The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  Antoinette was in a cardiac ward. She didn’t look too worried.

  “It’s my heart,” she said. “They’ve found the enzymes and done everything they can to stabilise it. Tonight I get a Brazilian and tomorrow an angiogram, and then they decide what to do.”

  “Sounds identical to what happened to my wife fifteen years ago,” said Janet. Janet’s second marriage was far better than the first, and Janet’s affection showed in her tone.

  “Some things change and some things don’t,” said Antoinette. “I’m a borderline case, so they’re not sure what’s going on, and they’re doing the old-fashioned investigation.”

  “So you had a heart attack?”

  “Possibly.” Antoinette was cheerful about it. “They’re hedging their bets. That’s why it’s all old-fashioned. Either way, I’ll be out the day after tomorrow.”

  Diana wondered at the coincidence of Antoinette having a possible heart attack this week, of all weeks. The dubiousness and the need for old-fashioned and quite intrusive procedures made her think of the lizards. She remained quiet while the others chatted, listening and watching. When she had the full picture, it was clear that Antoinette was not ill by chance.

  Quietly, she opened her handbag. She added a column to her piece of paper and turned a set of marks into a table. On the left were marks, and on the right were other marks. She quickly tallied moments of known interference (her husband, herself, now Antoinette) and realised she already had over a dozen.

  “What’re you doing?” asked Antoinette.

  “Deciding whether your possible heart attack will trigger the end of the world or not.” Diana said this in such a matter of fact way that, naturally, her three friends couldn’t possibly believe her.

  “There must be other factors,” said Trina.

  They diverted themselves for a full hour discussing reasons why the world should burn and reasons why it shouldn’t. The nurse came in and apologetically said: “We need to get her ready, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re throwing us out?” asked Janet, humorously.

  “Sorry,” said the nurse. “But make sure you don’t forget to add nurses to the side of good when you decide on our fate.”

  “Will do,” said Diana.

  It was far too late for lunch by the time the three left the hospital. There was only one possible response to this, and the three of them were so profoundly agreed on what it was that they didn’t need to speak. Chocolate. A tray of different comestibles made from the substance, and iced chocolate to accompany it.

  “I feel much better,” said Janet.

  “I feel extraordinarily tired,” said Trina.

  “I think we should all cancel anything strenuous or hard or stressful and—”

  “Not get heart attacks. Even putative ones,” finished Trina.

  “Yes, that,” said Janet. “I think we need a movie. The daftest one we can find. My place?”

  “Can’t,” admitted Trina. “Work beckons.”

  “Only two months and then you’re retired and can join the land of the ever-youthful,” Diana reassured her.

  “When you will have all of the time and much less of the money.” Janet was upbeat. She had barely returned from the big overseas trip that marked the end of her own working life. She had good finances and her garden was producing the best flowers ever. Retirement suited her.

  “I like my job still,” confessed Trina. “That’s why I didn’t take early retirement when everyone else did. I’m only part-time, anyhow. My favourite thing is that I annoy everyone by coming in later, leaving earlier and doing triple the work.”

  “How does that work?” asked Diana. “I’ve wondered that for a while.”

  “It’s generational. I suspect that I’m the last of the old fogies who were taught in the old fogie way.”

  “Paper and pen,” said Janet.

  “Printouts and learning grammar rather than relying on the machine and…”

  “Leanne would have called us young upstarts, because we can’t spell without help,” said Trina. The other two gave wry smiles. For their generation, they could spell splendidly. But Leanne had been both a scientist and, as a child, a spelling champion. She had been able to spell words that no-one else knew existed.

  “God, I miss Leanne,” said Janet.

  Day Four

  Diana began the day properly, the way she began every day properly. It was a profound part of who she was. Instead of giving up on her insufficiently reliable memory, she had turned its vagaries into a meditation ritual, gathering her mind together. Today was a bad day and she did it first thing in the morning, as usual, but she also did it after she’d heard the news about Antoinette.

  “I’m fine,” her friend had said over the phone. “It’s a minor procedure. Don’t even come in today—I’ll be home tomorrow and you can visit then. Let the others know for me, please? I really need to rest today.”

  “No worries,” pronounced Diana. And she’d tried. Really, she’d tried. It took an hour to get through to Janet, but Trina wasn’t answering her phone at all. Diana left two messages. If her life weren’t so very strange (even for a very extended level of strange), that would have been enough effort and she could have moved on. She thought she was worrying over nothing, and so she did her little memory ritual again. Then she rang Trina.

  “Can you come over?” Trina asked.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know? I just…”

  “I’ll be right there,” Diana promised.

  Twenty minutes later, they were in the hospital.

  Diana had taken one look at Trina’s grey face and decided firstly that caution was the better part of valour, and secondly that the ambulance’s emergency systems were better than hers. The paramedics had spent very little time doing tests. During that very little time, Diana got together a bag for Trina. A very basic bag, but a bag. Thus, when they told Trina she had to be moved, at once, and didn’t even let her walk to the ambulance, Diana was ready. She was an experienced emergency-goer, thanks to the lizards.

