No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

by James Smythe

  He doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he adjusts it in the mirror.

  ‘I’ll take Alyx,’ he says. ‘It’ll be nice to spend some time with her.’

  ‘Sure,’ Deanna says. She focuses on his neck, his hands up and fiddling with the knot, and she wishes that he would realize what he’s done.

  As he hands his bags to driver, he notices that the side gate to their house is open. ‘Shit,’ he says. The trashcan lids are up. He goes to them and peers in. ‘The bags are gone. Assholes.’

  ‘Again?’ she says from the porch.

  ‘I know,’ he says. He pulls the gate shut and looks at the cut-through lock that he put on after the last time that this happened, in the weeks following Sean’s death. ‘Can you buy a lock next time you’re at Henderson’s, something that’ll keep it shut, something they can’t cut through? Trent’ll know what sort of thing. A chain or something.’

  ‘Why do they do this?’ Deanna asks, coming out to look at the fractured remains of the cheap lock. It’s a rhetorical question. She looks at the pieces. Somebody came during the night and they were prepared. Laurence kicks the gate hard enough that it slams shut but swings right back open again, a clang of metal as the hinges meet and bounce against each other.

  ‘Don’t get stressed about it,’ Deanna tells him. ‘Please.’

  ‘I didn’t sign up for this part,’ he says. She kisses him, and he breathes out, an exhalation that’s part calm, part relief. ‘Let’s go,’ he says to Alyx.

  In the car, Alyx clambers. She presses the window button, making it descend and then rise again, watching the world be taken away by the slick blackness of the glass. When it’s shut, the glass changes tone and shade, allowing just enough light in while still letting them see outside. She coos.

  ‘This car is awesome,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ her father tells her. He puts the seat-back TV set on, flicking through the presets he’s established. Alyx turns her attention to it and the people talking.

  ‘Are you on here today?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Next week.’ The only time Alyx watches him on TV is when he’s in a one-to-one, because he always does a shout-out to her; always tells the family that he loves them. It’s a recent thing. The cynics, and there are many, think it’s working his personal situation to his benefit. Sometimes he wonders if he’s been that cynical himself and just not realized. ‘What have you got in school today?’

  ‘We’re reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ she says.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘I don’t know what else.’ She undoes her seat belt and he sees past her, to the traffic on the streets, the busy morning intersections, the reckless drivers. It’s the route chosen by the computer’s algorithm, the most likely route to get them where they’re going in the most efficient way possible. Traffic is mostly (but only marginally) better thanks to their ClearVista branded devices. But still, you can’t account for other people and human error, Laurence thinks. Some things simply cannot be predicted.

  ‘Sit down,’ he says, and he reaches over and clips her in himself. ‘Be more careful, okay?’ She nods and he kisses her forehead. He looks behind and out of the window, to see if anybody’s following them. He doesn’t know why, but it doesn’t hurt to be paranoid, he tells himself. This is what they want: the press, his enemies. They want him when he’s dropped his guard.

  Deanna’s finished her new book. She’s opened the file every day for the last week and read it all morning, right the way through until she picks up Alyx from school. It takes that full stretch of time: not because it’s especially long, but because she focuses on it, gets as deep as she can. She’s been editing it for weeks now, going over and over the words, searching for the truth in what she’s written. It’s important to find it because that informs the story, the characters. Every word is careful; every word has meaning. It’s arduous; but, she reminds herself, it probably should be.

  It’s eleven when she finally hears Lane waking up. Doors slam – bedroom, bathroom, bedroom again – and then comes the sound of her boots on the stairs. Deanna shuts her laptop, so that her daughter doesn’t see what she’s been working on – as if she would care, Deanna thinks – but then Lane is gone without even coming into the kitchen. Another slam, this time from the front door. There’s no shout of goodbye.

  Deanna thinks about going after her, but it would be pointless. She would yell at her and Lane would ignore her; or she would chase her and Lane would bite her hand off. They’re losing her, Deanna thinks. She’s old enough to leave home but she has no job or indication of a desire to do anything with her life, and that’s all that keeps Deanna hopeful: that Lane’s own lack of ambition, of drive, will keep her here for a while. While she’s at home, they can keep an eye on her; and it means that the house doesn’t become even emptier. Because Lane makes noise. Alyx is quiet, appearing in doorways and padding around in her bare feet, but Lane is noisy, and she’s difficult, and she fills the house with her presence.

  Deanna returns to the manuscript and her emails. As well as the new book she has got an email in draft. It’s been half written for the last few weeks, addressed to her agent. He stopped calling after Sean died, most likely because it suddenly became something that he would have to talk about but clearly wanted to avoid; and, Deanna reckons, he wrote her off. There was no chance of her finishing a book while she was still in mourning. And she felt the same, until she realized that the feeling of mourning was never going to go away. Then it became freeing, and that’s when the words came. And it might be that he’s not the best person to represent her now. Her previous books were flowing and grounded and real, but this new one is so sparse and fantastical he might be the wrong person to try and sell it for her. The email says all of this, but then it introduces the book to him anyway. Into the Silent Water, she’s called it.

