Secrets and Lies

 “The issue, Minister,” said Dink Lightly, “is that the diaries you’ve provided for the book—”

“My personal diaries, yes.” The Minister famously disliked listening to anyone else speak for longer than a few minutes.  Dink, his ghostwriter, was coming to terms with it but he still had to avoid sighing in frustration that the Minister was clarifying a point that was obvious to everyone in the room.

“Yes,” he said, mentally sighing instead.  “Yes, those diaries. The issue is that they contain, well, confessions.  Of crimes.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said the Minister cheerfully.  He grinned at Dink with his best campaign smile.  “I think we used that a slogan last year, in fact.  You can put that in the book.”

Dink forced a smile onto his face and reached for his notepad.

“Ah, before you write that down, Mr. Dink,” said a nasal voice to his left.  He couldn’t help but think of a weasel trying to be human whenever he heard that voice.  “That slogan, Minister, was the one we trialled to explain the increase in the number of people being sent to prison.”

“Ah,” said the Minister in the tone of someone being reminded of something unpleasant.  “That was not our greatest success, right?”

“Far from it, Minister,” said the weasel.  Dink tried to remember that the man’s name was Jacob, just in case he had to offer an opinion.

“So probably only a third-rate success,” said the Minister sounding thoughtful and apparently having only heard what he wanted to hear.  “I think the book should—“

“Focus on the top-tier successes,” said Jacob.  The Minister glared at him for a few seconds and then nodded.  “Ok, don’t use that quote.  Or save it for the sequel maybe.”  Dink glanced surreptitiously at Jacob who shook his head fractionally but firmly.  Dink wrote down some words at random to appease the Minister and wondered how much longer this would go on for.

“Right,” said the Minister.  “That’s all then, right?”

“Ah,” said Dink, but the weasel laid a cold, clammy hand on Dink’s wrist and spoke over him.

“Not quite, Minister.  The diaries, as this young man,” and Jacob smiled at Dink in a way that made him want to vomit, “is trying to tell you, contain details that are not in the public interest, though the public would likely be very interested in them.”

“What?”  The Minister could be disarmingly blunt when he wasn’t actually interested in what was being said.

Jacob took his hand off Dink’s wrist and Dink narrowly avoided shuddering in relief.

“The diaries state that you broke the pandemic rules,” said Dink.  “Repeatedly.  And inventively, in some cases.”

“Those rules didn’t apply to me,” said the Minister.  He looked at his watch.  “I’m on the news in five minutes and I’d like to watch it.”

“They did,” said Jacob smoothly.  “And finding out that you’d broken them would put you on the news rather a lot Minister, but not in any way you’d like to watch.”

“Well change the law, then,” said the Minister.  “Have them not apply to me, since I’m the Minister and I’m running the show here.  How is this difficult?  Why am I having to listen to this?”

“Changing the law retroactively would require Parliament to be told all the details,” said Jacob.  “Which might endanger your chance of re-election.”

“Oh.”  The Minister frowned and adjusted his position on his chair in a way that suggested he had been about to stand up and leave no matter how the conversation went.  “I need to be re-elected.  At least until I can make this position hereditary.  So… just don’t put that bit in the book.”

Dink found himself writing down hereditary? and wondering what the Minister was on about.  A moment later Jacob took his pen out of his hand and carefully scribbled over hereditary until only the question mark was left.

“The problem, Minister,” said Jacob, “is that under the rules set out for the writing of these books for government officials the ghostwriter must report any evidence of criminal activity if they come across it.”

“Well done,” said the Minister, smiling warmly at Dink.  “I shall act on it at once.  Is that done now?”

“Not to you, Minister,” said Jacob.  Dink thought he sounded wheedling now.  “To the police.”

“Good Lord,” said the Minister.  “Haven’t I abolished them yet?”

“Legislation is in passage,” said the weasel with a smile that Dink felt showed far too many teeth that were far too white.  “But realistically it would be better to submit the evidence to them and then have them decide that there is no crime to investigate.  A little work with the Official Secrets Act after that and we can cover this up for a hundred and fifty years, by which time no-one will care.”

The Minister gave the weasel the side-eye.  “And how do they decide that?” he asked.  “What’s it going to cost?”

“It used to be a peerage,” said Jacob.  “In the good old days.  You’d just knight the Chief Constable or give his wife a modest title, one that comes with a small stretch of land, and be done with it.  But under the current circumstances… you’re probably going to have to give up on abolishing the police force.”

