world by not making love with their mother? Do you want to manipulate reality so that your own life is better in the far-off world of 1990?

Or do you just want to do it all over again, but to pay more attention this time?

* * *

Eventually, the moment comes.

‘Who do you like, girl?’ Shane asks, ‘Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin?’

If you like Napoleon Solo, go to 4. If you like Illya Kuryakin, go to 3.

But this time,
think
about it.

G
iven that you’re going to get together anyway, you opt to hurry things up and cut in on Marie-Laure, edging Vince out. Marie-Laure is surprised, but you get round her by showing how sensitive and intuitive you are. It’s not difficult. Since you have the memory of living for ten years with the woman this girl will turn into, you have insight into her likes and dislikes and know things about her she won’t be able to tell you for years.

Vince, annoyed, drops you both. Fine. He’s a deadweight.

Your parents notice how hard you work in the garden and comment on your improved attitude. Dad says there might be something for you at the bank.

A job.

For a moment, from the perspective of fifteen years of unemployment, you’re so overwhelmed that you consider accepting it and going into the bank.

No. With what you know, you can do better.

Surprisingly, Marie-Laure chucks you. There’s something creepy about you, she says. You’re sly and you know
things
.

You resolve to pretend more, to do a better imitation of your younger self; but you can’t. You have years of experience, even if of the dullest imaginable life.

So you get together with Victoria, who is at college and putting together a band. You can’t play an instrument and can barely hum a tune, but you have a memory of the future.

You ‘write’ as many 1980s songs as you can remember, poaching from The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Tom Robinson, Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran. It occurs to you that you’re robbing these people of slivers of their minds. You might in the future be able to sue for copyright violation when they independently write songs you have introduced to the world. You suggest styles of clothes for Victoria’s band, piecing together something somewhere between late punk and early New Romantic. In the end, you wind up dressing them as pirates.

Victoria sings ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’ at a college disco. It goes down a lot better than ‘Relax’ or ‘Karma Chameleon’, probably because it’s a song from next year rather than next decade. Actually, it’s not quite the same song: you’ve channelled bits of Ian Dury, but Victoria, who genuinely is talented, has added her own input.

When you sign a contract with Real Records, you phase out your ‘song-writing’ and encourage Victoria to take over, which she does.

Whenever you feel guilty about what you’ve done to Ian Dury or Elvis Costello, you remember that the Victoria you knew first time round became a complete waster and moved in with that hairy clod Graham Foulk. Now, she’s a passionate, involved, valuable artist. She brings out of you an invention you didn’t realise you had. You gradually phase out the borrowed ideas and try to retro-fit an alternative world image for her.

And just maybe you’ll prevent Duran Duran from ever happening.

This might work out.

And so on.

‘
K
ill them,’ you say.

‘Then you kill me, right?’ Mary prompts.

‘Yes,’ you admit.

Shane and Grebo have their hands full.

Mary shoots you as you leap at her. You feel a
push
in your shoulder but ignore it. You think of Juanita as you gouge out Mary’s eyes with your thumbs. You think of Joseph as you take Mary’s gun and shoot Shane in the face.

‘No,’ says Grebo, yelping as Chris chews his wrist like a ferret.

‘Yes,’ you contradict.

Chris gets free. You think of her as you shoot Grebo in the balls. Chris scoops up the twins, hugs them.

People are coming. The police. The noise.

You stand over Mary. She isn’t screaming. She’s patting the floor, looking for a gun. You point her gun at her head.

If you shoot her, go to 182. If you don’t, go to 186.

I
n the first torrential rain of the autumn of 1976, you find yourself in a coffee bar in Soho, wondering how much further you can stretch the small sum of money your parents gave you to seek your fortune in London.

An anonymous man sits opposite you.

‘Keith Marion,’ he says.

I
say. For it is I.

Read 13, and come back here.

* * *

You’re surprised. Not only do I know you, but I know all about you, about where you come from. You can sense this in an instant.

I tell you the name I am using: ‘Derek Leech.’

Not many people can do what you have done; and they always have to pay a price. Not necessarily to me, but often to someone like me.

I offer you a position. My terms are favourable, though, as always, there’s a catch. ‘You have to think about what’s important to you.’

So, are you interested?

If you are, go to 195. If you turn me down, go to 197.

Y
ou sit back, almost relaxed. Mary’s gun
thwicks
. Chris snaps back, blood on her forehead, eyes frozen.

‘Bleddy waste,’ moans Grebo.

Mary slips her gun into her waistband. With gloved hands, she picks up the wrench from the floor. ‘This yours?’

You nod.

She whirls, landing a crunching blow on Grebo’s head. The man goes down and she hits him again, three times. His legs are kicking, but he’s dead.

‘Somebody has to take the blame,’ she says.

Shane is appalled but frozen. His gun is still on you.

‘Congratulations,’ Mary said. ‘You died fighting for your family. Got a lick in.’

She hands you the bloody wrench and pulls out her gun again. ‘Put your dabs on that, please.’

You grip the sticky steel.

