The Paper Eater (25 page)
Authors: Liz Jensen
– Rights, Voyager? he chuckles. I’m afraid that as a leading light in the Sect, you sacrificed those long ago. In any case, he smiles, you’ll be surprised what a comfort it’ll be to have your nearest and dearest –
– They’re not my fucking nearest and dearest! If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here now!
– You don’t have the choice, Voyager Kidd, he says, tilting his head towards me, his grin fixed. The sun-glasses are unnerving, like the huge, inscrutable eyes of an insect.
– Your ex-wife, her new husband and your daughter are coming aboard at 1400 hours. I’m sure that, like the rest of us, they’ll be wanting to give you a good send-off. There’s a lot to celebrate, Voyager. The news from America, Liberty Day on Atlantica …
He smiles again and you can see he’s looking forward to it.
– It’ll all be kicking off on the main deck at 1500. He pauses. – It’s going to be quite a
fiesta
, Voyager. There’s a lot of excitement around this event. A real community buzz.
Does this man have any idea what I’m going through?
– But this man Gwynneth’s married, this Geoff bloke – I hardly know him! He’s a so-called stress counsellor, with sissy curtains in his waiting room! He’s a jerk!
Fishook takes his hands off the wheel and, with a swift movement, lifts the flaps of his glasses so they stand out at right-angles. His flat blue eyes look me up and down.
– He may well be a jerk, Voyager, he says. But he’s also a customer. And what the customer wants …
He turns back to the wheel. My life has been a whirlpool
shape, I’m thinking. Everything sucked down too quickly and suddenly to make sense. Now I know why John behaved the way he did, when he thought it was him, and joked about the Big Fry-Up: you don’t quite take it in. There’s a … distance on it. But now there isn’t, is there, and there’s this sick, sick dread sweeping over me and I’m feeling faint and helpless and wanting to cry. I don’t know what to say any more. I’m not in control of anything. Not even the guest-list for my final bash.
Fishook’s picked up his cigar again, and he’s puffing monstrous fumes as he steers.
– Look over there, Voyager Kidd, he goes, pointing with his fat roll of tobacco.
There before us is the long humped line of land, bristling with skyscrapers. And the gaping yawn of the estuary.
I clench my buttocks together. Fishook’s looking at his watch, and then at me, his head cocked thoughtfully.
– You have six hours left, he says softly. You are a human hourglass, Voyager Kidd. And your sand is running out.
Just kill me now.
High in the upper stratosphere, Liberty’s gliding oceanographic satellite charts the subtle shifts of the artificial land-mass below, registering the pressure on the porous rockbed and the complex nuances of subterranean physics. Strange the way the light plays tricks. From the pictures reaching Head Office it almost –
almost
– seems as though the yolk of the fried egg itself – the inland hump of St Giddier’s Mount – were slowly and inexorably deflating. You might even think, if you scrutinised these pictures, that the waters were creeping higher, and gnawing at the coastline by St Placid. If you were a catastrophist, you might go as far as to speculate that something might be going horribly and dangerously wrong beneath the earth’s crust – and venture to wonder whether, beneath the enchanted crucible of St Giddier’s Mount, something was frighteningly amiss. Something structural.
If you were a catastrophist.
– Earth has not anything to show more fair, breathes Wesley Pike, turning his back on the satellite screen and gazing out at the glittering snake of the River Hope, its urban banks already thronging with excited shoppers. Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight more touching in its majesty …
Once the Boss has remedied the geo-structural glitches, the disgruntled minority in Head Office will be questionnaired and flushed out. Now that the American election is all but
over, the Boss will be free to unveil her strategy for the triumphant return of normal life on Atlantica. It’s what she’s best at. The Bargain of a Lifetime promotion is probably just the start of it. It’s working already. The customers are gagging for it. Look down there: they’re forming queues!
She has turned things around a million times before. Just watch.
But something bothers Pike. Saps at his inner strength, weakening him, tempting him to think off-code and to wonder if –
A shrill buzz; the communicator on the desk before him flashes. Distractedly, still mulling over the ugly, terrifying thought, Pike switches On.
– Wesley? comes the voice. It’s me.
