The Paper Eater

LIBERTY DAY 2 P.M.

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.

– 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.

I can see from the red puffiness of his eyes that he’s been crying. The jelly’s a horrible gloop. Slowly, taking care, he straps my wrists to the arms of the chair.

– And now the ankles, we do the same.

I’m trembling all over as he annoints them, and locks the metal clasps. I’m freezing and I feel sick.

Now, ladies, gentlemen and children, says Craig Devon. His voice reverberates around me. I must ask you for complete silence, please, until after the Final Adjustment. Will Dr Pappadakis please now blindfold the voyager.

There’s a show-biz drum-roll, and Dr Pappa reaches for John’s sequinned oeuvre. It glints in the sun.

– I do not want this job, murmurs the doctor. Do not blame me, Voyager.

I nod, and he slides the blindfold over my eyes.

Darkness.

We will now begin the countdown, says the meaty voice of Craig.

That’s when the panic kicks in. I’m shaking, shaking – the fear flops across me in shuddering freezing waves. What if – what if they don’t – I don’t want to die. I’m not ready, and I’ll never be ready. I’m human.

– Ten, nine, eight –

Oh God! It’s so slow! So slow! Please hurry up!

– Seven, six, five –

And now it’s too fast! It’s happening too fast! Everything rushing in on me, screaming at me, my mind a blur, a tidal wave of noise. I can picture Fishook’s finger poised above the console. His head leaning down.

– Four – I squeeze my eyes shut.

– Three – I groan.

– Two – I tighten up my arse.

– One –

– STOP!

A woman’s voice. Small and firm as a bullet.

The crowd goes ape. After a split second of shocked silence, they’re yelling and screaming, tugging this way and that in a drunken Mexican wave. They came to see a man finally adjust! What’s going on?

What’s going on is this: Kidd’s ex-wife has whipped off her black veil and snatched the Captain’s hand away from the button. The blond man has grabbed him from behind and handcuffed him, fast as a magician’s trick. A sudden whirl of movement, and the woman’s drawn a gun from her handbag and she’s pointing it right at Fishook’s head! Another flurry and the Greek doctor has ripped Kidd’s blindfold off, and he’s swaying numbly in the light.

– Am I still alive? I mumble. The air seems to whirr around me. It’s the crowd, screaming.

– Yes, says a woman’s voice. And so am I.

It can’t be. I look up, and nearly faint. It is.

– Hannah! Alive. Dizzy, I close my eyes again. Then open them. She’s still there. Smiling at me like in a thousand dreams. The joy of it floods me in a rush, like I’m suddenly drunk, or drugged, or both, and I feel my smile stretch and stretch until my face aches with it. A thousand dreams.

Just kill me now.

Wesley Pike doesn’t recognise Benedict at first. Focusing, dazzled, he thinks simply, he looks familiar, he looks –

Then the feverishness kicks in again. Benedict. Pike groans, reaches for a chair, and sinks into it. The puzzle hasn’t fitted into place yet. Next to him, the Liberty Machine’s cool body hums. He shifts his glance back to the screen, still not taking it in.

Can that actually be Hannah Park, handing the gun to Dr Pappadakis – he seems to have offered to take over – and unstrapping Harvey Kidd, and – embracing him?

Pike licks dry lips. Tries to breathe steadily and evenly. Can’t.

Benedict is looking straight at him, or so it seems. He must know exactly where the cameras are. His face is like a coin flashing in the light. Pike recoils from the terrible, treacherous intimacy of his glance.

Fuck you, it says. I’m Benedict, and I know best.

Pike feels his own face go white. Hadn’t he known this about Benedict, right from the start? Hadn’t he said as much, in the People Laboratory? Made the boy blush?

The crowd is losing control, rage and frustration sweeping through it like a crackling bushfire.

– Wait! says a voice that reverberates across the harbour.

With the sudden swiftness of a snake spitting venom, the blond man has puckered his lips, shot a bright ball of green chewing gum from his mouth, taken the microphone, and put a hand in the air for silence.

– You came to see a Final Adjustment, he says. The crowd stops. Hushes. – So here’s an offer.

The amplifier picks up his voice, and scatters it. They’re listening now. The hush thickens and fills.

– Give us a few minutes of your time. If you’re not convinced by what we say, the Final Adjustment will go ahead. But if you are – Harvey Kidd will go free.

A murmur washes across the crush of people as he gestures the prisoner forward.

– Mr Kidd, he says to the grey-faced figure, who is grinning like a maniac. You have one minute in which to tell the customers of Atlantica the truth about the Hoggs.

