The Paper Eater

by Liz Jensen

  – And the Park business?

  Outside, on the horizon, the Sea Hero comes into view, a distant block of grey.

  – Oh, I was going to tell you, says Benedict. I’ve visited regularly, as planned. The mother’s happy with the sabotage story. Well, not happy of course, but … well, she’s a model customer, so …

  – She hasn’t questioned it, nods Wesley Pike. He’s gazing at the ship.

  From Benedict, the sound of chewing.

  LIBERTY DAY 12 P.M.

  They’re calling it the dawn of a new era, but the thought brings no comfort to Tiffany, Gwynneth and Geoff. The Sea Hero is now sliding its way up the estuary – and Harvey with it.

  Gwynneth, who not long ago gave birth to the baby Howard – a fretful, colicky lad, hard to settle, quick to posset his lunch – tightens the belt of her dressing-gown around her birth-whacked midriff and chews on a fingernail. Nearby, balled up in an armchair, Tiffany feeds herself popcorn coated in spray-on caramel. Both women have spent the morning watching the TV, their stomachs twisted in knots. Geoff, stress-management consultant and new dad, won’t even look; it threatens his blood pressure. He sits with his feet in a basin of warm water, slices of organic Kenyan cucumber over his eyes, listening to whale music on headphones and secretly wishing he’d never met the Kidd family. Look what it’s all led to!

  For all of them, today sees the culmination of a year of what Geoff has christened pure unadulterated hell. Ever since the chilling documentary about the Hoggs was screened, the sirens have been wailing their morbid soprano day and night, deepening the siege mentality in the family home. The new baby can’t be blamed for sensing that something is horribly awry in the world he has entered – and screaming accordingly, both day and night. Fear stalks the beleaguered little family, raises their hackles, making them hiss and snarl at one another like beasts at bay. The knowledge that they share is a burden too awful for one small family to bear.

  As the Sea Hero sails towards Atlantica on their TV screen, Gwynneth plunges her head into her hands and groans. Not for the first time she wonders if she should check herself into some kind of clinic, or ring the Hotline and blab the whole thing. Oh, she was happy for Tiffany to bust Harvey and hand the Hoggs to Liberty – as anyone in her position would have been! But how could she have guessed they’d reappear in this ugly, frightening way? When they don’t even exist in real life?

  Or do they? She’s no longer certain. They’ve come to seem so – well, oh, just so horribly real! She’s even seen them on television! Heard interviews with their victims! Her friends have told her about the swathe of corruption that Cameron’s been spreading, vandalising street signs with his graffiti’d insignia. And there’s no avoiding the destruction wreaked by Sid, who’s been cutting the perimeter fence of the purity zone every night. There’s a rumour going round that Rick’s behind some of the broken marriages – Dr Carney’s, for example, that seemed made of rock.

  – It’s all your fault! she blurts at Tiffany. If it wasn’t for you –

  Tiffany pauses over her popcorn.

  – But I didn’t – I mean how could I –

  She sighs and stops. It’s pointless. What is there to say? Over the months, she has tried to reassure her family that, by delivering Harvey to Liberty when she did, she has gained them all immunity. But her sudden unexpected redundancy tells another story.

  – The fact is, spits Gwynneth, that we know the Hoggs aren’t real people, and nobody else does!

  – Shhh! hisses Tiffany, diving a hand deep into the popcorn tub, her face flushing with fear. It’s not safe to talk! Even to each other!

  Picking up the bad familial vibes, baby Howard begins to cry.

  – I’m scared, groans Tiffany, ignoring the infant’s wail. I don’t want to do it! Her eyes blur at the thought of this afternoon. She is shaking with fright.

  Two weeks ago, Liberty came to the door. There were two plain-clothes associates, a man and a woman. When she saw the Liberty IDs flashed at her, Tiffany’s heart bucked painfully. There was another one waiting outside in a car with Groke number-plates. He was dark and powerful-looking. Security, probably. He’d have a gun. His eyes swivelled expertly about the street.

  – May we come in? the tall man had said, stepping in.

  – Won’t take a minute, said the woman, following.

  While the blond man did the talking, the woman did the poking around. It was frightening. They’d felt so alone, so isolated. Tiffany had been so scared she’d crammed her face with cold alphabet pasta all the way through the meeting. Howard cried incessantly. Gwynneth shivered and whimpered. Geoff just did breathing exercises, trying to keep his pulse-rate down.

  – There’s heart failure runs in my family, Geoff trembled, when the Liberty man finished explaining the terrifying bottom line. The Liberty man’s mouth had tweaked upwards in response, as though he thought heart failure was funny. But in the end what choice did they have, once the smooth young associate had graphically described what would happen if they didn’t co-operate? With sinking hearts, Tiffany, Gwynneth and Geoff agreed to do what Liberty said.

