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.