The Paper Eater

by Liz Jensen

  A situation such as mine? Friends and family? What’s he talking about? From the corner of my eye I notice that he’s put his cigar down and taken the microphone of the tannoy system from its holster. He’s fondling it near his cheek like an electric razor.

  Then he clicks it on and speaks.

  – Wind east-north-easterly, he says, switching to DJ mode. His processed voice ricochets about the vessel, setting up a million tinny vibrations. – Steering a steady south-southeasterly course, due to exit Northern Waters Section at 0500 hours GMT tomorrow, destination, Atlantica. He gives a little pause, then, and looks at me. Where we will be celebrating Liberty Day with the Final Adjustment of a leading Sect member and Enemy of Libertycare. Another pause, in which he looks at me more intently. – Some of you know him on board as the Paper Eater. (What? I’m thinking dumbly. What was that?) It still hasn’t sunk in. And it still doesn’t, even now when he’s looking me right in the eye and saying slowly into the microphone – His name is Harvey Kidd.

  I just think, hey, that’s my name too.

  – Light vessel automatic, winds westerly, says the radio. The words catch me in a smooth trap of language. Turning to gale force later … winds fresh, southerly … It’s mesmeric. If you stay very still, the words sort of imprint themselves in your head, and giddify you. That’s the way mantras are supposed to work. I read it somewhere, in the Education Station, when I was searching for the meaning of life and came across the knitting-machine theory. I looked up love too. Devoted attachment to one of the opposite sex, esp. temporary. Fishook is looking at me.

  – What? I mumble. I really am feeling a bit confused, as if the geography of the shipping forecast has somehow dislocated me. – Me? I ask finally. Stupidly.

  Fishook gives me a sideways look. And a little nod that says yes.

  That’s when my knees give way, and I’m sagging to the floor, clutching the wheel to stop myself.

  Fishook switches off the tannoy, replaces the microphone in its metal holster, re-lights his cigar and stands next to me, puffing Cuban clouds. Together, we watch the horizon. I grasp the wheel, numb. My heart’s contracted like a shocked scrotum but I don’t let it show. Steer a straight course. I’ve seen him marlin-fishing. He likes to leave them writhing on the deck. Sometimes he’ll have them thrown back. Sometimes not.

  Something inside me’s collapsing, sucking the breath out of me. If I could just wipe the last five minutes from my mind, stick my head in the sand, pretend –

  Is this a joke, I ask, remembering Flussman.

  – Sadly not, Voyager, he says. The decision has been made at the highest level.

  – A cock-up? I muster. I mean, I’m white-collar. I thought the killers had to be –

  – Don’t believe everything you hear in the mess, Voyager, he goes. Priorities change. The Americans are polling as we speak. Atlantica needs to show them how the system deals with its human waste. It has an example to set. He smiles. – Your Atlantican’s a discerning customer. He doesn’t want to watch just any old Final Adjustment on his national holiday, Harvey. He wants value for money.

  Nothing left to say. My hands drop from the wheel, and I stand aside to let him take over. I see what he means now. The past, it’s ahead of me, on the vast water. And the future’s behind me because there isn’t one. After a few moments the tears make the line wobble and then spill and I see it again, the open sea, my life. Just like he said. I take a good long look, a last look, drinking it in.

  Power for the Powerless: NB There isn’t any.

  Then Fishook bleeps Garcia.

  – Escort this Voyager back, he says.

  It’s half-way down the corridor of D deck, as Garcia is taking me back to the cabin from the poop, that I make the mistake of looking across at the growing hump of Atlantica on the horizon. That’s when the physical reaction comes, unexpected and unbidden, a big tidal wave of nausea that I’m helpless against.

  – Wait, I tell Garcia. And unleash a frightening quantity of black bile, with lumps of paper in, on to the shiny rubber.

  – Like in horror film, says Garcia when I’ve finished.

  He looks impressed.

  In the cabin, John’s there with his eyes all red. His shoulders hang slack, like a boxer who’s toppling about in the ring, surrounded by people yelling in his ear to go back and fight. But you know he’s been felled like a tree and his career’s done with.

  I don’t speak. There’s this big emptiness inside me. I can still taste the sick in my mouth, so I go and rinse. When I turn round, John’s slumped in his chair.

  – You should be glad, I go.

  He should, logically, shouldn’t he? So why isn’t anything like you think it’s going to be? He’s crying now, big shuddery man-sobs. It’s worse than what happened on the bridge. It’s torture. I reach for my letter. What have I got to lose? A cold wave of misery slaps over me as I look at the envelope in my hands. When I first saw the red handwriting it was more flabbergasting than blood. It set my nerves jangling, fired up a mad little sizzle of hope that despite what happened, despite everything I knew, a certain woman might still be –

  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, nod
ding 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.

