The Paper Eater (26 page)

– We can have every confidence, he murmurs. Every confidence …

Next to him, the Boss vibrates gently, the shadows of clouds sliding slowly across her white flanks. The decisions she has made over the past year are based on simple equations really – the kind any child could make with a pocket calculator. In the Liberty system, the greatest happiness of the greatest number is a core principle. The figures speak for themselves. Atlantica’s five million, weighed against America’s two hundred and fifty. A part, sacrificed for the greater good of the whole … what more glorious contribution can a society make to global humanity?

America,
Home of Liberty
. Doesn’t it sound good? Doesn’t it sound …
right
?

Oblivious, Wesley Pike stares through the window and dreams on.

I look out of the porthole and my stomach clenches. Bird of Liberty flags flap dismally from the dockside buildings, and the leaning skeletons of scaffolding rear up from the silt of the river banks, spiking the Hope’s curve like the bones of a fish. The skyline of Harbourville is wreathed in heavy greenish mist. Head Office looks faintly askew. Is Wesley Pike up there at the top of that mineral-streaked monolith? I remember our meeting, long ago – a lifetime ago – in the Snak Attak.
He’d fazed me, by guessing the origins of the Hoggs like a mind-reader. Then talked about his mother, who flow-charted her son’s future before she died. As I crane my neck to peer up at it, I get the weird sensation that the sky’s falling on us, and Wesley Pike with it, and that his heavy charisma will crush me like paper.

I’ve added the finishing touches to the chess board with magic marker, still roiling with fear and rage about Gwynneth, Tiffany and that wanker of a Geoff. Why are they suddenly so set on banjaxing my fragile eco-balance before I croak? Their nerve is staggering. One of the first things I’m planning to ask my not-daughter Tiffany is what the hell she means by asking personal questions about my stool.

Sporting festive gas masks and Model Customer badges, excited Atlanticans roam the harbour and the city streets, spilling happiness and beer with equal recklessness. Whole families clad in bright leisurewear carry bulging bags of merchandise and push trolleys piled high with teetering goods. Wicker settees and matching occasional tables are on sale for fifty dollars. There’s a four-for-the-price-of-one offer on support tights. Artificial coral for indoor aquariums has gone through the floor. Dishwasher pellets are next to nothing. You can get five fondue sets for the price of three, and there are complimentary barbecue tongs for anyone whose surname begins with L. People are beginning to buy stuff they didn’t think they wanted, till they saw how cheap it was: automated curtain-rods, mushroom-growing kits, pinking shears, doll’s-house equipment, home leg-waxes, edible play putty, solar-powered strimmers, talking encyclopaedias, crystallised raspberries, toilet-brush holders in the shape of the Titanic.

Beyond the peppermint that’s gushing out at full strength there’s ketchup in the breeze, and hope, and the frangipani perfume that’s selling well this year in the over-sixties market, and the rise and fall of cheery retail banter. The customers are
eating and laughing and strolling about clutching cans of fizzy diet drinks, happy and aimless. High wittering voices float on the balmy breeze, mingling with the vaporous haze fanning in from the sea. There’s a band playing somewhere, a distant tinkle and throb. Atlantica is still a beacon for the world. They’re killing a man at three.

– Your brain isn’t much cop compared to even a simple piece of electronic circuitry, I tell John.

– Which would you prefer, he goes.

– So you can’t outwit a machine, I tell him. But you can fuck with its head.

– Having your eyes sewn shut with blanket-stitch by a syphilitic chimp, he goes, or –

– You can skew a game, just by being human, I tell him. Emotional decisions, they throw a spanner in its works, they –

– The chimp doing that, or having a nutter garage mechanic fill up your ears with that expandable foam stuff?

– You can win by accident, without even understanding why. You can –

My voice is trembling. And he’s in tears, banging his fist against the washbasin.

We’ve docked.

Just kill me now.

A crack rips across the atmosphere, and a rocket of orange-and-silver flame is shooting high into the sky’s concave shell and then exploding in a burst of dark-orange powder that spells out LIBERTY. The shimmering letters quake and shatter across the harbour, then billow out across the blank blue. A spontaneous cheer choruses up from the bubbling crowd, lasting long after the word itself has gusted apart.

– Li-ber-ty! Li-ber-ty! the voices chant. The thrill is infectious.