‘Ta,’ Mary says.

‘What about James?’ you ask. ‘And Hackwill?’

And the twins?

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘You’ll never know how the story comes out.’

She shoots you.

Go to 0.

Y
ou finish Mary off, a bullet in her skull.

Armed police officers charge into the flat. Heavy visors, chest-protectors. Things are shouted at you. You spread your arms.

Chris shouts at you, ‘Put it down!’

You look along the length of your arm and see Mary’s gun in your hand.

You are shouted at again.

You try to let go of the gun, but it’s stuck. Hammer-blows hit your chest. You hear explosions, unsilenced
bangs
rather than muffled
thwicks
.

In enormous pain, you’re slammed against the wall.

Chris screams.

Go to 0.

I
t happens in an instant. It doesn’t so much hurt as wear you out, as if you’d fast-forwarded through three hours of running after a bus. There’s a lurch, and an instant hangover, which instantly vanishes, leaving your brain fogged with the memory of throbbing fuzziness only fractionally different from the sensation itself.

You’re trapped in a tiny room. You’re dragged down on to a ratty couch and lie there.

You’re different. There’s a bulge of stomach, a thin fungus of beard, and your arms and legs are feeble. It’s as if you’ve spent years in a prison camp on a diet of chips.

A copy of the
TV Times
flops on a ratty magazine rack. It’s dated 17 November 1990. This week. John Thaw is Inspector Morse. You hunt through the magazine for a political fact, and infer that the Major government is in power. The world hasn’t changed radically, only you have.

And your life. The room is full of stuff. People live here. There’s a television, a stereo, a stack of LPs, bright-coloured paperbacks, cheap plastic toys, posters and snapshots Blu-tacked to the walls. The place smells of fried food.

You live here.

The creepiest thing you find, when you force yourself to ignore the gunge in your head and carry out a search, is that among the LPs are albums you can remember buying –
Dark Side of the Moon, Diamond Dogs, Never Mind the Bollocks
– and even a few jazz and blues albums inherited from Dad –
Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, Blues for Night People.
The older discs are not copies of the albums you own, but the records themselves (Dad always printed his name neatly on the label). The sleeves are in worse condition, with shreds of rolling tobacco stuck to them.

The photographs on the wall give parts of the story. You appear as a glum lump, often with a thin blonde woman you don’t recognise and two kids who don’t look like Jeremy and Jessica but might be their cousins. The only familiar face is VC, who shows up in a few snaps looking like a younger version of the Wicked Witch of the West, all black hair and ratty black shawls. None of her records is in the stack, which makes you wonder how much has happened differently in this life.

You look at your own face, in the snaps and in the mirror. Under flab, pallor and hair, you think you have fewer lines around your eyes and mouth. This face doesn’t seem to have been used.

You have a feeling this is the life you’d have had if you hadn’t tried.

Whoever you are here, no one will miss you.

If you walk away, go to 191. If you stay, go to 196.

‘
T
hat would be telling,’ you say.

She prods, not sharply but enough for you to feel.

‘Who would you rather deny a warm bath, me or Councillor Hackwill?’

‘I don’t have favourites.’

That’s true. You remember Mary supervising the smashing-up of your home. And her terrifying monster fits at school. She’s earned her place on this course fair and square.

Mary puts her knife away. You swear she’ll never get that close again. You count off the minutes and tell Mary when the hour is up.

Near nightfall, Kay Shearer works out how the map fits together. Mary recognises a culvert they trudged through earlier. That’s where the treasure is.

They make their way down the valley. In the gathering gloom, you see Hackwill’s team ahead, spread out around the culvert, scratching with their hands at the dirt. James is enjoying a cigarette, watching the work.

‘They haven’t found it yet,’ Shearer deduces.

Mary’s team rush into the culvert. Shane tackles Sean, bringing him down. They scuffle.

Mary fixes on the spot where the case is buried, under a thin layer of shale. Hackwill is crouched over it. Mary tries to slam Hackwill aside but the councillor leans out of the way. Mary careers on and sprawls.

Hackwill pulls the case out of its shallow grave and holds it up in triumph. He bellows apeman victory. Mary won’t let it go easily. She stamps on Hackwill’s instep with her heavy boot. Hackwill clouts her with the suitcase. She stops fighting. You know she could take Hackwill but has calculated the long-term effects.

* * *

As Mary’s team huddles outside, sheltering in Colditz against the soft rain, Hackwill presides pompously over the dinner table, wolfing down extra helpings of stew.

‘I had my doubts last night,’ he says. ‘But I’m beginning to see how this course works. I think we’ll all come out of this stronger, better.’

You catch James’s eye, and try not to snicker.

‘What’s up for tomorrow?’ Hackwill asks.

‘All good things come to those who wait,’ you say.

Just before dawn, you assemble the teams. Hackwill’s lot, a little smug, are more chipper. Sean and Shearer snipe at each other, and Mary is irritated with them. McKinnell says his bowels are in better shape. You almost hope so, because if not he’s going to have a
really
bad day and be
extremely
unpopular.