  She describes the setting, the characters: a woman has forgotten who she is, but she wakes in a land that’s flooded, a thick and grotesque scar marked across her forehead. Her mark means that she did not die accidentally: it means that she killed herself. In her hand there is a picture of a child, and all that she knows is that she is there to find him. But he is lost, and she wonders, as she goes, how intentional this all was; that maybe her own death was the first part of a quest that she cannot possibly hope to complete.

  As she reads the synopsis, the novel, she thinks how thinly veiled it is, but that it doesn’t matter to her. Not with this book. She wants to publish it under a pseudonym, if it’s good enough to even be published in the first place. She can’t tell; she’s never been able to tell. She’s sure that nobody will want to hide who she is, especially if Laurence gets further in the race. After that, everybody will want their blood; she just hopes that it’s harder to take it if you don’t know it’s there, waiting to be tapped.

  As they wait at the airport’s check-in desk, Amit talks to Laurence about how this will be once he’s secured the nomination.

  ‘Then,’ he says, ‘they’ll wheel out the plane to ferry you around. No waiting. Think about that. And then, you know, a couple of years down the road, Air Force One.’

  ‘You’re cursing it,’ Laurence says.

  ‘It’s not a curse,’ Amit says. ‘You’ve seen the polls. Can’t curse that.’

  ‘I’ve seen three percentage points.’

  ‘Exactly. Foundations.’ In front of them an elderly couple bicker about the flight. They throw statistics at each other like curveballs. The airline hasn’t had an accident in a while, the woman says; that means, statistically, they are now more likely to. She talks about safety protocols and how likely they are to have slipped, reading probability numbers from the ClearVista app on her phone. The man counters that, behind the scenes, the airline is likely to have picked their game up specifically because of the existence of ClearVista. They’ll want to reassure their customers that they can be trusted. The woman asks why the likelihood of an accident – a percentage that’s higher
than the airline’s nearest rivals – isn’t higher, then. The man says that they haven’t taken that into account yet. It hasn’t propagated. Laurence listens while trying not to, and watches Amit tweeting about their day, about where they’ll be and what they’ll be doing.

  The delegates picked him, not caring about his lack of experience. Statistics and predictions, that was the way that the business of politics was always going to be heading and Amit came from that background, having worked for ClearVista in their early days. He helped to write their algorithm, the algorithm that has now intruded on so much of the world in one way or another. Too much math, he said, when Laurence asked why he wanted out of such a big company. They were something close to friends now, sure, but business always comes first. Laurence can’t imagine this relationship going further if he loses the race. Laurence knows how this works for Amit if they fail. He will bounce back, and he’ll be here again in four years with another potential candidate. His numbers, based on his time with Laurence, will be better; his stock maybe even higher. Especially if he jumps ship before he’s pushed. If he sees the way it’s going, watches the tide.

  The couple checks in, finally, and moves on, and then Laurence and Amit are second in the queue. The man in front of them holds his ticket up to the scanner and hands his ID to the girl behind the desk. He has no luggage, not even a carry-on, just a blue jacket, carried in his hand. It’s expensive-looking but bundled up. He pockets his ID, and he looks at Laurence as he steps past them. He nods, and smiles. Amit notices.

  ‘He knew who you were, see?’

  ‘What?’ Laurence is caught for a second, somewhere else.

  ‘He recognized you. Foundations, then a ground swell of being recognized. That’s as good as support, because he’ll remember that. He sees your face on a ballot, he’ll remember who he wants to vote for. You’ll see.’ Amit hands the assistant their IDs, and both men hold their phones out to scan their tickets. She asks them the usual questions and Amit answers for them. Laurence glances behind them.

  ‘I don’t like being recognized,’ he says. ‘They raided the trash this morning.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Somebody in the night,’ Laurence says. ‘Didn’t see who they were.’

  ‘That’s what some people will do. They’re desperate for news.’

  ‘News isn’t in my fucking garbage cans, Amit.’

  ‘Yeah it is. Larry, news is and always will be whatever somebody can get their hands on that somebody else will pay to read.’ He hands Laurence back his ID card. ‘Flight’s twenty minutes late. Let’s get a coffee.’

  They walk through the terminal to a coffee shop and Laurence finds seats at a table while Amit goes to the counter. This is how it is, now, until there’s a result one way or another: other people trying to bear the brunt of the stress for him, deferring whatever they’re not sure he can take and treating him as if he’s important. He doesn’t push back. Amit’s phone beeps as he comes back to the table. He grins.

  ‘The prediction’s done.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The little tick boxes, Larry. Remember the tick boxes?’ Laurence hates when he calls him that. He’s the only person who does, an affectionate little tic. Larry and Dee, frivolous and light … ‘The package is being put together, should be with us soon as anything.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘It is. But you’ve seen Homme’s. You know that it’s effective.’

