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Somewhere East of Life
THE SQUIRE QUARTET
Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories, many of which are being reissued as part of The Brian Aldiss Collection.
Several of Aldiss’ books have been adapted for the cinema; his story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ was adapted and released as the film AI in 2001. Besides his own writing, Brian has edited numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as the magazine SF Horizons.
Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005. He now lives in Oxford, the city in which his bookselling career began in 1947.
Brian Aldiss
Somewhere East of Life
Dedication
with love
to Felicity and Alex
bearers of fruits
from
Kidlington and Osh
Contents
Somewhere East of Life
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
1 Friends in Sly Places
2 Murder in a Cathedral
3 Bishops Linctus
4 FOAM
5 Some Expensive Bullets
6 Soss City
7 ‘The Dead One’
8 Looking for a Postcard
9 A Head Among the Throng
10 ‘Time Had Run Out’
11 ‘The Madonna of Futurity’
12 A Crowded Stage
13 Richard and Blanche
14 In the Korean Fast Foot
15 Makhtumkuli Day
16 Burnell Speaks!
17 Glimpse of Airing Cupboard
18 The Friendship Bridge
19 A Toe and a Tow
20 PRICC Strikes
21 Subterfuge
22 A Brief Discourse on Justice
23 To the Krasnovodsk Station
24 Singing in the Train
25 Snow in the Desert
26 The Executioner
27 Squire Ad Libs
28 Open to the Public
29 ‘Newcastle’
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
THE SQUIRE QUARTET
Copyright
About the Publisher
Epigraph
When you reach the point of no return there’s nothing for it but to go back.
Old Goklan saying
Introduction
In this, the final novel of the Squire Quartet, time has moved on slightly.
We meet Roy Burnell beside his friend’s hospital bed. Burnell is employed by WACH, the World Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, which looks after precious things liable to be lost or lost already.
But soon among those lost things is Burnell’s memory. A thief has criminally but adroitly stolen a year of it through an illegal e-mnemonicvision operation.
Burnell has lost twelve vital months of his past. He summons his wife, Stephanie, though memory of her, including all scenes of their love-making, has gone. She comes, and Burnell learns they have been divorced.
E-mnemonicvision is one among the many ‘visions’ generated by technology in this novel. Memories can now be stored electronically and re-used; thieves sell them as pornography.
Partly to escape imprisonment in the present, Burnell accepts a WACH consignment to document an ancient church in Georgia. The church reputedly contains an old and valuable ikon – the Madonna of Futurity.
So Burnell goes to Georgia. Much of it has become a battlefield – ‘Moral emptiness. That’s what the world’s suffering from,’ one character claims.
Burnell eventually finds the ikon. It has been broken into three pieces, all carefully preserved.
For reward, Burnell is sent on a new assignment to Turkmenistan, a place I had never visited. I hired a researcher, who turned up such interesting facts about this little-known country that I determined to go there. It happened that I had a learned friend, Dr Youssef Azimun, who at one time had served as Cultural Director for the new Turkmenistan government, but he had proved so popular that the President – more about him in a moment – had dismissed him. I flew with Youssef and a lady from the BBC called Sue to Ashkhabad, the capital city, almost the only city, since much of Turkmenistan is occupied by the Black Sand – the Kara-kum Desert.
The Soviets had ruled the five trans-Caspian states for nearly seventy years. Now they had gone, leaving behind a strange legacy. After an earthquake in 1948, the Soviets had repaired much of the city of Ashkhabad. Some streets were rather pretty, with rows of small trees and little gutters of water running to cool the temperature. Curiously, the air was full of nostalgic cuckoo calls. Though the Turks were Muslim, after the long Russian stay they downed their vodka like