As the well-loved anthem
Independent and Free
begins to
strain and swell, a windy sigh seems to rise from the collective soul of the island and hover over the shining River Hope. The giant screens flash party colours, rich and amorphous. Feeling peckish, the customers head for the fast-food concessions which spring into frantic action, Catherine-wheeling with queues for big pink smudges of candy floss, sushi, and frankfurters. The music’s stirring chords build and build in a sumptuous crescendo, a crescendo that seems to bend the light so that the sky itself appears to throb in tune. The sun sparkles off a hundred edifices of glass and chrome, a thousand glinting trams, a plethora of shopping malls and schools, swimming pools and golf courses.
Independent and Free
echoes gloriously over the glimmering air, then drains to a tingling fade. The Ferris wheel begins a slow, happy revolution. Kids yell just for the hell of it.

This brave land.

In the visiting area on B deck of the
Sea Hero
, Tiffany waits with the others, clad in mourning garb and shaking with fear. She can’t stop it. She can’t. She’s been feeding herself pretzels to calm down. When they’re finished she plans to bite her nails to the quick. She wonders if she could ask the Liberty people if it’s OK to visit the loo.

Just kill me now.

A tap on my shoulder. I turn and see a masked face. The blindfold is a glittering, baroquey garment, de-luxed with purple silk, sequins, seed-pearls and minuscule glass beads. It twinkles as he inclines his head with the odd elegance of an emu.

– It’s crakko, I say. You have to hand it to him. – A work of art. An
oeuvre
.

He’s taking it off now, slowly. And he’s thrusting it at me, blinking, his red-eyed ugly-mug self again.

– For you, mate, he says.

I gulp. The words won’t come.

– When I thought it was me that was for the chop … well, I was planning to leave you all my stuff. You know, the tat Jacko sent. The Egyptian scroll thing, and the terrier. Even the rhino dropping.

I glance at the fibrous block, light as a piece of popcorn, like a home-made loaf sitting there squat on the shelf. That faint organic smell.

– Well, instead, he says, now that it’s you, going to – you know. Well, I thought you might like – well. A thing to say goodbye with.

I’m so moved I can’t speak for a moment, so I just take the blindfold, and hang it round my neck.

– I’ll … do it justice, I tell him. And the chess set …

But my voice wobbles and I have to cough. Enough said. He knows. Next thing, we’re hugging. A big heavy man’s hug, slapping each other’s back. It goes on for a while – and then we split apart, embarrassed. But we’re both smiling like a couple of idiots, glad that it happened. There’s some silence after that, as we blow our noses on bog paper and mull things over.

– Which would you prefer, says John. Being force-fed live tapeworms or having your whole face stuffed in a red-ant heap, eyes open?

– Well, it’s apples and oranges, that one, I reply, trying to sound cheery. But if I apply my mind to it, I’d have to say –

I was going to say the ant heap, but I break off in mid-flow. Because bam, it’s hit me like a whacking great sledgehammer between the eyes!

– Jesus! I yell. How could I have been so stupid? The rhino shit! A stool investigation!
How could I have missed it?

In St Placid, Tilda holds her breath and bears televisual witness to the sombre but exciting scene being enacted on the upper deck of the
Sea Hero
and relayed live, complete with a little
clock on the bottom left showing the minutes ticking by. There have been pictures of Harvey Kidd’s face everywhere lately. An
éminence grise,
is the caption in this morning’s paper. He chews the printed word, apparently; that’s why he’s grey. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he’s the one behind some of the Hoggs’ most daring economic atrocities. There was even a graph illustrating all his dealings on the stock exchange; he bought and sold –

Oh. It’s starting.

There’s a drum-roll, and on to the deck of the prison ship
Sea Hero
steps the Captain himself. He waves to the crowd, and then there’s another drum-roll, and Harvey Kidd’s daughter and ex-wife appear, both in mourning: the younger woman in a black trouser suit and dark glasses, her mother in a black dress and a veil. There’s a man with them; Tilda’s read about him too; he’s Gwynneth Kidd’s new husband, who’s come to give moral support. He’s in dark glasses and a sombre suit. Perhaps aware that he is only on the edge of the family, he stands a little back from the women, his hands clasped behind his back, his blond head sombrely bowed.

