The Paper Eater (21 page)

We have a system that’s so admired worldwide that the people of the United States are campaigning to have it
, went Craig Devon.
In the near future, a superpower may finally get the administrative system it deserves, free of human error. If that happens, it will be the dawn of a new era for mankind. An era of peace and prosperity.

Next, a shot of Earl Murphy, the American hero taxi driver, heading a huge march with banners. Music underneath. Your heart thrilled at the sight of it. You couldn’t help rooting for what they wanted.
The people of Atlantica fought hard, as ordinary Americans are now doing, for the high standards we have enjoyed in the last decade
, went Devon. His voice sounded as juicy as pork.
But what we have fought for is now under a very real and terrifying threat
. The sinister music
started again – a pulse of drums – but I must’ve blinked or something, missed a beat. Because suddenly without any warning, there was my family. Filling the screen.

For the first fragment of a second, my reaction was joy; so much joy at seeing them again alive that I caught my breath. I wanted to shout out to them from across the hall, at the top of my voice: Hey, folks, it’s me, Harvey! Look, over here!

But straight away the joy curdled. Something had gone obscenely to cock.

– My God, I murmured. And the horror welled inside me like vomit.

I wasn’t the only one to recoil from the cluster of leering faces. All around me there were groans and gasps of unease.

– I’ve seen them, whispered the quivery man next to me. I’ve seen them before! I
know
them!

From the look of the other blokes around me, he wasn’t alone; they seemed to be experiencing the same thing. How come, I thought. I felt almost indignant:
I’m
the only one who knows them! They’re my private people! What’s going on?

This is no ordinary family
, went Craig Devon’s meaty commentary. The camera tracked from one grainy mug-shot to the next.
These men and women
, he went,
are the faces of a new evil
.

The terrible thing was that, looking at their distorted faces, you could believe it. It was as though all the goodness in them had shrivelled, and their worst traits – all those little tiny characteristics that barely emerged before had just, well,
ballooned
. Mum was suddenly mean-looking, superior and spiteful. Dad’s face was all stubbornness and violence. Uncle Sid looked like a slimy pervert. And Cameron: well, he’d always had it in him to be smugly threatening. Even Lola was suddenly – I hate to say it, but she looked like a slag. I shuddered. Are these the people I’ve known and loved
all my life? I thought. Is this what they’ve turned into? It horrified me to think that I once counted myself among this family’s members. I was glad my face wasn’t in the portrait, because they repelled me. I guess at that point I wanted to disown them.

Other people seemed to be having the same reaction, because as the screen faded to black, a low murmur of revulsion ran through the hall. Then there was a guitar twang and we were looking at the dog-collared bloke again. His face was like a St Bernard dog’s: sad and heavy with responsibility. He was cocking his head sideways, his fingers steepled in front of him on a big paper-strewn desk.

– This is the question, he said, and you trusted him immediately. In Libertycare, we have the fairest people system in the world. Atlantica is rich, successful, and globally admired. So why, why on earth – he unsteepled his hands and spread them wide, imploringly – has this movement developed? Why on earth is it setting out to destroy the very cradle of freedom itself?

It seemed like a good question.

The worst part was that some of what they said about the Hoggs was true.

The documentary went on to show how they’d set up a network of offshore companies, all bogus, that churned out millions per annum, on the backs of the Atlantican taxpayer. It showed the paperwork – my paperwork – on the French vineyards, the Australian paper-mills, the Italian sun-dried tomato industry, the Malaysian tiling factories. I recognised files I’d generated. Deals I’d cut.
The Sect has been using this fraud network to fund the sabotage of the cleansing mission
, went Craig Devon.

