Somewhere East of Life. Brian Aldiss

he muttered.

      ‘What about sexual functions, then? Do you still have erections?’

      ‘Hadn’t you better research that area yourself, Doctor?’

      When she laughed, most of her body shook. ‘You’re a naughty boy, that I can see. We shall return to that subject later. Drink your tea and don’t worry about things.’

      ‘Do you want a raspberry jam sandwich, Doctor? I’ve lost my appetite as well as my memory. Will my memory return? You’re sure I wasn’t in an accident – a car crash or something?’

      She shook her head. ‘Everything’s as I tell you. We’ll soon find out more about you. That will help. You’re going to counselling every morning, starting tomorrow, and that will help too. We can find out how many years of memory you’ve lost.’

      ‘Years? Shit!’ He said he could recall that there was an opera he had seen in which a man had his reflection stolen. This was worse, like a kind of evil magic.

      ‘You see, you remember some things, like the opera. Now don’t worry. Rest today. You’re still in shock. Eat up that sandwich.’

      He obliged the doctor by taking a bite before asking her what EMV was.

      ‘You don’t even recall that? It’s a scourge of modern life, like video shockers only a few years back. You know that tumours can be removed from the brain without old-fashioned surgery, and now it’s possible to remove selected memories. Those memories can be stored electronically and so reproduced any number of times.

      ‘Oh, it’s a huge industry.’ While he munched at the limp sandwich, she explained how EMV was a sport for amateurs, just as television had been invaded by amateur videos. Anyone with a striking memory or experience could sell it to the EMV companies, ‘the way poor people used to sell a kidney for a bit of money’. Of course they would lose that memory for ever but, if it was valuable to them, it could be reinserted once it was recorded.

      ‘So I could get my memory back if I could find the thieves?’

      ‘You can’t catch these people.’ She went on to say that for EMV-viewers, the memories projected into their heads were as transient as dreams although, projected at greater power, they could become as permanent and ‘real’ as genuine memories. A vogue for the permanent insertion of seemingly life-enhancing memory implants was yielding up a new generation of mental cases whose assumed memories did not fit their own personality patterns.

      Burnell was sunk in introspection. His gaze fixed itself on a malevolent square of cherry fruit cake lying on the white plate before him. He became convinced that he could read its mind: and somewhere in the warped mental processes of the fruit was an ambition to eat him, rather than vice versa. Only with an effort did he manage to look away and stare into the friendly black face by the bedside.

      ‘I can’t remember where I was before I found myself running on Salisbury Plain.’

      This time, she put her hand reassuringly over his. ‘We shall find out all about you. Don’t worry. Tomorrow, our psychotherapist, Rebecca Rosebottom, will see you. And she is an absolute guru.’

      Smiling, she rose to go.

      ‘Would you take this piece of fruit cake away with you?’ he bleated.

      Searching about in his head proved to be a strange process. He could recall his early life easily. The death of his mother was vivid. It was possible to trace the chain of events until he was in his mid-twenties, when he had grown a small moustache to impress a girlfriend. That would mean the memory was probably ten years old. After that, nothing.

      The last thing he could remember clearly was standing in a building in a foreign city waiting for a lift. He was in the foyer of an ornate hotel, all white and gilt and potted cheese plants. The lift cage descended from an upper floor. He walked into it and pressed a button to go up. After that – nothing. The dreaded white-out, the feared abyss. The thieves had got the rest.

      The following morning, Dr Kepepwe entered Ward One with a broad smile on her face and her hands behind her broad back.

      Burnell was propped up in bed, having just finished breakfast. She came and contemplated him for a moment before speaking.

      ‘You are Dr Roy Edward Burnell, AIBA. Those are letters after your name. You have been a university lecturer. You are a specialist in the architecture of religious structures such as cathedrals. You are currently an Area Supervisor for the World Antiquities and Cultural Heritage organization in Frankfurt in Germany. You have responsibility for threatened buildings of architectural and religious merit over a wide area.

      ‘And how do I know all this? Because you have also published a learned book, in which you contrast human aspirations with human-designed structures. The book is called Architrave and Archetype and –’ she brought her hands from behind her – ‘here’s a copy, just tracked down!’

      He took the book from her. It carried his photograph on the inner flap of the dust-jacket. He stared at it as if the title were written in letters of fire. In the photograph he had no moustache, praise be.

      ‘We’re getting somewhere,’ Dr Kepepwe said proudly. ‘We hope to contact your wife next.’

      He smote his forehead. ‘My God, don’t say I’m married.’

      She laughed. ‘Well, you certainly were. Current marital status unknown.’

      He closed his eyes, trying to think. No memory came through, only the tears under the eyelids. Whoever his wife might be, she constituted a vital part of the vault the memory-thieves had robbed. It was lonely, knowing nothing about her. Leafing through the copy of the book Dr Kepepwe had brought, he found her name. There it stood, alone on the printed page, the dedication page:

      For

      STEPHANIE

      ‘Nothing is superlative that has its like’

      Michel de Montaigne

      Tears came again. He had a wife. Stephanie Burnell. The line from Montaigne, if it was more than mere courtesy, suggested love and admiration. How was it he was unable, with his memory of her gone, to feel no love and admiration?

      ‘We can’t have you moping,’ said Dr Kepepwe, bustling in, to find him staring into space. ‘Are you well enough for a game of tennis? There’s a good indoor court on the top floor. I’m a demon. I’ll play you when I’m off duty at five-thirty.’

      To kill the afternoon, he wandered about the great white memorial to human sickness. The few staff he encountered were Asiatics. He found his way into what the hospital called its library, where ping pong was played. The room was deserted; but the whole hospital was strangely deserted, as if the world’s sick had miraculously healed themselves. The library shelves, like the shelves of a derelict pantry, held nothing by way of sustenance. Almost no non-fiction, books on dieting excluded, no travel worth a second look. Fiction of the poorest quality, all formula stuff – romances chiefly, thrillers, also fantasy: The Dragon at Rainbow Bridge and similar titles, featuring pictures of brave men, women, and gnomes in funny armour.

      In a neglected corner where ping pong balls could not reach lay a clutch of Penguin Classics. Zola, Carpentier, Balzac, Ibsen, Dostoevsky. He remembered the names. Also the Essays of Montaigne.

      Burnell picked up the volume almost with a sense of destiny, having so recently come across Montaigne’s name in his own book. Carrying it over to a bench, he read undisturbed while the best part of an hour stole away, drowsy and silent. He believed he had heard the cadences of Montaigne’s prose before. Nostalgia rose in him, to think he might once have read it in the company of the unknown Stephanie. They must have enjoyed the way the sixteenth-century Frenchman spoke directly to his reader:

      I admire the assurance and confidence that everyone has in himself, while there is hardly anything that I am sure of knowing, or that I dare answer to myself that I can do. I never have my means marshalled and at my service, and am aware of them only after the event … For in my studies,