Tilda watches, entranced. She’s got some dim sum all ready to microwave but she’s glued to her chair. Another drum-roll and a door opens on to the deck. The prisoner appears, led by a chipmunk-faced guard.

Harvey Kidd, grey-faced, blinks in the light.

My head’s spinning. I can’t believe the size of the crowd, a throbbing packed mass, shoulder to shoulder. There must be thousands down there. As I raise my head to take in the spread of it, a massive jeer buckles out from the throng, a rushing throaty sound. They’re yelling and whistling and shrieking, their words cargoed with loathing, their tiny faraway faces distorted with hate.

No question about it; they want me dead.

– The sweet sound of democracy, murmurs Fishook. Justice
must be seen to be done, Voyager. The customer’s demanding it, see?

Beyond the bunting and coloured smoke I see the giant Ferris wheel doing a slow, mocking turn, the tiny figures in its clinging pods straining to gawp.

Rigged to the far end of the longest jetty there’s a massive screen, showing flickering scenes from the crowd. My heart’s jumping about this way and that, a rogue organ come loose inside my chest. I can’t think straight. I can’t see straight, either, because when the screen suddenly fills with something moonlike and grey, with blobby craters and weird protuberances, I don’t get what it is. The jeering gets louder, angrier. Then something twists inside me and I realise. The grey thing is a human face. Mine.

– Smile, Handsome, says Fishook. You’re on TV.

In her tilting apartment, the Vanillo bottle by her side, Tilda Park sits rapt as Craig Devon continues his hushed live commentary:
This is Harvey Kidd’s daughter Tiffany
…

Tilda watches the big girl. She’s the shape of a lumbering caravan. She steps forward and offers her father a fumbling embrace.

It’s a poignant moment for her, of course. She’s one of many people who’ve had to take the difficult but brave decision to Hotline their own parents …

Tilda sips her Vanillo. Stares, trembling, as the camera zooms in on Tiffany Kidd who looks miserable and scared. She’s shaking, and there’s a pretzel stuck to her collar like a brooch. Her eyes are red from crying. Poor girl, thinks Tilda. It can’t have been easy.

– Tiffany, mumbles Harvey Kidd. He’s trying to smile, you can tell. But it isn’t working; his grey moon-face twitches and his eyes skid about not settling on anything.

And this is his ex-wife, Gwynneth Kidd …

The smaller of the two women takes Kidd’s hand. You can’t
see her face because it’s covered by a veil. I’d do the same in her shoes, thinks Tilda. How else could you cope with the shame?

– Gwynneth, says Kidd. The name reverberates around the dock. – It was … kind of you to come. His voice wobbles.

– A pleasure, she musters. Her voice is wobbling too. It’s a ghastly moment – almost too intimate for television, really, if such a thing’s possible. Tilda gulps.

– Well, er. Goodbye, Gwynneth, says Kidd. His grey face is turning a shade paler and he’s sweating. – All the best.

Then Gwynneth backs off, to be consoled by her new blond husband. You can’t see his face very well behind the dark glasses, but he looks quite a catch. Familiar, somehow, too, thinks Tilda – but she can’t place him, and now the shot has changed back to Captain Fishook who is ushering the condemned traitor towards the raised platform by the prow. It’s a small space, the size of a boxing ring. The chair in the middle. When they reach the fenced entrance, Fishook takes Kidd’s arm, like the father leading the bride.

Quaking with a terrible anticipation, Tilda pours another Vanillo and takes a deep swig.

A hush descends, flattening itself like a thundercloud on a prairie as Harvey Kidd sleepwalks his way to the electric chair and sits. On the dockside, the crowd jostles to look at the giant screen which shows his face, blank with shock and fright. A fat woman has brought her own step-ladder and she’s bustling to erect it. Others have binoculars, and are trying to focus on the deck itself.

There’s no padding, of course
, murmurs Craig Devon in the hushed whisper reserved for snooker commentary.
We see here the functional arm-rests with clasps, and the straps there with leads emerging. Note too, the microphones at head height … Ah, as you see, Kidd is now reaching for his blindfold,
hand-crafted, apparently, by his cabin-companion … now here comes the ship’s doctor, Manolis Pappadakis, originally from Greece …

Dr Pappas’ gentle voice seems to come from far away, but he’s right next to me.

– Now please, Voyager, we will roll up your sleeves and I can apply the jelly, he whispers. For conductivity.