  Homme had his own prediction released to the public a couple of months ago, the product of spin and facts, but also deep-rooted in his public persona. Amit thought that it was managed – it had to be – but to the public it seemed to be honest. It was in some way a truth. The ClearVista algorithm took his information – his entire life, realistically, when you break it down – and fed out a picture of a candidate who wouldn’t actually be a bad leader. Statistically, Homme was weak on so many issues, running with very few actual policies he seemed to care about but he was balanced, accessible, open to all. He would take red families in some places, that was his trick. Crossing party lines. Along with the hypothetical suppositions of what his stance would be on certain hot topics (which contradicted so much of the usual left stances, pandering to moneymen and the religious right), ClearVista created a short video. This was their most important gimmick: a new addition to the premium package, only possible with the most detailed survey and at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars; but, they promised, the trade-off was worth it. The video was useable, open source, free to be circulated however the recipient desired. Homme’s was perfect for him. It was so on-message as to be almost laughable. There he was in a helmet and a flak jacket, surrounded by swirls of dust, running to a helicopter, waving at troops; shaking their hands as he passed them, mixed gender and color (and even, in their haircuts and rainbow pin-badges, crudely implied sexuality). It was very presidential, the press agreed. They joked, the first time that they saw the tech, about previous presidents, and what it would have shown of them: Marilyn Monroe; ‘I am not a crook’; interns and cigars. A few days after the video was released – along with the full results of the tests, and the answers he gave to get the results, in the spirit of full disclosure and honesty – his numbers increased, stripping out votes from the other candidates. The video worked, even if it was only smoke and mirrors. ‘Pointless to be nervous,’ Amit says. ‘It’s done. Results come through later today, they’ve said.’ They leave the Starbucks and head for the gate, scanning their ID cards as they pass through to the departure lounge.

  They join the queue to board, and Laurence notices that the man who had been in front of them at the check-in desk is in front of them again now. He’s wearing his blue jacket this time: the back is wrinkled from where he was gripping it. He turns and smiles.

  ‘You’re Laurence Walker, right?’ the man asks. He holds out his hand, and Laurence looks at it: something wrong about this. It’s the second time he’s been here. He’s stopped believing in coincidence. Amit notices and steps in, shaking it first.

  ‘You’re a supporter?’ Amit is exuberant, as he always is.

  ‘Yeah, I thought it was you. I’m a big fan,’ the man says. ‘We’ve been needing somebody like you for a while now. We’ve been playing safe, I think. We need a shake-up, that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘Yes,’ Laurence says. ‘I agree.’ The man talks about the party and the future and Laurence nods his way through the conversation, relieved for some reason. Relieved, and yet still nervous.

  The flight attendants run through the drills and show the exits; and they show the little movie about what to do in an emergency; and then the plane waits while the captain runs the airline’s custom algorithm, to take into account the names of all the passengers, to generate a final figure that’s meant to dictate their safety levels; and Amit fights the elbows of the man next to him, who reeks of cheap cologne and grips the seat’s arms as they shuttle down the runway. He leans over, looking across the aisle at Laurence and the window, and he watches the ground seemingly get faster and faster, and then it tilts away from the plane as they head upwards, pulling away from the ground. His ears pop and he shuts his eyes and opens his jaw over and over in an approximation of a yawn. He’s one of the first to his feet when the seatbelt sign goes dark, grabbing his laptop from the overhead locker.

  ‘You want?’ he asks Laurence. Laurence shakes his head and jacks his seat back a few degrees.

  ‘I’ll get some rest,’ he says. ‘Wake me when we land.’ Amit sits down and logs into the Wi-Fi. He loads the calendar app and looks at the breakdown of the next few days, structured and tweaked to the minute in order to allow the maximum time with each of the potential investors, and at each photo opportunity. The little colored bars are packed tight, and he rearranges the ones that only involve the two of them – breakfasts, dinners – so that it maybe doesn’t look too bad to Laurence’s eyes. Artificial breathing room, Amit thinks: one of his finest tweaks to the system. And each of the appoint
ments has information attached that both men have to memorize. They have to know who donated what previously, and why; what the thing was that swayed their wallets. They have to know how deep they can make them dig. One of Amit’s junior staffers has prepared a full breakdown on every man for them, telling them who to discuss God (capital G) and religion with, and who is likely to want to talk about artillery instead of textbooks. There are lists of the names of their wives, husbands and children. One of them has lost a child, just as Laurence has; this is common ground. All of them will know everything about him; their own research just levels the playing field. Lies are pointless now, because information doesn’t die like it used to. It all sits there on some server, waiting for somebody to discover it and mine it and crosscheck it and use it. Used to be in politics that you could tell a different story to two different moneymen and they’d both buy it. Now, Amit’s rule is that you should stick to the truth, or whatever version of it is most palatable. You only work with what you’ve got. Laurence’s life is available to the world already. Everybody can read the words from the eulogy he delivered at Sean’s funeral; that’s nothing but material now.

  His email pings. It’s ClearVista. The whole thing is automated: no people sitting back and watching this, making it work. That was the tech that they were instigating when he finally left working for them. For whatever reason, that stuff always used to creep him out. The email is labeled Your Laurence Walker Results: there’s something disquietingly possessive about it. Laurence opens the email.

  Thank you for your contract with ClearVista, the world’s foremost predictions and statistics company, it reads. Your package [LW008] has been completed and the contract fulfilled. Please find the initial results attached. Further emails with package enhancements will follow. Thank you for using ClearVista.