John looks up at the sound of the dismal tearing.
– What are you doing there, Harv?
– Facing up to reality, I tell him. The letter’s out of the envelope now. I flatten it out – it’s covered in the same big childish red writing – but I’m still not ready to look.
– You said you weren’t opening it. I’m not opening it, you said. You said no news was good news.
– Well, that was before, wasn’t it.
Before. When I had all the time in the world. I look at it. John’s watching me.
– Is it from Hannah? You never said – But he stops, probably because he’s seen my face.
– It isn’t from Hannah, I begin.
The world shifts as I speak, into a flat thing, two-dimensional, with only a faint vertigo to tell you we’re on a round planet, ruled by gravity. I think about my cud, and the half-dried rook with the fat arse, which is supposed to represent my not-daughter Tiff. I think about the game I’ll play with the French cyber-forger from H deck, Ollivon. I’ll use the Queen’s Gambit and win thanks to some nifty bishoping. Or lose, because I’ve never had a way with knights. Is the cat still alive, I wonder, and living with Mrs Dragon-lady? If so, is she still feeding him that dried rubbish packed with addictive additives, that wrecks his gums? As John’s needle flashes anxiously in mid-air, I’m also thinking, I’ve never actually said the words before, even to myself.
– It’s not from Hannah, I say slowly.
It’s a struggle just speaking. Something heavy starts to do battle in my throat but I swallow to force it down. I look out of the porthole, try to banish the nudge of vertigo. Seagulls chopping against the wind.
– Why not? His voice different, husky.
I can’t tell him though. Can’t bring myself to say it. The words are stuck.
But pennies are beginning to drop with John, I can feel it. That’s how well I know him; I don’t even have to look. While he’s hovering between saying it and not, the power of the moment swells like an electric force. It’s just when I think it’ll knock us both flat that he clears his throat to speak.
– Is it because she’s dead? he asks formally.
I’m braced for it, so I don’t turn.
I sit and watch the seagulls and the cormorants flapping. There’s stuff you come across, never quite makes sense, isn’t there. Like what on earth possessed somebody – I forget who – in 1793, someone near Bergen, in Norway, to construct a whole church, complete with pews, pulpit, organ, knave, window-frames, walls, the whole shebang, entirely of papier mâché? It stood for thirty-seven years. It might have stood for longer, if it hadn’t been demolished. Then in 1883 in Dresden, a watch-maker made a watch from it that worked. It was his masterpiece, and it performed as well as any metal watch, he said.
Chew, chew, chew.
– Pike sent me that card, I say finally, nodding at the shelf. It’s tasteful, a white background, the Bird of Liberty, and forget-me-nots. – It arrived three months after I came on board.
Oh, I’d already guessed by then. I knew in my heart of hearts it’s what they’d do. Betray the customer and you are betraying yourself.
– Sincere condolences, it said. There was a little newspaper cutting too, and the text of the in-house obituary. A Tragic Accident.
John coughs apologetically, a little husky bark. It must set up a tiny air-gust in the cabin, because it’s enough to send the letter whooshing off the table. It doesn’t seem to matter any more, though. So the letter flaps in a zigzag to the floor, and I leave it there. From where I’m sitting, I can see the signature at the bottom, though. It both surprises me and doesn’t.
Tiffany.
I clear my throat.
– The heyday of papier mâché in Europe was 1770–1870, I tell John. That’s a long time ago.
LIBERTY DAY: 5 A.M.
Seen from space, Atlantica sits like an organic jewel on the canopy of the ocean, its frilled coastline surrounded by the kind of shimmering halo that glaucoma gives to a source of light. Slowly, the first threads of morning trace their way across the gleaming flood-pools near St Placid, exhaling a mauve mist which rolls across farmlands of okra and pineapple, suburban cul-de-sacs and city streets, swirling its way into five million dreaming minds. It is towards this methylated, vaporous landscape that the Sea Hero – still barely a dot on the horizon – now sails. Atlantica twitches in its sleep.
It has been a difficult year.
Panic feeds on the human spirit, sucking at its boundaries in small greedy waves. The past twelve months have witnessed a sea-change on the island: families splintered, best friends revealed as traitors, houses re-mortgaged, holidays cancelled, wills re-drafted. Long queues snail out from chemists’ counters, where the supply of Libbies cannot meet demand. Trust, on Atlantica, is now a commodity more prized than saffron or truffles, as mythically laden as frankincense and myrrh. Ever since the screening of Evil In Our Midst a year ago, hot on the heels of the Festival of Choice, the Hotline has registered up to two million calls a day, a proportion of which have been re-routed to backup services beyond the green belt of Harbourville. Only last night Mr Liam Hedges from Groke saw a man fitting Sid Hogg’s description hopping off a tram, ‘easy as you please’, and entering a massage parlour ‘well-known to the authorities’. A sharp-eyed child from Atlantica City South District raised the alert when he witnessed Cameron Hogg and three unidentified associates bullying a drunk Marginal in a play area, and ten separate callers reported spotting Gloria Hogg rigging roulette machines in Mohawk and planting toxins in the gas pumps outside a holiday hypermarket. A typical evening.
But while Libertyforce has questionnaired, marginalised and processed hundreds of suspects with exemplary precision and speed, the Hoggs themselves remain frustratingly elusive. They seem to be both everywhere and nowhere.
And most frightening of all, the movement is spreading.
Up in the Temple on the top floor of the corporate ziggurat, Wesley Pike, sipping rich Brazilian coffee, is skimming the latest graphs from the Munchhausen’s Department. The Boss’s psycho-statistical forecasts have proved accurate again: a distinct element of excitement is becoming traceable beneath the customers’ fluctuating stress-levels. As Liberty Day dawns, this mood can safely be expected to reach euphoric levels. It makes sense of course, he reflects, refilling his china cup from the small percolator. Danger has its thrilling side. Nobody can put their hand on their heart and say it doesn’t thump that 40 per cent extra in times of crisis and that the thump doesn’t feel good.
Wesley Pike lays down the graphs and loosens his tie. Today the Boss has ordained that the customers’ spirit be rewarded: the Bargain of a Lifetime starts at nine. It will feature the biggest discounts ever made in consumer history. There’s to be 60 per cent off designer labels, 70 off tableware. 80 off suites. Entertainment-wise, the Final Adjustment of Harvey Kidd is scheduled for three. All is going as planned.
Correction: 85 per cent is going as planned.
An unwelcome worm of unease uncoils inside Wesley Pike as he remembers this, constricting his gullet. He puts down his coffee, tugs at his collar and undoes the top button of his shirt, fanning the air with his hand. It’s hot.
The ground force has implemented all the Boss’s formulae, planting evidence and obtaining videotaped confessions when and where necessary. It has followed her recommendations to the letter, never veering from the blueprint. Some associates have even offered initiatives for her approval, and been rewarded. So why do the satellite pictures continue to hint at an alarming escalation of the still unmentionable problem, a geological crumbling that is more than mere erosion? Wesley Pike is not alone in wondering this – but he is alone in his faith. Or so it feels.