  “Can my friend come?” was the only question Trina had.

  “Of course,” said one of the paramedics.

  For all Diana’s illnesses, this was not something she’d experienced before. She knew that Trina’s sudden danger was intentional. That two of her closest people were dead and another two in hospital was a message. Not a nice message. A clear one. It was saying “You don’t want to stay on this planet. They’ll all die anyhow. Look, let us show you. Come home.”

  All the while she was with Trina and diverted her from the worst of her worry, or sat silently, waiting with her, all that while, this thought haunted her. It haunted her while they waited for a doctor, then a few minutes later when she sat next to Trina’s bed, then when Trina had blood taken and measurements taken and…it all happened quickly. It wasn’t a long haunting, but it was an intensive one.

  The doctor wanted to talk with Trina alone, and Trina said: “Please, let Diana stay.” So Diana stayed.

  The doctor was very blunt. “Twenty years ago, you’d be dead in a day and we’d not have been able to diagnose you properly.”

  What a coincidence, thought Diana, that twenty years ago was when Trina was probably set up for this. So they wanted me to lose her.

  The pattern was straightforward: first lose the husband (personal loneliness); second, see Antoinette nearly die; third, lose Trina. Then decide that home was the only option. Except that those words “twenty years ago” changed matters.

  “It’s a rare disease and not fully understood, but if we do a heart transplant quickly, you’ve every chance of living to a ripe old age.”

  “You can do it, just like that, a heart transplant?”

  “We can if we use an artificial heart.”

  “What has to happen?” Diana felt impel
led to ask, since the doctor obviously needed something from Trina.

  “I need to brief you,” he answered Diana, but addressed Trina. “You need to consider your options and, if you’re ready to go ahead with the surgery, sign a waiver. This is uncommon surgery. If it works, then you’ll be fine in a few months.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “It depends. You could have the equivalent of an old-fashioned heart condition and have to be careful, or…”

  “I could be dead.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said the doctor.

  “Since I’ll be dead by tomorrow night anyhow, from what you say, I should just say ‘yes’ and let you get on with things,” Trina declared, with only a hint of sarcasm. “You can give me as much briefing as I need, but I think it’s an obvious choice.”

  “Then I’ll set things in motion and come back and brief properly later, and get your formal approval. Mostly, right now, we need to prep the artificial heart and set up the surgery. I’ll let you know as soon as we have a time.”

  “Can Diana stay?”

  “Only until I return. After that, everything will start happening. I can get one of the nurses to ring to let you know how the operation went and then again when she can have visitors.” This time the doctor was addressing Diana. Names were something he avoided.

  “OK,” said Trina.

  After he left, she turned to Diana. “I hope you don’t mind me deciding to run your life while I’m sick. Whatever you had planned for today isn’t happening.”

  “What I had planned for today is irrelevant until you’re through this.” It was only a part-lie. Trina would be through the operation one way or another before Red Button Day. This probably reduced the options Earth had, simply because it would be hard to get reasons for the Earth to continue being human if she herself were sitting by a sick bed all the time, but…it was another of those ironies.

  Diana found herself giving humans one mark simply because of the importance of Trina. Then she gave them another to get even with those who had planned to kill Trina. This meant that Earth only needed seven more marks to survive. Trina needed a new heart, however, and that came first.

  Meanwhile, she traipsed after Trina while her friend was wheeled to her pre-operation destination. Instead of being the big, open room, it was a smaller open room. Only four patients in all.

  Trina looked around, inquisitively, “More facilities, less space,” she noted. “I’ve never seen it from this angle before. How do I look?”

  “Depends,” answered Diana cautiously, “on whether you’re asking out of vanity or curiosity.”

  Trina laughed. “A bit of both, of course.”

  Diana decided to err on the daft side, but she couldn’t be inaccurate. It was not within her. “Proto-zombie?” she suggested.

  “That’s pretty much how I feel. Also, everything’s hard work.”

  “What I do normally is just sit back and enjoy the scenery.”

  “The trouble is,” confessed Trina, “that this is so big. My mind can’t encompass it. Heart operations aren’t life-threating any more. My family has no history. Yadda yadda.”

  “Your mind doesn’t have to encompass it,” Diana pointed out. “All you have to do is get through it.”

  “And if I don’t, then it doesn’t matter?” Trina did her best to sound cynical.

  “It always matters.” Diana was surprised at how much she cared. She gave humanity another point for this passion. “But when there’s nothing you can do, then it’s much safer to live in the moment.”

  She wished she could take her own advice. However, there was something else she could do. She spent that whole night working on equations to see what could be done and how to do it. That passion she felt for Trina’s life, the sheer importance of it to her, the absurd centrality of friendship to her own existence…

  These things changed everything. She needed more options.