They’ve been on first-name terms for a while now. Wesley Pike had an inkling, way back, that this young associate had the talent and confidence of a much older man. The characteristics of a successful Liberty employee are sensitivity, perceptiveness, a hands-on approach, plenty of initiative, a capacity for lateral-thinking. An early attitude problem can be a sign of potential. Pike was right to nurture him, right to spot how the black mark on his record could be turned into a golden asterisk of promise. And sure enough, of all the officers he briefed in the People Laboratory for the Hogg project, Benedict Sommers has been the most committed, the most diligent. The most proactive too. The Hannah Park business –
Benedict’s initiative. Benedict’s idea. The Boss had processed it, and finding no flaw, had even earmarked the young man for a success reward, placing him back on the fast track where he belonged. Soon he’d be leaving Liaison behind, and be at Facilitator level.
– St Placid report, says Benedict. (Pike has missed his voice. Been looking forward.) – Thought you should be aware.
– Yes. Go ahead, son.
Son?
The word flips out easily, as though he’s said it before, but he hasn’t. Affection – he’s never felt it like this before. It hatches in his head, pure silent pleasure.
– The toxicity levels – you’ll get the printouts, but well, they’re almost off the scale. And the customers are jumpy, no question.
– But?
– Well, they’re sort of happy too. There’s this sort of euph
oric
effect, it’s having. I guess like a wartime spirit. I mean, there’s all the panic about the Hoggs, but – well, you know. They feel sort of
virtuous
. (Pike smiles. The accuracy of the Munchhausens’ graphs is intensely gratifying. You can almost forget …) – And spending’s through the roof, says Benedict. (Pike can hear him chewing. He must have a word with him sometime about that wretched green gum.) – Up 25 per cent. And with the promotion coming up – well, they’re going bananas.
– And the Park business?
Outside, on the horizon, the
Sea Hero
comes into view, a distant block of grey.
– Oh, I was going to tell you, says Benedict. I’ve visited regularly, as planned. The mother’s happy with the sabotage story. Well, not happy of course, but … well, she’s a model customer, so …
– She hasn’t questioned it, nods Wesley Pike. He’s gazing at the ship.
From Benedict, the sound of chewing.
They’re calling it the dawn of a new era, but the thought brings no comfort to Tiffany, Gwynneth and Geoff. The
Sea Hero
is now sliding its way up the estuary – and Harvey with it.
Gwynneth, who not long ago gave birth to the baby Howard – a fretful, colicky lad, hard to settle, quick to posset his lunch – tightens the belt of her dressing-gown around her birth-whacked midriff and chews on a fingernail. Nearby, balled up in an armchair, Tiffany feeds herself popcorn coated in spray-on caramel. Both women have spent the morning watching the TV, their stomachs twisted in knots. Geoff, stress-management consultant and new dad, won’t even look; it threatens his blood pressure. He sits with his feet in a basin of warm water, slices of organic Kenyan cucumber over his eyes, listening to whale music on headphones and secretly wishing he’d never met the Kidd family. Look what it’s all led to!
For all of them, today sees the culmination of a year of what Geoff has christened pure unadulterated hell. Ever since the chilling documentary about the Hoggs was screened, the sirens have been wailing their morbid soprano day and night, deepening the siege mentality in the family home. The new baby can’t be blamed for sensing that something is horribly awry in the world he has entered – and screaming accordingly, both day and night. Fear stalks the beleaguered
little family, raises their hackles, making them hiss and snarl at one another like beasts at bay. The knowledge that they share is a burden too awful for one small family to bear.
As the
Sea Hero
sails towards Atlantica on their TV screen, Gwynneth plunges her head into her hands and groans. Not for the first time she wonders if she should check herself into some kind of clinic, or ring the Hotline and blab the whole thing. Oh, she was happy for Tiffany to bust Harvey and hand the Hoggs to Liberty – as anyone in her position would have been! But how could she have guessed they’d reappear in this ugly, frightening way? When they don’t even exist in real life?
Or do they?
She’s no longer certain. They’ve come to seem so – well, oh, just so horribly real! She’s even seen them on television! Heard interviews with their victims! Her friends have told her about the swathe of corruption that Cameron’s been spreading, vandalising street signs with his graffiti’d insignia. And there’s no avoiding the destruction wreaked by Sid, who’s been cutting the perimeter fence of the purity zone every night. There’s a rumour going round that Rick’s behind some of the broken marriages – Dr Carney’s, for example, that seemed made of rock.