No! They’d never do that, I thought, they’d never
dream
of –

There were shots of the craters, taken from helicopters. St Placid was the worst affected. You could see a huge crack
stretching from one corner, and black liquid pooling out. It looked serious.
Damage like this was carefully camouflaged at first, and wear and tear was blamed. Then, zone engineers began to blow the whistle on the Hoggs
. There was an interview with a craggy-faced bloke in a hard hat, a crater worker. He described how Lola Hogg had approached him personally. She was a very seductive young woman, he said. The camera worked its way up her body and settled lingeringly on her boobs. After outlining her family’s eco-Luddite beliefs, which opposed waste recycling and the principle of reclaimed land, she’d offered him oral sex, in return for his help in an act of sabotage at the purification zone where he worked. Heroically, he resisted, and by a miracle, escaped from Lola’s clutches to tell the tale.

– But some of my mates, they weren’t so lucky. There were quite a few of them, got involved. And of course there were accidents.

Surveillance footage showed a small figure falling down a crater. They ran it in slow motion, then stopped it in mid-shot and zoomed in on his face.

Oh God, Lola, I thought. What have they been making you do?

Blah, blah, bollocks: on and on the film went, with each member of the family accused of some specific crime by an honest-looking customer. My mind was in turmoil. In my head, I knew it was all lies – but what was going on in my heart and my guts was another matter. What if the Hoggs really had turned bad? I mean, Lola offering that bloke the blow-job – she was capable of it, I reckoned. Sid’s fortune
could
be channelled into porn, and he had his louche side, I’d always known that. Cameron and Mum might, if pushed to an extreme, blackmail all the pupils at a school for the disabled. Dad had it in him to break a man’s ribs. When I saw the charity worker on the film talking from his hospital bed, fear in his eyes, low and quiet, I could see he wasn’t
lying. He believed it. And part of me did too. The Hoggs had been kidnapped, after all. What had Libertycare forced them all to do, against their will?

I felt giddy.

Over recent months, Libertycare has been doing its utmost to keep you informed while minimising customer anxiety and discomfort. But the truth we must now face as an island is that the Sect has infiltrated the purification system, and reversed the filtration and drainage process. Unleashing unprecedented levels of pollution, and putting the island itself in danger.

I groaned aloud, and the squirrelly bloke next to me jumped in the air with fright.

Perhaps I should have felt flattered, seeing what they’d done with my family. After all, the Hoggs were my creations, originally. And now they were famous. What more can an artist hope for?

Except I wasn’t an artist was I, I was just an ordinary bloke.

A family man.

As customers, we have responsibilities as well as rights
, finished the Voice of Atlantica.
Our task is to stay on guard, to protect the system we have fought for and deserved
.

The idea was simple, and scary. It had the capacity to terrify universally.

I’d underestimated them. Pike, and the Liberty Machine. And Hannah must have done too, because if she’d known what was going to happen she’d never have –

Would she?

So don’t think twice. Call the Hotline with your suspicions. Carry your loyalty card at all times. And the spirit of Atlantica will triumph as it has triumphed before.

– It’s a load of bollocks, I told myself. No one’s going to believe a word of it.

But that wasn’t true. I’d been half seduced by it myself.

SCUM

– Scum! whispered Tilda tremulously, reaching for the remote control and flicking the TV off. They’re even worse than Benedict said! I think I need a Vanillo. She poured a big one.

Hannah was rocking rhythmically. She’d watched the documentary with the inhaler clamped to her face. A sheet of collapsed bubble-wrap lay at her feet.

– Well, said Tilda, sitting down heavily, her face white. Thank God for the death penalty.

– But everything’s been twisted! blurted Hannah, pulling off the mask.

Tilda stopped drinking in mid-sip and looked at her daughter sharply.

–
What?

– The Hoggs aren’t like that! They’ve made them look – if you knew them, you wouldn’t see them like that, you’d –

She stopped. The room seemed to tilt even further.

Tilda was staring at her incredulously.

– You
know
this Hogg family then? You’ve
actually met
these people?

– Sort of, Hannah mumbled. And then backtracked. – No, of course not. Not in person. She gulped. – I’ve heard about them, that’s all. At Head Office.

Her mind was whirling.
I should have known
…
something must be going wrong on Atlantica. Badly wrong. The research I did – the Multiple Personality Disorder
…

She groaned.