“No!”

“Hear me out, Minister, at least.  There is an alternative.”

“I won’t have these plebs trying to prosecute me!  They’re persecuting me enough already without changing the damn letters around!”

“Indeed, Minister, though can you truly say they have no cause?”  Jacob didn’t wait for his boss to answer. “Instead, let’s have the police force report into you directly.  They will be placated by the legislation to abolish them being dropped and we’ll slide their reporting lines under you as part of amendments to other bills. A little bit of PR work and we can change the M from meaning Metropolitan to Militia, I should think.”

“The M?”

“As in London Metropolitan Police: LMP, Minister.  We can make it London’s Militia Policing.  And it will your own private army.”

Dink reached for his pen to note that down but Jacob removed it and, without once looking at Dink, snapped it in half.

“Capital idea,” said the Minister.  “They’ll have a hard time arresting me if I’m giving the orders, right?”

“Precisely, Minister.”

The Armageddon Library

 The entrance hall was marble-floored and the white marble, flecked with red and gold inclusions, glistened as though freshly polished.  Tall stone pillars — not marble as that would have been decadent — held the ceiling aloft in two rows of four pillars each.  Their sides were fluted and their tops were carved to make it seem as though grapes and vines were growing there.  At the far end of the hall were mahogany double doors with brass handles, and along the walls of the hall were paintings; most were landscapes but there were two portraits that flanked the far double doors.

Heather, who had been leading the way until that point, slowed down and then took several steps to the side, stepping out of the colonnaded avenue down the centre of the hall and stopping in front of one of the landscapes.  The painting was rendered in an ochre palette, all earthy browns, deep reds, and a hint here and there of orange.  A single splash of yellow was used to indicate the breaking of sunlight through clouds and illuminating a wide building that looked like a palace of some kind; two storeys high and made of a dark, expensive looking stone.  Part of it was ruined and the walls were shattered and riven; lumps of stone littered the foot of the wall and rooms were partially visible.  A grandfather clock, seemingly untouched by the devastation around it, was located high up in the partial ruin with the time just visible.

“Heather?”  Jacob had reached the double doors and was resting his hand on a handle.

“In a minute,” she said, not turning to look at him.  He looked at the back of her head, admiring her long black hair that fell straight down to her waist, and then at the door.  His fingers tightened on the handle as he made his decision, but the handle refused to turn and the doors refused to move.

“I think these doors need both of us,” he said, tugging on the handle.  The doors were solidly made and didn’t even tremble.  He noticed that the handle was cold beneath his hand and seemed to be chilling his skin instead of being warmed by it.  Puzzled, he pulled his hand away and shook the slowly-growing numbness from it.

“I recognise this,” said Heather, still not turning away from the painting.

“Somewhere you’ve been?”  Jacob stopped shaking his hand and examined the handles on the doors carefully, now not touching them.  One, the one he’d been holding, had a grey layer of condensation covering it but the other was clear. He touched a finger to it, tentatively, and it felt warm to the touch.

“Somewhere I’ll be,” said Heather.  “It’s from a vision.”

“One of those that Yaga gave you?”  Jacob couldn’t keep from sounding faintly skeptical.  Grandmother Yaga was, in his view, a fraud: a con-artist who read tarot cards, cast horoscopes and dabbled in numerology and preyed on the weak-willed and simple-minded.

“She didn’t give me any visions,” said Heather, turning away from the painting at last.  “She gave me a drink that helped me see them more clearly.  I had the visions anyway, every time I tried to sleep.  She helped me see them, and that made them go away so I can sleep properly.”

Jacob opened his mouth and then hesitated.  The dark circles caused by weeks of sleeplessness were still visible on Heather’s face and he’d been kept awake some nights himself listening to her toss and turn and try to sigh as gently and quietly as possible.

“Right,” he said awkwardly.  “Ok, I guess that’s how it worked then.”

“It is,” said Heather.  She took a step forward and then frowned.  Instead of joining Jacob at the door she crossed the hallway to the other side and stared at the painting there.

“This one too!  I will be here in the future.  How strange is that!”

“Well,” said Jacob, trying to rein in his skepticism.  “I guess these are places you want to visit anyway, so maybe it’s not that surprising you were dreaming about them.”

“Visions aren’t dreams, Jacob.  They come on like dreams, but they are glimpses of the future.  It’s still you, just looking through your own eyes at a different time.”

“Seems a bit pointless,” said Jacob.  “What good is seeing it if you can’t do anything about it?”