– It’s all your fault! she blurts at Tiffany. If it wasn’t for you –
Tiffany pauses over her popcorn.
– But I didn’t – I mean how could I –
She sighs and stops. It’s pointless. What is there to say? Over the months, she has tried to reassure her family that, by delivering Harvey to Liberty when she did, she has gained them all immunity. But her sudden unexpected redundancy tells another story.
– The fact is, spits Gwynneth, that we know the Hoggs aren’t real people, and nobody else does!
– Shhh! hisses Tiffany, diving a hand deep into the popcorn
tub, her face flushing with fear. It’s not safe to talk! Even to each other!
Picking up the bad familial vibes, baby Howard begins to cry.
– I’m scared, groans Tiffany, ignoring the infant’s wail. I don’t want to do it! Her eyes blur at the thought of this afternoon. She is shaking with fright.
Two weeks ago, Liberty came to the door. There were two plain-clothes associates, a man and a woman. When she saw the Liberty IDs flashed at her, Tiffany’s heart bucked painfully. There was another one waiting outside in a car with Groke number-plates. He was dark and powerful-looking. Security, probably. He’d have a gun. His eyes swivelled expertly about the street.
– May we come in? the tall man had said, stepping in.
– Won’t take a minute, said the woman, following.
While the blond man did the talking, the woman did the poking around. It was frightening. They’d felt so alone, so isolated. Tiffany had been so scared she’d crammed her face with cold alphabet pasta all the way through the meeting. Howard cried incessantly. Gwynneth shivered and whimpered. Geoff just did breathing exercises, trying to keep his pulse-rate down.
– There’s heart failure runs in my family, Geoff trembled, when the Liberty man finished explaining the terrifying bottom line. The Liberty man’s mouth had tweaked upwards in response, as though he thought heart failure was funny. But in the end what choice did they have, once the smooth young associate had graphically described what would happen if they didn’t co-operate? With sinking hearts, Tiffany, Gwynneth and Geoff agreed to do what Liberty said.
– You’ve made the right choice, said the Liberty woman as the quaking Tiffany took the red biro she was handed. And scared witless, wrote as dictated.
Two weeks ago. Two awful, scary weeks. Nearer and nearer comes the ship. And now it has docked.
– I can’t do it, whimpers Tiffany.
– There’s no choice, snaps Gwynneth, silencing Howard with a dummy.
And there isn’t. She’s committed.
A buzz at the door: that will be the car now.
The flooding in St Placid starts slowly from the east, exhaling a sickly lavender mist. Some customers, armed with binoculars, thermosed coffee and video-recording equipment, are strolling up to the foothills of St Giddier’s Mount to watch its creeping progress inland. There’s something mesmeric about the way the slick of liquid moves; it’s almost organic, like blood. By mid-morning when the pools have widened and flattened, you can even make out a steady smooth gurgle as its pulse strengthens. Look now across the farmlands and you will see dreamy lakes – vast thick pools that vibrate their own eerie subterranean song. Every now and then, the smooth skin is broken by the silver flip of a jumping fish, or the reaching tentacle of an ink-filled squid.
The lavender spreads softly, a balmy puddle of oil on glass.
The stillness is rich, tangible.
The lights are off in Tilda’s lilac apartment, but the sun spills in, casting its soft rays across her ancient doll face. The television throbs weakly in a corner, charting the day.
In the Temple on the top floor of the ziggurat, Wesley Pike breathes in the strong feisty peppermint rush of the day. He has eaten a bagel, drunk more Brazilian coffee, run his eye over more graphs, and flicked through the news channels. The customers, jittery from the extra peppermint, have begun shopping in earnest now; you can see them down below,
swarming from store to store, zealous and united. He loves this view of the city. He will love it for ever. High above the busy grid of streets and plazas, the glittering sky whirls with fresh promise. Far away on the shining horizon of the United States, the customers of America have spoken.
His thoughts float. In war, it is the little man who wins; the honest and stalwart customer, whose courageous faith lights the way for the faint-hearted.
The masters have been abolished; the morality of the common man has triumphed
. She’ll keep the faith. There’s a plan for Atlantica; of course there is.