The Final Adjustment will go ahead… My heart spasms and tumbles.

I should be prepared for this, but my instructions in the rhino shit were brief and anonymous and it was all a bit last-minute and – well… The truth about the Hoggs is suddenly feeling like a pretty tall order.

The big scary emptiness down below jolts me back. They’re waiting.

I clear my throat, an ugly barking noise that vibrates around me.

– The fact is, I stammer, the Hoggs aren’t what you think.

But it’s a bad start.

The microphone throws my voice into the air and echoes back, sounding fake and wheedling, as though I’m begging for my life. Which I suppose I am. The ugly yells are starting again. The customer doesn’t like it. He wants something more, or something else, you can hear it from the way his voice foams and froths upwards, curdling in the zinging wind. He came to see a man die. He wants his money back. I’m just a bloke, I think. How’m I supposed to – Five million pairs of eyes on me. Five million pairs of ears waiting.

– I always wanted a family, I babble. I didn’t have one, I was an orphan.

I’m shaking now.

– And so –

I shut my eyes.

I can’t do it. The Hoggs are still my family. If I tell the truth about how they came to me, I’ll lose them again, and for ever. And then what will I do? And who will I be?

I’m lost! Just kill me now!

When I open my eyes, there’s Hannah. She’s guessed my thoughts, because there’s a pleading fierceness on her face, and in that split second I know I have to do it for her, for me, for the customer, for all of us. From nowhere, the energy’s exploding inside me like a potent capsule, and I’m speaking in a new strong voice I barely know.

– I made them up.

From down on the dock side the crowd’s foaming voice deepens with a raucous menace, but there’s no stopping me now.

– They don’t exist! They’re inventions! I generated them on a computer, and that’s all they are. They’re not real, they’re not real, they’re NOT REAL!

I’m smiling. Smiling because it’s out, escaping like gas from a balloon whooshing high and invisibly majestic into the bright air. Something lifts within me: a huge weight’s gone; a heaviness that I didn’t know I carried. As my words float out across the harbour, I can almost see Mum and Dad, Uncle Sid and Cameron and Lola flying with them, in V formation, like a flock of birds migrating to a warmer place, carried on the peppermint breeze, up and away, joining the dancing molecules, leaving me behind. It gives me the strength to say it louder. In fact I’m shouting now, swept by a tingling, unfathomable euphoria. The blond man’s nodding at me eagerly. I see the relief break on Hannah’s face and she smiles the most dazzling and beautiful smile I’ve ever seen, and so I yell it again and again and again, I yell out the whole story, the whole nub of it, because I’ve found my true voice now, the voice that comes from deep inside me, from where my inner self hides.

– The Hogg family were just my FANTASY! They don’t EXIST! They NEVER DID! They were people I invented! They were a bit of me that got out of hand! I was LONELY, that’s all!

Out. Gone. I shut my eyes and feel something die and be born at once.

It’s then I know that I am free.

On the dockside a small dark figure, thickset as a keg of explosives, makes its way through the massed throng, looking for a vantage point from which to watch events on the giant screen. When he finds a small space near a couple busily unfolding a step-ladder, Dr Crabbe stops and strains his neck to watch. His eyes are on Hannah Park.

It was a year ago that she arrived on his doorstep in Groke. She needed to hide. The island was in danger. She’d be taking over his surgery, she told him. He could help her, or he could get busted. An easy choice.

The fat woman has carefully climbed her step-ladder and now stands at its top like a bulky statue, a frankfurter in each hand. Her mouth hangs open. Below, her husband holds the ladder steady. Their eyes are fixed on the giant screen.

Benedict Sommers has taken the microphone again.

– You have heard the truth, he says slowly. Now would you like the Final Adjustment to go ahead – or would you like to hear more?

There’s a short silence.

– More, blurts the woman with the frankfurters. The mustard is dripping down in ochre gloops.

– More! cries Dr Crabbe.

– More! call the customers, one by one, until their voices are melded into a single shout. More, more, more!

When Hannah Park steps forward, the cries die down again. They are ready to listen.

– I worked for Libertycare as a psychologist, says Hannah Park. The Corporation took all five Hoggs and re-modelled them as scapegoats. I know this because I was involved. The idea was for the family to take the blame for the ecological crisis on Atlantica.

– Ecological crisis? breathes the fat woman. What ecological crisis?

She drops her frankfurter; it rolls over Dr Crabbe’s foot and down the sloping tarmac and then stops, blocked by the wheel of a little boy’s tricycle.