Heather’s finger brushed lightly over the surface of the painting, feeling the brush strokes permanently imprinted in the oil paint.  It was rough, a little like snakeskin.  “If you remember it,” she said, “you can do something about when the time comes because you can plan what you’re going to do.  It’s like you get an extra chance, time to think about it before it happens.”

“You sound like you’ve done just that.”

“I have,” said Heather.  “Here.”

Jacob decided that standing by the double doors wasn’t encouraging Heather to join him so he walked over to the painting to join her.  His presence normally caused her to back away slightly, so perhaps he could herd her to the double doors like a sheepdog.  To his surprise though, she remained standing where she was and let him get almost close enough to put his arms around her.  He looked at the painting, more to have to something to do than out of curiosity, and almost turned away again.  Then he focused and took in the picture.

“That’s us,” he said, staring.  “Here.  In this room.”

“Yes,” said Heather.  “I had a vision of this room and that painting, only in the vision I came to help you with the door instead of stopping and looking at the art.”

“And?”

“And in my vision we were both killed by what lies beyond the door.”

Jacob was silent for several seconds and then he shivered, a full body shake that made him turn pale and look wild-eyed.  That faded quickly, but the paleness remained.

“What does lie on the other side then?” he asked.  “I thought we were looking for a library.”

“That’s what’s on the other side,” she said as though not realising how annoying that sentence was.  “And there was something else; a snake of ice that lay coiled around the room and guarded the books and breathed out the very cold of Fimbulwinter.  It exhaled, and we died in a freezing gale that torn the heat from our skin and our souls from our flesh.”

Jacob took a step back from her and, when he realised that he’d taken a step towards the door took another step, further away from both of them.

“It’s gone now,” she said.  “It was always leaving, we just were too fast and startled it.”

“I don’t much like snakes,” said Jacob.  His voice was faint and the paleness wasn’t fading.  “That sounds like a nasty way to die.”

“It’s not how I die,” said Heather.  “At least, not today.  I have seen myself in other visions and other places; I surely won’t die until after then.”

“Must be nice to know,” muttered Jacob. “Anyone can have these visions, can they?”

Heather’s sudden smile startled him and she laid a finger briefly on his lips.  When she withdrew it he licked them.

“Seers see their own deaths,” she said.  “It’s depressing, seriously.  I’ve seen myself die eight times now, and each time I’ve had to figure out how to avoid it.  Sooner or later I’m going to get it wrong, and then the vision of my death is the true one.”

“I can handle that,” said Jacob, but it didn’t sound convincing.  “Can we go in the Library now or are there spiders in there?  Or lions and tigers?”

Heather nodded.  “We can go in.  You can open the doors yourself now, there’s no snake on the other side holding them shut.”

“Good to know,” murmured Jacob.  He returned to the doors trying not to tremble as he reached out for the handles.  This time they stayed warm in his grip.  “I hope the Armageddon Library is worth the trip.”

“So do I,” said Heather.

Letters to Eric (I)

Dear Eric,
I turn my back for two minutes and when I turn back, you're getting married again? And to a man who couldn't even find gainful employment as shark chum? What are you thinking this time?
I know you've said it's only a civil union, but sweetheart, please, remember your first marriage for a moment. When you married Tania you said you thought the gay thing was just a phase, and after all, you could easily get a divorce if it didn't work out. Seven years later, after Tania had a child, a sex change, and enough plastic surgery that she avoided warm rooms (remember the barbecue when you weren't talking to each other and her face started to melt?), you finally got that divorce.
Think some more about it Eric, please. For all our sakes.

You asked me what would be a good Christmas present for Jacob this year; well I think crutches are probably what he's going to want most. I've been talking to various carers and his grandmother has said that she'll pay for someone to pretend to love him twice a week, which should help his depression out a little. It would be lovely if he could see his mother again, but Tania's a bit scary for adults, let alone small children.

The flowers were lovely, although freeze drying them was a little odd -- was this the new boyfriend's idea? I think you mentioned he's something squelchy in embalming? I put them in the hall, on the side table you like.

I hope we'll be seeing you at Norman's party at the end of the month. Norman said that he's not seen you since you made a pass at his son. We both hope you realise that Norman doesn't care at all, and that no-one blames you for the accident. Please come.

We're glad, of course, that your job is keeping you busy, please tell me some more about what it is that you do when you next write. Unless it's something squelchy in embalming, in which case tell me about the next job you're going to find.

All my love,