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.