– What’s a scapegoat? asks the boy.

– Shhhh! snaps his mother, her candy-floss poised like a pink cloud. She squints at the screen.

– The leaks at the purification zones aren’t due to sabotage, Hannah Park is saying. They’re due to a failure of the system. Libertycare has known for years that the cleansing programme was breaking up the island’s crust. All the surveys showed it. But instead of calling a halt to the whole thing – she pauses. A rush of voices ripples its way out across the harbour. – They adjusted the geologists and carried on. The murmur swells. – The Corporation knew that if you were aware of the crisis, you wouldn’t vote for them again. After the Festival of Choice, the system went into damage-limitation mode. The Hoggs were launched to deflect everyone’s attention from the real problem, while the United States voted.

Now, the crowd is shifting and stirring like a great cloud-mass. They’re all straining to watch, some of them jumping to get a better view.

– But the problem’s still here, says Hannah Park.

Benedict Sommers waves a brown envelope at the cameras.

– If you want proof, we have it. The document in here was generated by the Liberty Machine itself.

The fat woman, trembling, reverses her way down the step-ladder as he reads from it aloud in a firm voice:

The silence that follows is total.

If betrayal has a smell, that smell is wafting across the harbour now. As the customers begin to sense it, they feel suddenly, lurchingly sick. The eerie silence stretches as the truth sinks in.

– Well then, says the woman with the frankfurters.

– Better pack up, says her husband.

They become oddly practical. They fold their step-ladder. They check their belongings. Next to Dr Crabbe, a man’s voice says – Fuck! I don’t believe it! and an elderly woman faints, crumpling to the ground like a discarded piece of clothing. Behind him, a woman starts up a high, shrill moan. An obese family of five starts to nudge its way towards the ship. – Come on, urges the father. Let’s get the hell out!

The crowd is stirring in all directions, as though caught in a whirring food-mixer. They’re screaming and yelling now. It’s starting to sink in that it’s the beginning of the end.

Captain Fishook clears his throat, and murmurs something to Hannah. She hesitates, then signals at Dr Pappadakis to lower the gun.

– This is a Class One emergency, says Fishook. Over which I have the honour of presiding at this time. In accordance with nautical protocol, I am issuing an SOS. Calling all ships in the Atlantic Ocean. Please tune to channel 16. Calling all air bases…

As Captain Fishook speaks, a sudden sense of being part of history overwhelms him. He can see how this scene might become the stuff of legend. His voice deepens and swells with gravitas.

– Mass evacuation required, repeat, mass evacuation required…

In St Placid, Tilda watches. She knows it’s too late. Her eyes are round with shock. She lets the tears trickle. She doesn’t care.

Hannah! Hannah, alive! Hannah, looking at that man, that grey-faced Hogg criminal, her face wide open with love!

And Benedict! Benedict, who told her she was dead! He’s there too!

Tilda clasps her pill-box to her stomach. Her body shakes with a terrible, painful, uncontrollable joy. The pills rattle.

From everywhere and nowhere grows a great rumbling voice of anger, a voice that swells and heaves, filling the harbour and the sky above with the terrible heart-rending sound of human dismay. Picking up the faint strains of it, Wesley Pike exhales slowly. Now that the United States has voted for the system, this surely is the moment the Boss has been waiting for. It was she, after all, who dictated the schedule for the day. It was she who launched them all on this wild trajectory.

As if on cue, the Boss’s purr begins to alter subtly to a vibrant hum, and then a slow, deep whirring. Wesley Pike smiles, his heart soars. At last! As he waits impatiently for a sign from the strategy screens, he is only dimly aware of the faint clamour going on outside, the screams and shouts of panic, the urgent calls, the running footsteps.

The Temple door bursts open. A young field associate stands there panting, her uniform a disgrace.

– We’re bailing out, she says. There’s planes and ships being organised. You coming?

The Facilitator General laughs with gentle contempt.

– Are you sure? I mean the whole building’s pretty unsafe. And the ground underneath – I mean, there’s not much time, sir.

– Off you go, says Pike, flapping a hand. Join the rest of them.

– Suit yourself, says the girl. And leaves.

– I’ll wait here, says Pike gently under his breath, when the door has closed. I’ll wait with her. I’ll wait.

He knows she’ll deliver. Just the thought of it makes him feel dreamy and safe. Fallings from us, vanishings… Nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Reward success… Soon. She’ll do it soon.

On Captain Fishook’s orders, the crew have unlocked the cabins, and all the prisoners are pouring out, heading for the rapidly filling upper deck and congregating there as though sleepwalking. The sky seems to ache with the pity of it.