  At this moment, Diana had no idea whether there were actually more options open to her, but now she was certain the game was rigged. She couldn’t change many things, but she could give her mind a fair chance of making a sensible decision or, maybe, finding an alternate course. To do this, she needed to break down her conditioning. So this is what she did, one equation at a time.

  Her approach, using paper and pens and shutting her mind off the way she had trained it in avoiding letting the lizards know she was self-aware, meant that no-one but she was the wiser as to what actually she was doing. The insomnia would be visible, but that was really all. The lizards needed Uplift on to know anything about what was happening inside her brain, and if Uplift were switched on in the week before Judgement, everyone would know Judgement was rigged. Data external to the Judge only, this week.

  She felt a certain satisfaction in turning the tables. At three in the morning, however, she realised that the tables would be turned back if she herself died from tension and exhaustion. Her own body was frail.

  She slept for a few hours, then went back to the drawing board. By the time she received the call that Trina was safely through the operation and would be able to be visited from later that day, Diana had found a possible loophole for Earth.

  Day Three

  I don’t trust those lizards not to destroy Earth through me being ill so much of the time, thought Diana. I’m being racist, it’s not just lizards. It’s anyone involved and I don’t know who they are. It doesn’t matter if I’m racist, as long as I don’t take that prejudice with me when I return.

  And there’s still no guarantee of me returning. Earth is balanced on five out of ten points and only has three days to go. I have to stick to that, because it’s what I promised myself and right now there are no sureties, none. It’s also a nice narrative for the Judgment. Very Sodom and Gomorrah.

  She was so tired that she started thinking in terms of old Earth-threatening dramas. Gamera and Gamora, Japanese monster and green alien. To stop her mind wandering, she rang Antoinette and Janet and they had a nice group chat.

  “We can’t all go in at once,” said Antoinette.

  “The hospital says we can,” said Janet. “I checked. But going in all three at once reminds me of Leanne. In fact, the hospital reminds me of Leanne.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Diana.

  “They know what’s best and theoretically they’re right, but in practice…”

  “The reality is that it’s about Trina, not about us. How about you go in, Diana, because you’re the least exhausting of us, and let us know if she’s up to all three.”

  “Then you’ll come out and join me?”

  “We should join you anyhow,” said Janet. “We should all sit in a café and take it in turns to visit Trina, as she’s able.”

  “Now, that’s a good idea,” said Antoinette.

  “I know one of the nurses from my various visits,” Diana said. “I can ask her.”

  “And we can tailor who goes in according to Trina’s needs.” Antoinette was inspired.

  Janet nodded. “Totally. You if she needs quiet comfort,” with a nod to Diana, “you if she needs verve and aliveness,” nod to Antoinette, “and me for flowers and everyday chat.”

  “That sounds excellent,” said Diana.

  “I am most excellent,” agreed Janet. “Also, there have to be some advantages to being an increasingly elderly woman. One of them is that we can cancel everything and be there for our friend.”

  “Thank God we can,” said Antoinette.

  “So—” Janet was in one of her brisk moods, “—let’s get a report on how she is, nice and subjective. Diana, you saw her last.”

  “Actually,” Antoinette said hesitantly, “I did. I was coming out of the procedure and I asked about her. Someone wheeled me in to see her. She had just been shaved and was in a sparkly clean gown.”

  “Finally,” joke
d Diana, “an advantage to one of our crises.”

  “You’re right.” Antoinette looked pleased. “She said that she was herself, and dealing, but that was mostly thanks to you being there whenever she needed and not being intrusive. When she had no strength to move, you sat there and waited, she said. It meant she could face the operation, she also said, because Diana was channelling the strength of all of us. I joked that Diana was channelling chocolate. That too, she said.”

  “Only one problem with us hanging out all the time,” said Diana, “and that’s the fact that you were in hospital yourself, until yesterday. We can handle one emergency with grace and fortitude, but two is more difficult.”

  “God yes,” said Janet. There was a moment’s pause while they all thought. Then, “Who needs a café?” said Janet. “My place is only five minutes from the hospital. We can get meals delivered and combine our chocolate stashes and watch old movies and Antoinette, you can bring your PJs and use my spare room.”

  “And rest whenever you need to,” finished Diana. “If you don’t mind, Janet, that would solve everything. Will your partners mind, though?” The various partners were brought into the discussion.

  They wanted to join the vigil. And Janet’s spare room had a double bed, so Antoinette’s husband would fit. He offered to do food runs whenever things looked as if they’d run out and hospital runs for changing of the guard. Janet’s wife offered the home front. The respective husband and wife laughed at each other for taking on such traditional roles. Antoinette said, then, “So we’re fine, as long as there’s enough chocolate.”

  Humanity received two points that day, one for emotional support and one for the look on Trina’s face when her friends brought her a bag to get her through her transplant, and it included her share of the chocolate.

  The new count, the invisible count, of Judgement against the species that had set her up to die, that was marching point for point with the Judgement against humanity.