If Harvey could see what they’d done to his family – how his nearest and dearest had been demonised, turned into –

– Scum, repeated Tilda vehemently. They’re scum!

But maybe he
had
seen. He must have been adjusted by now. She had to see him, tell him she didn’t know –

– Let me check something, she said to Tilda, gulping. I need to log on.

– You fire away, said Tilda, swivelling her legs off the footstool. I’ll go and make us a cup of tea. And then you can tell me more about this Hogg family.

When Tilda had hobbled out to the kitchen, Hannah opened up the computer and ran a search. Her fingers were trembling; she was so tense she kept bungling it and clattering the wrong keys. Concentrate, she told herself. Keep calm. And then, after a couple more slips, she got there; Head Office, Social Adjustment Department. And there was Harvey.

His photo, his name underneath.

And the Machine’s decision.

The world went white. It had to be a mistake. Pike said – She stopped short. Pike had said nothing. Nothing. And she hadn’t asked. She’d just assumed – a case of fraud. The words on the screen jumped about. The room was hot again. She must have groaned or cried out, because Tilda’s voice came through from the kitchen.

– Are you all right there, Hannah? Did you say something?

That’s when she remembered Leo Hurley, and the look in his eyes. Damage limitation. Her heart was pounding, fast and hard. It hurt. She’d been so stupid. Locked in her little bubble. Too scared to think beyond the here and now. Hiding behind her Crabbe’s Block, which Harvey said –

She shut her eyes. It’s all happening too late.

The anger that swept out of her was so fierce and huge she thought it might kill her. Things went white again, a
white-hot light, and there was a screaming noise like steam, a scream that went on and on, higher and higher, and then her mother was hobbling in.

– Hannah! Stop it! What’s happened to you?

– Where’s that envelope? screamed Hannah, and realised the terrible noise she’d been hearing came from her own mouth.

Her mother had changed gear; she was suddenly hobbling backwards now, reversing out of the room, one hand in the air.

– Stop this, Hannah! she whispered, hoarse with fright. Stop this now! You’re having a – fit!

– No I’m not! Just tell me where that envelope is! She was raw with rage.

– What envelope? stammered Tilda.

– The one I sent you to look after.

Tilda, still backing away, flushed. She put her hand over her heart.

– Well, I said I’d put it with your peanut-butter-label collection, up in the spare room, but I never got round to it, so it’s –

– Where? hissed Hannah in a pale, hoarse whisper.
Where?

– Top drawer, there. I’m going to finish making that tea. I think we need a cup, don’t we, after this – scene.

And she limped out of the room.

As Hannah pulled the envelope from the drawer, she heard her mother’s voice coming from the kitchen: high and excited. She must be on the phone, thought Hannah. Consulting Dr Crabbe. Or telling one of her friends from the girl gang that her daughter has flipped.

She forced herself to take some deep breaths, then began to open the envelope. As she attacked the flimsy seal, she stopped, and looked closer.

Someone had already done it.

But who? Tilda? She didn’t know. And there wasn’t time to think.

She ripped further, pulled out the document within, and devoured its contents.

Three minutes later she stuffed it back in the envelope, her head reeling. Everything suddenly made sense.

– The whole island, she murmured. – The whole island,
the whole of Atlantica
–

Leo had known. But he hadn’t known what to do, except get the document out of Head Office. What had happened to him? Where was he? She shuddered, thinking of the craters. And then it struck her.
If they find out I’ve seen this, whatever’s happened to Leo, could happen to me
.

Just then the doorbell rang, and immediately she heard voices in the hallway: her mother’s. And a man’s. There was no time to do anything; Tilda was ushering him in. Her face glowed, as though she were presenting a long-lost son. The man was tall, pale, good-looking. He had crystals stuck to his coat. A whiff of lavender followed him.

– I’ve been telling my daughter all about you, said Tilda.

Hannah swallowed. Her heart was banging. She knew him.

– Meet our Liaison associate, said Tilda, with her Visitor smile. What a lovely coincidence for us, he’s popped round. We’ve just watched the film.