– I nearly didn’t get it! I gabble into Hannah’s hair. I won’t let her go. I can’t stop kissing her. My Hannah. I guess I’m sobbing. – I didn’t open the letter, see, I left it standing on the shelf, I didn’t think –

– We had to take a gamble, she says. She’s crying too.

– Where were you all this time?

– In Groke, with Dr Crabbe.

– The man who – I stop, and gawp.

– Diagnosed me, she said. And sent the rhino dropping.

It takes a moment for this to sink in.

– The satellite engineer? Jacko? That’s Dr Crabbe?

– The rhino thing was his idea. He had a contact who –

We’re interrupted.

– You did it, mate! You did it!

It’s John, lumbering thickly towards us, balancing a tray with my chess set on it.

– Sometimes you can win, he says, laying it down gently on the electric chair, just by being stupid. That’s what you said, isn’t it?

He’s grinning all over and I am too. Next thing I know we’re locked in a rib-crushing hug.

– Human. I said human.

– Same difference.

– I made that chess set, I tell Hannah proudly, when John and I have pulled apart. I’m still crying, and so’s she. – From chewed-up paper.

– It’s beautiful, she says.

And so are you, I’m thinking.

– My white queen, I tell John.

And then there’s a tiny silence, the silence of a new presence that’s joined us. I know who it is but I don’t turn right away. When I do, my heart stumbles. She’s dressed in black. Her eyes are red. She hangs her head and won’t speak. I have the same problem; I open my mouth, but there’s nothing. I’m blocked.

I look away, stare out to sea.

– Dad, she says.

I gulp.

And then I say – Tiff.

I turn and smile, and she smiles back. And that’s all we can manage for now, and maybe that’s all we’ll ever manage, but it’s enough.

The sudden noise catches Pike unawares: a Tourettish stammer of activity from the printers, belching endless concertina’d reams of pages, overflowing their trays and gushing to the floor, skidding on the lino and fanning out in chaotic sheaves. Pike scrabbles for an armful, rips it off. And scans a page. This section of the blueprint shows rows of figures. Strange disjointed words. Equations that make no sense. Graphs that peak and trough meaninglessly on the page, doubling back on themselves and exiting upside-down. The letter w appears to be repeated a thousand times. A page of slogans follows: PUTTING THE CUSTOMER FIRST. YOUR CHOICE, OUR COMMITMENT. FREEDOM: THE DREAM THAT CAME TRUE. THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. VALUE TALKS. A FESTIVAL OF CHOICE. Strings of gobbledegook. A complex Venn diagram, whose circles overlap heavily, like storm-clouds. THE BARGAIN OF A LIFETIME.

The machine’s throaty thrumming deepens, then soars upward three octaves. And ends in a high, thin shriek.

– Well, Captain, says Benedict Sommers. Are you ready?

– Aye, aye, says Fishook. When he grips the microphone, a little shiver runs through him as he makes the mental adjustments.

– Now, folks. Listen up. This is turning out to be a – momentous occasion indeed. I may even be right in thinking that we are witnessing our finest hour. Now it’s with great pleasure and respect that I am handing control of the ship to these fine people here.

And another huge, rushing roar goes up, with whistles and shrieks and yells tumbling headlong across the sky towards the ship like the rumble of a huge human motor. In a small wave at first, then massing thickly, the customers start to mount the gangways and pour like lava on to the decks. A small stocky man who looks like a keg of explosives is among them. The throng swells and roars, a cyclone of humanity.

On the streets of Harbourville, the looting has begun.

Hannah’s been telling me how when she met Benedict Sommers at her mother’s in St Placid, she thought it was the end.

– And it would have been, if Benedict hadn’t read the document in Leo’s envelope. He did some research, and found out that Leo –

She stops, and her eyes fill with tears. I squeeze her hand.

– Dead?

She nods.

– That’s when we knew I’d need to disappear. I went to Dr Crabbe’s surgery, and Benedict stayed close to Pike.

She looks across at Benedict; he’s with Fishook, at the wheel. They’re studying a map. He turns and smiles and she smiles back, first at him and then at me.

My heart’s going crazy.

The smile has spread to a grin. In Head Office I never saw her smile. She’s so pretty. Her face is different from how I remember it. It’s all flushed and – I don’t know. Free. But suddenly, a horrible fear hatches: will she still want me?

– Hannah, are you still, you know, you?

There’s a stretch of silence.

– I am, she says finally. If you are.

– But your Block…

– Well, I was blocked, once.