  – You’ve made the right choice, said the Liberty woman as the quaking Tiffany took the red biro she was handed. And scared witless, wrote as dictated.

  Two weeks ago. Two awful, scary weeks. Nearer and nearer comes the ship. And now it has docked.

  – I can’t do it, whimpers Tiffany.

  – There’s no choice, snaps Gwynneth, silencing Howard with a dummy.

  And there isn’t. She’s committed.

  A buzz at the door: that will be the car now.

  LIBERTY DAY 2 P.M.

  The flooding in St Placid starts slowly from the east, exhaling a sickly lavender mist. Some customers, armed with binoculars, thermosed coffee and video-recording equipment, are strolling up to the foothills of St Giddier’s Mount to watch its creeping progress inland. There’s something mesmeric about the way the slick of liquid moves; it’s almost organic, like blood. By mid-morning when the pools have widened and flattened, you can even make out a steady smooth gurgle as its pulse strengthens. Look now across the farmlands and you will see dreamy lakes – vast thick pools that vibrate their own eerie subterranean song. Every now and then, the smooth skin is broken by the silver flip of a jumping fish, or the reaching tentacle of an ink-filled squid.

  The lavender spreads softly, a balmy puddle of oil on glass.

  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 t
wo 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.

  – For you, mate, he says.

  I gulp. The words won’t come.

  – When I thought it was me that was for the chop … well, I was planning to leave you all my stuff. You know, the tat Jacko sent. The Egyptian scroll thing, and the terrier. Even the rhino dropping.

  I glance at the fibrous block, light as a piece of popcorn, like a home-made loaf sitting there squat on the shelf. That faint organic smell.

  – Well, instead, he says, now that it’s you, going to – you know. Well, I thought you might like – well. A thing to say goodbye with.

  I’m so moved I can’t speak for a moment, so I just take the blindfold, and hang it round my neck.

  – I’ll … do it justice, I tell him. And the chess set …

  But my voice wobbles and I have to cough. Enough said. He knows. Next thing, we’re hugging. A big heavy man’s hug, slapping each other’s back. It goes on for a while – and then we split apart, embarrassed. But we’re both smiling like a couple of idiots, glad that it happened. There’s some silence after that, as we blow our noses on bog paper and mull things over.

  – Which would you prefer, says John. Being force-fed live tapeworms or having your whole face stuffed in a red-ant heap, eyes open?

  – Well, it’s apples and oranges, that one, I reply, trying to sound cheery. But if I apply my mind to it, I’d have to say –

  I was going to say the ant heap, but I break off in mid-flow. Because bam, it’s hit me like a whacking great sledgehammer between the eyes!

  – Jesus! I yell. How could I have been so stupid? The rhino shit! A stool investigation! How could I have missed it?

  In St Placid, Tilda holds her breath and bears televisual witness to the sombre but exciting scene being enacted on the upper deck of the Sea Hero and relayed live, complete with a little clock on the bottom left showing the minutes ticking by. There have been pictures of Harvey Kidd’s face everywhere lately. An éminence grise, is the caption in this morning’s paper. He chews the printed word, apparently; that’s why he’s grey. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he’s the one behind some of the Hoggs’ mo
st daring economic atrocities. There was even a graph illustrating all his dealings on the stock exchange; he bought and sold –

  Oh. It’s starting.

  There’s a drum-roll, and on to the deck of the prison ship Sea Hero steps the Captain himself. He waves to the crowd, and then there’s another drum-roll, and Harvey Kidd’s daughter and ex-wife appear, both in mourning: the younger woman in a black trouser suit and dark glasses, her mother in a black dress and a veil. There’s a man with them; Tilda’s read about him too; he’s Gwynneth Kidd’s new husband, who’s come to give moral support. He’s in dark glasses and a sombre suit. Perhaps aware that he is only on the edge of the family, he stands a little back from the women, his hands clasped behind his back, his blond head sombrely bowed.

  Tilda watches, entranced. She’s got some dim sum all ready to microwave but she’s glued to her chair. Another drum-roll and a door opens on to the deck. The prisoner appears, led by a chipmunk-faced guard.

  Harvey Kidd, grey-faced, blinks in the light.

  My head’s spinning. I can’t believe the size of the crowd, a throbbing packed mass, shoulder to shoulder. There must be thousands down there. As I raise my head to take in the spread of it, a massive jeer buckles out from the throng, a rushing throaty sound. They’re yelling and whistling and shrieking, their words cargoed with loathing, their tiny faraway faces distorted with hate.

  No question about it; they want me dead.

  – The sweet sound of democracy, murmurs Fishook. Justice must be seen to be done, Voyager. The customer’s demanding it, see?

  Beyond the bunting and coloured smoke I see the giant Ferris wheel doing a slow, mocking turn, the tiny figures in its clinging pods straining to gawp.