  He runs a hand across his broad brow. He feels slightly feverish. And despite the Boss’s white, humming presence next to him, slightly alone.

  The conversations he has monitored in-house show how far the creeping poison of disillusion has spread. Every organisation contains a hard-core of secret doubters, and the Corporation is no exception; they are low-level operators, mostly – the types that get referred to R and R, and end up questionnaired out of the system altogether.

  But suddenly, they’re getting numerous. Vocal too. The e-mails are insolent little texts – sarcastic, nit-picking, accusatory. Some signed, others arriving anonymously, through back-routes. The kind of toxic electronic paperwork which – only a few months ago – would have led to need-profiling. What solution, they ask, with thinly veiled hostility, does the Boss have up her sleeve, when it comes to dealing with the eco-geological crisis brought on by the waste leaks? As Facilitator General, might he liaise with the Liberty Machine to provide them with an answer? The atmosphere at Head Office is becoming tainted with a mutant mistrust; the lingering bad smell of lost nerve. In his darker, more paranoid moments, Pike has almost wondered whether some kind of … network might be operating. Oh, he has no proof. A wink here, a twisted glance there, a stifled whisper as he enters a room. It only takes a couple of dysfunctionals to start an insurrection: look at what the geology lobby tried to stir up a few years back, before the flush-out. Leo Hurley was eliminated long ago. Hannah Park likewise. But –

  But. He reaches for his coffee, sips, winces.

  – Fallings from us, vanishings, he murmurs. Blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised …

  He leans against the Boss’s smooth white flank and stares out of the floor-to-ceiling window across the cityscape. It is a view to die for.

  – High instincts before which our mortal nature did tremble like a guilty thing surprised …

  Is our own mortal nature the problem? Is that why the unfathomable 15 per cent seems to be doing its own thing?

  As morning breaks over Atlantica, centimetre by centimetre the flat grey rectangle of the Sea Hero slides closer to land.

  LIBERTY DAY 6 A.M.

  The Libertycare system looks set for a triumphant victory in the United States, mouths Craig Devon earnestly from Tilda Park’s television. But she can’t hear him; she keeps the sound right down, and anyway she’s wearing earplugs to block the sirens which have been shrieking all night. Despite the recent upheavals on Atlantica, Libertycare’s global status has flourished, Craig Devon is saying. Tilda passes her hand over her eyes: how’s anyone supposed to sleep? As the polls close in the United States after an unprecedented turnout, Earl Murphy is keen to stress that Atlantica’s terrorism crisis is no more than a ‘people hiccup’. If it’s the only problem the island has faced in ten years, he argues, and it’s down to humans, then it confirms what he has been saying all along …

  Tilda removes her little earplugs and measures out an early morning Vanillo in her sloping apartment. What we are witnessing today, finishes Craig Devon, is the dawn of a new era.

  Adapting her walk to the ever-changing gravitatio
nal whims of her home was hard at first, but Tilda managed. It doesn’t take much to factor a simple tilt into your gait, once you get accustomed to the idea. It’s the rest that’s hard.

  On the shelf above the TV, next to the miniature pill-chest and the hologram of Hannah where Tilda has trained her eyes not to rest for long, stands the spirit level, its elliptic bubble trapped in fluorescent green liquid. Tilda hobbles to the shelf, picks it up, turns it round, puts it back and watches the bubble move through the oil and settle. Seven degrees: severe subsidence, just as Benedict Sommers warned when he first told her about the Sect and its plans. St Placid is the worst hit, being closest to sea level. And the Hoggs to blame. You don’t realise how smoothly daily life runs until it’s disrupted.

  And it’s been disrupted all right. Tilda takes a swig of 68 proof Vanillo and winces, then feels the sweet after-tang velvet its way down. She’ll get a Gourmet Special delivery, later, foodwise. She doesn’t bother choosing from the menu any more; too much hassle. She just orders number seventeen, that way you get your little surprises; she’s had everything from potato skins to bisque. Sometimes she’ll switch on the TV, but the soap operas have died on her. To look at them, you’d think the scriptwriters and the actors have started to despise their work. Even the medical crises look weak and fake, as though while he’s shooting the resuscitation scene, the director’s on his mobile, looking for another job. And the commercials have definitely lost their X factor. She used to love that one for diabetic butterscotch, where Nefertiti hurtles out of a giant fridge, bristling with frozen popsicles. But the Nefertiti woman’s doing rape alarms now, and the doctor from Moment of Crisis, he’s selling surveillance equipment. And as for the news –

  There’s a new drug Sid Hogg’s started peddling, especially aimed at the elderly. One capsule and you’re hooked for the rest of your life, because it’s a parasite, and your blood’s the host; she’s seen the diagrams.