The Paper Eater

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 gravitational 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.

Her eyes flit to the window. She used to see joggers going past. She misses them, now they don’t come any more. They’re stuck at home too, most likely, doing it on an exercise machine instead, put off the streets by the muggings and the toxic leaks.

She can’t summon up the words to talk about what happened. The shame and the grief that mash inside her, they block her throat. She picked up the phone to the Customer Hotline once, opened her mouth, but all that came out was a gutted croak like a euthanasia victim breathing their last. If you can’t even speak to the Hotline about it, how can you begin to talk to your friends? It’s the thought of their pity that makes it worse. They say there’s not a family in the country hasn’t been affected in some way, so it’s not as though she’s alone. Oh, there are all sorts of support groups. Customer Care organises them. Or you can set up your own little circle, register it with Libertycare – she’s had all the bumf through her door, and Benedict’s been on about it.

It’s just, those groups are for losers, aren’t they?

The tears well up. They say the colour of death is pure white. That it’s the last thing you’ll see. All those years, trying to get rid of Hannah’s Block, and then the Hoggs do it, easy as pulling a plug! Betrayal’s a slippery slope, and Hannah was in up to her neck before she knew it. She even defended them! After the documentary, she said they weren’t that bad!

Another swig. Vanilla tang. Blunt feeling that comes after. Tilda would like to be small enough to dive into the bottle, and drown, and become pickled inside it like a dumb, innocent gherkin. It’d numb the grief, maybe. Dull the anger that attacks her sometimes, unexpectedly – a vicious bite, the kind a spoilt lap-dog might give you out of sheer yappy spite. Cruel and shameful as a senior sexual urge.

Hannah’s visit to the crater was captured on video. The CCTV cameras at the purity zone picked up everything, apparently: how Hannah used her Liberty pass to get in, how she added enzymes to the filtration system, how, when the security staff spotted her, she ran and slipped and –

– Please stop, Tilda begged the bereavement associate in a tiny whisper. I don’t think I –

– Sometimes it helps to bring the reality of it home, Mrs Park, the associate said. Why don’t you take the cassette with you, have a think? You never know, some customers in your situation find that –

Tilda had burst into hopeless sobbing. Benedict stepped in, murmured a few discreet words, then pocketed it himself.

– For when you’re ready, Tilda, he said. And not before. He left it on her video rack, but he didn’t push it.

It’s still there now, untouched. Watch it? She’d rather die. She finishes the Vanillo in one, smacks her lips. Pours another. Vanilla tang. Blunt feeling. Good.

Anyone illegally entering the zone takes their life in their hands, Benedict explained gently as Tilda rattled away at her little chest of drawers searching for the right pill, saying now where do I keep them, now where do I keep them, under her breath. The security personnel have their instructions. They can’t be held responsible for accidents. Especially if they’re encountered during the course of –

The word sabotage hung between them.

Hannah wasn’t the first Sect casualty. Far from it. It had been hush-hush so far. Don’t give them the publicity, was the thinking. It’ll help them thrive. It was more than anyone’s job was worth, Benedict Sommers told her sorrowfully, to retrieve the body from the crater.

The body.

There are bodies on TV. On Moment of Crisis they showed a bulldozed man, cut in two. Abroad, where human error’s so rife, there are hordes of them, aren’t there; wars, famines, burst dams, exploded factories… She opened her eyes and looked at Benedict again, dizzily.

– Body?

– But they found her cardigan, he said.

Crumpling, Tilda grabbed it, buried her face in its loose hairy knit and breathed in the smell of peanut butter.

Ever since that day a year ago, Benedict has been solicitous beyond the call of duty. He’s visited her every week and kept an eye on her like the good man he is. How many good men are there in the world? Tilda reckons she can count those that she has met in her entire lifetime on the fingers of one hand.

But sometimes, like last night, Tilda will sit in the semi-darkness of her living-room, staring at the hologram of Hannah and thinking about Benedict. He’s a dark horse. Oh, he’s told her things from time to time, about his flat not far from here, and how everyone in Head Office calls the Liberty Machine the Boss; it’s a she, apparently, and no bigger than a household fridge. But in those lonely, scary, middle-of-the night times, Tilda can’t help wondering if she did the right thing when he first started to visit her, back in the days when she called him Mr Sommers and he called her Mrs Park. She’d talked about her daughter, of course she had, shown him the hologram, why not, been pleased when he said he knew Hannah, even more pleased when he said she was well thought of… They’d first bumped into each other in a lift – that must happen a lot in office life, mustn’t it?

After that, it had seemed fine to show him the envelope.

– Go ahead, Tilda said, thrusting it at him. It’ll all be Greek to me, but if it’s of use.

– Thank you, he said. His eyes were a lovely blue. – It’s good to have your trust.

That was a nice thing to say, wasn’t it? He’d bring it back, he said. Hannah needn’t even know.

But on nights like last night, while the flood sirens are wailing across St Placid, Tilda re-lives that moment, and it just doesn’t look good. It fills her with – well, doubts. Doubts that turn to multi-headed monsters, the way they do in the dark, and whack, whack! When you chop one head off, another one sprouts. Sometimes a sleeping pill fixes it till morning. But sometimes it doesn’t.

Vanilla tang. Blunt feeling.

Exhausted to the bone, Tilda sighs wearily. Outside, through the wobbling blur of her tears, she can see the first hint of the fairy weather promised by the forecast: mauve mist giving way to coral pink, then a perfect, translucent blue with sparkling whorls of cloud.

Celebrate Liberty, that’s the slogan they’re using for the day. There’s going to be retail chaos apparently. The Bargain of a Lifetime will be the biggest sale ever.

Funny, though. She just can’t get in the mood.

Behind her on the muted television, Craig Devon is mouthing something, and pointing to a map of the United States. There’s an animated graphic showing how the votes are coming in. One after another, little Birds of Liberty fill the blank states.