– And then? Did Dr Crabbe –

– No, you.

– Me?

I’m gobsmacked. Proud of myself.

– I did that? I say. Without even knowing? Just by…

– By loving me, she says.

There’s another little pause.

– But it was so easy! I blurt. Anyone could’ve done it!

I’m blushing. Like a jerk.

– No they couldn’t, she says.

And I take her in my arms.

In her tilted apartment, Tilda tingles with pride and a loose, disjointed bewilderment. It’s not every day your daughter pops up alive and well on national TV when you thought she was a piece of calcium at the bottom of a crater. Not every day that you check the cassette they gave you, and discover it’s not Hannah committing sabotage and falling to her death at all, but a promotional video for the Liberty Trust Scheme, showing how you can save twenty-eight dollars a month by pledging your assets to the Corporation in perpetuity.

On the streets outside, some of her neighbours have pumped up inflatable dinghies and are setting sail in little clusters, clutching maps and compasses. Good luck to them.

Tilda holds her glass of Vanillo high, its silver liquid gleaming in the fading light. She sips, and the warm glow spreads and deepens, cushioning her like a cosy internal duvet. She’s seen the future. She’s seen how her daughter and that grey-coloured man will sail away somewhere and get as far as they can but never be safe, because the United States is run by Them now, and it’ll be re-named Liberty and the world will somehow overnight be – well just bigger and better and… Oh, she’s too old to think about all that nonsense. Let the young ones worry. She doesn’t have courage or ideals, she isn’t a fighter; she can listen to the sounds of panic outside and the little screams, without being too disrupted. There are plenty of ready-meals in the freezer, and she’s got the telly.

She’s always been a bit of an armchair person.

Yes, she’s seen the future. And she’ll stay put.

The satellite predictions that now litter the Temple floor show how in a matter of weeks the land to the west will have saturated like soggy bread. How the plantations of mango, guava, coconut and lemon-grass will dissolve into swamp, more liquid than solid. Swamp that itself will effervesce, sucked down by the seductive lure of physics. Deep down below the tilted coast, geology resists feebly the pressure of the inevitable. The purity zones ravaged by filth, the waste channels blocked, the volcanic fissures bloated. Over the months to come, Atlantica will relax, loosen the corset of her geography, let what will buckle buckle and what will sink sink.

Gravity has outlined its agenda.

Urgent hoofing noises thunder in the corridor outside the Temple.

– She knew all along, murmurs Wesley Pike. The echo of the machine’s high shriek still rings in his ears. Treachery tastes like sour iron in his mouth. She knew. Knew, and knew he’d buy whatever she said, knew he’d buy it because he was used to buying and it was all about buying.

His heart twists as he reaches for the lever that calls a halt. The software has already taken up office in the United States and it’s over for Atlantica, it’s been over for a long time, so whatever gesture he makes – the only gesture left – can mean nothing.

It’s a smooth, cool, decisive slide. It’s the work of a second.

It means nothing. It means everything.

When it’s done, he is surprised to find himself a man again.

Bewildered faces turn to catch the last rays of the dying sun, and we breathe deep, inhaling the peppermint breeze that bears the ugly lurch of grief. The sky swarms and buzzes with helicopters peeling away from the city, thistledowning in all directions. There’s a loud boom, and then a protracted honk from the funnel as the gangways lift.

Minutes later, to the sound of screaming panic, the ship has pulled slowly out from the dock and Fishook is steering eastwards from our steadily crumbling shore. As we leave the estuary behind, the waves in our wake seem to foam and curdle and the cloud-mass above us echoes with the high thin cries of the island we’re abandoning. Gradually, the darkening silhouette of Harbourville grows smaller and more precarious, shuddering to a pinprick in the gusting wind.

Hannah and I stand in silence, in the first clobbered stages of shock, the tears running freely down our cheeks. On the horizon, the sunset glows a hectic red, fringed with the toxic blue haze of an all-seeing sky, and from the distant island, an orange-and-blue firework bursts and blossoms across the bubbling seascape, filling the sky with a fierce and bloody light.

I’ll never lose sight of this tiny, intense split second, this little numb splinter of grace. The future is rushing in to swamp us, I can already feel the concave ache of it. I have no idea where we will sail to now, or where the human world is headed. But I know there is more gullibility than wisdom and more greed than kindness and more darkness than hope and more fine wares than anyone can ever pay for.

How easy we are to seduce.

Survival is our burden and our treasure.

Our treasure: a tiny guttering beacon in the whirling sea.

Let us not sink.